Does Not Love

by James Tadd Adcox

  The judge draws a diagram on a napkin:

  “Ultimately, the law is pure form, devoid of content,” the judge tells the FBI agent. “What we are fighting for is not a thing, but a shape.”

  A little later, the judge says: “My wife has not been very understanding. We’ve had some problems. We had two kids, boys, but neither of them lives in Indiana anymore. I think one of them moved to Seattle? He was a designer. Web designer. We’re not really in touch anymore. I think they both secretly call my wife, that they stay in touch with her and tell her about their lives and so forth. She won’t talk to me about it.”

  “That sounds horrible,” Viola says, putting her hand on his hand.

  “She says I lost my chance with them a long time ago,” the judge says. Viola notices the FBI agent staring at her hand on the judge’s hand.

  “Listen to me,” the judge says. “Going on like this. We’re celebrating, aren’t we?”

  The judge orders a round of sake on the rocks for the table. “A thing a lot of people don’t realize about sake is that it’s a very versatile drink,” he says. The FBI agent and Viola and the judge toast to the judge’s future, and then they toast to the FBI agent’s future and Viola’s future. “You kids,” the judge says. “You fucking kids.” The judge orders another round for the three of them and gets his money out and puts it on the table.

  “You’re not paying for this,” the FBI agent says. “We’re taking you out, remember?”

  “I’m paying for whatever the hell I want to,” the judge says. “It’s my money and I want to spend it.” He toasts again to Viola and the FBI agent. “You fucking kids,” he says. “I bet you kids have some kind of fun together, don’t you?” The judge is holding Viola’s hand in both of his.

  “We should drive him home,” Viola says to the FBI agent, a little while later. “He’s in no condition.”

  “I’m staying at a hotel,” the judge says.

  “Which hotel?” He tells them.

  Viola and the judge follow the FBI agent out to the FBI agent’s car. The judge walks with Viola’s arm in his. He pats her arm. He keeps saying what a wonderful night he is having and how lovely it has been to meet her. “Put him in the front,” the FBI agent says.

  “That’s not very gentlemanly,” the judge says, but allows Viola to help him into the front seat anyhow.

  At the hotel the FBI agent parks and they stand before the sliding glass doors to the hotel lobby while the judge says goodnight.

  “Do you mind seeing an older gentleman up to his room?” the judge says. Viola looks at the FBI agent.

  “Sure, see him up,” the FBI agent says. “Do whatever the hell you’re going to.”

  In the hotel room, which is much nicer than the room that the FBI agent is staying in, the judge respectfully embraces Viola. Viola nuzzles into the judge’s neck. He’s in very good shape. She can feel how good of shape he’s in, in the muscles in the arms with which the judge is respectfully and gently embracing her. She asks the judge how often he takes young women up to hotel rooms with him.

  “I enjoy the occasional guest,” the judge says. “I try to be appropriate, you know.”

  “Very appropriate,” Viola says. “I’d imagine.”

  The judge can’t get a hardon. It’s only half-there. He’s very pleasant about it. “Other men I’ve been with aren’t so, you know, accepting when that happens.”

  “I’m seventy-six years old,” the judge says, “and I’m in a hotel room with a beautiful young woman. I’m having a wonderful time in any case. My only concern is that you not think it’s any commentary on you.”

  “Oh, no,” Viola says. “But I appreciate your concern.”

  They sit on the hotel-room bed, the judge in his boxers, Viola readjusting her skirt. “You can spend the night,” the judge says. “I never kick my guests out. Never. It’s out of the question.”

  “I can get a taxi,” Viola says. “Really, it’s fine. You’ve been quite the gentleman.”

  The FBI agent is still waiting outside the hotel doors when Viola comes back down. Viola realizes, as soon as she sees him, that she’s actually not at all surprised that he waited.

  “You’re jealous,” she says.

  “Why shouldn’t I be jealous?” he says.

  “Look, this is an affair,” Viola says, getting in the car. “I have a husband.”

  “You don’t love him.”

  The FBI agent drives through the city towards the motel, where Viola’s car is parked. Viola asks for a cigarette, mostly to break the silence.

  “I have proof that you don’t love him,” the FBI agent says. “Photographs, video and audio recordings.”

  “Jesus.”

  “And that he doesn’t love you.”

  Viola stares out the window at a series of abandoned factories passing by. “He loves me,” she says.

  “He doesn’t deserve you.”

  “He loves me,” Viola says. “I don’t want to hear you say that he doesn’t love me again. Because it’s not true.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Viola brushes her teeth in the empty house feeling very alone. She tries to think about her situation with the FBI agent and with Robert and about what effect going up to his hotel room with the judge might have had on the situation, but none of her thoughts come in words. She pictures herself asleep under a snow drift, curled up. It doesn’t seem sad or self-pitying to her. It’s just a very comfortable picture. But of course it’s too late in the year for snow. As she’s brushing her teeth she lists places in her head where it would still be snowing this time of year. Alaska. Some place in Canada. Michigan, Upper Peninsula. Certain mountaintops in Chile or Argentina. She makes a big production out of smoothing out the bed sheets and turning back the covers. Robert isn’t home yet. Robert doesn’t come back all night. She lies under the covers, staring at the ceiling, until early in the morning, thinking.

  ~ ~ ~

  Viola meets the retired judge for brunch at a restaurant near the river walk downtown. After brunch they take a walk along the river. As they walk the judge holds Viola’s arm and asks about her upbringing in the South.

  “You don’t have an accent,” he says.

  “People always tell me that, but it’s not true. I have a Raleigh accent. This is what people from Raleigh sound like.”

  “Perhaps you’ve been in the Midwest too long,” the judge says. “We don’t have accents either.”

  The judge has brought along a couple of paper cups and a thermos of rosé and chipped ice. They find a bench facing the water and he pours a cup for Viola and one for himself. “This is lovely,” he says. “Soon the weather will get too hot for this to be so comfortable.”

  They talk about the river walk, and the recently announced plans for its expansion. Viola thinks, I’m glad that we didn’t have sex that night. There was a moment, of course… And he is in remarkably good shape… But he’s kind of a father figure. I like that, that he’s just a father figure. It’s much less complicated between us if he’s a father figure and we didn’t have sex. Viola had a friend in her MLS program who had a thing for father figures. This friend was very proud of it, or proud enough to tell Viola and some other people, anyway. She only dated men who were older, and who looked more or less like her dad. Viola wonders what happened to her. Then she remembers: she married someone at Robert’s firm. That’s funny that I would have forgotten about that, she thinks.

  The judge pours them each another cupful of rosé. “What should we toast to?”

  “We forgot to toast last time,” Viola says.

  “That’s why it’s so important that we toast this time.”

  “I don’t want to toast to anything important,” Viola says. “Let’s toast to chipped ice.”

  “Chipped ice is very important,” the judge says, but they toast to chipped ice anyhow.

  A little while later Viola says, “Are you drunk?”

  “I’m slightly inebriated. ‘Tipsy.’” He says it in a way that ma
kes “tipsy” sound like it’s something only other people say.

  “‘Tipsy,’” Viola says, saying it the same way, smiling. “‘Tipsy.’ Isn’t this illegal, drinking out in the open? Aren’t you supposed to uphold the law?”

  “I’m only sworn to uphold the secret law. And I’m retired.”

  “Am I breaking any secret laws?”

  “If you were I couldn’t tell you.”

  “I feel like that’s all I ever hear, recently. For once in my life, I’d like to know what I’m doing wrong.”

  “If you’re doing anything wrong,” the judge says. Viola glowers at him. “You seem to have gotten very serious all of a sudden,” he says, dividing the last of the thermos between their cups.

  “I’m not sad,” Viola says.

  “No one accused you of being sad.”

  “Oh. I thought maybe you did.”

  Viola and the judge observe couples paddling by in paddle-boats. They drink the last of the rosé. Viola sits fiddling with her cup.

  “Here,” the judge says. “Let me show you something.” He peels back a place in his skin, an area perhaps an inch square on his forearm. Viola peers into the area that he has peeled away.

  “What do you see?”

  “Nothing,” she says.

  “After so many years, I have started to become the law myself,” he says. “A kind of structured emptiness.”

  “Am I allowed to see that?” Viola asks.

  “Anyone is,” he says. “There’s nothing there to see. That is how the law remains secret: it isn’t there.” The judge replaces the flap of skin that he had peeled and pats it down.

  Viola makes a small basket out of grass while they’re sitting on the bench and hands it to the judge.

  “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “I’ve just always known.”

  “It’s lovely.”

  “Thank you,” Viola says. She makes another. “When I close my eyes and think about the last several months, I picture a whirlpool, or a tornado. A ring of violence circling and circling around nothing. Continually drawling everything towards that emptiness in the center.”

  “I see,” the judge says.

  “I wanted to be a nun when I was younger, have I told you that?” Viola says. “Or a saint.”

  “I didn’t realize you were Catholic.”

  “I’m not.”

  The judge examines the basket, holding it gently up to the light.

  “Maybe secretly you thought I was sad,” Viola says, as they’re walking back to their cars. “But you didn’t want to tell me, because you saw how serious I’d gotten. You didn’t want to ruin our good time.”

  “You’re a charming young woman,” the judge says, as they’re standing by her car.

  “I can’t tell if you’re being serious.”

  “I’m absolutely being serious.”

  “I thought you were,” Viola says. “But you can see why it was important for me to make sure. I had a good day.” The judge gives her a peck on the cheek.

  “I’m glad we didn’t have sex that time, when I took you to your room,” Viola says. The judge looks at her, dejected. She tries to explain about how she likes him better as a father figure, and he says that he understands, but she’s pretty sure he doesn’t. “It was a compliment,” Viola says.

  “I understand,” the judge says. He kisses her check again, but it’s not the same.

  Viola gets in her car and says to herself, stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid. She watches the judge walk back to his car in her rearview mirror. He is still holding the tiny grass basket. She thinks, why do I always have to explain myself about everything? Why can’t I just let something be? Viola thinks, I should get out of my car and go after him. She thinks, anything I do now would make him feel worse. She thinks, if I were him, wouldn’t I want me just to disappear right now, so I’d never have to think about me again?

  ~ ~ ~

  Viola disappears. There is a Viola-shaped hole in reality, where Viola used to be. The Viola-shaped hole in reality sits with the FBI agent in the motel room and watches videos that he has taken in which he pretends to interrogate her. Except, she thinks, I haven’t seen this video before. That’s not even me. The image quality is bad: horizontal white lines wash up and down the screen like waves. Is it possible that we are watching an actual interrogation? Is there a market for interrogations, passed back and forth between members of the intelligence community, the government, police forces, amateur enthusiasts, connoisseurs? It is not the content of the interrogation that is important, she thinks, but the form… If you hurt someone enough, scare them enough, they will say whatever you want them to. It is a way of turning someone else’s body into a kind of puppet. Content becomes meaningless: you may as well be talking to yourself. But the form, the ritual… A tornado, a whirlpool, violence swirling around emptiness. Love, too: a kind of violence, drawing everything into the emptiness at its center… Eye, she thinks. That’s the term for it, the center of a tornado, that kernel of nothing. The eye.

  “I want you to tell me exactly what I am allowed to do,” the FBI agent says. She is lying still mostly-dressed in bed, with the FBI agent looming over her.

  “What do you want to do?” she asks.

  “I want you to tell me.”

  “Do you want to slap me?”

  The FBI agent slaps her.

  “Do you want to spit on me?”

  The FBI agent spits on her.

  When I was younger, she thinks, I wanted to live a life that was not just for myself. I wanted to do something large, something important, something pure and full of grace. When did life become such a small thing? When did I become an animal that mostly reacts? Oh yes, I loved men before Robert, and I was hurt by them, and I found Robert and decided that he would not hurt me. This is how life becomes small: you grow up, which is to say, you get hurt, and then you adjust your life in ways in which you hope you will no longer get hurt. But of course you get hurt again, and what difference does it make, who’s responsible?

  “I feel so bad, so much of the time,” the FBI agent says. She rubs her hand through his hair.

  “It’s okay,” she says, shushing him. “It’s okay.”

  Somewhere, I am being watched, she thinks. On other screens. Images of me, scattered throughout the nation. She considers the FBI agent. This is not his fault, she thinks. Or not entirely. I was in the process of becoming a certain type of image — fitting a certain role — long before. Can I say that it is Robert’s fault? No, not entirely — I had as much to do with it as anyone—

  Robert, who was once her husband, which is to say, who was once married to an image of her, calls, over and over again, on her cell phone. She can never quite convince herself to answer it.

  ~ ~ ~

  Hugo takes Robert to the guinea-pigger camp, which lies on the far western edge of the city. They take the bus from downtown, because Hugo is concerned that Robert’s newish, expensive-looking car might attract suspicion. “What kind of suspicion?” Robert wants to know.

  “They might think that we are with the mafia.”

  Beyond the complex’s gates, rows of bright orange roll-up doors stretch off into the distance. Small fires are everywhere. Guinea-piggers look up at Robert, sweating, shaking, their eyes glazed over, many of them not seeing him as he walks past, or, if they do see him, not knowing whether he is an hallucination. Others don’t even bother to look up, but continue feeding their fires with pieces of junk mail or gathered sticks. Huge flakes of ash float through the air like terrifying moths.

  “This is horrible,” Robert says.

  “This is the underside of the world,” Hugo proclaims, voice suddenly taking on dramatic-movie tones. “This is — oh, hi kids.”

  A group of a half-dozen kids runs by, throwing
pieces of rubble at each other. One of them throws a piece of rubble at Robert, which hits him, hard, in the shoulder.

  “Hey!” Hugo says. “Don’t throw rubble at Robert. Robert doesn’t even know how to play the rubble game.”

  Robert rubs his shoulder. “Did those kids have horns?”

  “Horns?” Hugo asks. “Oh. The bony protrusions. Yes, certain of the younger children here have bony protrusions. It was a statistically insignificant birth defect resulting from a previous phase I drug trial that their parents participated in.”

  “That seemed like a lot of kids with horns that just ran by.”

  Hugo shrugs. “Statistics,” he says.

  Hugo brings Robert to Jeremy, the leader of the guinea-piggers. Jeremy is a thin, haunted-looking man, with dark circles under his eyes and a sharp face. He’s the only other person in the storage facility that Robert has seen wearing a suit, though Jeremy’s is in bad shape, shabby and worn through in places, with a noticeable stain near the left breast. His office is in a double-wide storage unit filled with stacks and stacks of papers. “I’m sure that Hugo has told you what I expect in return,” Jeremy says.