There were few other people in the room. The howling storm had paralyzed Washington as drifts of nearly an inch and a half had piled up along some major arteries.
The waiter brought our drinks. Dewar's and water,' I said.
'Yes. I don't care really, but everyone at work says if you don't order by name they give you bar whiskey.'
I drank a little beer. Molson. Rive Gauche didn't have Rolling Rock Extra Pale either. The All World Big Deal at the next table was telling his kid about how tough you had to be to prevail in business and giving a number of examples of how tough he'd recently been.
'Lonely at the top,' I said to Susan.
'But not quiet,' Susan said.
'How about I threaten to kill him if he doesn't shut up.'
'It would probably work, but the rest of the evening might be a bit strained.'
'I know. The world is never simple, is it?'
Susan shrugged. 'He's excited by his success. He wants to pass along to his son some of what he knows. He's showing off a little. I'm not sure it's a capital offense.'
'He's showing off for the daughter-in-law,' I said.
Susan shrugged again, and smiled. 'He's male.'
The waiter appeared to take our order. I ordered pigeon stuffed with cabbage. Susan ordered sole Veronique. I asked for a wine list. The Big Deal listed some people he'd recently fired. I studied the wine list. Control. If I concentrated on Susan and dinner and wine, I could block the guy out. It was simply a matter of control. The wine steward came by. I ordered Gewurtztramminer. He smiled approvingly, as they always do, took the wine list, and departed.
The Big Deal explained to his son some of the ways the son could improve professionally. I could feel the muscles bunch a bit behind my shoulders. Susan noticed my shrug to loosen them.
'Getting to you, is he?' she said.
'Takes his work seriously,' I said.
'Don't you?'
'Not as seriously as I take you,' I said.
The food arrived, and the wine. We were quiet while it was served.
When the servants had departed, Susan said, 'Is there an implied criticism there?'
I didn't answer.
'Do you think I take my work more seriously than I take you?'
'At the risk of oversimplification,' I said, 'yes.'
'Because my work has taken me away?'
'In part.'
'Your work takes you away. How is that different?'
'When I leave, I leave because I must,' I said. 'You could have stayed in Boston.' Susan started to speak. I made a stop sign with my hand. 'It's more than that. You went willingly, you aren't…' The more I talked the more churlish it sounded. It wasn't churlish inside. 'You aren't sorry. You're having a good time.'
'And you'd like it better if I weren't?'
When I had been a small boy someone told me that the blood in your veins was blue, the way it looked through the skin, and that it only turned red when you exposed it to air. What I felt was one thing when I kept it in. It changed color entirely when I exposed it.
'I would like it better if you seemed to be missing me more.'
Susan drank some of her wine and put the glass down very carefully, as if the table were shaky. She looked at the glass for a time, as if it were something she'd suddenly discovered. Then she raised her eyes and looked at me.
'Until I was twenty I was my father's princess, his little JAP. And then I was my husband's wife, the ornament of his career, and after the divorce, not very long after, I met you and became your'-she made a wiffling gesture with her hand-'friend. Always me was perceived through you- you my father,you my husband, you my friend.'
'By whom?' I said. When I was serious my English was good.
'By all of us. By me and by you, all of you. Down here there's no intermediary lens, no you through which me is seen. Here I am what I am and a great many people are very much taken with me because of what I am and they never even heard of you. Yes, I love that. And yes, I miss you. But missing you is a price I have to pay in order to become completely me. At least for a while. And goddamn it, it's a price I am glad to pay. I sort of expected you'd understand better.'
'I kind of hoped I would too,' I said. 'I'm doing the best I can.'
'So,' Susan said with emphasis, 'am I.'
I drank some wine. The truth kept turning to confusion as I tried to speak it. 'I think what you're saying I can handle,' I said. 'But I think you've overcommitted. You are becoming your work. You don't talk the same. You use the jargon of the profession, you drink the drink of the profession, you know who the important people are and get next to them. You've begun to believe in potluck suppers to boost morale. I'm not sure how much you're becoming yourself.'
'I'm not becoming myself,' Susan said. 'I'm trying out selves, I'm working up a self. That's part of the problem. I never had a center, a core full of self-certainty and conviction. I've merely picked up the colorations of the yous: my father, my husband, my…'-she smiled a little- '… friend. Of course I'm becoming more shrink-y than the shrinks. I'm like a kid in her first year at college. And if it helps you any, you might think of me that way, leaving the nest. Even explaining myself limits me, it's intrusive, it compromises me. I want to do what I want to do.'
'Unless your supervisor tells you not to,' I said.
'That's not fair. It's not… it's not even insightful. You still can't get outside your own view. You can't understand someone without a goddamned code. You don't see that for millions of people, male and female, the workplace is the code.'
I shook my head. 'You have committed yourself to everything I've worked all my life to stay free of.'
'I know,' Susan said.
'You endorse a way of life I find not only uninviting, I… I disapprove of it.'
Susan nodded.
'I always assumed,' I said, and twiddled with my-wineglass as I said it, 'I always assumed that someone who found his or her identity the way you're finding yours was…'-I spun the stem of the wineglass slowly between my fingers and watched the round bottom circle slowly on the table linen-'shallow.'
Susan's gaze on me was steady. 'It's a view you tend to impose on anyone close to you. You believe things very strongly. It burdens people.'
I nodded. 'A person might need to get away from me,' I said. 'To develop her own views.' I stopped twirling the wineglass and picked it up and drank some wine. Then I took the wine bottle from the bucket and poured some more into Susan's glass and mine.
'The thing is, you're not shallow,' I said. 'And if you were, it wouldn't matter. Not only would I follow you into hell. I'd follow you into AT amp;T.'
Susan sampled some of her sole.
'So I was wrong about that,' I said. 'Makes me wonder what else I was wrong about. Makes me doubt myself. Screws up my autonomy.'
I took a bite of my squab. It was delicious. I tried the cabbage; it had a magnificent smoky taste.
'How come I'm still hungry when my heart is breaking?' I said.
Susan smiled. 'Old habits are hard to shake,' she said.
'The other thing that's killing me,' I said, 'is, I suppose, a problem of excessive self-concern. But I have offered you what I had always thought was the most desirable thing in the world. I have loved you absolutely, and completely, and without reservation. And I still do. I guess I'm feeling that you are not grateful.'
'Good heavens,' Susan said. 'You're human after all.'
'But that's not your problem, is it? That's mine.'
'Yes,' Susan said. 'It would be worth your while to think about whether you love me for my sake or yours.'
'I don't want to do that,' I said.
