“This isn’t a leveraged buyout we’re talking here,” Barney says. “Net gains and costs and that sort of jazz don’t apply. This is politics, not business. What we’ve got here is information about people who are fucking up our country. So let’s just put it out there so the public knows what’s happening. It’s a sin to sit on a story like this one.”
“But what good can come from releasing it?” Mickey asks again.
“Well, to start off, it’ll hurt the Republicans in the election,” Barney answers.
Uh-oh. Big confrontation. We’ve got the Greed King and the Bad Rad in the ring together. Mucho fireworks.
“Is there someone you’re trying to protect or something?” Barney asks, stalking Mickey around the kitchen.
“No. I know Jerry Russo, just like Shay does,” Mickey answers. “I’ve got no reason to protect him. What I’m asking is what’s the big deal if Fawn Hall does coke? Everyone does. If Shay publishes that story, twenty people around town can say they’ve seen her do coke too. There’s no big story in this because everyone does drugs.”
“Yeah, but not everyone works in the White House,” Barney argues. “Not everyone who snorts coke has access to top-secret documents.”
“Who cares? Jesus.” Teardash shakes his head wearily. “This is why the Democrats can’t win an election. You guys always get sidetracked by some miniscandal. You always go off on some cockamamy tangent that no one else cares about.”
In his exasperation, Barney turns around and looks accusingly at Shay. His old friend Shay. His former wife and once great ally.
Shay flushes and shifts her gaze away before making a waddaya-gonna-do? kind of shrug.
Translation: Big handsome billionaire who’s good in bed has funny politics. So sue me.
A little before seven someone turns on NBC and we watch Connie Chung deliver the news, which consists almost exclusively of weather-related stories.
• The first five months of 1988 were the hottest on record for the United States. One-hundred-degree temperatures dominated the country. Washington, D.C., along with twenty-two other states, reached a three-digit temperature peak several weeks ago and plateaued there.
• Corn, soybeans and spring wheat crops have already failed. Drought fears have sent prices soaring for wheat and wheat futures. Economic analysts say cake, cookie, bread and cereal prices will rise considerably this winter.
• The incidence of skin cancer is skyrocketing due to an insufficient layer of ozone to screen out ultraviolet sun rays. The camera scans sun worshipers on the beach and then shows close-ups of faces covered with fresh malignant tumors.
Commerical break. Next:
• Prisoners in various federal penitentiaries have begun rioting for air conditioners in their cells, and several wardens have capitulated to the demands.
• A spokesman for a New York City Merchants’ Association claims there are no longer any window AC units available for sale in any of the five boroughs.
• Washington, D.C., which has not had to enact any water restrictions, last week mailed to its residents a self-congratulatory letter noting how well the city has handled the drought.
I received one of these letters. It was signed “Wally Water.”
What doesn’t get in the news is the fact that D.C. has started to smell like flowers decomposing in a vase.
After the news, I go upstairs with Eli to help him pack.
What I feel is the beginning of a deep depression plus a jittery kind of neediness. This is not a recipe for seduction. This is a bad way to feel since any sort of upset turns Eli off. He can’t stand it when I’m depressed. He can’t stand it when I’m agitated.
Sitting on the edge of our bed, I watch him ferry his clothes between the bureau and his suitcase. He is systematically disorganized. He rumples his clothes the same way he rumples his face with conflicting expressions.
“I didn’t want to ask downstairs, but what happened at the police station?”
Eli hikes his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose with his middle finger. A hundred times a day Eli gives his finger to the world.
“Nothing much. I filled out a car-theft report.”
Eli is nervous. His body language has developed a stutter. I know he’s feeling guilty because he didn’t invite me to Atlanta. Before Eli lost interest in me, he often converted business trips into holidays for the two of us. But now he no longer feels any impetus to be with me in a new and different setting. All the romance inspired by his overseas assignments has evaporated. The fact he’s not trying to restore it is simply a sin of omission.
It is part of the sign language used by people falling out of love.
Tentatively Eli presses down the top of his suitcase to see if it will close. Then he walks over to the bed, pulls me up and envelops me in a big bear hug.
“I hate like hell leaving you home alone with all this mess,” he says.
Gratefully, I smear myself against the geography of his body. I can feel the friendly warmth of his breath on the crown of my head. I concentrate on not giving off any negative vibes.
“You think we’re going to have to feed that crowd downstairs?” he asks, effectively jamming reception of any emotional message from me.
“I don’t know,” I whisper, pressing my pubic bone against the corresponding hollow above his groin.
“We could order in,” he suggests. “Chinese. From the Empress.”
I arch my back so I can apply more low-body pressure and also see his face. Eli gives me one of his long, slow smiles while his hands inch down my backside. Eli has slow hands. For me, slow is always better. I don’t like being startled by sudden moves in unexpected places. When some of the movable flesh on my buttocks slides out of his grasp, he politely corrals it in again.
I laugh. He laughs. He almost kisses me. Instead he says:
“I’ve got something for you later.”
Although Eli has responded to my pelvic pressure with a sweet hardness, he now pats me on my backside, like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar encouraging some fellow Laker to hang in there. Then I’m released from his hug.
It is almost dark before Eli orders our dinner. As usual, he orders too much. I will be eating Chinese for the rest of my life. After Shay puts Amelia to bed, everyone helps clean the kitchen while I make coffee. Finally Barney and Victoria Lang leave. Around ten o’clock I say good night and go upstairs to my bedroom. I take off my clothes and pull on an old shirt of Eli’s.
No bath tonight. No repeat of last night.
Eli comes into our room.
After twenty years, conjugal love is like brushing teeth at bedtime. It doesn’t necessarily make us feel better, but not doing it invariably makes us feel worse. A quick once-over is our common compromise. But that’s exactly what I don’t want tonight. I do not want a slapdash lickety-split encounter. I do not want a sexual non sequitur. I want a coupling that has consciousness and cognizance. It has to feel important, not just like a pun on all four-letter words including l-o-v-e. I don’t want to screw just because we both know it’s good for our relationship and that we’ll feel better afterward. I don’t want Eli to feel virtuous for screwing me.
“Eli,” I begin, sitting down at my dressing table and adopting a certain tone of voice about which there is no confusion, “we’ve got to talk.”
“I know,” he says after a heavy, reluctant pause that’s as emphatic as a groan.
“Eli, what’s happening to us?”
My question establishes a direct confrontation. Of course what’s happening between us is the most compelling subject we share. It’s the big R-word. We’re talking texture here. Density. Compulsion. Quality time.
“I don’t know,” Eli says, dread making each word grate abrasively against the next. “But I know it’s my fault. You haven’t done anything wrong, Nat. You’ve been terrific. Really patient.”
“Eli, are you involved with someone else?”
“No, there’s no one else. I’m just out of it, Nat. Bu
rned out. Stressed out. Bummed out. I’m stuck in a rut over at work. I can’t seem to bust loose over there.”
I rest my elbows on my dressing table so I can prop up my head, which has suddenly become as heavy as my heart.
POLAROID SNAPSHOT
This faded, creamy yellow Polaroid print is a nudie Eli took one hot (in both senses of that word) summer night. It is not in my album; I keep it in a dresser drawer. Eli always claimed legitimate film-processing labs wouldn’t develop nude or explicitly sexual negatives. I don’t know whether or not that’s true, but when the spirit—or better yet, the flesh—moved him, Eli would encourage me to attempt various poses for him and our old Polaroid. Men are weird about visuals. Women are not into looking the way men are. Anyway, great sex is habit-forming. Sometimes, for fairly long periods of time, Eli and I forget about sex. But when we’re into it, it’s all I can think about. Doing IT. DOING it. IT, in ITself, is mind-boggling. Eli knows how to spin me off into a sensuality that frees me from gravity (in both meanings of that word). Once accustomed to sex on a steady basis, I suffer withdrawal symptoms when it’s withheld. My sexual hold on Eli is simply my own addiction to sex. That’s what turns him on.
“So … is it all over?” I ask in what I hope sounds like a reasonable tone of voice. “Are we finished?”
His silence grows like seeds in a garden, impacted in soil, struggling to break through the earth’s surface to reach the light.
“I don’t know,” he finally manages to say. And then to be nice he adds, “I sure hope not.”
“Well, what’s the deal, Eli? If you don’t know, who does?”
“No one,” he answers sadly. “No one but me. That’s why I think maybe I should spend some time alone. To think things through.”
“I wish I had the residuals on that line of dialogue,” I say bitterly.
Silence.
Then he says:
“Listen. I don’t know what I’m thinking right now. I mean, to talk about breaking up after twenty years is like discussing whether or not to cut off your arm or your leg. You know you’ll miss it.”
He seems oblivious to how that comment pierces me. I am speechless.
“What we should try to do is set aside some time for discussing things, Nat. If not this week, then soon.”
“Great,” I say sarcastically. “I can get behind that.”
Thick silence once again. I can sense his kindness struggling to break through barriers of other feelings.
We are both stymied. Paralyzed. I turn off the lamp on my table and walk back to bed. Lying next to each other, we listen to the animals in the zoo. Tonight the gibbons are going crazy. They are chattering wildly, as if they sense danger approaching. I know how they feel. I also feel imperiled. Eli extends one of his arms across my midriff. But there is no buzz between us. No magic to inspire us. No electricity to spark a connection.
“Auntie Nattie?”
I separate myself from Eli in one smooth, fluid motion.
“What, Amelia? Why are you up?”
“Can I sheep with you and Uncle Eli?”
“Not tonight, sweetie,” Eli answers, but Amelia is already crawling over me, tumbling between us, giggling nervously.
Eli groans. “Why don’t you go find your grandmother and your Uncle Mickey?” he asks in a droll voice.
“I want to shtay here,” Amelia responds.
And stay she does.
“Okay, Eli,” I whisper over the little girl lying between us. “Go to sleep. Don’t worry. We’ll talk when you get home from Atlanta. Everything will be okay.”
I don’t cry until much later, when both of them are sleeping.
6
The next morning at seven-thirty I drive Eli to the airport in his Honda. In the car we barely speak. We are both mentally too busy. I am focused on his imminent and symbolic departure. He can’t wait to be gone. I do not want to crumble in front of him. He doesn’t want to appear overeager to leave.
I am back home again at eight.
By eight-thirty I am drinking my third cup of coffee and taking a second pass at the Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle, when Shay appears in the kitchen doorway.
“Good morning,” she says amiably.
As usual she’s camera-ready.
What she has on is the white shirt Mickey wore yesterday and her silver bracelets. Her hair is a mess; she has “bed-head,” our childhood word for hair pressed flat in back from sleeping. Shay’s problem was most likely caused by sex rather than sleep. Although she claimed she was too tired to boogie on Friday night, she seems to have gotten a second wind.
Barefoot, she makes her move on the coffeepot.
“Mickey’s taking Amelia for a walk,” she says. “Our plane’s not until three.”
Sitting down in a chair across from me, she starts to sip her coffee.
“If you only did crossword puzzles you’d think James Agee and Erle Stanley Gardner were the only American writers who ever lived,” I say. “These clowns always need an E-R-L-E for some reason. Do you know a four-letter word for addict?”
“Natalie, listen,” Shay says. “I was a real asshole Friday night. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I came down so hard on you. It was stupid of me to leave those papers in the car. And now I’m taking off and leaving you with all these problems on your hands.”
I start going through the Acrosses again.
A four-letter word for addict?
“But I have to ask you to help me get through the rest of this thing, Nat. I’m not saying it’s your fault, but before the car got ripped off, things were really going great for me. I mean, this Fawn Hall story would have been a big feather in my cap. And I think Mickey was—is—planning to ask me to move in with him. He has a fabulous apartment on Park Avenue. Five bedrooms. And after we get settled I’m going to bring Amelia up there to live with us. Get a full-time nanny. You know. The whole schmear.”
A four-letter word for addict?
A four-letter word for addict?
“But now everything’s up for grabs,” Shay continues. “I mean, chances are if those papers are found the DEA will bring charges against me.”
“Maybe not.” I shrug. “Maybe they won’t want the publicity.”
Shay sips her coffee. “The thing is, everything can be traced right back to you through the car registration.”
“Good morning, Sasha,” I say sarcastically.
Translation: As usual you’re a day late and a dollar short catching on to anyone else’s reality.
The telephone rings. It is Christopher asking for Shay, so I hand her receiver. She says hello and then listens silently for a while. When she finally speaks her voice is quivering.
“Listen, Christopher, I’m not going to Atlanta for a vacation. This is a working trip. Nooooo! How am I supposed to find a baby-sitter in a city where I don’t even know anybody? Jesus! This’s quite a stunt for you to pull at the last minute. What the hell do you have to go to Atlanta for, anyway? Even if you got a plane reservation, you’ll never find a hotel room. No! No, you can’t stay with me. No! This is not gonna be a second honeymoon!”
She is clawing for her cigarette pack in the breast pocket of Teardash’s wrinkled white shirt.
“This is really a shitty thing for you to do, Christopher. But if you have to act like an asshole, I’ll just ask Barney to keep her. Believe me, I’m really pissed off. Nooooo! I have other things to do this afternoon. I have to buy another laptop for one thing.” Now she changes her tone of voice. “Listen. Is it okay if I charge a Toshiba laptop to your Visa card and pay you back as soon as the insurance company reimburses me? We still have that floater on our homeowner’s policy, don’t we? To cover personal property outside the house? Great, thanks. No, I don’t know which hotel I’ll be staying at.”
She slams down the receiver, lights a cigarette and looks at me with despair in her velvet-blue eyes.
“Oh, God. Now Christopher’s going to Atlanta and his maid’s going on vacation and I kn
ow Barney won’t be able to take care of Amelia. He’s got a big case in court this week and Victoria works. What am I going to do? Everything’s coming apart.”
She drains the remaining coffee from her cup and then makes her pitch.
“Do you think there’s any possible way you could keep Amelia here with you? Just until Friday? I mean, as long as Eli’s out of town and you’re on vacation anyway? She’s crazy about you and she’s been pushed around so much lately.”
Shay begins to cry.
Holding her heavy hair back away from her face, she lets hot tears drizzle down her face. They slide off her cheeks and fall into the deep V opening of Mickey’s shirt. During this crying jag, it is clear that the thought of Amelia’s distress tortures her. She looks ravaged, like a caged animal.
“Could you, Nat? Would you? I’ll never ever ask you for anything ever again. Really. The rest of my life. I promise. Just this one last thing? It’ll make up for leaving your keys in the car. I’ll never ask you for anything else. I mean it this time.”
Yeah, sure.
What a bunch of ca-ca.
This is really too much. First she plants stolen documents in my car and then she asks me to take care of her granddaughter while I plow through the shit she’s piled on me. I am breathless with indignation at what a user she is.
User! The four-letter word for addict is “user.”
“When is this going to end, Shay?”
“What?”
“This addiction to using people.”
“What do you mean?” Her entire face puckers up with consternation. “Why are you attacking me, Natalie? I didn’t mean for this to happen. And, besides, you were as careless as I was.”
The tears start cascading down her face again. There is a wild expression in her eyes.
Quietly I write U-S-E-R into #24 Down and look to see what new opportunities this opens up for me.
“I should think you’d have a little bit of compassion,” she sobs. “First I had to raise Steven all by myself …”
I look at my sister reproachfully. Mom, Dad, Barney, Eli and I took care of Steven almost as much as she did.
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