by John Metcalf
“I don’t know. Get to sleep.”
“Will Nanny die?”
“Good night.”
As he went along the landing, he heard her half-singing, “Nanny’ll die and Grampy, Mummy, and Daddy, Uncle Drew and the mailman and Mary and the Volkswagen and Nanny and Grampy . . .”
He stood silently in the bathroom for a few moments, resting his hands on the edges of the washbasin, staring down. He saw, unbidden, like a succession of frozen movie frames, that other bathroom in a silent apartment where dirt and empty beer cans had accumulated until the lease expired.
In the cabinet, the daily reminder of the blue plastic diaper pin, the sticky bottle of Extract of Wild Strawberries, Gravol, the smiling tin of Johnson’s Baby Powder.
The room that had been his son’s he had not been able to enter. The frieze of animals sagging from its thumbtacks, a deflated elephant on the dusty carpet, scattered blocks.
He washed his face and then remembered to flush the toilet.
“No trouble?” said Nancy as he came into the living room.
“She’ll be off in a few minutes.”
“A suggestion of cognac?” said Alan. “You’ll have to use a tumbler because I broke the last snifter.”
Peter sank into his usual armchair.
Nancy was lying on the couch staring into the fire.
Alan rolled the glass in his palms.
“Well?” said Peter.
“Well, what? Oh! Oh, yes.”
Alan produced from the inner pocket of his jacket an envelope. He straightened a bent corner. He leaned forward and passed the envelope to Peter. He sat back. Peter opened the envelope and glanced at the contents.
“Funny,” he said. “Witty. Exquisitely comical.”
“I thought you’d react that way.”
Peter tossed the letter over to Nancy.
“Oh, Alan!” she said. “That’s not very funny.”
“It wasn’t intended to be,” he said.
“‘A Scientific Date with CompuMate,”’ read Nancy.
“An unfortunate name, agreed,” said Alan.
“Sounds like ‘copulate,’” said Nancy.
“‘Consummate,’” said Peter.
“Shut up!” said Alan. “Listen, I’m being serious. Okay? We’ve listened to you talking about the situation for hours on end so you can just sit there and hear me out. Now, I want to look at this rationally. The first fact is that you claim you want to get married again. God knows why, but that’s your funeral. So what’s stopping you? It isn’t that you’re not attractive to women because over the last couple of years there’s been a veritable parade of the creatures . . .”
Peter sipped the cognac, martinis before dinner, wine with, conscious of becoming floatingly, pleasantly, drunk, watching the play of expression on Alan’s face rather than paying attention to his words, feeling a great affection for him. It was soothing to be with friends in this room with a fire in the fireplace, in this room which was part of a house, part of a household; soothing to be, however briefly, in some sort of context.
“. . . so it’s not lack of opportunity. Montreal’s bulging with women . . .”
A log in the fire slipped and sparks sailed up. When the fire had burned down and the talk had finished, he would have to go out into the snow. He thought of his apartment. In a closet in his apartment there still sat a carton not unpacked—a “barrel” the moving men had called it. For two years he had reached over it to take out his coat. He did not know what it contained.
“. . . and just think of the bunch of . . . of Dulcineas you’ve brought round here,” Alan was saying, “eating us out of house and home. And I expect they were the pick of the crop. Now what I’m getting at . . .”
Nancy’s hand patted the carpet for the packet of cigarettes. Watching the oily curves of the cognac on the glass the word “meniscus” came into his mind but he knew it wasn’t the right word. Bulky as the still-packed carton, sadness sat inside him.
“Well, I think the whole idea’s silly,” said Nancy, “Any woman who’d sign up for that’d be crazy.”
“Why don’t you listen!” exclaimed Alan with a drunken earnestness. “Of course! That’s just what I’ve been saying. The women he’s found on his own were mostly crazy. Right? What about that blonde one? Eh? You know.”
“Marion,” said Nancy.
“Right. All that nonsense. And that other woman with the adhesive tape over it. If you didn’t know Peter, you wouldn’t believe they were walking around, would you? Of course ninety per cent of these’d be mad as hatters, but what if there was one woman just like him. The same reasons, I mean. Why not? What’s he got to lose?”
“Peter wouldn’t like a woman who’d sign up for that sort of thing.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know Peter.”
“And what do you mean ‘that sort of thing?’”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“Peter!” said Alan. “What do you think?”
“The other day,” said Peter, sitting up, “I went into Dominion to get some apples and I was wandering around sort of glazed with the music and everything and I’d come to a halt in front of a shelf and I found myself staring at a box of toothpicks.”
“Fascinating,” said Alan.
“And do you know what it said on the box? It said: ‘Stim-UDent: Inter-Dental Stimulators.’”
“Do you want to give it a try or not?”
“I had a hamburger last week,” said Peter, “that was served on a paper plate embossed with the word ‘Chi-Net.’ And I’ve sipped my milk through straws manufactured by the ‘Golden Age Scientific Company.’”
“Stop babbling,” said Alan. “It’s only fifteen dollars for a month’s trial.”
Peter laughed.
“Okay?” said Alan. “Or not?”
Peter shrugged.
“Good!” said Alan. “ So we can fill in the form. I love forms. I’ll just get something to rest it on.”
He took a large book that was on the side table and near the couch.
“What the fuck’s this!”
“It’s that book club,” said Nancy. “I keep forgetting to send the don’t want cards back.”
“Fish Cookery of Southeast Asia.”
“They bury them until they rot,” said Nancy.
“What?”
“Fish.”
“Who?”
“Southeast Asians.”
Alan stared at her.
“And you,” he said, turning to Peter, “want to get married again.”
Spreading out the form, he started to read.
Many of us have come to realize that we need the love and companionship of a compatible Mate with whom we can share our deepest beliefs, our gravest sorrows, our wildest joys. CompuMate promotes harmonious relationships between mature individuals and encourages personal growth through deep and meaningful long-term, male-female interaction. Any single or legally unattached person who is serious minded and of sound character and who meets the computer’s acceptance standards is eligible to become a CompuMember.
“Just who does that computer think it is?” said Nancy.
“Haughtyputer,” said Peter.
“Now the first thing, then . . .” said Alan.
“Wait,” said Peter. “How’s all this nonsense supposed to work?”
“You answer all these questions and then it matches you with someone who’s given the same kind of answers. And then you end up with a Computer Compatible.”
“A ‘Computer Compatible?’”
“Now don’t start being awkward. Are you ready? Okay?”
Mark the Character Traits which are YOU: Popular, Well-to-do, Artistic, Puritan, Sexually Experienced, Bohemian, Diplomatic, Free Spirit, Romantic, Shy, W
ell-Groomed, Sensual, Sporty, Sensitive, Smoker (non, moderate, heavy), Drinker (non, social, heavy).
“So?” said Alan. “What would you like to be?”
“Artistic,” said Nancy.
“Romantic, do you think?” said Alan.
“Of course,” said Nancy. “And Sensitive. And Shy.”
“Can’t I be Sexually Experienced?”
“No,” said Alan, “it might put her off.”
He marked crosses in the appropriate boxes.
“And for smoking and drinking,” he said, “I’m putting ‘Moderate’ and ‘social.’ Or we won’t get any Compatibles at all.”
Can Premarital Sex Be justified?
“What choice do I have?”
Never. After Engagement. If in Love. Between Mature Individuals. Always.
“Do people still get engaged?” said Nancy.
“I was engaged,” said Peter.
“Yes, but you’re as old as we are.”
“Not only was I officially engaged, I purchased an engagement ring complete with diamond.”
“You’re an antique,” said Nancy. “Just like us.”
Alan cleared his throat.
Which of the following interests would you like to share with your CompuMatch: Dancing, Athletics, Skiing, Winter Sports, Spectator Sports . . .
“Hate all of them,” said Peter .
. . . Politics, Photography, Music, Animals . . .
“Animals?”
. . . Animals, Fine Arts, Natural Sciences, Parties, Psychology, and Sociology.
“I don’t like any of them.”
“Well you’ve got to.”
“What do you mean, animals?”
“How the fuck should I know?” said Alan. “Take her to the zoo.”
“It’s not open in the winter.”
“Oh, stop being difficult!” said Alan. “I’m putting you down for Music, Animals, and Fine Arts.”
“And what’s more,” Peter said to Nancy, “the engagement was announced in the paper with, believe it or not, a photograph of the charming young couple. So how about that?”
“What are your age requirements?” said Alan.
“What?”
“How young and old are you prepared to go? There’s a note here that says the wider the range the more choice the computer can provide.”
“Remember her father, Nancy?” said Peter. “I even asked him for her hand in marriage.”
“Peter! Come on! You’re not paying attention.”
“Sorry, sorry. What was it? How young, you said?”
There flashed through his mind a vision of an evening he had spent some eighteen months earlier. He had met her at a party. She was young and beautiful, her eyes dark and entrancing. At three thirty in the morning he had escorted her back to her apartment on Sherbrooke West. Her apartment was furnished with plants, posters, and a pinball machine.
It was summer; she gave him a large glass of Kool-Aid. She went into her bedroom.
One of the posters was electric blue.
In the centre was a red circle.
Under the circle was the word NOW.
She reappeared in a long, white nightgown. Her bare feet were brown. Across the road from her apartment was the Montreal Association for the Blind. Yellow floodlights lit the front of the buildings. She insisted they go out into the night because she wanted to share with him something rare, something mysterious.
She flitted across to the island in the middle of the road, her legs dark through the white gown against the light of the approaching cars. She smiled and beckoned to him. On the lawn in front of the building she urged him to take off his shoes and socks to walk in the dew. His feet looked pale and silly in the dark grass. She took him by the hand and led him to one of the floodlights. Her hand was cool on his. She made him kneel and gaze into the glare of one of the yellow bars of light while she counted aloud to a hundred.
“See!” she cried, when they stood up. “Everything looks purple.”
Peter drained the last drops of cognac.
“I’ll put the maximum as your age,” said Alan, “so how about twenty-five as minimum? That’s ten years.”
“Make it thirty.”
“Why thirty?”
“The heart,” said Peter, “has its reasons.”
Alan crossed something out and turned the form over.
“How about race?” he said. “Of your CompuMatch, that is.”
“Peter?” said Nancy.
White. Coloured. Oriental. Any.
“Apart from all this,” she said, “do you know what sort of girl you really want? You know, if you could . . . Or is the whole idea just silly?”
“What sort of girl?” said Peter.
Protestant. Catholic. Jewish. Unaffiliated. Other.
He held up the empty glass to look through it at the fire.
“Yes,” he said. “I know just the sort.”
He tilted the glass creating changing shapes.
“I want a girl in gingham.”
* * *
Peter sipped the coffee, watching the waitress, watching other diners, half-listening to scraps of conversation near him, extending as long as was decent the minutes until he would have to pay the bill. He ate at Chez Jean-Guy two or three times a week. It was not exactly cheap but he liked the linen, wine, flowers on the table. The food was respectable. As he was a regular, they rarely hurried him and he often sat over coffee, sometimes cognac, glancing through trade journals and the catalogues.
Above the background sound of voices, cutlery, crockery, he heard a sharp click and Jesus Christ! from a man at the next table. He hadn’t looked at the two men when they’d come in, as he’d been watching his waitress stretching to clear off a vacated table. Both men were in their forties and wearing expensively tailored versions of teenage clothing. One wore a necklace and medallion. On the near man a heavy gold bracelet.
“What a jeezely looking thing!”
“Couldn’t tell, eh?” said the necklace man. “Swear it was a Parker pen. I came through three international airports with that in my suit pocket. “
Peter couldn’t see what it was because of the flowers on their table.
“Where in hell did you find a thing like that?”
“This one?” said the necklace man. “Tokyo, this one. Never,” he said, “never underestimate your Japanese.”
“A very ingenious people,” said the bracelet man.
“The Jews of the East,” said the necklace man.
“Let bygones be bygones,” said the bracelet man.
“Of course,” said the necklace man, “in the travel business you’re always on the move. Locating. Different countries all the time. The personal touch. And it’s become—well, I suppose you’d have to call it a hobby of mine.”
“Well,” said the bracelet man, “it sure is different!”
There was another click.
“Refill all round?” said the bracelet man.
Beckoning to Peter’s waitress, the necklace man said to the bracelet man, “Two more vodkatinis, are we?”
Peter felt a surge of irritation. They were ten years older than he was. Why couldn’t they accept with dignity what faced them in the morning mirror? Slackening. Caries. The intimation of jowls.
He wondered what they thought about when locked alone in the burnished steel and strip-lighting of a jet plane’s toilet.
“Yes,” continued the necklace man, “every different place I go I buy their kind of switchblade. As I say, I suppose you’d call it a hobby.”
The waitresses wore blue tunics with white blouses. Peter watched the changing blue planes across her thighs as she placed the martinis in front of them.
“But it’s in the south,” continued the necklace man, “the southern co
untries where I’ve found what I’d call my best pieces. The time before last in Mexico, for example, I bought a crucifix. Crown of thorns. Loincloth. Little nailheads in the hands and feet. Enamelled. Brown beard. But press his navel and you’ve got yourself five and a half inches.”
The waitress smiled at Peter from her buffet and raised the coffee pot. Nodding, he smiled back.
He always tried to get a table at her station. The other girls were French-Canadian but she, he had discovered, was German. It was not the length of leg nor the strange severity of her haircut that attracted him but rather the way she spoke. There was something about her speech; it was nothing as definite as, say, a lisp; if it was an impediment at all it was so slight, so elusive, as to be indefinable. But he was not comfortable with the idea of “impediment”; it did not quite capture what he seemed to hear. That something, he had almost decided, must be the suggestion of a long-ago-lost accent. He found it charming.
He did not know her name.
Sometimes it was Eva. Sometimes Ilse.
She wore no rings.
The austere tunics reminded him of girls’ gym slips, stirred idle thoughts of Victorian pornography, the backs of hairbrushes, correction, discipline.
Miss Flaybum’s Academy. Sexual pleasures he’d never been able to even vaguely understand.
Necklace and Bracelet had exhausted compact cars and the prime lending rate and were now fairly launched into the virtues of aluminum siding.
He watched her deft movements, her smile, the formal inclination of her head as she jotted down each order. The elusive something about her speech was, he decided, like a faint presence of perfume in an empty room.
He found himself wishing that he wasn’t wishing that she wasn’t German.
He embroidered upon the possible permutations of Alsace-Lorraine.
Recalled a poster he’d seen outside the Beaver for a movie called Hitler’s Hellcats. A Nordic beauty aiming a Sten gun, her blouse severely strained. He had come to consider most psychological solemnities, such as the gun-penis thing, as dubious as Dr. Trevore and his lumpy ashtray. Yet the poster had stayed in his mind for months. And then, too, he remembered the security guard at Man and his World.
Last year with Jeremy. The mechanical delights of LaRonde, ice-creams, Orange Crush. The rites of summer. And while Jeremy had been riding out his minutes on the merry-go-round, the paunchy guard stroking the revolver butt.