The Idea of Love

by Patti Callahan Henry

  The elevator in the apartment frightened her with its groaning and stretching, so she always took the stairs. The last thing she needed was to be caught inside its metal cage. When she had groceries, she would place them on the elevator and then race to meet them on the third floor where the doors would open with her packages. Only twice had someone been on the elevator when it had stopped. The first time it was an old man eating her granola from an open bag. The second time a young child was staring at the groceries in confusion.

  She walked down the dark stairwell and reminded herself, again, to call her landlord about the missing bulbs. Ella thought about stopping in, saying hello to Mimi, but she wanted fresh air. Hell, she wanted a fresh life.

  The evening was humid, a watery intimacy she could swim through with the hope of forgetting who she was and how she had landed in this life she didn’t recognize. How did people stop thinking about the things they didn’t want to think about?

  Could she have been more inventive in bed? Cooked better meals? Done Pilates? Read articles in the New York Times to discuss over dinner? Bought more bohemian clothes like the girlfriend wears? Or ask more questions about his work? “How was work today, honey? Did you rent a lot of boats? Sleep with any of my friends’ sisters?”

  In the back pocket of her jeans, her cell buzzed again. Hunter.

  No problem about this evening. Get some rest. Talk soon

  She answered.

  I changed my mind. Meet me at Fifth Avenue, a block from the Sunset, in fifteen minutes. Walked halfway there.

  Great!

  What else was there to do? Obsessing was getting old.

  * * *

  Blake saw her before she spotted him, which he liked. Ella sat on a bench at the far end of the park, her head back as if on a hinge. She stared up at the evening sky.

  “What are you doing?” Blake asked as he reached her side.

  “Every night at about this time, the birds come in. Hundreds of them in little flocks of ten or twenty. White birds with hidden black wings. Like magic.” She lifted her head and smiled at him. “Sit down. I’ll show you.”

  Her skirt, a mess and mingle of flowers, spread across the bench. He moved the fabric aside to sit next to her. Her top was a simple white tank that didn’t compete with the skirt. There he was, dammit, narrating in his head, when he should be enjoying a lovely night with an equally lovely woman. He wanted to stop. He didn’t want to stop.

  He leaned his head back, his neck cranking with the stiffness that came from weeks of travel in crappy rental cars, pillows made of foam, and sagging mattresses. It felt good. God, he wanted to go home. The back of the metal bench dug into his neck like strong fingers. He rocked back and forth, just an inch or two each side, trying to work out the knots in his muscles.

  It was twilight, the “magic hour” as they called it in Hollywood, everyone’s favorite kind of light to film in because it softened everything. But it was hard to catch. This light, right here, made him wish he had a crew, a camera, and mostly, a good love story.

  The clouds were motionless, the few that there were, as if they’d been painted in permanent repose. The sky, which all day had been washed-out blue, was now navy. In his peripheral vision he saw a purple sunset, seeping down, soaking the sky.

  “Here,” Ella whispered.

  “Here what?”

  “Here they come—”

  She didn’t need to finish her sentence because he saw them, the undersides of them at least: a flock of thin white birds flying in broken V formation. Their underbellies rounded and their wings spread wide and hardly moving, they were gliding, skating on air. They flew as a group to the dense tree next to a pond. One by one they settled on branches above and below and next to one another as if they had assigned spots. They folded their wings and bowed their heads, acknowledging the day’s end.

  “How do they all know when to come?” he asked. “They’re flying in one after the other. Flocks of them.”

  “I have no idea. I’ve thought about looking it up. Why is it they come at dusk? Where is it they’ve been all day? But part of me doesn’t want to know. Part of me likes the mystery of it all.”

  “Yes,” he said, and he knew he would look it up. He didn’t like the mystery. If there was something to be known in this life where so much was unknown, he wanted to find it out.

  Finally, Ella lifted her head and turned on the bench, one leg tucked under her bottom. The breeze, full of sea, blew her hair around as if from an offscreen fan in a photo shoot. She smiled and he wanted to take a picture, to capture her just like this. He held his phone up and tapped to take a picture.

  Ella held up her hand. “No…”

  Blake lowered the camera. “It’s a great picture.” He lifted the phone again and tapped the camera, prompting the sound of a shutter.

  “Delete that,” she said, laughing.

  “No way.” Blake shoved the phone back in his pocket.

  “Take a picture of the birds, not me,” she said.

  “What kind are they?” he asked.

  “Now that I know,” she said. “White ibis.”

  “Sounds like a goddess name,” he said.

  “I said the same thing when my mom told me the name. I was like ten years old and I said … that.” Her words rushed out easily and quickly and she seemed embarrassed, turned away. “I feel young when I see them.”

  Blake took in a long breath like he was about to jump off a diving board into the deep end. “I do, too,” he said, exhaling.

  “You do what?”

  “I feel young, watching those birds with you.”

  The silence that followed was long and quiet, full of nature’s secret sounds of life. On the dock a block away, two seagulls crowed.

  “Why do seagulls always sound like they’re crying?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Other birds call and chirp and squeal, but seagulls always sound like they’re crying their tiny hearts out.”

  “I think you’re right,” she said. “But weird, they were my mom’s favorite bird. She read a book when she was younger, a book about a seagull and she’s always loved them since.”

  “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “You were very close with your mom, weren’t you?”

  “Yes,” Ella said. “There were a few years when I was twelve and thirteen years old that we weren’t, but I guess that’s normal. She just always … understood me.”

  “Tell me about her,” Blake said.

  “That’s so hard. I always have a hard time describing someone. I lose the details in the big picture. I’m not good at it.”

  “Try,” he said.

  “She was beautiful and smart. She laughed too loud, and talked too soft. She had freckles on her face, but more on her left cheek and that drove her crazy. She mixed up her words, got them backward. So if she was trying to say ‘Four Star Hotel,’ she might say ‘Whore Far Stotel,’ and not even notice it … she’d just keep talking.” Ella smiled and then shook her head. “She was fun. She was kind.” Ella stopped. “I know I talk about her like she’s still here … still alive. But she is for me sometimes.”

  “She sounds like someone I’d have liked to meet.”

  Ella nodded “Who wouldn’t? But she’d embarrass me because she called me ‘bunny,’ even around other adults.”

  Blake laughed. “Cute name.”

  Ella held up her hand and shook her head. “Don’t even think about it. I’m not kidding. Do. Not. Do. It.”

  “Okay. Okay. Well, let’s get something to eat,” he said.

  “I’m not all that hungry. Is just a drink okay with you?”

  “Always,” he said.

  Ella kept quiet even as she walked next to him, her arms swinging with each step, her skirt lifting inches above her knee with every breeze. She slipped a rubber band off her wrist and put her hair in a ponytail. He wanted to release her hair, watch the wind catch it in its hand
s and twist it around. For a moment, he was jealous of the air and sea, how they could touch her hair, wrap themselves into its tangle and waves.

  He wanted to say something to make her talk. So he lied. Again. He hated it but still he did. “It might be interesting to include the white ibis in the book. I need to find out more about them, why they flock that way to the trees at night.”

  “But if it’s really a history book, you know, comparing past to present, I doubt the birds have much to do with that.”

  “Unless…” He paused. “Unless they’ve always been the same. Maybe it’s one of those things that doesn’t change, even as the town and environment does.”

  “Maybe,” she said. “But everything changes. Everything.”

  Blake stopped. She didn’t notice he wasn’t keeping up until a full block later. She finally turned around. “Come on,” she hollered.

  He stood still, not knowing why, staring at her. Everything changes, she’d said. Everything. It wasn’t some profound statement, so why did he feel like it was? And why the hell was he trying to make everything in his life stay the same? Trying so hard.

  “Hunter?” she said, and there she was, at his side. “Are you okay?”

  Hell. She didn’t even know his real name. He hated himself, that metal-tasting tingle on the edges of his tongue that he’d identified as self-hatred. He’d tasted it for months after the photos appeared in the magazines, in his wife’s e-mail, on his friends’ desks.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “I was just … thinking about what you said. About change.”

  “What did I say?”

  He stared at her for a moment, just a small slice in time. He could have opened his mouth and said something authentic, something true. Instead he mumbled, “Nothing. Let’s go.”

  He walked ahead of her—she had to take a couple of long steps to catch up with him—and then they were in front of the bar. It was a ramshackle place that seemed to be made of sticks and duct tape. A flashing sign, missing the U, stated S_NSET. Strings of lights were hung crisscross and sideways, overlapping and drooping down. Someone had thought that enough twinkly lights would hide the decrepit condition.

  “I know it doesn’t look like much,” she said. “But it’s really good. Our best chef works here if you’re hungry.”

  Blake raised his eyebrows. “Oh, really?”

  “I know. Best chef in nowhere Carolina doesn’t give you a lot of hope but trust me, okay?”

  He felt the sinking-chest ache of his betrayal as he said, “I trust you.”

  The crowded bar smelled of bodies and beer. Ella sipped white wine while he tried to make his JD last. There wasn’t much talking because there couldn’t be. A band played Beatles cover songs while drunk, sunburned patrons yelled to one another, straining to be heard. And in the back corner, a Ping-Pong table. Two clearly drunk girls were pretending to play and yet mostly chasing the ball under the table and into the corners, bending over so they could display their lace underwear.

  “Ella,” Blake said. She didn’t answer; her eyes were across the room, watching a couple kissing in the corner. “Ella,” he said louder.

  Her eyes moved lazily toward him as if he’d just awoken her from a dream. “Yes?”

  “Want to play Ping-Pong?” He pointed across the room.

  “Only if you want to get your butt whipped,” she said. “I’m good.”

  “Well, let’s see if that’s true or not.” He motioned to the frazzled waitress who wound her way through a group of high-fiving men.

  “One more?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Blake said. “And you?” he asked Ella.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” she said. “A double.”

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Very,” she answered. “I’ll go secure the Ping-Pong table.”

  She wound her way through the crowd, winding past people without speaking. One woman, a tall brunette with a goblet of beer, tried to stop Ella, but Ella pushed past, ignoring the woman, who proceeded to lift her middle finger behind Ella’s back. If it had been a guy, Blake would have had to throw a punch. But he knew better than to get in the face of an angry woman. You only try that once.

  The waitress returned with the drinks. He tossed too much cash on her tray and she smiled. “Thank you.”

  Blake carried the drinks toward the Ping-Pong table, where Ella was negotiating with the panty-flashing girls. “Just one game,” she said. “And then it’s all yours for the night.”

  They wouldn’t budge. They just stood there staring at Ella with dark, drunken faces. “No,” one of them finally said, as if it was a word she had to dig deep to find.

  Blake approached the women, put on his best smile. “Hey,” he said, trying to sneak in some semblance of a Southern accent. “Can I buy you girls a piña colada for one turn at the pong table?”

  They giggled. Actually freaking giggled. “Sure,” the tall one said. “I’m Pamela. And this is Angela.”

  “Your names kind of go together,” he said. “How cute.”

  “I know, it’s like we should have a TV show.”

  “For sure,” he said. “A reality show.”

  “I told you,” Pamela said to Angela.

  Blake handed the JD to Ella but addressed the girls. “Go tell the waitress two drinks on me. By the time you two finish, we’ll be done,” Blake said.

  The girls sauntered away with their giggles and high fives.

  “Brilliant, Hunter. Brilliant.” Ella clapped and bowed. “Were you an actor or con artist in another life?”

  “Sort of,” he said, and picked up the paddles. “Which one do you want?”

  “Red,” she said. “Good-luck red.”

  “It is?” he asked.

  “It is now.” She was seriously adorable.

  For a few minutes they hit the ball back and forth, friendly and slowly. They didn’t talk and this was nice, just hanging out with her without thinking so hard about what to say, about the facts that might give him away.

  Ella missed the last hit and scrambled off to find it, leaning down to catch it from a warped floorboard. She returned to the table. “Okay, any bets you want to place?”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “Your call.” She tossed the ball up and caught it in her palm.

  “If I win, you have to tell me a story from your childhood,” he said.

  “Deal. And if I win?”

  “You won’t,” he said.

  “If I win, you…” She paused. “If I win, you have to tell me a story about you. Anything, but I have one rule.”

  “What is that?”

  “It has to be embarrassing.”

  “That’s a cruel bet.” He bowed. “You’re on.”

  It was hypnotic the way they hit the ball back and forth. He didn’t want to make her miss a hit because he wanted to stay there for hours, just letting the ball go between them, spinning and then returning, rotating like the Earth in space, bouncing and then the satisfying thwack of ball on paddle.

  The little white ball, so neat and perfectly timed to return to him, flew past his paddle as it twisted downward into a deep dive. “You!” he hollered across the table with a laugh. “You put a spin on it.”

  She smiled and he knew he’d been had.

  The game ended with a score of 21–3. And he was fairly sure Ella gave him the three. The piña colada girls had been waiting, sipping their frothy drinks and cheering on Ella as if they were all part of a sorority.

  Blake didn’t so much mind losing to Ella, which was odd because he hated losing at anything. Watching her with her tongue stuck firmly in the lower right corner of her lips, her wrist twisting in instinct to the angle of the ball, he even forgot to drink his JD.

  They gave the table up to the girls. “This way,” Ella said, and pointed to a stairwell. “Goes to the roof. It’s a great view. The perfect place to cash in on my bet.”

  The sun had set and the moon, a dented balloon, rose above the water. Wave
s, high and full of spray, a ghost cloud of water, battered the docks. Boats swung, drunk and still hitched with ropes, against the buoys.

  It was as crowded on the roof bar as downstairs, but Ella led them to a corner where she lifted her face to the breeze and sighed. “Nice.” She took his drink from him, taking a long sip.

  “Whoa,” Blake said, and placed his hand on her glass. “Slow down. That is definitely not a chardonnay.”

  “Really?” She looked at him, raised her eyebrows and then took another swig. “Or are you just avoiding paying off your bet?”

  He moved closer so he could hear her. But only so he could hear her. “I don’t have any embarrassing stories,” he said.

  “Right. I’m sure. As we like to say in the South, ‘Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story.’”

  “Okay, let me think.…” Of course he had embarrassing stories. Shameful ones. Devastating ones. But he wouldn’t tell those. “I once invited a dead person to our house.” This story, the one he was about to tell, was true. He wanted to tell her about the time he looked like such a fool that his wife left him alone in the pew, red-faced, standing with his daughter, who probably wanted the floor to open up and take her.

  “You did what?” she asked with laughter.

  “So let me set the scene,” he said.

  “Go ahead.” She might have slurred a little, but how could she not after slamming down that double JD?

  “Well,” he said, and moved a little closer. “We had these dear family friends named Deenie and Frank. We did everything together. Vacations. Kids’ graduations. If we believed in godparents, I would have been their children’s godfather.”

  “Okay…” Ella looked into the empty glass. “What does this have to do with…?”

  “I’m setting it up for you.”

  “Got it. Good family friends. You know them really well. You’re close.”

  “Yes. Very close.”

  “So then?”

  “Frank’s father passes away. Mr. Cameron. That’s his name to me. He was very formal. A pipe-smoking intellectual who I played poker with a few times. The funeral was in Saint Stephens. A huge, multi-steeple church with stained glass windows casting crucifix shadows everywhere. This is Mr. Cameron’s funeral.”