by Calvin Baker
And like Lucifer, I knew, pride was my greatest sin. By fourteen I was perhaps worse than the devil, who only battled God over His heavenly throne. My war with Him was over creation.
I knew my fortune, though, in being able to choose a life I desired, and the values I would live by. I thought the best way to honor this was to be steadfast in them. I was no longer an idealist, but still tried to believe there was a life of the spirit. At times, sensing it when I listened to music, or read psalms alone on Easter. I left money sometimes for orphanages, for the homeless, for monks whenever I happened past a temple, glad to see their prayer flags chanting against the wind.
Devi left, and from the balcony I watched her make her way down the block toward the subway, her body swaying lightly beneath her printed sundress, the color of forsythia in April. I wondered at the mystery that compels us to feel our entire being awaken to one person and not another, alongside the remorse that the only thing the matter with the person in my bed was nothing to do with who she was, but only who she was not.
I already missed her human company, though, as she slipped away, and the familiarity that kept our affair going so long, the solidity of another person in the immaterial gloom.
As she vanished into the mouth of the subway, I wondered whether if I had said nothing, and let things take their natural course, we might have learned to be satisfied, second-guessing myself again as possible happiness, possible futures collapsed like light switches in an abandoned house with each step she took.
I understood then why the relationship had gone on so long: because I feared there was no such thing as lasting, unconditional love; or else, if there was, I would wake one morning only to find myself unable to fulfill its demands. Her yellow dress disappeared into the subway, and I watched as it swallowed her from my life, alone again and utterly free, as I used to be before I knew her.
4
When I checked my e-mail that morning, I was struck to receive an invitation to Schoeller Mitchell’s bachelor party. I knew him from college, as the man I least expected ever to marry. He embraced his debauchery with such zeal and openness, whenever I saw him the word corrupt always presented its naked syllables in my mind. The fact that he was finally committing himself to marriage was remarkable, even if it was a woman he’d once dismissed in the most graphic, vulgar terms.
“How did you meet?” A mutual friend had asked, after one of their early dates, at a West Village bar where we were gathered for drinks the last time I’d seen him.
“I was out with Rex, and she was walking down the street with her boyfriend.”
“And that didn’t deter you?”
“Survival of the fittest, my friend. I knew I was going to marry her.”
“You could not possibly have known that.”
“Of course I could. Let me show you a picture.”
The invitation announced it as the end of an era, which seemed a lucky enough thing for everyone except his future wife. He had organized his life until then unapologetically around self-indulgence, beginning soon after graduation. By the time everyone else had begun to buy houses and settle down, he had bought an Italian sports car with the money he made at his job in a bank.
Around the same time he had also volunteered for a program that helped train aid animals. Rex was a chocolate Labrador Retriever he was helping prepare for life as a seeing-eye dog, but for reasons that were less than admirable. Weekends he would cruise around with the dog in the passenger seat of the sports car, picking up women. “Oh, what a beautiful dog you have.” “Isn’t he? Unfortunately he doesn’t really belong to me. I’m only helping raise him for the Sisters of Mercy. As soon as you get attached, they’re gone, and you’re heartbroken every time. Rex is going to a blind eight-year-old in South America next week. I hardly know what I’ll do.” It was nausea-inducing to behold, but impressive for its sheer shamelessness. The only reason we were still friends was our shared history, and the fact that there were so few single men among those we knew.
“Why are you with her, if you do not respect her?” I asked, after hearing more about his new girlfriend than anyone who was not her lover should know.
“Weren’t you listening?” He flashed the picture again. “She has an Ivy League degree and screws like a porn star.”
“You are a callow man leading a superficial life,” I said.
He had been loyal enough, though, to invite me along with a group of our mutual friends to Rio for a final blowout. Whatever else, I was impressed by his optimism and resolve to follow after his instinct. As a general rule I tried to avoid weddings I did not think would survive and declined the invitation.
When I closed the message I realized I was the last bachelor among our friends. I thought about Devi again, and the other women from my past, worrying whether I should have simply chosen someone before thirty, because the heart is only brave early in life. Perhaps I was too coarsened by experience, and my desire to find someone was doomed.
I wasted the rest of the morning flâneuring through cyberspace, growing depressed as I scrolled through pictures of the past staring out from social media pages filled with spouses who might have been me; children who might have been my mine; all the victories, vicissitudes, and compromises of normal life. I decided, by the time I logged off, it was better to regret the past as I remembered it than google up the dead. The past was beyond reach.
I left the apartment, certain again in my decision trusting irrationally that love would somehow find me. But to help it along I also swore off the seductions of the Internet, where desire was reduced to the shallow present, in which you could not smell the perfume in the nest of a potential lover’s neck, or scent the summer of your first love, or catch a whiff of your future children.
I was still preoccupied with this as I stopped by the deli for my morning coffee, where Mr. Lee broke my reverie as I waited at the counter to pay.
“Harper,” he said, pulling me back from the forest of my thoughts, “why you lonely man?”
“Excuse me?”
“It’s Friday. Where Ms. Devi?”
“We broke up,” I told him.
“Why on Thursday I always see you with date, but every other morning always shop for one, breakfast for one, coffee for one. Why you don’t find good lady?” He leaned over the counter, lowering his voice and tapping the plastic-covered pressboard conspiratorially. “Make love. Make family. Make good life. Happy man.”
“It’s difficult,” I said.
“Difficult when you think. Easy when you do.” He made an inappropriate gesture, beaming with avuncular mischief.
He usually sat stoically behind his station, watching the customers come and go, and I did not know he even knew my name, let alone kept tabs on me or had a sense of humor. I thought to ask how it concerned him, but when I realized he saw my agitation that day, and meant it kindly, I took it as another sign, and waved goodbye with genuine goodwill and feigned happiness.
It was near noon, and I had other problems to worry about, as I went to the post office to pick up a package from Davidson, the director of the film I was writing, or had been writing until Davidson had a breakdown and disappeared to recover. He had only communicated sporadically the past three months, leaving the project and my days uncertain.
Despite whatever financial anxiety it provoked—if I stumbled making my way in the world there was no one but myself to fall back on—I stuck by him, because he had given me an opportunity when I had no experience, except a script I had written which was never made. I was thankful for the chance, and when you have worked with someone in that way you share a bond beyond gratitude, even with the rats who exploit goodwill in others, as well as the ordinary half-rats whose honor runs exactly as deep as self-interest.
Davidson was not a rat. He had talent, but he was also changeable and capricious in a manner that made him unknowable even before his breakdown. When I asked, during our first meeting to discuss the new project, why he had given me the job, he stared at the b
are white walls of his office and replied enigmatically, “After I left film school I went into the desert to discover the kinds of movies I wanted to make. For a month all I did was stare into the sand,” he motioned to the blank walls, “until I could no longer remember anything I had seen before the sand.”
I had no earthly idea what he meant.
“When I had rid myself of everything I had been taught, unlearned every way of seeing not my own, banished every inauthentic way of being, and burned away every single idea that did not rise from my own self, I began to construct a master canon, frame by frame. Whatever rose up from my gut after that belonged to me, and I would serve it. Everything I have done since came from that reel I made in the desert.”
I thought I got it. “Where do I fit in?”
“When we met I asked my gut, ‘Boss, what do you make of this character?’ And my gut replied, ‘Boss, give the guy a shot.’”
Which is to say, I should not have been surprised he had gone off the grid and no one knew where he was. But the uncertainty was enervating. The only advantage of the situation had been to allow me to structure my days as I chose.
To keep sane as I waited to see what would happen to the project, I simply kept working. Usually in a café in the East Village, or the Rose Room at the library, or, when the weather was fair, the garden of the Goethe Society, in an old mansion uptown.
At the post office that day I was relieved to find a thick packet, which obviously contained a manuscript, and I thought the last version of the script had finally been approved. I headed uptown to the Rose Room to read.
On the way to the train, one of the shopgirls smiled at me as she raised the metal gate on her boutique. Her smile buoyed my spirits, but I reminded myself how much time could be wasted chasing phantoms and ghosts. Still it made me feel less miserable after the bust-up with Devi.
At the library I found a seat and settled in with my laptop before opening the envelope, which was postmarked Paris, instead of Rome as the last one had been. I did not make much of it until I saw the note inside, telling me he wanted to scratch the project.
I should have seen it coming, and in fact had seen it coming, but had denied the evidence to myself, so was that much more angered and dejected. But as I began typing a tensely worded two-page letter, it occurred to me I might have deserved it for allowing things with Devi to go so long in an unresolved state.
It was only after I had saved the letter to my drafts folder that I read the rest of Davidson’s note, and saw the pages in the envelope were not the last version of our script, but a play he had seen in Paris. He wanted to make an adaptation, and asked if I would be interested.
It was an interracial love affair set in the banlieues outside Paris, but, as I flipped through it, I thought it was only Davidson being fickle, and the project would eventually evaporate, just as the last one had. The play was translated as When You Are Weary, and he had scrawled a list of famous rappers he wanted to consider for the lead.
“On film it should be Breathless meets The Wire, with a hot soundtrack,” he’d written. I could not tell whether he was serious or not—he was pitching—and tried to suppress my sense of outrage at the wasted work I had put into the other project while he flitted around the world like a dilettante.
Inside the package were also several black-and-white stills from the original play to help me visualize what he had seen, but, as I rifled through the photos, I could not imagine what Davidson had in his head, which only increased my pique at him for dropping the other project. I was also having trouble moving beyond the neurotic meanings that would shade everything when it was put on film, and added to my mental notes that in the raced version the betrayal would seem to be because they were an interracial couple.
I was keeping a pretty good list of other things to be pissed about as well, when my computer chimed and I looked up to see an instant message on the screen.
“Sorry,” I wrote, mortified when I realized instead of saving the draft I had sent him my unedited thoughts. The damage was done, in any case, but I at least had the satisfaction of speaking my mind, even if it sabotaged me. I could live with that, taking my slip to mean I should just have done with the whole enterprise.
Davidson was all business, though, and ignored the apology, which was clearly insincere. “Thank you for sharing your feelings, my friend. The entire point of the original was how existentially cool Belmondo was—as a crook, a lover, un type—right down to the bullet in his back. Other than that it’s just a love story, baby. Simple, sweet, tragic. Write it like that.
“He knows about death, in a country that has just lost a generation of its men. She does not. Any other politics are outside, in the tabloids, not inside, where these things, if they are true, tell us about our own world. If it is a shallow desire for the forbidden, it is vulgar if they know it, a petty infatuation if they do not. If it is the signal that goes off inside you it is poetic. If it is profound and real despite great barriers it is ill starred. If they surmount them, heroic. If it is love of the spirit and they cannot achieve it in the world, it is tragedy. Just tell the truth. What could be simpler, and what could be harder?”
He had the upper hand, and not only because he was right, leaving me dangling above the abyss of my own chagrin. Before he signed off, he told me to think about whether I wanted to be part of the project. I was chastened and told him I would read it again, and reply the next week.
“Let’s meet for lunch in person, once you’ve finished,” he wrote.
“When will you be back?” I asked.
“Here in Paris,” he replied.
I did not want to go to Paris, but felt obliged, and said I would get in touch. My gut told me I was going to get fired in person.
When our instant chat ended I continued to rifle through the material, realizing all of a sudden why Davidson had been drawn to the play. It had been an all-female cast, and as I pored over the photos, I was not sure which of them he was sleeping with, but was positive he was dating at least one of them. He was that way.
I had planned to go to a party that night with my friend Nell, who produced a popular television show, but as I headed home, I no longer felt like going out. The day was jinxed. I called to tell her, mentioning in passing I had broken up with Devi that morning.
When Nell heard this she was even more adamant that I come out. “You were still dating Doctor Perfect? You know there was no connection there. Now let it go. Stop worrying, and come to the party.” She promised an interesting, beautiful crowd. I was too anxious about work and my conversation with Davidson, however, and bowed out. Instead I spent the evening alone in my empty apartment, making reservations for Paris, to get fired.
5
Despite my misgivings I flew to France two weeks later to meet Davidson, whom I had not heard from again since our chat, and was anxious of what to expect. When I arrived at my hotel there was a message from him at reception, asking that I call as soon as I arrived.
It was still midmorning, and after showering and an hour-long nap, I telephoned the number he had left. When he answered I was relieved to find he was in as good a mood as I had ever witnessed, and invited me to a dinner that evening with a group of actors he had befriended.
It was still light out when I joined them at nine o’clock around a long sidewalk table, not far from the Barbès station. There was a great communal feeling around the table, a mood of perfect naturalness woven through with joy and laughter. An hour later the summer sun was just starting to set, backlighting the gritty streets, and our meal had barely begun.
By the time the dishes were finally cleared it was long after midnight, but our gathering showed no signs of ending, as Davidson ordered Champagne. Several people drifted off after the bottle, but the five of us who remained continued debating, gossiping, laughing around the candles under the streetlights.
When the fifth man left, Davidson was chatting up a dark-haired beauty named Genevieve with quick, hazelnut eyes. Her friend, a
bourgeoise girl called Florin, had mesmerizing, Athena-gray irises and was fashionably dressed in designer clothes. She was full of whatever she read on the Internet, though, repeating headlines and opinions almost verbatim, which were never as witty or informed as she thought. I did my best to be companionable, even if I was irked by her received opinions; and not because I found those who expressed received opinions and tastes thin-souled, but because they set me on edge as being capable of believing anything that had sufficient followers, and frightened me in the same way crowds at sporting events did, as the peacetime expression of the same latent impulse that caused political mobs.
I also happened to be jealous of Davidson, whose companion seemed fascinating and sparkling with life. I thought to leave, but he seemed transfixed by her, and if I left it would ruin the balance. I tried to be a good sport, making a diminishing effort to engage Florin, as Genevieve leaned attentively toward Davidson while he regaled her with his adventures, and neither of them paid much mind when I tried to interject in the conversation.
I fingered my glass, and humored Florin, masking my boredom, as my attention began visibly wandering when she started talking at length about her problems, and then how great she was, and name-dropping the important people she allegedly knew, and besides that whatever the newspapers said. Her eyes were captivating, though, and I focused on them until their gray mystery turned to ash.
Davidson ordered more Champagne, and I scanned the street, longing to leave, until I had grown sullen. As the darkness deepened I checked my watch, and began motioning to begin my escape, before I became too irritated and unsociable. It was then Genevieve suddenly put her hand on top of mine.
