The War Council

by Ann Shepphird

  Naturally, I was bored within a month. Was that all there was to life? Soul-sucking jobs or academia? What a choice. The problem was that nothing in the “real world” interested me. My field was organizational communications, and I had spent a lot of time studying how businesses functioned and the group dynamics of business communications, so theoretically I could work in the corporate world, but all that research had just shown me that the business world was ten times more tedious than academia. So, I was stuck.

  Not that the café-bookstore was that bad. Some interesting types used to come in. It’s funny how regulars develop in a place like that. And, yes, it was not lost on me that it was my year off, and I was analyzing the clientele of a small business. Old habits, am I right? I actually ended up doing a lot of research for my dissertation there. Mostly, though, I just people watched.

  And then, one day, HE came in. And then he became a regular. Yes, Bill. Wow. Even now when I think about him and that first moment, I get a chill that runs throughout my body. I had just about given up on men when he can into my life. At that time, it seemed the choice was between frat boys with over-active hormones or stuffy intellectuals spouting Roland Barthes. Bill was neither. He was just… Bill.

  I noticed him the first time he came in. He would come in every day around 9 a.m. to read the New York Times—yes, he still read the newsPAPER—and drink an espresso. Like, he didn’t even drink fluffy cappuccinos or caffe lattes—no, he had the real thing. Espresso. And he would wear these old gray t-shirts like he’d just been running or whatever it was he did in the mornings. He’d come in, buy the New York Times from me, then meander into the café for the espresso.

  It was his face that I noticed first. He had this beautiful black hair and brown eyes with long black lashes that completely encircled his eyes. It was a beautiful face that didn’t quite fit the intense way he carried himself. Except it did. The totality of Bill was almost too much for me to handle.

  I still remember the first time he spoke to me.

  “New York Times, please.”

  I almost fell off my stool. I stared into his deep brown eyes and felt myself swooning. Stop it, I thought. What a dopehead.

  “Dollar fifty.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  Needless to say, our conversations grew. I kept trying to find ways to facilitate communications. I would vary the music I played in the bookstore to see what he liked or sit reading different magazines and books to see what might catch his interest. I spent hours in the morning deciding what I would wear before going to work. And, I’m embarrassed to admit, the tops may have gotten more snug.

  Our first conversation came about because of one of my music selections: B.B. King. Finally. I had been through classical, pop, rock, show tunes, reggae, and soul before I made it to the blues. The blues did it. B.B. did it. I will always thank B.B. King for bringing me and Bill together.

  There was something different when he walked in that day. He smiled at me, and his eyes lit up. As usual, I swooned (despite my best efforts).

  “You’ve got B.B. on today,” he said.

  “Yeah. You like it?”

  “I love the blues.”

  “Yeah? So do I.” It wasn’t a lie. I did love the blues. I just didn’t think he would love the blues. I mean, based on my informal research in the bookstore, the taste of the typical Berkeley-based New York Times print reader tended to run more toward classical or jazz or, well, punk.

  “Did you know his old band is still playing and is coming to the Bay Area?”

  “They are?” Okay, I did know and had been planning to get tickets but hadn’t gotten around to it. The more time I laid off from school, the less I tended to get done.

  “I was planning to go with some friends. Would you like to join us?”

  Would I? Would I? Pow. I could barely contain myself.

  “Sure. That sounds like fun.” Was I cool or what?

  “Okay, well, I’ll let you know.”

  “Okay.”

  I walked on a cloud the rest of the day. The MAN had asked me out, and while it was not necessarily a date, it was close.

  We saw the B.B. King Blues Band at Kimbel’s East, one of those great old clubs. Dark, raucous. It was fabulous. The band was fabulous. Bill’s friends were fabulous. Bill, naturally, was fabulous. It was one fabulous evening. We went in a group—six of us—two other men and two other women. I kept trying to figure out if he was dating any of the women—or, heck, any of the men—but he didn’t seem to be gravitating toward any one of them. All of them were from Bill’s journalism program and had moved to the Bay Area specifically for the graduate program, so seemed to have clustered together out of necessity.

  We sat to watch the show. Bill sat next to me. Every once in a while, his thigh would rub up against mine (it was a small place), and the vibrations that went through my body were just incredible. It had been a while since I’d had sex, and I must admit that I was craving it like nobody’s business. The blues didn’t help. I personally find the blues to be incredibly sensual, and sitting there in the dark with Bill drinking beers and listening to B.B. King’s band made me quite toasty.

  Then Bill’s hand just happened to drop onto my thigh. Oh my god. I would have started hyperventilating if I hadn’t swigged my beer and gestured for another. I looked over at Bill. He looked over at me, his deep brown eyes gazing into mine in a way that made me feel he could see into my soul, and I let my hand happen to drop lightly onto his.

  The band was playing “Drowning in the Sea of Love,” and, man oh man, I was. It was so sensual. Bill’s hand began moving in time with the music, and I felt like I might explode at any moment. And then, and then, he kissed me.

  We were in the back of the club. In a very dark corner in the back. We were behind his friends, who faced the stage, so no one could see us. Bill leaned over and pressed his lips against mine and wow. Just wow. I wanted him so desperately at that point I didn’t know what to do. Or how I could wait. But I did. I just pressed my lips back against his, and the connection was so powerful. Like electricity. It really was a kiss to end all kisses.

  “I can’t get enough of your love…” Sing it, B.B. King band, I thought. And they were. And I was kissing Bill. And he was kissing me. I swear we sat there for hours enjoying the electricity surge our lips were producing, but I know it probably wasn’t that long. The set ended. Everyone was clapping. The lights came up. Bill and I pulled apart. He stared into my eyes again with a look that seemed as surprised as I was at the chemical reaction we were producing. His friends turned, and we turned and smiled in an attempt to look oh so chaste and pure. I’m not sure how successful it was.

  “Nice set, huh?”

  “Yeah. Even without B.B., they put on a great show.”

  Later that night Mark, who drove, dropped us off at our cars, which were near the Berkeley campus. The others dispersed, and Bill and I stood next to our cars.

  “So,” Bill said, “would you like to, uh, go out some time? Maybe to a movie?”

  “Sure. When?”

  “How about tonight?”

  “It’s one o’clock in the morning.

  “Well, I have Netflix.”

  “Oh. Netflix.” Naturally, I knew what he was asking and, my body still burning from the club, I decided to go along with it. “Sounds like fun.”

  “Good.” Bill beamed. “Why don’t you follow me?”

  “Great.” I crawled into my car and hit my head against the dashboard a couple times to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. Nope. No dream.

  Needless to say, we never got around to watching anything on Netflix. The next day I was at work when he walked up to buy his New York Times.

  “Well, hello.”

  Ah. That voice. I could feel myself turning eight shades of scarlet. I turned and there were those eyes again.
/>
  “Hi.”

  “How are you?”

  “I’m good,” I said. “You?”

  “I’m fabulous.”

  “Fabulous?” He felt fabulous?

  “Yeah. Musta been the band.”

  “You think it was the band?”

  “No, not really.” And then he smiled. A wicked “baby, it was good” kind of smile. Oh God. Please strike me down at this very moment, and I will die happy, I promise.

  “No?” I asked.

  “No.”

  “Well, then, what do you think it was that made you feel so fabulous?”

  “I’m not sure, but if you’re game, we can try again tonight to figure it out.”

  “Kind of like an experiment?”

  “Yeah. An in-depth experiment.”

  “In-depth, huh?” I was giving him my best wicked “baby it was good” kind of smile.

  “Yeah.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “I mean… sounds fabulous.”

  “Great. See you tonight.”

  He sauntered off with his New York Times, and I was left with the most wicked grin that ever existed plastered across my face. Life was good.

  That was over five years ago, and the memory still conjured up the same feelings. Oh Bill. No. No Bill. It was Nick what’s-his-name. I suddenly realized I had the “baby, it was good” smile plastered on my face while I was walking with Nick what’s-his-name across the campus toward Sproul Hall. And he was talking. What was he saying?

  “… at the revival house and I thought maybe, if you weren’t doing anything, you might want to go and see it.”

  “What?” What the fuck was he talking about?

  “Sabrina.”

  “Sabrina?”

  “The movie. The original. Audrey Hepburn. William Holden. Humphrey Bogart.”

  “Oh. ‘Sabrina.’ What about it?”

  “It’s playing at the Telegraph Friday night. Would you like to see it?”

  “With you?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “A date?”

  “Yeah. I guess you could call it that.”

  “Huh. Well. Sure. I guess that would be okay.”

  Nick got this gleeful grin. “Great. I’ll give you a call.”

  I smiled. Actually, I felt pretty good. “Okay.”

  Nick started off in the opposite direction, leaving me standing next to Sproul Hall. Funny. I was going to say no. I mean, with the War Council and all, I was going to be very busy. But just then, when he asked, I noticed that his blue eyes were really quite blue. Quite lovely, actually. And they were framed by these beautiful lashes. He was actually good looking. Quite good looking. That discovery, coupled with the sexual excitement the memory of meeting Bill had conjured up in me, had me thinking “why the hell not?”

  “Sabrina,” huh?

  Chapter Seven

  KATHY

  Maggie never knew what hit her. She was preoccupied with the War Council, I’ll give her that. Still, she fell for the oldest trick in the book. The ole “I happened to be walking by” ploy. Naturally, it was planned. I knew that Maggie would place the ad in the Daily Cal after her two o’clock class, so Nick was strategically placed right outside in the quad. We had to catch her in a position where she wouldn’t have too much time to think. I knew Maggie. If we allowed her to think about whether or not she should go out with Nick, she would find eight million reasons why she shouldn’t or couldn’t go—be it the War Council, her classes, or Bill. Bill. Damn Bill. I must admit that much of my interest in this project lay in helping Maggie get over Bill.

  I was also still interested in proving the War Council wouldn’t work. In all my years as a counselor, I had never seen evidence that people should coerce other people into commitment. If the feeling isn’t mutual, it just isn’t right. I had heard enough horror stories to know.

  I was working in the Student Psychological Services department at Berkeley. SPS is a staff of psychiatrists, psychologists, and doctoral candidates who counsel Berkeley students. Apart from the usual stress-related problems of university life, unresolved childhood traumas, and residual assertiveness deficiencies, I spent a lot of time listening to relationship woes. The university environment creates a dating pool that has yet to be rivaled so, naturally, I ended up counseling a lot of students who were particularly unhappy with their relationships. Let’s face it: Happy people don’t tend to choose psychological services as a place to spend an hour.

  The unhappiness among the 20-somethings I saw tended to manifest itself in two basic areas: the person who feels pressured (needs space) and the person who feels insecure (needs love). This is your basic unbalanced love relationship. The person who feels pressured needs space. They do not feel as ardently (or, at times more accurately, possessively) as the insecure person. The insecure person senses this and, seeking validation of love, tries to coerce the pressured person into expressing their feelings more ardently. The pressured person, then, feels more pressure.

  In essence, the insecure person desperately needs to hear and feel things the pressured person cannot give, thus forcing the pressured person into a situation where they might lash out or ask for more space or close up. None of these reactions will reassure the insecure person, so they push harder, and ultimately it’s a destructive cycle.

  As you can probably guess, for most people trapped in this cycle, happiness lies not in the relationship but in themselves. The insecure individual needs to learn to believe in themselves apart from the relationship. And the pressured individual needs to learn to not feel guilty for expressing their own needs and desires. Once these people learn to find the answers within themselves, they are able to move on to find and enjoy healthier relationships.

  This is why I hated Maggie’s War Council concept so much. It seemed to me that the War Council would only bring more pressure into relationships that were already uneven and pressure filled. What would the War Council do? Coerce one partner into not feeling insecure and another into not feeling pressured? Impossible. To say that love can come through coercion is crazy. Love can grow through time and space and individual growth, but a War Council cannot create these things. Obviously, Maggie felt differently, which is why I sent Nick to track her down in the quad outside the Daily Californian offices.

  The anti-War Council War Council conspiracy did not stop at Nick and Maggie’s rendezvous at the quad. Shoot, by then we had already planned what they would do on their first date—down to the fact that they would go to see Sabrina. I had asked Randy and Hallie to be involved in our little project, and it was Randy who suggested Sabrina (for reasons that will be explained later).

  We had met at my house the evening after the first official War Council meeting on campus. Naturally, I made a little dinner for everyone. Just some sliced heirloom tomatoes in a vinaigrette, marinated butterflied leg of lamb, and scalloped potatoes. Rather civilized for a conspiracy, I suppose, but I didn’t see why we couldn’t add a little class to the operation.

  Brian would never admit it, but I think he was a little put out that Maggie hadn’t included him in the War Council. I understood her motives. His research was, admittedly, a little “rat oriented,” and we’d been married for so long that he wasn’t well versed in dating etiquette. But he was Nick’s friend—and my husband—so I included him in our little plot.

  Nick, Hallie, Randy, Brian, and I sat around the table conversing and enjoying the dinner. The lamb, by the way, was delicious. I’d had them marinate it at this little store on Union Street. They do such a nice job. After dinner, we would break into our mini-troops to design a strategy for Maggie and Nick. At the moment, though, it felt like any other dinner party.

  I looked over at Nick. He was chatting away about surfing the beaches of Brazil. I really did like him. He seemed like such a good fellow and had a real spirit of adventure. I wasn’t sure
why he wanted to use this War Council idea to get to know Maggie but, for his sake, for Maggie’s sake… and mine, I hoped it worked. That might sound strange after having just heard my reasons for wanting to disprove the War Council concept, but I just wanted to show Maggie that love (with someone other than Bill) was possible while hopefully also proving that coercion was not the way to deal with relationships. In order to show Maggie that coercion was wrong, we had to show her what it felt like. Right? I sure hoped so. In the meantime, maybe she would fall in love with Nick.

  Maybe I was rationalizing, but I thought we might all come out winners. Nick would get Maggie. Maggie would get Nick. And I would never have to hear about Bill or the War Council again. I sure hoped what I was doing was right as I ran the risk of proving my point while losing my best friend.

  After dinner, we split into two groups. The guys interviewed Nick to get an idea of his background and things we could use strategically. Hallie and I worked on an overall game plan. Hallie was the strategist while I provided the details from Maggie’s life. On Hallie’s suggestion, I had made up two charts. One traced the progression of Bill and Maggie’s relationship—from their meeting at the bookstore through the breakup. The other showed Maggie’s interests, Bill’s interests, and Nick’s interests.

  Hallie and I analyzed the charts and decided that we should have Nick’s interests and the progression of the relationship differ significantly from Bill’s. This way we would eliminate the comparison factor. The men Maggie dated after Bill tended to fail because she continually compared them to Bill. The guys, being polite, would ask her what she wanted to do. She would pick something she’d done with Bill. Then she’d feel miserable because she wasn’t with Bill and dump the poor guy before he had a chance. Our thinking was: If we take away everything that might remind Maggie of Bill, wouldn’t that, in essence, remove the tendency to compare?

  The answer—at least in our minds—was yes. So, the first date was designed around two facts. One: Bill was not that into movies. They rarely went out to the movies and never to old movies. So, Sabrina would be a surprise—a pleasant surprise, we hoped. Randy had pointed out that Sabrina (the original 1954 version) was not only playing soon at the Telegraph but was about a young woman (Audrey Hepburn) who thinks she is in love with William Holden but ends up discovering she really loves his brother Humphrey Bogart. A lot of hidden meaning there, don’t you agree? Also, the movie is filled with this wonderful old Edith Piaf song “La Vie en Rose,” which is not only incredibly romantic but might remind Maggie of the fact that Nick and Randy sang the song the first night she met him at our dinner party. We needed to build some shared moments.