The bowl did not go unremarked. The white Mr. Tatsusuke had chosen for the tea bowl was stainless. It was subtly luminous, and offset by the gold, it was luxurious. Unlike many potters who imitate the work of Lucie Rie, Mr. Tatsusuke does not aspire to ever-increasing feats of thinness in his clay, nor is he interested in a smooth exterior and flawless lines—a yoga student’s idea of peace. Mr. Tatsusuke’s hand is bold. He has a masculine commitment to his imperfections, rather than a fretting quality. His craftsmanship is masterly, and this particular bowl stood out from the body of his work. It was like a declaration of love. For what, I was unsure.
* * *
It was a month later, sometime in the middle of a weekday afternoon, that Mrs. Thibideaux and I had our only conversation. I had let the phone ring and ring, so I was startled when the rings came to a halt, and after a little fumbling, a woman spoke to me with great confusion.
“Hello?” she said. “Hello?”
“Good afternoon,” I said. “I hope I didn’t wake you?”
She just gave a cough and then apologized for her cough.
I said, “No need to apologize. I’m calling from Seibu department store. I was calling to inform Gerard Thibideaux that his commission has arrived in the store.”
“Hello?”
“Yes, good afternoon, I’m calling from Seibu downtown. Is Gerard Thibideaux available?”
“Jerry?”
“Yes, he had ordered a bowl from us, and I wanted to inform him it has come in the store.”
“Jerry isn’t here!”
“All right, could you please inform him—”
I heard her fumbling the phone in its cradle, and after a few moments, she managed to hang up.
* * *
My shyness about the bowl began to diminish. As days became weeks, I got in the habit of calling regularly. I think it was about twenty-one days later when, abruptly, Mr. Thibideaux answered the phone.
“Thibideaux residence, Jerry speaking.”
“Mr. Thibideaux, this is Fumi at Seibu department store.”
“Hello, Fumi. How are you?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I was calling to inform you that your commission has arrived in the store.”
“Uh-huh, thank you, Fumi. I appreciate that.”
“Of course. Do you know when you might be free to come in?”
“No, Fumi—to be honest, I don’t.”
“Sir? The bowl is in the store, for clarification. It has already arrived in the store. That’s for clarification purposes.”
He started to say something, but then he stopped, and for a little bit of time, both of us were quiet.
“Mr. Thibideaux?”
“Yes?”
“Your bowl has come into the store four or five weeks ago. Do you know—”
“I heard that, Fumi.”
“Oh.”
Then we were quiet again.
“Mr. Thibideaux,” I said, but before I could continue he said, “I’m waiting for some cash to land. Fumi, I’m waiting for some cash to land in my account.”
He began to tell me something about check number 622. I said, “Perhaps you could make a payment.” Then he started to tell me about a trust fund in Mississippi. He explained his great-grandfather was a pine baron. He talked about caring for his mother, about how much it cost him, and then his mother began to shout at him in the background. Actually, she was quite capable of saying things that were unkind. Mr. Thibideaux said, “Fumi, would it be all right if I called you back?”
But rather than letting me answer, he just hung up the phone.
* * *
Months passed with no word from Mr. Thibideaux. He never called, and he never answered the phone when I called. I left messages. I even considered writing him a card. I thought about it quite often. Once, I even found myself thinking about it under the strange conditions of a dream. I was trying to get some nails and tacks gathered in crumpled-up newspaper while at sea, in an old wooden sailboat, amid tossing white-crested waves. I was in the bottom of the boat, in a small cellar, so the tossing waves caused the nails to keep escaping my grasp. “It doesn’t matter,” somebody was telling me, and I was saying, “No, it does matter. It matters a lot!”
It was a small thing, an inconvenience, but it grew in my mind, so that when I looked at, when I even thought about, Mr. Thibideaux’s bowl, I felt sick to my stomach. It became the kind of incident a person could explain to a psychologist.
* * *
Several days after Mr. Tatsusuke died of natural causes, Mr. Seibu asked me to show him the white bowl from the jewel-box display. It had been a year since I had spoken on the phone with Mr. Thibideaux. Mr. Seibu ran his fingers along the spiral divot inside the bowl, where Tatsusuke had traced his fingers through the clay. He turned the bowl to examine its bottom, and I knew he wanted to take it. This is quite ordinary for Mr. Seibu, who could of course have any item in his store.
I knew he was going to take the bowl. I also knew that I was going to have a telephone call from Mr. Thibideaux. What I did not know was that Mr. Thibideaux was going to choose that particular moment to appear in the store, like the fox. He stood behind Mr. Seibu, who was saying, yes, maybe he would like to take the bowl to his home.
I nodded. I took the bowl and turned. I began to wrap it in tissue paper, and then I stopped. It was my responsibility to explain that the bowl belonged to Mr. Thibideaux. I took a moment to compose my words.
“Fumi”—Mr. Seibu gave me a funny look and extended his open palm to take the bowl. He bowed and said good night.
Actually, Mr. Thibideaux never spoke. He just turned and walked out slowly, even stopping to pick up a Daum figurine of a penguin. I considered racing out onto the sidewalk and taking Mr. Seibu by his sleeve. I would just have to explain—it was a commission, I made a mistake. But I was uncertain, thinking of all the different ways to begin.
* * *
Later that week, I received an envelope, and inside it I found a card. On the front of the card was a photograph of a naked old man who was tied to the ceiling by ropes and had some kind of foam smeared all around his bottom. A second old man, wearing a lot of leather, had his fist inside the first man’s bottom. I probably should have just thrown the card away, but I opened it and found a long inscription in a delicate hand.
Mr. Thibideaux wrote that he understood what had happened and bore me no ill will. He explained that he hated this world and everyone in it. The people whom he had once considered friends had abandoned him when his father died and his money was spent, and his mother had contracted this disease. He told me he himself had AIDS, and he described the circumstances under which he had contracted it. He said there is nothing beautiful in this world, nothing wholesome, and nothing sane. He said people everywhere are like figures in a certain painting by Bosch, and the time he spent in monasteries was characterized by impassioned bickering over the smallest things—the sound of chewing, the way a certain man moved his fingers. He told me how they fired an old cook just because he was flatulent, and because he used too much salt. When you drink a cup of tea, he said, you are a party to misery, and then I stopped reading what he had to say.
I never mentioned Mr. Thibideaux’s card to anyone. I imagine that he hoped to disturb me, sending that kind of card, but I am not some flower. I have been alive for more than fifty years, and I have thought many ugly things. Miserable people often think they have a special purchase on the truth. My husband was one of those. At the moment of his death, I told him I was relieved. He gasped, and then everything was torn away.
Catholic
In the morning, I wrote an email to this priest I knew. It had been a long time since I’d thought of him. I told him that I had spent the weekend with a guy I met on a plane. “But I guess I am too intense, or something.” I asked him if I could stay in his place in Paris. I said, “I know this is a lot to ask, but I feel very lonely right now, and like you are the only person I can say these things to.”
He answered immed
iately: “I won’t be checking email for the next month or so.” It took me a second to realize that it was an autoreply message.
The next morning he wrote: “Don’t worry. I think you will meet other boys. Be flamboyant. I don’t have a place in Paris. I used to have one in London.”
At my job, I had a desk that looked out at the tar-painted second-story roof where people from the music department went to smoke. I went out there to call the plane guy. I walked back and forth on a wooden board, and then squatted down and rested on my calves. I told the plane guy I never wanted to talk to him again. He said that was childish.
* * *
My friend Lee asked me to see a movie. We agreed to meet at a German restaurant around the corner from the theater.
Lee and I were not close friends. We had met about ten years before. At that time Lee was a computer programmer. He was also in a band. He was having a touch of success when I first met him, which made my close friend—whom Lee dated—angry. She said, “I have known a thousand bands who were supposedly about to blow up, and it never happens.” She was frightened that she would lose Lee, or that he would have all the power in their relationship. Lee did become famous, but he always loved my friend, and in the end it was much more complicated between them.
By this time, by the time we met at the German restaurant, my friend had broken up with Lee, and was dating Bill Clinton’s young press advisor. Lee’d had some real success and he was at the beginning of his decline. He knew it was the beginning of his decline, and so did everyone around him, but he tried not to accept it.
Lee and I were still friends for one reason: we often saw each other at Starbucks. We were the only people like us who went to Starbucks. At first we ignored each other. I would have been okay to leave it that way, but Lee was a descendant of John Singer Sargent, so he had excellent manners. He came up to my table one day and said, “Hi.” After that we’d sit together with our laptops when we saw each other. We had almost nothing to say.
I got to the German place an hour early. The restaurant was empty except for a guy at the bar. He was a little chubby. I could tell he was single because he was wearing white tube socks with black dress shoes. His jeans were too tight on him. I don’t mean that he had on skinny jeans, I mean that he had on jeans that were two sizes too small, and he was uncomfortable. He kept squirming, fooling with his phone.
There was something in the air. I don’t understand how it works. Everything looked brighter.
I was happy to be distracted from the guy on the plane. I had called him a couple times, after telling him I didn’t want to speak to him again, but he hadn’t answered. I was waiting for the bartender to see me. Outside, through the window, I saw an old guy stop under a tree, pull down a branch, and smell a flower. The chubby guy at the bar was looking at his phone. The bartender was on his knees, wiping something with a towel. The priest was unusual. He had told me, “Forget AA. Forget being sober. Address your emotional life and none of that is necessary.” I was four months sober. I didn’t know what was right—whether I should drink or be sober. I wasn’t into religion, but after the weekend with the guy from the airplane—a weekend I don’t know how to explain—I wanted to believe in something. The plane guy and I took hallucinogens together, as well as painkillers, and maybe the drugs made me insane, because I could almost hear the priest urging me to order a drink.
The bartender got up off the ground and came over to where I was sitting. He threw a coaster down and looked at me. I had trouble getting the words out, but I ordered a vodka martini.
“What kind of vodka?”
“Just Stolichnaya, or Stoli, or whatever.”
“Stoli.”
“Yes, Stoli. Or whatever.”
When Lee showed up, I was having my second martini.
“I’m drinking,” I said.
“That’s fine.”
“I haven’t had a drink in four months, but I don’t care.”
“That’s fine.” He sat beside me and ordered a beer. “How do you like it?”
“I like it,” I said.
He looked embarrassed for me. We were quiet. I didn’t want to go to the movie. Lee drank a beer, and we tossed a coin, and we ended up going to another bar.
I opened the door to the second bar, and a guy swung around. He had been leaning against the door, so when I opened it, his face was only a few inches from mine. I remember his teeth. He had a canine that came out at the side, and his front teeth were fine and white and flat. He had a messy beard, and he wore glasses that magnified his hazel eyes. He was striking. He had his palms against either side of a pint glass of beer. It was like the figure holding a lantern on the cover of Stairway to Heaven, or Rasputin. He was tall and square-shouldered. He wore an army jacket with the sleeves rolled, and something about him looked religious. I mean, he looked like Jesus.
“I didn’t know you were back yet,” Lee said.
“We got back last night.” The guy stepped back to let us in.
“How was it?”
“Ah, you know.”
They talked a little more like that. Then Lee remembered I was there. He said, “You guys’ve met, right?”
“I know I know you,” the guy said. “Where is it that I know you from?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “You look kind of familiar.”
I knew who he was. He was the drummer from Catholic. We had met the previous Christmas, at the same bar, but only for a little while. He was married to the singer in his band. The singer was an interesting woman. She had long, frizzy, curly blond hair and she had a tummy. She wore tight Lycra skirts with low cheap heels and strange T-shirts that looked like they came from Units. She wrote good lyrics. She didn’t seem like she loved the drummer anymore. He said, “Oh yeah, wait a second. I know exactly who you are! You’re that writer girl.”
“Well, sort of.”
“No.” He looked at me with a funny smile. He had his mouth closed, twisted a little to the side, like he was hiding it. “You are.”
“I’m going to get a drink.”
The bar was crowded. People were standing two or three deep behind the chairs. Waiting to get through gave me time to relax. I drank a drink standing there and got another one and went back to him and Lee.
He invited us to come hang out with him in back. He and I got caught up in the crowd and we let Lee go ahead.
He asked me what music I liked.
“I don’t really know any music. I just sort of go on song jags where I listen to the same song over and over again.”
“What?”
I repeated it, and he said, “What bands do you listen to over and over again?”
“I like that Arthur Lee band Love.”
“What?”
“That Arthur Lee band Love.”
He nodded, and his eyes and cheeks swelled up a little. He showed a lot on his face. He said, “Who else?”
“I like your guys’ band.”
He swelled up more. His face turned red. I was happy that he was still vulnerable enough that he could be flattered. I said, “What movies do you like?”
“Sophie’s Choice. With Meryl Streep?”
“I’ve never seen that, but my friend Zbigniew says the book’s really good.”
“The book is garbage.”
“Zbigniew has pretty good taste. He said the language is beautiful in it.”
“The book,” he said again, “is garbage.”
“Well, I’ll look for the movie.”
He asked me what I did, and I said, “I’m an editor at a magazine. Actually, maybe you could write for us.”
This was my old trick.
“Do you have like a card?” he said.
“No.”
“Here.” He reached out and touched the arm of the girl beside him. He said, “Do you have a card?” The girl handed him a card. He started to write his phone number down.
“Don’t give me your number!”
He looked startled.
&nb
sp; I said, “I hate the phone.”
“It’s just for texts.” He crossed his number out and said, “Fine.” He wrote his email down on the card.
* * *
A few hours later, in the booth where we were all sitting, the drummer elbowed my ribs and whispered in my ear. “Just talk to me.”
“What?”
He whispered with a hand over his mouth, “Come over here and just talk to me.”
We got into a different booth. He said, “She was doing a metafeminist critique on you,” and he glanced at a girl we’d left. She was at the other booth. She was about my age, maybe a couple years older. She was friends with him and with his wife.
I was drunk and I can’t remember what we talked about. We talked for a long time. When the bar closed, the three of us—the drummer, Lee, and I—went to Lee’s house. Actually, we made a stop at the drummer’s house first. He was blacked out, I think. He was repeating himself. As we drove up to his house, he kept asking if we wanted “coke or X.” When he came back with the Ecstasy he kept saying, “You only need half. Half is good.” He put half in my mouth and kissed me. Up close his white pocked cheek was like brushing the surface of the moon.
When we got to Lee’s, the drummer and I went into Lee’s bedroom. I realized Lee was coming, too. I stopped in the doorway and waited a second. Lee understood. He turned back, and passed out on his couch. The drummer and I took Lee’s bed. I was seeing white pills, like television static moving evenly across the blue field of my vision. He went to close the door and came back to where I was kneeling on the bed. I reached a hand up to touch his face. Then I took off his pants. I thought he had a very small penis. I tried to get him hard.
He said, “I’m sorry, it’s just not.”
I stopped what I was doing. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s just. Sometimes it’s just not.”
He got me onto my back and went down on me, but I couldn’t feel anything because I was drunk. I tapped his shoulder, and he came up.
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