When they lived together, it was she who had been the advocate of unreasoning impulse, B on the other side wherever that might be.
B’s correspondence with Penelope went on for almost four months before he found an occasion, more excuse than occasion, to visit Seattle again.
Seeking the element of surprise, he arrived at Penelope’s doorstep, bearing like a torch a bouquet of wilted anemones. When it became apparent that no one was home, he recognized the face of a fool in his own self-regarding mirror.
He waited, slumped down in his rental car, for her return. Two hours passed. It might have been a month. It had the texture of a lifetime. Then she arrived, getting out of a late model green Mercury, an older man (a man around B’s age) at the wheel. She sauntered to the door of her small house, put a key in the lock and then withdrew it, turning as if she felt B’s eyes on the back of her head.
He watched her approach his rental car, her route somewhat circuitous. She stared through the window at him for a moment or so, squinting her eyes against the glare, before running toward the passenger side of the car. –What a great surprise, she said, getting in, sliding her arms around his neck. I thought when I saw the parked car that you were the creep that had been making the sick phone calls.
–No such luck, he said.
They drove around looking for a secluded place to stop the car.
–Is PT still churl in residence? he willed himself to ask. He was like a college student around her, his unsureness poking through a smoke screen of bravado.
–I’ve told PT he has to leave, she said, signalling with a charming heavenward glance the impossibility of the man. He says he’ll go when he finds another place. He doesn’t even pay his share of the rent.
She had her arm around his shoulder while he drove. Even outside the city limits, absolute privacy seemed a rare commodity.
He told those in his circle—it was the same lie he told himself—that it wasn’t sex or not primarily sex behind his feelings for the girl. He would be content, he insisted, just to take her to dinner or walk with her in the park. That was before she went down on him in the back seat of his rented Dodge Polaris. The earth moved or his emergency brake slipped.
Nothing he was willing to say about the relationship shed light on his mostly incomprehensible behavior. Even B, in his more reasonable moments, wondered what was so compelling about Penelope.
He didn’t live with her, not at first—he had a room at a small residential hotel—but he saw her at least four times a week for the next two months. The pleasures were elusive, though he missed her the odd days they were apart. Their relationship had an indefinable quality—it was constantly improving without actually getting better. She seemed to hate it when he let it be known that he doted on her. She admired cool, so he studied numbness, aspired to some higher level of insentience. —That’s so cool, was her highest praise. Her idea of him, he suspected, was miles away from the anxious person he knew himself to be.
When he found out that PT had slapped Penny around (had and had been, handiwork on display), B felt obliged to confront the younger man. Confrontation had never been easy for him—it was his emotional MO to let things slide. With all that, he had a precipitous temper, which had gotten worse with the years.
PT was deceptively mild-mannered and denied emphatically that he had ever struck Penelope. –Someone’s been hitting her, B said, and all the evidence points to you.
–Violence is not in my nature, PT said, raising his arm menacingly.
After PT moved out, Penelope said she couldn’t afford to keep the apartment on her own, so B offered to pay half the rent.
–I’ll only accept it as a loan, she said. I don’t think we know each other well enough yet to live in a small place together full time.
One day she mentioned that even though there had been nothing real between them for awhile, she kind of missed PT. It was possible, it struck B, that he had been wearing a “kick me” sign all along and he had been the only one not to notice.
B stayed away for a few days after the PT confession, as if absence were the only way to keep his tattered dignity intact. He secretly hoped that making himself scarce would raise his value on the market. His absence was also her absence. He could do without her less than she could do without him.
–Did you miss your Penny? she asked him the next time they got together. They were sitting in his parked car on a well- traveled country road.
–Penny who? he said, and that was when he found out she had no sense of humor. His remark made her cry and he loathed the oaf-himself-who had brought her pain. She refused to be comforted, pushed his hands away.
–It was a joke, he said.
–Not very funny, she told him when she could find her voice.
After they made love, she confessed that she hadn’t really been hurt by his remark, knew it was a joke all the time.
–Then why the tears? he asked her.
–I wanted to get a rise out of you, she said. I wanted to see what you would do if I cried. Her revisionist confession, whether true or not, left an aftertaste of distrust.
Not all of what is known of B’s liaison with Penny comes from B himself. A longtime friend, S, also a poet, though of larger reputation than B, showed up in Seattle on the last leg of a reading tour during that period (his live-in girlfriend Laura along for the whatever) and he looked up B and the two couples spent some time together.
S’s initial impression of Penny was virtually the opposite of B’s. He thought her passive-aggressive and subtly manipulative.
–She needs attention, was the phrase he used. Of course S tended to be ironic about even the smallest things.
When S arrived in Seattle, B was sleeping over at Penny’s place virtually seven nights a week—Penny’s wishes, not B’s, apparently the determining factor. They had dinner together at this four star Japanese restaurant in downtown Seattle and S was in great form, his charm in fifth gear. Laura, who’d seen his act too many times before, was impatient with him, but Penny was enthralled. S’s main topic of conversation was himself, but he did it in a slightly self-deprecating way, acknowledging his narcissism with some embarrassment but also going with it unashamedly, almost ingenuously because what the hell, he was who he was.
People he just met, people he hardly knew, it didn’t matter their age or sex, tended to bring out the best (or worst) of his act. He tended to feel aggrieved if the least of his audience didn’t love him wholeheartedly.
Anyway, after dinner they went to Penny’s place for coffee and dessert. B was low-keyed through much of the evening, a witness to the events around him, content to let S have the stage. He was not jealous of S, or not so he let himself know, pleased for the most part that his friend and his inamorata were hitting it off. Of the group, only Laura seemed annoyed by S’s compulsively overbearing behavior.
And then, for no apparent reason, Penny picked a fight with B in front of the others. That was later. That was during the last stages of the evening.
It was already closing in on one a.m. and Laura and S showed no signs of terminating the evening. Perhaps they were still on eastern time and thought it was already tomorrow. Perhaps they were waiting for some kind of natural closure and it may have been Penny’s empathic sense of things that brought her to initiate this seemingly gratuitous fight with B. –Would you like some more brandy? B asked Laura, who had just drained her glass. –There isn’t any more, Penny said and Laura said that was okay, she really didn’t need anymore, and then B took his own glass, which was about half full and poured the contents into Laura’s glass.
–What are you doing? Penny said in an unnaturally harsh voice. Laura doesn’t want brandy from your glass, which has all these finger smudges on it. Why are you being so stupid? She smiled kittenishly at the others.
B, challenged by Penny’s vehemence, withheld the urge to strike back. –Chill, he said, which was her word, giving it back to her in an ironic context like the mock return of an unwanted
gift.
–I’m so sorry this happened, she said to Laura
–That’s all right, Laura said, averting her eyes.
–What you did, Penny said, throwing him a sly censorious glance, was distasteful to Laura and embarrassing to me. Okay?
–Please, Laura said, leave me out of this.
B tended to be turned on by Penny’s officiousness, and waited in a state of barely controlled horniness for S and Laura to go back to their hotel. The moment he got them out the door, Penny broke into tears, throwing herself face down on the bed. B sat down on the side of the bed and stroked her hair, his swollen horn pointing toward the wall, a divining rod on a false errand. When Penny was able to speak again—her grief seemed temporarily bottomless—she thanked B for his ministrations, said she didn’t know what she’d do without him.
Forgiven (he assumed), he turned to embrace her. Then she said she really needed to be alone, would he mind going to his own place for what remained of the night. Of course he minded (why wouldn’t he?) though he accepted his banishment with tight-lipped good grace. He didn’t whine or plead, though was sorely tempted.
It was S who told B about what happened after B left, about his assignation with Penny, the whole shameful story. This was several months down the road. After S’s confession, B was unforgiving, would have nothing to do with his celebrated friend for the longest time.
Penny’s version of the story was different from S’s. S had called, she said, about six in the morning, moments after she had at long last fallen asleep. He was complimentary, said she had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen up close, and invited her to have breakfast with him at the Sinclair Hotel. She refused initially, but he cajoled her into coming along. B acknowledged that S could be extremely persuasive.
They had breakfast together, then he invited her to see his room, which he said was very unusual. The room was like most hotel rooms, but of course his saying the room was unusual was just an excuse to get her there. Anyway, all they did in the room was talk. He was extremely gentlemanly. Not only did they not go to bed (in her version of what happened), the question never came up.
–Had he asked, B asked her, what would you have said?
She worried the question in her ingenuous way. –I don’t know, she said, taking his hand. I don’t want to lie to you.
–You don’t know?
–Gee, I hope I would have said no.
He believed her, he wanted to believe her, he could do nothing else but believe her. As a reward for his credulousness, she seduced him or more exactly let him seduce her. Although she had tired of him, she was unable to let him go.
Some months had passed and B was back in New York, was at the Guggenheim Museum to see the Lichtenstein show. On the fifth level, looking down at the panorama of surfaces, he noticed S a level and a half below. He thought a meeting might be awkward so he dawdled, pored over each image, deconstructed each painting with time-consuming concentration. Such attention inevitably has its own unexpected rewards, secrets offering themselves like dreams. B was zoning out on an aspect of a woman’s face when he felt a large hand claim his arm.
–How are you doing, buddy? S said warmly as if there hadn’t been bad blood between them, no unreconciled rift. It was as if the painting B had been staring at had yielded S from behind its blandly mysterious surface.
The men had lunch together in the Museum cafeteria. S talked of a movie he had been commissioned to write, a children’s book he agreed to do in collaboration with a famous illustrator, shared news of mutual friends. After a second glass of wine, he mentioned that he and Laura had split-up which was a sad business particularly to him. B, who was in the midst of a dry period, confided little, asked questions which S tended to ignore.
–Whatever happened to that little vixen in Seattle? S asked at some point in one of his ironic modes.
It was B’s turn to be evasive. —We’re still in touch, he said.
–What do you mean in touch? he asked. Correspondence? Phone calls? Red-eye flights?
–Whatever, B said. What’s Laura doing?
–We’re not in touch, S said, except sometimes. He smiled to acknowledge the good nature behind his parody of B’s evasiveness. Then he said—it was superbly timed—that he had seen B’s latest novel and thought it...a brave and daring piece of work. Just before they separated, S gave B Laura’s number and suggested he give her a call. –She’s always liked you, he said.
–She’ll be much better for you than that nut case in Seattle.
Penny had been cool to him on the phone and B felt some kind of reassuring gesture needed to be made. Two hours after he completed his poetry workshop at Columbia, he flew to Seattle, calling Penny from Kennedy and leaving a message which included estimated time of arrival on her machine minutes before boarding.
She wasn’t there to meet his flight, as he had hoped, and he sat around the airport for a few hours, unable to make a decision as to what to do next. Depression sat on his chest, took the starch out of his legs. He sat in the waiting room, reading a magazine, as if waiting to meet himself.
After a while, he roused himself from his torpor and found a phone. His last best hope was that she wasn’t there. The line was busy. So she wasn’t in transit, caught in traffic, obstructed in some unavoidable way from reaching him; she was on the phone chatting with someone, some other guy most likely. She had no women friends.
Another airline had a flight from Seattle to New York that was already boarding and B, with new found urgency, decided to exchange his ticket for the more immediate return, the transaction taking its time, requiring additional funds, the confirmation of a reluctant supervisor. Nevertheless, he got to the gate in time, sweating for his efforts, and returned home 14 hours and change after his departure.
There was a message from Penny waiting for him on his answering machine. –I do want to see you, it said, but this is not the greatest time for me. Could you make it next week instead. I hope this reaches you in time. Instead of erasing the message, which was his first impulse, he tore the machine from its moorings and threw it against the wall. When in cooler heat he managed to reattach the machine, Penny’s unwanted message repeated itself.
His motor still running, too exhausted to sleep, he called Laura at the number S had given him and asked her if she’d like to meet for a drink. –That would be nice, she said. Why don’t you call me early next week and we’ll set something up.
–I was thinking of tonight, B said. Is that not possible?
Laura laughed. –You don’t waste any time, do you? Why don’t you just come here? I have some interesting leftovers in the fridge. Does the idea of leftovers make you crazy?
–I often feel like a leftover myself, B said.
He arranged to see her at ten which was an hour and twenty minutes down the road, but when the time came to leave he was asleep on the couch in front of a made for TV movie about a kidnapped child. He dreamed of looking for a cab to get to Laura’s and being unable to find one that was either unoccupied or disposed to stop for him.
Fortunately, the ringing of the phone woke him from his evil dream, the third or fourth ring, the machine—his voice on the machine—announcing his remote presence. The next voice was Penny’s. –Where are you, baby? it crooned. I miss you terribly, I do, believe it. I surely do. I miss you so much. I want you to consider....The time limit on the answering machine cut her off.
I won’t be jerked around, B said to himself, though he called Penny back, and got—would you believe it?—a busy signal on the other end. So instead of flying back to Seattle, which he had been prepared to do, he took a cab to Laura’s Chelsea area apartment.
Though Laura looked like a model (and indeed had even been briefly a model) and was smart and gifted, B had no romantic interest in her, which was odd, which was in opposition to his history. Anyway, all Laura seemed to want to talk about was S. In the course of things, B got another perspective on the events surrounding S’s assignation with Penny.
Returning to their hotel in a cab, Laura and S had a mild argument about S’s showing off and dominating the conversation during their visit. She made what seemed to her the gentlest of complaints—it was not as if they hadn’t had this conversation before. S took exaggerated exception to her remarks, responded with inappropriate vehemence. –If you think I’m so awful, S said, you could always stay at your sister’s. Laura’s sister lived in Bellevue, which was a nearby suburb, and Laura took the bait, found that she was angrier at S than she had original suspected.
As soon as she got to her sister’s place, it struck her that S had gotten her out of the way so that he could spend the night with “Thing,” which was her name for anyone whose name it pleased her not to remember. How did she know that S was with the girl? She just knew—it was S’s history to do stuff like that. Anyway, when she returned the next morning to their hotel to get her clothes, S was gone. There was the name of another hotel written on a pad next to the phone. In the course of her researches—she wanted to know exactly what she was dealing with—she discovered that it was “Thing” not S who had taken a room at this other hotel. That didn’t exonerate S in her view. It only meant that what had gone on was somewhat more complicated than she initially thought.
–So we’re both victims, Laura said.
–And we’re both also to blame for what happened, B said. B didn’t like to think of himself as a victim.
–Do you really think that? Laura asked. Or are you just saying that to be clever?
–All I meant is, you want to live your life as if you’re responsible for what happens to you. It sounded too pat, as he said it, and he found himself skeptical of his own wisdom.
–Even if you’re really not, she said, smiling. No, I know what you mean. It was our choice, sort of, to be with untrustworthy people, wasn’t it?
–Perhaps, we had no choice, he said, in the way, say, an addict has no choice.
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