“I don’t want to work anymore. I’ve got other things to do before I die.”
“It would be different with us.”
“We’d stick our hands in each other’s pants.”
“I’d take care of everything,” she said. “I really would.”
“Come home with me,” I said. “We’ll tell Robin you’re my cousin.” I felt her go slushy in my arms, losing hope. I tried to let my weight crush her, but she wasn’t fragile and didn’t mind. What was I supposed to do now, spirit her away in my barf-stained Toyota wagon?
“I have nothing against your wife, but every time you mention her it makes me want to puke.”
“I drove all this fucking way to see you.”
“I’ll be sad when you go.”
“I’m sad now.”
“I hate this,” she said. “Although it’s nice to be with someone who doesn’t act like he wants to kill me every time I open my mouth.”
What could I say to that? “We’ll have fun this summer.”
“I guess.”
“What does that mean?”
“I hate cheating,” she said. “I hate lying and planning and scheming.”
We lay there, trying not to do that.
“Hey,” I said. “What if we meet somewhere else?”
“How is that better?”
“Somewhere less public.”
She gave it some thought. “I have a meeting in Anguilla next month.”
I’d had in mind somewhere near the Amtrak station in Wilmington. The longer we lay there, the worse I felt. Even if I could afford the plane ride, I’d have to get someone to cover. Our babysitter worked part-time. Who would do drop-off in the morning and pickup at Molly’s at night? I’d need an excuse. And I’d have to tip the Caribbean bellhop for incidentals.
“I know it’s harder for you,” she said. “Mike doesn’t give a shit. I’ve exchanged six words with him in the last thirteen days.” I didn’t want to hear about that bald-headed fuck. “He’s in Holland.”
“Good for him.”
“I think he had to go buy some clogs.”
“You’re funny.”
“I wish I could help you.”
“Help me what?” I asked.
“I’d like to make it easier for you.”
“So I can meet you in Anguilla?” We were still having fun.
“I don’t mean that. I didn’t think you even cared about money.”
I didn’t want her pity, or her dough, if that’s what we were talking about, but as I lay there I thought about hers, and mine, and had the sense that we’d begun blindly feeling our way into a conversation that was not entirely contradictory to my interests.
I said, “I live on sunshine and candy.” She told me to shush. You’d think there’d be some formal presentation or specialized language, or explicit demands on those targets she largessed, since it was one of her many jobs now to give money to losers.
“You’re successful at what you do,” she said, “but it isn’t as steady.”
I saw us entering into a new type of contract, an arrangement based on lust that offered a dividend, a secret layer of protection. I imagined it then as some monthly number, conceived on the basis of my responsiveness to her needs, money I’d immediately get hooked on, which would open up new priorities and all sorts of sickening conflicts, and eight kinds of pressure to spit out gratitude to justify her investment. I’d learn to beg when I came up short, one more worldly necessity negating my search for solidarity, artistic purity, and spiritual insight. I’d just attach myself to that multiheaded hydra, that billion-dollar death machine, each suction cup lined with serrated teeth, swiveling, perforating my system, jamming its slimy probe inside me. Things would sour between us and I’d wait for the ax to fall, emailing her lackey functionary, some asshole I’d be on a first-name basis with, happy holidays, all that.
“Hey, why don’t you take your money and shove it?”
“Hey,” she said. “We use our inside voice.”
“Oh wow, here’s eight cents on the floor. Can I keep it?”
She looked bored, or harried, or a little alarmed. She looked as if she’d stumbled into one of those unnerving conversations with a stranger in a public place where it takes a moment to figure out that they’re crazy. Also, it was time to leave.
“How were you planning on funding me?”
She leaned back and touched the corner of one eye, rubbing it. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m pretty sure I can make a living on my own.”
“I’m sorry you have to work so hard.”
“Say that one more time.”
“Sorry.”
“You want me to know how it feels to get paid for it, because that’s how it is for you.” She pulled her arm off me and sat up and fixed her clothes. “I don’t mean you,” I said, my face burning. The need to clarify took hold. “This whole place is fucked.” I offered a poignant description of my earlier disorientation, how I’d lost my sense of direction as we wandered the downstairs, which I’d intended as an illustration of the excess of her house though unfortunately made it sound like I’d wanted to leave from the start but got lost. One last time I gave in to the idiotic impulse to explain. “But that’s the idea, isn’t it? To crush people so they can’t even think. What does it cost to heat that ballroom?” She leaned forward, avoiding eye contact, hunching to get her bra back on. She had long, fine, soft, beautiful hair, nice collarbones. “I feel like a total skank right now, and it’s not even my house.”
“Will you shut up.”
I think she just wanted someone normal, not some broke freelance artist, but not him, either. He didn’t put their kids to bed, didn’t say good night to her. Her sisters hated him. He enjoyed strip clubs, dining alone in expensive restaurants, borrowing money against companies with hard assets, numbers and video games, but not people. No doubt the burdens of his philanthropy weighed upon him, the politicians who came begging, senators and governors, who he referred to as “a buncha ding-a-lings.” His tutoring centers served ten thousand kids a year and needed more space. His hospital in Eastern Europe bled cash.
Hey, I had my own fucking problems. I’d been gone all week, I had a deadline and a long drive home, where I worked beside a washing machine in an unheated basement with a damp floor and a midcentury oil burner that reeked of diesel. In a rainstorm I stopped counting how many wet-vac buckets I carried into the yard.
From where I lay I could see a broken ceramic dish, makeup brushes, loose change on the floor.
“I didn’t mean to call you a skank.”
“You never called me a skank.”
“Well, you’re not one.”
“And you’re not a liar and a cheater.”
“If I were rich, you wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”
“Is that right?”
“I’m not real to you.”
“You can stop telling me what I think.”
“You think it’s cute that I make sixty thousand dollars a year.”
“That’s the stupidest thing you ever said.”