by Ann Beattie
After more investigating, just after New Year’s Day, 2011, he bought—in a different town, farther away, from a male real estate agent who asked to be called “Zippy”—his fixer-upper two hours from New York City—okay, two hours and twenty minutes—or, to be honest, two and a half. He put in an offer, agreed to the counteroffer, on Zippy’s advice (“It’s a great time to buy, with those Bush scumbags out of office, just to give you a hint about where I stand, politically”), and was able to move into a house before the area became fashionable and people began selling their barns and carriage houses.
To his surprise, Elin approved of his leaving the city, though she’d been a little surprised that he’d be living alone (“You think I’d tell you about buying a house, but not a serious girlfriend?”). It perplexed her that he hadn’t found a job he could fit into comfortably. He’d been honest about that, too, when she asked if he’d be taking the train all that way, five days a week.
Thirteen
Arly reappeared in his life, not something he wanted, something he’d almost managed to avoid, even calling Brenda to ask her to remind him that Arly was poison. “If you’re a masochist, there’s nothing I can do,” Brenda had said. “I don’t want you to think I’m Miss Conventionality. I like nasty sex sometimes. I know what it is. I just don’t drag in my family and friends, if the fallout’s going to extend to them. You went to that fancy school where everybody played to everybody else, so you came out thinking the whole world wanted to be your audience.”
Arly seemed different when they met for coffee, but still herself, still edgy. She’d dyed her hair brown. She said she had a job selling cosmetics downtown at M•A•C. She apologized for what had happened in Miami, though she absolutely denied that one of the men in the bed had been the bartender. It seemed like a pointless lie, though in insisting she was telling the truth, she told him the man had been the friend of a guy she knew who’d paid her to have sex with him. At first, he thought she was lying. He cut the discussion short, saying he had to get back to work. “I understand why you don’t want to see me anymore,” she said. “What’s that look for? I do!”
“Bye,” he said, and left.
He’d lied about still having a job. He had something in the works—something that might or might not work out, though he’d managed once more to get a great letter of recommendation, and he hadn’t even had to hit up Benson. He’d given in and met Arly only because he had to be in town that day anyway. He’d driven in to see his dentist. He had no plans for the afternoon, but he commended himself for meeting her at Starbucks rather than a bar, and for leaving when he thought there was nothing more to say. Why should he be surprised she had sex for money? That probably happened a lot more than he knew. He walked through Union Square, found an empty bench (he could hear Benson saying, “You have to be careful of lice”), and sat down, vaguely remembering some poem they’d found hilarious back at Bailey, though that one had been about fleas. All he could remember was “And so, ad infinitum.”
He was looking but not really looking at pigeons, who had absolutely no personality, none, unless you projected onto them. She texted. Of course, he thought, though he hadn’t expected that when he’d walked out and forced himself to breathe deeply, as if he’d left a smoke-filled room, then turned toward the park. BAR OFF LOBBY GANSEVOORT. Half an hour had gone by since he’d left her. The phone pinged again: PARK AVE, NOT MEATPACKING. Maybe she’d up the ante and have someone there to mug him.
He ignored the text and sat for some time—it was chilly, but spring was on the way—watching a dark-skinned woman in a turban chat with another woman who wore a visor and sweatsuit and pushed a sleeping baby back and forth in a stroller; they spoke animatedly in Spanish. His tooth—what was left of it—was throbbing. That was why he was squinting. Discovering the reason relieved him. He had a prescription for a painkiller in his wallet from the dentist, “just in case.” He walked to a CVS and dropped it off, gave them his address, wandered through the aisles as he waited for it to be filled. He picked up a Toblerone on sale—some consolation necessary. He could let it melt in the good side of his mouth. As he was deciding, a young woman picked up a bag of candy and dropped it in her purse. She saw that he saw she’d done it. He glanced around, looking for the security cameras. Nervously, she followed his eyes. She picked up one more item and turned away.
He wandered into the aisle stocked with antihistamines, decided on the CVS version of Benadryl. RM 816, the next text said. She must be sleeping with lots of guys to be able to afford a room at the Gansevoort. When he finally got the prescription, he picked up a bottle of water and bought that, too, placing it on the counter along with the candy. He did not have his CVS card. The woman spun the bag as she handed it to him, as if it contained dog shit. He expressed this thought. “Use that word again, I’m calling the manager,” she said. Instantly, the Indian man at the next cash register began to scrutinize him. He walked away, but once outside opened the bag and threw it away, along with printed information about the drug stapled to it. The bottle contained only four pills. He put one on his tongue, unscrewed the water bottle cap, and took a slug. He put the bottle by his feet as he removed two Benadryl pills tightly sealed in plastic and took them as a chaser. Then he went to a bar he and Benson had once gone to after a free outdoor concert, where, because it was still early, he managed to get a seat. “Mojito with gold leaf,” he joked.
“Gold leaf, did you say? Sorry, I don’t know that one.”
He thought about it. About the wrecked room at the hotel. He’d had to pay a steep penalty for changing the return ticket. He was breathing through his mouth, almost panting, angry at Arly all over again, and most of all at himself. The Miami adventure had been a stupid idea. They weren’t the kind of people who’d go there and have a great time. What had he imagined—that they’d rub suntan lotion on each other’s backs, cavort in the waves, that she’d take his hand under the table as they sat side by side and waited for their perfect dinner to be brought? That scenario was bullshit, as farfetched as any fairy tale. The next ping of his phone he ignored, but he did make a tiny exploratory gesture with the tip of his tongue, and land on a not-too-sore spot where he dared not push. “A margarita with Cuervo Gold,” he said. “Sorry. Bad day.”
“Absolutely. Comin’ up,” the bartender said.
Inducing a slowed-down version of time, he thought, was sort of interesting, as opposed to being caught in it like a time warp. The beach. Miami. Prufrock. The crab. “I should have been a crab.” Maybe people took poetry too seriously. Or maybe poetry was like any other drug—it could sometimes make you feel one way, sometimes another. He dug his fingernail into the package again to release one more Benadryl. LouLou’s recipe for sleep, when you had nothing better. The bartender set a glass of water in front of him, then turned and began to pick up bottles. It was great to have the throbbing lessen. If Arly was really his friend, he could tell her about the root canal in mid-process, ask if he could curl up in the bed and sleep, though he didn’t mistake her for a friend. Who was his friend? He hardly ever talked to Jasper. And Benson. Not that he’d ever been that close to Benson, but that strange phone call, when Benson had been so paranoid. What had Benson thought, that he was off with his fiancée? WAITING pinged up. No further message. Well, good. As was the margarita on the rocks (“You said rocks, right?” He might have), the ice delightful, though something to guard against getting near his upper teeth, the pain now having subsided to a mere ringing in his ears.
A woman slipped onto a bar stool three seats away. She ordered a glass of Chardonnay and a glass of water. The bartender began to scoop ice into a glass. Ben should have taken the train. His car was parked on Twentieth Street, pretty far west. On the other hand, the Gansevoort was on Twenty-ninth. It might be amusing, or if not amusing, a weird form of retribution, to go there and to be impotent. Guys were probably thinking that as they sat on bar stools all over the city. He found himself funny. He
smiled. “Sorry?” the bartender said. His blond hair was cut in layers; every way he moved his head, some different clump of hair went into motion. A middle-aged man with a beard approached the bar stool next to the woman, asking her perfunctorily if the seat was empty. That was the thing: Etiquette required that you had to leave plenty of space when it was available, in order not to be thought flirting, but when the bar started to fill up, there was no such assumption.
“Refill?” the bartender asked.
He looked at his drink. The last quarter-inch of liquid was melting into the remaining ice.
“Just the check, thanks,” he said. The drink’s iciness had started another, lesser throbbing, radiating into his head from his ears. He’d hold off on taking another pain pill until he got to the hotel. Then he’d pull his prank and pass out—even if it didn’t seem ideal to be asleep when she was awake.
“Ben?” a woman in a velvet baseball cap said.
“Hi,” he said, though he had no idea who she was. Her eyes turned slightly down at the corners, as did her mouth, after she spoke. Maybe she’d already had a few.
“Lauren Black,” she said.
“I’m really sorry,” he said, noticing her slightly raised eyebrows. He couldn’t tell if she was hopeful or skeptical. She was attractive, and she knew him and he didn’t know her.
“Lauren. I mean, Lauren Alwyn-Black, as LaVerdere liked to say. A sin that I didn’t keep my maiden name, so he added it for me.”
“Oh, sure, so sorry, hi, hi,” he said, swirling off the bar stool. “Man, I’m no good at all when I see somebody in a different setting. Sorry.”
“Well, yeah, it’s a bar, so I guess that’s a different setting, all right. I live near Gramercy Park. I got divorced a couple of years after you left Bailey. I recently married a lawyer.”
“Oh, well, hey, that’s good,” he said. “Or, I mean, I hope it is. We all had—” What did they all have? “Of course we all had these fantasy lives going on about the faculty, but I’m sure you didn’t have any reason to be thinking about us. I mean, not that you didn’t care about us.”
She smiled slightly, nodding. “I work at the Morgan Library now. Pretty close by. I miss Bailey, sometimes.”
“Yeah, we were lucky. I realize that. So it’s great you’re living in the city. I was here for a while, but I’ve moved upstate. Just in town for some business. I guess it doesn’t look like that, sitting in a bar.”
“Well, I’m saying hello in a bar,” she said, nodding to the bartender as he put a Bloody Mary down in front of her. “Anyway, good to see you, Ben, and I hope everything’s going well. A friend’s meeting me,” she said, lifting her drink as if offering a toast to the empty table behind them.
“Good to see you,” he said. The effort he was putting into talking exhausted him. If he was lucky, some spell he’d felt under might have broken, like a cold front bringing in lower humidity. If he was lucky, his interaction with Lauren would mean he’d given up on the idea of seeing Arly.
Ms. Alwyn-Black—Lauren—reached out. She briefly placed her hand on his shoulder, without saying anything. He smiled and clasped his hand over hers for a second, then released his grip, turned, and left the bar. All of this, he could see, in his peripheral vision, was being watched by the bartender, who thought that juggling glasses would mask his interest. Ben didn’t expect her to follow him out—he didn’t think he’d seemed as off-kilter as he’d felt—and she didn’t. Only in the sunlight did he remember her brother running into him in the corridor on 9/11 and think, with a sigh, that somehow they’d all gotten through that.
He turned the corner onto Lexington. He walked past Indian restaurants and a wig store, and passed several old ladies walking little dogs. A taxi driver who’d been moving fast turned on his light, braked, and bent forward to peer out the side window. Ben realized how slowly he’d been walking and picked up the pace. Lauren. Had he ever even known her first name? The sidewalk was almost empty. Someone had dropped a slice of pizza, which he stepped around. Two girls in high heels and short skirts were climbing into the backseat of a car. The taxi had streaked off, and an enormous truck rumbled behind it, followed by another stream of taxis with their lights off.
In the lobby of the Gansevoort an enormous guy wearing a wire checked out the people approaching the elevators, pretending to be holding open the doors, while eyeing them for familiarity, or their room cards. Ben saw the man’s newt eyes flicker in his direction, though the man said nothing.
Cindy Crawford walked in, passed under the pink chandelier, turned left at the elevators, her high heels clicking, taking the lobby entrance into the bar. The security thug was an enormous horror-movie fly with multifaceted, glinting pupils. The guy pushed a button as Ben approached to let him on the elevator, indicating acceptance at the same time he indicated contempt. You’d have to work out hours every day to get a body like that. His hands were the size of melons, the skin just as stippled. One other person, a man, also rushed forward and got on, reaching around Ben to push three. Elevators presented a problem. If you were a man and you reached around another man, he might think you were coming on to him. Ask the other man to push the button for your floor, though, and you became a wuss.
By the time the doors opened, he was thinking again of the wreck Arly had made of the Miami hotel room—not something he and she had done in her apartment, in spite of their not exactly hanging up their clothes and placing their shoes side by side. By the time the elevator doors opened on eight, his erection was pushing against his pants.
The door to eight-sixteen was cracked open. What awaited? He walked in, realizing with relief there’d be a minibar, he could have a drink and calm down even if it was too late to rethink things. He could catch his breath.
She lay naked in bed, turned toward him. Had she been crying? Was he looking at an object, not even a real person, an inflated, weeping emoticon that might blow up and drift away like a hot-air balloon . . . a rubber? She thought they had time for that? In this pornographic dream? It was real Gansevoort behavior; somehow he’d managed to sleepwalk to her room, filled with so many possibilities. “You get it, you get it, you get it, Ben gets it,” she repeated in a muted, sweaty mantra as he fumbled to undress. There was Arly, moaning the second he climbed on top of her. She arched her back. “I thought you wouldn’t come,” she said. Just hearing the word forced him to fight against the cue to his body, though it was no use. If he’d taken poppers instead of pain pills, he couldn’t have come more intensely, though as her tongue trailed down his body, a little rivulet from the stream, trickling down his legs in the middle of a dream, as she was grabbing him like a drowning person and his ears filled again with relentless buzzing—hey; he wasn’t going anywhere!—he was hard again, inside her, though they’d somehow slid from the bed to the floor. Something was hurting his spine. It turned out to be the Toblerone. “Wait,” she said, “wait wait wait.” She wiped her fingers over his lips. She’d been concerned, he realized, because she’d noticed a little bubble of blood at the corner of his mouth.
In the next few months she brought a dominatrix back on the last train of the night. Another time, she flew to Vegas with a friend who’d gone to Bard and lost a thousand dollars—her entire savings—playing blackjack. He didn’t want to listen to the Velvet Underground with her anymore, though. She did coke and, worse, lied about it as well as never sharing. She hinted about a more permanent relationship. She’d found out that the sister-in-law of a friend had been killed, a woman she’d liked, who’d been part of a bridal party, who’d put her hair in a French twist. Her super’s brother had died—a fireman who’d had to retire after 9/11. She understood life was fleeting. They had sex three times the first time she visited, though he’d made her promise no sex, that they needed to talk seriously about what was, or wasn’t, going on. He noticed she didn’t say anything about her feelings for him when she said she loved his house, the yard’s loamy sm
ell, the birds and chipmunks, the voles, everything but the skunks. The next week she made an apple pie (he’d assumed when he first came in that she’d bought a scented candle). He found out she’d been seeing another man in New York because the guy called at odd hours. She lied about that, too. Finally, if she hadn’t told him she was leaving, he would have asked her to go. He came back one day to find all her things gone. In the bathroom—she’d watched too many movies—she’d lipsticked the mirror, GONE FUCK YOURSELF. Examining it closely, he realized she’d painted the mirror with menstrual blood before throwing the tampon in the trash.
At least she hadn’t gotten pregnant during all that unprotected sex.
Fourteen
It was always nice, but strange, when Elin visited. He’d never thought of her as a parent, but neither was she a friend he felt relaxed with. She dressed as if it mattered what she looked like. When the New York exiles and weekenders arrived, they continued to dress in black. Only Elin wore a skirt with a neat pastel sweater set and a pearl necklace. It made her seem older than she was, as did her hair, which had turned white. (“This happens prematurely to everyone in my family,” she said, self-consciously touching the ends of her hair before she’d even taken off her coat.) Her conventionality made him wonder if his father had sought her out because she was a conformist, whether that had made him feel safer. Ben’s mother had cared nothing about stylish hair or makeup, though she’d been—or at least, his sister insisted she’d been—a natural beauty, with her prominent cheekbones and the same almond-shaped brown eyes Brenda had. His sister would have had something disparaging to say about Elin if she’d known she was there. Of course he mentioned Elin as little as possible to Brenda, the same way he avoided mention of any other woman.
