by Daniel Quinn
“Okay. Your original direction—the direction you took at the beginning of this series of dreams—was toward the right, toward an active, physical involvement. That direction now seems to you mortally hazardous. The menacing follower—your looming guilt—lurks there. So turning back, you go to your left—toward the spiritual and intellectual. You seek an upper room, a lofty place that looks upward into the heavens. This”—she tapped his forehead—is the dome, of course. In other words, you think you can escape your dread of involvement if you keep things on a high intellectual and spiritual plane.”
Greg shook his head, unconvinced. “I don’t think so. What you’re saying makes beautiful sense, but I don’t feel any ‘dread of involvement.’ I really don’t.”
“Don’t you? I thought that’s what your problem with Karen is. You want to be pals and she want to be married.”
“True. But that’s Karen.”
She cocked a skeptical eyebrow at him. “Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the distinct impression that all your relationships with women have been on a pretty light-hearted level. Till now.”
“Yes, I suppose you could say that.”
“But you’re absolutely sure you feel no dread of involve-ment.”
He laughed and shook his head in defeat. “Okay, point made. You must have read a book or something. Have you ever considered the proposition that a woman’s place is in the cellar?”
And that took them off on another track.
VI
SUNDAY WAS THE ONE DAY of the week Greg never failed to take note of. It was unmistakable, because the Outer Drive, normally surging with energy and life, was as hushed and deserted as a country churchyard—for him a depressing sight. It was a day on which he was particularly vulnerable to depression, thanks to his parents, who had consecrated it a perpetual day of mourning for Greg’s older brother, who had gone off to boot camp when Greg was ten and had committed suicide a month later for reasons unknown or undisclosed. From that moment, he had been enshrined as a household god beside whom Greg could never be more than a disappointment. He had been all the things Greg wasn’t: a golden boy, cheerful, helpful, eager to please, extroverted, athletic. Greg remembered him only dimly (and guiltily) as an energetic youngster who was good-natured but not terribly bright.
Any other day of the week Greg might take off and do nothing; Sundays he invariably filled with work in order to stifle the nagging voices of the past.
Around noon Mitzi, the divorcée manqué from upstairs, called to see if she could drop in that evening. He told her he’d welcome the company, and he was sincere; an evening with Mitzi would mean only one more to get through before he called
Ginny. She said one odd thing before hanging up. After a hesitant pause: “I had a dream about you.”
“It’s the in thing, Mitzi. Everybody’s doing it.”
“Would you believe what that bastard husband of mine is trying to do to me?” Mitzi asked when she was barely inside the door. “He’s trying to get back all the tapes he bought for me, for Christ’s sake. Have you ever heard of anything so fucking petty?”
Greg agreed he’d never heard anything so fucking petty, and she went on from there through a family-sized bag of potato chips that she’d supplied and four hefty bourbons that he supplied. It took until midnight to review the current status of her grievances and counterstrategies, and when it seemed to Greg that she’d worn herself out on the wickedness of lawyers, he asked her about the dream she’d had.
“Oh, that,” she said darting a guilty look at him. “I don’t know whether you want to hear about it or not.”
“Why not?”
“It was . . . creepy.”
“The best dreams are all creepy,” he said.
“Well . . . okay.” Mitzi closed her eyes dramatically. “We were holding a funeral—all the people in the building, the janitor, even the postman.” She made a face. “And it was your funeral. We were burying you in back, where the moving vans unload. And we were all saying what a pity it was and what a shame and you just a young man and so on and so forth.” She opened her eyes and looked at Greg. “And the weird thing was that you weren’t dead. I mean, we knew you weren’t dead.”
“What was I doing if I wasn’t dead?”
“You were asleep. You were asleep and you couldn’t wake up, and that’s why we were burying you.”
“Go on.”
“I think that’s all there was,” she said, but went on staring into space. “There was something about letters.”
“Letters?”
“That’s right. Oh, I remember now. There was a big pile of unopened letters on your coffin. That’s why the postman was there. It was a regulation that . . . The reason we were burying you . . .” Mitzi nodded. “I’d forgotten this part of the dream. This is how it began. The postman came in and said, ‘What’s all this? Why isn’t this person collecting his mail? I can’t keep delivering mail if he isn’t going to collect it.’ So we went up to your apartment and found you asleep your bed, and we waited around and tried to wake you up. And the postman said, ‘Well, that’s it, this man has to be buried, because it’s against the regulations for me to deliver mail that isn’t being collected, and if we bury him then I can go back and tell them it’s okay now, because this man is dead.’ And that’s why the postman was there: to make sure we really buried you, along with all your unopened mail.”
Greg chuckled. “Quite a dream.”
“It seemed very creepy at the time. Now it just seems ridiculous. What do you think it means?”
“A dream should not mean but be,” he said. “I don’t think it means much of anything, to tell the truth.”
“You don’t think it’s . . . an omen?”
“Good God, Mitzi. You read too many horror comic books. Applying the Agnes Tillford method to it . . .” He closed his eyes for a few moments. “I would say it means you’re afraid that I’m not always going to be around to give you a shoulder to cry on. It means you’re afraid that someday you’re going to come in here and find me asleep—which is to say insensible to your troubles.”
“Yeah. But what about all those letters?”
He thought for a moment, then smiled. “Those are from my creditors. Knowing how little money a freelance writer makes, you’re worried that my creditors are going to do me in and you’re thinking of cutting me in on your divorce settlement.”
“Shit! Divorce settlement? When those lawyers get through with me, I’ll have to borrow bus fare to get to the poorhouse.”
And she went on from there until Greg shooed her off to her own apartment half an hour later.
VII
HAVE YOU EVER SEEN Les Enfants du Paradis?” Greg asked when he called Ginny on Tuesday.
“No. Is it like Sasha’s?”
He thought about this for a moment. “Yes, it’s a lot like Sasha’s. It’s very romantic and comes to a tragic end. But it’s not a restaurant, it’s a film. A classic film, which everyone should see at least once in his or her lifetime.”
A pause. “Then it’s too bad it’s not playing somewhere.”
“Ah,” he said, “but it is playing somewhere.”
“I see. Then it’s too bad I have no one to see it with. I hate going to movies alone.”
“This,” he pointed out gravely, “isn’t a movie. This is most definitely a film. And I’m perfectly prepared to cross off several items on my social calendar to escort you.”
“Then it would seem I’m in luck.”
“Absolutely. It’s also highly educational. You will learn to say absolutely not in an aristocratic Parisian accent.”
“Wonderful. I can astonish all my friends.”
“Exactly. And afterwards we can astonish all the waiters at L’Auberge by saying absolument pas to all of their suggestions.”
“What fun. And when were you thinking of all this happening?”
“Well, I’ve never been much for postponing gratification. Are you free this evening?”
; She was, and Greg said he’d pick her up at 6:30.
“Don’t be so old-fashioned,” Ginny replied. “Where’s it playing? I’ll meet you there.”
He named a small art cinema on the near north side and told her not to be late.
“If I’m not there by seven, I won’t be there at all,” Ginny snapped, and Greg’s mood of exhilaration sagged like a punctured balloon.
Nevertheless, she stepped out of a cab in front of the theater almost ten minutes before the hour, and his apprehensions vanished. He was delighted to learn they shared a common disdain for munching during movies and both liked to sit up front, to be engulfed by the image on the screen.
But, as they sat waiting for the film to begin, his speech centers became clogged, and he had to fight down the temptation to vocalize inanities like “Have you been here before?” and “I just love old movies.” Ginny was equally speechless, and Greg suddenly recognized the old symptoms from high school days.
They were On A Date. Staring straight ahead, he said, “Do you come here often?”
Ginny burst into laughter, and the spell was broken. They traded singles bar clichés until the lights went down and the film began.
Greg noted with relief that it was a fairly good print and for the first few minutes was more alert to Ginny’s reactions than to the film itself. When he was assured that she was enjoying it, he relaxed and allowed himself to become absorbed in what was happening on the screen: Jean-Louis Barrault, on a street-side stage in Paris, was miming the activity of a pickpocket that was working the crowd. Greg knew the film by heart and in a few minutes was looking forward to a tavern scene in which the fragile-looking mime fells one of the vile Lacenair’s bullies with a dancer’s blow. As the scene opened, however, the screen abruptly went dark and the sound failed. After waiting for it to resume for half a minute, Ginny leaned toward him and said, “Is this the good part?”
“This is the dark part.”
“Ah. A film noire.”
Greg grunted.
After ten minutes of sitting quietly in the dark, he said he’d reconnoiter to see what the prospects looked like. He found a small crowd in the lobby exchanging speculations. Apparently a fuse had blown—or something had blown. It was rumored that help was on the way from some unknown corner of the city, but the theater personnel were already handing out free passes to anyone who could produce ticket stubs. Greg produced his, collected a pass for two, and went back for Ginny. “The wires sprang a leak,” he told her, “and the electricity all ran out. No more movies tonight.”
“Or films?”
“Or films.”
She gathered up her things and they left. To Greg it seemed like a bad omen. “All the same,” he pointed out, “there’s still L’Auberge.”
“I’ve got a better idea,” Ginny said. “You took us out to dinner last week. Let’s pick up a couple of steaks and take them to my place.”
“That sounds fine,” he said and began looking around for a cab. Ginny’s taking the initiative for the evening was a good omen that offset the bad.
* * *
Ginny’s apartment was a revelation to him, and he couldn’t quite say why. The large front room was manifestly a work space, with expensive-looking drafting tables, a personal computer and printer, a light table, a waxer, tabourets overflowing with brushes, markers, and templates, racks of press type and a xerographic duplicator. While Ginny was off changing into jeans, he tried to figure out how it also managed to be an elegant living space as well. The graphics on the walls were the sort you find in Michigan Avenue galleries, and the two sofas facing each other across the ankle deep wool rug were in the Ferrari class of furniture, but it wasn’t money that had turned the trick. He consigned it to the realm of mystery by deciding it was a designer’s room, had been assembled according to principles beyond his comprehension. Beside this room, his own would seem frumpy and boring, and his prized claw-foot table would be a definite embarrassment.
Oh well, he thought, I just want to be loved for myself.
“There’s an ice bucket in the kitchen,” Ginny called to him from an adjacent room.
Greg looked around. “Where’s the kitchen?”
“In front, to the right.”
He’d taken in the extension of the room to the right, but simply as another living area, not as a kitchen. Now that his attention was focused on it, he saw all the required appliances there in plain sight. More of the designer’s magic. He found the ice bucket and was cracking ice trays into it when Ginny joined him. Leaning back against a counter and watching her as she reached down bottles and glasses, he decided she was very alluring in jeans.
“Do you have a gorilla suit?” he asked on an impulse.
She put down a bottle and turned to stare at him. “It’s at the cleaners, I think. Why?”
“Oh, I was just wondering if I’d have the same reaction to you in a gorilla suit.”
She frowned. “If you were in a gorilla suit or I was in a gorilla suit?”
“Well . . . if you’ve only got the one, we could share it.”
She shook her head, smiling. “You are crazy.”
“There are two colors,” he was saying an hour later, “red and black. Choose one.”
Ginny studied the deck of cards face down on the table in front of her.
The steaks had been good, the conversation had been lighthearted, and when Ginny returned with the coffee, Greg had drawn a deck of cards from his shirt pocket.
“What’s that?” Ginny asked.
“Card trick. As promised.” He shuffled and set the deck in front of her. “Tell me what the top card is.” Ginny reached for the deck but he stopped her. “Don’t you know this trick?”
“No,” Ginny said doubtfully. “How could I know it?”
He frowned. “I thought everyone knew this trick. You honestly don’t know what the top card is?”
She laughed and said she honestly didn’t.
Greg paused as if considering how to proceed. Finally he shrugged and said, “Well, we’ll go on anyway. There are two colors, red and black. Choose one.”
“Black,” she said after a moment.
“Uh huh. And there are two black suits: spades and clubs. Choose one.”
“Clubs.”
He looked at her suspiciously. “You do know this trick.”
“I don’t!” Ginny protested. “I swear to God!”
He shrugged, unconvinced. “Okay. There are three kinds of clubs: high, middle, and low. Choose one.”
“Low,” Ginny said.
“And the low clubs are ace, two, and three. Choose one.”
“Three.”
Greg nodded. “Turn over the top card.”
She picked it up, looked at it openmouthed, and said, “Good lord.”
“May I see it?” She showed it to him. It was the three of clubs. “Aha,” he said. “You lied. You do know this trick!”
“But I don’t!” Ginny said. Then she laughed. “How the hell did you do that?”
“I didn’t. You knew all the time it was the three of clubs.”
“You swine. Tell me how you did it.”
He gazed at her with lidded eyes. “Absolument pas. Jamais.”
“Bastard. Tell me.”
He raised his brows innocently. “But I want you to think of me as a man of mystery. How can I be strangely fascinating if I reveal all?”
She cocked her head at him. “And you seriously expect me to share my gorilla suit with you?”
“I’ll bet it’s all moth-eaten.”
“It’s not!”
Finally he relented. “It’s not really a card trick at all,” he said. “It’s a psychological trick. Obviously I already knew that the top card was the three of clubs. I just had to lead you to it through a series of apparently arbitrary choices. That’s the psychological trick: if you give someone an arbitrary choice to make between two or three things, he’ll almost invariably pick the last one you name. I said ‘red or black?’ and
you picked black. I said ‘spades or clubs?’ and you picked clubs. I said ‘high, middle, or low?’ and you picked low. You weren’t thinking about your choices—you were wondering why I kept insisting you already knew the trick.”
“True. If I’d been thinking, I would have said that ‘low’ should be ace, two, three, or four.” She cradled her chin in her hand and stared at him thoughtfully for a moment. “It’s true. Now that I know, you no longer seem strangely fascinating.”
Greg snorted. “Wait’ll you see me in a gorilla suit.”
Later, saying good night at the door, Greg felt his heart plunge into his stomach when Ginny frowned and said, “It seems a shame to send you home.”
Seeing his face drained of blood, her eyes widened in alarm. “What’s wrong?” When he didn’t answer, she covered her face with her hands and moaned, “Oh, Greg, I am so fucking stupid!” Then she took him by the hand, led him back to a sofa in the living room, and sat him down. She sat down beside him and looked at him searchingly. “Greg, you are a lovely man. I doubt if you know how lovely you are. I just got used to saying anything at all to you. Do you understand?”
Greg shook his head, not trusting his voice.
“Oh dear.” She stood up nervously. “When I said what I said . . .” She paused, searching for words. “There isn’t another man in the world I would have said that to, and you’re obviously the one man in the world I shouldn’t have said it to.” She closed her eyes. “Oh God, it just gets worse and worse.”
She knelt down beside him and took his hand in her own. “Greg, what I’m trying to say is this. When I stood there at the door, I thought ‘Wow, it really seems a shame to send this man home.’ There’s nothing wrong with that, is there?”
He shook his head.
“And if I’d kept it in my head, where it belonged, we would have kissed good night, and you would have gone home, and everything would’ve been fine. Wouldn’t it?”
Greg nodded.
“You wouldn’t have felt bad if I hadn’t said that, would you?”