Girls (3 page)

You sit down in a booth and the waitress brings you a menu. She doesn’t say anything to you, doesn’t even give you a second look. And you are surprised how much it irritates you to be treated like that, like anyone else. It’s something you thought would never make you feel anything but relaxed.

And as you are looking at the menu you catch the door open out of the corner of your eye and the person who comes in walks right up next to you and says, “Excuse me.”

You look up. Standing there is a large man, much larger than you, wearing a grimy T-shirt and blue jeans and a belt buckle that says
ALLIE’S GATOR FARM
. His worn black baseball cap says
CATERPILLAR
in yellow letters and you are suddenly very aware that yours is not only new but says
ALPHA-GENESIS
.

“Yes?” you say.

“You’re in my booth,” the man says. He’s not picking a fight, just stating a fact, like you’ve made a genuine mistake, like you stopped to ask him directions and he’s telling you you took a wrong turn.

“Oh,” you say. “Well I don’t mind if we share, that’s no problem,” you say with the friendly smile that has closed more deals than you can remember. Well, unless you actually try to remember.

He looks over at the empty side of the booth and then looks back at you and says, “No, I don’t think so. I think I’d like my booth to myself just right now.” And again he looks at you without hostility. He’s simply telling you what you need to know.

You look around the diner. You know where this would have to go from here. So you don’t say anything more. You just get up and, with no other booths free, start to walk over to the counter. But he says, “Hey!” as you walk away.

And this time when you turn around you’re ready to take a stand right there in your new sneakers. This has gone far enough, you think, I don’t care what happens, you think, I’m not going to let this redneck push me around anymore.

But he’s holding your coat out to you. “You forgot your coat,” he says.

“Thanks,” you say, taking it from him.

“No problem,” he says, sinking into your booth. “What is that anyway? Calf? It’s nice, real soft.”

“No,” you say, “I think it’s sheep.”

“Huh,” he says picking up his menu, “I didn’t know they could make sheep that soft.”

As you sit down at the counter, sit down on one of the metal stools with their worn-out padding, and pick up a menu, you hear the waitress go up to him behind you and say, “Hey, Jake, how you doing? Usual?” and the reply, “Howdy, Lu-Ann, yes please, if you don’t mind.”

And as you eat your third-rate chicken-fried steak it occurs to you that the way you feel has nothing to do with your job or with all the responsibilities you have made for yourself outside your job. You realize that the way you feel will never go away. You realize that, as long as you are around other men, it can never stop.

There are certain mammals that have a little hook at the end of their penis. Their couplings are so violent they could never copulate successfully without it. But sometimes, when they mate, they become caught. Unable to separate they cannot forage or sleep or run. And so they die like that. Joined.

I remember holding your hand in Avignon.

We walked through the medieval streets, close like canyons, twisting our ankles on the cobblestones. The sun was orange, yellow, made everything beautiful, the laundry strung from window to window, the stray dogs pissing in the gutters.

We had always talked about going there when we were in college. You had done your thesis on the papal period, wanted to see all the places that were so important, the places that had only been words and silver halides to you. This was a dream come true for you.

At that palace like a fortress, like some vampire’s hall, you told me what happened here, who was killed there. On the walls, from where we could see the collapsed bridge, you sang the song. Your French was perfect. A little English girl was there and when she heard you singing, she ran away from her mother and asked you if you could teach her the song. You held her tiny hands while you listened to her, took her request as seriously as she did, laughed and looked at me when she was done asking. The wind blew your hair into your face but I think you saw me smile. You taught her the song and her mother thanked you as if you had done her the greatest favor, endured the greatest injustice.

We stayed in a suite at the Louis XIV. The night we arrived there was champagne waiting for us in the room. I had asked for it. The night we arrived you tried to pour it down your naked breast into my open mouth, but instead of cascading off your nipple, the stream split there, clung to the underside of your breast, ran down your body to where it touched the bed. I licked up what I could as it flowed but it made the mattress wet anyway.

I bought you everything you wanted. Everything. The Crusader’s cross hammered out in silver, inlaid with onyx. The Regency armoire that cost as much to ship back as to buy. A letter of excommunication signed by Pope Innocent VI.

But you said you didn’t want the bracelet. You looked at it very closely but then stood upright and said, “No, I don’t really want it.” You didn’t know I saw you touch the glass bangle you were wearing as you spoke, the bangle I had brought you back from a business trip to London. You probably didn’t know you touched it yourself.

You seemed so happy. I enjoyed your company so much. I wasn’t particularly interested in the medieval history of the papacy but it made you so excited, made you come so much alive, that I could listen to you talk about it for hours. Your eyes lit up when you talked about it, shone, not like when you talked about your work at the PR firm. I remembered why I’d taken you so far to ask you a question I already knew the answer to.

The last night there, after dinner, near a lead fountain in the middle of a crossroads, I asked you to marry me. You said yes, of course. And that was what was supposed to happen. There was nothing wrong, nothing wrong at all. I felt fine.

On the flight back you looked at the ring every so often, hoped the woman next to you would say how pretty it was, ask you about it. But she was much older, she read and she ate and she said nothing. At last, somewhere over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you put your arms around my neck and sighed and closed your eyes and said, “It’s like a fairy tale.” I kissed your brow and moved your left arm a little so I could see the report I was trying to read.

But I do remember holding your hand in Avignon.

“‘To me you are the most hateful of all the kings the gods love. Forever quarrelling is dear to your heart, and wars and battles; and if you are very strong indeed, that is a god’s gift.’” — Agamemnon to Achilles,
Iliad
1:176

You wake in the night sometimes, your heart pounding with that fear, that terror that you are not secure, that you are exposed, that for all your money and servants and employees, tomorrow you may be out on the street — working in a factory, driving a bus — fighting with a woman as old as you are about whether or not you can afford to see a movie. Just a lousy movie. You lie there and stare at where the ceiling would be in the dark and you realize that there is someone next to you. But you don’t know who. You weren’t even that drunk. There were, as always, several candidates — temps, struggling actresses, younger sisters. They couldn’t wait to talk to you, to listen to you, to find you fascinating. And now one of them lies next to you. Half your age, you know that, she must be. But that is all you know. Her face, her name, her body are gone.

And you hate yourself for being weak, for taking the drug again, for smoking the cigarette you had forborne. You wish she wasn’t there, whoever she is.

In the morning, you wake and she is in your shower. You wonder what she looks like but it doesn’t matter, no matter what she looks like she must go. But then the shower is turned off and she steps into your room, drying her whole body with a hand towel, unashamed of her nakedness. Not like the women you know your own age, that can’t wait to hide their sagging flesh, turn off lights, wear long skirts. And her wet hair and the glistening of her nipples in the morning sun and her anklet or her tattoo or her pierced tongue or whatever it is makes you shiver and you know you will not tell her to leave, that you will listen to her babble over lunch and nod and smile. But not because you are trying to please her. Because watching her really does make you smile, indulging her really does make you happy for a moment. Watching something free, unweighted, like setting a dog loose on a beach. You are too tired to run like that, too anxious to enjoy the sun and the waves, but seeing the animal relax, take pleasure, at least helps you remember what it was like. In the earning of things you have lost the ability to enjoy them. And others can only enjoy them because they did not earn them.

If you are running with a friend and the two of you can have a conversation as you’re running, you can be sure you’re not getting anything out of the run.

You will let her dress you, let her teach you new dances, take you to new clubs, new bars, because even though you know it does not really matter, it matters to her. You will let her take you to a dirty Thai restaurant that has mediocre food and when she says, “How is it?” you will say, “Great,” and she’ll say, “I told you!” and you’ll leave it at that because you can’t explain and you’d rather she was happy and ignorant than informed and miserable. In fact it is because of this very quality that you are drawn to her and those like her and why you can never be with one too long. Because then they become like you, when they become informed, they become tired like you, jaded. But when they still do not yet understand the world, they can still remind you of joy. They are little bundles of joy, they are. You can live your life through them even though you are dead. These little bundles of joy in string bikinis who are not too tired to go parasailing, still thrilled at the prospect of skydiving, who have not yet discovered that there is nothing worth discovering. You want to possess them, yes. But like a spirit, not an owner.

“‘Even as Phoibos Apollo is taking away my Chryseis . . . I shall take the fair-cheeked Briseis, your prize . . . that you may learn well how much greater I am than you . . . ”’ — Agamemnon to Achilles,
Iliad
1:182

We smile when they tell us we don’t know anything and that we understand even less.

Smile when they berate us for being boring, for wanting nothing more than to sit still when we have a moment in which we do not need to work, despite the money and the toys we have, the money and the toys we always dreamed of. “We could do anything,” they say. “Fly to China for the weekend, race cars, anything, and all you want to do is sit there and watch the largest television I’ve ever seen.” Yes that is all we want but not all we wanted. The energy is gone for all else, gone, and they should be thankful for that because that is why we need them, that is why they make us tremble, that is why we smile at them and say nothing, because they are our energy now, they have the energy we have spent elsewhere, we need them to get us up off the couch because without them, a moment’s peace would be enough.

Smile, find it charming when they’re impressed by what used to impress us — champagne, private jets, expensive cigarettes — again, we need them for that. Without them we have done all this for nothing.

What did even the gods themselves prize above all other sacrifices?

What was the only thing that even they could take only once?

You always asked me those questions. Before we knew we were getting divorced, before you opened the note from Daniel’s daughter, before your friend saw me in Seattle with that undergraduate that had attended my lecture. You asked me one of those questions on our very first date. “God, those things are so fake! I think that’s so unattractive, don’t you?” you asked.

Even if you had put it differently, I would have known the answer. Your small cup and push-up bra told me what you wanted me to say. “Oh, absolutely,” I said even though I liked the waitress’s breasts. Did you need to ask me that? Saying nothing at all would have been better. Then I never would have been forced to put the lie into words, then at least some kind of ambiguity would have remained.

Yet those early ones were always easy. I knew what to say if you asked me if you looked fat, if a skirt looked good, if you could get away with those boots. But the longer we knew each other, the more times we had sex, the more and more difficult they grew.

There was the phase you went through when you made a point of staring at other men when I was talking to you. It made you so angry when I looked at other women you thought you’d show me what it was like. But when I didn’t react, you became even more furious. “Why don’t you care? If you loved me, you’d care,” you yelled at me. That was the first question I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t understand why it wouldn’t be possible for me to love you and trust you.

But there were many more after that, many more questions I didn’t know how to answer, questions you always asked me after sex, questions that had obviously been poisoning your mind for days, for weeks. Questions like, “If I brought another girl home with me, would you sleep with her?” Questions like, “If I was kidnapped, how long would you wait before you slept with someone else?” Questions like, “How much do you love me?”

After the first one, after I said, “Well I guess if you brought her home with you I would,” after you refused to return my calls for a week, I learned very quickly what I was supposed to do if I wanted you to stay with me. I learned very quickly that even when I kept no secrets from you, you still didn’t want to hear the truth.

Where did those questions come from? From fears or expectations or both or something else entirely? Why did you ask me those questions if you didn’t want to hear the answers? Why did you teach me to lie to you?

In Turkish the term is
chitter-chitter,
which means “freshly baked,” “ready to eat.” In Japanese,
hatsuikuzakari no bi,
meaning “the blossoming beauty of a girl in the midst of developing.” In Afrikaans,
hoë ouderdom,
which means “the riper, the better.” In Seri Indian it is
ziix cëima,
which translates as “body that has happened,”
ziix
being otherwise used primarily to refer to corpses or “bodies that are no longer happening.” In Urdu it is. . .