The Pleasure of My Company (3 page)

Still, as freakish as I
may have appeared, I had established contact. And I doubt that her brief
distorted impression of me was so indelible that it could not, at some point,
be erased and replaced with a better me.

Which leads me to the
subject of charisma. Wouldn’t we all like to know the extent of our own
magnetism? I can’t say my charm was at full throttle when I strolled by
Elizabeth, but had she been at the other end of the street, so that I was
walking eastward with the sun behind me, squintless and relaxed and perhaps in
dusky silhouette, my own charisma would have swirled out of me like smoke from
a hookah. And Elizabeth, the enthralling Elizabeth, would already be snared
and corralled. But my charisma has yet to fully bloom. It’s as though something
is keeping me back from it. Perhaps fear: What would happen to me and to those
around me if my power became uncontained? If I were suddenly just too
sensational to be managed? Maybe my obsessions are there to keep me from being
too powerfully alluring, to keep my would-be lovers and adventures in check.
After all, I can’t be too seductive if I have to spend a half hour on the big
night calculating and adjusting the aggregate bulb wattage in a woman’s
apartment while she sits on the edge of the bed checking her watch.

Around
this time the
Crime Show
called, wanting to tape more footage for their
show. They needed to get a long shot of me acting suspicious while I was being
interrogated by two policemen who were in fact actors. I asked them what I
should say, and they said it didn’t matter as the camera would be so far away
we would only have to move our mouths to make it look like we’re talking. I
said okay, because as nervous as it made me, the taping gave the coming week a
highlight. The idleness of my life at that time, the unintended vacation I was
on, made the days long and the nights extended, though it was easy for me to
fill the warm California hours by sitting at the window, adjusting the breeze
by using the sliding glass as a louver and watching the traffic roll by.

Eight days after my last
sighting of her, I again saw Elizabeth standing across the street, this time
with a different couple but doing the same routine. She stood at the car,
handing over the brochures, and then dallied as she made her final sales pitch.
I decided to take my walk again, this time wearing my sunglasses to avoid the
prune look. I outdid myself in the clothes department, too. I put on my best
outfit, only realizing later that Elizabeth had no way of knowing that it was
my best outfit. She could have thought it was my third- or fourth-best outfit,
or that I have a closet full of better outfits of which this was the worst. So
although I was actually trying very hard, Elizabeth would have to scour my
closet, comparing one outfit against another, in order to realize it. This
outfit, so you know, consisted of khaki slacks and a fashionably frayed white
dress shirt. I topped it off with some very nice brown loafers and matching
socks. This is the perfect ensemble for my neighbourhood, by the way. I looked
like a Californian, a Santa Monican, a man of leisure.

I
attained the sidewalk. I decided this time not to look like someone with a
destination but to go for the look of “a man taking his dog for a walk.” Though
I had no dog. But I imagined a leash in my hand; this was so vivid to me I
paused a few times to let the invisible dog sniff the occasional visible bush.
Such was the depth of my immersion in my “walking man” character. This time
full eye contact was made with Elizabeth, but it was the kind where even though
her eyes strayed over toward me, she kept on talking to her clients, in much
the same way one would glance over to someone wearing a giant spongy orange
fish hat: You want to look, but you don’t want to engage.

A plan
began to form. As I passed her, I noticed the two opposing driveways coming
up, which meant I could cross the street if I wanted and end up on her block.
In order to walk near Elizabeth, I would have to reverse my direction once I
had crossed the street. But it seemed perfectly natural to me that a man would
walk down the street, decide to cross it, then go back and read the realtor
sign before going on. This required a little acting on my part. I came to the
low scoop of the driveway and even walked a little past it. I paused, I
deliberated, I turned and looked back at the sign, which was about a dozen feet
from where Elizabeth was standing. I squinted at it, as if it were too far away
to see, and proceeded to cross the street and head in Elizabeth’s direction.

She was
facing away from me; the sign was behind her and stuck into the flower bed,
which was really more of a fern bed. She was wearing a tight beige-and-white
paisley skirt, and a short sleeve brown blouse that was bursting from within
because of her cannonball breasts. Her hair was combed back over her head and
held in place by a black velour hair clamp, which fit like headphones. Her feet
were plugged into two open-toed patent leather heels and were reflected in the
chrome of her Mercedes’ bumper. I couldn’t imagine any man to whom this package
would not appeal.

As I
approached her, I felt a twinge where it matters. And if my theory is correct,
that sexual attraction is usually mutual—an evolutionary necessity, otherwise
nobody would be doing it with anybody—then Elizabeth must have been feeling
something, too. That is, if she ever looked over at me. I came to the sign,
leaned over, and pretended to read the description of the apartment, which was
reduced to such extreme abbreviations as to be indecipherable. What’s a rfna? I
had to do mental somersaults to align the fact that while I was reading
Elizabeth’s name, her actual person was by now two steps behind me.

I
stepped backward as if to get a better view of the sign and, I swear this was
an accident, bumped right into Elizabeth, glute to glute. She turned her head
and said airily, “I’m sorry,” even though it was I who had bumped into her. “Oh,
excuse
me,”
I said, taking all the blame.

“Are
you the realtor?” I asked.

“Yes I
am,” she said and she browsed inside her purse without ever losing eye contact
with me.

“How
many apartments are there for rent in the entire complex of apartments?” I
said, using too many words.

“Just
three. Would you like a card?”

Oh yes,
I wanted a card. I took it, palming it like an ace of spades, knowing it was a
memento that I would pin up on my bulletin board. In fact, this would be the
first item on the board that could even come close to being called a bulletin. “That’s
you,” I said, indicating with a gesture that the name on the card and the name
on the sign were one and the same.

“Are
you looking for an apartment?” she asked.

I said
something exquisite: “I’m always looking to upgrade.” I muttered this casually
as I sauntered off. The wrong way, I might add. The next opposing scooped-out
driveways were so far out of my way that I didn’t get home for twenty-five
minutes, and while I walked I kept looking back over my shoulder at my
apartment, which had begun to recede into a pinpoint.

Once home I reflected on
the encounter, and two moments in particular stood out. One was Elizabeth’s
response to my inquiry about the number of apartments for rent. “Just three.”
It was the “just” I admired. “Just a few left,” “Only three and they’re going
fast” was the implication. Elizabeth was obviously a clever saleswoman. I
figured that three were a lot of empty apartments for this building, and that
the pressure was on from the owners to get them rented fast. I’ll bet they knew
what they had in Elizabeth: the very, very best.

The second
moment—contact between me and Elizabeth—was harder to relive because it had
occurred out of my sight, actually behind my back. So I had to picture the
unseen. Our—pardon my language—butts had backed right into each other like two
marshmallows coming together in a sudden splat. Boing. If I had intended this
sort of physical encounter I would be a different kind of person. The kind I
am actually not. I would never do such a thing intentionally, like a subway
creep. But I had literally impressed myself upon Elizabeth, and at our next
meeting we would be further along than I ever could have imagined, now that
she and I had had intimate contact. My hip had touched hers and hers had
touched mine. That’s probably more than a lot of men have done who have known
her a lot longer.

My
third contact with Elizabeth, which occurred one week later, was a total
failure, with an explanation. I was coincidentally on the street when Elizabeth
pulled up and got out of her car. Nothing could have seemed more casual, more
unplanned, than my presence in front of the Rose Crest. She unfolded herself
from the Mercedes, all legs and stockings, and gave me a jaunty wave. I think
she was even about to speak to me. The problem was, I was taping my long shot
for the
Crime Show,
in which I was supposedly being interrogated by two
cops on the street.

So when
Elizabeth waved, I was approached by two “policemen” who seriously overacted
in their efforts to make me look guilty by snarling and poking at me. Luckily
it was a long shot, so their hambone performances couldn’t be seen on camera.
No Emmy for them. I thought I was pretty good. We were given no dialogue to
say, but we had been asked to spout gibberish while a narrator talked over us.
They weren’t recording us, they just wanted our mouths to be moving to make it
look like we were talking. One “policeman” was saying, “I’m talking, I’m
talking, I’m moving my mouth, it looks like I’m talking.” And then the other
one would say, “Now I’m talking, I’m moving my mouth like I’m talking.” Then
they would say to me, “Now you talk, just move your mouth.” So I would say, “I’m
talking, I’m talking, I’m talking back to you,” and so on. I couldn’t wave to
Elizabeth, even though she’d waved at me, as it would have spoiled the scene. I
must have looked strange, because even though it was eighty-five-degree
weather, I was wearing the blue parka with the bloodstain to look even more
suspicious for the camera. This couldn’t have made Elizabeth too comfortable,
particularly if she’d had any inclination toward viewing me as her next
husband.

I am
always amazed by what lies buried in the mind until one day for no particular
reason it rises up and makes itself known. That night in bed, a vision of
Elizabeth’s face entered my consciousness, and I saw clearly that she had grey-green
eyes. It was a small fact I hadn’t realized I knew.

On Sunday I decided to
distract myself by going down to the Rite Aid and taking a look at Zandy. This
was no ordinary girl watching. Zandy works at the pharmacy, behind an elevated
counter. She’s visible only from the neck up as she sails from one end to the
other. If I visit the pay phone/Coke machine alcove, I can get an employee’s
view of Zandy’s pharmacy-white outfit against her pharmacy-white skin. She’s a
natural California girl, except her face has never been touched by makeup or
sun, only by the fluorescent rays of the ceiling lights. Her hair is almost unkempt,
with so many dangling swoops and curls that I long for a tiny surfboard so I
can go swishing amid the tresses. I have no designs on Zandy because the
rejection would be overwhelming for me. Plus, she’s a genuine blonde, and I
prefer Elizabeth’s dyed look.

The
Rite Aid is splendidly antiseptic. I’ll bet the floors are hosed down every
night with isopropyl alcohol. The Rite Aid is the axle around which my squeaky
world turns, and I find myself there two or three days a week seeking out the
rare household item such as cheesecloth. Like every other drugstore on earth,
it is filled with quack products that remind me of nineteenth-century ads for
hair restorers and innervating elixirs. These days there is a solid percentage
of products in the stores which actually work, but they’re on display next to
liquid-filled shoe inserts that claim to prevent varicose veins.

I
pretended to stop for a Coke ‘n’ phone—even though my phone card was on
empty—and saw Zandy gliding behind the counter, as though she were on skates. I
moved to the end of the displays, pretending to read the instructions for the
Coke machine, and good news, the wonderful minds at the Rite Aid had decided to
move the Tepperton’s Apple Pie Most Average American essay contest placard next
to the Coke machine, where I could tear off an entry form and, for the next few
minutes, write another five hundred words while Zandy, delicious as a meringue,
went about her work in full view. I did not really want to write another five
hundred words or even two hundred words, but it was easy enough considering the
trade-off. There were several dull pencils in a box on the display, so dull
that when I wrote with them the wood scraped against the paper, but I buckled
down and began my second patriotic essay in two weeks, after a lifetime of
none.

America
lets me choose not to be a pioneer. I am uplifted by doing ordinary work. The
work of society, the common work of the world…

And so
it went. I was impressed with myself because this essay expressed the exact
opposite idea of my first essay—one week I said I had the pioneer spirit and
the next week I didn’t—and I wrote both opinions with such ease that I believed
I could take any subject and effectively argue either side. This skill would be
valuable in dating. Just think, I could switch positions midstream if I sensed
my date reacting badly.