Alternatives to Sex

by Stephen McCauley

  Didier’s building turned out to be a couple of short blocks from Edward’s. It was an old factory that had been converted into famously expensive apartments. Whenever I’d tried to imagine where Didier lived, I’d pictured a small studio with heavy drapes and dusty antique carpets, ashtrays heaped with cigarette butts, and the smell of sex clinging to the upholstery. I was shocked when Didier opened the door to his apartment and I saw behind him a wall of windows blazing with the lights from nearby buildings and reflected up from the street, five stories below. He gave me a series of right-cheek, left-cheek pecks and welcomed me in. “What is this outfit, Mr. Collins? You’ve come directly from work?”

  “A funeral,” I said quickly. “I didn’t have time to change.”

  “My mother will be impressed. She loves death.”

  Although I generally prefer small, even cramped rooms, I was dazzled by the bright expansiveness of his place, the high ceilings, and polished walnut floor. Far from being cluttered and dusty, it was a masterpiece of midcentury understatement and was so crisp and expensive, I thought I must be imagining the whole scene. I complimented him on his taste and his tidiness, although it seemed highly unlikely he’d done either the decorating or the cleaning.

  “Yes, Mr. Collins, I know. You thought I lived in a terrible little hovel with no windows and cigarettes and perfume that smells like animals. You thought I was ashamed of how terrible it was. But instead, I was maybe a little ashamed that it was so nice.”

  He led me into the living room, and there, sitting on a classic piece of Le Corbusier leather and metal, was a golden-haired woman he introduced, unapologetically, as “Mrs. Didier.”

  “C’est M. Collins,” he said. “Le type que je t’ai décrit.”

  I understood enough to get that at least I’d been mentioned to the matriarch.

  “Enchanté, madame,” I said and shook her hand. I then added the one sentence in French I can speak with a semblance of fluency: “Je m’excuse de mon français. C’est très, très limité.”

  “Ah, well,” she said, “if your English, Italian, Spanish, German, or Flemish is better, we can try any of those.”

  Mrs. Didier was neither thin nor fat, but appeared to have a solid, sensible body, encased tonight in a very smart woolen suit that was probably an ancient, well-preserved Chanel. At least I didn’t feel overdressed. She was smoking a cigarette with elegant nonchalance. Her hands were mottled with age spots, the skin loose and veiny, but her face was a splendid example of careful renovation. Her forehead and eyes were completely unlined, and her neck was taut. All of it was unmistakably artificial, but her appearance didn’t reach the level of horror movie excess that often went with this territory. As one tends to do in these situations, I began admiring, not the bone structure and features of the face itself, but the skill of the surgeon who had reconstructed it, and Mrs. Didier’s wisdom in seeking him out.

  “I wasn’t expecting such a beautiful woman,” I said.

  This comment inspired her to slowly grind out her cigarette, slip on a pair of black, heavy-framed glasses, and make a more thorough examination of me. Finding me as uninteresting as she’d suspected, she took off the glasses and shrugged. “I like your socks,” she said.

  “I’m coming from a funeral.”

  “You can’t be all bad then, can you?”

  Sitting on a leather sofa and taking in the surprising surroundings, I had to conclude that Didier had been more truthful with me about his work life than I’d assumed, and that the confusing stories about the trips abroad and his employment in the family business had very likely been accurate. He and Mrs. Didier chatted in what sounded to my untrained ears like formal French while I tried to piece together why seeing him like this, as a three-dimensional human being with actual family on the furniture and actual artwork on the walls, made him more interesting but less attractive to me.

  At nine o’clock, Didier switched on the television set, and after a series of mishaps with the remote control, the big, impressively flat screen was filled with an image of Deirdre’s divorcing newscasters, joking and smiling at each other as if they were the happiest couple in the world. “These are boring people,” Didier said.

  “I suspect you’re right. I think you’ll find Marty more interesting.”

  There was a profile of a shopkeeper in Rhode Island who sold nothing but magnets, and then a feature on a swarthy little glass-blower in northern Maine. There was a long, tiresome series of advertisements for local businesses, and finally, the newscaster husband said, “Now let’s meet a New England entrepreneur who’s giving anger and hostility a good name.”

  “I didn’t know it had a bad name,” the wife joked. “Around our house anyway.”

  Marty appeared on-screen, microphone in hand, pacing back and forth across a stage, shouting at a roomful of people who sat cowering on folding chairs. The camera pulled back to show Charlaine poised at a corner of the stage, baring her teeth at the intimidated audience.

  “This is your friend?” Mrs. Didier asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “That’s definitely Marty.”

  “He is brutal.”

  “She’s a woman,” I said.

  Mrs. Didier laughed at the suggestion and put on her glasses again. “This country,” she said dismissively. “Je comprends maintenant, chéri, pourquoi tu ne peux pas trouver une femme.”

  She understood why her son hadn’t been able to find a woman? Or had she meant a wife? Either translation raised a number of fascinating questions that it was impossible to ask at that moment. I looked over at Didier, but he was engulfed in cigarette smoke, grinning one of his enigmatic grins.

  There were shots of Marty stomping and screaming, riling up a group of people by pumping her fists into the air, eliciting bestial cries of outrage and fury. Then, in a stunning slam cut, she was shown curled up on her living room sofa, professionally made up, dressed in a pink sweater, looking soft and stereotypically feminine. “It’s not about being angry,” she said softly. “It’s about being active.”

  The next image was of one of Marty’s clients, huddled in a corner of a room weeping into a napkin while Marty screamed at her; and the newscaster (Tom, they were all named Tom) said, in a cheerful voiceover, “But if this isn’t anger and hostility, it sure looks like it. And maybe that’s exactly what everyone wants and needs in this time of terror alerts and posttraumatic stress—a little righteous aggression.”

  “It’s not about fear,” Marty said, sitting on her sofa, a few of the stuffed dolls from her bedroom visible on the windowsill behind her. “It’s about faith in yourself.”

  The piece rambled on in this incoherent fashion, mixing Marty’s kind, gentle words with contradictory images, and shots of her jogging along leaf-strewn paths with faithful Charlaine at her heels. Next came the testimonials from people who’d been in her training seminars, including one woman who claimed, through a shower of tears, that she’d lived most of her life as a recluse after an unspecified violent attack in her youth, and that upon finishing Marty’s training she’d begun to “live her dream” and had opened up a chain of successful restaurants. There was a lot of sobbing, and many references to September 11 as either the motivating factor in taking the seminar or justification for having done so.

  Didier and his mother seemed to find the entire ten minutes hysterically funny, as they commented on the clothes of the people on-screen, the simple-minded attitudes, and mostly, Marty’s stunning audacity. But by the time the profile ended, I think even they were impressed with Marty’s self-confidence. The whole piece finished with a brief shot of one of Marty’s previously traumatized clients walking peacefully through a park, holding the hand of her large husband, as if, in the end, this simple act of intimacy was what required the most courage and determination. As if this ultimately was the goal.

  “That is a sweet story,” the newscaster wife said to her husband. “I guess the world needs more rage.”

  “Please,” the husband joked. “Just no
t in the kitchen.”

  As soon as Didier clicked off the television, Mrs. Didier pushed herself out of her chair and excused herself. “Après ça, il faut que je mange. Interesting to have met you.”

  She walked carefully down a long hallway and disappeared around a corner.

  “She’s an imposing figure, Mr. Didier. You might say intimidating.”

  “You might if you were her son. So, now you know everything about me, Mr. Collins. You can see I’ve had nothing to hide all along.”

  “I’m stunned. But even if you had nothing to hide, you hid it well.”

  “I do my best. I’m going back to Brussels with her the end of next week, Mr. Collins. I won’t be seeing you for a while. You will have to find someone else to not fuck.”

  “I’ll try. It’s not so easy, you know, Mr. Didier. There is one thing I have to ask you about. The wife. I didn’t know you were looking for one.”

  “Oh, yes. But not looking very hard. It’s mostly to please my mother.” He settled himself back on the sofa in a brief, naughty sprawl, as if, once again, he were in control of our relationship. “Don’t be so surprised.”

  “So she doesn’t know—”

  “She knows everything. What do you think? Appearances matter in my family, and it would be nice to produce an heir. I am the only child.”

  An heir. I’d never heard anything quite so odd as the prospect of Didier being a father.

  He led me to the front door of the apartment. From somewhere down the hallway, I could hear the sound of a garbage disposal, grinding up food in the sink. I loved the idea of Didier’s elegant mother in her Chanel suit stuffing leftovers down the drain.

  Before opening the door, Didier reached up and patted my face. “You didn’t tell me who died, Mr. Collins.”

  “Ah. No one at all. I had a feeling we might not be seeing each other for a while. I wanted to look nice for you, Mr. Didier, to leave you with a good impression, I suppose.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I knew that. I just wanted to make you admit it.” He ushered me out the door, and I heard it lock behind me.

  Midnight Call

  My phone rang at midnight. I was sitting on the chaise longue in my bedroom, reading the final pages of The Mandarins with regret. Since I’d turned forty, no one ever called me after 11 P.M., so I was expecting more bad news of the death and destruction variety.

  It was Marty. As a testament to the power of mass media, I felt a surge of gratitude that this TV personality was actually phoning me.

  “You were incredibly charismatic,” I said, “and the footage of the seminars was riveting. On top of it all, you looked beautiful.”

  I could practically hear her shaking her head in disappointment. “Let me tell you something, William. I don’t really give a shit if I look beautiful or like a rabid dog. One of the key lessons in my seminar is You Don’t Look at Your Own Looks. So why care? What I do care about is that I’ve been tracking my Web site, and in the past two hours alone, I’ve had sixty hits. They’re broadcasting the segment again this weekend as part of a best-of-the-week wrap-up. This is major.”

  “It…sounds it. And after seeing the show, I’m not surprised. You’ve earned it.”

  But even this comment, which I’d meant sincerely, raised her suspicion. “I appreciate the praise, but I don’t need the condescension, especially not tonight. I’m calling to tell you that I’m pulling out of the sale.” She waited for me to say something, but not wanting to Step in Her Shit, I Kept My Mouth Shut. “I could call Tom myself, obviously, but I figured the professional thing to do is to let you handle it.”

  “What about San Diego?”

  “I’m not walking away from a business opportunity like this. You can’t buy this kind of publicity.”

  “And Edward? He’s been counting on this for months.”

  “Let me tell you something, William,” she said. “The only way to help someone else is to ignore them completely and take care of your own needs. Think about it. So the best thing I can do for Edward is to take care of me. But someone needs to take care of Edward, and you’re the most likely candidate. That’s the real reason I’m calling you this late. He’s in trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?” I looked out the big picture window of my bedroom at the lights of the Boston skyline. Planes were circling the city, even at this late hour. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s stuck in Montreal. He called me a couple hours ago to tell me.”

  “Stuck? How can he be stuck?”

  “He was flying in from Chicago almost a week ago, and he had a major panic attack. Now he won’t get back on a plane. I guess you didn’t notice he’d dropped out of sight. The airline is threatening him with a lawsuit or some bullshit. I told him to get on a bus, but he’s too freaked out to do that.”

  “Does he know you’re not moving?”

  “We discussed it. OK, William, he thinks I’m abandoning him. I suppose I am in some ways, but I can’t help it. I’m Not About You.”

  “No.”

  “He also feels abandoned by you, which is a lot more to the point. He can’t get on a plane anymore, he can’t work, his apartment’s almost sold so he’s got nowhere to live. He’s talking about buying a place up in Canada and staying there. Something about wanting to leave the country. If you were a real friend, you’d go get him.”

  “Of course I’ll go,” I said. “What’s his phone number?”

  “I have no idea.”

  He’d refused to tell Marty where he was staying. He’d left the hotel where the airline had put him up, and he’d thrown away his cell phone so their lawyers couldn’t reach him.

  “My God,” I said. “It sounds like a full-scale nervous breakdown. What about the pilot, does anyone know how to get in touch with him?”

  “Oh grow up, William. There’s no goddamned pilot. That was to make you jealous. Just go up there and start looking.”

  “That doesn’t sound very productive. The closing on his apartment’s in a few days. Maybe his lawyer knows how to get in touch with him.”

  “When in doubt, call a lawyer. I have to get off. My Web site is officially going through the roof.”

  Closing

  Because Edward was so small of stature, because he wore a little blue uniform to work, because he sought out the company of unavailable married men, because his job involved aimless travel in the air above the surface of the world, I tended to think of him as childlike and inconsistent, simultaneously irresponsible and self-sufficient. But the truth was, he was one of the most consistent and reliable people I knew, and infinitely more adult than me or any of my friends. He had a lot of silly affectations—the refusal to get a driver’s license, the long, pointless delay in getting a computer—but the more I thought about those, the more they seemed like examples of his steadfast certainty of who he was and what he wanted from life. I couldn’t bear the thought of him undone by panic, wandering aimlessly around the cold streets of Montreal.

  I’d given him the name of the lawyer he was using for his end of the sale, and I called several times, leaving ominous, vaguely worded messages.

  “We’re closing on his apartment in two days,” I said when the lawyer finally called me back. “I’ve been having a little trouble getting in touch with Edward, and I wanted to make sure everything’s set.”

  “I’ve got it all written down,” he said. He was an older man, and he had a deep, gruff voice I’d known Edward would find appealing. Unfortunately, he also had the lawyerly skill of never saying more than he intended to say.

  “So Edward’s planning to be there?”

  “I’m handling the closing. He’s given me power of attorney in this, and he’s chosen not to be there.”

  He refused to say more than that, and since I thought it might be best to hold my tongue as well, the conversation died for a surprisingly long time.

  “I know he’s in Montreal,” I finally said. “I don’t suppose you’d be willing to tell me exactly w
here or how I can get in touch with him.”

  “I’d be happy to give him a message.”

  “That would be something. Tell him I’m trying to reach him. Tell him to call me.”

  I still had hope that Sylvia would come to her senses and cancel her plans at the last second, but even if she did, it wouldn’t solve anything. And she wasn’t likely to; she was so enthusiastic about buying the condo, it was exhausting.

  “You know, I’m ashamed of that sex book I wrote, William,” she told me one afternoon. “I’m not ashamed of my behavior or my success, of course, but the whole topic seems so dated to me now. Sex. Does anyone care anymore? I doubt it. It’s all so pretragedy, twentieth century, isn’t it? You were very prescient to stay above the bodily fray. It’s all about real estate now. Real estate is the sex of the new millennium.”

  The closing on Edward’s condo was held at his lawyer’s office in an ancient brick building behind the Cambridge courthouse. It was a small firm, and the lawyers who worked there handled the closing with bored efficiency, although in this case, they were late. Sylvia and I sat around the conference table, drinking coffee and waiting for everyone else to show up. She looked as exuberant and ridiculous as ever, in her mod clothes and her big turquoise eyeglasses.

  “You’re giving me a very peculiar look, William,” she said. “Admiring, or dismissive? Clue me in.”

  “Neither,” I said. “I was just thinking that I never imagined I’d be at an actual closing with you. I’d been expecting our old relationship to go on for years. I’ll miss it.”

  “I probably will, too. But I’m so self-absorbed I won’t realize it. I could come in and pretend to be apartment shopping from time to time.”