A Postmodern Love

by Nick Totem

  “Don’t look so grim. Help me up. I want to see.”

  In front of the mirror by the door, she examined herself, turning left and right, and he stood by her, looking but with a voyeuristic sadness. From the shoulder and the clavicle, her chest descended over two small saline implants where her breasts had once been.

  “Transcended.”

  “That’s enough. Let me put the bandages on,” he said impatiently.

  After he was done, she said, “What do you think of my look? Is it weird?”

  “What’s weird is that you’re so calm. If you feel sad or shocked or angry, you must deal with it.”

  “No, none of those. Don’t worry. I’ll always be honest with you. I feel none of those. Only tranquility. Maybe because it’s finally over. Everything over. Transcended. Life goes on again. A new life.”

  “Yes, but first you need to recover your health,” he said as he studied her face, seeing how the wrinkles on her forehead, the hollowness around her eyes, had become more prominent in the last few weeks.

  She caught onto what he was seeing, and said, “A poet once said, time is the fire in which we all burn . . . This face will fade, this body will fade, life goes on.”

  And so life went on. Even with the letter gaining weight on his mind each second, Thomas came to the apartment everyday after work to change the dressing and was glad the wound had been healing well. Two weeks later, the pathology report came back and was negative for any sign of cancer. For the moment, Lana had escaped its clutches. And she was scheduled to have breast reconstruction in the following month.

  One day when he was changing her bandages, the intercom rang. He put down the bandages to answer. Lloyd’s voice came through. Thomas turned to Lana and raised his eyes.

  “Is Lana in? Who is this?” Lloyd’s voice rang loudly.

  Thomas let go of the intercom and said to Lana, “What do you want to do?”

  “Will you go down and see what he wants?” she said, holding onto the gauze over the wounds.

  “Me?”

  “I can’t possibly go. Please. Go and see what he wants. I don’t want him coming up here. Whatever you do, don’t let him in.”

  “All right,” he said grudgingly. He spoke into the intercom, “I’ll be right down.”

  Thomas exited the building. The black Rolls-Royce was parked in the middle of the street. It was a beautiful summer afternoon.

  Martin had gotten out and stood by the car. Lloyd, who was impeccably dressed in a tailored gray suit, had his back to Thomas.

  “Hi, Lloyd.”

  “Hello, Doctor,” Lloyd said as he turned around. They shook hands.

  “I’m sorry, but Lana is not able to meet anyone right now,” Thomas said. “It’s not personal. It’s just that she is still recovering. You can imagine the shock to her body.”

  Lloyd turned up slightly toward the building. “How was her surgery?”

  “It went very well. She is in the clear for now.”

  “That’s wonderful news.”

  “Yes, she’ll be ready for the private jet very soon,” he said, remembering the letter and trying to probe Lloyd’s reaction.

  Lloyd cocked his head slightly and observed Thomas; he said, “I hope so. She is a special girl, at least for me. She deserves the best.”

  “Sure.”

  “You’ve been very helpful. How are you with her now?”

  “Hah,” Thomas laughed. “The same as the last time you asked. I’m only lending her my expertise. Helping her, that’s all. Soon she’ll be back to her old self again. She’ll come running to whomever she wants. You know how she is.”

  Lloyd’s forehead wrinkled, and he now resumed a serious tone, “I heard about the shooting.”

  “Have you made contact with Chau the Dog? Tell him to lay off.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “As sure as I can be.”

  “Well, there are always drive-by shootings in LA. It could just be one of those. You never know.”

  “You think?” Thomas said, staring hard at Lloyd.

  “Well, it was a good thing then. No one got hurt.” Lloyd looked away and added casually, “Good thing you weren’t taking a walk with your children.”

  “I don’t have any kids but what are you trying to say?” Thomas said, wondering if Lloyd was threatening him.

  “Exactly that. Fortunate no one got hurt. No one you care about.”

  And that was it, one of those moments that hit him, a devastating force that makes one suddenly realize the truth, however improbable it is. He now looked intently at Lloyd, seeing a shell of a man, aging, accelerating in time quickly into his middle age, full of menace. It had been Lloyd all along, the money-cock behind everything, Cristiano’s running away, Chau the Dog, the shooting. They had never been in any real danger that night; the shots had been warning, meant to scare him away.

  “Anything else?” Thomas said impatiently; his chest started to squeeze.

  “Yes.” Lloyd turned and beckoned Martin.

  “Let me ask you something. Why are you so obsessed with Lana? With your money, you can have plenty of beautiful women. I saw your receptionist. She looks like a model. What gives? Why not go for younger, more beautiful women,” Thomas said breathlessly; his anger erupted.

  “She is special to me,” Lloyd said deliberately. “You must understand. She must be special to you, for you to be here.”

  “Why insist on her and do these things,” Thomas said, making his tempo of the sentence into a statement, perhaps an accusation.

  Lloyd stared at him. “What things?”

  Just then, Martin approached with an enormous bouquet of roses, daisies, and lilies. “Please give this to her. And tell her I’m waiting. Whenever she is ready.”

  Thomas took the bouquet. He went in, without shaking hands, his insides roiling. His anger was burning fiercely, consuming all hope; he was at the gate of heaven and being denied entry and thus a man whom no one should mess with.

  “For you, from him,” he said with a detached tone when he entered the apartment.

  “That’s nice.” She was lying against the headboard and covering herself with her shirt. From the bouquet, she removed an envelope and took out a card and a check. After quick perusal of the card, she chuckled.

  He went to her to resume putting on the bandages.

  “Don’t look so peeved,” she said without budging.

  “Do I?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me finish bandaging.”

  Her eyes locked into his when he finished, and she leaned forward to take his hands.

  “I told him you’ll be ready for his jet soon enough.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  She drew him toward her so that he had to sit down. She kissed his hands and said, “Thank you for all the tenderness. You’re the most tender man there is.”

  “You’ll be ready for flight soon, another couple of months,” he said, unable to shake off the meaning of the letter.

  “But my wings are clipped.”

  “You’ll have them again.”

  “What if I’m exactly where I want to be.”

  He pulled away, walked to the window, and looked down. “What is it about you and Lloyd? Back and forth. Running away and coming back. Giving ultimatums and then money.”

  “I’ve told you already. It’s a game we play.”

  “Shouldn’t you avoid him forever instead of playing these games?” He turned to her. “If he’s responsible, even just partly responsible, for Cristiano’s disappearance, the man you loved, shouldn’t you hate him? Run away to France and never come back. Marry a Frenchman and live happily. Why keep coming back here?”

  “Because I’m just like the rest of them . . .” Lana raised her voice. “Because people like me are awash in the world . . . Why do you think women marry men old enough to be their fathers? Because they are in love? Or he’s a great man? No, because he’s a billionaire
. The truth is very simple. I like the glamour, the private jets, expensive things, even though most of the time I hate myself for it. I tasted them when I was at Stanford and I’ve been hooked since. It’s so simplistic but it’s true. Or maybe because I want to hurt him again and again for what he did to Cristiano. I don’t know.”

  He said nothing and looked out the window.

  “I tried, Thomas. I really did,” she said softly now. “It’s different this time . . . Come and sit with me.”

  He looked down at his feet and then turned to her. When he sat next to her, she took his hands and her eyes gleamed brightly. “You’ve helped me this far. The furthest I’ve ever gone. Take me the entire way. It’s different this time. I feel it. And I’ve seen enough of that world to be done with it.” She held the check in front of her—Fifty thousand dollars printed on it—and with a flick of her wrists she tore it to shreds. Then she took off his glasses and kissed him.

  They made love simply. She clung to him, his body moving against her and inside her, strong and free. She moaned when she came. And in their delicious exhaustion, she held him and stroked his hair.

  “Is it very strange to make love to a woman without breasts?” she said.

  “Yes, in a way. In a way, transcendent.”

  “You stole my line.”

  In a dreamy gaze, she looked outside. The blue in the clear sky was ceding to a honey-colored orange, all pervasive, instilling the warm air.

  “Why is it that the innocent die young? While the guilty go on living, and on and on in luxury,” she said as if speaking to herself. Then a bit later she said, “I may want to have a child before my ovaries have to come out.”

  “If you want life, you have to fight for it,” he said. In his mind, the things she had said came streaming through—there is killing and dying going on all the time in this world; he hurt me; a great love, once lost, must be assuaged by a great crime.

  37

  With Lana’s recovery progressing on its expected course, Thomas began to catch glimpses of the end game, of an improbable ending in which he and Lana would live happily together. Besides, she had said to him: “It’s different this time. I feel it. And I’ve seen enough of that world to be done with it.” Perhaps Lana had been traumatized by the surgeries, the shooting, and burnt by the fire of time, forging a completely different person, who might just want to try a normal life with him. But even if Lana had changed, Lloyd’s presence loomed in the background as a menace and a temptation, and could at any moment speed at them like a hurricane, threatening to pick them up and dash away all his dreams. And the letter Lana had written to him became a constant reminder of that distinct possibility of her running back to Lloyd, to the private jets and the money, yet again.

  It was normal, one supposes, for Thomas to mull over Lloyd’s effect on him while he was in the apartment, in the presence of Lana, and to be distracted sometimes, as when they sat down to dinner he would wonder what kinds of fancy food she had dined on with Lloyd. Or while they passed a storefront, he would see a dress and, knowing the price tag of several thousand dollars, and didn’t dare mention it at all, though he could envision Lana wearing it, looking spectacular. Once, a colorful bouquet of roses and daisies and lilacs greeted Thomas and unsettled him as he himself was bringing Lana a few roses. “Is it from Lloyd?” he blurted out before he could stop himself. “No, it’s not,” she would answer without volunteering any further information. Of course, it could be from anyone, Dietrich Gassiot or a number of other suitors, but Lloyd hoovered prominently above them all, real and imagined suitors alike.

  However, it was abnormal for Lloyd’s face with his devious eyes, the slow tempo of his speech, his tailored suit, his gold watch with the Tourbillon spinning like a private earth on his wrist, to infiltrate Thomas’s mind when away from Lana. At times, Lloyd’s warning suddenly echoed coldly: “Good thing you weren’t taking a walk with your children.” A bullet, coming from a shadow in the street, striking him in the heart—the nightmare would choke Thomas in deep sleep, and he would jump up gasping for air. Trepidation at the unknown, at the promise of violence and tragedy, was what he had to look forward to, if he were to be with Lana. At other times, “He hurt me, Thomas,” rang loudly, and an overwhelming impotence swept over him, leaving him livid with anger and helplessness.

  If one is obsessed with something greater, much greater than oneself, one will inevitably destroy oneself, but if one is obsessed with something lesser, there is no choice but to destroy it. And Thomas had an inkling that his obsession with Lloyd had solidified just as much as it had with Lana; to him, both of them had morphed into a real thing and its shadow. What’s more, he saw Lloyd as a shell of a man, a cheat, a rich, immoral cheat who was shielded by heaps and heaps of money.

  He must do something—a conclusion that took hold of him slowly and unnoticed at first, like a cancer, until it metastasized as a life threatening tumor.

  “I can’t get this asshole out of my mind,” Thomas said to Mike, staring blankly into the sky. They were sitting at their favorite watering hole in Hermosa Beach one day after work, drinking Dos Equis, talking.

  “What do you mean?” Mike said and stared at Thomas, displaying once again his odd ability at homing into the other’s hidden motives.

  “The rich asshole I told you about. Lloyd Quattleberns. The hedge fund guy. He won’t leave her alone. She can’t be with him because he did something to her fiancé when she was still at Stanford. A musical genius,” he said and proceeded to tell Mike in detail. What he didn’t tell Mike, however, was that there was also a real chance Lana, by her own free will, would run to Quattleberns, and that this was his real fear.

  “Hmm. He’s very dangerous, I hope you know that. He could have Chau the Dog shoot you. That night he could have easily killed you. Those were warning shots, my friend. And no one can do a thing about it.” He took a sip of the beer.

  “You’re right.”

  “Thomas, in real life there is no Sherlock Holmes to solve crimes or to bring justice. You’ll just be dead. That’s it. And with his money, no one can touch him. Even if they were to catch Chau the Dog, I doubt it if they could even pin it on him. He’ll have all kinds of alibis. He’ll have the best lawyers. Heck, it might even be someone else entirely.”

  “Yeah, but what can I do?”

  “Do? Hope, I guess. I don’t see to many options for you. I know you’ll never leave her in this situation. I know you love her. Leaving her would make you look like a small man. So what can you do with Lloyd? Reason with him, may the best man win? That kind of things.” Mike laughed. “I don’t think a man like Lloyd would be open to that. First of all, it sounds like he’s obsessed with her, even more so than you are. Why? I don’t know. You need a psychologist to answer that. And what’s more, a man like that only sees things through the prism of money. You don’t have enough to sit at the table. So, from what I can see, you have only one option, that’s to hope.”

  “Hope is not a strategy, Mike.”

  “In this case, that’s all there is. I mean, if she is really into you and wants to have a life with you, then you’ll have no choice but to go along. Maybe one day, Lloyd Quattleberns will see that and leave you both alone. You know, the big fish will always eat the little fish. That’s life. But the secret is that the big fish doesn’t get to live forever, and one day the little fish, if it can wait long enough, gets to munch on the big fish’s corpse.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I like that . . .” Thomas mumbled. He saw the logic of what Mike said, but it was entirely unsatisfactory. He simply must do something; anxiously waiting for something bad to happen was not an option.

  The next day, as Thomas left his house to go Lana’s apartment, his mother, Grace, pulled up. “Thomas,” she shrieked as she stepped out of the car. “Is this girl you’re seeing serious? She’s awfully pretty. Maybe you’re wasting your time.” She spoke breathlessly, as though she had been mulling over it for many days.

  “Mom, what are you
talking about?”

  “I was thinking. Maybe you’re wasting your time with her. You could be seeing someone else. And get married. A girl who is so pretty can be trouble.”

  “I’m a grown man. I can handle it, mom.”

  “You could be dating another woman and get married and have children.”

  Maybe because he just wanted to shut her up, or he was remembering what Lana had said about wanting a child, he said sharply, “We’re trying to have a family and a kid, mom. You don’t have to be married to have a kid. She might be even be pregnant for all I know.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful, Thomas. Send her my love.”

  Thomas headed straight to his car and back out, while Grace looked on; her mouth hung open as if weighed down by happiness.

  What he had said to his mother pushed him over a forbidden boundary; he decided to do something about it and drew up a plan. He must strike awe and fear into Lloyd’s heart, and surprise and shock him in such a way that Lloyd would think twice about messing with him again. He must gather as much information as he could about Lloyd. He thought of talking to Dominic and even Dietrich Gassiot, but decided against doing so for fear of raising suspicion. The internet was an obvious resource, but there wasn’t much more than what he had found; Lloyd, like Lana, had stayed out of the virtual world—no Facebook account, no Twitter, nothing. But he knew exactly what he must do.

  For several days in the following week, he developed a routine that appeared reasonable enough when observed from the outside. After dinner and around the same time each night, he would withdraw from the apartment with the excuse of having to park the car in the overnight parking lot, even to the point of cutting off Lana in the middle of saying something. Once on the street, he would do everything elaborately, timing each action.

  “Thomas, what took you so long?” Lana would say when he returned, out of breath and perspiring. “I was going to call you but you left your phone here.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I couldn’t find an empty lot. Had to drive to the one farther down the street.”

  “That’s odd. All full lots even for a weekday?”