The Mere Future (7 page)

I smiled again, trying to connect. He looked everywhere but here.

“Have you got the eight words?”

“Yes,” I said, sitting down on his leather sofa, determined to chat.

He hated that. Harrison just could not stand the way that the wrong people would sit down next to him expecting something meaningful. It was a time waster. The pressure to get rid of them was too much. He wanted to look the other way, flip a trap door, and never think about those skanks again. He was a God. He could make scum disappear. Looking at me made him want to drink. It was all my fault.

“What have you been doing today?” I asked, trying to make friends. I imagined our future camaraderie. Gin and tonics on his beach house porch in Venice. Me on the back of his motorcycle.

“Thinking of a title for my second novel.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he wondered why he had divulged anything. He regretted advancing the conversation because now I would want to talk about it more. And if I was sitting before him blathering, how could I disappear?

He turned, cracked the new bottle of Bombay, and the rest of his day was shot. All because of me.

“I’m sure you’re worried,” I said. “I am a copywriter, after all, and I know that packaging is more important than the object itself. But, that’s what a career is, an art career or any other.” I raised my hand high to illustrate. “Ups and …” I smashed my hand flat on the table. “… downs.” Then I did it again. “Ups … and … downs.” This time I smashed the table harder. “Downs are inevitable. It’s the bounce-back that counts.” I guess I was excited.

Harrison hated that word.
Downs
. He despised it and anyone who used it.

“It is not inevitable,” he said. “Look at Phillip Roth.”

“Maybe you’ll be that lucky,” I smiled. I thought I was being reassuring, but simultaneously wise and knowing. “Sure, I’ll have a drink. Thanks!”

We sat on his couch and stared out through his double skylights, drinking. It was the best couch I had ever been on. Comforting but not so soft it would break your back. You could sleep or read without falling asleep, make love, or chat. It was so deep that I didn’t have to hold up my own neck. Outside, shades of perfect evening mist streamed in through the urban filter. Light in front of, on top of, beside, and behind buildings, all converging like a vision at Lourdes. But this was a typical city evening now, in a New York where suddenly everything worked miracles.

Harrison hated me so much that he could have chopped up my body with a fork. I had tried to shame him, obviously, but he was too well bred and drunk for that. I was not, however, so I didn’t notice the difference. From now on, he would simply ignore me, have another drink. No matter how long I sat there, he would shut up and suck them down. He knew that someday I would just go away. So he drank.

“Oh well,” he said finally, when the bottle was half gone. “We’ll have to talk again soon.” Over his dead body. “You’re on the inside now—
The Brand New York
and all that. No more complaints.”

“No,” I said, handing over my precious piece. “Here are the words. Z-mail me the cash.”

When he had politely seen me to the door, and was safely back behind lock and key, Harrison had another Bombay. He was so annoyed. Why had Ginette and Claire put him in this situation? Couldn’t they take care of themselves? Why did they let him have so much control? It was humiliating. Protecting them from him was their job, not his. Everybody was driving him crazy. Harrison kicked back and put his head in his hands.

Here was the thing,
he drunkenly realized. He did not look for fulfillment in other people. He needed women for something else far more desperate. He needed them for romance, for sex, to talk on the phone, to see at the end of the day. They were time fillers. He did not need them for a sense of self. Was that so bad? He liked to put his arm around a woman in the movies, walk home, make love, and have coffee in the morning. There was nothing in any of that that required one at a time.

What was he going to write about? All of his favorite topics had already been grabbed: his penis, television, kids in New Jersey who don’t do anything. Software. Pollution. Maybe he should call his second novel
Gilligan’s Island.
That wry, glib, distanced sense of humor that stands for nothing on its own was a sure bet. He loved that way of being, it had taken him and so many like him so very far. Now, supposedly, that was over. But he had no idea of what could possibly take its place.

10. CLAIRE’S GLEE

C
LAIRE
,
THE
R
EAL
One with the bad TV, Claire had something holy to write. She went to one of those new-fangled—what are they called?—stationery stores. The word “staples” now only meant tiny metal things that came in cardboard boxes. This particular shop, named
Marge’s Corner Stationery Store
, had just opened up where a Wendy’s used to be. A nice woman named Marge read mysteries behind the counter while she sold paper and writing instruments. There Claire found some gorgeous paper, rough-hewn. And she also found a neat pen.

Claire sat down in a tea shop and tried to compose, but her arm didn’t wrap properly around this brand-new writing utensil. She drank down the Darjeeling, wandered outside, and landed on a stoop, laying out a sheet of gorgeous pulp flat against a book. The book was a gift from Harrison Bond.
Great Short Stories of Honoré
de Balzac.

Although romantic, this pose was hard—sitting on steps, slouching over a pad. Her back would not remain straight enough, straight enough to write. Even after so many hours of yoga. Pens were not so easy to maneuver anymore; most people took classes to learn how to use them. The gorgeous succulent handwriting that she’d imagined came out crude, ugly, and vague. Finally, she gave up, scooted home, checked her mailbox, leaned back in her chair. It was perfect for watching
I Love Lucy
, but not very helpful when it came to using a pen. Its ball did not slide. She felt every bump and grind of the paper’s weave. It was like riding your bike over backwoods underbrush. Then she tried the kitchen table, perfect for wine or oatmeal. But for writing the truest letter from her heart, it was too slick. The paper slid. Finally, Claire just stopped posing and did it. She scrawled with passion across the top of the page, knowing that the formation of her letters and their links would never be beautiful. She felt like Queen Victoria with dyslexia. Her handwriting sucked. It expressed, but did not communicate.

Finally, Claire accepted her limitations, and turned on the computer with a clap of her hands. There she composed a missive to her secret true love. And his name was NOT Harrison Bond.

Dear Jeff,

Every day at the appointed times, I go to the mailbox and await
each Postal Round to see if there is a letter for me from you.

I know that Sophinisba reinstated letter writing as a way to create
jobs and reverse the speedup process provoked by email, and most importantly
so that we can all have better interpersonal relationships.

I think she has a good idea there, I really do. Gee whiz, I sound
like a bimbo. A really authoritative person would say, “
SHE HAS A
GOOD IDEA.” Not “I THINK
.” I’m not the female Sambo, brains
akimbo. It’s just that twenty-four hours a day of mail service and
delivery, more employment, more incentive, cheaper stamps—all
that seems cool. But it also means that I have five opportunities per
twenty-four hours to be disappointed by your silence.

Jeff, darling, I remember when phone-answering machines were
first invented. I didn’t want to leave home because I had no way of
knowing whether or not a message was waiting. I hoped that my father
would call to apologize, and I didn’t want to miss it.

Then they invented access codes and I could beep in every fifteen
minutes, all day long. Whenever I felt anxiety about my father’s
good-guy type of cruelty, I would call my machine and hope. It was
expensive, all those quarters, but cheaper than hospitalization.

Then they invented cell phones. I didn’t have to carry bags of quarters
with me and spend time stopping at pay phones, looking for one
that wasn’t broken. Now every time I felt anxious and missed my father’s
ever absent love, I could make the phone call to my machine,
but still keep walking.

Everything was faster, faster, faster. Even though he never called.
Then I met you.

But now, with all of these mail deliveries, I’ve had to change my
life again. I can’t leave the house to go to work at The
MEDIA HUB
without enormous fear that your letter is waiting for me back home
in the box.

Even though my father is now dead, I hope that in his final moments
he realized that he had hurt me and wrote a letter of apology
that has since gotten lost in the mail. And that, in the end, he actually
did love me more than his own ego, right? So now I spend weekends
waiting for the sound of the Post-Teen punching in the combination
on the front door.

The way I look at it, Jeff my love,
EITHER
:

1. You want to write things to me that are difficult to convey, but
you can’t put yourself through that and nothing else worth sending
comes to mind.

OR

2. You don’t know what to say.

Jeff, I project onto you all day long. How ironic, since my job is to
design ROM-Projectiles for Five Dimensional Nasal Imaging. My
emotions and my day job have become low- and high-tech versions of
the same process.

Jeffrey, dear Jeffrey, I am fast and you are slow. I want answers as
soon as I’ve gleaned the question, and when nothing is gleaned, I
want questions to answer. I want proof of my impact on you. I want
to save you. I want you to save me. I want to rescue you. I want you
to rescue me. I want us to transform each other, thereby healing each
other. And I want it now. I can’t wait to save my own life by saving
yours, and you saving your life the same way.

You are vague and confused, Jeff-O. You give vague, confused answers.
On the surface, you appear to be brain dead or, at least, a
moron. You like something, but you can’t explain why and you won’t
bother to think about it. You take antidepressants so you can’t have
any orgasms, but you’re always hard. This makes you more depressed,
but less depressed than you would be without the antidepressants. If
you don’t take your meds, you won’t even kiss.

For you, Jeffie, just saying that you like something is a big confession.
Get over it. You are not so special that you can be ashamed of
things that everyone else does too.
CONNECT. CONNECT.
Take
a look around, you dope. Everyone else is scared too, and that’s what
it is to be human. Only a narcissist thinks he is the only one who is
scared. And that he has to withhold, or else has to recognize himself
in others. You’re racked with guilt and blame yourself for everything
to the point of negative megalomania.

Well, blame me, darling! Blame me!

Let me at least give you that much.

Confession for me is
de rigueur.
I don’t pretend to be so special.
In fact, I am so regular, like everyone else, that I recognize myself in
others compulsively. I see everyone else’s faults as forgivable, and so I
forgive myself. Maybe I need more shame. And that is something you
can give me. With your eyes closed. It would be so easy for you, Jeff.
You would be excellent at it. That’s what you offer me, the shame that
I so desperately need. Please do it.

Love,

Claire

11. FORMER RUSSIANS

O
N THE WAY
home from Harrison’s, I stopped off to do the dinner grocery shopping at the former Organic Wal-Mart. Now it was a free-for-all, with people selling tomatoes out of their window boxes, and home-made refrigerator cake. There, I spotted one.

You see, I have had a lifelong hobby of recognizing former Soviet Bloc celebrities in the supermarket. This interest began in childhood. My father used to like to stop prominent individuals on the street and have them shake my hand, so that later (like now) I could say that that was what we did. In this manner I met James Baldwin when I was six. I met Dave Madden from
Laugh-In
. And then, one day, in the Daitch-Shopwell, by the dairy case …

“Look,” Daddy said. “That’s Alexander Kerenski.”

“Who’s that?”

“The Prime Minister of the Menshevik government of Russia, after the Czar and before the Communists.”

I looked up from behind his knee. The object of my father’s fandom was a lonely old man in an old gray suit. He was food shopping slowly because it was his only way to be around people. His suit was too big on him because he was well into the shrinking process. Poor guy, he placed his bets on the wrong side of history and paid ever since. Nowadays, Mr Kerenski would ask people questions like, “What kind of sour cream do you like?” just to hear another human voice interact with his own. He dreamed that one of these people would strike up a conversation and become his friend. That they could have tea together and talk about the Duma, the Cossacks, and Lenin, that scoundrel. But this never happened. He saw it take place once in a movie and twice in a play, but in real life one thing never led to another. Kerenski stopped. He changed his glasses, stalling for more time among the living. He examined the sour cream container again. What was he looking for? The refrigeration refreshed his soul. He changed his mind, reached for the cottage cheese.