Phil returns, glasses in hand. They discuss a fraught merger in which the firm’s involved, a problematic tributary of its paper trail that leads to a Chinese magnate connected to the Thai sex trade. He wants to laugh, wildly, dangerously. At a lull in their conversation, Phil glances at the woman in black, half laughs, half scowls. What a fucking nutcase, Phil says. Who, he says. You don’t know about Rebecca Weiss? Why, he says, should I? Phil laughs. Secretary with Clearwater. Long story. Gross story. Beneath my dignity to gossip. Ask anyone on the seventh floor.
He approaches her. She leans against the guardrail, facing the city. He stands beside her and watches the city and drinks. I don’t believe we’ve met, he says. You have a short memory, she says. I’ve got an excellent memory. Almost as excellent as your Latin dance — and it comes back to him, a charity function, a salsa band, they were introduced by George Massey, she asked him to dance, and when he danced with what he considered restraint, she ran a nail along the back of his neck and said: It’s not a waltz, you know. I remember now, he says, forgive me, I try to repress my misguided attempts at grace. You shouldn’t be talking to me, she says. Oh no? It’ll be bad for business. Is that so. Don’t look now, but everyone’s staring at us. You have eyes in the back of your head? You’re a good host, Mr. White, I appreciate that you want me to feel welcome, but I’d hate to deprive your more important guests of their star. My associate tells me you work at Clearwater, I’m surprised we haven’t met before. I’m inconsequential, she says. Not like you. The new figurehead. He can’t tell if she’s being sincere. And he can’t take his eyes off her. Congratulations on climbing to the very top rung, she says. I’d get vertigo.
A hand on his shoulder. Phil Goldman’s there, with a short bald man he recognizes, a lawyer, Jenkins, Jones. An introduction is made and he’s led away. He drinks, half-listens to Jenkins or Jones, nods and smiles, emits warmth. He thinks about his wife. Wise and kind, Jewish also, as he supposes this Rebecca Weiss must be. You might even say there’s a resemblance, though not in the eyes, and not in the pallor, and not in the lips. They haven’t had sex in six months. Since he was promoted, since he got the top job, to be exact. It’s his fault more than hers. He’s been busy, he’s been tired. That’s not why. He has felt, since he was promoted, an unease at home. He’s stopped meeting his wife’s eye. His daughter’s too. He is aware of a stirring within himself of what he can only call shame. It bewilders him. He’s developed a habit of leaving the house in the mornings before Cynthia and Hannah wake up. He slips out of bed, shaves and showers and dresses, skips coffee, skips breakfast. He used to love to see his wife and daughter at the kitchen table in the morning, it reminded him why he works, gave meaning to his labour. Now he feels an awkwardness even at the thought of it. He would sit with them and not know what to say. He’d feel like a stranger among them.
It’s past one. The party’s finished, the roof almost clear, the caterers putting lids on platters, wiping up. He says goodbye to Phil and friends and watches them go out, and turns to see Rebecca Weiss by herself at a table, her eyes on him. Still here, he says. Nowhere to go. Awfully well-dressed for a homeless person. Didn’t say I’m homeless, she says without a smile, just got nowhere to go. Nowhere worth going. It happens sometimes: attend a party, stay till the end, meet no one interesting or no one available, then find at the end of the night I’ve got nowhere to go. And I can’t go to sleep. Why not? I’ve lost the habit, it’s like anything else, you don’t sleep for long enough you lose the habit, you can’t remember how once you did it so naturally, you try to recall the steps you took to fall asleep, what it felt like to stop thinking. Who are you, he says. She laughs. I imagine your wife must be very beautiful, she says, laughing. Yes she is. Go home, she says. And repeats, unaccountably: Go home, go home, go home. No, he says.
They leave together. She lives in a condo by the lake. He abandons his car in the parking garage and together they walk towards the water. Taxis’ lights glare and pass by. The wind whistles through concrete. He feels as though in a dream. Their words, their glances, their syncopated steps — about it all is a lightness, as though nothing they do together could possibly be of any consequence. How crazy that is. He knows, he knows. She’ll invite him inside, he knows. And then what. He has made no firm decision about this, though he’s got presence of mind enough to realize that to walk this far at her side is probably itself a decision. He’s always been faithful to his wife. He’s never been seriously tempted. Even now, even strolling alongside this woman with blue necklace against white collarbone, even this doesn’t feel like temptation, feels rather like a game. Their not talking about it, their drifting down the windy street together in silence — this is the complicity of children who each know the rules to a game but won’t speak them aloud, lest by speaking they prove that their game is manmade and not magic. How drunk are they? Just barely. She’s beautiful to him, but no more so than his wife, and not conventionally so, not an ideal, too strange, too fierce. Who’s leading, he wonders. Did I will this or did she? Do I have the power to stop it? And do I want it to stop?
When they get to her building, she invites him in. He comes in. Their clothes are on the floor right away. When they’re finished he asks if he can have a glass of water. She disappears into the kitchen and he thinks: I’m now a man who does this. Then he thinks, just as distinctly, with surprise: And I’m not ashamed. Which isn’t to say he’s proud, either, he doesn’t see the evening in terms of conquest, and anyway he’s not sure whether she’d be his conquest or he hers, but gone now is the feeling of shame that plagues him at home, in the office, as he sits in traffic, the sense that he’s lost direction, that something hard and fast in his soul has dissolved just lately and he doesn’t know how it’s happened and he doesn’t know how to make himself whole again. He feels happy. Thirsty. Their sex was satisfying. He likes the sound of her in her kitchen. The view from her bedroom, the wide, dark sweep of the lake. She returns with his water and stands by the bedside, in the glow of a lamp he’s turned on. Her curves delight him. Her hair falls across her breasts. Thank you, he says. She nods, distant, and withdraws to the balcony. Who are you, he says. She turns and he sees that she’s crying. I don’t mean to be rude, but you should go, she says.
He drives home, morning comes, and so does guilt. But he can’t stop thinking about her. In bed beside his sleeping wife he thinks about her. At his desk, in meetings, watching numbers diminish, increase, he thinks about her. He imagines he sees her face at crowded crosswalks, in the parking garage, behind an elevator’s closing doors. He gets little work done. After lunch he buzzes Paulson, a young analyst, hardworking and discreet, whom his predecessor lured from Clearwater Capital, the firm where she works. He’s always liked Paulson. Narcissism, maybe: Paulson reminds him of himself, what he might’ve been at thirty had he been in this business then. Have a seat, he says casually as Paulson eases the door shut behind him. Tell me, what do you know about Rebecca Weiss? Paulson blinks. What, you mean the dirt?
It’s all gossip. To be taken with a grain of salt, says Paulson, and frankly I’d take the whole shaker. Goes something like this, she’s on vacation, Venice, two or three weeks, she meets a guy, English, and they fall hard for each other, they have a thing. So what happens is I guess she decides this romance is more important than what she’s left behind here, because she doesn’t come home, she follows this guy back to London, and they’re shacked up for I don’t know, a month or two. Anyway, here comes the crazy part. Mitch Friedman at Clearwater, he’s in London meeting clients. He gets out of the Tube and who does he see in Hyde Park, on a bench by herself, but our lady. He tries to talk to her. And what does she do, she ignores him. Completely. Acts like he isn’t there at all. He makes some calls, I don’t know the details exactly, but apparently she’s had some sort of breakdown, she’s an outpatient at a hospital over there. Two weeks later, Monday morning she shows up for work downstairs as if nothing’s happened. Everybody goes what the fuck, right? But she seems to
tally fine, you’d never know anything weird had gone down. And nobody wants an HR hassle, so we all kind of nod and go oh, okay. And that’s it. And then a couple days later she disappears again. Make some calls, eventually they call her building manager, building manager knocks on her door, she’s at home. She’s just decided not to show up for work again. A guy from Clearwater goes over to her place to talk to her, she’s civil and everything, invites our guy in, offers him coffee, but when he asks her why she’s not at the office she shrugs and says she can’t get out of bed. You’re out of bed now, our guy says. I can’t get out the front door, she says, I know it’s unacceptable, you should probably fire me. Crazy, right? She was never like this before, back when I knew her. Sweet, sexy, sharp wit. Dude did a real number on her when he dumped her.
He’s flirting with danger, he knows, but he can’t turn his face from it, he feels mesmerized, eyes fixed to a flame burning up in an unknown dark. Daylight floods his office, feels cloying. He leaves early, considers going to see her, decides against it. At home in the afternoon, his wife out on errands, his daughter at school, he sits in his study with the lights off, watches the arms of his old apple tree sway in the breeze. He stares at his bookshelf, lingers over his several editions of Anna Karenina. He thinks not about Vronsky and Anna’s adulterous passion, as if in search of instructive parallels, but instead about Levin, the man who wins all that he desires — beautiful young wife, tranquil domesticity, a life of genteel leisure — only to find his thoughts turn again and again to the razorblade, the pistol, the noose. A man prosperous and lost. Worried his irreverent life has meant nothing and yet unable to turn to religion, unable to believe. He hears his daughter come home, move about. He likes to listen to her like this, in her private moments. She’s come from choir practice, he remembers. Friday. A committed girl, his daughter, to stay after school to sing on a Friday, the weekend awaiting. Committed, focused, a real gogetter. Like him, like her father: destined for big things, for success, like her father. He sits in his study and listens, not making a sound.
After work on Monday, he returns to Rebecca’s apartment. She buzzes him in, meets him at the door without surprise. Their sex is fierce, fraught. She makes coffee. You shouldn’t have come back, she says as they sit together in her narrow kitchen, coffees steaming. I understand I’m a great adventure, but look at me. You must know about me. Now that we’ve done this once or twice, isn’t it time you got back to your perfectly ordered life? You have a distorted image of me, he says. She laughs. Describe your wife to me. Give me a break. Please, I’m curious, I want to picture her, I think about her all the time, she’s become a central figure in my daydreams, I want to get the picture right. Your wife, your house, your little family. What do you do here all day, he says, you should get out of the apartment, I understand this guy hurt you, but — her chair scrapes linoleum, she moves to the cupboard, takes a bottle of bourbon down from the shelf. Come for a walk with me, he says. Your wife will see us. Let’s get dinner. What do you want from me, she says. He’s silent. Her apartment is bright, swept with the day’s last daylight. I feel rude when I kick you out after sex, she says, and I hate to be rude, so maybe let’s end this here. Fine, he says.
That’s it. It’s over. He’s sad, he’s relieved, a bit bewildered. But soon he slips back into his accustomed patterns. Work consumes his attention, distracts him. He becomes once again an attentive husband and loving father, remembers how to play those parts convincingly, smooth out the wrinkles, plaster over the gaps through which peek inadmissible desires, unhelpful questions. One night later that week, when he’s sure Hannah’s asleep, he crosses the hall to Cynthia’s bedroom. (They’ve long slept in separate rooms, first because he snored, later, after his snoring abruptly stopped, because they were already in the habit and why break the habit when it works so well for them both, affords them such rest.) She’s reading, something about the Jewish population in British Mandatory Palestine. His smile is wry. Should I be concerned about this? She sets the book on her knee. Just because you like to pretend you have no history and no roots doesn’t mean everyone else has to, she says. He kisses her. He kisses her again. Honey, she says. You don’t want to? I want to, sure, but … you’re not too tired? I’m wide awake, he says.
It’s good. He thinks this during the act and afterwards. It’s better. His affair was a flop by comparison. Cynthia’s attentive, present, she knows what pleases him, he knows what pleases her and he’s pleased by her pleasure; while with Rebecca — enigmatic, unknown, an adventure (to use her word) — he was ungenerous, thought only of his own hunger and how to sate it. He liked himself less with her. Was it a mistake, he wonders, picturing Rebecca’s narrow, harrowed face in the shadows of his darkened bedroom as he returns from his wife. No, not a mistake. It was, he might say, at the risk of rationalist glibness, an enriching experience. Not dignified, but nevertheless a contribution to the fabric of his life, to his understanding of the world and of himself, a garish light that reveals to him the boundaries of the role he plays, where lies the line beyond which he becomes, irrevocably, another man. The womanizer. The erotic man of influence, proud and insatiable. Even Voltaire, he remembers, wouldn’t reject sexual intrigue if wisdom were at stake, Voltaire who slept with a man once for the sake of philosophy but wouldn’t repeat the experiment. He’s had his moment. And he’s glad that it’s passed.
A week later he wakes up so depressed he can hardly get out of bed. It takes him an hour to dress. He’s late for work, he’s unshaven. His colleagues notice; he doesn’t care. Shame twists him again, again he’s consumed by thoughts of her, long neck, pink cheeks. Yet how absurd that is! He doesn’t love her, he hardly respects her, she leads the sort of shadowy life he rejected as an undergraduate, as vapid as lurid. He has more than she does, he has everything. So why does he scan her file over and over, obsess for hours about their time together, the sound of her voice? He comes to the conclusion, by the end of this black day, that he’s sorry for her, profoundly sorry, that this funk he’s in is subconscious penance for the luck he’s had, the happiness she’s been deprived of. He realizes he wants to help her, give to her; his love for her, if love it is, is basically philanthropic; or perhaps all love is. (No, he thinks: no, all love isn’t.) They must be close to the same age, maybe she’s a bit younger, but he realizes he thinks of her almost like a daughter. He wants to offer her friendship. He wants to offer himself as a salve.
Cheered and purposeful, nervous, he returns to her apartment after work. I’ll leave if you want me to, he says as she opens the door. I just want to see how you are. Her eyes are raccooned with fatigue. I’ve got the kettle on, she says, you want tea? And she steps out of the doorway. They sit in her kitchen and talk. He finds it difficult to say what he means, what he’s resolved to say. I want to see you, he says; which isn’t what he means. She’s pale. I don’t know if I can do this. Not like we’ve been doing. I want to see you as a friend, a companion. You’ve come back to reject me? I’ve come back because I think you need me in your life. She laughs. Call me arrogant. Arrogant, yes. And I need you in mine. Like a shot in the head, she says, laughing. It seems to me you must spend too much time here by yourself. What do you do with your days? I read, she says. I read about the irremediable loneliness of the soul, it’s the only kind of reading that makes me laugh, and I like to laugh. I masturbate, I surf the Internet. I look at pictures of places I once travelled. Most of them have changed since I was there. It makes me feel old. A feeling I like. And I write, she says. Really. Yes. I can show you. And she rises and drifts into the living room, her shoulders slumped, her walk languid.
She’s written poetry. Reams of it. He sits beside her on the sofa and reads from a battered notebook, her gaze hot on his cheek. He has no idea why she’s opened up to him, shared with him these intimate stirrings laid out in chicken scratch, but he doesn’t question it. He’s glad of it. Well? she says. He keeps reading. Much of her writing is histrionic, verbose. But some is extraordinary. A poem ab
out a street brawl outside the apartment where she lived with her lover in London, her feeling then of the fragility of her world’s order, how swiftly violence breaks out, the equally jarring swiftness with which it ends, and the silence it leaves. A poem about strangers’ children: longing for them in Covent Garden, considering what the theft of a child would entail, if it might be defensible. Many about her lover. All of her interesting poems, he finds, are in some way connected to that man, London or Venice, sudden departures. Your opinion is loaded, she says, I know your credentials. Does she refer to his aborted career as a scholar? To his own youthful attempts at verse, published in prominent journals, promising, abandoned, scuttled by his feeling that poetry isn’t a craft, can’t be perfected, admits only failure in finer and finer degrees, perpetuating the illusion that something permanent might in the last event be said? It’s good, he says. Do you still write? No, he says, haven’t for a long time. Why not? Never really liked to. I found words weren’t well suited to express the way I saw the world, words specify, make concrete, I stopped writing because I felt my experience of the world was less stable than that, constantly shifting, a series of impressions none of them trustworthy neither evil nor good, I found words pinned things down too rigidly, so I stopped. Numbers are better, at least the numbers I deal with, they don’t claim to explain the world, only their own worldly sphere, transient, limited. She stares at him, runs her hands through his hair. I painted, he says. Late adolescence. I painted constantly. That was better. Suited me better. I thought that was what I’d do with my life. Why didn’t you? The lifestyle. The form of life. It scared me. Get up, sit down and work, eat drink sleep. And again. No sense of advancing, progressing, rising. I was scared I would feel I were standing still all my life. She places her finger on his lips, traces the edge of his lips with her nail. So?
Faithful and Other Stories Page 7
