Dreamspinner Press Year Nine Greatest Hits

by Michael Murphy

  “I have needs and desires just like you, and one of my desires is to have at least a little time with my partner. We used to eat dinner together, we used to watch crap TV together, we used to sit together on the sofa and read, cuddled up to one another, we used to read the Sunday New York Times together and talk about articles one or the other of us had read. We used to wash the dinner dishes together. We used to do so many little things that were important when you put them all together. Hell, at one time in the distant past we even used to have sex. When that was taken out of our lives we lost a big part of our connection, our intimacy. We’re now just two people who happen to sometimes sleep near one another. And I can’t take it anymore. I need more than that.”

  David slipped on his suit jacket and grabbed his two suitcases.

  “I’ll send for the rest of my things as soon as I can find a place to live. If they’re in your way, put them into another bedroom and I’ll get them out as soon as I can.”

  “David—”

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t talk to reporters. If someone asks me a question, I’ll give them some bullshit answer.” He picked up his suitcases and started to carry them toward the door.

  “David, don’t go. Stay. Let’s work on this. I’ll take some time off. Let’s have sex. Let’s go out to dinner. Let’s do something―together.”

  David had fought them, but there were tears in his eyes. This decision and this move were just about killing him. “Can’t. I’ve got to go to work.”

  “Why do you say my job is consuming me?”

  “Look at your schedule. You’re working twelve hours a day on average, some days up to eighteen hours. But here’s a reminder: you are human. You cannot work eighteen hours a day and expect it to not take a toll on you. You need to strike a balance between work and home. Otherwise this job will kill you. I can already see how much of a toll it’s taking on you. You look older now than you did just a year ago.”

  “I am older now than I was a year ago.”

  “Yes, but you look significantly older than just one year.”

  That statement stopped Gray cold. He left the room quickly, presumably to find a mirror. A couple of minutes later he was back with a shocked look on his face. “My God, why didn’t you tell me?”

  “And when would you have me do that? Hmm? Should I send you an e-mail periodically to remind you that it’s been thirty days so you’ve likely aged another year by outward appearances? We used to have these conversations over dinner in the evening, or on weekends. We never talk because you’re never here. If we had any quality time together, we could have had this conversation six months ago.”

  “You saw this six months ago?” Gray asked angrily.

  “The trajectory that you were on, yes.”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” he asked, sounding almost panicky.

  “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said,” David said sadly, shaking his head. “Since you don’t seem to be hearing anything that I’m saying, let me try something just a little different. Where will you be tomorrow evening?”

  “Tomorrow? What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just answer the question,” David patiently told Gray. “Where will you be tomorrow evening?”

  He thought for a moment. “I’m scheduled to visit West Virginia to tour an area hit hard by a flood.”

  “That’s right. And where will you be on Wednesday evening?”

  “Um, Wednesday… Wednesday I think I’m scheduled to be in Cleveland.”

  “Thursday?”

  “On Thursday I’ll be in Miami.”

  “Friday?”

  “On Friday I think I’m in Denver.”

  “Saturday?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  “On Saturday you fly from Denver to Los Angeles where you’ll be for three days. You go from there to San Francisco for a night and then you fly back from there to Zurich for the G7 summit where you will be for five nights. Do you begin to see how difficult it is to grab even two minutes of your time?”

  “David, please….”

  “You think about that. You maybe give some thought to controlling your hours, let’s spend some time separated for a while, and then maybe in a few weeks or a month or two, call me.”

  “Will you be seeing… dating anyone while… while you’re gone?”

  “I have no idea, Gray. I highly doubt it. That’s not what this is all about. But I don’t rule it out down the road. I’m a man. I have needs too. They’ve been in dry dock for months, but they will not remain sidelined forever. But again, that’s not what this is about.”

  David started toward the staircase leading downstairs but stopped when he heard Gray say one simple word as he sat down hard on a nearby sofa, slumped over a bit. “Okay.”

  David walked down the stairs and out the door to the waiting car. He headed to the university, where he stored his two suitcases in his office. He didn’t have any classes to teach that day. He made a few phone calls and booked himself into a hotel on the campus. As soon as he knew, he told his senior agent, “I’ll be staying for the next few nights at the university hotel. I booked a two-bedroom suite. I’ll be in one of the bedrooms and you and your colleagues can be in the other bedroom, plus whatever space you need in the living room. I hope that works okay. If not, we’ll make other arrangements.”

  “Is everything okay, David?” his lead agent asked him.

  “No. Nothing is all right, but I’ll deal with that later.” Even though he wasn’t supposed to be there, he found a meeting to fill his time—anything to take his mind off what was happening in his personal life.

  When he finished for the afternoon, they moved to the hotel. The agents had earlier checked him in so he could slip in without spending any time in the lobby where he might attract attention. He sequestered himself in his room and cried. He worked every day and returned immediately to his room afterward where he ate room service and otherwise huddled in his bedroom wondering where it had all gone so spectacularly wrong. For the first week, David shed more tears than he could recall shedding during his entire life.

  The first week passed as a bit of a blur for David. He was feeling more down than he had ever felt before, and he knew he was distracted. His time in his office was not as fruitful as usual, but he couldn’t help it. His life was falling apart in ways he had never anticipated. He countered that by working long hours in an effort to fill his empty time. He desperately hoped Gray would at least call, but David heard nothing from Gray that week.

  Midway through his second week away, David sat in his office one morning to be available for any student that wanted to talk with him, although his heart wasn’t in it. When he heard a knock at his door, he automatically called out, “Come on in,” without even looking up from his computer monitor, where he was trying to read his e-mail. “Have a seat and I’ll be with you in one second.”

  “Sure.” Instantly David turned from his monitor and looked up when he heard Gray’s voice. He had missed Gray so much. David broke into the biggest smile he’d felt in a very long time. He wanted to bound out of his chair and wrap his arms around Gray, but he managed to stop himself from doing that.

  “Gray? What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be… I don’t know, but I know you’re supposed to be somewhere.”

  “I am somewhere―I’m here.”

  “No, you’re supposed to be somewhere important, somewhere out of town, or on some trip or giving some speech or meeting with important people or something.”

  “I need to talk with you.” Gray fell back into the guest chair across from David’s desk. David moved his chair around to the side of his desk so that they were facing one another, separated by only a couple of feet of space. “I haven’t slept very well the last week or so,” Gray said.

  “I can understand that,” David commented softly as he leaned back in his own chair. “Neither have I. But you should be accustomed to sleeping alone by now.”
/>
  “I want to talk with you. I need to talk with you. I can’t do anything with everything so up in the air.”

  “I appreciate the chance to see you, but I’m curious―how is it that your schedule suddenly and magically cleared, allowing you to just pop out and come over here to talk with me? This has never happened, not once since you’ve been President. In case you didn’t know, the President of the United States has a very busy schedule.”

  Gray looked down somewhat meekly and then brought his gaze up to David’s face. “The President of the United States has been a fucking idiot, and he needs to thank the love of his life for helping him to see the error of his ways. That trumps everything else at the moment. I’ve hurt you and that has left me feeling absolutely devastated. One, because I did it, and two, because I didn’t even notice that I was doing it.”

  A hint of the man that David had married ten years earlier was back, which made David smile.

  “Thank you for saying that, Gray. I believe you. I’ve missed you so much these last nine months.”

  “After you left,” Gray said, “I was pissed off at you, then at the world, and then at myself for causing so much upset. It took me a couple of days of sitting alone in that empty house to sort everything out. I haven’t worked because all I can do is think about you and all of this. I see now what happened and I am so sorry for everything I’ve put you through. No matter what else we say today, the one thing that I need to say is that I love you and I miss you terribly.

  “When I came out of hibernation, the first thing I did was sit down with my chief scheduler for a couple of hours. I told him that we had to stop scheduling things on weekday evenings and on weekends. I told him I want to be home with you and that I had lost track of what was important to me―you. I’ve also asked him to never let me get so carried away again. I told him that if he sees my schedule creeping out of control, that he is to come to me and tell me to stop, that I’m doing it again. I’ve also told him that if I don’t listen he is authorized to smack me on the back of the head to get my attention.”

  Gray’s look was hopeful. David nodded his approval. “Good. I’ve been so worried about the toll your schedule was taking on you physically,” David said softly. “I know that some things go onto your schedule months ahead of time, so if you are able to carry through with this, I know it’s going to take a couple of months for this new approach to ripple down to the actual schedule.”

  “Not necessarily. I’ve told him to pass as many of those scheduled speeches as possible to the Vice President or to members of the Cabinet. There are some commitments that I cannot get out of, but I should be able to trim back the nonwork day calendar by at least 60 to 70 percent in the near term and more in the longer term.”

  “Great,” David commented. “You work too hard. I’m pleased with anything that gives you a more humane schedule.”

  “David, I love you, and I want to make this right. You need to understand that I cannot conceive of my life without you in it. The day you left… I felt lost. I felt empty, like a part of me had been cut out and was missing. That first night I wandered aimlessly throughout the entire house for hours because it hurt so much.

  “But I realize now that I had, for all intents and purposes, abandoned you over the last nine months, and for that I apologize. I see it now, and I truly do apologize for the dreadful way I’ve let my job take over my life.

  “As you said last week when we talked, it’s almost like I’ve had another lover who has taken all of my attention, leaving none for you. I see that now. We were in a brand-new and completely foreign environment, and I had simply left you.

  “I miss you terribly. Every night I keep waking up and reaching across to your side of the bed only to find that you’re not there, and I mourn all over again.” Gray paused for a moment, his eyes cast down. “I know that hotels cost a lot of money and we’re not rich. So I wanted to tell you that you’re welcome to move back in and have your own separate living space while we sort this all out. You won’t even have to see me.”

  “No. I need to be completely out of that place and away from you if we are to have any hope of saving our relationship. I’m looking for an apartment so I can get out of the hotel.”

  “I want to argue… but I think I understand. You may not believe me, but I thank you for opening my eyes to what I’d been doing. How can I make it up to you?”

  David didn’t know how far to take the conversation. “When do you need to leave?” he asked. “How much time do we have to talk?”

  “I have all day,” Gray said. “When do you teach today?”

  “Not until one.”

  “Do you want to go get some lunch and talk now?” Gray asked.

  “Um, sure, why not? I’d like that, actually. I can’t remember if we’ve ever had a meal together. I’ve got some vague memories in the far distant past.”

  “Consider this the first step in the direction of finding a new life for us.”

  “All right,” David agreed, smiling and feeling hopeful at the way their conversation was going.

  They walked together across the campus. Gray had tried to hold David’s hand, but David had pulled back and quietly refused. Ten minutes later, they were seated in a small, private room just off the main dining room of the faculty club. Gray’s presence was clearly a huge deal for most of the staff, but David noted that, as usual, Gray was gracious and genial in his dealings with people.

  “You really are good at that, you know,” David said.

  “Good at what?” Gray asked.

  “Good at talking with total strangers and putting them at ease. Good at making people feel like they are the most important person you’ve ever spoken with.”

  “Except for you,” Gray joked lightly.

  “It doesn’t work when you’ve seen the wizard behind the curtain and you know how he pulls all the levers and makes all of his magic happen,” David told him. “Especially when he’s making the magic happen for everyone but you.”

  “Well, if there is anyone who knows me and how I work, it’s you.” Gray paused for a moment. “The last week when I haven’t been sleeping very well, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I hadn’t really realized how much, from the very first day, this has been difficult for you.”

  “You too,” David agreed, trying to note the obvious.

  After a moment of silence, Gray asked, “When did we start to fall apart?”

  David thought about the question. “You probably don’t remember, but we were having sex one night… back when we still had sex, although it was already quite rare even back then. The telephone rang and then rang again, but we kept going. Then it rang again. And then a Secret Service agent came into our bedroom… and caught us… in the act….”

  “Oh, please don’t remind me,” Gray said shaking his head. “It was like having your mother or father walk in on you having sex. What was it about that night? Was it having the agent walk in and see us going at it?”

  “No. I could care less about that. It was having you push me off you so hard that I flew off the bed and onto the floor. And then you raced away and left me lying there without a single glance back, without even offering to help me up off the floor.”

  “I’d completely forgotten about that,” Gray said quietly.

  “I haven’t,” David said softly.

  “So that was the start of things becoming… difficult?”

  “If I had to trace it back to one thing, I might pick that one. It did seem like after that you were on a different track from me and that I was seeing less and less of you. I was okay with that at first because I knew you had a lot facing you. You had to learn a lot fast.

  “I figured that the first three months would be a major challenge for you, but that after that you’d begin to come back to me. But you didn’t. Your long workdays became standard. Never sharing a meal became standard. You being gone for days on end became standard. I wasn’t okay with all of that becoming your standard operating method.
I wasn’t okay with having to find out about things like where you were or if you’d be home that night from an agent. The fact that I didn’t know half the time where you were showed me better than anything else that we weren’t communicating anymore.”

  “That makes sense,” Gray agreed. “And then there was our anniversary dinner.”

  “I don’t blame you for that, Gray. You can’t control when major emergencies happen. I was mad, but I wasn’t mad at you that night.”

  “I had thought that going out to dinner would help, but I blew it badly and that made it worse rather than better.”

  “Don’t beat yourself up. I know that your schedule is harder to corral than the average executive’s. I tried to treat dinner out like we always had when really what I needed to do was learn to approach it with a whole new way of thinking, and a lot more flexibility than I’m accustomed to.”

  “I’m pleased to hear you say that,” Gray said with a hesitant smile. “I thought that those experiences had been key in driving us apart.”

  “No. They weren’t great, but the blame falls on both of us for them not working, and they were only a small piece in the bigger puzzle.”

  “Fair enough. So it was the quarantine that really marked the division between us, then, wasn’t it?”

  David considered it for a moment. “Yes, although we hadn’t been exactly spending loads of time together for the months leading up to that. And so you know, I have forgiven you for that, even though it made me angrier with you than I think I have ever been in the ten years we’ve been together.”

  Leaning forward to bring himself closer, David fixed his stare on Gray and said softly, “It was especially unfortunate because the entire experience on that airplane scared the hell out of me. I was so looking forward to getting home, taking a shower, eating something, and then cuddling up with you, feeling safe in your arms.”

  “But that didn’t happen,” Gray said, grimacing.