B Page 2

  –Fuck you, she said.

  When she released his hand, he got up from his perch on the bed. His back was hurting and he had difficulty straightening up.

  –I meant the fuck you in a positive way, she said. It would be much appreciated if you stayed the night. When I get into a panic, I need to have someone I can trust around.

  —

  When B (the hero of my memoir) finally confronts his wife about the man she has been spending so much time with and asks if she is having an affair, she says no, it is just a friendship and of course they are working together, collaborating on this children’s book. The answer comforts him and he lets matters ride another week. And then another. The next time he confronts her, she breaks down and cries.

  —

  He said or was thinking of saying that he would stay until she fell asleep when Max phoned from Los Angeles. While they were talking, he tried to slip quietly out of the room but he stepped on an errant shoe and turned his ankle, holding on to the wall to keep from falling. His back was throbbing. He tried not to listen, but of course he couldn’t avoid hearing their conversation. They talked for fifteen minutes or more, just chat for the most part, a sharing of the events of their time apart. They were so easy with one another, so respectful, so affectionate, so intimate it was as though they were taunting him. If he were ever to imagine an ideal couple on the page, the Harts would be his example. Heather mentioned that he had come to dinner but not that he was still there, not that he was in the bedroom with her, his back against the wall, trying with minimal success to tune out their conversation. He felt further compromised by her implicit lie.

  –Why didn’t you tell him I was here, he complained when she was off the phone, but of course he knew the answer and so did she and so there was nothing to be said.

  2.

  When B was five years old, he had gotten hit by a car, causing a mild concussion and some residual anxiety. He seemed “nervous” for a number of years after that, which was attributed to the trauma of his brush with death. He dredges up the memory of his accident—not that he has ever completely forgotten it—when he finds himself lying in bed, their legs entangled, next to his friend’s wife.

  He thinks of himself perpetually caught in the lights of a car, trying to decide which way to tumble to avoid being hit, paralyzed by indecision.

  Even as an adult, he felt vulnerable to the unexpected. He could never wholly shake the feeling that some unseen danger awaited him around the next blind turn. As a way of averting disaster, he tended to anticipate bad news. Still, he was unprepared for a call from Max virtually demanding that he come down to his office that afternoon for a talk.

  –What’s this about? he asked him. Max mumbled something about not wanting to discuss it on the phone. Before going off to see Max, he called Heather to get some inkling of what awaited him. Another piece of unexpected news: Heather had no idea that Max had made this appointment with him. She had, she told him, considered ending the relationship with the man she had been having the non-sexual affair with for seventeen years, but she hadn’t told Max about it, not yet.

  –So, she said, the reason Max wants to see you can’t have anything to do with me. I suppose you wouldn’t want to tell me afterwards what it was about.

  –If I betrayed Max’s confidence, he said, how could you trust me not to betray yours?

  –I was teasing you, she said. Don’t you know when you’re being teased? Still, it’s a strange thing for Max to do, isn’t it? Has he done something like this before?

  –Done something like what before? he asked.

  –You know, she said. Don’t give me a hard time, okay? And don’t ask me to ask Max because Max doesn’t know I know he set up this meeting with you. All these secrets are making me crazy.

  B thought of postponing his meeting with Max but he was too distracted to do much else so he procrastinated, worked up some low level anxiety, until it was time for him to leave. Despite what Heather had said, he was all but sure that this meeting had something to do with his having spent the night at their place when Max was away. Why else had Max been so grim over the phone?

  Max took him to lunch at an exotic vegetarian restaurant called the Sensuous Palate without even asking him if the choice was acceptable.

  –I’m thinking of becoming a vegetarian, Max announced as if that explained something.

  He had to wait until the meal was almost over for Max’s bombshell. –I want you to put yourself in my shoes for a minute, he said. That’s something a writer, someone who uses his imagination for a living, ought to be expert at, right?

  B was careful with his response, continued to suspect Max was playing some kind of cat-and-mouse game with him.

  –I’m probably the exception that proves the rule, he said. I never put on other people’s shoes. I have enough trouble getting my own on the appropriate feet.

  –Good, Max said, an indication that he wasn’t listening. Unlike you, I’m someone who’s always believed in the sanctity of marriage. In the 24 years Heather and I have been together, there have only been two lapses. That’s not perfect, but certainly from what I hear better than average. A week ago if I made this confession to you, I would have said there had been only one lapse in twenty-four years.

  –Something happened during your most recent trip to California.

  Max put his hands over his face. –Mea culpa, he mumbled.

  B gave an inward (unheard, he hoped) sigh of relief. This wasn’t about him apparently, though he remained wary. –Did you at least enjoy it? he asked.

  –Hated it, Max said, a nervous laugh escaping. I can’t even tell you how it happened. Gail’s husband had left her and she was feeling down and I was trying to make her feel better. She worked for me on a picture I had a producer credit on a couple years ago and we had remained friends. Anyway, it was probably a one night thing. I don’t see it happening again.

  –You don’t have to justify yourself to me, B said.

  –I feel terrible about what happened, Max said. This isn’t me. And I haven’t told you the most disturbing thing. The girl, she thinks she’s in love with me and that this is going to be some kind of permanent thing with us. I told her I have no intention of leaving Heather, but she won’t believe me. It’s a mess. The kid’s in a very vulnerable phase.

  –What do you want me to tell you?

  –How would you handle it if you were in my shoes? Max asked.

  –I’d fuck things up, he said. The thing to do right away is to tell Heather.

  –That’s the one thing I can’t do, Max said. When I had my other lapse—this was about 18 years ago—Heather forgave me, but she said if it happened again it was over between us.

  –You don’t think Heather would forgive you? You’ve been together 24 years.

  –Two months from today is our twenty-fifth anniversary, Max said. Why does she need to know? And the last thing I need is to be forgiven, for God’s sake. Being forgiven is one of the worst burdens I can think of. Anyhow, would you want to know if you were her?

  B didn’t answer. He took a bite of his apricot and bamboo tart and savored the experience with insufficient pleasure. He didn’t think he could fit into Max’s shoes and Heather’s shoes at the same time.

  –You want me to tell her, don’t you? Max said. You want to see Heather hurt and our marriage in distress. If Heather and I broke up, you could step in and comfort her. That’s what you want, isn’t it?

  3.

  B didn’t go to the Harts for dinner the following Sunday, made some excuse about having to see an old friend who was visiting from out of town. It seemed to be a mutual decision since Heather, who had picked up, said they had been remiss in not letting him know they were going to be away for the weekend. He was fond of Heather and Max and felt aggrieved his friendship with them had taken this awkward turn. He took time off from his memoir to write them a joint letter, which of course he couldn’t send because it implicitly violated each of their confidences.
/>
  The following week B was not invited to Sunday dinner or at least not explicitly invited. After not seeing Max and Heather for three weeks, he called to say he wanted to take them to dinner at Cucina, which was a place the Harts tended to go on celebratory occasions. Max answered, sounded glad to hear his voice, said Heather was out and that he would call back after he spoke to her. B’s curiosity got the better of his judgment.

  –Did you tell her about your second lapse? he asked.

  –That was bad advice you gave me, buddy, Max said. Because I was foolish enough to listen to you, matters are a little dicey at home right now. Look, I’ll call you back when Heather gets in. Max called back a few hours later to say they would have to pass on his dinner invitation. –Heather doesn’t want to have anything to do with you for the time being.

  The news surprised and pained him. B tried to imagine his offense, imagined a variety of possible offenses and regretted them all. —What’s this about? he asked.

  –I haven’t a clue, Max said. Even if I knew, Heather has the right to represent her position in her own words. Don’t you think so?

  –Would you put her on the phone?

  Max was gone for a few minutes and B rehearsed his opening line to Heather, a running gag they had between them, but it was Max who returned to the phone. –She’s too pissed to talk to you, he said.

  For the next few days, B knew in effect what it was like to be banished from Paradise with no hope of return. The two people in the world he felt closest to had, for no fault he was willing to acknowledge, turned against him.

  —

  I have to admit at this point that I had my doubts as to whether this was the right episode with which to begin the book.

  —

  B’s wife, which is how he still thinks of her, calls to ask him to pay the gas bill at his former house. While she has him on the phone, he asks her if she thinks the Harts are reliable people.

  –I haven’t seen them since our breakup, she says. Have you been seeing them? I always liked him better than her. There’s something about Heather that tends to put me off.

  4.

  After a month of banishment passed, B ran into Heather at the local D’Agostino’s. She was coming down the very aisle he turned up and he stopped in his tracks the instant he saw her. There was no way to avoid being seen so he affected a casual pose, waiting for Heather to make the first gesture. She had been studying a shelf of floor waxes so it took a moment for her to notice him.

  –Where have you been keeping yourself, stranger? she said, approaching like the car he had been unable to escape in his dreams. She gave him a hug that lasted it seemed a couple of beats longer than convention required. She waited for him to finish his shopping and they walked out of the supermarket together. He carried one of Heather’s supermarket bags for her along with his own small pickings. He rarely bought more than three or four items at a time when he shopped.

  –I’m glad we’re friends again, he said.

  –What do you mean again? she said. When did we stop being friends?

  –Well, he said but then he decided not to press the issue.

  –How’s the autobiography coming? Heather asked. Have you found a strategy? You see I remembered what you said.

  They stopped at Purity, a local diner, for a cup of coffee.

  –My strategy is to start with the present, he said, and associate from it into past events with similar configurations. Or not.

  –Whatever, Heather said. She stared off into space as if she were dissecting his remarks though perhaps she was musing about something else altogether. The coffee was terrible as usual, but its familiarity had a kind of nurturing effect. It was the essence of all the bad burned coffee he ever had in diners everywhere. It was like mother’s milk, he thought, though as he had never been nursed (his mother had tried, she said, and failed) he could only imagine that mother’s milk, whatever the taste, was similarly comforting. He found himself staring at Heather’s breasts.

  –You’ll be happy to hear I’ve taken your advice, she said. It’s a great relief, I’ll tell you, not to have to carry that burden around with me.

  –You told Max? he asked.

  –Better than that, she said, looking around the restaurant to see if there was anyone she knew. I’ve created a situation where there’s no longer any need for confession. I think you understand what I’m saying.

  He was uneasy with the confidentiality of Heather’s tone. The sure way to kill a friendship was to be given glimpses of a secret life that didn’t and couldn’t concern him. To change the subject, he told her how much their friendship, the dinners at their place, had meant to him over the past few months.

  She laughed at his earnestness. –Tell me something I don’t know, she said.

  –I would if I could think of something, he said.

  After they had finished with their coffees—the waitress had filled his cup twice—B walked Heather from the restaurant to her door.

  –I’m glad I ran into you, she said, hugging him again. That was fun. We should do this more often.

  He watched her climb the steps to her brownstone, feeling oddly embarrassed as if their incidental meeting, their going for coffee together, his escorting her home, represented some undefined violation. Not only that but it felt like a violation he had committed many times before. When she was gone he felt a sense of loss which surely had more to do with something in his past than with Heather going inside.

  B surveyed his feelings on the way home. He was not romantically involved with Heather, he decided, and had never been. She was a smart, slightly crazy, sexy woman and he liked her. But he was also aware that he wanted something from her, wanted her— it was hard to define exactly what—to...love him. Was that what it was? Wasn’t that pathetic!

  So when Heather called to invite B to have lunch with her the following Thursday, he offered some involved probably unconvincing lie as to why he couldn’t make it.

  –If you won’t come, Heather said, I’m going to end up visiting Roger again. Do you want that to happen?

  Surely those weren’t the only two choices, he thought, but he withheld the remark. –Roger is your heroin habit, he said. And I’m your methadone cure.

  –That’s not so far from the truth, she said.

  He regretted turning down Heather’s request—you don’t turn down a friend who’s asking for help—and he called back the next day to say he had gotten out of his prior appointment and was now available for lunch. The first time he called he got their answering machine and left no message. When he tried again an hour later, Max picked up. As an improvisatory move, he reissued his invitation to take the two of them out to dinner some Sunday. Max said they would prefer to stay in and barbecue and why didn’t he join them this Sunday like old times.

  So his relationship with the Harts had turned another corner. He had been restored to their good graces. “Paradise regained!” he wrote in his journal. Yet the sense of loss he had felt a few weeks ago when they had cut him off lingered. It was further exacerbated by an unreasoning anger he felt toward Max and Heather as a couple, as an entity that excluded him from the intimate world they shared. It was all so familiar what had happened, the twists and turns of his relationship with the Harts, it was as if he had been rehearsing in variation the same unwatchable movie all his life.

  —

  B’s mother dotes on him, yet his father’s needs, which are various and unending, almost always have priority. Do I have that right?

  —

  B called the Harts Saturday morning and begged out of his appointment for Sunday dinner. Heather tried to cajole him into changing his mind. –It won’t be the same without you, she said. You have to come. Tell whoever it is you’re seeing that you have a prior unbreakable commitment to us. You know we love you. You have to come.

  It was as if the sirens were singing to him and he was lashed to the boat. –I appreciate what you’re saying, he said, but I can’t do it this Sunday.
<
br />   –You’re a shit, she said, laughing.

  And though he knew it was true, he liked himself better for refusing her.

  —

  In truth I had gone back and forth on B’s decision. Either way was problematic. Even if he went to the Hart’s barbecue, his relationship with them would be irrevocably altered by the events preceding the renewed invitation.

  —

  You weren’t quite alive, B told himself, unless you surprised at least once in a while that unseen imaginary observer watching you perform. On Sunday morning he called the Harts and got Max. After they joked a bit—their usual by-play—he told Max he could see them tonight for dinner if the invitation was still good.

  –You come over to dinner, said Max, and I’ll forgive you everything.

  III. THE READING

  B travels by train to give a reading of his poems at an obscure liberal arts college in southern Pennsylvania. His mint green Saab, which has been virtually the shell on his back, has come down with a case of transmission failure the morning of the trip. Worse news, it is his habit to believe, lies ahead. When his wife left him fifteen months ago to run off with a criminal lawyer who also happened to be a friend, his life, which had been finely tuned for years, fell abruptly and perhaps irremediably into screeching disarray.

  When the train arrives at the college station twenty minutes late, no one is on the platform to meet him. What’s that all about? Already nightfall, the dark platform seems a deserted street in the middle of nowhere. Has he been lured here only to be abandoned in darkness? The tips of B’s fingers are chilled, almost numb from the cold. He paces the platform, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, and waits. It is unrewarding activity, pacing and waiting, reminding him of the bad luck he is embarrassed to believe in and can’t seem to shake.

  He approaches the grizzled ticketseller, who withholds speech as if there were no getting it back once given away. Still, if you ask the right questions, he has always believed, the information you’re after will work its way through the cracks. The college, he interpolates from the ticketseller’s grunts and headshakes, is too far away to walk. There are no cabs available after six thirty. The station’s two public phones have been out of order for months. After awhile another train arrives. B, who has nothing better to do, meets it as if he were meeting himself. Two people get off at the dark and deserted station. One is a woman he knows slightly, a poet he met two years ago at a writer’s conference and fell in love with at sight. He has not seen her since.