Look, you really have to get out of here, he told himself, and you have to do it without waking Heather. When he lifted the corner of the comforter to slide his left leg free and following that, his right, Heather mumbled something that might have been, –Work ethic, and moved spasmodically toward his side of the bed, resettling herself. He held his breath until he was almost sure that she was asleep before completing his journey from bed to floor. A misjudged move ended with him rolling on to the carpet with a painful thump, his left elbow taking the brunt of the fall.
He lay where he had fallen, listening to Heather shuffle about on the bed, wondering if he had damaged himself in any notable way. He couldn’t be sure but he had the sneaking suspicion that he was lying on his shoes.
—
This woman of a certain age, one of the faculty wives perhaps, gets B into a corner and insists on telling him about her marriage. –We fucked once, she says, in the 27 years we’ve been married and I have twins to show for it. I’d say that was efficiency, wouldn’t you?
–I see, B says, looking around the room for Y whose hand he thinks he notices emerging through the crowd to grab an hors d’oeuvre from the center table.
–You don’t know anything about it, the woman says. How can you possibly? I’m the only one in the world that knows what it’s like to have been in this marriage.
–I hear what you’re saying, B says. Still, it’s hard to believe that in all the time you and your husband, the dean (the name eludes him) have been together, you’ve only slept with him once.
–Now you’re being overly literal, she says. There may have been as many as three sexual encounters between us in the years we’ve lived together and I’ve conveniently forgotten two of them
–Uh huh, B says, only half listening. I probably should get myself another drink.
–Take mine, she says, exchanging glasses with him. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? B clears his throat.
–How often do you and your wife have sex? she asks, leaning into him as if she means to pass her words from mouth to mouth. B hesitates, flees the room with Y in tow on the playing fields of the imagination.
–If you’d rather not say, I understand, she says. Still and all, I’d be willing to bet it’s more than three times in thirty years.
–My wife and I have separated, B says. Recently.
–Good for her, the woman says. Or maybe you’re the one who did the leaving. Which is it? You’re probably too much of a gentleman to say. I don’t meant to be forward which you’d know was not my style if you knew me better, but if you’re looking to get out of here which I suspect you are we could continue our tête à tête at my house, which is a stroll from the college.
–I don’t know, B says.
–It doesn’t matter to me one way or another what you decide, she says. So please, I’m asking this as a favor, don’t take my feelings into consideration. Please make your decision on coming to my place solely on what it flatters you to do.
–Thank you for the invitation, B says, but I’m here with someone. An abrupt desperate glance at the dwindling group of celebrants in the room gives the lie to that assertion.
—
Although the snow was falling in almost invisible flurries, the stuff was sticking to the ground, was accumulating more quickly than he would have supposed. Last time B checked his watch his son was 10 minutes late. He held up his wrist to the streetlight, but it was hard to make out the time through the glaze of snow. He thought of going indoors, but his son would be showing up at any moment and so it seemed best to keep vigil at the appointed spot.
Dusted with snow, the people arriving at the Garden mostly in groups of two seemed ghostlike and B had the sense of recognizing one or another from some forgotten past with only the vaguest sense of their occasion in his life. Of course New York was full of people you had met—at parties, at theaters, at movies, at concerts, at sporting events, at supermarkets even—without having exchanged a word or shaken a hand.
A woman went by (with three younger women) who looked like someone he had once met at a meeting of a group called Heartbreak Anonymous. He whispered her name, Helena, to her back as she passed and though she went on without turning his way, he sensed from her body language that some connection had been made.
A burly man he was sure he didn’t know stopped in front of B and said to him, –Aren’t you...? I just want to say the city needs more people like you. The man, who was redfaced and may have been slightly drunk, shook his hand vigorously then hurried away.
A woman he did know, a former student from years back, said hello as she ambled by with her boyfriend or husband, then returned to say she had enjoyed the two classes she took with him but there were times she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. It made her feel stupid, she said, which was not good for her self-esteem.
Then he was sure he heard his son’s voice, saying, –Dad, sorry, and he excused himself to the former student, still wondering what he might have said that was beyond her comprehension, and turned in the direction of his son’s voice, the swirling snow blinding B momentarily.
–I thought we’d have dinner first, B said to the approaching ghost. But the snow-dusted figure hardly looked at him as he flurried by, muttering something to himself that sounded like –Fuck- all, though of course it could have been anything.
—
B walks two blocks in the heavy rain-bordering-on-hail with the redheaded Cassandra Lutz at his side. –I have something to ask you, she says, whispering into his bad ear. What’s your sign?
–My sign? You mean my astrological sign, don’t you? I used to know it. If you tell me what signs there are, I’m sure it’ll come back to me.
–Tell me your birth date and I’ll tell you what your sign is, she says. That’s an easier way of doing it.
His birth date is part of the public record but for some incomprehensible reason he feels the need to guard this information.
–It’s not something I put much credence in, he says. Astrological readings. Can’t we just let the matter drop?
–Everyone says that until I’ve done a reading for them, she says. This is not going to hurt, I promise you, okay? You’ll be surprised at how much you learn about yourself. I have a reputation for doing the most empowering readings in the business.
–I don’t doubt your skill, he says. I’m just not interested.
–Your close-minded stubbornness tells me that you’re either a Scorpio or an Aries, she says. You could also be a Leo, though I wouldn’t bet on it.
At this point they get into an excessively polite argument, which evolves into a shouting match as if they were some long term dysfunctional married couple, standing on a street corner in the rain with nowhere to go that would make a difference. Cassandra’s parting remark as she storms off is, –And I was just beginning to feel attracted to you.
—
–Don’t you know how attracted I am to you, Penny says. She is lying on top of B fully clothed in the back seat of his rented Dodge Polara parked on a semi-dark corner of a dead end street. He imagines the look of astonishment on the face of someone—a cop perhaps shining a flashlight in the window—observing them. Of course sometimes imagination dovetails with reality. Someone does tap at the window just as Penny has reached inside his fly to take his member (of an inexclusive club) in her humid hand. In short order his fly is rezipped and B is sitting up, his edgy attention directed at the window at which the tapping sound appeared. The tap does not repeat and B, disentangling himself, feels the need to feign innocence, a precaution directed from childhood memories of humiliation. An uneventful minute passes before B thinks to unroll the window.
–It’s just kids, Penny says, but B remains wary despite the fact that whoever interrupted them is gone.
–Why don’t we go to my hotel room? he says.
–I don’t know, she says. It just seems like so much trouble. It’s fine here, it really is. She unzips his fly and goes down on h
im, his shoulder cramped against an arm rest. B warily accedes to pleasure, his shoulder aching in counterpoint, while dangerous shadows surround their fragile sanctuary.
—
His father, carrying a pint of something in a brown paper bag, hurrying by B’s parked car, stops in his tracks to glance at B slumped down behind the wheel. –If your car won’t start, you can borrow mine, he says. What are you doing sitting there by yourself like that? I thought you had to be at school.
B turns the key and his old Saab bursts into voice. As he pulls out of the space, he electronically slides down the driver-side window and he waves to his father. –I’ll call you, Dad, he says. As he reaches the stop sign at the corner and looks back through the rear view mirror, he sees his father, frozen in place, shaking his head in disapproval as if it were a replay of some unremembered scene from childhood. On the drive back, an idea for a story blows into his head in which a grown man, returning from an extended trip, arrives home to find himself as a child, sitting cross-legged on the floor waiting anxiously for his father’s return.
—
B hadn’t expected to see her again, had barely thought of Gladys Fleur since his disastrous performance at the Femmes Club but there she was (smaller than life) waiting on line to buy a ticket at the Angelica Film Complex.
He called her name. –Gladys, Gladys Fleur, and she looked at him without a stir of recognition, offering an embarrassed smile in compensation.
–Yes? she said, squinting.
–Are you alone? he asked her.
–I don’t know if that’s any of your business, she said in that severe voice he remembered from their first conversation on the phone.
–I can see you don’t remember me, he said, moving alongside her as if he were her partner in line. I spoke at a Femmes Club meeting about three months ago and made such a mess of things you had to lead me out the back way for my protection. If you knew me better, you would know I was not as incorrigible as I seemed that night. At this point they were almost at the cashier’s box and Gladys’s usually impassive face seemed virtually carved in stone.
–Incorrigible is a fancy word, she said. I would have used the more down to earth “asshole” in its place. Turning away from him, she requested a ticket for the very movie he had also come to see, which reignited his fantasy about their secret affinity.
She was already out of the picture by the time he purchased his ticket, but moments later he found himself, although he had willfully kept his distance, three steps behind her on the escalator going up to the third level. His feelings wounded by her rebuff, he decided to honor her wish to be alone (or at least unencumbered by his presence). Not wanting to give the impression of dogging her steps, he went into the Men’s room and washed his hands, making every effort to avoid looking at the tormented face in the mirror, which persisted in catching his eye.
He dawdled at the door to the theater, bent over twice to adjust the tie on his left shoe. Several filmgoers and three minutes passed before he made his delayed entrance. The house lights were dimming as he opened the door and a coming attraction for a whimsical British comedy was unfolding on the screen. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the semi-darkness—the theater about half full—before moving confidently down the aisle. Someone bumped him from behind. –Hey, he complained.
–You’re so slow, a voice whispered, and perhaps it was his fault, the incidental contact, for stopping abruptly. A second somewhat more aggressive bump followed the first. Feeling mildly aggrieved, he willed himself not to turn, not to confront his ostensible assailant, focusing instead on choosing a seat on the aisle a few rows from the screen. As soon as he had crossed his legs, he had to uncross them and get up to let the person behind enter his row. During this transaction, he resisted glancing at the woman sliding by him, though he couldn’t help but be aware she had slipped into the seat immediately next to his.
A voice whispered to him during the closure of the second coming attraction. –I have no idea what came over me that time, she seemed to say, emphasizing the word time. They had kissed in the corridors of the Fort Hamilton Armory and then she had slapped his face. He wondered, reaching for her hand, to which of those gestures her apology (if that’s what it was) referred.
—
It was a few minutes past One a.m. in the new year when they got to Debby’s apartment, B wondering how he might break his promise to sleep with her without seeming to go back on his word. When Debby said, –You don’t have to, you know, if you don’t want to, his feelings in the matter did a 360-degree turn. It was not that he didn’t want to fuck her, but some moral compunction gave him pause. She was after all the daughter of the first woman he had ever loved.
Debby took off her clothes while B watched shyly, his eyes partially averted. –What you see is what you get, she said or, as the case may be, don’t get. B went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He noted that Debby had an electric tooth brush and he elected to use his finger instead.
When he emerged—he had also undressed down to his briefs in the bathroom—Debbie was submerged under the covers, a thin white blanket over her head.
–What’s going on? he asked her, moving around to the unoccupied side of the bed, shivering slightly in the overheated room. The blanket muffled whatever it was she had to say.
–Got you sucker, it might have been as he made his way under the covers. A nervous laugh ruffled the white blanket. He lifted the cover as though it was an upside down veil and kissed her, missing her mouth by no more than an inch.
—
His inquisitor was an intense woman with touched-up blond hair somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-five.
Q: Do you mind if I leave the tape machine on during our discussion. I don’t do shorthand and my memory, so they tell me, is not the greatest.
B: Actually, I do mind. I’m sorry to be so difficult, but I get selfconscious when I know I’m being recorded.
Q: Why don’t we talk awhile with the machine off and when you get comfortable, when I can see that you’re comfortable I’ll turn it on. Okay?
B: I’d prefer that you didn’t.
Q: I just don’t want to run the risk of misquoting you. Okay? Let me say before we start, though I admire your work, as a woman and a feminist, there are certain things in your books that I find objectionable.
B is about to say something that might confirm her worst opinion of him, though instead he offers an apologetic shrug. The tape registers 20 seconds of silence.
Q: Let me play devil’s advocate for a moment if I may. If your books don’t seem real to the reader, why should he bother reading them?
B: I think the devil would be pleased at how well you’re representing him.
Q: No, seriously. Isn’t it the illusion that we are participating in a real world, one that is less humdrum than the one we live in that attracts most readers to the novel?
B: I can’t speak for most readers. I write novels that someone like myself might want to read. Novels that frankly confess themselves to be pieces of fabrication and that don’t try to deceive an unwary reader into believing otherwise.
Q: I don’t see you as a writer who writes consciously out of personal experience, though marriage and divorce seem a recurrent issue in your work and also, from the biographical data available, in your life.
B: I avoid writing out of my life as much as I can, but what else is there. I mean it draws on you if you refuse to draw on it. Generally, I’m more comfortable with what appears to be invented material. If I know in advance what’s going to happen, I tend to lose interest. Whatever my intentions for a work, the unconscious is always skulking around, insisting on its prerogatives.
Q: In your most recent book, An Unauthorized Life, you create a character whose biographical information resembles your own though is different in certain verifiable respects. It seems to me the point you’re making is that all biography is fictitious to some extent and that fiction, if it’s doing its job, needs to be true in
its own way. Does what I’m saying mean anything to you?
B: The character in An Unauthorized Life was intended as a shadow self, a worse and better alternative with whom I happen to share certain experiences in broad outline. Of course, the same thing might be said about my relationship to the central figures in my other books.
Q: Madame Bovary, c’est moi?
B: If you will.
Q: Are you one of those writers who objects to readers who don’t respond to him on the highest levels?
B: When you put it that way, I can only say I hope not. I see myself at least in part as an entertainer and sometimes even as a frustrated stand-up comic. Of course my limited readership indicates that this is not a widely shared opinion.
Q: Well, a number of my expectations for this interview have been deflated. I had heard that you would be difficult and so far, except for the business about the mike, you’ve been a pussycat. I was also told, I won’t mention by who, that you would make a pass at me before the interview was done. That seemed possible because your alter-ego in An Unauthorized Life would probably have done as much in a comparable situation. In fact, in real life so to speak, you’ve been a perfect gentleman.
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