The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

by Rebecca Miller

  Since the most recent change of romantic alliance, Craig was a little bit reserved with me. I think he was sore about the abrupt breakup on the way to the beach at Gigi and Herb’s house. Usually, our transfers were more seamless and unspoken, less like the ending of a regular couple. Perhaps he was insulted by my pedestrian technique, which implied he gave a shit, which of course he didn’t. Jed and Calvin were both expecting me to move over in bed for one or the other of them, as I normally would have, but I was too tired. The week after we got back from Herb and Gigi’s house, I slept most of the time when I wasn’t at work. I think maybe I was trying to avoid my next boyfriend. I slept so deeply over those few days, it felt like I might just float away in some dream and die.

  When Herb called me, it was one o’clock in the afternoon, I didn’t have to be at work till nine. No one else was in the loft, the answering machine was off, the phone kept ringing and ringing. Finally I staggered out of my room and dropped to the floor as I answered, leaning against the wall, whispering ‘Hulluh’ and struggling to light a cigarette I’d found in a crushed pack under the table. My neck was clammy, eyes unfocused. I was almost incoherent with sleep. He asked me out for breakfast. Even half-conscious, I knew that I shouldn’t go out with him, so very married as he was, but I hadn’t been able to get him out of my mind ever since he’d told me I was sweet. To prove him wrong, perhaps, I saw him.

  He treated me like a pal. He was avuncular. He filled me with eggs and coffee, teased me about being a waster. I called him an old fart. We saw each other plenty after that. We would weave around the city, laughing and talking. He found me amusing. I found him reassuring. Once, we walked all the way up Madison Avenue. He led me into a really expensive store and made me try on this black cocktail dress. The cloth was cool and smooth against my skin. It made me look shockingly pretty. I took it off. Then, while I was dreamily sliding silk coats along their rack like the beads of an abacus, he bought me the dress. He bought me shoes, too, very high, pointy heels with straps around the ankles. I knew I shouldn’t accept these things, and the truth was I found them slightly ridiculous. They were too on-the-nose sexy for the taste I’d learned back at the loft – not enough irony, not enough edge. Yet wearing them thrilled me. Gigi was away in Italy at the time. Herb asked me if I would come over for dinner.

  The small elevator reeked of gardenia perfume, with an undertone of fried garlic. I sat down on the leather bench. It felt cool against the backs of my thighs, which were bare because I was wearing the cocktail dress Herb had given me. I pulled the old cardigan I was wearing around me and looked up at the walls, which were upholstered in heavy, amethyst-colored linen. I was just imagining moving into the elevator – where would I put the bed, the sink, a little carpet – when the doors opened right into Herb’s apartment. And there was Herb, his emperor’s face creased into a smile, his long arms open.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he proclaimed. I tottered out of the elevator in the massive heels he’d bought me that afternoon. He gave me a hug. He was wearing a soft brown sweater. It felt like a rabbit. He smelled like limes. When he let go, I looked around. It was an old apartment, he said. Built before the Second World War. Gigi had decorated the place in red and blue and yellow. ‘It’s a bit like a home for disturbed children,’ said Herb.

  We sat down on either end of the poppy-red couch, bashful now that we were alone in his apartment. A large Yves Klein painting with imprints of naked women in blue paint on raw canvas hung on the wall opposite us. Herb went into the kitchen and came out with a bottle of champagne. We drank. I was so hungry; I felt the alcohol behind my eyes immediately. I imagined what Suky would think if she saw me now, sipping champagne in costly garments, as she used to say. What a mix of excitement and jealousy would be sloshing around inside her. I finished my glass, and he poured me another, brought out a bag of potato chips.

  ‘I let the maid go home, so I’m afraid it’s just me tonight. You won’t have the service you deserve.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I said. All I could think about was his broad trunk, the reassuring baritone of his voice, the way his corduroys fit him so loosely, Mr Brown had worn pants like that. Was that why I was here? I wondered. Because of a pair of corduroys? All of a sudden, I was overcome with sleepiness and wanted to lie down. I ate a handful of chips. ‘Dinner’s almost ready,’ he said, standing up. ‘Don’t despair.’

  The dining room was all white: Lucite table, marble floor, translucent plastic chairs, crystal chandelier. Herb pulled my chair out, then put a big glass bowl of pasta with tomato sauce between us. ‘I hope the sauce is okay,’ he said. ‘I haven’t cooked anything since I was thirty.’ It was the best food I had ever tasted. I ate like I was starving. He put more in my bowl. ‘So, Pippa. Shall I tell you some of the things I like about you?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, my mouth full of spaghetti.

  ‘Well, let’s see. You’re not a show-off, but I think you’re damn smart. You’ve got an original way of living, for this town. You’re in it for the experience, is that right?’ He made being utterly lost sound like a good thing. ‘You’re beautiful, but you’re cool about it. You don’t even seem to know how lovely you are. And … I don’t know, I suppose there’s sadness there, and I like sadness. In moderation.’

  ‘I like your corduroys,’ I said.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No. I like your face. Your voice. I … This is going to sound weird.’

  ‘Say.’

  ‘It’s like I feel what you’re feeling. If you’re feeling sad, or nervous, or happy – I feel it in my body, in my fingers.’

  ‘What a remarkable thing.’ He sat and looked at me for a moment. Then he said, ‘I don’t ever want you to have to censor yourself around me. I want to know you, Pippa. I want to know who you are. Tell me one thing about yourself. The most important thing.’

  I thought about that for a while. Then I took off my cardigan, stood up, took my pasta bowl, set it on the cold marble floor beside his chair, went down on all fours in my finery, and ate out of the bowl like a dog. I knew he could see the marks Shelly and Kat had left on my back. I have never felt so naked, before or since. After a few seconds, he gripped me around the waist, lifted me onto his lap, dipped his napkin in his water glass, and washed off my face. His eyes were glistening. ‘No, no, no,’ he said. ‘I don’t believe it. Who did this to you?’

  He carried me into a bedroom. It was not his room – he told me it was not his room. He said I was a queen. ‘I don’t know who put this spell on you, darling. But if I’m good for anything, it’s to show you how wonderful you are.’ When he put his hand on my abdomen, I felt a sudden, deep, pulsing ache, not pain but desire, desire in my womb. That’s the only way I can describe it. I was so wet it soaked through my dress onto the sheets. That was the first night I really made love. It wasn’t my pleasure and his pleasure, a transaction – ‘and here’s your change, ma’am’ – it was just wordless, thoughtless, and complete, like two waves crashing together and becoming the same water.

  And that’s how we buried Gigi Lee, kicked the sand over her perfect body with our bare feet as we wriggled toward each other in her very own guest bed.

  Kept

  Herb rented me a studio apartment on Seventieth and Lexington in a building with shining brass doors and a doorman called Nathan. I felt like an alien uptown; I was dressed wrong for everything, even buying milk. But Herb came over with something new for me to wear every few days, until I didn’t feel dressed wrong anymore. I just felt like I was impersonating somebody else. Herb picked me up every afternoon at my new job in a fancy shoe store on Madison Avenue and walked me up to my little apartment. The walls were stark bluish white. There was a pine table in the kitchen, a black couch in the living room. I kept the place immaculate. I wanted it to be blank, a place for a person to change into another person. I took no pills. I got into no trouble. Herb said I was his true wife; he had found me at last.

  When he told me, I was thrilled, incredulous, laughing
. ‘What are you, fucking crazy? That’s the last thing you need.’

  ‘I see something in you,’ he said, looking at me steadily and sweeping the hair from my eyes. ‘Something you don’t see.’

  ‘Anyway,’ I said somberly. ‘You have a wife.’

  He threw himself back on the pillows. ‘If I have to live with that lunatic one more week, I’ll hang myself. For years I’ve been hoping she’ll have an affair so I can get out of it. But she won’t do it. The bitch.’

  I yearned to say yes, but I was scared of Gigi, and I was afraid of what I would do to Herb. I hurt everyone I loved, everyone I met, practically. How could I trust myself with marriage?

  Pivot

  The doorbell rang, which was a bad sign. I hadn’t ordered take-out, Herb had keys. No one else knew where I was. I said ‘Hello’ and heard Gigi’s voice. Fright flashed through my wrists. I said I was on my way down. I thought I would be safer on the street. Just as I was pulling on my jacket, there was a knock on the door. I contemplated running down the fire escape, but then I opened the door. There she was, looking over-the-top gorgeous, like something out of La Dolce Vita, a black dress and a fur coat, long dark hair and bangs, that drooping, voluptuous mouth, mascara bleeding around her tragic eyes. She walked around the place on stiletto heels without saying anything, looked the kitchen over, stalked into the bedroom, the bathroom. Then she stood there and took me in. I was in a tank top and sweatpants, my stringy hair scraped back in a ponytail. I looked like I should be her masseuse or maybe her tennis coach, but not her replacement. No way. ‘You whore,’ she said. That was nice.

  ‘I’m not a whore,’ I said.

  ‘Is not a whore paid for sex? What do you call this? I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you. I knew you were no good – a predator, and the worst kind, the unconscious kind. Things just “happen” to you, don’t they? And before you know it you steal my husband!’

  I tried to check inside her open coat for a weapon. I thought if she was unarmed, I could defend myself. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘He told me he loves you,’ she said.

  I don’t know how she ended up clutching my knees. I looked down, and she was kneeling, her coat splayed out behind her like the train of a dwarf queen. ‘You can stay here, see him, have a love affair, but do not take him, please, don’t take him –’

  I don’t remember what I said. It was something like ‘Okay, I won’t,’ I think, because she was out of there like a puff of smoke.

  I couldn’t make love to Herb after that. I knew I should move out, but I really didn’t have enough money for a security deposit anyplace unless I found a roommate, and I didn’t know anyone anymore. I couldn’t go back to Jim or Trish or Suky or the loft. I mean, I could have gone back, but I knew it would lead to disaster. Herb was very understanding. He insisted I stay in the apartment on my own, even though that meant he had to stay in a hotel, because it was so painful to be with Gigi, now that she knew. He called and told me he loved me ten times a day, sent me flowers, sent me a necklace. I didn’t want to talk to him. When I came home from work, I just curled up in bed and tried not to think about getting high. There was a Catholic church down the street, and, though I was not Catholic, I went there often. Not for Mass so much, just to sit there and pray and ask forgiveness over and over and over. All I ever did was cause misery and distress, and I was still doing it. I wrote my parents a note to say I was well and had a place and please don’t worry and I think it’s probably best I stay out of the way from now on, given the circumstances. I didn’t intend to put a return address on the envelope, but then I did.

  *

  One morning, Herb let himself into the apartment, dragged me out of bed, dressed me, stuffed me into his Jaguar, and drove me to his beach house just so I could take a walk on the sand, breathe in the sea air. As we drove up to that glass-encased dollhouse, I was deluged with feeling for Herb, the same heady certainty that had gripped me when I watched him at Gigi’s party: that I knew him, understood him, craved his company. So it was very smart of him to bring me back there.

  On the way home, it was night. We were on a narrow country road. Herb’s headlights raked a little fawn on the side of the road. Its legs were folded up underneath its body, and it had its ears pricked up. Herb pulled the car over. We got out. As we approached, we could see that the creature was frightened, trembling, but it didn’t run; drew its ears back and bowed its head. ‘Maybe his mother got hit by a car,’ I said.

  ‘His legs are broken,’ Herb said. ‘Otherwise he would have run away.’

  ‘Should we bring him to a vet?’ I asked. Herb lifted up the fawn’s body. Its two hind legs dangled, useless and bloody; its front legs made a pathetic galloping motion in the air.

  ‘They can’t help him,’ he said.

  ‘We can’t just leave him here,’ I said.

  Herb gently laid the deer back on the ground and got back in the car. I sat next to him. He was silent for a long time. He took in a long breath, let it out again. ‘Close your eyes and cover your ears,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ I asked.

  ‘Just do it,’ he said. He backed up the car about five yards. Through the windshield, I watched the fawn, frosted ghostly white by the headlights. Herb put the car into gear, stepped on the accelerator. I screamed, but he didn’t swerve. I squeezed my eyes tight, felt the thud as we hit the deer. The car had stopped. Herb backed up, got out, checked to see that it was dead. Then he steered the car back onto the road and drove us to the city.

  We didn’t speak on the ride home. When he stopped outside my building, he looked at me. ‘It would have starved or frozen or been devoured,’ he said. ‘You know that?’

  I nodded. He slept at my place that night. Very early in the morning, I was woken by the sound of him weeping. I turned him over, wiped his tears away. I loved him then. To have the courage to do something that hurt you so much. A strange act of kindness. It was then that I knew, absolutely. ‘I will marry you,’ I said.

  ‘You will?’ He sounded baffled.

  ‘How could I not?’

  Bullet

  Herb called me from a phone booth on Park Avenue.

  ‘I told her we’re getting married.’

  ‘How was it?’

  ‘Horrible, and then … slightly less horrible.’

  ‘Come home, then,’ I said. He did. We scrambled eggs, toasted bagels, watched bad TV in bed till three in the morning. We were so happy.

  ‘You need to be a little careful,’ Herb said, ‘about Gigi.’

  ‘What do you mean, she’s going to try and kill me?’

  ‘No, no, no. But she’s volatile. And feeling scorned. So if the buzzer rings and you’re alone here, don’t answer.’

  ‘What if I ordered in?’

  ‘Don’t order in unless I’m here.’

  A few weeks went by. Herb gradually moved his things over: boxes of books, a couple of framed posters of old films, and his limited but high-quality wardrobe. The divorce papers were being drawn up. Gigi stayed away. We lived inside a little nutshell of contentment. We saw almost no one. Only Sam Shapiro, Herb’s trusted ally, was allowed in on our secret. A couple of times a week, the three of us would go out, and Sam would regale us with stories about his disastrous love life, or gripe about his new novel.

  One such night, Sam got to the apartment before Herb did. He sat back on the ink black couch sipping a glass of pineapple juice, watching shivering saffron squares of sunlight appear and disappear on the wall as the sun set. His young, taut, raptor face shone with humor and curiosity. ‘Don’t you have any hooch?’ he asked me.

  ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘But I could make you a sandwich.’

  ‘You sure have cleaned up your act,’ he said, looking over at me skeptically.

  I laughed. ‘You don’t believe it?’

  ‘There are two schools of thought regarding change in human beings. Yes, and no.’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Fundamentally … no. But I h
ope I’m wrong. For my own sake.’ His ironic tone was shot through with wistfulness.

  ‘What would you change about yourself if you could?’ I asked softly, leaping, I knew, forward, toward him.

  He thought for a few seconds. ‘I would be less of an observer. I’m sick of being the specter at the feast. You see, Pippa, I’m one of those unlucky beings who don’t fully exist. I live off other people. But all writers are vampires, hasn’t Herb told you that?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘If I find the right girl, she’ll make me real.’

  ‘Do you really believe that?’

  ‘You’re real.’ He looked at me then with genuine longing. The shape of our narrative could have melted then and there; Herb might have come home to two young people falling in love. But I didn’t topple. I really had changed, I realized. I wasn’t going to seduce or be seduced anymore. Not even by this ravenous creature here, tempting as it was to evoke some actual passion from his ever-watchful, ever-thinking being. I looked away and stood up, aware of something having shifted inside me, some internal door closing. I had been tamed at last.

  ‘So, Dracula, am I gonna end up in one of your books now? The little fuckup who went straight?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think you’d fit into any of the stories in my head,’ he said, back to his usual, arch tone.