Far-Flung (7 page)

When Jane speaks, she addresses my palm and not me. “I see blue lights. I see swimmers. I see rhododendrons. You will live a long time.” She pauses. “You will always feel like this.” She slowly rolls my fingers toward my palm, making a fist. She looks up at me.

“Like what?” I ask.

Jane lets go of my hand, and makes a vague gesture with her own, indicating the A&P, the parking lot, my car with Dog in it. “Like this,” she repeats, softly. “You will always feel like this.”

Joyce is there, standing above me. “Perhaps you should take some sick time,” she says. “You can’t keep falling asleep at work.”

I feel very tired. I just want to go back to sleep. I don’t know what to say.

“Do you have any comp time coming?” says Joyce. “Perhaps you should take it now.”

“I’m tired,” I say. Joyce is a little out of focus, on account of I just woke up.

“I know you’re tired,” says Joyce. She seems to be talking very loudly. Joyce sent us flowers. She is nice. “You look very tired. That’s why I think you should take some time off. Don’t you think that would be a good idea? Do you understand?”

“I guess so,” I say.

“Well, think about it,” says Joyce. “Think about it, and let me know. Things can’t go on like this.”

“I know,” I say.

“Good,” says Joyce. Then she leaves.

When I get home that night things are fine. Miranda suggests we go out to dinner, and we do. It is very nice. We drink a lot of wine and eat and eat and then we drive home. We watch the news on TV. It is terrible news; even the local news is terrible. Miranda yawns and goes into the bathroom. I can hear her in there: the water flowing, the toilet flushing. It all sounds so lovely, so safe. I can hear Miranda setting the alarm in the bedroom, and the radio playing softly.

“Are you coming?” she calls down the hall. “Come to bed.”

I get in bed with Miranda and pretend to go to sleep. It is windy and cold outside, and the trees rattle against the windows. It is hard to stay awake. My head is spinning with all the wine I drank, and I am so tired. But I stay awake until Miranda falls asleep. I get up and go down to Dog.

When I open the closet, Dog is not there. The closet is empty. I call Dog softly, thinking she has got out somehow. I call and call, in little whispers, but she doesn’t come.

I stand in the hall for a long while thinking I must have fallen asleep. Maybe I am dreaming. I do not understand what is happening, and I begin to cry a little. I go back upstairs and into the bathroom and close the door. When I stop crying I come out and stand in the bedroom. Moonlight falls through the window and onto the bed; onto the part where I am not sleeping, onto the empty spot beside Miranda, who sleeps against the wall, in shadow. The first time I saw Miranda was in a hotel in Florida. She was coming out of her room with a folding beach chair. She asked me to hold it while she answered the telephone, which was ringing in her room. I stood in the corridor and held the chair for what seemed to be a very long time. I could hear Miranda talking in her room, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.

Miranda wakes up. She turns over, into the moonlight, and looks up at me. “What are you doing?” she says, sleepily. “Why aren’t you in bed? Are you crying?”

I realize I am still crying a little. Miranda sits up in bed, very beautiful, the light pale on her face. “Why are you crying?” she asks.

I don’t know what to say. The wind blows and the bedroom seems to shake. I can hardly speak. “Where is Dog?” I finally say. “What did you do with Dog?”

“Dog?” says Miranda. “What dog?” She leans forward, across the bed, toward me.

A
FEW DAYS BEFORE
C
HRISTMAS
I come home from work to find my friend David sitting on the little red velvet banquette in my mirrored lobby.

“Hi, Lillian,” he says.

“Hi,” I say. “What are you doing here?”

David stands up and kisses me. “Just hanging out,” he says. “No. I came to give you this.” He hands me a Christmas present: a tiny gift-wrapped box.

“This is for me?” I ask.

“No,” David says. “It’s for your mother.”

“Come on up,” I say.

We get in the elevator along with a woman in a fur coat. When she gets off on the fourth floor David says, “Merry Christmas.” She doesn’t answer him.

“You have a very unfriendly building. I said ‘Merry Christmas’ to everyone who came in your lobby while I was waiting. Only about three people answered me.”

My apartment is pretty clean except for a half-eaten cinnamon Pop-Tart on the coffee table. While David hangs up his coat I hide it under a
Time
magazine.

David sits on the couch. “I think I’m a little drunk,” he says. “We had our office Christmas party today. It was awful.”

“Do you want some wine? Or a drink?”

“I better not,” David says. “But I will. Just some wine. Or a beer. Do you have a beer?”

“No,” I say.

“Then wine.”

I go into the kitchen. David follows with the present. “Open this,” he says. “I’ll get the wine.”

I exchange the corkscrew for the present. “Since when do you give me Christmas presents?”

“I don’t know,” David says. “Since now. Open it.”

I open the present. David watches me, a glass of wine in either hand. Inside the box is a thin silver ring set with five small rubies. It’s an old ring; I’ve seen it before. When Loren married David, his mother gave her three of them. There was one with diamonds and one with sapphires. She wore all three of them stacked on one of her long fingers. Loren and David are divorced now. Loren is, I suppose, my best friend.

“Isn’t this Loren’s?” I ask.

“No,” David says. “Not anymore.”

“But why are you giving it to me? You should give it back to your mother. Or save it for Kate.”

“There are others. Kate can have the others. I wanted you to have this one.”

“Why?” I ask.

David puts the glasses of wine down on the table. “I don’t know,” he says. “I feel bad. I mean, I know how you feel.”

“About what?”

“Me,” David says.

I put the lid on the box and hand it to David. “Here,” I say. “I’m sorry but I can’t accept it.”

“Why can’t you accept it?”

“I don’t want it,” I say. “You shouldn’t have given it to me.” I drink some of my wine.

David opens the box and looks at the ring. He touches it with his finger. “You don’t understand,” he says. “It’s no big deal. It’s just a token. Of affection. I want you to have it. It’s important to me that you do. Please?”

He holds out the box. I sip my wine. I decide I’ll take the ring for David’s sake. If he wants to give it to me so badly, O.K. But I won’t ever wear it and I won’t ever let it mean anything to me. It will just be this ring.

“O.K.,” I say. “Thanks.”

“Put it on,” David says. “Try it on.”

I take the ring out of the box and put it on my right-hand ring finger. “See,” I say, laying my hand flat on the table.

David touches my hand. “It’s beautiful,” he says.

“I’ll be right back,” I say. I go into the bathroom. I wash my face, and rinse it with cold water. When I come out David is standing in the living room eating the Pop-Tart.

“I’m starving,” he says. “Do you want to go out to dinner? Or are you doing something?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Well, actually, I was thinking about going downtown. To the place where Heath works.” Heath is David’s lover. He was David’s temporary secretary last summer when his real secretary went on vacation.

“He’s not at the bank anymore?”

“He hasn’t been for a while. He’s a waiter, at this place called Café Wisteria. Do you want to go? It’s supposed to be good. Come. It will be fun.”

Café Wisteria is a large, noisy restaurant. There are several dozen decorated Christmas trees hanging upside down from the ceiling. David confers with the hostess, a black woman in a green leotard.

“See,” David says, as we sit down. “I told you this would be fun.”

I try to locate Heath in the whirling mass of waiters, busboys, and diners, but it’s hard because all the waiters look alike in that gay-New York waiter way. They’re all tall and handsome. They all look like they just got their hair cut: The backs of their heads are as smooth and tended as their faces.

“Which one is Heath?” I ask. I have to yell over the music.

“I don’t see him,” David shouts back. A waiter who looks very much like Heath but who isn’t Heath comes to take our drink order. Moments later they arrive, along with a plate of crudites shaped like a wreath.

David and I don’t talk much; we eat broccoli and watch the crowd. Now Ella Fitzgerald is singing “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and as I sip my cold amber drink I think she’s wrong, he’s already come, he’s here. I feel like we’re sitting on the ceiling, or we’re falling, or the trees are falling. Something’s falling.

“What are you doing for Christmas?” David asks.

“Going to my parents’,” I say. “It will be deadly. Julian’s in South America and Adrian is going on this lesbian cruise to the Greek Islands. So it will be just me and Harriet and Winston.”

“Christmas is the worst,” David says. “It’s designed to make people like us feel bad.”

“What are you doing?”

“Actually, it might work out O.K. for me this year. I have Kate Christmas Eve and Loren has her Christmas day. Gregory is going to be in L.A., so instead of shuffling her back and forth, Loren and I will take her up to my mother’s. We’ll pretend we’re still married for a few days.”

“Does Gregory know?”

“I don’t know,” David says. “I take it things are kind of rocky with them.”

“What about Heath?”

“I can’t very well take Heath to my mother’s,” David says. “Not that he’d come. Not that I’d ask him.”

“Does your mother know about Heath?”

“God, no. My mother is still waiting for me to get back together with Loren. She wants a grandson.”

“My mother has given up on us producing natural grandchildren,” I say. “She’s joined this program called ‘Guardian Grandparents.’ She’s adopted about eight million black children. She’s always showing me pictures. It’s cruel.”

David isn’t listening. And then I see why: He’s watching Heath approach through the crowd of tables, turning sideways to let people pass.

I love eating out. It makes me feel sexy and wanted. I know that everyone in this restaurant—except Heath—assumes David and I are lovers. It’s just something you assume about people who are eating together. If you see a man and a woman walking down the street you don’t assume they’re lovers, because walking down the street isn’t sexy. But if you see the same two people in a restaurant it’s different. It is sexy. It’s great.

I look around the huge room at all the people leaning toward one another across the lavender tablecloths, their faces glowing with candlelight and quiet erotic energy, but then I realize that all these other couples, people who look like they can’t wait to get home and fall into bed with each other—maybe they’re all just like David and me. Maybe there’s nothing really happening between them, maybe it’s just the wine and the food and music. Maybe nobody’s getting what they want anymore, maybe everything is complex and involved, and everyone here will go home alone to their cats and clock radios.

Heath arrives, with a second round of drinks. “Hi,” he says. “Welcome to Cafe Hysteria.” He puts his hand on David’s shoulder. “Are you guys having fun?”

“It’s great,” I say.

“The drinks are on the house,” Heath says. “But you have to pay for the food.”

“What should we order?” David asks.

“The swordfish isn’t bad. Avoid anything with sauce. The sauce chef didn’t show up. They’re trying to wing it back there.”

Heath gets off work early and joins us for coffee. He’s changed into his street clothes and it looks like he might have taken a shower. He smells very clean, and his hair looks wet, although it could just be slicked back with stuff.

The three of us have trouble talking. We talk about the dinner—it was good; then about what Heath’s doing for Christmas—he’s working. I excuse myself and go to the ladies’ room.

There’s a woman leaning against the sink smoking, and she’s still there when I come out of the stall. She’s wearing a gold lame space suit. “Did you happen to see this guy out there?” she asks. “He’s wearing sunglasses and has a funny nose?”

“How funny?”

“I don’t know,” she says. “It’s too big or something.”

“I don’t think so,” I say.

“Could you check. Please?”

I open the door. There’s a man standing at the telephone watching the ladies’ room. He’s wearing shades and his nose is funny looking. I close the door.

“He’s out there,” I say. “He’s on the phone.”

“He’s been on the fucking phone for hours,” the woman says.

“Who is he?”

“Oh, just some noxious freak of nature I used to be married to. He follows me around and verbally abuses me. Could you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Just walk out with me, and talk. He’ll leave me alone if I’m talking to someone. He’s a coward.”

“O.K.,” I say. “Sure.”

We walk out of the ladies’ room. The man hangs up the phone and shouts “Julie! Julie!”

“Walk,” Julie urges. “Just keep walking.”

I escort Julie safely to her table. She is dining with a large group of similarly outfitted people. She promises to do the same for me someday.

I return to my table. “We’re going over to Heath’s,” David says.
“It’s a Wonderful Life
is on TV. Do you want to come?”

“No,” I say. “I’ll just go home.”

“Come,” says Heath. “It’ll be fun. Besides, you’ve never seen my apartment.”

This hardly seems like reason enough to go, but I don’t argue this point. I’m sick of resisting things.

The cab drops us off at the corner of Twentieth Street and First Avenue. David goes into a Korean market to buy coffee beans and cigarettes.

Heath and I go up to his apartment. It’s right over the little store. There’s a large open room which has a kitchen at one end. There’s a fat cat sleeping on the kitchen table. Along one whole wall is a floor-to-ceiling mirror.

Heath picks up the cat. “This is Spike,” he says.