The Pleasure of My Company (18 page)

She
slowed and stopped. The mechanical hum of the car had become accepted as
silence, but when we got out of the car, the further, deeper silence of the
desert shocked us both. Holding Teddy, I leaned against the car and pointed out
the dipper, then the North Star, then Jupiter. A meteor caught my eye but Clarissa
turned too late. Clarissa and I didn’t speak, but this quiet was different from
the stiltedness in the car. The air was cold and brittle but was punctuated
with surprising eddies of heated winds.

It was
going to take some acting on my part to keep her from knowing that my mouth was
on a three-second delay from my brain while it tried to eliminate the letter
e
from everything I was about to say.

What I
wanted to say was, “There’s a three bedroom at the Rose Crest for rent. Would
you and Teddy like to share it with me?” but it was shot through with e’s. So
instead I slouched back onto the fender and said, “I was shown a big vacant
flat across from my pad. I’m thinking of taking it. If you want to, you could
stay. I could watch him so you could study.” There was a long pause. “You could
stay in your own big room. I don’t mind waking up with junior on nights you
just want to conk out.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say, though I
wanted to keep talking so I would never have to hear her answer.

“How
much is it?” she said.

“I
would pay all our monthly bills, food, all that. You could finish school.”

“Why
would you do that?” she said.

Because
I am insane. Because I am lonely. Because I love you. Because I love Teddy. “It
could work for both of us,” I said. “I’d watch him and you could go to school.”

“Can I
let you know?”

“Naturally,”
I said.

“We
would be sharing, right?” she said.

She
meant, sharing and that’s all. I nodded yes and we got back in the car.

Twelve
hours later she said, “I think it could work. You’re sure you’re okay with it?”

“I am.”

The
drive from Granny’s had been one of escalating greenery, ending in the sight of
home. The scrub of southern Texas had given way to cacti, which had given way
to the occasional oasis in Arizona, which had given way to the pines and oaks
of California, which turned into curbs and streets. When we finally pulled up
in front of my apartment, I stuck my foot out of the car, put it on the grass,
and said, “Sleet, greet, meet, fleet street.” Clarissa looked at me like I was
crazy.

Over
the next few days, every habit of mine returned with a new intensity, as though
I owed it a debt.

There were two letters
waiting for me when I returned. One was a kindly but brief note from my sister
informing me of Granny and our inheritance, the other from a law firm in San
Antonio informing me of the same. Ida’s letter, though less emotional than a
letter from Granny, still had the same embedded goodness, and I wrote her back
apologizing for my years of silence, listing a few of my dominant quirks so she
could understand me a bit better. The letter was so good that I copied it and
sent it to the law firm, too, though I realized later they could use it against
me in court and try to keep the money for themselves. But they didn’t.

The FOR
LEASE sign was still up at the Rose Crest, but I didn’t want to make any moves
until the cash was in hand, and the money took several weeks—of course—to
become mine. I had to prove who I was, which was not easy. I thought my
argument to them—that I was me because no one else was me—was convincing, but
it was not what they were looking for. I had to prove my lineage. My documents
were vague. I had no driver’s license and could not find my birth certificate.
Ultimately the legal firm came to a decision; they had no one to give the money
to but me, and my sister had vouched for me, so enough was enough and they sent
me the dough.

I now
had an actual reason to call Elizabeth the Realtor. Not having a phone, I got
the address of her company and walked there, even though the route proved to be
almost impossible. I wondered if my path, when viewed from an airplane, would
spell out my name. Just before giving up, I found a crosswalk for the handicapped
that had two scooped-out curbs and used it as a gangplank to get to Elizabeth’s
block. I left a note that said I was interested in the apartment.

She
drove by several hours later and I ran down the stairs before she could get to
my door. Elizabeth must have developed an extremely sophisticated wealth
detector because she suddenly began treating me as a viable customer who was
swimming in cash, even though I was sure that nothing in my behaviour had
changed. Even after I made her drive me across the street, which wasn’t more
than twenty steps, she maintained a professional front and showed no
exasperation. Or maybe she perceived my indifference toward her and was trying
to win me back.

Within
the hour, I’d leased the three-bedroom and even negotiated the price down
fifty dollars a month. I had another eight days on my monthly rent and I told
her I would move in at week’s end. I watched Teddy several times that week and
Clarissa showed no signs of backtracking.

I was now purchasing a
newspaper every day and perusing the financial section. I diligently followed
bonds, mutual funds, and stocks and noted their movement. Movement was what I
hated. I didn’t like that one day you could have a dollar and the next you could
have eighty cents without having done anything. On the other hand, the idea
that you could have a dollar and the next day have a dollar twenty thrilled me
no end. I was worried that on the day my dollar was worth eighty cents I would
be sad, and on the day it was worth a dollar twenty I would be elated, though I
did like the idea of knowing exactly why I was in a certain mood. But I saw
another possibility. If I bought bonds and held them to maturity, then the
fluctuations in their value wouldn’t affect me, and I liked that their
dividends trickled in with regularity. This meant that my mood, too, would
constantly trickle upward and by maturity, I would be ecstatic.

In
interviewing a series of bond brokers, I sought out someone who could satisfy
my requirement of extreme dullness. I felt that the happier a broker was, the
shadier he was. If he was happy, it meant that he thought about things other
than bonds. Happiness meant he might be frivolous and do things like take
vacations. I wanted a Scrooge McDuck who thought about only one thing, decimal
points. Since I was a person whose own personality rose and fell based on the
input of another person, meetings with these brokers were deadly. The more sombre
he was, the more sombre I would become, and we would often spiral down together
into an abyss of tedium.

I
interviewed four brokers at several firms in the Santa Monica area. It was the
second one who was stupefyingly dull enough and who gave me a siren’s call when
I met with his rivals. His name was Brandon Brady, and he was so dreary that I’m
sure that the rhythmic alliteration in his name made him faintly ill.

What
made me finally choose Brandon was not his colourlessness but my perception of
the depth of his narrow, hence thorough and numerical, mind. I was sitting with
another broker, whose own deadly personality challenged Brandon’s. It would
have been a tough choice based on flatness alone. But when this broker laid out
his plans for me, he started with a proposal to buy a ten-year bond starting
next Wednesday.

“There’s
a problem with buying a ten-year bond next Wednesday,” I said.

“And
what is that?”

“If I
buy a bond next Wednesday, ten years later it would come due on a Saturday, but
I couldn’t cash it in until Monday. I would lose two days’ interest.”

He
checked his computer then looked at me as if I were a wax model of myself: I
seemed like a human, but something was wrong.

And
that was that. I went back to test broker number one, who made the same gaffe.
But it was Brandon, who, after I had proposed buying a bond next Wednesday, got
out a calculator and made a clatter as he ran his fingers over it, then frowned
deeply. “Well,” he said, “they’ve got us on this one. Why don’t we wait a few
days and see what other bonds come up?” I knew I had found my man.

Clarissa and Teddy’s entry
into the new apartment was biblical. It was as though they had been led into
the promised land. Throw rugs of sunlight crept across every bedroom floor, and
I had placed cheap plants in every empty corner, copying a home decor catalogue
I had found in the mailbox. I marched Clarissa around the place and she took a
breath of delight in every new room, which gave me pleasure. I had budgeted for
just enough furniture to make the place functional, so it looked a little
spare, but if my twelve-year plan was to work, the cash would have to flow as
though through an hourglass. Clarissa had some furniture that she coerced a
friend with a pickup to deliver, and Teddy’s colourful possessions were quickly
distributed throughout the apartment. Clarissa installed a phone, which I
viewed suspiciously at first, then finally forgot about. The place filled out
incrementally, a few framed photos appeared, and by the end of the month it
looked as though a family lived there. Except.

Except
that the space between me and Clarissa remained uncrossable. Sometimes I felt
an intense love coming from her toward me, but I couldn’t tell if it was
because of Teddy. I gave it time, and it was easy to give it time, because
Teddy’s antics often kept any serious discussion at bay. If my hand rested
against Clarissa’s, it was only a moment before I had to move it to snag Teddy.
When he ambled around the apartment, Clarissa hung over him like a willow.
There was no such thing as a solitary moment. I began to allow a phrase in my
head that would never have been allowed across the street. The imperfect ideal.
As strict as my life across the street had been, it was just as loose at the
Rose Crest. Teddy’s chaos left me in structural shambles, and I think I could
tolerate it because the source of the chaos was unified. He was a person beyond
logic; he was the singularity.

It is disappointing when
you discover that the person you love loves someone else. I made this discovery
twice. The first was one evening when the three of us sat down to our usual
meal. These dinners were the fantastic disorder at the end of my rigorously
structured days spent with my nose in financial magazines and reports. I had
grown to anticipate them and participate in them with a newfound looseness.
Clarissa and I chipped in and had food delivered, and there was a lot of
freewheeling talk accompanied by the opening of white paper bags containing
napkins and picnic utensils and tuna sandwiches and mustard packets. This
crinkling noise and snap of the plastic tops of containers of mayonnaise always
sparked us into thrilling recaps of the day’s most mundane events, and months
later I realized that these half hours were sacred.

After
Clarissa had set Teddy in a high chair and thrown a few morsels of tuna in
front of him, he fisted a glob of it and stuck it in his mouth, then turned to
her and grinned. Clarissa’s face beamed and broadened, her focus was only on
him; there was nothing else, no apartment, no jobs, no schoolwork, no life
other than the joyful force that streamed between them. And there was no me. I
sat and waited out the absorption, which flickered when Clarissa reached for
more food and finally both alit back on earth.

Clarissa’s studies
progressed and she engaged herself in them with fervour, and she grasped the
language of psychology quickly. The vocabulary and concepts came easily to her
and she hinted that she had an affection for the subject matter that the other
students didn’t. At night she would catch me up on what she had learned during
the day, give me shorthand analyses of syndromes and disorders, and then would
go over comments she had made in class to get my opinion of them.

Clarissa
was always thoughtful toward me and would express her gratitude for my
assistance in her life, and I would thank her in return, which always left her
puzzled. The impact she and Teddy had had on me was made clear one afternoon
when a packet of mail arrived, forwarded from my old address. One of the
envelopes was from Mensa. I opened it and read that it had been discovered
that, as I had guessed, my scores had been compromised by human error, and
would I like to take the test again? My first thought took the form of a shock:
Human error at Mensa? What chance then did McDonald’s have, and the Rite Aid,
and CompUSA? My second thought took the form of a semantic shudder at the
phrase “human error’: Is there any other kind? My third thought was No, I didn’t
want to take the test again, because here I was having a life, even though it
was a pastiche of elements of the life of someone else.

One night I got a phone
call from Clarissa asking if it was all right for her to be home later than
usual. “Would you be okay? Were you going out?” she asked, “Can you watch
Teddy; is Teddy okay?” Sure, I said.

Teddy
and I had an evening of bliss. He was the model child and I was the model
adoptive/uncle/friend. We cavorted on the bed, we played trash can basketball,
we played “Where’s Teddy?” at professional levels. Finally a cloud came over
him and he conked out on my bed and I slid him over and rested next to him. My
lighting rules were still in effect and the soft thirty-watt lamp on my chest
of drawers was balanced nicely by the solar glow in the living room. My door
was ajar and I could see the front window and door as I lay in relative
darkness. I used this solemn time for absolutely nothing, as I drained my mind
of thought.