Al's Well
Page 4
“Somehow it’s entirely appropriate that it is Michael’s language. Like Michael, it’s whimsical, full of nuance and contradiction, rigid and anarchic, influenced by many and diverse sources – divers and diverse sources, indeed. Easy to know at a superficial level, and almost impossible to know entirely.
“Can I get you some more coffee? Sure? I think I’m going to have one. Are you on any kind of schedule or anything? I do hope not. Maybe we could grab a bite of lunch together. Good.
“Petrova likened her situation to that of a war girlfriend, who felt she had to sleep with her beau because she didn’t know if he would ever return. And there was that about Michael of the trench-bound soldier. Except that they were talking about different trenches. In his case, the trench was the affair, and in hers it was Michael’s return to England.
“I feared he was whistling in the dark.”
+++
“Monsieur?”
“Citron pressé, s’il-vous-plaît.”
“Same.”
“Deux.”
“Merci, monsieur.”
“Merci. You look lovely, honey.”
“You called me ‘honey’.”
“It’s the ‘Americanisation of Mike’.”
“I don’t think you’re Bob Hope yet. … It’s Sunday, Mike.”
“All day.”
“I thought today would never come. Are you as nervous as I am?”
“Nervouser.”
“But, hey, it is, it’s Sunday.”
“Dimanche.”
“Sure.”
“It’s Sunday, Trove, and you look swell.”
“Now you are mocking me.”
“You look lovely.”
“Yes, I do, don’t I?”
“Truly lovely.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I’m trying to, Trove.”
“You know how long this took? To make myself lovely for you?”
“Now you’re mocking me: You always look lovely. It was effortless.”
“You have any idea how much effort goes into being effortless?”
“Rescued from a train crash you’d look lovely.”
“See, what’s really neat about those rose-tinted spectacles of yours, they’re almost impossible to see.”
“We’ve got to talk, Trove.”
“Couldn’t we just have sex? Sorry. Sorry, okay? It just sort of splurged out of me. Don’t look so serious, Mike.”
“Seriously we need to talk.”
“Right. Shoot.”
“Citrons pressés. Madame.”
“Merci.”
“Monsieur.”
“Merci.”
“Je vous en prie.”
“Santé, Mike.”
“Cheers.”
“You know something, hon? This chasm has just opened beneath me. And I’m falling into it. Horror-movie-like. Arms and legs splaying about all over the place. You’re going to turn me down, aren’t you?”
“You’re a hugely desirable woman, Trove.”
“Shit. Shit! You are going to turn me down.”
“No. I’m not turning you down. Don’t think of it like that. I’m saying ‘yes’ to us as friends. I’m making a commitment to the forever of our friendship.”
“It’s not ‘Anna Karenina’ I’m proposing here. Not ‘Romeo and Juliet’, not even that what’s-her-name film, you know, the orgasm one. What is her goddamn name? It’s sex, for Christ’s sake. A … what do you Brits call it? … a shag. God, that’s an ugly word. And for such a beautiful thing. It could be beautiful, you know that, Mike? A roll in the hay, you know? Really beautiful. Just so we know what we’re missing. Or maybe not missing – who knows?”
“I don’t want a romance, Mike – Christ! Who needs another one of those? And at our age? – I don’t want an affair, not even … what do they call it here? … a divertisement. I want a fuck. A throw-me-on-the-bed, have-your-wicked-way-with-me-and-then-let’s-get-back-to-living fuck.”
“My way’s not very wicked, I’m afraid.”
“I guess I’ll never know. Peg Ryan, that’s who it was.”
“I couldn’t fuck you, Trove.”
“You really know how to bolster a girl’s ego, you ever been told that?”
“I couldn’t just fuck you.”
“No. Foreplay’s a requirement too.”
“I’d fall in love with you. Don’t you understand that?”
“Not if you knew me.”
“I do know you. And the you I know already I love.”
“They’re pretty words …”
“Not just pretty words. You make me sound so calculated.”
“Sorry.”
“Oh God, so am I, Trove. You have no idea how sorry I am. This time, though, it’s actually me paying you the compliment. You see, I couldn’t just do that, couldn’t just make love to you, have sex with you … you know … fuck you. I’ve already said it, I’d end up, I know it, falling in love with you. And what would be the consequences of that? As I say, you have no idea how sorry I am.”
“Are you?”
“So sorry. But I’ve got a feeling that that sorry would pale into insignificance against the sorry I’d be if I went ahead … if, Trove, we went ahead. I think a whole host of people would be sorry then.”
“Okay.”
“Do you know how much I want you, Trove? Do you have the smallest idea? How much I’d like just to spread-eagle you across this table and ravish you here and now?”
“Is that what they call a cover charge?”
“We’d end up hurting each other.”
“I presume we’re not talking S&M here.”
“Much more painful than that.”
“Yeah.”
“There’s Al as well ...”
“There’s always Al.”
“We can’t just ignore him.”
“That’s supposed to be my line.”
“You’d end up hating me.”
“I hate you right now, Mike.”
“Quite.”
“Quite?”
“And we haven’t even … you know … had sex.”
“Oh, that’s so English.”
“‘No Sex Please, We’re English’?”
“No, ‘quite.’ … It’s not the ‘no sex’, is what I’m saying, it’s the ‘quite’ that’s so English, the ‘quite’ you said. And not good-‘English’ either. You notice, Mike, I didn’t say British.”
“It’s the title of a play.”
“‘No Sex Please, We’re English’?”
“‘… British’, I think. A farce, to be precise.”
“Quite, as you would say. Quite.”
“Touché.”
“I can’t believe you’re saying ‘no’ to me.”
“Believe me, Trove, neither can I.”
“The wonders you do for a girl’s self-confidence.”
“I’m demented.”
“You know that?”
“Not responsible for my own actions.”
“And for your own inertia?”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re all responsible for our own actions. Are we also responsible, is what I’m asking, for own inertia?”
“Inertia is also action, Trove.”
“Oh, like not being fucked, I suppose, is also being fucked.”
“Isn’t it?”
“I suppose. I suppose, Mike, in a way, it is. I have to go.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Apparently not.”
“Schoolgirls obviously have the same humour as schoolboys.”
“Oh, much dirtier. You going to pay the check?”
“There’s always, Trove, a check to be paid.”
“Don’t preach at me, right?”
“Heaven forfend!”
“Heaven what?”
“Forfend.”
“And that’s a word?”
“You’ve heard of a forefinger? Well, a forfend is like a bottom equivalent.”
“Well, up your forfend, then, baby. Maybe with your forefinger. That’s one helluva tip, Mike.”
“That’s what all the girls say.”
“What was it we were saying about schoolboy humour?”
“Schoolboy humour is an oxymoron. That’s a contradiction in terms.”
“Yes, Mike, I do know what it means.”
“‘Military Intelligence’, for example, is a famous oxymoron.”
“I also know the meaning, Mike, of an oxyless moron.”
“As is indeed American …”
“Don’t say it.”
“What?”
“‘American culture’, you were going to say: ‘another
oxymoron.’”
“And that would have been a cheap shot, right? If I had’ve said it, I mean.”
“I’m so bored with hearing it, Mike.”
“It’s also not true.”
“It is also not true. I used to love this boulevard, know that?”
“We tend to forget, Trove, with … well, with … you know in the White House, just how many gifts America has given to the world.”
“It has, you know.”
“Steinbeck is one of the world’s great writers.”
“Of all time?”
“Certainly of all time. The two Millers: Henry and Arthur.”
“They did a burlesque act, right?”
“Eugene O’Neill. Edward Albee. Scott Fitzgerald.”
“Hopper, Mike, and Jackson Pollock.”
“Gerschwin and Bernstein and Ives and ...”
“Hemingway?”
“I was never crazy about Hemingway, to tell you the truth.”
“That doesn’t make you a bad person, Mike.”
“No?”
“An illiterate person, maybe. Not a bad one.”
“They’d be appalled, wouldn’t they?”
“By what’s happening today?”
“Wouldn’t they be appalled?”
“They’d be appalled, Mike. Christ, Mike, I’m appalled. There are still right-thinking Americans, you know.”
“As opposed to Christian right Americans?”
“Right. Know what else?”
“What?”
“I just walked right past my car.”
“Did you?”
“We did, Mike.”
“Meg, by the way.”
“Meg?”
“Meg Ryan, Trove. Who starred in ‘When Harry …’.”
“Meg?”
“Meg.”
“Not Peg?”
“Meg, Trove.”
“You sure?”
“As sure as God made them li’l green apples.”
“Meg Ryan? That doesn’t sound right to me.”
“It’s also not Willy Crystal.”
“I know that.”
“Billy not Willy.”
“Talking of Willy’s …”
“Which we weren’t.”
“Talking of a lack of willy’s …”
“Trove …”
“This is it?”
“What?”
“I get in my car, Mike? Drive away?”
“Into the sunset?”
“Run the end credits?”
“Does it have to be?”
“You’re the one said it did.”
“Trove, I said I couldn’t just … you know … fuck you.”
“That’s the last line in ‘Casablanca’.”
“Scarcely.”
“Think about it, Mike.”
“I said I couldn’t just fuck you.”
“I don’t understand that.”
“Think about it.”
“Ever the gentleman.”
“Me?”
“Opening the door for me.”
“I don’t want you to go, Trove.”
“You know I have to.”
“Yes.”
“I have a meeting I have to get to.”
“Yes, you said. It’s just …”
“Just?”
“I have a feeling, Trove, if you get into the car, you’ll drive away forever.”
“Maybe I should.”
“Oh, I’m sure you should.”
+++
We kissed. Again with the gawkiness of teenagers. We broke the kiss. Looked deep into the well of each other’s eyes. Slowly I closed my eyes. Slowly she closed hers. We kissed again.
+++
“Oh God, Trove!”
“That was all bullshit, right?”
“All of it.”
“You can’t kiss me like that, right, and not want me?”
“Oh God, I want you.”
“And you have to have me, right?”
“I have to have you, Trove.”
“I have a meeting.”
“Right.”
“Next Saturday, Al’s away. Next weekend.”
“You said.”
“You busy next weekend?”
“Even if I were ...”
“We could meet next weekend.”
“You don't need to pack?”
“Pack?”
“For Norway. You said you were going to Norway. Doing your Alex Haley bit, you said.”
“I know what I said, Mike.”
“Finding your roots.”
“I know, Mike, what I said.”
“What have I said?”
“I'd like you, is all, to be swept away or something with passion.”
“Not too good, us Brits, on the whole swept away front.”
“Do you want to meet next weekend?”
“Yes, please.”
“That's being swept away?”
“British-style.”
“Right.”
“Mike-style, that's a tango of passion.”
“A tango?”
“A tango to go! I really want to spend the weekend with you, Trove.”
“You mean that, Michael?”
“Oh God, Trove, if you but knew how much.”
“I’ll call you.”
“Please.”
“All of it bullshit?”
“Every word, Trove.”
“I can’t, see, not go to the meeting.”
“Go.”
“It was a lovely kiss.”
“Yes. Lovely. Thank you. For me too. Lovely. Like you.”
“Next Saturday?”
“Next Saturday.”
“I will call, Mike.”
“Go.”
+++
She went. I followed her car way beyond the point when it was out of sight. My brain was trampolining in a treacle of warring emotions. I was cross. That was the most obvious emotion. With myself primarily. No, furious. I should have stuck to my guns. I should have been stronger. I owed that to myself. Who but an idiot sets himself up to be hurt again? Again and again? An idiot or a masochist … An idiot and a masochist.
But there was that stirring within me, stronger than myself. Some kind of super-force, some elemental force.
– “Bullshit, Mike. Bullshit.”
– “No, not entirely.”
I started seeing her, you see, with fresh eyes. As I was having that drink with her, I suddenly realised I wasn’t drinking with the her I knew. This was another Trove. The identical twin, perhaps, of the other, but undeniably a different person. No, not even identical. Not even a twin. Someone similar, someone redolent of the Trove I had known. Someone who would sometimes remind me of the Trove I had known.
– “And with this new Trove you’re falling in love? “
– “I don’t know.”
– “But you’re preparing to? You’re getting somewhat squidgy in your feelings, a bit gooey?”
– “Just a bit.”
– “You couldn’t fuck her because you’d fall in love with her?”
– “There are, let’s put it this way, blips on the radar screen.”
– “Bullshit, Mike. Bullshit.”
– “If I did love her, I’d walk away?”
– “Does all love have to be selfless?”
– “Doesn’t that define love?”
– “Antony’s love for Cleopatra?”
– “Obsession.”
– “And love cannot be obsessive?”
– “No. The obsessive belongs only to obsession.”
– “That screws up most of the world’s love stories.”
– “The judgement of Solomon is a love story.”
– “I want her.”
– “Want isn’t love either.”
– “Lust is a part of love.”
– “Only a part of it.”
– “Aren’t I entitled to some happiness?”
– “So, the price of this ‘love’ is Trove’s unhappiness and your own hypocrisy? A pyrrhic sort of love, then?”
– “I can’t see her again, can I?”
– “Not alone.”
– “I can’t go to bed with her?”
– “Not if you love her.”
– “Isn’t it possible, some sort of middle ground? Where I love her so much I want to make love to her, but not so much I don’t recognise it’s in her best interests that I don’t?”
– “Listen to yourself.”
My mobile bleeped. I had a text: ‘Pls, sir, I want sum mor! xxXxx T.’
I rummaged in my mind for gags involving twist – in the tail, perhaps. But the only ones that occurred to me were bad or tasteless or both. Less is more, I remembered. I texted her back: ‘Me 2. Mxx.’
Oh God, I wanted some more. So much more I wanted. I wanted it all, in fact. I wanted her all.
Chapter 4
My darling Trove,
To say that I feel self-conscious doing this would be to describe the Grand Canyon as something of a fissure. Here goes nothing, I suppose. I feel gawky too, adolescent. Very unsure of myself. But you say I need to do this, so, as they say, here goes nothing.
I think I have been open with you, but you say I haven’t and that this exercise will help me to become so and I bow to your instinct and superior knowledge or whatever the hell it is. So here – as now I’ve already said twice before – goes …
(I also feel a bit voyeuristic. As if, almost, I’m watching a video of us having it off {which is an odd phrase, when you think about it. I mean, where did that come from: ‘Having it off’? [My English teacher once wrote in an essay of mine: ‘This is supposed to be an exercise in language, not an algebraic equation.’ I’m beginning to see what he means!].} And I feel quite turned on by that {being voyeuristic} – and hugely turned off. At one and the same time!)