by Jonathan Dee
You’re wrong, I said. Mal is bothered by the fact that you take issue with him. And no one wants to silence you. Anyway, you’re missing the point. Mal Osbourne is not the enemy here. He’s fighting the same thing you guys are fighting. The established cultural order is what he hates.
Then Liebau, a man nearly old enough to be a grandfather, a man with patches of white in his neat beard, did an astonishing thing: he stuck his tongue out as far as he could, crossed his eyes, and repeated what I had just said, in a tone of mock earnestness. The estabwissed cuwtuwaw owdew is what he haes.
This was a new one. I reminded myself that my unflappability, my ability not to take things personally, was what Mal prized in me – it was the secret to my ascent. Still, it was clearly time to do away with the niceties; social graces only seemed to antagonize these people.
Fall semester starts soon, I said. You guys ready? For classes and whatnot?
Farber sat up straighter. I don’t see how that’s in the bounds of –
Liebau held up his hand. He already knows. He wouldn’t ask if he didn’t know the answer. We’ve lost our teaching jobs.
How will you find work?
We have our resources.
You put a lot of faith, I said, in the strength of your ideas. I mean, I guess that goes without saying. You’d have to, since all the force, all the money, is amassed on the other side.
Gradison, who had been noisily stirring his tea, suddenly held out one fist to me, turned sideways. Thumbwrestle? he said.
No, thank you. So let me get to the point.
Mal had said I would know what to do, and it was true; it was all coming to me now, spontaneously, as if he were working through me, without instruction, my mind racing to keep one step ahead of my speech, since I didn’t think it would be wise to stop talking.
Mal Osbourne actually has a great respect for the work that you two have done. Even when it’s been directly at his expense. He can see – he and I have talked about this several times – he can see that it has a great deal of iconoclastic energy, as well as a strong visual sense, a sense of how to get a message across in the least fussy, most memorable way possible. Not just a desire to break molds, but an instinct for it, a knack for it.
I’m moved, said Liebau to Gradison. Are you moved?
Palladio would like to hire you both, I said. Your starting salaries would be two hundred thousand for the first year.
Now I had their attention. In the crack of light under the swinging door to the kitchen I could see two points of shadow; the Asian woman was listening there. Farber was all ears as well.
You want us to come down South, Gradison said, and live in the big house?
Not if you don’t want to. You can stay right here if you prefer.
Liebau held up his hand. Hire us to do what? he asked, confused.
To do exactly what you do now.
Come off it.
I’m not kidding. We’ll write it into your contracts. No restriction on content. Keep making fun of us, if that’s what you want to do.
They stared at each other.
Ask anyone who works there, if you want to, I said. Ask if their content has ever been tampered with, or censored in any way. (I was out on a limb now – Elaine’s Kerouac ad had been squashed, of course, on formal grounds – but that was an anomaly, and anyway I had to win here, I had to go back home with something to show. I knew it’s what Mal would want, even though, strictly speaking, there was no precedent for it.) Mal is a facilitator; he provides the link between great artists and the means for disseminating great art. All he has to offer is his sensibility. He hasn’t been wrong so far. And he thinks that you two have greatness in you.
Liebau tapped Gradison on the shoulder; they stood and walked to the corner of the room, where, shoulders hunched, they whispered to each other, complete with overdrawn hand gestures. Everything they did seemed to have that overlay of irony to it, of performance. I looked over at Farber, who met my eyes and shrugged, caught up in the suspense of it himself. After a minute or two they came back to the table and lowered themselves on to the pillows again.
Two million, Liebau said.
Sorry?
Two million. Each. The first year.
I scratched the bridge of my nose. Well, I can talk to Mal about it. We can work something out. Nothing’s outside the realm of –
Twenty million, Gradison said. For me.
Yeah, me too, Liebau said.
I didn’t change expression. I’ll talk to Mal about it, I said. It was clear that they were just trying to get me to say no to them, and I would not.
Liebau leaned forward, stuck his bearded face at me over the table, with an expression of great curiosity in the crow’s feet around his eyes. You are an amazing creature, he said to me. An evolutionary marvel. Do you know that?
This isn’t about me. It’s—
Oh, I beg to—
It’s about the two of you. It’s a sincerity check. Because I think that your idea of yourselves is predicated on failure. You enjoy making these destructive gestures precisely because no one’s listening, because you know no one cares what you think. Well, here’s a chance for you to take the ideas you hold so dear and make the whole world listen to them. What’s your answer?
No, Gradison said, not smiling now. Our answer is no.
See, I don’t understand that. You define yourself through these ideas, that, I don’t know, that Mal Osbourne is Satan, that nothing he says is sincere, that his art is about commerce even when it has no commercial content, whatever. I don’t know. But now it seems to me that these same noble ideas would, to you, not be so noble – they’d be changed entirely – if instead of being unemployed middle-aged leftie dinosaurs you were actually succeeding in disseminating them widely. It’s the trappings that really concern you, not the art. I think it’s all a pose, I really do. I think you don’t really believe in yourselves at all. It’s a pose.
Liebau beckoned me closer. I leaned my head across the table. He cupped his hands around his mouth as if he were getting ready to shout, but when his voice came out, it was a whisper.
Dissent is the art, he said.
He sat back, and, in his normal voice, repeated himself. Dissent is the art. And crushing dissent, Johnny, in case you haven’t twigged to this yet, is the business that you’re in. Swallowing it, bastardizing it, defanging it, eliminating it. The reason you think our art’s meaning wouldn’t change if we sold it to you is that you don’t think it means anything anyway. Art comes from somewhere. It has a provenance. Changing that provenance changes the art. Denying that provenance denies the art.
He sighed. And now, he said, in conclusion: get out.
I thought they were kidding. I smiled.
Get out, he said. I mean it. Get out of my house. You defile it by sitting here.
Get out! Gradison said.
Get out! Liebau said, louder. The two of them got to their feet. Get out! Get out!
I looked at Farber. Do you think you could encourage your clients to—
Something – a pencil, I think – whizzed by my head. Get out! They were shouting now. Gradison ran over to the wall and took down a mask – long, scowling, with open mouth and large wooden teeth. Holding it over his face, he ran back across the room and stood inches from me, hopping from foot to foot.
Booga booga booga! he shrieked. It was ridiculous. Then he picked up my half-full cup of tea and proceeded to throw it on me.
They followed me out on to the porch, still screaming, Get out! I hurried into my car. Gradison and Liebau, overweight men, college professors, climbed up on the hood and banged on my windshield with the flats of their hands. Their faces were stretched by a fury so outsized I couldn’t really be sure it was genuine. When I put the car in reverse, slowly, they rolled off the hood and landed on their feet in the driveway; but when I got out on to the dirt road and stole a glance into the rearview mirror, there they were, still huffing after me, shaking their fists, before they finally
stopped, leaning over with their hands on their knees, trying to get their breath.
* * *
IT WAS ALL in the nature of a demand, I see that now, but why shouldn’t I make demands of her? An impartial observer, I think, would say that I was owed, that I had a claim originating in what she had done to me, in the cruel aimlessness she had brought to my life just when I thought I knew what my life would be devoted to. But forget impartiality, I don’t want to be impartial. That’s the last thing I want. Nothing in my life since has been as real as our love, and I can’t see anything in her life right now that strikes me as particularly genuine, either. And before that? A glorified PA for some half-talented Hollywood wannabe, for whom nastiness was passed off as integrity, as evidence of a tortured soul, when really the only thing torturing him was ambition? I’ll show him a tortured soul.
All the way across the country I thought about what I would do. Mal was out of the country. I couldn’t make up my mind what to say to her, but saying nothing was out of the question. The inevitability of it propelled me; resisting it would have been like trying to break a fall by flapping your arms. So I dropped my bag in my half-empty room and made my way across the ground floor to the east wing. The ballroom doors were closed, to protect the surprise of Milo’s installation: other than that, a normal day. I did stop in my office, on the way upstairs, to see what messages there were that needed returning. It was nearly seven o’clock, and so Tasha had already left for the day.
On the fourth-floor landing I felt a wave of nervousness, but I kept on going. I knocked, for the first time, on Mal’s bedroom door. No one answered. She may well have been out; I hadn’t thought to check for her car. Suddenly it began to seem like an opportunity of a different sort. I tried the door, and, as if in a dream, it was unlocked.
I’d never been in there before. I don’t know what I expected. He’s done it in white, all white, the bedspreads, the curtains; only the brass railing at the head of the bed shone gold. No artwork on any of the walls. No books, no mirrors. A door to the bathroom, a double door leading to what must have been a walk-in closet, and a door to the balcony, which was open; the breeze pushed at the skirts of the long white curtains.
There was someone in the bathroom, and she seemed to hear me at the same moment I heard her. The faucet turned off.
Who’s there? she said.
I stood still, and held my breath. I made myself so silent I could hear the blood in my ears.
John? she said.
Molly walked slowly into the room and smiled at me, with a lack of alarm that I thought was really inappropriate under the circumstances. What are you doing here?
I came to tell you something, I said, my voice shaking a little in spite of myself. You have to leave this place. You have to get out of here.
She looked concerned – not for herself, though, for me: as if there were something so odd or disturbing about the expression on my face that she hadn’t even heard what I’d said.
Listen to me, I told her. I swear to you this isn’t about me. It’s about you. Well, it’s about this whole place, really, everything around here is fucked up, it’s falling apart, and that’s because you’re here. I’m not sure why that’s true, exactly, but I’m sure it’s true.
Molly pulled her head back in amazement. John, she said, I haven’t done anything. To you or to anyone else. I do my best to stay out of everyone’s way. It’s a huge house and I live in it, that’s all.
I nodded. I’m not accusing you of anything, I said. But ever since you got here, I can feel things going downhill. For all of us. And now he’s going to ask you to marry him.
She actually laughed.
What? she said. You’re dreaming. What makes you think that?
He told me so. He’s going to ask you when he gets back.
Molly’s eyes widened.
It’s a fucking joke, I went on. He doesn’t even know you. He doesn’t know how to love you. He doesn’t have any idea who you are. He can’t understand you, and so he wants to have you. And if he has you, then that’s it, it’s all over. I’m sorry I can’t say it any better. But I remember you, Molly. I know how you need to be loved. And it’s better not to be loved at all than to be loved in some inauthentic way. I mean, for most people any kind of love is better than nothing, but that’s not you, you can’t have less than you deserve. It wouldn’t be right. Can you understand what I’m trying to say?
Molly was looking at me strangely. Unfocused. Like she didn’t really see me; but her eyes were right on mine.
Because if you can’t, I said, then God knows no one else will. Let me just ask you one thing, okay? What do you see in him, anyway?
She took a step closer to me. I’ve stopped seeing things in men, she said. If you wait long enough, they show you everything anyway.
Her voice was odd. She was staring at me carefully, like you’d stare at a mirage, like you half expected it to disappear if you just looked at it hard enough, and as she did so she reached up and ran her fingers gently along my collarbone.
I didn’t move.
What’s left for me, John? she said. I have a lot of time left to get through. All I want is to be comfortable. Shouldn’t I be comfortable?
You have to get out of here, I said. Inside me the blood was hammering away. My face was turning red.
She ran her hand gently over the curve of my head, like you might do to a child. Why do you care? she said.
Stop it. I’m trying to tell you something.
Everything I touch falls apart. You’ve come back to me, though. I knew you would. I’ve been waiting up here for you. Is that what you want to hear?
That’s not true, I said.
She was talking almost like someone in a trance. Something’s happened to her, I told myself. You can’t take advantage. But it was no use. What was the point of resisting? Still, inside, until the last second, I resisted.
Why do you care? she said again.
Because he doesn’t love you.
You still love me, though, she said. Don’t you?
I could feel her breath on me when she said it.
You have to go.
With one hand around my neck she pulled me toward her, and with the other she covered my eyes.
I’m not even here, she whispered.
I wanted to worship her but it wound up happening differently. Though I wonder about it now, at the time it seemed right that she should be so passive, letting me call all the shots, which I was certainly in the right frame of mind to do. I thought of her passivity as a gift to me, an offering. I went through the whole catalogue of sexual memories, though in truth a lot of the stopping and starting had to do with my trying not to come. I wanted it to last for ever. Literally, that was what I wanted. I made it last a long time.
Did it change anything? Did it make me feel like I’d taken back something that had been stolen from me? To some extent. At one point, when I was behind her with my fingers dug into her hips above the bone, and she was on her knees and elbows, I saw that, with her eyes closed, she was crying. But I was too far gone myself at that point to stop and ask her what was going on. The sight of it at the time, if you want to know the truth, just made me fuck her harder. I used to go out of my way to avoid using that word, actually: fuck. But I need it now, it is the anti-euphemism, it describes what cannot otherwise be truthfully described.
But that was well after I laid my hands gently along her jaw and we kissed, for a long time, until at one point I heard a lovely suppressed moan from deep in her throat, as if she had just remembered something. Every instant, in fact, was another memory brought painfully back to life, as painful as it should be to bring something dead back to life again. I’ll know it’s time to kill myself the day I can’t recall even one aspect of it.
At one point we were in a kind of sitting position, with her legs wrapped around my waist. The patchy redness that broke out around her neck was a sexual response: another detail to remember. As we ground slowly together I real
ized she was saying something, her face buried in the hollow between my neck and shoulder.
What? I said.
She moved her lips from my skin, but left her forehead there.
I’m sorry, she said. I’m so sorry.
Don’t say it. Don’t. It’s forgotten.
Which, actually, was the truth. Nothing could have been further from my mind. Or no, that’s not it; time seemed to have collapsed in some way, so that what had happened then was also happening now, only with a different outcome: I was holding on to her, I would never let her get away like that again. We had gone back in time, so that what was in many ways the defining moment of my life was now unmaking itself. Just as if it had never happened at all.
We fell asleep there, in the dead of night, in the white room, a room defined only by our presence in it, sterile, outside time. Sometime before morning I was snapped awake by the prospect of Benjamin’s arrival with breakfast, and I dressed and tiptoed back downstairs.
When people – poets, or what have you – compare sex to death, I think this is what they’re referring to. Everything builds toward one moment, that moment is the completion of the act itself: just as the moment just before you die is the realization, the sum total and final complex relation, of everything about you, everything you’ve done, felt, said, heard. Then the moment comes, and you want to put it off, you want to go back. Because you realize the explosive moment you’ve been spurring yourself on toward is also the end of everything. You want to turn back time, to knock everything apart so that it can reassemble itself again. You want to go back. But you can’t do it.
* * *
TWO WEEKS SINCE my previous entry, which I had imagined would be the last one. Two days since the contents of my laptop – returned to me following its miraculous survival – were subpoenaed. Palladio’s lawyer is fighting it, but from what I’m told he won’t have a lot of luck. So my most private thoughts, all the things that I considered unsayable, are now about to become part of the public record. Perfect.
Forrest Shays, the lawyer, has told me in no uncertain terms to stop writing things down, but I’m sorry, it would feel pretty hypocritical that way; if it’s all going to be out in the open anyway then this little digital record, permanent and ephemeral, may as well have at least the virtue of completion. So I’ll end by relating the – what’s the word Mr Shays himself keeps using, the word we’re all supposed to remember come deposition time? The incident. I guess that’s to try to establish that not only did none of us see it coming, but no one could reasonably have been expected to do so. Well, they can call it what they want. I do consider myself responsible, though maybe that’s just my nature; anyway, the lawyers are all over it now, and I’m relieved that none of it is for me to decide.