Everything Solid has a Shadow

by Michael Antman

  She signaled for the check, even though, having eaten only a bit of our dinner, I’d been contemplating a cup of coffee and maybe a biscotti. While we waited for the check to arrive, she smiled distantly but didn’t say much more to me. There was definitely something wrong. Maybe she really had felt violated by my dream, or merely, for lack of a better term, freaked out. Maybe she didn’t want me around to remind her and just didn’t want to talk about it at all. Her explanation for my dream sounded more like a rationalization. After all, when she had spoken to me in my dream, she hadn’t merely said she was sick or fatigued or shaky, she had said there was something wrong with her brain.

  And there was.

  So I let it go until after I’d paid the check, and I waited until we walked back out onto the sidewalk. It was a glorious summer evening, and the sun, though low in the sky, was still bright and hot. Suddenly, on impulse, I said, “Hey, you’re still feeling really pretty good, right? And I’m not trying to minimize the seriousness of what you’re facing, but hopefully you will be for a long, long time. And I know you like snorkeling and surfing and everything. Anyway, so if Alisa’s not going to be able to go with me to Hawaii, how about you join me instead? See something beautiful instead of the inside of a club or a doctor’s office, have a little fun, take your mind off of being sick.”

  MariAngela looked at me, a little startled, and the lowering sun made her eyes look almost like they’d appeared in the dream—unnaturally bright, and with a tinge of orange in them. Then she said “no” so definitively and so abruptly that I knew that things with us would never be the same.

  “No” was the only thing she said.

  And then she walked away.

  10

  It was another bad evening. I went back to my house, and instead of calling Alisa as I’d said I would, I sat cross-legged on my bed, working on the chord changes for a new song. It was a tricky one, and just at the moment I was concentrating hardest on it, a sudden image flashed into my mind: It was Alisa’s bottom half, stretched out over the laundry table in her condo basement, being pressed slowly down again by a male torso so that her bare butt—no bikini bottom this time—was pressing against the light switch and flipping it to the off position.

  Except this time, I could see who the man was. It wasn’t me, and it wasn’t some shape-shifting, generic dream character. It was Frank.

  I laid my guitar on the foot of my bed and went into the kitchen to make a late dinner. But I stood there at the open refrigerator, and I felt more frozen than anything in the freezer compartment. I was having trouble sorting out what was bothering me, because there was just so much. There was the argument with Alisa, and her comment about my “fear of success.” That was one thing. But MariAngela’s reaction to my Hawaii invitation was another. Her simple no kept on echoing in my head, and it wasn’t just a rejection, it was a rebuke. It seemed to be implying that I was a bad person for even asking, but why? Because I already had a girlfriend? But Alisa had said no, and I was starting to wonder how much longer our relationship was going to last. Or was it because MariAngela thought it was unfeeling to ask her so soon after her diagnosis? Maybe, but wouldn’t a good friend invite a good friend to a beautiful and peaceful place to get her mind off of that diagnosis?

  Or maybe it was because MariAngela thought that I was asking her despite her diagnosis, in order to have sex with her. But that didn’t make sense—if I’d never hit on her before, why would I do so now, when she was sick? Anyway, whatever MariAngela might be thinking, I knew my own mind and knew that I certainly didn’t have any notion whatsoever of having sex with her in Hawaii. And yet if that were the case, wouldn’t I have had to get her her own room? And how could I afford that if I couldn’t even afford a new Speedo?

  And wasn’t it true that, sick or not, I had been attracted to MariAngela for a long time?

  Or was MariAngela’s rejection based on quite the opposite—on her knowledge that, as her illness progressed, she might never have sex again? Had she been insulted not by some imagined supposition on my part that we would share a room and have sex, but rather by some imagined supposition on my part that sex was completely out of the question?

  Had she imagined, in short, that I had invited her out of a completely asexual sort of pity? And could it possibly be the case?

  And then there was the image of Alisa having sex with Frank. I found it very hard to get it out of my head, even though it, too, like whatever the hell it was that MariAngela was imagining, existed purely in the realm of supposition. Alisa having sex with Frank and me not having sex with MariAngela were somehow all tangled together in a way that made me very, very unhappy indeed.

  I went on like this for a while, feeling miserable, although I suppose that standing there with the refrigerator and freezer doors open wasn’t so bad, because it was a hot evening, and my old house didn’t have any air conditioning. But after a while, I started sweating and feeling weak in my legs, and that made me think of what it must be like to have ALS, so I shut the refrigerator, grabbed a dusty granola bar from the cabinet, and went to the couch to lie down.

  It only got worse. I was developing a headache from the lack of food, and I wondered why I hadn’t told MariAngela that I wanted some of that gnocchi too, or why I hadn’t just ordered my own dish or even flagged the waiter down for some coffee and biscotti before the check came. Was it because I wanted MariAngela to get all the nutrition she needed? Or was it because I was afraid to interrupt her as she told me of her illness? Did I think she would accuse me of being unsympathetic for eating while she talked about her incurable disease? That was ridiculous, of course, but then that raised the larger question of why I was so afraid of women and of what they thought of me. And then that got me off onto a tangent that was too dark for me to handle, because of what had happened when I was a child and Elizabeth died and her mother said I was responsible, and maybe I was in a way, because why else would my family have moved back to Buenos Aires so quickly and then stayed there for three years?

  I couldn’t dwell on this for long, so I started worrying about my job situation, which, as scary as it was, was a big comfort compared to thinking about that little girl’s horrible death. By the time I fell asleep on my couch, though, the one terrible thing that seemed to resound in my head worse than all the other terrible things was the sound of MariAngela saying no to me in such a definitive and preemptory manner.

  I was a very bad person, and MariAngela, who was sweeter and less judgmental than anyone I knew, had me pegged.

  11

  The next morning, I felt a little better, and before work I went to the pancake place down the street from my house for a big breakfast of three poached eggs, turkey bacon, coffee, orange juice, and a pecan roll, and by the time I strolled into the office, I was doing pretty well.

  Gilbert was in his “wise man” mode that day. His self-definition required him to imagine that others found him to be intimidating, controlling, and a memorable “character,” though his inclination to be seen in this manner was so transparent that it made his tendency to dominate seem ugly and insincere, because it was in service to his self-image and not to the work we performed on behalf of our clients. Understanding this at some level, he would sometimes take a softer tack, where he spoke loftily of meanings and intimations, though, without his being fully aware of it, this was doubly insincere, as its purpose was to obscure, or artificially ennoble, his naked need to intimidate.

  But there was a peaceful, if inadvertently comic, element to this softer mode of his. He pulled a chair up next to mine and started massaging my shoulder as if I were his prize horse.

  “This business of ours.”

  “Yes,” I said. “What about it?”

  “You happy?”

  “Sure, I guess.” I shrugged a little bit to get his hand off of my shoulder. I felt relieved, because when he’d said “this bu
siness of ours” I thought he was talking about the marketing business in general, and that was usually the prologue for him to say something along the lines of, “It’s a funny business, don’t you think? I mean, at the end of the day….” And then he’d be off to the races.

  But he was talking about our agency, specifically, so that was a bit better.

  “I know we’ve had some tough times here lately, Charlie boy. And I think I know why.”

  “Why?”

  “I think we’re looking at this business backward. We’ve got a stable of clients that we serve 24/7, and we put everything we have into meeting their needs.”

  “So you’re saying we should put our own needs first?” The irony, of course, was that this was exactly what Gilbert did every day—put our own needs first. That was what kept us, I believed, in the third tier of companies in our industry, though I wasn’t about to point this out to Gilbert. It was easy for me to be contemptuous of him and his self-serving ways, but starting my own agency, and doing a better job of it, was well beyond my capabilities.

  “No, I just mean that our clients really don’t know what they need. Oh, they think they do, they think they do. ‘Get me a social media presence.’ ‘Get me a content-marketing capability.’ But do we ever stop and ask ourselves, or ask them, if what they say they need really serves a purpose?”

  “Well, to some extent, we do.”

  “Like when, Charlie? Like when?”

  “Well, like when I switched Gennaro to a Google AdWords campaign instead of the regular banner ads because I didn’t see us getting much traction from them.”

  “Wait a minute, what? You did what?”

  “I, uh, you know, I just felt because they depended so much on search results and it’s a lot cheaper, and…”

  “Just fuckin’ with you, Charlie. Just fuckin’ with you. Keep up the good work. Enjoy the islands, and we’ll talk about Gennaro when you get back.”

  With that, he gave my shoulder another unnecessary squeeze and walked away.

  So my job was off my fretting agenda for a while. I had a lot of other things on my mind, but no one to talk to about them. Obviously after her rejection and all that had come before, there was no way I could call MariAngela. Bowen was more of a buddy than a friend I could confide in. I thought fleetingly about calling either Frank or Diane, but I rarely saw or talked to either one except when Alisa was around, and besides, I suddenly remembered the image I’d had of Frank having sex with Alisa, which I’d almost forgotten about in the rush of other dark images last night. I really didn’t have any other friends to speak of, but then it occurred to me that Alisa was still my girlfriend, at least for now, and I could at least give her a call on FaceTime.

  I’d planned to keep it all kind of light at first, but instead what I said was, “Man, I had a terrible night last night.”

  A bit to my surprise, she said, “I’m sorry, sweetie. I hope you’re feeling better today.”

  But instead of following her lead and asking her how she felt and, in general, making up with her, I said, “One of the reasons I had a terrible night was that I had this weird image of you having sex with Frank on the laundry table in your condo. I know it was just part of this whole light-switch thing, because that was part of the image, too, but I gotta admit, it bothered me a little.”

  Alisa surprised me again. “I’m beginning to think you really are psychic, Charlie. First of all, you actually dreamed about the light switch for a second time!”

  “I didn’t dream it. It was just this image that popped into my head while I was awake.”

  She shrugged, as if this were of the most supreme unimportance. “And second of all, I get where you’re coming from with the whole Frank thing.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that I haven’t really been mentioning it lately, but pretty much every night, especially when you’re not sleeping over, I’ll run down to the basement and flip the switch because I’m hoping it’ll make you have another dream.”

  “Like I said, it wasn’t a dream. It was just an image that flashed into my head while I was awake.”

  “Same difference.”

  “Well, maybe, but in any event, that wasn’t what I was asking. I was asking what you meant when you said you saw where I was coming from about the whole Frank thing.”

  “What I’m saying is that Frank’s been coming on to me big time at work. He and Diane aren’t getting along at all, and I’m guessing that’s why she was so dark at dinner the other night, all that death talk and rumination about how everything changes and stuff. Frank said they haven’t had sex in six months.”

  “So he’s after you now?”

  “You must’ve picked up subconsciously on some signals he was sending at dinner. Or maybe it really was one of those vestigial communications, but the fact is, Frank keeps on coming over to my desk and talking about all the things he’d like to do to me. Not super-direct or anything, but hinting, which is somehow worse.”

  “So you’re saying he’s sexually harassing you.”

  “I guess you could call it that. He’s very proud of his huge dick and he keeps on telling me how he’s going to use it on me.”

  “What huge dick? He has a huge dick? And how do you know this?”

  “I don’t, Charles. He’s just bragging. He’s trying to get me turned on. He doesn’t understand women at all, if he thinks that’ll do it. I’m thinking of going to HR and complaining.”

  “I’m still not clear on all of this.” I often wasn’t clear on things when I was talking to Alisa. “You just said he was more like hinting, but then you tell me he’s talking about his huge penis. That hardly sounds like hinting to me.”

  “You’d have to be a woman to understand. He’s hinting in a really obvious way, so that he knows I get the message that he thinks I want to hear, but without saying it directly so he doesn’t get into trouble if I report him to HR.”

  “You don’t report to him, do you?”

  “No, he’s in a different account group. Technically, we’re almost at the same level. I suppose I could just tell him to shut the fuck up. But I’m a little afraid that if I do that, or if I go to HR for that matter, that he’ll make more trouble for me.”

  “So you’re not turned on by him at all?”

  “Are you kidding? Absolutely not.”

  “And you haven’t had sex with him at all? On the laundry table in your condo, or anywhere else?”

  “C’mon, Charles, you’re being ridiculous. The laundry table? It would collapse under the weight.”

  “Of his huge dick.”

  “Ha ha. No. I have not had sex with him on the laundry table or anywhere else. I just want to get away from him.”

  “So then how about you change your mind and come to Hawaii with me?”

  “Okay.”

  “What? Okay? I mean, you’ll really go?”

  “Sure.”

  “What about your fear of flying over water and everything?”

  “I’ve been thinking about that. That’s why God invented Xanax. I figure one Xanax when we take off, one when we’re over the water, and I’ll fill in the gaps with vodka.”

  “Now you’re talking!” I couldn’t have felt more buoyant than I did at that moment. It was as if everything from the past few weeks—MariAngela’s illness, her rejection, Frank and his putative big penis, my job situation, my father’s $60,000 gambling debt if in fact it existed, even that horrible CGI movie we’d seen with Frank and Diane—all of it had been wiped away by a brilliant blue wave.

  “So will you even try to go snorkeling with me?”

  “I’ll come to the beach with you. I promise. This is Honolulu where the club is, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Oh, so wait a minute, we might not even h
ave to fly to the other islands at all, right?”

  “Well, I kind of wanted to see the rest of Hawaii, but we’ll play that one by ear.”

  “Good. So anyway, sure, I’ll go to Diamond Head beach, or whatever it’s called, and I’ll bring that white bikini, and maybe we’ll find some beach volleyball players and I’ll kick their asses so you can feel proud of me.”

  “I’m proud of you already, just for going.”

  “And if there’s a topless beach, you can really show me off.”

  “Cool. And snorkeling?”

  “I promise I’ll think about it. Maybe. Yes. Not off of a boat in the middle of the ocean, but maybe some place where we can wade in from the beach or something. Get a couple of drinks in me and hold me around the waist, and maybe I’ll give it a shot.”

  It was weird how nice she was being. But I didn’t question it. All I could think of was me teaching her something for once, because, skinny and hunched shoulders and all, I was nonetheless a strong swimmer. And watching all the guys on the beach admiring her in her white bikini, or in just the bottom half of her white bikini. Seeing other guys admiring her body and her breasts would be a big turn-on for me, I had to admit. And so was watching her in the audience, smiling proudly as I performed—though I had trouble picturing this last one, and suddenly I was nervous all over again that no one would show up to my shows, or that I’d perform poorly, or something. I didn’t have stage fright, per se, but I did have Alisa-fright, and I didn’t want her to lose respect for me if she didn’t care for my performance.