to imitate a possum, and his girlfriend is urging him to stand up or sit down. This is tiresome.
I look away. Helen has returned and is now on her terrace. The sun has almost entirely set, leaving behind glorious slashes of red and purple in the darkening sky. She’s turned one light on; it’s hanging above her head but she’s not reading. Drawn to the light as I am, Wallace looks in Helen’s direction and says that he met “that young woman”—he knows her name—at the market and asked her if she ever intended to marry and would she consider him if she did. Wallace says that he dropped to one knee to ask her for her hand and that Helen laughed and told him to get up and relax. Wallace’s girlfriend is not amused. What is her name? Something guttural—Brechje, I think. Wallace explains that he asked Helen to marry him only to make her feel better, for surely a woman on her own is lonely. The life of a spinster is barren, he warned Helen. I can just picture Wallace doing that and imagine Helen’s disgust. He seems to have a penchant for dropping to the ground.
Once, when he was in Paris, Wallace trotted about the city wearing a pith helmet and dunked his head under the cascading waters of several stone fountains. He filled his pith helmet with water to throw over himself. It was a hot summer. He showered in the street and lay on the ground next to Notre Dame until the gendarmes removed him. That was the summer his mother came to Paris to see him, to rescue him from the Beats and so forth. But Wallace was not for rescuing. He enjoyed the bohemian life and also enjoyed throwing himself at his mother’s feet, accusing her in a loud moan of driving him crazy. When he tells this story he always notes: My mother shook and so did her gold jewelry. Wallace loves making a scene.
Roger is approaching, affecting his usual manly gait, and I spy a peculiar little smirk on his lips that I’d like to rub off. Or rub out, rub him out. I must be drunk or Helen is right and I hate him. He kisses the Dutchwoman’s hand elegantly and Wallace sits up, like a well-trained dog, to pay attention to him, as if to a teacher. To my eye Roger is in no way commanding. He can be pedantic, though. They all chatter together aimlessly for a bit and Roger asks how my book is going and if I didn’t finish a big chunk the other night. My work is progressing, I lie, and yours, dear? I’m past the hurdle, he says. I act as if I believed him. Then he goes on to talk about his novel, its structure, as if all one wanted to hear about were his artistic trials and tribulations. It is one thing to discuss a literary subject, it is quite another to complain endlessly about the difficulty of writing. These things, I believe, ought never be the topic of discussion. Would a carpenter take up the dinner hour telling all assembled how hard it was to finish this or that job? No, he’d get on with it. If he were intelligent he might talk about an aspect of carpentry from which all assembled might learn something. Carpentry affords many metaphors.
You’re airing your clean laundry again, I say to Roger. In this you and I have no meeting of the mind. Unhappy with my castoff, he responds and points to Yannis, who’s dying of boredom, I assume, at another table. Oh Roger, I retort, in mock horror, you strain credulity. You are tres transparent. And you, Horace, he answers, are in no position to talk. I am sure Yannis has heard Roger’s remark; this bodes ill for the rest of the evening.
The evening ends as most do. It blurs into a watery mass of colors, amorphous moments and words, the night’s palette. Helen’s light is still on but she is no longer on her terrace. Her curtains are drawn. I wonder if she is making love. I want to make love, though that is not what Yannis and I often do. He sometimes permits me to love him and occasionally he responds to or services me. I content myself with the past. There was a love of my life, years and years ago. He
I look away. Helen has returned and is now on her terrace. The sun has almost entirely set, leaving behind glorious slashes of red and purple in the darkening sky. She’s turned one light on; it’s hanging above her head but she’s not reading. Drawn to the light as I am, Wallace looks in Helen’s direction and says that he met “that young woman”—he knows her name—at the market and asked her if she ever intended to marry and would she consider him if she did. Wallace says that he dropped to one knee to ask her for her hand and that Helen laughed and told him to get up and relax. Wallace’s girlfriend is not amused. What is her name? Something guttural—Brechje, I think. Wallace explains that he asked Helen to marry him only to make her feel better, for surely a woman on her own is lonely. The life of a spinster is barren, he warned Helen. I can just picture Wallace doing that and imagine Helen’s disgust. He seems to have a penchant for dropping to the ground.
Once, when he was in Paris, Wallace trotted about the city wearing a pith helmet and dunked his head under the cascading waters of several stone fountains. He filled his pith helmet with water to throw over himself. It was a hot summer. He showered in the street and lay on the ground next to Notre Dame until the gendarmes removed him. That was the summer his mother came to Paris to see him, to rescue him from the Beats and so forth. But Wallace was not for rescuing. He enjoyed the bohemian life and also enjoyed throwing himself at his mother’s feet, accusing her in a loud moan of driving him crazy. When he tells this story he always notes: My mother shook and so did her gold jewelry. Wallace loves making a scene.
Roger is approaching, affecting his usual manly gait, and I spy a peculiar little smirk on his lips that I’d like to rub off. Or rub out, rub him out. I must be drunk or Helen is right and I hate him. He kisses the Dutchwoman’s hand elegantly and Wallace sits up, like a well-trained dog, to pay attention to him, as if to a teacher. To my eye Roger is in no way commanding. He can be pedantic, though. They all chatter together aimlessly for a bit and Roger asks how my book is going and if I didn’t finish a big chunk the other night. My work is progressing, I lie, and yours, dear? I’m past the hurdle, he says. I act as if I believed him. Then he goes on to talk about his novel, its structure, as if all one wanted to hear about were his artistic trials and tribulations. It is one thing to discuss a literary subject, it is quite another to complain endlessly about the difficulty of writing. These things, I believe, ought never be the topic of discussion. Would a carpenter take up the dinner hour telling all assembled how hard it was to finish this or that job? No, he’d get on with it. If he were intelligent he might talk about an aspect of carpentry from which all assembled might learn something. Carpentry affords many metaphors.
You’re airing your clean laundry again, I say to Roger. In this you and I have no meeting of the mind. Unhappy with my castoff, he responds and points to Yannis, who’s dying of boredom, I assume, at another table. Oh Roger, I retort, in mock horror, you strain credulity. You are tres transparent. And you, Horace, he answers, are in no position to talk. I am sure Yannis has heard Roger’s remark; this bodes ill for the rest of the evening.
The evening ends as most do. It blurs into a watery mass of colors, amorphous moments and words, the night’s palette. Helen’s light is still on but she is no longer on her terrace. Her curtains are drawn. I wonder if she is making love. I want to make love, though that is not what Yannis and I often do. He sometimes permits me to love him and occasionally he responds to or services me. I content myself with the past. There was a love of my life, years and years ago. He
Similar Books
