“It’s private,” I said.
“Oh, private.” Daniel smiled. He stepped down from the platform and walked away from the others. “Wel ?” he said.
“Wel … I’m due back at the base, but … if you take me home I’l go AWOL. If you’re free, that is,” I added. It had just occurred to me, with a mortifying shock, that he probably had a girlfriend waiting for him at home. I pictured their at: candles, incense, Klimt posters.
There, amidst the poetry books and leftover hashish crumbs, on a velvet blanket spread over a mat ress on the oor, they would have a long and glorious night together.
He burst into laughter.
“I don’t think I’ve ever received such a compliment in my life,” he said. “AWOL …no, I can’t be responsible. You’l be in deep water.”
“You don’t have plans?”
“I was planning to go home and sleep. And you should get back to your base, or you’l have hel to pay.”
“Oh, who cares, they hate me anyhow. I can’t clean any more toilets, I’ve done them al twenty times this week.”
“What’s your name?”
“Dana. The bride is my cousin. I guess she’s not a bride anymore. I guess she’s a wife now.”
“Dana. The bride is my cousin. I guess she’s not a bride anymore. I guess she’s a wife now.”
“Dana. Wel , Dana, what are we going to do? Encourage you to be derelict, or urge you to do your duty?”
“You don’t have other plans?” I asked again. After my despairing vision of the at and the girlfriend (black hair, sensuous mouth, aloof but generous), his availability seemed too good to be true.
“Not at the moment.”
“Don’t pay any at ention to my uniform. I only wore it because I don’t have a dress.”
“I guess I’m too weak to resist.”
“I’l wait until you finish packing up.”
“That’s okay, Gabriel and Alex wil look after everything. Let’s go, my car’s just down the block.” He waved to his two friends.
I nished recording my dream and drank two cups of cafe et lait, a co ee drink Daniel had invented and named. The kitchen had a name too, the Dining Car, because of its narrow oblong shape and its position at the end of the U, between the living room on one side and the bedroom and bathroom on the other. The at had original y been three separate units on the ground oor of the building. There wasn’t enough space in this middle section for a table and chairs; instead, Daniel had built a counter along the wal , bought two wooden stools, and hired an artist friend from work to paint a mural on the wal above the counter. The mural showed two train windows, through which appeared a comical landscape of cows and barns. I loved the painting, and I loved the kitchen. But in fact we rarely ate at the counter. Daniel preferred to eat Japanese-style, kneeling at the low table in the living room.
I nished my cafe et lait and had a shower. Showering at our place was a particularly pleasant experience because the bathroom Daniel had built for us was very luxurious. We sacri ced space in the bedroom in order to have a large bathroom, but Daniel said he was tired of the closet model he’d grown up with, and he brought al his creativity to bear on this project. The room was tranquil and luminous, like the crystal oor the Queen of Sheba mistook for a pool in King Solomon’s palace, but it was also warm, with a white clawfoot tub, a cushioned window seat, and multicolored ceramic oor tiles. Some of the tiles had come loose and I kept them in a pile by the sink. Whenever my neighbor Benny came to visit he’d glance at the tower of tiles, stacked snugly at the corner of the counter, next to the toothpaste. Among the many things Benny found exasperating about me was my refusal to let him glue the tiles back. “I want Daniel to have something to x when he gets back,” I explained. “So he’l feel at home.”
In the novels my father sends me from Belgium, September is an autumn month: the days grow cooler, leaves turn, people become pensive. We like to pretend that here, too, September brings a gentle foreshadowing of winter, and that today and yesterday were exceptions, but we know we’re lying to ourselves. The weather forecast promised a sweltering hamseen day. I extracted a pair of blue cot on trousers and a short-sleeved black top from amidst the household debris strewn on the oor. The place was a mess, as usual. Then I prepared my camera, covered my face and arms with sunscreen, packed water and a hat, and slid my mobile phone into my front pocket.
It was stil early, so I sat down at my computer and worked on my latest novel. I pay the mortgage by writing anonymous novels in which beautiful women with euphonious names swoon into the arms of sardonic but ultimately pliant men, always dark, always handsome.
The guidelines have changed over the years; the list of words they want me to use and the types of sexual acts they want me to describe have expanded. But basical y the rules are the same. The plot has to move slowly but inexorably toward a satisfying climax (romantic conquest, marriage) which is also the resolution, and the characters have to speak like imaginary people in a textbook on earthlings, a textbook used on a distant planet by creatures who have never met any earthlings but have done some research and guessed the rest. I wrote without thinking, my mind wandering.
“Give me a sign, darling,” Angeline said. “Give me a sign that you wil stand by me. Anything at al , that I can keep next to my heart.”
“Take this ring,” Pierre said, removing the gold and emerald ring from his own nger. “Wear this ring around your neck and each time your heart beats my sword wil —”
I listened to music as I wrote, the songs Daniel and I loved, and also new ones that had come out since he left. Mercy, mercy on us al . Or funny songs that Daniel would have enjoyed singing. Why did you tel your mother I come too fast? Why didn’t you tel her about that time in the car, or about the tat oo I got just for you? More cynical
