But okay, true enough, I don’t turn up my nose at decent-quality chocolate either.
All right. I do see that what I am doing is sitting here in the Virgin Atlantic first-class lounge, watching the bartender mix my martini and arguing with myself.
Hendrick’s gin. What, do you take me for some sort of heathen?
Still, “amenities” aside, I do appreciate the style of this lounge. It’s over-the-top post-midcentury, with swivelly Scandinavian scoop-chairs and a banquette made of plastic orange balls. You feel a little like ducking into the spotless bathroom and changing into a Pucci minidress with some Corrège boots and Twiggy-esque eyelashes, just to fit in with the mood.
I settle on the banquette, drawn by the orange balls, which are oddly comfortable to sit on though they are not soft and squishy. I sip the martini. And I think about Wilson blabbing all the Crowe family business to a stranger, who for all I know could be taking notes in order to write some kind of tell-all book. People prey on the rich, they really do, though it’s no doubt irksome to hear me say it.
“Oh come on,” I can hear Natalie say. “You have the totally charming Gordon for a father. That amazing apartment. Freedom. Compared to pretty much anyone, you have it really good. Why waste your emotional energy hating your brother, who’s not exactly a monster anyway?”
Well, I don’t hate him.
It’s not about hating him at all. It’s important for you to understand this.
Look, all right, I can see that from the outside, it looks like we Crowes have absolutely nothing to complain about. More money than God, go wherever, do whatever. That’s how it looks. But the reality is that we are watched. Sometimes ten eyes are on me when I leave the building just to go get toothpaste.
Do you understand what that means?
Do you understand how it feels to know that if you make one tiny false step, it will be plastered all over the tabloids—and the internet, oh my god. I do not have the freedom to be human.
Ah, martinis. Do they have a similar effect on you? Get you all up in your head, rummaging around, looking under the sofa cushions of your mind as though you’re going to find gold coins under there?
Half an hour until boarding and I am pleasantly about a quarter in the bag, enjoying the olives from a second martini, which are surprisingly good and not like the olives you usually end up with, even at so-called high-end bars, that taste like they’ve been languishing on a low shelf at D’Agostino’s for upwards of five years before landing in your martini. Even Hendrick’s cannot fix this.
I wonder about the name “Virgin Atlantic.” Which virgin does it refer to, I’d like to know? If any of tonight’s passengers are virgins, I’d be rather surprised. We in the first-class sections of the world tend to lead speeded-up lives, if you see what I mean. Maturity tends to come early to the sophisticated, whether they want it to or not.
I think the olives have upset my stomach. This intermittent queasiness is becoming quite annoying.
A man comes in and goes straight to the bar. He’s around my age, at least as well as I can determine from his back. I see his shoulders relax as he talks to the bartender, that loosening of tension familiar to all travelers once they’ve made it to the gate or the lounge and they know they’re not going to miss the flight. A spark of interest flares up because he is wearing Carhartt work pants. Not a look you tend to see in a first-class lounge, no matter what amenities they offer.
Of course he’s slumming, in some sense of the word, and I believe I have mentioned the appeal in that. He leans both forearms on the bar and says something to the bartender, who laughs. The laugh is genuine.
Reflexively I reach down to pat my large traveling handbag to make sure I haven’t put it down somewhere and forgotten it. I watch the man sip his drink—can’t tell what it is from this distance—and then he turns around and leans his back against the bar, and our eyes meet.
I look away. I drain the rest of my drink as I feel him approaching.
“Looks like we’ll have the plane to ourselves,” he says. “May I join you?”
I don’t entirely follow how cozying up flows from a nearly empty plane, but since I am one-quarter verging on one-third shit-faced, I say yes. “I am enjoying the orange balls,” I add, and he looks at me quizzically. Helplessly I gesture to the banquette while telling myself to please not open my mouth and let the words fall out without inspecting them first.
No sooner do I have that thought than I violate it.
“I can’t quite figure you out,” I say, squinting at his face.
He grins, as anyone would. He is, I would say, as I attempt to hold on to some shred of dispassionate objectivity, a very attractive man. Late twenties, lean, a mop of hair that’s not quite so wild as to be an affectation. Intelligent, mirth-filled eyes. The kind of jawline that is a base requirement for models. Yet despite all that, I am not getting an overly self-involved vibe from him…a relative rarity in New York with men who have money and look this good.
“My name’s Jimmy,” he says.
“Caroline.”
“Is that your real name, or are you messing with me?” he asks, his expression jokingly suspicious.
“Real. But now I wish I had made something up.”
“I’m not actually Jimmy.”
“I see that now.” Well. This trip is quickly turning out to be more diverting than I expected. The spark turns into a flame, tiny but dogged. I cock my head and gaze at his face.
“For years, ‘Jimmy’ is what I wished my parents had named me. My whole childhood, that’s what I hoped for. I even looked up how to change it legally and everything.”
“Well, why haven’t you?”
‘Jimmy’ shrugged. “Too late, I guess. By the time I was old enough I didn’t feel like training everyone to stop calling me Morton.”
“‘Morton?’ Really? I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. It has been a cross to bear.”
“Indeed.”
“We’ve got time for one more,” he says, glancing at his phone. “You in?”
Two martinis is my limit. Three, in my experience, means I could go completely off the rails.
“Why not?” I say.
We guzzle them down so as not to be caught with half a glass when the boarding call comes. Of course no one would protest if we took the glasses with us, but it’s awkward getting out your boarding pass while clutching a martini glass. They’re so sloshy, which is perhaps a design flaw, but who’s going to argue with that beautiful conic shape?
The lighting in the lounge is quite dim as though the people at Virgin Atlantic either want to put travelers to sleep or encourage bad behavior. From behind the banquette a sort of pink glow emanates, which has the effect of showing off Morton’s cheekbones and jawline in a psychedelic fashion.
I can’t take my eyes off him. The nearness of his body is making me agitated and breathless.
The woman making the long-awaited boarding call has a lilting voice, possibly Jamaican. Morton gallantly holds out his arm and we proceed to the gate, where we are quickly whisked through as befits members of the Platinum Ultra Deluxe Winner’s Circle Champion’s Club or whatever they call it, and then find ourselves in the comparatively bright lights of the first class cabin. I stand there, blinking and drunk, trying to figure out my next step.
I take hold of a seat-back to steady myself.
Never have three or you’ll be at sea jumps into my head, chanted by the jeerlings in raucous unison. I muster a smile but they are not fooled.
The brightness of the cabin, combined with the nearness of Morton, has me more discombobulated even than usual.
Which is saying something, I do realize.
A flight attendant comes over and helps me find my seat and get settled. Other passengers begin to trickle in. I am offered a drink but with the very last vestige of sense I possess, I decline.
Paris. It will be cold and gray, but it will still feel friendly there. Just to wander about and have all th
ose French words filling my ears seems like enough reason to make the trip. My favorite translation of À la recherche du temps perdu is tucked in my bag.
I’ve got my seat belt buckled already, like a good citizen of the world, and so I can’t lift myself up very far to try to see where Morton is sitting.
Could I ever have a boyfriend with the name Morton? I understand it is no doubt a family name, not something picked out of a hat, probably treasured by his parents and grandparents etc. Only the well-placed and well-off would give a son such a name. I imagine rolling over in bed and murmuring, “Mort.” It just…well, come on.
Morty?
I try to come up with some acceptable nicknames but get nowhere. And I will tell you that normally nicknames are something I have talent for. Some in our circle still call Wilson “Wee Willie,” for example. I know, perhaps it is on the obvious side. But sometimes a bludgeon is as good as a rapier. I also called Natalie “Gnat” in sixth grade, and that has stuck as well. And stickiness, in my opinion, ranks high when one is rating nicknaming talent.
When my thoughts circle back to Morton, I heave a sigh, and a flight attendant leaps attentively to my side.
“Can I get you anything?” she says, and for a moment I try to think of something difficult yet possible, something interesting with which to challenge her. But all I can think about right now is Morton.
How long has it been since I had a boyfriend, you ask? Or even a one-night stand?
Isn’t that just a little bit personal?
Years. It’s been years, or at least…it feels that way. It’s not because…not because I get no offers. I mean, let’s face it, the bar for hooking up, for a lot of fellows young and old, is on the low side. And it’s not that I’ve got such a chilly heart that I can’t feel love, or desire.
God, I feel all of it right now, for this Morton in work pants that I’ve barely said six words to. I feel my skin heating up, prickles in odd places on my body, my attention being pulled in his direction even though I am deploying all manner of diversion to keep that from happening. If desire is a checklist, Morton is zipping right down the line, pinging one item after another (with the exception of his name, and even that gets a kind of dispensation due to signifying superior class).
Shut up, I tell the jeerlings. But I know from long experience that they do not listen to me.
The plane takes off and I decide to get up and use the bathroom, a thin ruse to find out where Morton is sitting. I see him chatting to a woman across the aisle, smiling at her while he fiddles with the controls of his seat.
I see them.
Morton’s flirty ways are not specific to me. Obviously he passes out those warm smiles like bonbons to any woman in the vicinity.
Motherfucker.
My throat closes up. I want to run down the aisle and sweep their drinks onto the floor, scream something filthy, stab them both with plastic forks if that’s all there is to stab with. My eyes burn and I go into the bathroom and cry a few gulping tears before I manage to pull myself together. In my handbag is my travel makeup kit; I wash my face with that nasty airplane water, wipe down with a cucumber-scented disposable cloth, and apply eyeliner and lip gloss only.
Fuck Morton and his stupid work pants.
Deep breath.
You think I’m overreacting? Well, fuck you, too. I’m doing the best I can here.
I get comfortable in my seat, legs raised up, back down, blanket tucked, eyeshade in place. I’m not sleeping but lying there letting the words fly past, not like waves breaking on my head but more like a bubbly stream going over me while I am still managing to breathe. With me, my thoughts—it’s mostly words swirling up in my head. Other people have told me they have mostly pictures, which seems amazing to me, unimaginable, possibly glorious. I often try to focus on an image—like right now, I am thinking about a few blocks on rue Mouffetard that I happen to know well—and while I can summon the image easily enough and consider it for some moments, before long the words wash it away.
“You’re not sleeping, are you?” says Morton, I think, and I feel a hand on my arm.
I raise the sleep-mask. “Good evening, Monsieur,” I say, then cringe inside.
“Okay if I bring my stuff and come sit next to you? We could watch the same movie and make smart remarks.”
I giggle. Who am I?
“Sure, if you want.”
He grins at me, and I can read that grin a million miles away, any woman could. He’s got Ideas. He’s thinking, somehow, that he’s going to get some carnal satisfaction during the flight, though the mechanics of this are mysterious to me because the seats don’t even touch each other. On Virgin Atlantic, the first-class seats are separated pods, their own little islands, ensuring the passengers’ virginity for the length of the flight.
Don’t talk to me about the bathroom. What do you take me for?
Morton snuggles in across the aisle; we talk in low voices since dinner trays have been cleared away and the cabin lights dimmed. We scroll through the movies and he chooses Breakfast at Tiffany’s, which gladdens my heart.
It’s a time of ripening possibilities, of hope, of tingling sexual sensations that keep traveling over my skin as I watch the people on the screen but am thinking about Morton and me in Paris, laughing as we stroll down boulevard Saint-Germain, tête à tête at Café de Flore, kissing in bed wrapped in ridiculously luxe hotel sheets.
When the movie is nearly over, Morton unbuckles his seat belt and gets up. I watch him squat down next to me, watch his face come down near mine.
“Everyone’s asleep,” he says. He brushes his lips against my cheek, then my lips. Something inside me leaps with joy. He takes hold of my shirt and pulls me toward him, kissing me like he means it. For a split second everything is dazzlement, liquid shooting stars, bright pictures unreeling in my head.
“No,” I tell him, pulling my mouth away. “No.”
“Caroline—”
“Stay away from me,” I whisper, the sound harsh, almost a hiss.
Of course you don’t understand—how could you? All I can say is that I cannot. There is no room in my bed for Morton, and it makes no difference how much I might regret it.
They’re so useful, it’s a shame we don’t carry sleep shades around in our regular non-airline lives. I flip the sleep shade down over my eyes, lean back in my seat, and that’s that. I don’t have to see the expression on his beautiful face. I don’t have to see what I can’t have.
At least give me a little credit. I pushed him out of some speeding traffic that might have gotten him killed. In that brief moment of insanity, I was thinking of Morton most of all.
14
Wilson
One awesome thing about coming home: I forget, when I’m in Berkeley, just how incredible the women are in New York. Entirely different thing. Not so wholesome, for starters. And that can be really, really nice. Except of course that part of the point of my coming east for a few days was to get away from Anne-Marie and cool my jets.
So far? Jets are decidedly not cool. Already I met a woman by the boathouse and had her up to 744 before lunch. Did her in my childhood bedroom. I’ve also got several promising phone numbers that I’m safeguarding; well, I’m telling myself I’m not going to call but I don’t seem to be deleting them from my phone, so….
The other reason I came home was to sit down face to face with Caro and see if she could help me fill in some of these memory gaps. She was a bitch on the phone but the phone’s never been her best thing. Caro’s one of those people it’s usually better to communicate with in person, though once we were face to face she didn’t give me any openings to ask anything. One short conversation and boom! She leaves the country.
Once, about four or five years ago, Caroline and I went to Paris together, just the two of us. We stayed at the Georges V, spent boatloads of Gordon’s money on dinners and champagne, and hung out at clubs until dawn. Just acting like trashy rich Americans, which was totally entertaining. She can be
fun, you know, though you can’t count on her for shit.
Later on I’m meeting Gordon for dinner downtown before he flies off for a quick pre-Christmas business trip. I’d like to video chat with Rebecca now, but with the time difference, she’s still at work. I shower and change and still have time to kill before leaving to meet Gordon. It’s too cold to head down early and wander the streets after dark, so I plop down on the sofa, the one with eider-down pillows imported from England, and mess around on my phone. I should have known better because Mummy can sense when someone is alone, even when she’s passed out all the way down the corridor in her bedroom with the door shut. It’s like she can feel you sitting there without company and she’ll come barreling out, ready to pounce.
“Wilson,” she says, leaning in the doorway of the living room, as though picking up a conversation that had only been interrupted for a few moments.
“Mummy!” I say. “You look stunning this evening. Going out?” I felt I had to say something. She’s wearing sequins, for God’s sake.
“Remember Jamaica?” she says, hanging on to that doorjamb like it’s the only thing keeping her from evaporating into thin air.
“‘Course I do. Come sit down. Would you like some tea or something? Can I fix you a snack?”
“You take such good care of me,” she says, swaying slightly as she manages to leave the doorjamb behind and set sail for the sofa. “You’re the only one who does. Your father…”
I intend to make a good-natured chuckle but it comes out as a bray. “Gordon is Gordon. No point wishing he were something he’s not.” Suddenly I’m seeing Sandie Shearer sitting next to Mummy, watching the two of us. I get all self-conscious, but I sort of like that she’s there even though her owl-eyes blink at me with never a hint of being amused by anything.
Mummy puts her hand on my cheek which makes me intensely uncomfortable.
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