Alternatives to Sex (10 page)

We’d progressed to the part of her monologue in which she ripped off her turquoise glasses and listed a variety of psychological and chemical problems that made the purchase of this particular house impossible. Hypoglycemia, hypocholesterolemia, posttraumatic something or other.

She halted her speech to look for a mint in one of the canvas tote bags she always carried with her. She was an ex-smoker who kept replacing that oral fixation with a variety of others: chewing gum, mints, breath sprays, lollipops, and so on. The occasional solid meal might have taken care of the entire problem, but there was about as much likelihood of that as the actual purchase of a piece of property.

“And why take on the burden of all those tenants?” I prompted. “They would just be more headaches you don’t need.”

“Exactly,” she said. “Look at your nightmare in that regard.”

“Exactly.” During our long talks about her housing headaches, I’d revealed to her many of my own, including the Kumiko Rothberg situation.

“I’d be as inept at collecting rents as you are. I wonder if I should go to a movie tonight? And you know I consider that particular ineptitude a sign of strength of character, in your case.”

“Yes, I know. I appreciate the vote of confidence.”

“Thank you for taking it the right way. Not that there’s a
single
movie I want to see right now. Oh well.”

Despite having read lurid descriptions of Sylvia’s multiple orgasms and sexual escapades in parks and department stores, I found it hard to imagine her touching another human being, let alone being driven to heights of wild passion in a fitting room at Harrods. She struck me as too anxious and distracted—not to mention absorbed in the minutiae of university politics—to care about such things. I didn’t know her age, but reading between the lines of her book, I’d come to the conclusion that she’d reached a period of blissful sexual dormancy, give or take the occasional grad student.

“And I wasn’t ever really sure that that neighborhood was right for you,” I said. “It’s fine for me, but it would add another twenty minutes to your Deerforth commute.”

“I wasn’t sure either. Although I was almost sure. It was that point-two percent uncertainty that unraveled me in the end.” Unable to find what she was looking for in her bag, she gave it a little kick and sat up straight. “I can get more mints when I buy the soap. They’re usually on sale there.”

I always ignored these oddball interjections and was never entirely certain if she knew she’d said them aloud.

“You don’t hate me, do you, William? This is the third time I’ve done this.”

“Fifth. But I’m not counting. When the right thing comes along, we’ll know it,” I assured her. “That fireplace in the second-floor rental unit would have been a constant worry.”

Reassured that I was going to forgive her and was still on her side, she relaxed back into her chair. “I’ve been thinking of going back to square one. Can you stand to think about square one again? A tidy studio apartment right in the middle of everything. I know that’s what I’ve got now, but I want to own. Downtown Boston somewhere. I’m sick of landlords, no offense.”

“We’ve discussed how much you’re going to lose on this, haven’t we?”

“Down to the penny. But it’s worth it and it’s only fair. Those poor people deserve something. You’ll find a buyer for the place, won’t you? It’s not uninhabitable; someone could cope with it. On top of that, I’ll get us tickets for an opera or some expensive ‘event.’ America’s becoming a culture of ‘events.’ I’ll have to make a note on that before I leave. Remind me, will you? No, never mind, it’s an idiotic observation that’s going to go nowhere. I’m desperate for a new topic. I’ve exploited food and fucking already. Unfortunately, I don’t have drugs or murder in the family to yack about. I may have to resort to literature again. How’s your sex life,
carino?”

“Dreary,” I said. “An orgy here, a foot fetishist there, a couple of outdoor encounters along the river, a guy on a leash.” I shrugged.

“Sounds like my week.” One of her bags had toppled over, and she bent down to gather up the stack of books that had fallen out. “One day, I’m sure you’ll tell me the truth.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” I said.

With some people, the best place to hide the truth about your life is out in the open. Sylvia often asked me, casually, about my sex life, one of the privileges, I suppose, of a person who’d written graphically about her erotic experiences on a fishing trawler. It was only to her that I’d made a full confession of all my doings, and she, in a gratifying and disappointing way, had consistently acted as if I was serving up lies as homage to her book.

It was as I was watching her pack up her bags and pat down her short, artificially red hair that I was struck with what seemed like a brilliant idea. I’d solve a couple of problems at one time and make several people happy—boss Gina, Sylvia herself, Edward, even Edward’s beastly friend Marty.

“You know, Sylvia,” I said, “I’m not sure this is the right moment to bring this up…”

“In that case, you must.”

“A friend of mine told me he might be selling his studio in the South End. It’s modest, but tidy, nicely appointed.”

Her canvas bags slid off her thin arm and dropped to the floor. She sat down again, wound her legs together, and leaned on my desk. “Tell,” she said, her eyes bright behind her big eyeglasses.

“It’s not officially on the market yet, but we could probably take a look at it. Built-in everything, very modern…”

“Perfect.”

“Small.”

“Perfect. Windows?”

“Well…”

“Unimportant. When?”

“When?”

“…is he moving out?”

“Oh, probably before Christmas. There might be some negotiating room.”

And so we were off on love affair number seven.

“She’s your classic dead-end street,” Jack said, once she’d left. “Or cul-de-sac. That’s French for sack of shit. I would have fired her years ago.”

Jack had read through some of the more graphic sections of
Come Again
and was convinced Sylvia had made half of it up. I suppose his unwillingness to believe the book was motivated by jealousy, although some chapters did include practices that sounded physically impossible.

“I think this time it’s going to work out,” I said. “I have a completely different feeling about it.”

“Feelings. There’s a concept I just don’t get. You threaten them, William. You tell them you won’t work with them anymore, they’ll go bankrupt. Give me one week with her and I’ll have her in a crap condo that’ll shut her up once and for all.”

“I’ll think it over,” I said.

“It’s about real estate, not people. You forget that.” He shuffled around some papers in a completely unnecessary way, and then, without looking up from his desk, he said, “What’s this about a guy on a leash?”

“Guy on a leash? I have no idea what you’re talking about. You must have misunderstood. Was I talking about a lease at one point?”

He scowled at me, and I was shocked to realize that it wasn’t with disapproval of what I’d told Sylvia, but disappointment that I wasn’t sharing the information with him.

The seller took the news about Sylvia badly. He had a life of his own. He was moving to New Mexico. This was going to complicate everything for him. He was a hefty man with such a thick and idiosyncratic Boston accent, it was impossible to imagine him living elsewhere. Last September, he’d decided to move away from the East Coast because he considered it too vulnerable to future attacks. Like many people who had made radical plans for similar reasons, his will seemed to be wavering after a year of quiet on the home front, and I wouldn’t have been stunned to learn that he was secretly relieved the sale had been postponed. Even so, I assured him that I’d start showing the house again the next day, and that if my customers didn’t bite, two other agents in the office were confident they could find a buyer within a week.

“I know it’s bad for you,” I said, “but don’t forget, she’s not getting off easy, either. She’ll be losing a lot of money.”

“Good. I hope she loses everything. She’s not one of those nuts who does this six times a year, is she?”

Six times a year was overstating it, even for Sylvia, so I told him truthfully that she was not one of those nuts. After I’d hung up, I began pondering my motives for interesting Sylvia in Edward’s condo. Inevitably, she would complicate Edward’s relocation idea, just as she’d complicated this guy’s. It would be a roadblock to Edward’s plans, even if not an insurmountable one. Every time I thought about helping my friend pack his belongings into boxes and shipping them to San Diego, I felt queasy.

The place Sylvia had rejected was wrong for Samuel and Charlotte in all ways, but I decided to show it to them anyway. In most cases, finding the right place to live is like finding a romantic partner through a personal ad. People go in with a list of qualities and physical details they consider essential, but then some chemical attraction to the least likely candidate kicks in and the interest in classical music and fine dining or the must-have walk-in closet is rendered irrelevant.

Charlotte showed up at my office alone the next afternoon. “I didn’t want to get Samuel involved and have to consider his schedule,” she said. “Sometimes it’s better to make your own plans. At some point, I’ll let him know you put in the time showing me the place so he’ll appreciate your diligence.” She picked up a calendar I had on the corner of my desk, arched her eyebrows, and flipped the page to the current month. “Do you really think I’ll like the house?”

“I’m not sure. But it’s always useful to rule things out absolutely.”

She waved off the particulars of this place, as if to say that she trusted me and the process. She’d had a manicure since the last time she’d been in, and her nails were smooth and shiny, orange near the tips that appeared to blend subtly into red toward the cuticle, something like autumn leaves. Elaborately painted nails were increasingly common, but I was disconcerted by the sight of them on smart, professional women of my age whom I assumed to be too busy for such glossy vanity. She caught me looking and curled her fingers in a bit. “I have to deliver a manuscript in Boston later this afternoon,” she said. “I was happy to have an excuse to leave the house this much earlier.”

“Interesting book?”

“No, of course not. Something called
The Confidence Game.
A good title for a film noir or a spy thriller, but in this case, it is exactly what it sounds like: instructions on how to be more confident in your business dealings. Ten easy ways to get what you want from the underlings, all infused with a troubling tone of self-righteous American arrogance. At one point, the author even refers to ‘terrorists’ in the employee lounge. I tried to add a note of humility, but I’m sure it won’t be appreciated. Humility is completely out of favor these days.”

She made her speech with conviction, but also with the inflections of a performance, as if she wasn’t used to delivering this kind of lecture on her work. Maybe she wasn’t used to talking about it at all.

“If you think of some confidence-building advice for me, let me know.”

She glanced around the office. By most standards, it was a highly successful business, but Gina, with her devotion to practicality, made very little effort at dressing up the place. The walls were cold white and the furniture was functional pressed wood stuff that she’d leased from a supplier. It probably didn’t look like the kind of office where a truly confident person would work. At first, Gina had hoped I’d spruce up the decor some, but then she’d visited the apartment I was renting at the time and never mentioned the plan again.

Charlotte fiddled with her unruly hair. “I used to think my greatest maternal accomplishment, maybe my only maternal accomplishment, was instilling confidence in Daniel,” she said. “It was an obsession of mine, practically from the minute he was born, obviously an attempt to undo my own parents’ mistakes, since they were of the break-their-spirits school of child rearing. But lately, I’ve been wondering if I shouldn’t have encouraged specific talents or skills that would give rise to confidence, rather than the abstract thing itself. He’s extremely confident, but has he earned it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Rhetorical question. And please don’t repeat my doubts, especially to Samuel. He and Daniel are basically twin brothers.”

I was delighted by the double betrayal.

As I drove her to the house, she became silent, and I could tell she was disappointed in the neighborhood. Vinyl siding was hugely popular in Somerville, and there was something unsettling about the sight of row after row of multifamily houses encased in plastic, as if the whole area were an overgrown Monopoly game.

“I know it’s not exactly what you were looking for, in terms of location, but there are a lot of advantages.” I left it at that because at that moment I couldn’t think of one. “I don’t live far from here myself.”

“Oh, it’s fine,” she said. “I was just a little amazed by your car. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a car this clean. Is it brand new?”

“Nearly.” My Toyota was eight years old, but with its creased upholstery, layers of carpeting, and tiny compartments, it was an endless source of cleaning opportunities. I told her that a friend had taken it to a car wash for me, as a present.

“Oh,” she said, nodding with the noncommittal distraction that usually indicates disbelief.

Fortunately, the seller wasn’t home. He’d already begun to pack away books and dishes and posters, and all of the house’s flaws were on display, along with a shocking amount of dust and filth that had been uncovered when the furniture had been moved. Charlotte wandered around the owner’s apartment as if she were in a secondhand shop, occasionally pointing out a bowl or a lamp that she admired, but saying nothing about the place itself. She walked hesitantly, as if she was afraid of stepping on broken glass.

“I don’t suppose you want to see the other apartments in the house,” I said.

“No, I don’t think so. I mean, there’s no point, is there?”

“Probably not.”

“A more interesting idea would be to look at your house. To give me a different view of the neighborhood.”

I sensed that this was a bad idea. I was letting her get the upper hand in the relationship, never sensible, professionally or personally.

“All right,” I said. “It’s only a couple of minutes from here.”