Iris Has Free Time

by Iris Smyles

  “Your dessert depresses me,” I said. “You are happy,” I reminded him.

  I slipped my fortune into my wallet where it remained until my whole purse—with my fortune in it—was stolen off the back of my chair at a cafe a few years later, after Martin and I had broken up.

  VI

  “Imagine you have a heap of sand before you.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you imagining it?”

  “Yes,” I said into the phone.

  “I don’t believe you. Where is the heap?”

  “It’s on my living room table. I’m looking at it right now.”

  “Okay, good,” Martin said. “Now, imagine yourself removing one grain of sand at a time.”

  “Wait, I accidentally got two. It’s hard to separate them.”

  “That’s okay. Just keep going.” He paused. “Now, is it still a heap when only one grain is left?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “If not, then when did it go from being a heap to a non-heap?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Exactly. That’s the heap paradox. Sorites paradox is its official name, but—”

  “I’m sorry, what? I couldn’t hear you.”

  “I said, ‘Sorites paradox is its official name.’ I can’t talk any louder because I’m at work—I’m a paralegal. The conference room was empty, so I figured I’d try you. . . . I should get back though. But, um, I was wondering if you’d want to get a drink later?”

  VII

  We promised to remain friends, but after a few tearful attempts decided it would be best not to see each other for a while. We continued to call each other on birthdays and major holidays, and now and then we exchanged emails: One regarding the launch of my new literary magazine. Another announcing the death of his parents’ dog. I sent my condolences. He sent his congratulations. And then . . . a heap.

  Last week, we met for dinner at a restaurant in the West Village.

  He looked assured, handsome . . . grown-up.

  “You mean old,” he said with a laugh.

  I picked up my menu and hid behind it.

  “You haven’t changed,” he added, referring to my hiding.

  Whenever we spent any time apart, even if it were only a weekend, I’d react this way. With two days worth of facial hair, he’d greet me in the doorway. He’d come very close, reach his arms around me, and I’d squirm away, flitting off into the kitchen or the bathroom or anyplace where I could watch him at a distance until I got used to him again. “You’re like a cat,” he’d say, when eventually I’d come closer, sitting across from him first, then brushing up along his side, until finally winding up in his lap.

  “You’ve changed,” I’d say suspiciously, touching his beard. “I have to get to know you again.” It became our routine. Martin would laugh. And I would laugh with him, knowing how silly I sounded. But hadn’t he changed? Wasn’t his beard proof? Time had passed, and when he’d bring his face close to mine, I’d feel all the intervening hours between us.

  I put the menu down after only a few seconds. Whereas a weekend apart had once left me feeling distant, years apart had left me feeling paradoxically close. We talked about movies, the weather, our current lives, and then about the past, as if it had nothing to do with us anymore, as if we were tourists.

  Martin had gotten a job at a new firm. A lawyer at last. Why, just yesterday he’d used some of the philosophy from his college thesis in one of his closing arguments. I mentioned my writing. He said he enjoyed the piece I’d recently published in the New York Press—“An Open Letter to My Date of Last Friday.”

  I reddened, worried what he’d think of me now, writing trashy dating stories for a free newspaper. “It’s basically fiction,” I said defensively. “I actually wrote the piece a few years ago. I’ve been trying to submit my writing more, trying to work on my follow-through, ‘go the distance’ and all that. Been watching a lot of Rocky . . .” I trailed off.

  “It was good. I told everyone I know to pick up a copy.”

  I cringed. “Really?”

  “I told everyone it was fiction, of course.”

  “Of course.” I looked down. “So I got an email last week from this editor who’s starting a web-magazine. He read my piece and wants me to write their sex column.”

  “You’re going to write a sex column?”

  “Well, no,” I backtracked. “It wouldn’t be a sex column, exactly. More of a ‘single girl’s column.’ I’d write about my life, about dating and work, what I’m thinking about. . . .”

  Martin chewed. “What are you going to call it?”

  “I’m trying to decide between ‘Rue the Day’ and ‘Second Base.’ I like ‘Second Base’ for the obvious Homeric echoes, the island of Calypso being second base and all that—did I tell you my theory about baseball being based on The Odyssey? Think about it: You leave home. You try to return home. There are a series of islands—bases—along the way, and outside forces try to strike you out or help you along, just like the gods.”

  “I like ‘Rue the Day.’ I don’t know if people are going to get the reference to Homer. They might just think you mean ‘up the shirt.’”

  “Well, that too.”

  Martin poured some more water into my glass.

  “The site’s aimed at young people who don’t buy newspapers, who’ve grown up doing all their reading online. That’s what the editor said. Everyone writing for it is, like, just out of college; I think he thinks I’m younger than I am.”

  “Perhaps you are younger than you are.”

  “I have the résumé of a much younger woman, that’s true.”

  Martin put his glass down. “So, what’s the first piece going to be about?”

  “I’m not sure yet. I have all all these things I started writing in my early twenties. So I’m thinking to start by just finishing those. Rewrite each as if it were all happening right now. This way I don’t have to actually go on any dates. I can just stay home in my bathrobe, transcribing old sex stories, like a, like a sex-monk. You know?”

  “Sex. Monk.”

  “It’s a real job, Martin. He’s going to pay me.”

  Martin raised his glass. “You’re a writer!”

  “Hardly.” I blushed. “But it’s a start.”

  Then Martin brought up the night on the ferry.

  I stiffened.

  With glee he recalled the widow and her disapproving look, how the other passengers collected their luggage and hurried away from us, the color of the shipmate’s face as we disembarked and he made his threat, banning us from the ferry forever. “My god!” Martin laughed. “There are actually parts of Greece from which I am forbidden!”

  After dinner we walked awhile, laughing about all the things we once fought over. It was the beginning of spring. The sidewalks were crowded with young people. The air was mild and filled with the promise of summer. And then, as we rounded Bleecker Street, I pointed.

  “Right there. Remember?”

  It was only a month after we met. A Saturday before it all became Tuesday. The sun was shining and I’d come downtown to the Village, having agreed to help him search for a new chessboard and bong—his twin passions at that time, chess and pot. Because all our previous dates had been at night, I’d always worn heels. Walking beside him in flats then, I mentioned feeling short.

  Without warning, Martin took hold of my waist and hoisted me up onto his shoulders. With our considerable heights combined, his six-foot-two and my five-foot-nine, the sight must have been horrific. It was the kind of thing that would have thoroughly irritated the both of us had we seen anyone else carrying on like that—Martin had once described his ideal protocol for sidewalk traffic: “The left lane is for passing and the right for standing or strolling, though strolling is thoroughly discouraged”—and yet, we walked like that for two full blocks, laughing carelessly, an exception to our own rule. I hadn’t thought of it in years, had forgotten all about it until then, until, with uncanny clarity, th
e whole image—complete—like a postcard, rushed back. And I saw us vividly, the way others must have seen us: Bounding down Bleecker, the blue sky behind us, a monstrous totem of youth.

  CHAPTER 7

  “IRIS’S MOVIE CORNER”

  This week Iris reviews The X-Files: I Want to Believe, starring David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. Directed by Chris Carter, and written by Chris Carter and Frank Spotnitz.

  “I’m working on lying less.”

  “You lie often?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, no more than anyone else.”

  “I don’t lie,” I lied, being sure to make eye contact.

  “What I meant was, I am working on being more honest with myself.” He looked at the menu.

  We’d just seen The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which I didn’t think was very good, so in the spirit of honesty, I told him.

  “I liked the movie,” Glen answered. “But I was expecting there to be aliens.”

  “Exactly! The X-Files is always about aliens! Why did they make the sequel about stem cell research controversy instead?”

  Glen ignored my question and tucked into the menu as if he were reading a very good book. We’d already ordered. I tightened the caps on the salt and pepper shakers. I was nervous, having decided earlier that I was going to have sex with him.

  “Truffle Oil!” Glen boomed, slamming his fist on the table. He looked up from the menu, lightning in his eyes. Glen’s an actor and sees drama everywhere. He told me so on our first date. “Iris, look around you. Everything’s a script. You and me, but ‘poor players.’ Take that choking hazard sign—” I looked over at the illustration of a man doubled over with a blue face, holding his throat. “That’s Shakespeare.”

  Glen licked his index finger and turned a page, moving his mouth mutely as he perused the side dishes.

  “I’m having a great time,” Glen said at last. He folded the menu and popped an olive into his mouth. “Aren’t you?”

  “Of course!” I said, but I wasn’t really sure. I was too excited to call it a bad time, but it wasn’t exactly a good time either. Also, since I’d already decided to sleep with him, having a bad time was out of the question. I was determined to have sex and wasn’t about to let a little thing like his personality stand in my way.

  “It’s just nerves,” he said, sensing my discomfort. “Because we’re still getting to know each other. It will get easier.”

  I nodded, not really sure that I agreed. It was more that I wanted to agree.

  After dinner, we went back to his place and he tickled me for a while on the couch. I’m not actually ticklish, but it would have been too uncomfortable to just sit still and stare at him while he pinched me all over, so I writhed and giggled as if it were a wonderful torture. Seeing what a success the tickling was, Glen kept at it, surprising me every ten minutes of our kissing with tickle attacks. It was exhausting. Wishing he would stop, I thought about telling him I’d been miraculously cured, or else actually confessing the truth, but that seemed too hard.

  One lie begets another, inevitably. And so, after another minute, when I could stand it no more, I grabbed his crazed hands and looked into his eyes. “Listen, Glen!” I said. And then I told him I was frightened because he was clearly more sexually experienced than I.

  He relaxed and asked me how many men I’d been with.

  I made my eyes wide. “I can’t tell you. It’s too embarrassing.” I turned my face away.

  “Why?” he asked gently.

  “It’s so few.”

  “That’s okay. I don’t want to be with someone who’s been around the block. You can tell me.”

  “How many women have you been with?” I asked.

  “You really want to know? It’s not a little.”

  “Of course. You’re so charming and handsome. What’s it, like, fifty?”

  “Something like that,” he said, apologetically. He lifted my chin and looked into my eyes. “I’m sorry I’ve been with so many women, Iris. But if we’re together, I promise I won’t be with anyone else.” He brushed the hair from my eyes and for a second I worried he was going to tickle me again, but instead he asked, “So how about you?”

  I thought for a moment and began blushing—the result of my planning to outright lie to him. I tried to think of the smallest number plausible for a single woman my age, a number large enough not to overburden him with too much innocence, yet small enough to suggest virtue and catalyze his wish to protect thus making for a warmer post-coital experience. “Three,” I said, twirling my hair and looking up to see if he was buying it.

  His eyes flashed like he’d just found money in an old pair of pants. “That’s okay,” he said and kissed me gently on the forehead.

  We made out for another half hour (one-third the length of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, which was, in my opinion, a little too long). Glen moved his tongue around the inside of my mouth as if he were searching for something, which naturally compelled me to try to hide it. What this something was, I didn’t know, but I was sure he mustn’t be allowed to find it.

  While we kissed, my mind wandered back to the movie. The X-Files is traditionally about aliens—how Mulder believes in them and Scully is skeptical. And then there’s the unfulfilled sexual tension between them. But I Want to Believe had no aliens and skipped right past sex to a scene in which the two of them are lying side by side in pajamas, suggesting a committed relationship from which the sex has long since gone. Could the movie actually be an allegory for a long-term relationship? A relationship in which you continue to say, “I love you,” but what you really mean is you want to love, just like Mulder “wants to believe” in aliens, though they’re completely absent from the script. A loveless relationship . . . An alien-less X-Files . . .

  Glen tongued my ear, making a sloshy noise in my head. “I love kissing you,” he breathed, before reapplying his saliva to my mouth. Did he really love it, or did he just want to love it?

  He suggested we move into the bedroom and I made my eyes fearfully wide again, as he seemed to like it the first few times.

  “If you feel like things are moving too fast we can just sleep, or if you feel uncomfortable with that, too, I can put you in a cab. Though I hope you’ll stay.”

  “It is pretty late,” I said, pretending to think it over.

  “It would be great to wake up next to you,” he said.

  “It would probably be difficult to find a cab at this hour,” I said, over the sound of car horns and running meters coming through the window.

  He sat me on his bed and removed my sport jacket, then my sweater, button by button he removed my shirt, then my undershirt, then my camisole (I like to layer). Then my skirt and slip, my stockings . . . until I was all at once naked beneath his hands—naked but for the remaining layers of bra and underwear, of course.

  Then, he took off his own shirt, revealing a hairy chest. Then he stood up and took off his pants, revealing a pair of even hairier legs. When he was finished, he kneeled down on the bed and hid a condom beneath the pillow behind me.

  He offed my bra, and we were both naked: Him, but for his boxer shorts and body hair. Me, but for my panties, which are large and sexy (I like full coverage—over the waist and down the top of the leg, with a little extra room in the seat). When a man undresses me and finds me in these, he gets the feeling that what he’s about to do has never been done as, were I accustomed to casual sex, I would never wear such hideous under-things. My underwear thus creates an atmosphere of uncommon vulnerability, zero guile, the headiness of which triggers erections of unusual fierceness!

  Overcome by my disarming sexuality, Glen stood up to examine me. Frantically, he removed his boxer shorts when suddenly, it was revealed: He was completely hairless in the area surrounding his penis. I shrieked and pulled back. “What happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your hair!” I said. “Someone stole it!”

  “It’s there, it’s just shorter than t
he rest. See?” he said, inviting me to take a closer look.

  I picked up the penis between my thumb and forefinger and moved it to the side. He was right. The hair lay flat, hugging his pelvis like a crop circle. Still investigating, I asked him more questions.

  Did he shave it? I asked.

  No.

  Nair?

  No. He was not into hair removal, he said.

  Had his penis recently suffered a scare of some kind, which might have caused the hair to fall out?

  He told me that would only make it turn white, and No.

  I asked him if he’d waxed.

  Of course not, he sniffed, as if appalled by the idea.

  Electrolyzed.

  No.

  Alopecia?

  No.

  Might his penis have eaten the surrounding hair?

  He looked at me incredulously.

  I thought for another moment. “The shock of recognition!” I cried. “Perhaps you recently read a novel that was very good?”

  “I haven’t read a book in years,” he said emphatically, and I believed him.

  With his head propped up on his hand, and his penis still exposed but flaccid against his stomach, he said that he was just naturally hairless down there. “Just lucky, I guess,” were his exact words, which seemed an odd way to describe his hideous condition. His penis looked so vulnerable, like Bambi’s mother in the forest clearing, so available to the aim of gun-toting hunters. The sight of it filled me with a robust sense of melancholy.

  I concluded that such a thing could not possibly occur in nature. He was lying. I was sure of it.

  “I’m just not a very hairy person,” he insisted, running a hand through the thicket obscuring his chest.

  “Listen, Glen. It’s okay. Even I primp a little.” I took off my underwear to show him my own pubic hair, which had been gathered smartly into a side ponytail.