I’d be seeing her once, twice a week for six months and never got more than a nod and a polite smile, but then one day, this was back when Delta used to run a hydrofoil on the East River between La Guardia and East Thirty-third Street—what would take you an hour at least in a car you could do in fifteen minutes on the hydrofoil. Marie was standing near the rail, and I tapped her on one of her big old shoulders and said Hey you better be careful none of that water sprays on you, or we’ll have to put you in a taxi and take you straight to New York University Hospital and get you a cholera shot, and she said Really, you’d do that for me? That was how it started. By the time the hydrofoil docked on the East Side, we had already arranged to have dinner that night. Doleack went silent for a moment. He was one of those men who frown when they feel grief, or even tenderness, as if there is someone soft inside of him who is trying suddenly to be heard and who must be stared down, and silenced. We ate at a restaurant, I don’t think it’s even there anymore, near Gramercy Park, called La Colombe d’Or. I had no idea where to take her; I called my sister, she’s an expert on restaurants, and she said Oh take her there, and order the cassoulet, but Marie wouldn’t touch the cassoulet. She ordered a spinach salad, with dressing on the side, and she said to me I’m going to keep my figure until I find the right man, and then I’m going to marry him, have a couple of kids, and get as fat as a hog. Doleack cleared his throat, a rough, angry sound, like someone peevishly dragging a chair across a bare floor.
Did you have children? I asked. I pitched my tone between solicitousness and persistence. It was something you learned to do, like moving the dial on the coffee grinder so you could get the consistency you wanted—fine, extra fine, espresso. Nope, Doleack said. Negative on that. We spent two years trying. Every time Marie got her period she’d cry, but I’d say Marie, what the fuck do I care? Let’s raise Jack Russells—we were both crazy about those little ballsy dogs. Let’s buy a farm somewhere and get some horses and saddle them up and ride the hell out of them, and then jump into a nice pond naked as the day we were born. I meant it, too.
She stopped flying. She thought maybe all that compression was the problem, and you know sometimes women’s cycles get screwed up if they’re up in the air too much. Marie went through all the possibilities. By the book, of course. And step number three, or maybe it was four or five, anyhow she made an appointment to get the plumbing checked, and that’s when they discovered she had a cancerous cervix. Next stop, Sloan-Kettering in New York. We had one more dinner at Colombe d’Or, and once again she did not order the cassoulet, but she had a taste of mine. She said how good it was, so rich and smoky, but I could tell it wasn’t really her thing, especially going into the hospital the next morning and surgery the day after that. Doleack reached into his pocket, and I wondered if he was going to snap off another ampoule, but he just kept it there.
She never got out of that place. When they opened her up, everything was a million times worse than what they had originally thought. She died like she lived, total efficiency. First one thing went and then the next. It was like closing a summer house room by room. She lost her sight, boom, her ability to walk, finished, everything in order, one after the other, very methodical, like putting sheets over furniture, turning down all the thermostats. Her kidneys shut off, and finally her lungs started to fill, and that was it. She was thirty-one years old, we didn’t have a living will, or any of that sort of thing, we thought we would live forever, but there she was propped up in the hospital bed filling out the forms, putting her initials in the boxes—all four of her initials, I could never figure out how she squeezed them in. You know the last thing she said to me? She could hardly talk, it was all mumbles and morphine, but she whispered right in my ear I’m going to miss you.
Oh God, I said, this life has so much suffering. I had meant it to be consoling, but Doleack’s eyes flashed with annoyance. I’m sorry, Doleack said, I don’t happen to think you can compare losing Marie with any ordinary fucking little everyday tragedy. He took a deep breath. But in order for you to understand that, I guess you’d have to know something about how things were between Marie and me, and you don’t, do you? You don’t have the first idea about what we had. And I am not going to go into a lot of X-rated detail here, I will leave that to your imagination, but I will tell you that it is absolutely one hundred percent impossible for two people to be more compatible, more in tune with each other physically, than we were. With Marie, every light in my body went on. Every nerve was saying Okay, Webb, this is what we’ve been waiting for. And believe me, it wasn’t like she was some expert. Sometimes she’d just spaz out, and I had to hold her hips and tell her Whoa, you’re going crazy here, just find a rhythm and keep it. What made her so great to me had nothing to do with so-called skills. It was something much more mysterious, mysterious and basic; it was just her body, the specific gravity of it, the texture. Her pubic hair was long but very soft, extremely silky; you could rest your cheek against it and want to fall dead asleep, I’ve never touched anything like it, it was like corn silk. She was very wet when it was time, but never too wet; there was always this little bit of…I don’t know what to call it, there was always some substance, like a little pinch of arrowroot in the gravy to give it more body. She was what she was and maybe she was just one of a kind, but I would really like to find someone, another woman who can make me feel like I’ve found perfection. Because you know what? Do you know what you have when you don’t have perfection? He put up his hand, telling me not to bother answering. You have something less; you are making do. Is that the worst thing in the world? Answer: No, not really. But once you’ve had perfection, it feels pretty shabby to have anything else. Doleack pulled his plastic cube of breath mints out of his pocket, tapped one into his mouth. He offered one to me, which I accepted because when someone offers you a Tic-Tac they are telling you that you need one. So, Doleack asked, does that pretty much answer your question?
I knew enough not to say yes. You always wanted more; you always moved the finish line back when you were interviewing, no matter how surreptitiously. You never wanted the subject to feel there was nothing more than needed to be explained, justified, amplified, apologized for. I suppose so, I said. You go around, sleeping with women, hoping to feel what you felt with Marie. Doleack nodded but raised his eyebrows. Well, nothing quite so pathetic as that. I do manage to enjoy myself. I may be on a quest, but I make sure the journey is pleasant. After all, it’s still sex. I love getting my dick sucked and I love fucking. And then, without another word, without a yawn, or even a shift to the left or the right, without putting his head farther back, without stretching out his legs, without a change in his breathing, Doleack fell into a sudden deep sleep; it was as if he were an appliance and someone had just kicked the plug out of the wall.
I gazed for a moment at his sleeping, defenseless face. Of course I was saddened by Webb’s story. How could I not be, especially since I could not help but see in it certain similarities to my own? We were both chasing phantoms. But Deirdre was still alive, and really mainly separated from me because of my own pride, and longing for her did not belong in the same category as Webb’s longing for Marie. How could I compare the tragedy of his losing Marie to death to my losing Deirdre because I really wasn’t capable of sustaining the relationship? Yet even to conjure Deirdre in this self-abnegating way brought her to sudden life within me, and I said her name, softly, so as not to awaken Doleack.
I inched my little tape recorder out of my pocket, peeked down at it, and—cue: music, close-up of eyes bulging in horror—I saw that I had somehow failed to press the RECORD button. I had just pressed PLAY and the blank tape was blithely revolving.
I had blown it. I started madly running my hand through my hair, and then stopped, looked around to see if anyone was paying attention to me. Tony’s hands were folded, and his eyes were shut; his lips moved in what seemed a pious mutter. Len Cobb was listening to his iPod and eating a ham sandwich and drinking a comically small can
of beer. Stephanie was strapped into her seat and appeared to be dozing. But she sensed I was looking at her and she opened her eyes suddenly, to return my gaze. I gave her a small wave, meant to suggest my own harmlessness, but she interpreted the gesture to mean I needed her for something, and though the plane was still tearing through the gloomy gauze of nocturnal northern clouds and seemed a long way from leveling off, Stephanie unclasped her seat belt and, using Tony’s and then Len’s seat back for balance, she made her way toward me.
I quickly got up, to stop her before she walked all the way to my seat. I don’t need anything, I was just waving. Are you sure? she asked. I’m already up, I could get you—a drink? Some fruit maybe? No, nothing, I’m fine. I touched her elbow, meaning only to say she should go back to her seat and relax, but she stiffened at my touch. She must think we’re all monsters. Mind if I chat with you for a minute? I asked. Sure, if you’d like to. I’m going to make myself a cup of tea. You’re welcome to join me. I followed her into the galley. It was about ten feet by four feet, lit by three overhead lights. It wasn’t exactly shipshape. Salt or sugar grit was on the counter. Four badly stained napkins were balled into a corner; it seemed as if they’d been used to mop up a spill and then shoved aside. A whiskey tumbler with a V chipped out of its rim stood next to a similarly disabled wineglass. I don’t know what I was expecting. Something better. I see you were having a nice little chitchat with our friend, she said, opening a metal drawer and pulling out a tea bag from a rat’s nest of tea bags. I wondered if the pilots were similarly lax in their housekeeping. I wasn’t greatly concerned with cleanliness or tidiness in general, but I did think that those involved in aeronautics ought to be particularly neat, focused on crossing every t and dotting each i, just as you would not want to look up from the examining table and notice your doctor had soup in his mustache.
Well, since you asked me a question about how I like working this route, do you mind if ask you a question, too? Not at all, I said, be my guest. She pressed the flat of her hand lightly against her collarbone, to signify sincerity or harmlessness. Do you think the guys spend much time wondering what all these women think of them? Hmm, I said, that’s a good question. Well, don’t you ever worry about that?
Yes, I see what you’re driving at, I said. But aren’t the women in a business and we’re the customers? I think salespeople tend to like their customers, if they’re successful. So you think they like you? Stephanie asked, her smile as thin as fishing line. Maybe, I said. They might prefer us if we were a fabulously good-looking collection of perfect gentlemen, but on what planet was that likely to happen? Prostitutes are like psychiatrists, ambulance drivers, tutors, and personal trainers; they’ve got to be used to human wreckage. We’re all selling something that’s precious to us: our backs, our skills, our time. Think about it. You sell your time, your own precious, finite portion of your allotted stay on Earth, and you say here’s an hour of it, give me ten bucks, or a thousand, whatever. The women have something men want, and they are selling it, and maybe not being that crazy about the men is part of the job. But let’s face it—eight hours of work for a month’s worth of income, it balances out, don’t you think?
Right now I’m not thinking of them, Stephanie said. She had filled a teacup with water and then stuck it in the microwave. What I wonder about is what it feels like to be you. She lowered her voice, so it was just loud enough to be heard over the hoarse hum of the engines. I’ve had experiences with men who thought that maybe they were a little too good for me. It’s like having your soul scoured out with a Brillo pad. You feel like a complete stranger to yourself, except for the raw pain. The microwave’s timer rang, and Stephanie took out her cup of tea.
I don’t see how a man could think he was too good for you, Stephanie, I said. I’d think any man would feel pretty lucky—She stopped me with a quick shake of the head, a frown. Don’t flatter me. If working on these routes has taught me any one thing, it’s where I fit in on the beauty scale. It’s been a real education, I’ll tell you that. I hear some of the men rating the women on a ten-point scale, young, thin women, with the perfect waist-hip ratio, which you’ve got to understand is still the most important thing to men. And do you know what they give these women? Once in a while a nine or a ten, but mostly eights, sevens, I’ve heard sixes. So you can imagine what they’d give me, like a minus twelve. She sensed I was about to object, and she raised a silencing finger. You can’t tell me my own experiences. There is nothing quite like it, being with a man who doesn’t think you’re pretty. Being with someone who is thinking to himself Damn, I could do better than this. So I’ve got a theory, and I’m trying to live by it, but it’s hard. What’s your theory? She took a sip of her tea. She gave no indication of pleasure or disappointment; she experienced the tea the way she would experience reading the words she sipped her tea. My theory is that everyone needs to know exactly how attractive they are, where they fit in on the universal beauty continuum, and they should try to refrain from contact with people who are either much more or much less attractive than they are. Find your level and stay there. This holds true for friendships, too, by the way. In fact, if a woman wants to know where she fits in on the beauty scale and she can’t quite get the truth out of her mirror, she should ruthlessly appraise her five closest women friends and just put herself somewhere in the middle. That’ll get you pretty close to the truth.
Go to any beach, any bar, any high school cafeteria, you see the gorgeous ones with the gorgeous ones, the fat ones with the fat ones, the frightened little homely ones with glasses and their shoulders hunched up, they stick together. My girlfriend calls it beauty apartheid. But for men, forget it, it’s a different game, they don’t have to stay in their beauty ghetto; they can get a free pass out if they’re brilliant, or funny, and they can always buy their way out. That’s what this whole trip’s about, isn’t it? Buying women who wouldn’t want to be with you for free? In other words, you completely hate us, I said. Stephanie shook her head. We’re just rats in a maze, Avery. We can’t really help how we behave. And the truth is—I like men. I love them, really. I like to argue with them, and I like having a man on my arm the way some guys like walking around with pit terriers on a leash. I like their energy, their directness, and you know the stakes always seem raised when the men are around. They want so much and so they’re willing to put it all out there. I like that. Are you sure I can’t get you something to drink?
But before I could answer, Jordan, standing at the front of the plane, was calling out for everyone’s attention. Though it was warm in the cabin, he wore a zippered jacket, a silk paisley scarf with long black tassels. He held a cocktail glass with something bright amber in it, and he hoisted it up, like a cavalryman at the head of the table proposing a toast. His eyes were hectic. He swayed back and forth to counteract the movements of the plane. I want to propose a toast to my father, he called out, his voice thick and slurred. His empty sleeve, which he had tucked into his pants pocket, had come loose and waved about on its own. In the harsh light of the plane, his burns seemed particularly livid; you could almost feel the searing pain that had preceded them. Come on, you fucking guys, he called out. Everyone raise your glass. You fucking guys, fucking fucking…He fell silent, blinking rapidly. He seemed to be rapidly descending into debauchery, simply too frail to withstand the past twenty-four hours. Dr. Gordon, as well, seemed worse for wear. His blue blazer was rumpled, and his cottony white hair was disheveled. I have to tell you, Jordan was saying, I wasn’t sure I even wanted to come on this trip. It was my father’s idea. It all just seemed sort of random to me. All I wanted was to be home, crawl into a hole and never come out. But—Dad, I’m always going to listen to you, from now on. So Dad, come on, man, you’ve got to stop beating yourself up. What happened, happened. You couldn’t have stopped me if you wanted to. Not your fault, not your fucking fault. Jordan adjusted the height at which he held his glass, so that now it extended straight out at the other passengers. He smiled wildly, l
ike an escaped convict reveling in his hours of freedom before the inevitable recapture. Thank you, Dad; thank you, Mr. Castle; thank you, Gabby; thanks to everyone at Fleming Tours, and thanks to all you guys, you’ve all been really great. He drank whatever was in his glass in a long swallow, shivered theatrically, and then stumbled back to his seat.
Have you decided to go for the upgrade? Stephanie said to me.
14
LATE-NIGHT LANDING at Gardemoen Airport. The moon shone behind the bright broken clouds, transforming them into smashed-up pottery. On the ground, a Royal Jordanian jetliner that had been scheduled for takeoff was still on Norwegian territory, delayed by security concerns. It had been cordoned off by the politi, who stood in formation, with their hands behind their backs, stiff and still as toy soldiers, while air marshals and intelligence officers questioned the plane’s passengers. Because of the fracas concerning the Royal Jordanian 757, the Fleming jet was directed to a far runway and we had to deplane via a portable stairway and walk across the chilly damp tarmac to a side entrance of the main terminal, with the wind whipping at the hems of our jackets and the backs of our necks.
Except for the wind, the night was nearly silent. Even the jets on the tarmac, the planes circling above, the lone takeoff: silent.
Michael Piedmont was walking in front of me, the heels of his shoes clicking away, and for a few moments I lost myself in contemplation of his bulky body. It was darkly compelling to think about all that had been consumed to fill and stretch Piedmont to such an extent, the second helpings, the third, fourth, and fifth helpings, the blueberry pie eaten with a spoon while standing up in the kitchen, the bowls of popcorn scarfed down while lounging on the sofa, the scoops of ice cream bigger than cantaloupe, the chops the size of hot-water bottles, the gravy-stained shirt fronts, the olive oil–spotted ties, the crash diets, the catastrophic bowel movements, the dire warnings from one doctor and then the next, the resolutions made, the despairing capitulation to his own ravenousness. Just as Dr. Jekyll turned himself into a monster through his own curiosity, Piedmont had made himself horrible through appetite, but for him there was no going back, now he was Hyde without the Jekyll, Hyde forever, Hyde ad infinitum.
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