Amateur Barbarians

by Robert Cohen

  “Look,” he said abruptly, “what if one of these days I put the moves on you? What happens then?”

  She looked at him uncomprehendingly, as if he had broken into a foreign tongue. Then she gave a queer, inward smile, and launched into the water. He watched her swim the whole length of the pool, then turn around and swim back, perhaps in pursuit of an answer to his question, perhaps as a way of avoiding it. Then she did it again, and again, and again, her stroke as steady and unvarying as a metronome. Oren sat there and watched as if in a trance. He had, it seemed to him, always been sitting here, at the edge of the pool, watching this woman skim back and forth like a figure in a dream. Each lap seemed a kind of pure, clean thought. An argument, a theory, a resolution. People did their best thinking when they were in motion, between things. Sitting still was no good. The more one sits still, the closer one comes to feeling ill. Who said that, he wondered—Kierkegaard? Pascal? Maybe it was Nietzsche. What difference did it make? Jump in the pool, he thought. Swim after her!

  But it was too late. Gail came bobbing out of the water, wiping her eyes and blinking rapidly, like a sea creature newly born. She padded up the ladder on the balls of her feet. Beneath her sleek blue one-piece, her belly pulsed in and out. Her nipples strained against the fabric. A few dark, wild-looking hairs streamed scraggily from the V of her crotch.

  “Mind throwing me that towel?” she asked, breathing hard. “I’m cold.”

  “Sure.”

  He could invite her to dinner. Men and women did that sometimes, went out to eat together; it kept the economy going. On the other hand she was married to somebody else, the mother of that other person’s children. You could see this in everything she did. Even the brisk, no-nonsense way she dried herself with the towel, as if afterward it would be time for pajamas and story and bed. Soon she would vanish into the changing room and he’d lose all sight of her, he thought.

  “You’re a hell of a swimmer, by the way. I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  “Thanks.” Her lungs were still heaving a little. “You could be too, if you pushed yourself a little harder. You’ve got the strokes.”

  “Oh, I bet you say that to all the boys.”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “It’s probably something wrong with me,” she said, “but I’ve never found that sort of humor funny. All the compulsive little quips people make when they’re nervous—frankly I don’t see the point of them.”

  “That’s too bad.” Blood flew through his veins like a train, thronging that hot terminal, his face. “What sort of humor do you find funny?”

  “I find plenty of things funny, believe me. More and more.”

  “As long as we’re speaking so frankly, let me ask you something,” he said. “Don’t you get bored, doing the crawl all the time?”

  She flinched; it was as if he’d struck her. “As a matter of fact, I do. But it happens to be the only long-distance stroke I’m good at.” She peeled off her cap and shook out her hair. “And on that note, I better get back now to my narrow, boring little life.”

  “I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Don’t. You haven’t even gone in the pool yet.”

  “I’m not in the mood for swimming. Anyway I was thinking we could go grab a bite.” If anything, the transparent lameness of this idea, now that he’d put it into words, increased by a quantum factor. It was five o’clock in the afternoon. What were they going to grab and bite, a bowl of pretzels? “If you want to I mean.”

  “I better not. There’s this preliminary hearing tomorrow, and I’m way behind.”

  “Maybe I could help. I’m an almost former lawyer, remember? That should be good for something.”

  “Wow, an almost former lawyer. That is impressive.” The angle at which her head was inclined, as she toweled water from one ear, only enhanced the natural skepticism of her gaze. “You do like to be useful, don’t you? So let me see. How much environmental case law do you remember?”

  “Okay, that’s a fair question. A very fair question.”

  “Forget it,” Gail said. “It’s a sweet offer, but no. Even if you could help, it’s wrong to keep leaning on you every two seconds. It’s taking advantage.”

  “Of whom? By who?”

  “Go ahead and get your laps in. Really, you’ll see, it’ll make you feel good. We’ll catch up with each other later in the week.”

  Which, given her refusal to meet his eyes, and the brisk officious way she strode dripping over the tiles and pushed open the door of the changing room, seemed to mean hail, farewell, and so long. Good. Oren had plenty of uncompleted work of his own waiting for him back on the chrome table in his kitchen. Papers to be graded, reading logs to be annotated, lesson plans to be finalized. So good, he thought. Enough. Every time he took his leave of Gail Hastings, or she took leave of him, these same twinned feelings of regret and relief teetered back and forth on a sliding scale. He could no longer identify one from the other. No longer be bothered even to try.

  He went over to the diving board and bounced up and down for a while. There was grit in the paint, it gave the surface texture. Normally Oren disliked diving off the board, but then normally he disliked doing a lot of things he went ahead and did anyway. Because when you disliked doing as many things as he did, it simply wasn’t possible, let alone practical, let alone advisable, to not-do them all.

  A few days later, he was out doing one of the things he disliked most—standing high atop Don Blackburn’s utility ladder, taking one last whack at that recalcitrant shutter—when he heard the hollow whomp of a car door, and looked down to find Gail Hastings, small and tousled-looking in her down jacket, squinting up at him from the driveway.

  “There’s no getting away from you, is there? You’re always around.”

  “I’m good at aroundness,” he said. “In all modesty, I believe I have a gift.”

  “I feel like we’re being manipulated somehow. Like there’s some higher being out there lurking behind the scenes, and he keeps placing you in my path.”

  “I thought you didn’t believe in higher beings.”

  “I don’t know what I believe.” The sinking sun was in her eyes; she peered at him through the flat of her hand. “That ladder doesn’t look too stable. Aren’t you afraid you might fall?”

  “I was at first. But then something happened.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I fell.” He held up his arm to show her his bruised elbow, purple and swollen below his sweatshirt. Not that she could see beneath his sweatshirt. She was a powerful woman, but not that powerful. “I’m starting to get the hang of it finally.”

  “Falling?”

  “Fixing things.”

  “Well,” she said, “are you almost finished? We need to talk.”

  We need to talk…no other phrase in the language had such a withering, cryogenic effect on a man’s testicles. And how poorly they’d all gone, Oren thought, those previous talks women had at some point or other needed to have with him. Reluctantly he climbed down the ladder. The angle of the shutter still seemed off, but perhaps he’d lost perspective. That was what came of working too hard and too long at a fundamentally simple problem.

  Inside he found Gail at the kitchen table, sorting through Don’s mail with a fixed, absorbed expression, like a person playing solitaire. “I’m making coffee,” she said. “Want some?”

  “Sure.”

  He drew up one of Don’s ladder-back kitchen chairs and perched himself on it backward, so the slats formed a fence between them. Gail poured out the coffee into two of Don’s ridiculous mustache mugs, of which he had an extensive collection, as Don of course would. To Oren she gave the leering one-eyed pirate; the plump Victorian gentleman with muttonchops and bowler she kept for herself.

  The coffee tasted bitter and stale. Freezer burn.

  Gail took a clementine out of her bag, peeled it expertly in a spiral with her long fingers. “Want a piece?”

  He hesitated. He wasn’
t hungry, but he had a distinct memory of being offered an orange by her husband once and turning it down, and feeling afterward that he’d made a mistake. Why were the Hastings so intent on feeding him citrus? Did he look sick? “Maybe just one,” he said.

  The juice stung his fingers. His hands were raw, chafed from the cold; every time he stuck them in his pockets he bloodied his knuckles.

  “Listen,” she began, “I just want to say, none of this is your fault.”

  Oren nodded, chafing a bit himself now. It was already clear where this was going.

  “I’ve been impossible, I know. I’ve been bitchy and contrary and I’ve sent a lot of really mixed signals. I’m not a very brave person, Oren, down deep. I used to think I was but I’m not.” She plucked a seed from her mouth and deposited it on her napkin. “Couldn’t we just forget all this? And please don’t say forget what.”

  “I wasn’t going to.”

  “Good.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Actually,” he said, “I was going to say forget what. But I restrained myself. I’ve been restraining myself a lot lately, as you may or may not have noticed.”

  “Well, now you won’t have to restrain yourself anymore. At least not on my account. That’s good news, right?”

  “Right, yes. Maybe.” He took a sip of his coffee, almost relishing the burn. “No.”

  It seemed he had covered the options all right. But Gail was intent on her own thoughts. “I just don’t want to walk away from this thing feeling I’ve wronged you in some way,” she said.

  “You haven’t wronged me.”

  “Because really, you’ve been a trouper. You’ve been generous and patient and kind. If I’m wronging anyone here, it’s myself.”

  “Stop it. You haven’t wronged anyone. You’ve made a decision not to do something that probably you wouldn’t have done anyway. Do you hear me trying to talk you out of it?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s your call to make, and you’re making it. It’s that simple. We’re forgetting all this. Moving on. Whatever.”

  He could see from her face that his tone had been harsher than intended. She looked at him with a new, keen interest. Was this all it took to get through to people, acting irritable and snappish? If so he had an impressive future ahead, getting through to people.

  “How do you know I wouldn’t have done it anyway?” she asked. “How do you even know that?”

  “Trust the expert. The more time spent deciding, the less time spent doing.”

  “No wonder you’re so unhappy.” She reached for his hand and gave it a brusque squeeze. “You’re a romantic, aren’t you? You’ve been hoarding yourself all this time. Waiting.” She looked down at her plate, where the vacant clementine peel lay tilted on its side like a toy globe. “But I’m afraid we can’t all afford to wait that long.”

  “Look, I said I was okay with this.” Bad enough to be an unhappy person, Oren thought, but to be told he was an unhappy person, accused of being an unhappy person, and by Gail, who was not just the bearer of this news but the cause, this made him really unhappy. “What else do you want from me?”

  She lifted her shoulders and let them down again, helplessly, as if the shrug were some vexing new dance step she’d failed to master.

  “Look, there’s no controversy here,” he said. “We’re in agreement. We’re doing the right thing. It feels good to do the right thing once in a while.”

  “Yes. It does.”

  “So good. It’s settled.”

  “It’s settled.” She exhaled audibly. “So you’re not going to hate me?”

  “You must be joking. Of course I’m going to hate you.”

  That she smiled at this, however briefly, gave him hope. Perhaps she might still be moved to sleep with him after all, if not by charm than by pity. “No, you’re not,” she said. “I almost wish you would. But you’re not.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because we’d have to love each other first.”

  Exactly eight seconds ticked off on Don’s wall clock before Oren said, “At least you didn’t say you still wanted to be friends.”

  “Should I have?”

  “No…. So.” He rose from his chair. His movements were slow, laconic, an aging cowboy saddling up his horse. His work here was done.

  “You don’t have to run off you know.”

  “I’m not. I’m walking off. You’re the one—” He stopped. There was no point.

  “I’m the one,” she agreed quietly. “That’s right.”

  Without further discussion they cleared the dishes and washed and dried them in the sink, like thieves erasing evidence of a break-in. They were nothing if not tidy people. Oren was now desperate to get away; the house felt like a prison. He wanted to be out of there, to return to that other maddening indeterminate business, his life.

  So preoccupied was he trying to formulate his exit strategy, he almost failed to register the soft, persistent friction of Gail’s body against his, the hairs on his arm levitating toward her wool sweater, his jeans crackling from the whiskery electrostatic shed by her skirt. The dishes were done. The last of the coffee grounds had washed down the drain. The mustache mugs, like two tubby, jovial acrobats, stood upturned in their rack. So why were they still here? Against his hip he felt Gail bump and sway, deferent, gentle, inquisitive, a bumblebee browsing drowsily among flowers. Her cheeks shone in the steam that rose from the faucet. Her eyes had a tranquil, honeyed glaze, like someone humming a favorite song.

  Good lord, he thought: she’s waiting for me to kiss her. Or was she? He was pretty sure she was.

  All things being equal, it should have been up to her of course, the married person, if it were up to anyone, to get the thing started. But there were no rules for this game, clearly. If you were going to get all hung up on rules, Oren thought, you’d never make it in the adultery biz. Besides, it could be argued that by leaning against him this way, she had got the thing started, and was now waiting for him to continue it.

  Condensed vapor came dripping down the windowpane and puddled on the ledge.

  Gail was shorter than he was, and her head was declined at a discouraging angle; this left a considerable expanse of space to negotiate before he finally touched down at the shadowed crater of her mouth. Along the way he rehearsed a number of witty, mood-lightening remarks, the sort of remarks he was known for, liked for; the sort that had always made women want to kiss him in the first place. Gail opened her lips obligingly.

  “Please don’t,” she said.

  “Don’t kiss you?”

  “Don’t say anything.”

  She understood him better than he did himself. And yet the amazing thing was she appeared to still want him to kiss her. Though there was some evidence to the contrary as well. The shaking of her head for instance, no no no. The dryness of her lips. Her skeptical, assessing, open-eyed gaze, as if he were a plumber who’d come to unclog a defective sink. In the end it was all very complicated and inscrutable, very mixed-bag, very adult.

  So this is adultery, he thought, kissing her. He’d never committed adultery before, he wasn’t sure what constituted it exactly. Hard to go about breaking rules when you weren’t clear what they were. So far so good though. No one had slapped him or screamed; no peals of thunder had sounded in the heavens; no stern hand of judgment had descended to smite him. It was no different than all those other commandments he’d broken in the past, stealing and coveting and failing to honor the father and mother and engraving a false idol on his wrist and so on. Gail was wrong: he was no romantic. He believed in nothing. Or rather, in no one thing. At some point you had to choose between an orderly life devoted to absolute values and a messy one swamped by relative ones, between the old prayers and prohibitions and the world as it irreducibly was. And he had. It was hard enough, Oren thought, just to deal with that. Just to keep plain, actual, physical existence going, like this kiss for example, without tr
oubling too much over the ethics and morals. After all, he was the one doing most of the work. His tongue was probing her mouth, not vice versa; his was exploring her little caverns, her hidden nature sanctuaries and preserves (the mossy glades, the creviced rims of bone) while hers lounged by the front gate, collecting admissions. Was he living up to her expectations? Was she living up to his? He’d lived so long in a state of expectation, he didn’t know where it ended or began, what borders it might share with its tiresome neighbor, reality. He thought of Don Blackburn, drooling feebly onto his pillow. Of Teddy Hastings stumbling through some fetid jungle. Ever been to a jungle, Oren? He was in one now. The life of men was a war of attrition. You shot off your gun a few times, and then you were gone.

  Nonetheless he continued to kiss her. He kissed her as if he meant it, when in fact he didn’t quite; kissed her as if overwhelmed with passion, when in fact he was only whelmed at best; kissed her as if he’d successfully shut out his surroundings, when in fact he remained more or less attuned to them the whole time…the hot water trickling in the sink, the window clotting with steam, the sun misting up behind it, whether from sorrow or happiness he didn’t know. He kissed her until his mouth went numb, until his heart flopped against his ribs like a trout in a net. Then all at once he felt the net slacken, or tear; a great foamy, tumbling current rushed through, upending him like a raft, and after that whatever had been dammed up inside him began to move, as if space were being cleared for the next thing. And after that he just kissed her. That was what he did. He pressed his weight against her, he poured himself out as if filling a mold, and whatever he’d been doing before was now revealed to be something else, something less. His head was vacant and calm, a dark room. All the usual echoes had ceased.

  At last they collapsed against each other in a heap, like two accident victims flung through a windshield.

  “Mother of God,” Gail groaned, “and I gave that whole speech and everything.”

  He nodded. He couldn’t speak.