A Million for Eleanor: A Contemporary Story on Love and Money (13 page)

“My precious,” he said in a quiet voice when she finished buttoning up her skirt or something else. “Do you know that you are beautiful?”

She turned to him, slowly and shyly, not saying a word.

“I am serious. Yesterday you were a rose on the verge of blooming; now you have opened fully. Could you pull the curtains apart? Your beauty will shine brighter in the light.”

Eleanor walked to the window and did as he asked.

“You were wrong about one thing.” She sat down on the bed’s edge, staring at him as if unsure that he was real. “You are no philosopher. You like pictures better than thoughts.”

He put his hands behind the back of his neck, propping his body against the pillow, and looked at her with admiration.

“Darling, is there a woman in this world who’d be able to understand me better than you? And not only understand but also explain what I don’t see myself?”

Eleanor shrugged her shoulders.

“No, I don’t think so,” he continued. “She’d have to be similar to me, and you were the only one who managed. Which makes it even sadder that we didn’t become a couple in our freshman year.”

She leaned toward the nightstand to grab a pack of cigarettes, and he realized why the room smelled different: she must have smoked after he fell asleep. “Do you mind?”

“Not at all. In fact, I will take one myself.”

“I thought you didn’t smoke.”

“Just to honor the occasion,” he said, accepting the pack and the lighter. He coughed when the first drag penetrated his lungs, leaving the feeling of a notched arrow making its way through flesh. The next instant he felt nicotine rush to his head and exhaled, watching the smoke dissolve in the air. “How do you feel?”

“A little shaky, but wonderful.”
Eleanor smiled. “You surprised me. How long have we been doing it?”

“Half an hour, maybe?”

“No way! An hour and a half sounds more like it.”

“You must have thought me pathetic.
A lonely sociopath who eats alone and doesn’t take his Lamborghini on a date with the woman he claims to love… what can he possibly know about sex?”

“So, you do have a Lamborghini?”

“A purple Diablo.” He watched the cigarette melt away in his hand. “A love I didn’t betray yet. Any ashtrays around?”

Eleanor pointed at the white porcelain receptacle on the nightstand.

“Can you move it closer? I may drop the ash on the way. Besides, I want to make the picture fair. You’re too much in control: you lent me a cigarette, you lit it, and you also have the ashtray.”

“You really think we should have started dating as soon as we met?” she said when he relieved the cigarette of the long column of ash.

“Oh yes. In that case our lives would have taken much better courses. You
are
a muse, Eleanor: your beauty is immaculate, and you are clever enough to appreciate talent. If you lived two hundred years ago, chance would have made you meet some genius who’d incarnate you in his work. But you were born too late, in the foulest of all times, which meant your beauty and intelligence had to remain unappreciated. And then you met me, your one and only chance: a poor guy who knew everything about muses and dreamt to dedicate his life to one. You could have made me a worthy man: someone who falls asleep every night a step closer to eternity.”

“You think so?”

“Well, I do. But what do
you
think about me? I never found it out, just as I never knew why you refused to date me. Will you finally tell me?”

“Do you really want to know?” she said reluctantly.

“Do you think I’m trying to keep the conversation up? I always thought it was a trick for those who haven’t slept with each other yet.”

“I don’t know,” she said after a pause. “Something stopped me.”

“And what could it be? But pray, don’t say you were young and silly.”

“No, it’s not that. I just thought... that you hated yourself.”

“What?” He assumed he misheard her because of the nicotine buzz in the head.

“The only time I didn’t see you alone
was on the day we met. I thought you were so ashamed of yourself you hid from everyone. And then, when you told me you loved me… I didn’t know what to do because I was sure I’d never love someone who didn’t love himself.”

And then he started laughing. Everything came at him at once: the nicotine, the endorphins, the smell of her sent that she had just put on and the recollection of her face back then, at college, the expression of shy condescension which he could never understand on his own, and which now found a perfect explanation.

“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “I just remembered the rock climber you dated in your junior year. I always wanted to ask him if he carried a mirror in his pocket: I never met a more self-enamored guy. Honestly, I was even happy when I found out about you two. I thought he’d make you realize something about the human nature.” He heard disappointment in his own voice. “You didn’t, but at least when he dumped you you had a taste of what I myself ran into all the time.”

“It wasn’t the same.”

“Not entirely, but close enough. After all, what good can you expect from a narcissus? And can you expect anything bad from you? In my eyes you always were perfection stained with nothing but childish mistakes. I just couldn’t get why you persisted in making them.”

Eleanor kept looking at him silently, and he continued:

“Why did you need it back then, at twenty? What could you get from those brats? A free dinner? Fifty bucks, if you didn’t eat the whole day. A weekend in a manor? Why, to look at the pouffes in your own living room with more contempt? Or maybe you wanted to fly to Copacabana for vacation? Well, in that case you’d have to pay for the plane ticket and the hotel yourself. Your boyfriends were all the same, seeking nothing but pleasure and unprepared to give anything in return. And do you know what was the worst? Not that you slept with them, no, but that none of those little men appreciated you. None of them gave you a fraction of what you deserved as a born muse. For them you were
another
one, not the
only
one, but it never could be otherwise.”

“What does it matter now? Or you can’t marry me without taking revenge first?”

He smiled sadly and stretched himself.

“Why do I have such a memory for distant feelings and not for the things I did yesterday? Do you remember where I put my clothes?”

“They’re all over the place. Check if the suit got dirty, you may need another one.”

“I won’t,” he said, rising to his feet. She scrutinized every detail of his costume while he was dressing, but the image he produced in the end was as immaculate as that he presented on the porch of her house, save the face which became somewhat hollow.

“Tea?”

For a second he stared at Eleanor in disbelief,
then he shook his head.

“OK, then. What are we doing now? Where is the ceremony taking place? And do I even need to pick a wedding dress?”

“Don’t you mind the wedding again.” He was standing motionlessly, like a grave monument, moving nothing but his lips. “I will never marry you, Eleanor.”

She looked at him perplexedly, and for a moment he felt pity for her.

“Did you really think I would let you make a fool out of me for the third time? That tomorrow you’d wake up and say “
Richard, I have to go
?” No, dear, you’ve already sucked too much life out of me.”

“I’m not going to divorce you.”
Eleanor shooked her head, looking more apprehensive with every moment. “What are you talking about?”

“All the worse.
At college you didn’t give a damn about me for four years and now, after some thirteen hours, you’ve already slept with me and are ready to become my wife? What exactly changed? And in whom? You sure are the same: you still jump on everyone who has more money than you. Keep in mind that now the number of such people has decreased.”

“Is that what this farce was for?” Now there was sarcasm in her voice, but she sounded shocked nevertheless. “Are you trying to save the ghost of my chastity? I always was an innocent girl for you, wasn’t I?”

“You were. That’s how a muse is known: she is the one you consider a virgin even after you slept with her. But you know why I needed this. There was everything between us except sex, which I missed to complete the picture. It seems every woman must have a male confidant whom she tells most personal things about herself and whom she’ll never sleep with. That was the role I played in your life, and I couldn’t change it. Now I did, and I paid more dearly for it than I could ever imagine.”

“How could you…” She stopped and looked at him as if trying to find the ending of the phrase in the air between them.

“How could I – what?”

“Deceive me,” she said so calmly he knew there was a hurricane in her heart. “You promised to marry me.”

“You prefer being a shrewd cynic?” His face assumed a dreamy look. “Maximizing the profit, minimizing the loss: our macro theory class. But I didn’t
promise
to marry you: all I asked for in return for my million was your consent. This happens all the time: one person agrees upon something and desires it, while the other one can’t be bothered. At college it was the same; we just swapped the roles, dear.”

“Don’t you call me that,” she whispered through clenched teeth.

“What else can I call a woman if a night with her cost me a million? Even the New-year rabbit got less than half of it.”

These words made Eleanor wince as if she were stung by a wasp. She flung forward like a frenzied feline, aiming at his face with her nails, but he caught her wrist an inch away from his cheek.

“Where is your pride?” he said, looking into her eyes so closely as if trying to discern something at their bottom. There was no more azure in them as the whites were covered with a thin pink shroud. The sight of it struck him so much that he eased his grip, and when Eleanor pulled her hand away he immediately let it go.

“Don’t try to hit me,” he said. “Please.”

“Will you kill me if I do?”

“Of course not.
I will never hurt you. All I want is for you to be happy. After all, I donated a million to it.”

“Thank you, Mr. Benefactor: Heaven shall never forget your munificence!” The venom in her voice made it sweeter than he had ever heard it sound, and he could only regret he had to bring her to such a state to enjoy it.

“I don’t believe in it. Besides, if you want you can burn the money. It’s
yours
.” He kept looking at her face, hoping to feel the last touch of the sphere, but the monotonous and painfully sharp ticks of the quartz clock audible even from here were vanishing in the air one after another, and nothing changed. Then her upper lip trembled in disgust, and a sickening salty wave rolled up to his throat again.

“I loved you, Eleanor,” he said, feeling tremendously tired. “And you didn’t care. I thought I had a flaw that made you see nothing but a friend in me, a convenient friend who could always be used for cafeteria if others were busy. And your endless ‘
Richard, why don’t you hit on Lyn, she’s so into you?’
” He mocked her intonations. “I hated you so much in those moments!”

“Should have let me go,” she said with contempt, staring through him.

“But I never gave up the hope to win you. I wrote a song for you,” he said sadly. “Pity they didn’t let me perform at our annual concert. But you didn’t come anyway.” The sadness in his voice ceded to hopelessness. “You had a date with the guy who threw up on your room door: he wanted to make up for it. You know…” suddenly he felt as if his throat was full of sea water. “Some people never change, and some never change to the better. You are the second type.”

“Your sad philosopher is back again?” She found courage to depict a sarcastic grin on her face, which impressed him.

“You always preferred Germans, I know. But no one understood the Greek grief better than Nietzsche.” He tried to gulp down the disgusting lump, but it only grew larger.

“Go away, Richard,” she said icily.
“Now. Wait a minute,” she added hastily, as if pausing all the emotions she was experiencing. “Why two fifty-two in the afternoon? We met in the evening.”

“That’s for you to remember. Farewell,
Eleanor
,” he pronounced her name as if tasting its syllables, but they all dissolved in the saltiness in his mouth. The collapse was total: everything that nourished his imagination for years was gone at once, and he needed a moment to accept his new status. He looked at her once again, realizing that even the overwhelming anger and disappointment did not make her face less beautiful, and stepped into the hallway. He paused for a second to give the valises the last melancholic glance, put his shoes on and walked out from the dusty silence of the house disturbed only by the scratchy ticking of the quartz clock.

He breathed in the fresh and balmy morning air and walked to his car as leisurely as a man who had just woken up with anticipations of a pleasant day. The warm October wind stirred his hair, adding another touch to the image of a law-abiding citizen which, unbeknownst to himself, he could display to a passerby or an idler staring from the window. They would probably assume the young man was on his way to church and, judging by the introspective expression of his face, already soared in physically inaccessible realms. Where else could one go at such an early hour on a Sunday morning, dressed up in a perfectly white suit?