Can I come up?
More fury to surpress. Clueless men shortening her fucking life. She buzzed him in, opened the door for him. She knew what was coming. The last time she’d seen him she had broken up with him and then fucked him and sent him home. Admit it, she said to herself—she could hear him on the stairs—you confused the poor man.
We have to talk, Henry said.
No, we don’t, she said. We talked already. And then we had sex. Remember? So we’re covered, aren’t we?
She didn’t know how not to be slightly nasty. Being only slightly nasty was the accomplishment, in this mood, of a desire to be kind.
But it means something, he said. I mean it’s not just some random event. You said we were breaking up and then we went to bed, and now—
Now what? she said. Now what? You remember what I said? The last thing I said? That we fucked doesn’t mean we’re not breaking up, which I then said I was telling you because I didn’t want you to be confused.
But I am confused, he said.
Why am I not surprised, she said. Okay, look. It felt good. That day it felt good. Breakup sex. Standing there. Dressed. Minimally exposed. Skirt pulled up. Don’t you love that sound? I love that sound, the lining of a skirt against stockings. Very sexy. Today, I can tell you, that’s not where my head is. I’ve just been on corporate hold for an hour. Don’t go all emotional on me, Henry. Life is hard enough. It’s sex. If we like it a lot, if we like it too much, then perhaps it gets complicated. But frankly this is not what happened and this is not going to happen. Between us. No offense.
No offense? he said.
Yes, quite truly, she said. No offense. Again I’m talking about my frame of mind, not your personal qualities. Or your sexual capacities. Or your cock.
He stood, looking forlorn. Grimaced a little at the word cock. She felt pity, a little wave of motherliness or niceness, it irritated her that he could elicit that. He was not a bad guy, he just suffered from being a not-even-vaguely interesting guy. She sat down on the ottoman next to where they were standing. You have a handsome cock, she said. I do not disparage it.
And he did. It amazed her how the scrawny, bony guys often had large muscular cocks and the large muscular guys so often didn’t. She put her hand on it: there he was, ready Freddy, swelling beneath the prewashed denim… of his boring, light blue, unstylish jeans. He dressed like Woody Allen. And talked like one of the characters in Allen’s stupefying dramas. She pulled her hand back.
Henry, she said. Henry. You’re forty-six years old. We’ve been going out for a month.
Seven weeks, he said.
Seven weeks then, she said. She doubted this but it wasn’t worth figuring out. You don’t cry. You don’t cry, Henry. Not here, not anywhere. Jesus.
I’m sorry, he said. I keep thinking of the word conventional. You said I was conventional.
Well, you’re not conventional for New Mexico, she said. But for the Upper West Side of Manhattan—
I’m sorry, he said again. That word, it plunged me into an abyss. Of gray. A gray abyss.
Henry, see, now, that’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever said.
Maybe you should just give us some time, he said.
No, Henry. Time will not be our friend. Time will just infuriate me. Let’s stop before it gets toxic.
This isn’t toxic? he said.
Oh no, she said. Not even close.
* * *
WHAT GOES AROUND et cetera: André later: she found out he was fucking not one but two of the waitresses at the restaurant. Often after closing.
Jesus, she said. Then you come here and go to bed with me.
No no, he said. His hands came up like miniature shields to block this assertion. Not the same day. Other days.
What was it about certain men? He wasn’t that good-looking. It’s like some animal scent comes off them and women hit the floor on their knees. He didn’t have any doubts or misgivings about his desire to fuck you. He showed it in his eyes. He wasn’t sizing you up as a piece of meat. He looked straight at you and there it was: desire.
* * *
THAT HER FIRM was basically fucking evil could not be denied. It had only taken the first month to see it whole, though of course she’d known it all along. Morgan Stanley being three-quarters of their business was the first dead giveaway. Indeed, they had their office on the floor beneath Morgan’s banking regulations group in the WTC. She and others on her legal team had swipe cards to enter Morgan’s floors. Her firm supported Morgan’s compliance team. Their job on paper. What they complied with was Morgan. Early in her career, in entirely another context, representing someone in an EEOC case, she’d been in Morgan’s offices in Midtown one day and, departing after a meeting with the human resource people and their in-house counsel, she’d been on the elevator descending when some crusty partner had gotten on with four minions. After the doors closed and a second or two of silence had passed, he’d said in a pissed-off voice, I don’t pay the goddamned lawyers to tell me what I can’t do. I pay them to find a way to do it.
She had regarded the man from the side, and slightly behind: he couldn’t see her. He probably wouldn’t see her even if his face was pointed right at her. He was shorter than all his lackeys. Hair the color of pale slate. A look of permanent distaste on his face, for everything and everyone, carved there as by a sculptor. She understood him the way an oncologist understands cancer, not knowing its cause but recognizing its extent, its effects, knowing that it was incurable and that he was incurable. At that moment too, she had understood the firm—it too was incurable. It didn’t even know it had a disease that needed curing. It had to move and it had to eat so that’s what it did, and the larger it grew and the more kinds of business it swallowed, the more it had to move and the more it had to eat, and by mid-1999, when she’d negotiated a contract to join up with its near-subsidiary downstairs, to do compliance, it was moving in dark places and eating some bad shit; compliance was like a dash of mustard stirred in with all the shit that got eaten, hardly a thing. What mattered was money. For some of the money, a small dance was required, a certain knot of the necktie expected by the government. Little people took care of it. That was she, a little person, and she would be paid three hundred and twelve thousand, a little more, by the end of her first full year, after her bonus. What are you going to do with all your money, John?
24
After Henry and after André she spent some weeks in isolation. She was busy enough with the job to be absent from among her small group of friends. She was not interested in dating again. She tried to keep some healthy food in the house, sauté some vegetables for herself, make some brown rice. She read books, watched films at night—Japanese mainly, she was again becoming obsessed with Japan. And Korean. The Korean films were wild. But some nights she thought about the options, fed Mr. Arbuckle, and found somewhere to eat out, alone. So it was this night. A busy place, on one of the side streets around the corner from Columbus Avenue, bearing Thomas Edison’s middle name for reasons unknown, Alva—good food, no tables available by the time she arrived, after eight, but room at the bar. So she took the seat, had her book with her, a little novel by Kawabata, about a writer and the younger woman with whom he’d had an affair when she was sixteen. The woman went on to become a well-known artist but the writer had, in traditional terms, destroyed her life: yet her life appeared to be not destroyed but singular, because of the control as a woman she was able to exercise over it. After her writer-lover, she’d refused to marry. She’d become an established painter, and she had living with her a young woman painter, her protégée and her lover. The scenes between them were delicate as razor wire. Kawabata loved a distorted eroticism—distorted by grief, abuse, modernity. Anna ordered a piece of fish—branzino—with pistachios, shallots and thyme, rice and spinach and little mini squash things. Fish being something she never bothered to obtain and cook for herself at home. A green salad, a piece of good bread and butter.
And so she
sat and so she ate and read about Kyoto and Tokyo in the 1960s. And at some point she became aware, off to her left, of a broad, almost tall man, a man that gave a sense of height in the way he moved but was under six feet, she realized; her age, not bad-looking from a quick glance: appraising her. Would she ever be able to understand? What it meant to them, when men looked at her? She’d had more than three decades of this kind of attention now and it still unnerved her, or delighted her, or infuriated her. On occasion, frightened her. She wanted the world to be so ordered that the right to look at her, the right to assess her beauty, her class, her erotic potential, was hers to grant: some allowed, some not. Of course it wasn’t. And wouldn’t be. But the eyes were almost always rapacious: she could feel them down side streets half a block away. From windows. It was an unerring sense: if she felt it, she knew it was there. One was constantly tugging at one’s sweater, righting one’s skirt, pulling up one’s jeans, against those eyes, which were forever trying, like some perverted schoolmaster’s hands, to make their way inside one’s clothes. Younger, she had tried for a time to give up caring: wear no bra and a loose-buttoned sleeveless blouse and let ’em maneuver for the side view. This was liberating for half a day, then a source of rage and shame. Shame at the rage because that’s always where rage ends up when it can’t be shown some viable release. She really wanted to kill sometimes. Perhaps this was why half the women of her mother’s generation seemed furious and bitter. Not to mention insane, which outcome might, okay, have had other causes, like the systematic eradication of their identities.
And now at this late date, she was forty-three years old for Christ’s sake, some fucking guy was staring at her, she could feel it, standing down the bar a couple of seats, she would not turn and look at him, only had a rough sense of him—but then he came toward her and spoke:
Excuse me, he said. I believe we used to be in love once.
She turned to level him, to tell him to get lost, to denounce him as a clueless asshole, but some familiarity of the voice and a faint chemical foreknowledge, and her processing, too, of what he had just said, all this told her, mid-turn, that it was George. Then she saw and confirmed the fact. This half-second head start of cognizance was not enough to keep the shock and dismay from her face.
And by then he was actually crooning at her, low-voiced: Well I’ll be damned…
She realized she had literally gasped—she heard with horror her sharp intake of air, like Brenda Vaccaro wheezing on that old bra commercial. She put her hand over her mouth.
… here comes your ghost again—he finished the line. He laughed at her. You’re blushing now, he said. I’m sorry, really.
She was angry. Goddammit, she said. Goddammit. Shit.
I’m so sorry, really, he said. He reached out to touch her but, wisely, didn’t.
For fuck’s sake, she said, don’t stand there looming over me, fucking sit down. I was so about to let you have it. Goddamned asshole staring and singing at me.
He hid his face in his hands.
She looked at him. That’s a horrible thing to do. To a woman in her mid-forties. She thought but did not say, who actually did love you once.
She reconsidered and corrected herself—almost mid-forties, she said.
You don’t look a day over thirty-five he said. Or really, thirty-two. Three. Thirty-three.
He was scrambling to find the right number. Always dangerous territory.
Yeah, sure, she said.
I did apologize.
So you did.
I apologize again. I said what came into my head, verbatim. Often not a great idea.
That’s one of the things adulthood is supposed to train you out of, she said.
There’s only so much adulthood any one person can handle.
Any one man can handle you mean, she said. More males should admit this fact about themselves.
A pause. He said, How about this weather?
It’s the not the heat it’s the humidity. Actually it was early June and not hot and the weather had been spectacular. She didn’t mention this.
Yes, he said. Right. Winter kept us warm, covering Earth in forgetful snow.
He delivered the line flat but with a flavor of affection.
You remember, she said.
I do. You loved it so. I almost memorized it.
You apparently did memorize it. It’s oddly touching.
They looked at each other. He started to smile, then looked away, looked back with his face straightened.
What are you reading? he said.
Kawabata, she said, and held up the book for a second. An old paperback she’d found used somewhere on holiday. One of the stores on Cape Cod, she suspected.
It’s strangely compelling, she said. A society that values art.
He said nothing, watched her.
I didn’t recognize you, you know, she said. Last time we met, you were neat as a pin. Louis’s play. Now I saw this grizzled floppy-haired guy in jeans checking me out. I was like please God no, but then, what the fuck, there you are, coming over. I wanted my shoulder as cold as I could get it.
It did look—I’d say—lethally cold.
You have a killer opening line though.
Well, I didn’t want to kill you exactly.
You aren’t here alone, are you?
No, he said. I’m with some people. They’re nice, funny. I’d ask you to join us but I can tell you wouldn’t and really I’d prefer to politely depart from them and come back and talk to you.
Ha, she said. Well, you’re right about not joining. I’m not really up to that. I stopped in for a quiet… a quietish drink. I’ve never seen anyone here I know, before tonight.
She had picked up a guy here one night but she didn’t say that. Nor did she say she might have done so again tonight, given the opportunity. The last one had invited her to eat dinner and she’d leaned toward him and said, I don’t like to have sex on a full stomach. Now George was the opportunity, a near-paralyzing thought.
George said, Read your book, give me like five minutes. Or eight. He turned away, turned back. As if to make sure she would wait for him.
Really. I’ll be right back.
I believe you, she said. Go.
At his table he drank off his drink and made excuses, went around a bit, there were some laughs, she could see him explaining. People looked over, she averted her eyes, not wanting to look at being looked at. She was doing as requested, reading her book.
He sat next to her.
They looked at each other some more.
Remember—he started to ask, then stopped.
Yeah, hold that, she said. We’ll have none of that. That road is closed during the off season. Too much snow. Danger of avalanche.
You look good. Prosperous and everything.
I’m fine, she said, and felt instantly, as always when saying it, that she was lying.
I’m finally making real money working for the bad guys, she said. Are you still… what you were? Not spiritually. I mean professionally. A coffee guy.
Not really, he said. I’m transitioning out. We’re not really creating anything new, haven’t for a long time. It’s just about growth now. I’m not that interested.
What are you interested in? she said.
Ah, he said. There’s the question. I’m interested in my son, who’s thirteen and lives with me.
She looked at her watch.
We have a live-in caretaker, he said.
Funny, she said. A pause. Then: You weren’t one of the ones I thought would get rich.
This is something you thought about?
Some people struck me as headed there, yeah, she said. Her first thought was of Evan. Reagan-boy. He was a banker somewhere now. Didn’t matter where or what rank: he was rich. Not as rich as George though, certainly. So ha-ha Evan. Should have worked on a coffee truck and skipped B-school.
After a pause he said, We—I mean the men—we identified the already-rich but we never thought about whether a
woman was going to get rich.
Yeah? she said. The remark infuriated her. Think about what that means, she said. Really dwell on it. For a few days. Or years.
Yeah, I was acknowledging that, he said. Anyway in answer to the question. There are a couple of aspects of it that are interesting—I’m interested in Mexican coffee growers for instance—and many aspects that are definitively not interesting. Where to open a shop in Copenhagen being a recent not interesting example. Also, why we should open another shop in Copenhagen, since we have two already.
Three is a stronger number than two.
My god, you sound just like Burke. That’s exactly what he would say. Might have said, in fact. These days my ears glaze over. As it were.
You’re seeing someone now? she said.
Not really, he said.
She laughed. Not really. Of course. Don’t tell Mommy! Mommymommy I only peed in the bed a little and it wasn’t my fault it was Frankie’s fault, Mommy no really—Mommy!
She did the child’s rhythm but an adult tone, without pitching her voice higher. Looked at him, hung between amusement and irritation.
I’m going to try this again, she finally said. Are you seeing someone now?
There is someone I see every week or every couple of weeks… Like every ten days, say.
Three times a month, you also might say, Anna said.
You might. God knows what you might do, I haven’t really talked to you in like ten years.
Seven and a bit, she said. But go on, let us not digress.
Neither of us is committed in any way. I am not breaking her heart and she is not breaking my heart, we’re busy with other stuff and basically we like the sex. She has terrible taste. She’s forced me to go to not one but two musicals, which I told her is the limit, for the rest of time. I’m fairly sure if she ran into a fabulous-looking old lover in a bar, she’d have no compunction. Is that sufficient?
More than, she said.
How do you know I’m telling the truth? he said.
Oh god, you were always such a bad liar, Anna said. Completely transparent. I doubt you’ve become that good now. So order one more drink and then maybe I’ll invite you up to see my etchings.
Crazy Sorrow Page 29