Starting from Happy

by Patricia Marx

  114.

  Awful, she thought.

  115.

  Really terrible. P.U.

  116.

  When the night became too long, she imagined her funeral. Who would be in attendance might have been entrancing enough speculation for others, but not for Imogene. She wondered whose funerals, among her mourners, she would skip, should death arrive in a different order.

  117.

  The next night, while she was in bed, her speakerphone on, Imogene heard an exposition from Wally about flight distance, the term used by animal behaviorists to describe how close one can get to an animal critter before the animal takes off. So as not to seem like too much of a weirdo and in the interest of being polite, Imogene rounded down and told Wally that she guessed her FD was about twelve city blocks. Wally told Imogene that the conjoined twin model was more apt to describe him.

  “Which reminds me,” said Wally, “where would you like to spend your old age? In the country for me.”

  “Definitely the city,” said Imogene.

  “I wish you would stop going out of your way to point out how different we are,” said Wally.

  “Good night,” said Imogene.

  “Good night,” said Wally.

  118.

  Was that a fight?

  119.

  What is going on here?

  120.

  Hard to know. Dark clouds overhead? Cream curdling? Hard drive crashing?

  121.

  The next night, Imogene did not pick up the phone at the appointed hour. Wally thought he’d dialed wrong and dialed back. He started to dial again, but put the telephone down, figuring Imogene was brushing her teeth. The last thing Wally wanted to do was encourage Imogene to interrupt herself in mid-brush. He tried later. He had it in mind to tell her about his cousin who’d chipped his tooth in the process of trying to bite open the stuck toothpaste cap. He would warn Imogene not to do this. But there was still no answer. And none still later. Wally began to worry. He imagined that debris from scaffolding had fallen on top of her; that she had plunged to her death in an elevator; been crushed by falling bookshelves; poisoned by sushi meant for a diplomat; shot by a cannon during a performance of Aida; fatally attached to a superstrong magnet; attacked by a horse that resented having to drag tourists in carriages through the streets of the city when even a horse can see they could have taken the bus.

  122.

  What never occurred to Wally was that Imogene was spending the night with Ron de Jean.

  123.

  Wally perused the owner’s manual that came with his camera. Ordinarily, nothing gave Wally more pleasure than a thick instruction booklet. “It’s always the same when I turn that last page,” Wally was known to say, “I just can’t hold back the flat-out catharsis and exhilaration.” Tonight, however, all the tips in the world about installation, operation, and troubleshooting could not boost Wally’s spirits.

  124.

  Wally called Derek to report that the worst had befallen the love of his life.

  125.

  “Need your brother to issue ABT for a 507,” Wally texted Elsie, his longstanding barber, de facto therapist, and tight familial link to the New York Police Department. Wally meant an APB (all-points bulletin) for a 10-57 (missing person). What he’d written had something to do with the American Ballet Theater and a public nuisance.

  “HA HA,” Elsie texted back. “CM IN IMMED 4 EMERGCY SHAMPOO.”

  126.

  Wally was so overwrought that he decided to calm himself down by making a list of batteries: polymer battery (of course), biobattery, nuclear microbattery, optoelectric nuclear battery, organic radical battery, Baghdad battery, nanobattery, paper battery, supercharged ion, nickel cadmium, 9-volt, dry cell, button battery, AAAA, lithium, lantern battery, AAA, C, D, AA, lemon battery.

  There are many other types of batteries, but this was as far as Wally got before his sleeping pill kicked in.

  127.

  The next night, Wally distracted himself by going with Beenish Asif to the opening of the Pakistani Film Festival. A tweet by one of her classmates about a little-known Indian massacre of thirty-five Pakistanis in an upscale Lahore suburb had been made into a movie.

  128.

  A comedy. (Not a bad one.)

  129.

  After the film, there was a party with plenty of Pakistani bigwigs but no booze. After the party, Beenish and Wally went to Beenish’s, where there was Courvoisier V.S.O.P. While Beenish was in the bathroom, Wally made a beeline to the kitchen to make a quick call to you-know-who.

  He let the phone ring six times and would have let it ring until infinity if Beenish had not shown up in the kitchen, mascara-tinged tears running down her cheeks. Beenish was crying, she said, because her signature perfume (Gun-smoke) was being discontinued, because she was allergic to her favorite nut (macadamia), because, as she’d heard on the radio, the senator from Vermont was still filibustering and he sounded tired, because there was a full moon out, because she was not alone tonight (tears of joy), and because Beenish was a world-class crier.

  Wally followed Beenish into the bedroom because Imo-gene sure wasn’t waiting for him.

  (A 65 percent chance of a mix of clouds and sun was in the forecast. What the other 35 percent might be up to, nobody said.)

  130.

  This time Imogene really was brushing her teeth. Then she stayed up late, occupied with a million things. She looked through catalogs, scrubbed the wall moldings and inspected the cornices, drank two espressos, turned the television on while she paid her utility bill and then off while she treated herself to a normalizing facial mask, and telephoned Harriet to discuss the ins and outs of inventory. Imogene surmised that Wally had dozed off before the appointed hour.

  131.

  Where was Imogene the night before chaplette 129?

  132.

  She was, as has been noted, with Ron de Jean. Ron de Jean’s wife had e-mailed Ron de Jean to say, “Do not come to collect me at the airport, I will not be on Flight 343 on account of a development at the Hood conference having to do with the Woodsman.”

  133.

  Ron was not sure whether she meant this as a single or double entendre.

  134.

  Ron de Jean had little time to be perplexed. His lab assistant had informed him that one of the subjects in the sleep experiment was still sleeping. Every now and again, big anxiety gets in the way of little anxiety.

  135.

  Or is it the other way around?

  136.

  “As in sleeping or as in sleeping?” Ron said with suppressed terror in his voice.

  “The good news is that the molecule is indeed soporific,” said the assistant.

  Oh, well, Science!

  137.

  Ron called Imogene from the hospital. “If there’s anything I can do—” she said, meaning, of course, please don’t ask me to do anything. Wasn’t just offering enough? Not according to Ron, alas. He did not want to be alone that night, he said.

  138.

  Imogene did.

  139.

  Ron won.

  140.

  The subject woke up, if you could call it that.

  141.

  But enough about the subject. Let’s go back to the lab, shall we?

  142.

  No. The other lab.

  143.

  The vestibulospinal reflex lab. It was there that Wally and Gwen used to work side by side, rolling, pitching, and yawing cats around until the felines were unable to keep up appearances. More recently, it was there near the elevator that Wally bumped into his former partner.

  144.

  He was getting in, Gwen was getting out.

  145.

  The large, flimsy-looking carton in Wally’s arms concealed his face from her, but Gwen recognized the sneakers (black leather, blue suede), which she had purchased ($124.38) the day before Wally left her (four months, eleven days ago).

  146.

  Gwen ste
pped back into the elevator. “What a surprise to see you,” she said, even though she sort of couldn’t see him. “Maybe we should have a cup of coffee and, you know, talk.” Gwen pressed the button for the ground floor.

  147.

  “Don’t tell me you’re pregnant again,” thought Wally. Anyway, hadn’t Gwen walked out on him a long time ago (at least seven months)? Wally had all the womenfolk he could handle right now (one to four, depending on how he counted). “I’ve already had too many cups of coffee,” he said. (Three and a half.)

  148.

  The elevator came to a stop and the carton broke, its contents spilling all over. “Why are you taking your stapler home?” asked Gwen, surprised again.

  149.

  Wally thought, “She doesn’t want my stapler, does she?”

  150.

  Over a cup of tea, Wally told Gwen that he had just resigned from the lab.

  “Because of me?” she said.

  “No,” he said, and for a moment, he forgot who she was.

  151.

  Gwen was curious if the waitress was one of the things Wally wanted to pursue.

  152.

  “Tell me the truth,” Gwen said. “Did you leave because I went down to Insect Neuro?”

  “I left because I developed an unscientific attachment to cats,” said Wally.

  “So what will you kill now?” said Gwen.

  “I’ll guess I’ll come up with something,” Wally said.

  Gwen nibbled her rice snack in silence. She licked her finger, and with it gathered the last of the crumbs. “I think I should have joint custody of the car,” she said.

  (Gwen was not pregnant, but she was back with Leonard from the lab.)

  153.

  Some would say that among their rendezvous thus far, Wally and Imogene’s stroll through the park was the most auspicious. It was the first summery day of spring so the lawns were scattered with stripped-down sunbathers whose winter flesh Patty chooses not to describe.

  “Are you seeing anyone else?” Wally asked Imogene, taking her hand under the pretense he was helping her over a stick. “Because I don’t want to fall for you if you are with somebody else.” Wally did not tell Imogene that it was too late, that he had already fallen. Instead, he told her that he did not feel he could take another big step with her right now because he was too worried about being made heavy-hearted. If things didn’t work out, that is.

  “I understand,” said Imogene, but of course, she did not understand. She said it was okay with her if they stopped now. And she meant it. Then nothing happened, except Wally almost got walloped by a bicyclist.

  154.

  When nothing happens:

  a) You still have to pay.

  b) Count your lucky stars.

  c) Replace the battery.

  d) Something is happening, but very, very slowly.

  155.

  The severity of the phenomenon in the region may be attributed to the collision of two barometric pressures over a body of water. Heat index high. Wind chill factor low.

  The above took place atop Imogene’s extra-firm mattress. Meteorologists were baffled.

  156.

  Imogene was not in the habit of talking about her private life or even about her semiprivate life. But as long as Imo-gene had her mouth open, she figured she might as well use it. She told the dental hygienist quite a bit about the happenings of the night before. During the scaling, polishing, opening wider, and turn a little to me, please, Imogene yackety-yakked.

  Then, after the final rinse, the hygienist spoke up.

  157.

  “What?” the hygienist said.

  158.

  “What did you say?”

  159.

  “Were you saying something?”

  160.

  “I thought I heard you say something.”

  161.

  Wally was getting a haircut. Wally’s hair, however, was not the point. “She’s the girl,” he said to Elsie as Elsie snipped. “She’s the one.”

  “That’s what you always say,” said Elsie. “They shouldn’t let you use that number anymore. They should make you start at maybe seven.”

  “This time is different,” said Wally.

  “Stop squirming,” said Elsie. “This thing I’m holding is sharp.”

  “Imogene is the love of my life,” said Wally.

  “That’s what you said about what’s-her-name,” said Elsie.

  “Her?” said Wally. “I never said I was in love with—wait, what was her name?”

  162.

  Susan.

  163.

  Wally never knew. Don’t give him credit. Patty knew. She has an impeccable memory for the inconsequential.

  164.

  Let us go back. We’d better hurry up and go back!

  165.

  Once upon a time, on the outskirts of a hamlet, there dwelt a poor cobbler and his wife.

  166.

  Not that far back. Let’s say only a few hours.

  167.

  Sure enough, nothing lasts forever—not even nothing. Before long something was happening again. Wally had dropped by Imogene’s apartment, claiming he was in the neighborhood, which, by definition, he was. “I’m not doing anything,” said Imogene, who’d been darning.

  Wally stayed the night, and what a night it was. This, however, is not one of those books in which the author delineates every disgusting detail. What a pity. If it were one of those books, Patty wouldn’t be living in an apartment worse than Imogene’s.

  168.

  Blinking aside, Wally did not close his eyes that night. His full regard focused on Imogene, who seemed to be in sound repose. And yet, the next day, it was Wally who felt refreshed and vigorous and Imogene who was beat. How would Ron de Jean, sleep expert extraordinaire, explain this?

  169.

  This is not a rhetorical question.

  170.

  Nonetheless, Patty will not answer it.

  171.

  The girl who sidled up to Wally the next morning on the subway worked as a wardrobe consultant on photo shoots, specializing in wind, both natural and machine generated, but apparently she knew how to look adorable in the doldrums as well. Wally, however, was too moony-eyed over Imogene to notice. Wally told the girl all about Imogene. Which seemed to make the girl more interested.

  172.

  Wally got off at the next stop and never looked back.

  173.

  Life is unfair.

  174.

  Here’s who else Wally told about Imogene: the woman at the curb waiting for a green light, the newspaper stand fellow, the counter clerk at the dry cleaner, the delivery boy, the guy who telephoned Wally but meant to telephone Wee Lae Fong (one digit away) to order pork dumplings, Derek.

  A dog in an elevator.

  Wally did not tell the lady squashed next to him on the bus who was reading her Bible as if she were cramming for the afterlife.

  175.

  “Whatever you do,” Imogene said to Wally moments before Erna Gilfeather opened the front door to her raised ranch-style house, “don’t tell my mother you’ve seen me naked.”

  “What if she tortures me?” said Wally, playfully elbowing Imogene in the ribs.

  Imogene stood up straight and brushed a strand of hair off her forehead. “And please don’t tell her I lost her garnet earrings,” she said. Wally mimed sealing his lips.

  “Also, not a word about my forgetting to vote,” said Imogene, “or about the jeans she keeps begging me to throw out or that I reuse ziplock bags, keep textile dye in the refrigerator, have consumed alcohol, had a mole biopsied, take the subway at night, never wrote a thank-you note to Aunt Anne, watered her silk plants for a week, or committed copyright violations.”