“I’d be disappointed in you if you weren’t,” he says. “Make ‘em sweat, it’s what they’re paid for.” We both laugh. He knows me. He knows what a shit I can be.
I look at him with the nostalgic affection men are said to feel for their wars, their fellow veterans. I think, I once threw things at this man. I threw a glass ashtray, a fairly cheap one which didn’t break. I threw a shoe (his) and a handbag (mine), not even snapping the handbag shut first, so that he was showered with a metal rain of keys and small change. The worst thing I threw was a small portable television set, standing on the bed and heaving it at him with the aid of the bouncy springs, although the instant I let fly I thought,
Across from me at the night-black table, Jon, though diminishing, still moves and breathes. There’s a sliver of pain, of longing in me:
What we eat is vaguely Thai: chicken, spicy and succulent, a salad of exotic foliage, red leaves, tiny splinters of purple. Gaudy food. This is the kind of thing people eat now, people who eat in places like this: Toronto is no longer the land of chicken pot pie, beef stew, overboiled vegetables. I recall my first avocado, when I was twenty-two. It was like my father’s first symphony orchestra. Perversely I long for the desserts of my childhood, the desserts of war, simple and inexpensive and bland: tapioca pudding, with its gelatinous fish eyes, Jell-O caramel pudding, Junket. Junket was made with white tablets that came out of a tube, and served with a dollop of grape jelly on the top. Probably it’s vanished by now. Jon has ordered a bottle, no glass-by-glass for him. It’s a hint of the old bombast, the old peacock tail, and reassuring.
“How’s your wife?” I ask him.
“Oh,” he says, looking down, “Mary Jean and I have decided to try it apart for a while.”
This may explain the herbal tea: some younger, more vegetarian influence, in the studio, on the sly. “I suppose you’ve got some little number,” I say. “They say ”he goes’ instead of “he says,” have you noticed?“
“As a matter of fact,” he says, “Mary Jean was the one who left.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. And immediately I am, I’m indignant, how could she do that to him, the cold unfeeling bitch. I side with him, despite the fact that I did the same thing to him myself, years ago.
“I guess I’m partly to blame,” he says. This is not something he ever would have admitted before. “She said she couldn’t get through to me.”
I bet that isn’t all she said. He’s lost something, some illusion I used to think was necessary to him. He’s come to realize he too is human. Or is this a performance, for my benefit, to show me he’s up-to-date?
Maybe men shouldn’t have been told about their own humanity. It’s only made them uncomfortable. It’s only made them trickier, slier, more evasive, harder to read.
“If you hadn’t been so crazy,” I say, “it could have worked out. With us, I mean.”
That perks him up. “Who was crazy?” he says, grinning again. “Who drove who to the hospital?”
“If it hadn’t been for you,” I say, “I wouldn’t have needed to be driven to the hospital.”
“That’s not fair and you know it,” he says.
“You’re right,” I say. “It’s not fair. I’m glad you drove me to the hospital.”
Forgiving men is so much easier than forgiving women.
“I’ll walk you where you’re going,” he says when we’re out on the sidewalk. I would like that. We’re getting along so well, now there’s nothing at stake. I can see why I fell in love with him. But I don’t have the energy for it now.
“That’s okay,” I say. I don’t want to admit that I don’t know where I’m going. “Thanks for the studio. Let me know if you need anything out of it.” Though I know he won’t come over while I’m there, it’s still too awkward, and hazardous, for us to be together behind a door that locks.
“Maybe we could have a drink, later,” he says.
I say, “Maybe we could.”