I Regret Everything (12 page)

“It's bad form to ask a writer if anything is autobiographical but since you're on the inexperienced side and perhaps could benefit from some of my mistakes I'm going to ask if any of ‘Last Christmas' was autobiographical.”

“Are you asking if I tried to kill myself?”

“That's what I'm asking.”

Spaulding sat down. Thirty seconds passed. I signaled the waitress for a refill.

“At boarding school I started to have these panic attacks where my heart would start beating like a hummingbird's wings and it was hard to concentrate on what I was supposed to be studying because it felt as if every solid surface was beginning to disintegrate. The idea of flying home for Christmas was freaking me out. Can you imagine a major panic attack at thirty thousand feet?”

“That would be tricky to navigate.”

“So my mother flew to Switzerland to come get me. She wasn't happy about having to make the trip. I didn't want her to come anyway, I wanted my father but he had a meeting in Chicago that he couldn't cancel. You really want to hear this?”

I assured her that I did. She glanced toward the kids at the other table, preoccupied with their own concerns. I wanted to tell her that they were probably no less complicated than she, that everyone had troubles and we distinguish ourselves by how we respond, but I spared her the lecture.

“After my mother cajoled me out of my dorm and got me to her hotel the first thing she asked was whether I wanted to go shopping in Zurich or Geneva. That's the level she worked on, like you're staring at the emptiness at the center of existence and she's all, ‘Spall, look at these earrings!'”

Before I could stop myself, I laughed. She didn't seem to mind.

“I told her I didn't want to go shopping while I was having a breakdown. She said, ‘Spall, I'm trying.' And I'm like, ‘I know you are and your version of trying just makes me incredibly sad.' And then I started to cry and couldn't stop.”

Spaulding ran her finger clockwise around the rim of her espresso cup and looked down. An older couple doddered in clutching playbills from the Public Theater. They flopped at a table against the wall. The kids at the other table were going over their check, figuring out how much each of them owed. I began to doubt my observation that Spaulding's life was no more complicated than theirs.

“You don't have to tell me any more if you don't want.”

“At one point she said to me, ‘Spall, you know I've been sober less than six months this time and I don't really want to lay this on you but I think the episode you're having might be threatening my sobriety.'”

“What a narcissist.”

“I know, right?” She looked at me for affirmation and I shook my head in sympathy. “So my mother called a doctor and they shot me up with what felt like a horse tranquilizer and somehow got me back to New York. I couldn't get out of bed. I didn't bathe or even wash my face or brush my teeth. The Adderall the doctor had prescribed jazzed me up and Xanax flattened me out. I started to hallucinate. I can't believe I'm telling you this. You'll probably never look at me again.”

“That's not true.”

“I've only told the story to my therapist.” She took several gulps of water. “The thought of going back to boarding school when the break was over terrified me and I don't mean
terrified
the way some kids might say they're terrified of a history test. The kind of terrified where you can't stop shaking. I didn't want to be in Switzerland, but I didn't want to live in my mother's apartment.”

“Where was your father?”

“He came to see me when he got back from his trip. He's like, ‘Buck up, Spall, you're going to be fine. These panic attacks you're having? There are other ways to get attention.'”

“Ed's a raptor.”

“What?”

“Your father is not a nurturer.”

“That night I called my brother Gully who was supposed to be flying in from Seattle for the holiday. He was the only person I could talk to. The call went direct to voicemail. Apparently, the universe wasn't going to let me reach Gully, a conversation with either of my parents was pointless, and I wasn't going back to Switzerland so I swallowed too many Xanax and chased them with Champagne. Gully found me and called an ambulance. They pumped my stomach and I spent the next month in a mental hospital. I wasn't even really trying to kill myself.”

With a fervor that shocked me more than Spaulding, I gripped her forearm. She tensed. “That's the cruelest thing you can do to anyone who loves you.”

Spaulding yanked her arm away. Her eyes scorched. She glared at me, then got up and marched out. I threw some bills down and caught her on the sidewalk. She forced a smile, the gleaming white, slightly crooked teeth. I wished I hadn't touched her. A police cruiser rolled past. For a moment I thought Spaulding might flag it down but I don't think she even noticed. I asked her where she lived and she told me not to worry about it. She took a mint out of her pocket and popped it in her mouth.

“Please don't grab me like that.”

“I'm sorry. Spaulding, listen, I'm going to take you home, okay?”

“Naughty, Mr. Best!”

“To your place,” I said, trying to act like an adult. “Or your mother's place, or wherever it is you actually sleep at night.”

“I'm not sure I've forgiven you.”

I had the urge to caress the small of her back with my fingertips. That thought was immediately tried, sentenced to ten years' hard labor, and exiled to Siberia. I rested my hand on her shoulder in a manner that suggested general concern for humanity. She didn't seem to mind. A cab materialized and I held the door. The driver was a middle-aged man from somewhere a language of all consonants was spoken. Slipping into the seat, she said, “Grand Central Station.”

I slid in next to her.

“What are you doing?” Spaulding reasonably wondered as the cab moved away from the curb. Her indignation had cooled and she did not seem displeased with my presence. Although no plan had formed, I said, “Making sure you go home.”

“That isn't necessary, Mr. Best.”

“I know, Spaulding. And I don't want to because, honestly, you're kind of a pain. But you're probably still hammered and could pass out in a park and be kidnapped by gypsies.” My mouth was running because I wanted to keep her engaged. There was a sense she could leap from the vehicle. Why was I doing this? If the Raptor heard I had escorted his inebriated daughter uptown after a night of Mephistophelean revelry, would he thank me for saving her from the predations of the city? Ed was a cunning Manhattan attorney; he would presume the worst.

“I don't need you to tell me how cruel I am,” she said.

“You're right. Over the line. But you need to consider your legacy. We all do.”

I settled in for the ride. As we edged uptown she was twirling a lock of hair and gazing out the window. The cab was quiet.

“Does it suck being a lawyer?”

“Not as much as living in a refrigerator carton under a bridge.”

“A ringing endorsement.”

There was no use pretending otherwise with her. It wasn't like she needed to hear my version of the speech about working hard and being diligent. To what end? So she could end up like me, in her thirties and trying to convince herself she'd made the right decision.

“Everyone has their tragedy, Mr. Best.”

“What does that mean?”

“The awful thing that comes to define their lives. Like when your brain says lawyer but your heart screams poet.”

I pointed out that everyone needed to make a living. “And why is that?” she asked. “So you can have a fancy apartment and drive a sweet car and go to work every day where you spend all your time helping rich people not pay taxes?”

“Only a terminally unimaginative drone grows up wanting to exist in a world where the word
hour
is invariably preceded by the word
billable
.” I did not say that out loud because no one talks that way, but for some reason I still felt the need to justify my existence. “What I wanted to be,” I extemporized, “was an artist, someone who spends his days mining the unconscious for material to be transmogrified from the base metals of random memory and fleeting impression into the spun gold of extended and satisfying verse. And like Baudelaire and Rimbaud, one was after the affections of those who could appreciate it, but in a less homoerotic way.” That, alas, I did say out loud.
Transmogrified? One was after?
Homoerotic?
From which distant outpost in the cosmos of my head had those locutions beamed? Spaulding had just shared her darkest secrets and I was making a speech to the
Académie Français
. Could I not just talk to her? Had my circuits shorted and rendered my words pompous and off-putting? And why was I telling Spaulding this? Did I want her to repeat it to her father? That I had taken her on a cab ride and performed a pseudo-intellectual fan dance replete with highfalutin literary/sexual references thrown in for her delectation? “The sex wasn't a goal, really,” I continued, heedless. “Sex is nothing but a time killer, something to do when the conversation is exhausted.” I was chittering like a magpie.

“What are you trying to tell me?”

Excellent question.

“That people measure males by how much sex they've had and I am more interested in the approbation of others than is healthy.” Apparently, I couldn't stop.

“Did you just start therapy or something?”

“Therapy exists to prepare us for death. I'm already prepared,” I lied.

The cab crawled across 14th Street. Spaulding rested her head against the window. Streetlight shadows strobed her hair. Spaulding's palm rested on the seat. Two fingers delicately beat an unheard rhythm. Then the most extraordinary thing happened. Her head pivoted in my direction and she leaned in. A quick kiss caught the corner of my mouth so it wasn't full-on and it ended as quickly as it began. Her lips tasted like grapes. She reclined against the seat, staring straight ahead. My heart kicked. She shifted her eyes toward me without moving her head.

“Will you try to put your bonus in my partnership?”

Her laugh filled the back of the cab and was as brief as the kiss. I was dumb. It's a well-known power move to intentionally create discomfort in another and at this Spaulding was a preternatural master. She smiled, keyed up by my embarrassment. The conversation was supposed to remain on the level of saucy banter. I had no intentions in this area, repressed, unacknowledged desire being distinct from intent, Your Honor.

“Did I really say that?”

No easy response presented itself. On the surface it was a horrible idea, but I was painfully drawn to the exquisite torture of Spaulding Simonson, her possibility, her skewed view, her reverence for words, and the way she looked nestled in the dim light of the taxi.

“Spaulding, please know I'd . . .”

“You'd what?”

Every wrong choice I'd ever made raged back at me and I retreated to the rumpus in my head.

“Will you at least let me see some of the poems you're working on? I loved that fragment you read to the class.”

“Sure, sure.”

It was late and the neighborhood should have been peaceful but the sidewalks were teeming. The crowd seemed rattled, as if they weren't moving entirely of their own accord. None of them looked like they had to be anywhere in the morning. They sported unisex ensembles of loose pants or shorts, large tee shirts, dreadlocks, and tattoos. Random cries could be heard as they moved uneasily uptown.

We stopped at a red light. Someone was bellowing words I couldn't make out and this was followed by a rhythmic chant. There were shouts and it was not the sound of exhilaration but of fear and anger and suddenly a gaunt bearded man darted in front of our cab and ran across the street. A sprinting policeman trailed him, his gut straining against his too-tight summer shirt. The trajectory of this chase led the pair across the avenue where the bearded man plunged into the sidewalk throng quickly followed by the cop. It was easy to tell by the yelling that the riled multitude was not going to help the policeman. Spaulding grabbed my bicep and squeezed.

“Make a gesture, Mr. Best. Break a vase.”

There was more yelling behind us, louder this time. I looked through the rear window of the cab and saw a phalanx of mounted policemen herding people uptown, away from the circus at Union Square. The crowd was spiky and there were curses and screaming and I saw a man fall down in front of one of the horses. When I glanced at Spaulding to gauge her reaction to the spectacle, she was gone. Then there she was among the police and the horses gesticulating for the cops to get away from the man who was on the ground. It was a mark of astonishing bravery or madness, the kind of thing I could never imagine doing, and it was in that instant I knew. Our lives are lived with the illusion of control and then there are moments rare as wisdom when we abandon the pretense that we are masters of our fate. Despite all of my finely honed instincts of self-preservation, the chorus of inner voices imploring me to run in the opposite direction, and every iota of common sense, I had fallen in love with Spaulding Simonson.

Just as she launched herself at a police officer the horde closed and it was impossible to see what was happening. I threw twenty dollars on the seat and flew out of the cab. The mob had swallowed Spaulding as if she hadn't been there at all. Bodies whirled ever closer, mouths agape, random shouts of escalating confusion. I became acutely conscious of my clothes: Paul Smith suit, white Comme des Garcons shirt, gray Sulka tie, Brioni shoes. A target between my shoulders was the only thing missing. A short man with a neck tattoo leered at me. A sallow grin split his dirty face and displayed a broken front tooth. He extended his grimy hand, palm up. “Help me out?” he said before the momentum of the pack pulled him off. Someone crashed into my shoulder and I looked to see a large dreadlocked man disappear behind me as if being chased. There was another bump from the opposite side sending me back in the other direction and then—
Yuppie fucker
—a brick serrated my right cheek—the pain blinded—and I fell into a forest of legs where a boot stepped on my hand and in a stark moment it was clear that to lie there would deliver me from this world of striving and disconnection from which I had gained nothing and learned less and the life would seep out of me in a way that would not even require the exercise of free will but fingers raked my face and someone's knee drove into my side and I thought of Spaulding and whether she was safe and when I attempted to push off the ground another foot pressed against my calf grinding my leg into the pavement and as I tried to shift my hips and rise a knee thudded in my chest and sent me rolling and sirens shrieked and the whinny of a horse set off screams and the crowd heaved through the street as one organism and just as I thought I was going to be trampled two hands lifted me and I saw it was a fat man in a tee shirt that said
Fuck Tha Police
and he shoved me into the current of the mob as it whirled and eddied up Third Avenue and I was able to limp away from the hullabaloo.