by Nic Kelman
You will let her dress you, let her teach you new dances, take you to new clubs, new bars, because even though you know it does not really matter, it matters to her. You will let her take you to a dirty Thai restaurant that has mediocre food and when she says, “How is it?” you will say, “Great,” and she’ll say, “I told you!” and you’ll leave it at that because you can’t explain and you’d rather she was happy and ignorant than informed and miserable. In fact it is because of this very quality that you are drawn to her and those like her and why you can never be with one too long. Because then they become like you, when they become informed, they become tired like you, jaded. But when they still do not yet understand the world, they can still remind you of joy. They are little bundles of joy, they are. You can live your life through them even though you are dead. These little bundles of joy in string bikinis who are not too tired to go parasailing, still thrilled at the prospect of skydiving, who have not yet discovered that there is nothing worth discovering. You want to possess them, yes. But like a spirit, not an owner.
“‘Even as Phoibos Apollo is taking away my Chryseis . . . I shall take the fair-cheeked Briseis, your prize . . . that you may learn well how much greater I am than you . . . ”’ — Agamemnon to Achilles, Iliad 1:182
We smile when they tell us we don’t know anything and that we understand even less.
Smile when they berate us for being boring, for wanting nothing more than to sit still when we have a moment in which we do not need to work, despite the money and the toys we have, the money and the toys we always dreamed of. “We could do anything,” they say. “Fly to China for the weekend, race cars, anything, and all you want to do is sit there and watch the largest television I’ve ever seen.” Yes that is all we want but not all we wanted. The energy is gone for all else, gone, and they should be thankful for that because that is why we need them, that is why they make us tremble, that is why we smile at them and say nothing, because they are our energy now, they have the energy we have spent elsewhere, we need them to get us up off the couch because without them, a moment’s peace would be enough.
Smile, find it charming when they’re impressed by what used to impress us — champagne, private jets, expensive cigarettes — again, we need them for that. Without them we have done all this for nothing.
What did even the gods themselves prize above all other sacrifices?
What was the only thing that even they could take only once?
You always asked me those questions. Before we knew we were getting divorced, before you opened the note from Daniel’s daughter, before your friend saw me in Seattle with that undergraduate that had attended my lecture. You asked me one of those questions on our very first date. “God, those things are so fake! I think that’s so unattractive, don’t you?” you asked.
Even if you had put it differently, I would have known the answer. Your small cup and push-up bra told me what you wanted me to say. “Oh, absolutely,” I said even though I liked the waitress’s breasts. Did you need to ask me that? Saying nothing at all would have been better. Then I never would have been forced to put the lie into words, then at least some kind of ambiguity would have remained.
Yet those early ones were always easy. I knew what to say if you asked me if you looked fat, if a skirt looked good, if you could get away with those boots. But the longer we knew each other, the more times we had sex, the more and more difficult they grew.
There was the phase you went through when you made a point of staring at other men when I was talking to you. It made you so angry when I looked at other women you thought you’d show me what it was like. But when I didn’t react, you became even more furious. “Why don’t you care? If you loved me, you’d care,” you yelled at me. That was the first question I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t understand why it wouldn’t be possible for me to love you and trust you.
But there were many more after that, many more questions I didn’t know how to answer, questions you always asked me after sex, questions that had obviously been poisoning your mind for days, for weeks. Questions like, “If I brought another girl home with me, would you sleep with her?” Questions like, “If I was kidnapped, how long would you wait before you slept with someone else?” Questions like, “How much do you love me?”
After the first one, after I said, “Well I guess if you brought her home with you I would,” after you refused to return my calls for a week, I learned very quickly what I was supposed to do if I wanted you to stay with me. I learned very quickly that even when I kept no secrets from you, you still didn’t want to hear the truth.
Where did those questions come from? From fears or expectations or both or something else entirely? Why did you ask me those questions if you didn’t want to hear the answers? Why did you teach me to lie to you?
In Turkish the term is chitter-chitter, which means “freshly baked,” “ready to eat.” In Japanese, hatsuikuzakari no bi, meaning “the blossoming beauty of a girl in the midst of developing.” In Afrikaans, hoë ouderdom, which means “the riper, the better.” In Seri Indian it is ziix cëima, which translates as “body that has happened,” ziix being otherwise used primarily to refer to corpses or “bodies that are no longer happening.” In Urdu it is. . .
It is somebody’s birthday, you’re not sure whose. Maybe the fat blonde with the irritating cackle, maybe the German designer fresh out of school. You move from cab to cab and bar to bar, a swarm of cocktail-devouring bankers and consultants and IT pros. Everywhere the air is thick, visible. Now and then you find yourself wondering if the little table candles could cause it to ignite. Now and then you imagine a firestorm sterilizing the bar. You imagine this, now and then, even though you know the haze is evaporated sweat, even though you know evaporated sweat cannot catch fire.
Except tonight is not like other nights. Tonight your girlfriend is with you. You have been seeing her for some time, a few years. Perhaps more, perhaps slightly less. You think you know her quite well. You know she likes brioche. You know she claims to be better at chess than she is. You know her sense of humor is more vulgar than you’d like. You know she tells her older brother things she does not tell you. You know you find her looking in the mirror sometimes — frozen, toothbrush in hand, mouth full of foam — and when she sees you behind her she stops looking and begins to brush once more. Usually if the two of you are out and not out “on a date,” she goes out with her friends and you go out with yours. But tonight all her friends are busy. So here she is, with you, asking you who people are, telling you to introduce her.
Tonight is also not like other nights because you arranged to meet an old high school friend at one of the bars. A “we should get together sometime” that somehow became specific. And sure enough, as if conjured, as if your cell phone communicated with another world, he appears at the appointed place and time.
He does not need to force his way through the crowd, it parts before him. You never forgot he was a linebacker in high school but over the years, in your memory, he had grown smaller. It was only high school, after all. But as the people at the bar make room for him you realize that, of course, he must have continued to grow even though you were not there to see it. You wonder how he managed to get in wearing blue jeans.
“There he is,” you say to your girlfriend. “Come on — I want you to meet him.” The two of you excuse yourselves from the area your group has staked out, “prime real estate” as one friend would call it because you can see the front door. As your girlfriend uncrosses her legs, stands up, she watches some Italian friend of a friend. His eyes are fastened on her in turn, but below her waist.
“I do believe Paolo was just trying to see my panties,” she says to you. She’s very good with names, your girlfriend, even after a couple of Cosmos.
“Who’s Paolo?” you ask as you begin to shove your way through the crowd, shoulder first. Dragged behind you, in your wake, she does not answer. She knows you don’t really care who Paolo is.
The peo
ple at the bar make room for you after you slap your friend’s broad back and he turns around. As if surrounded by a magnetic field his rotation pushes back everything around him. Out of the corner of your eye you can see your girlfriend is surprised that this was once a close friend of yours. He has a very different look from your friends now, a look less at home here than in Irish pubs with sticky floors and broken dartboards.
She stands by patiently while the two of you spread your arms wide, yell, “Heyyyyy!” and begin to shake hands. You think the better of it and draw him down to you for a hug. Your clasped hands remaining between you, the embrace is awkward.
You look at your girlfriend after you release each other, as he straightens up. Now she is expectant.
“Penny, Clay. Clay, Penny,” you say as they look at each other. They shake hands.
“Nice to meet you,” says Clay.
“Likewise,” says Penny. She greets him as she has not greeted anyone so far. It’s not that she doesn’t like your friends or that she’s shy. It’s just that she has her friends and you have yours and that’s the way she’d like it to stay. So throughout the introductions she has been reserved, if curious. But with Clay, the right corner of her mouth turns up a little; with Clay, she lowers her head slightly, causing herself to look at him with upturned eyes. “I hear you’re a cop,” she adds.
“That’s my story and I’m sticking to it,” he says with a smile. He raises his pint to her and takes a sip. She actually laughs.
“Neat,” she says.
The three of you head back to the booths near the wall. You try to keep Clay as far as possible from the irritating blonde but you cannot escape her laugh. Once you get past the catching up, once Penny has gathered a satisfactory number of embarrassing stories about you, once she is familiar enough with him, her questions become bold.
“What kinds of guns have you used,” she asks, “have you ever used a machine gun?” “Have you ever had to tackle anyone on the street?” “Do they really have the toilets right there in the cells?” she asks. “If they do, I could definitely never go to prison.”
You consider saying something to her, whispering to her to cut it out when he talks to the waitress, goes to the men’s room, but you decide not to. He doesn’t seem to mind the celebrity, doesn’t seem to mind being exotic. Besides, she wouldn’t listen anyway.
Unable to avoid your area of expertise, you are drawn into a conversation near you, a conversation about trade-agreement trends. As you talk, you glance over at your girlfriend every now and then. You can’t hear what she’s saying but she’s laughing a lot, touching your friend a lot, poking his stomach a lot. Even from where you’re sitting, you can see her fingers meet resistance. He must have the time to work out every day. Her eyes flicker to his mouth when he talks and move over his chest, his biceps, when she thinks he isn’t looking, when he reaches out for his drink or watches someone walk by. On the inside of his left arm, you notice, he has the kind of scar you cannot get from falling off a horse or a boat.
And yet you discover you are not jealous. Instead, as the mousy woman next to you drones on about the dissolution of OPEC, you find yourself imagining your girlfriend going down on him, imagining the two of them in a bathroom here, your girlfriend squatting before him, legs spread, miniskirt hiked up, one hand in her panties, the other around his cock. The last time you were here, a few months ago, just the two of you alone, she blew you there like that. The bathrooms are single occupancy and when she led you back to the bar there was a long line of surprised people for her to giggle her way past. You discover that, instead of making you jealous, their flirtation is turning you on.
The conversation over, you rejoin them. Penny is trying to explain what she does for a living. You’re pretty sure Clay doesn’t understand completely but you could be wrong. You seem to remember he did pretty well in school, seem to remember something about the police academy entrance exam being significantly harder than most people think it is.
You continue to talk. Sometimes other people from your group join you, say, “Really?” when you tell them what Clay does.
It gets late, people leave, your group dwindles. The blonde shrieks as she stumbles on the steps down to the street. Through the window near your booth you can see her telling everyone outside she’s OK. Now none of you can remember what you were talking about only a moment ago. You and Clay take sips of your beers. With her elbows, your girlfriend leans heavily on the table, plays with a swizzle stick that was left behind. She moves the tip this way and that, studies its motion. Concentrating hard, she drags tiny pools of spilled liquid out over the glass then pushes them back together. Suddenly, before you can stop her, she looks at Clay and asks, “Have you ever killed anyone?”
You have been wondering the same thing all night yet you still say, “Penny!”
“Sorry,” she says right away, “sorry. Shouldn’t have asked that — it’s serious, I know . . . sorry . . . ”
“No, that’s OK,” says Clay with a shrug. But he doesn’t answer.
“ooop!” says Penny. “I need the little girl’s room — excuse me . . . ” Not without effort she stands up to exit the semicircular booth. Instead of getting up, Clay slides as far back as he can to let her by. When she squeezes past, her ass almost touches his face. You watch him watch her find her way through the bar, through the French rap bouncing off the retro plastic chairs. You are about to say something but the waitress appears.
“Last call, guys. . . ,” she says.
“Shit,” says Clay. “What time is it?”
“About four,” you say. “Why?” The waitress stands there looking back and forth between you.
“Sorry,” Clay says to the waitress, “I think we’re good, right?” He looks at you.
“Yes, thank you — we’re fine — I’ll close out my tab.”
“OK,” she says and disappears.
“What’s the matter?” you ask, concerned. He is looking at a small piece of paper he has just taken out of his wallet.
“I think I missed the last train,” he says.
“Oh,” you say, relieved. “Don’t worry about that! You can stay with us!”
“Really?” he says. “You don’t mind?”
“No — not at all — don’t be silly — of course! We have a guest room — it’s no problem, really.”
“OK,” he says. “Thanks man.”
“No problem,” you say, raising your glass to him. “What are old friends for?”
“Hey guys, what’s up?” asks your girlfriend, returned. She scoots into the booth next to Clay, perching on the end of the seat.
“Time to go,” you say.
“Awww,” she says pouting, looking at Clay, “I was just beginning to enjoy myself. . . .” She smiles. You haven’t seen her act like this in a long time, possibly since you met. You find yourself wondering if she’s like this when she’s out with her friends. They’re all beautiful, they must get hit on all the time. The waitress brings the check as Clay adds, “I’m staying over, I hope that’s OK. . . .”
Penny glances at you as you sign the little slips of paper then looks back at your friend and answers, “Of course, don’t be silly — we have a spare room.”
While you hail the cab, they continue to talk. You can’t hear what they’re saying but as the cab pulls up you hear Penny chuckling again. “You’re bad,” she says as they walk over.
Clay sits up front, there isn’t enough space for the three of you in back. After you give the driver your address, Penny slides up close to you and whispers, “I can’t wait to get you home.” She begins kissing your neck with an open mouth but no tongue, begins rubbing your cock through your pants. You can’t help pinching her nipples through her thin silk blouse. You glance up every now and then to see if Clay is looking. Not that you know how you’d feel if he was, embarrassed or excited, you just know you have to look. But he never turns around. He just stares out the window, light sliding across his face, slithering over the bridg
e of his nose. But you still grab your girlfriend’s wrist when she starts to undo your zipper.
When you open the door to your apartment, your dog is right there. He leaps up at you and Penny and then circles Clay, sniffing the cuffs of his pants before leaping up at him too. Clay squats down and rubs the scruff of the dog’s neck with both hands. “What’s his name?” he asks.
“He’s a Pharaoh Hound,” you say, “purebreed . . . his name’s Romulus.”
“I’ll just get your room ready,” Penny says, folding her shawl over a chair near the door, disappearing into the apartment.
While you wait for her, you show Clay the investments you and Penny have made together. The dog follows at your heels. Wherever you stop he sits and looks up at Clay hopefully. Clay listens without comment as you catalog the designers and painters in your house. He sits in a Corbusier when you tell him to, nods when you say, “Isn’t it comfortable?” When you tell him how much you paid for the minor Pollock you picked up at auction he raises his eyebrows. “I know,” you say, “can you believe it? Of course, it’s not a well-cataloged piece, but still. . . ” At the window, he says, “Great view.” He picks up a photo from the mantel and studies it.
“That’s me and Penny and Penny’s parents on her dad’s boat. Near Corfu, I think,” you say. Nobody uses the word “yacht” anymore. In the photograph, Penny wears a bikini.
“I look so fat in that picture,” she says from behind you. Clay replaces the frame.
“All set?” you ask.
“Yup,” she says.
“Great,” you say. “Come on, I’ll show you where you’re sleeping.”
“This is great,” he says when he sees the room, “thanks, guys.”
“You’re welcome,” says Penny. “You know where the bathroom is. . . .”
“And the kitchen,” you add, “help yourself if you want anything — mi casa es tu casa. . . .”
“Cool — great, thanks,” he says again, sitting on the edge of the bed.
“Good night,” you say. As you begin to close the door, the dog shoots through between your legs, squeezes into the room. You open the door again.
