Losing It (7 page)

I bet that's how Elliot would be, too—really accepting. He'd probably lay me down on some special rug in his house and try really hard to assure me that there wasn't anything I could suggest that would be out of bounds. And he'd be so happy that we wouldn't be able to sit at a metal table in a plaza for lunch without him immediately covering my hands with his and looking at me with puppyish gratitude.

—

But then I didn't see him for a whole week. He just wasn't around as much as the other people in the office, who were always appearing in front of my desk, like frogs rippling the quiet and asking me to do something. “Julia, can you run this up to the titles office on Green Street?” “Julia, do you think you could impose some order on the supply closet?” “Julia, would you mind unwrapping the minicups instead of just stacking the bags next to the cooler?” He never came by, never visited me after that initial encounter. I waited patiently until I finally had an excuse to see him the following Thursday, when I was supposed to water everyone's plants.

I approached his end of the office carrying the heavy, slushing watering can. Caroline was there again, at the desk, wearing more
or less the same kind of dress, and awake. She was attempting to shake a snow globe. I didn't have to look closely to know that her efforts weren't producing any action. Her head doddered up and down as she brought the snow globe to the left, then the right, then the left again. I walked up to Elliot's door and knocked. I tried again and still nothing.

I turned around and Caroline was looking at me. “He's not in,” she said loudly.

“Okay,” I said. I indicated to the watering can. “I just have to—” I turned the knob and pushed.

“Wait—” she said.

I shut the door behind me.

His office. It was dim without the lights on. It felt like a library, everything serene and orderly and muffled. White shelves lined the walls. There was a cup of oversteeped herbal tea on his desk, next to his wireless keyboard. There was a glass paperweight with some pyramids inside it. I walked over to look at one of the pictures on the wall, half noticing that there were no plants in the room except for a little cactus on his desk, which is probably what Caroline had been trying to tell me. It was a large framed poster—a reproduction of a pencil sketch, of a young man, a Native American, sitting on the edge of a wave that had been frozen in time right as it was about to crash. He was dangling his legs over the side, where it was jagged with foam and froth. And then above him, composing the top part of the poster, was a majestic hawk with its wings spread, and in its chest was the moon. Below, it read “Elsu.”

I heard the door clicking behind me. I turned around. Elliot.

“Ah,” he said, glancing quickly around the room.

“Hi,” I said. I held up the watering can. “I was just . . .”

“Oh, sure,” he said. He walked to his desk and laid a book down on it. “Well, I only have the one,” he said, pointing to the cactus.

He didn't seem pliable like he had when we first met. He looked a little unnerved to see me in there, not exactly filled with unalloyed gratitude.

“Right,” I said. “Yeah, I noticed. And I guess it doesn't need any.” I held up the can again.

“No,” he said.

We stood there. He put his hands on his hips and looked around, closed off.

“I guess it's just nurtured by the winds of time,” I said.

He unlocked a little.

I was about to walk out when he said, “Are you a fan?” and nodded at the poster.

“Oh,” I said. “No. I don't know.”

“Elsu
,
”
he said. “It's a book. It used to be pretty famous. It's about a young Native American guy who could freeze the ocean. He had this mission where he was supposed to climb the tallest wave so he could see his ancestors in the moon from there. And that hawk was his friend and would always guide him to the biggest storms.”

“Oh, okay.”

“And so there are lots of great scenes of him walking across the ocean, along all these planes and dunes of water, under the moon, watching whales under the surface and, you know”—he seemed less sure of himself now; he looked down and gingerly touched the top of his desk—“following his internal music and talking to a hawk.”

“That's pretty cool,” I said, a little too quickly, “to be able to do that.”

“Yeah,” he said.

“To be able to talk to a hawk,” I clarified.

“Right,” he readjusted. He walked around his desk and sat down in his chair, more composed. He leaned back and smiled. “So, do you think it would be better to be able to talk to a hawk, or stop time?”

I couldn't tell if he was sort of joking around, or if he really wanted to know. “Talk to a hawk,” I said. “Wait, no. Stop time. Obviously.”

“Right, because then you could—”

“You could, like, stop time during a tour of the White House, and then go into the Oval Office and rummage around and look in a bunch of secret files.”

He smiled. “So that's what you'd do?”

“Well, I mean, that's just the first thing I thought of.”

He put his hands behind his head. “I'd do it on a tour of these caves—have you even been to Luray Caverns?”

I shook my head.

“They're these caves in Virginia, like something from another world. I'd stop time on a tour and go and explore them by myself. They're all lit up. It's beautiful. There's even a piano in one part.”

“A piano? Really?”

“Or like an organ. Like from a church.”

“Do people play it?”

“Well, presumably,” he said. “I think they use it for weddings.”

“Who would get married in a cave?”

“Well,” and then he said, with a little flourish, “dwarves, elves, or any panoply of folkloric beings.”

I didn't laugh immediately, and he became embarrassed, and then I laughed too hard to catch up.

He tucked his lips in and shoved forward in his chair, like he really needed to get to work.

“Well,” I said, in a blur, “I guess I'll get back to this,” and held up my watering can.

“Okay,” he said, not looking up.

Back at my desk, I watched a woman in white capri pants walk up the pebble walkway and peer into the office, then decide against something and hurry away. I went over the conversation in my head. I'd definitely misread him when we first met. He was at the same time more confident and more sensitive than I'd thought, with all these levers and pulleys inside that I didn't expect. I thought of the way he touched the top of his desk, and then how he'd leaned back in his chair. At moments he'd seemed almost familiar to me. And there was a warm, humorous sinew to his personality that I liked. I had a sense of what he was interested in, and I needed to come up with more stuff for us to talk about. I thought of the cactus on the windowsill in Viv's kitchen. Maybe I could bring that in and put it on my desk and that would establish some mutual interest. Or, that's stupid. People didn't ask each other about their
cactuses.

Five

It was hot. I watched two construction workers share a cigarette across the street. They were sitting on a concrete barrel surrounded by long grass in front of a gutted building. They were talking and passing the butt back and forth in what seemed like slow motion. I couldn't hear what they were saying because of the sound of the train—a dark roar that shook my teeth in their sockets and shook the storefronts. The two men nodded slowly at each other. Together, they turned their heads to me. The train passed. The bar lifted and I walked across the overgrown tracks.

I was going to meet the “TheMeeksShallInherit” guy from the Internet, whose real name was Bill Meeks, for dinner. We'd finally settled on a time and place after a few days of wrangling, mostly on his end. I figured that in case whatever incipient thing I had going with Elliot Grouse didn't work out, it would probably be good to put some other irons in the fire. Maybe this could just be it, I'd thought, swiveling my hand through a bracelet, looking out my window at the bright field as I got ready. Our e-mails back and forth had had a promisingly chatty, easygoing nature to them that seemed
like it would translate to dinner conversation. And people had sex with people they had nice conversations with all the time.

I got to the restaurant a little early. It was a seafood place with small white tiles on the floor and a pleasant, dish-clanging energy. There were napkins standing on plates and it seemed expensive.

I was led to a booth. I sat down and stared at the menu and rummaged through my bag. I found a lint-covered packet of gum I didn't know I had and started chewing a piece. There was a commotion toward the front. I looked up and saw everyone's head turned toward a man with a large scruffy dog. They were barreling through the restaurant. A couple of waiters looked at each other, exasperated, and one tried to intercept them. I turned back to the menu and flipped through it a little more, but then I realized they were headed in my direction. I looked up. It was Bill Meeks. He was in front of me, the dog was panting frantically and trying to jump up. Bill got down on his knees and hugged him. “This is Henry,” he said. “Good boy, good boy.”

I leaned back. I had no idea what to do. Everything was noisily bobbing right there. “Hi,” I said.

Something was off. Not just because he'd brought a dog into the restaurant. He looked different. He was older than his online photo by at least ten years. His face seemed to have sunken in and bulged out at the sides.

“I just wanted you to meet him. Say hi, Henry!” He held up the dog's paw. I waved tentatively. “Okay, I'll be right back,” he said.

He walked out of the restaurant with the dog and disappeared from view. I sat there, embarrassed, aware that people were still looking my way, and stared at the menu.

He returned and sat down in front of me. He acted like we were still in the wake of some previous joke or bout of laughter. “I know, I know,” he said, a little out of breath. “He's the best, he's a character. So.” He looked at me. “What are we having?” He picked up the menu.

He was wearing creased khaki pants, a T-shirt that had a cityscape on it and read “St. Louis,” and a navy blue blazer that was too small. On one of his fingers was a large, bulging, golden class ring. He looked like he'd just come off a three-day bender on a friend's yacht. He was fidgeting under the table, shaking his knee up and down. He glanced up and smiled at me in a distracted way and went back to the menu. He shifted in his seat, sat forward, sat back. He cracked his knuckles, coughed a kind of preliminary cough. He craned around and looked toward the front of the restaurant. He leaned forward and picked up a saltshaker and scrutinized it and put it down.

“He's great,” I said. “Henry. He seems really friendly.”

“Oh yeah, he's the best. The best.” He rubbed his hands together, raked them through his hair.

“You been here before?” he said.

“No,” I said. “Are you from”—I pointed at his shirt—“St. Louis?”

“What? No,” he said. “But I've heard it's the greatest. Just the greatest.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“You've been there?” he said.

“St. Louis? No. But, yeah, I've heard it's pretty good. It's got that arch.”

“What?”

“That arch?” I pointed to his shirt. “That arch there. The arch?”

“Ah,” he said, smiling, vaguely perplexed.

We went back to the menus. The waitress came and we ordered drinks. I ordered wine and he ordered beer.

“I guess we're not challenging any gender conventions,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean with our drink orders.”

“Oh, right.” He regarded me briefly with what seemed like a touch of annoyance. He shook his head quickly as if trying to straighten everything out.

“So, Julia,” he said, once our drinks were delivered. “Julia Greenfield.”

I nodded. Took a sip of my wine.

“Tell me about yourself,” he said. “Tell me three things. That's right—I went to a job interview the other day. The guy said, ‘Tell me three things about yourself, or, describe yourself in three words!' I said”—he started counting things off with his fingers—“I'm loyal, I'm a people person, I get along with just about anyone, that's true, I'm really friendly, and I'm also punctual. I could have punched myself. ‘Punctual'? What a knucklehead.”

“Well, also you said four things,” I said.

“What?”

“Loyal, a people person, friendly, punctual.”

I had meant to say it in a joking way.

“I guess you're right,” he said.

He looked bleakly out the window. His face had fallen. On the street, a man wearing a sandwich board with stars and stripes on it walked by. Bill played with the sodden paper coaster under his
water. This was terrible. How had this happened? Why had I said that? What was going on here?

The waiter came and took our orders.

I had to get back—I sensed there was some sunny territory just above us on which we could connect. I had to change my whole bearing, ramp it up to match him.

“I've been asked that, too,” I said, laughing. “On a job interview. It's so stupid. No one tells the truth. I mean, what are you supposed to say, ‘I'm obsessed with spreadsheets!'”

“My mother,” he said. “She's a great lady, a really great lady. But she's a handful. I was— We were at her house, trying to fit a sofa through the doorway. It's at one of the new places, out there up Route 29? Really nice, and she keeps saying, ‘It fit through the breezeway at Delmarva! It fit through the breezeway at Delmarva!' And there we are, with this huge green sofa, stuck in the door. I was like, ‘Mom!'” He put his hands up in a helpless gesture. “‘Mom! What am I?'” He shook his head in disbelief. “‘What am I?'”

He looked at me for a reaction. I cleared my throat. “Yeah,” I said. “So, are you close with your mother?”

“Yeah,” he said glumly. “I would say so.”

Next to us were a couple of lawyer types, working on a case, fountain pens poised, the lady's hair tied back in a classy French twist. I watched as she flung her head back and laughed, and the man looked hungrily at her neck.

“Does she live around here?” I asked. “Your mom?”

“Emmitsville.”

“Oh, that's not far from where I'm staying, with my aunt.”

“You live in Emmitsville?” he said.

“Well, between here and there.”

“Isn't that where the new drive-in theater is?” He was flipping a coaster over and over in his hand.

“Oh, really?” I said. “That would be cool. I haven't heard of it.”

We picked over a few more topics of regional interest and then our food came. I kept trying to decide if he was handsome or not. He had dark blond hair that was swept back with a fair amount of gel, and there was something about him that suggested a high-school heartthrob gone out to seed, or a golden young actor past his prime. He was good-looking, I decided, but it was also as if the surface of his face had become unmoored and drifted ever so slightly off-center. Still, he had a kind of antic warmth. I imagined us in a cabin, or a room with wood paneling, in bed, and he's propped up on his elbow and walking his fingers up my chest. Then he maniacally kicks off the sheets and decides to make a crazy omelet. Then he's goofing around in the kitchen with a skillet on his head and we're both in stitches. I was starting to be able to see it, the way it would be with him, everything hilarious and spontaneous and slightly unhinged.

With the arrival of our second drink, we started talking about a man in town who we had both encountered, who may or may not have been homeless, and who sat on a pail on the downtown thoroughfare and played the same tuneless melody on his harmonica day in and day out. The sound had become synonymous with that area.

“Every freaking day!” said Bill.

“I know,” I said. “He's like some background extra in a computer game.”

“It would be one thing if he knew how to play the thing.”

“It's terrible!”

“And look”—he put his hands up in a defensive gesture—“I like zydeco.”

I laughed. “Oh, so that's what it is?”

“Yes,” he said, with an air of authority, his eyes suddenly stern. “It's zydeco.”

“Okay.”

“But this is getting out of hand. Learn a different tune!”

It was all-encompassing, when he was animated—his flashing eyes, his large face and golden hair.

We looked at each other, a little too pleased by this burst of agreement.

“Let's get out of here,” he said, his eyes gleaming.

“Now?” I said. “But what about . . . We have to pay.”

“Ah.” He produced a crumpled ten-dollar bill and threw it on the table. “Here,” he said, “you talk to the waiter, I'll go get Henry.” And before I knew it, he was walking out of the restaurant.

I sat there for a second, taking this all in. I found him outside. But before I could tell him he owed me thirty dollars, Henry yanked him away. “Come on!” he said.

Then we were swinging down the street, jerked along by the dog, who frantically ran around and made hairpin turns. I almost had to run to keep up with them. Bill kept laughing and looking back at me appreciatively. Was this going really well and I just
didn't know it? Was he on something? Were we having a great time? I tried to align myself with just that, that the recent turn of events on our date had exhibited the kind of spontaneity usually associated with people who were having a lot of fun together and were mutually delighted by the kind of madcap things that were taking place, that just naturally arose from our special chemistry.

I pictured us making out on a ski lift, his face rugged and tan. I saw us in an imports store, and he's playing peekaboo behind an ethnic mask.

We passed a hot dog stand, a yarn store. We walked through a pavilion where some men were setting up chairs for an outdoor concert. “Where are we going?” I said, out of breath, when I caught up with them on a street corner.

“We're almost there,” he said.

Finally we ended up at an old carousel, at the end of the historic district of the downtown area. It had golden poles and red and blue and green horses. But the paint was chipping and the whole thing was surrounded by chains. It had obviously been out of commission for some time. A tall building cast a shadow down one half of it.

“Ah, man,” he said. “This is so great. Isn't it great?”

“Did you come here as a kid?” I said.

He was kneeling, tying Henry up, and he exploded with laughter.

“Come on,” he said, out of breath. He climbed over the chains and got on one of the horses. He started whooping and waving his arm around.

“What are you—”

“What? C'mon!” he yelled.

Henry was barking. I wanted to run away. A woman holding
two white shopping bags walked by; her eyes flitted back and forth between us. She picked up her pace. I climbed over the chains and got up onto the carousel. I hitched my skirt up and hoisted myself onto one of the horses next to him.