“When? What was he like?” Cindy sputtered. “What happened? Have you kept in contact? Would he know you if he saw you again?”
“You want to dance?” I asked Tess and we both jumped out of the booth. I felt the back of my head burning hot but I’d seen that one coming and just kept putting one foot in front of the other.
It was a slow song and I got to hold her pretty much beginning to end. I hadn’t held a woman in a long time. It was terrifyingly wonderful, though I don’t know why terrifying. I’d had women in my arms before. We talked all the way through the song but the words got less and less important as we went on.
‘You really aren’t staying around?” she said.
“Business,” I shrugged, genuinely unhappy about my fictional life, whose consequences were the same as my real one. Which is the merger, I guess, that makes a good cover story work.
“I never thought I’d meet someone like you in a place like this,” she said and that turned me around all of a sudden. We’d had one dance and I was a little light-headed too but I couldn’t get three words out of my mouth two or three days earlier, so I had an excuse. What was hers? Then she said, “You want to go to the car and fool around a little?” which put me over the limit. I dragged her off the floor and back to the table.
Renn was wedged into a corner of the booth, bending spoons without touching them while Cindy explained the world according to Jim Avery to him. He wasn’t even trying to hide his discomfort. Was he gay? I wondered and then rejected the thought. If he was gay, they’d be best friends and discussing window treatments. Maybe he was in the closet? Whatever the reason, he was ignoring her and she just kept yammering, oblivious, like she was getting paid by the word.
“Excuse us a second,” I interrupted and grabbed Renn by the shoulder. I might have pulled him out of his chair; I was kind of running on instinct. I’m not sure if he was shocked or relieved but he let me drag him a few feet away.
“What are you mad about?” he protested, shouting over the music.
“You’re making us wonderful,” I said, shouting back. “You’re forcing them to like us.”
“You’re getting lucky and I’m learning how believing in myself-and paying Jim Avery a monthly stipend-will make all my problems seem insignificant. I’m six minutes into a fifteen minute monologue, all of which I’ve already heard her rehearse twice in her head-so, again, what are you mad about?”
“Hey, most people pay $450 for the 2-hour Your World evening session. You’re getting it for free.”
“Free is too expensive,” he said. “Anyway, I’m not forcing them. I’m just making them receptive.”
I could feel my eyes narrow. “And the difference is-?”
“The difference is, I have some scruples. If she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t. If she sees something she likes in you, she doesn’t fight it.”
“That’s scruples? You’re still coercing her.”
“It’s easy to be black-and-white,” he shrugged, “when you have no power. I could easily force her to sleep with you and everyone in the room. The fact that I don’t doesn’t make me pure, but it is a form of scruples.”
“Well, knock it off,” I said. “Let me get there on my own.”
He sighed okay. We returned to the table, where the ladies were waiting, and I could see immediately that the light in their faces had faded. We weren’t so fascinating anymore. Now they seemed to be sizing us up a bit, checking to see if we were worth the effort. More like what I was used to.
“We’re working on this new thing-paraskiing,” Max stammered, taking furtive, nervous looks at both women. He’d been nervous when he had them firmly under control. Now he was a wreck. “You ski down a hill wearing a parasail…no…I mean, you ski down the hill and…deploy…the sail just after you go…over the edge-there has to be a cliff, of course…and you drift down…to wherever you land. Of course, you need a lot of cleared space down there… down below…for landing…because the sail tends to drift and…you don’t…want to come down in the trees. You could break something.”
He was dissolving quickly, like a standup comic who knows he’s bombing. I realized what must have happened-he’d searched (the room? The state?) for a mind with an edgy entrepreneurial idea and he’d found one-a really stupid idea, dangerous on every count. “But you wouldn’t believe the numbers,” he continued now, trying to cover himself, throwing good money after bad. “Parasails really don’t cost much and…the people who pay to take risks pay big money for it. In fact, if you don’t charge them enough, they get-” I grabbed him, held a hand up in front of the girls and dragged him away again.
“What the hell is this about?” I demanded.
“I’m no good at this,” he answered. He was sweating like a pig.
“How good do you have to be? Idiots manage it every day.”
“Idiots have instinct,” he said without self-pity, as though this was something I should have known about him. “All I know is what’s in their minds. They want a man who does something extreme-ish though not too much and Cindy likes money, too.”
“That doesn’t mean you just start babbling every detail, dammit.”
“Well, how else is she going to know?”
“Let her figure it out! It’s a mystery- you’re a mystery. She’d rather guess you have money than be sure.” I couldn’t believe it. “You’re naturally mysterious when you’re not trying.”
“I’m-she’s pretty,” he stammered. “When the girl’s pretty, I’m just not natural,” he said unnecessarily and we retreated back to the table.
Tess was flashing looks at me now, with a sort of desperate hope in her eyes. Cindy was eyeing both entrances with an equally desperate hunger. I suddenly remembered what dating was like and understood how alluring it would be to just be able to control things.
“We have several businesses,” Renn segued, trying to get himself under control. “Rafting, skydiving, extreme skiing, gliders-Greg’s big on gliders.”
All eyes were suddenly on me and I realized-shockingly-that I actually knew something about gliders. “Gliders are amazing,” I started and suddenly there were pictures in my head and a tingle in my voice because the memories were coming back to me in waves. “They tow you down the runway and it doesn’t feel fast enough and then the plane in front of you starts to lift off and you realize you’re already floating behind it and you didn’t even feel the takeoff. And they pull you higher and higher and it’s noisy and buffety and then they release the cable and, all of a sudden, you’re just there, all alone, rock steady over everything. There’s this amazing moment when you realize it really is going to work, you’re not just going to plummet to the ground. You’re just a hiss through the air and everything gets slow and easy, like you’re suspended in time and space. You’re not going anywhere and you have all the time in the world to do it. And then you’re on the ground again, way too soon.”
I had no idea if this was a memory or a dream. But it felt real inside me. At some point, I’d had a moment of nutty daring and taken that risk, for no reason at all.
The girls were staring at me, eyes wide and bright. I’d put it over. I looked at Max and he was smiling and the look on his face said You did it on your own, pal. Except I hadn’t-he’d found my best memory to spark, for me to build on.
“C’mon,” Tess said, grabbing me by the hand and pulling hard, “we’re going for a drive.”
We didn’t drive very far, ending up behind a hardware store nearby. It looked closed for the night but she said ‘They’re bankrupt’ in a tone of voice that said Don’t question the county registrar and that was enough for me. We parked out near the dumpster in back and pawed each other for an hour or so. It just tore me up to have her- nothing was what I expected. We laughed and got off really nice at first and I was just gassed being there, my hands on her, my mouth on her, giving and getting pleasure. But after a while, my feelings got gummed-up, a bit more complicated. When I kissed her, I tasted other kisses; when I touched her breast, I remembered other breasts. Good feelings here and there, good moments but bad ones too, fights and jealousy and lies. It occurred to me that I was remembering the feelings without being able to remember the women and that felt kind of shameful. I’d lived a while without a memory and that was beginning to feel like a blessing. It took a big effort to try and shove those feelings back into the murk and just be with her. I never completely succeeded at it, to tell the truth.
When we got back to the restaurant with the huge electric sign, she kissed me goodbye like she meant it and said “If you ever get back around here, I’ll be at Town Hall.” And that really shredded me-it had been a long time since anybody wanted me, much less wanted me again. I knew I’d never be back and if I was, it wouldn’t be the same anyway. I was pretty sure she knew that too. Which left me tingling with feeling as I got out of the car, feeling in all directions, sensitive to everything everywhere-the breeze and the damp in the air, the sound of the
