I Think of You: Stories (7 page)

Charles Jourdan boots, and an Etienne Aigner handbag to match. She even had fawn gloves. She looked terribly lost inside all that. It didn’t suit her at all. Anyone could see he had only just bought it for her. Her name is Mandy. She’s the small-boned wiry New York type. Arty-looking, with frizzed-out brown hair, an amazingly clear, lit-up kind of skin, and a very slight cast in her left eye, which is actually quite appealing.

Anyway, seeing her in those clothes was weird. They’re just the kind of thing he’s always thought elegant women should wear, and I’m sure she would never, ever have chosen them for herself. Do you remember that scene I told you about in Harvey Nichols where he stopped in front of a mannequin and said, “That would look good on you,” and I started to cry and kept asking, “Why does it always have to be beige?” Well, seeing this freewheelin’, verse-writin’ (he says she is a poet and a photographer—both!), dope-smokin’ (you mustn’t be shocked, Mummy, everybody does it here. And you mustn’t worry: I’m not doing it) New Yorker dressed like English country brought that side of it all back to me, and I was so relieved to be through and out.But I must admit I felt a pang of jealousy: it was the idea of him looking after her, I guess. Like seeing you or Daddy being really nice to someone other than me! I mean, I wasn’t
jealous
jealous: I didn’t want to swap places with her or anything, and I certainly didn’t wish her any harm. I felt sorry for her: she looked so out of place, so uneasy, and so determined. I suppose it must be rough being dragged off to meet “the wife,” even an estranged wife, as he once put it (neither of us has mentioned a divorce yet).

Anyway, he was looking great: better than any time since we got engaged.He’s stopped trying not to smoke and is back to forty cigarettes a day, except it’s Freiburg and Tryer now, not Rothmans. He’s terribly chic and he’s in a bearded phase.He looks like a gentleman sea captain. We all shook hands and smiled and I asked about the journey and we said they’d picked a lovely day for it. Then I took them to the best that the town had to offer in the way of cafés, a large room full of senior citizens and irate young mothers. It all smelled of frying, and they in their Bond Street outfits looked like posh relatives come to give a poor student a treat.

So we had tea and I felt terribly like some mother being shown her son’s new girl, and like a mother I thought, She’s not good enough for him, which she isn’t. She isn’t pretty enough and she doesn’t have that unwavering serenity he needs. She probably is in love with him; it’s hard not to be. But also I think she’s edgy and restless and won’t be happy with him and won’t make him happy. I also fear there must be some gold-digging element there because she’s so obviously on the make and he looks prosperous. I don’t think his money can possibly last very long, though. A year maximum—and I don’t know what he’ll do then.

Well, they drove off to the Lakes, a battery of cameras on the backseat and all that. And he phoned to say the hotel was every bit as lovely as we had thought it was when we had dinner there with Mario two and a half years ago. Three days later he came back alone to say good-bye. He said he’d left her in town to do some shopping, but who on earth was going to shop in a little town in the north when they could shop in London in a couple of hours? She just didn’t want to go through the meeting-the-wife routine again and I don’t blame her.

Windermere, England

11/24/78

She met us at the station and she was so friendly I could have thrown up. Eastern inscrutableness, I guess. Her name is Asya. It actually means Asia in Arabic.
He
says it can also mean “the cruel one” and “she who is full of sorrow.” She insisted on taking us for tea at this dump that reeked of stale frying oil—except of course neither of them would know what that was. They must have thought it was quaint and picturesque because it was down a dirty, cobbled lane backing onto the marketplace. Everybody else there was either some bearded old woman out for her week’s supply of cheap cabbages or a harassed young mom with overloaded baskets and stroller. People that couldn’t go anywhere better. It was a depressing scene. (It was like a parable, actually: youth on its way through a lousy life to old age. It makes me wonder why we all bother to go on.)

We sat there picking at some greasy pastry and drinking overboiled tea and making dumb conversation:

She: It’s quite a long trip up from London really, is it not?

Me: You must have made it lots of times?

She: At least twenty, I should think.

That kind of thing.

Except then they got started on Sadat’s Jerusalem trip and couldn’t stop. Well, finally she asks for the bill,
and holding it between two slim brown fingers, she raises her eyebrows with just the hint of a smile (very charmingly done): “This is hardly worth fighting over, is it?”

She left what must have been a
50
percent tip and handed over the car keys on—natch—a solid gold key ring.

“It’s really beautiful up in Windermere. I’m sure you’ll have a lovely time.”

She didn’t quite say “children,” but she easily could have. And of course she was careful not to mention the name of the hotel or let on if she’d been up here with him.

“If you would just drop me off at the house?”

But he wanted to stop by his college first.

He says she’s finishing a dissertation, getting a Ph.D. Only the way he says it, you’re not sure if it’s a joke or what. (I’m trying to be completely fair here. I’m always
100
percent honest in my journal—otherwise what’s the point of keeping it?) She is good-looking; not a stunner or anything, but okay, with a lot of shiny black hair with a loose wave in it. I think she’s older than me, but I couldn’t tell her precise age; I never can with Eastern people.

Once we get to the college he wants to go for a walk. All it is, is a small-town campus, and we keep bumping into people who know him and all he says is “This is Mandy” and they nod and smile politely and
don’t say “Mandy who?” I’m getting pretty fed up by then: this was billed as a trip to the Lake District, not down memory lane. I don’t say anything, though, because if I’ve learned anything by now, it’s that he moves at his own pace and does what he wants and screw the rest of the world. And if the world objects or has something different in mind, why then, screwing it is just that much more fun. So I trail around after him and smile and say “Uh-huh?” and “Hi” and get madder and madder.

Then I get to thinking he wouldn’t be taking me around this place if he was planning on splitting soon, would he? And so I’m not mad anymore. I can’t really afford to be mad at him anyway. For one thing, he’s paying for this suite. (I’ve never stayed in a suite before. It’s great. Like, now I can’t sleep, but I don’t have to lie next to him in the dark or camp out in the bathroom: I can sit out here in this very beautiful “olde English” room with the fire gently dying in the grate—this is really a room to write poems in. But I must carry on with this because I haven’t been getting much chance lately. Also I feel that this is IMPORTANT and I want to always remember how it felt.)

He’s paying for this trip. He pays for everything. Ever since I met him three weeks ago, I’ve never once had to use my own money. Which is just as well, since all I’ve got is my ticket home and five hundred-dollar traveler’s checks stashed away—what’s left of two years
of saving. Except not all that five hundred dollars is really mine. There is:

$14Owed to Clark for one week’s rent when I moved out so fast. Unless he managed to sublease the room right away.

$50Borrowed from Jackie in Paris—to be collected when she comes over.

$20Acid in Amsterdam (alliteration!)—for Don when he comes over.

So that really leaves me with $
416
that I can honestly call my own. Wow! That wouldn’t last two days the way we’re going. He must have stashes and stashes of dough, the way he throws it around. He thinks what you do when you run out of clean socks is go down to Harrods and buy another two dozen pairs. (The reason he runs out of socks is he changes three times a day. I used to think Arabs weren’t very particular about all that, but this guy is paranoid with showers and clean clothes. Also, all his socks are black!) All this shopping suits me fine. He’s always bought me something too. Like the outfit I was wearing this morning. I was right to wear it because it’s called a lady’s traveling outfit, and that’s what I was doing—traveling. I saw her clocking it, right there in the station. I guess it looks kind of new: the creases sharp and the nap all going in one direction and all that. She probably knows the sort of
thing he’d buy as well. You’re not married to someone for six years without knowing that. Not that you’d think it from the jeans and sweater she was wearing. But then she doesn’t need to bother anymore. He doesn’t mind spending his money on me. He does it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe that’s Eastern too: women being chattels and all that. (Does
chattel
have anything to do with cattle? Maybe, because the possessions of nomadic peoples would probably be livestock.) I wonder how much of that I really can put up with? It’s fun so far, but it’s only been three weeks. She must have gotten fed up with it, though—and she was born to it.

Why the hell do I have to keep on thinking about her? I wonder how much
he
thinks about her? A lot, I’d guess, although he’d never admit it. Admit it? He’d never discuss it even. He’ll maybe answer a straight question, but not always.

But seeing him with her today was really something: he was like some kid showing off. Showing off to his mom. And playing her up. One minute he’d be all intimate half-smiles and the next he’d be needling her. And she was all serene and beautiful, taking it all. It’s sick if you ask me. Sick. It could have been beautiful: two people—having passed through the Storm That Made Their Marriage and then the Storm That Wrecked It—left with a Deep and Intimate Friendship. But in their case it’s just sick. I don’t know why.

Wow! I got upset just then.

Man, I’d go crazy without this journal. I had a smoke and a small Scotch and here I am again. I put everything in here: accounts, observations, fragments, poems (must remember to copy out two written on the Amsterdam–London train), even the days I get my period and the nights I make love.

Talking of making love, I just went and looked at him as he lay sleeping. He looks so peaceful when he sleeps. Not everyone does. Clark ground his teeth all night. But Saif just turns on his side and curls up like a baby. I’ve laid for hours staring at his back: the color of light caramel candy. Sometimes I’d like to lick it, but I don’t know what he’d think of that. He’s into some kind of Eastern thing he says is called Carezza: it involves him doing things to me very slowly (nothing weird or far-out, just stroking and things) and me doing nothing at all. It’s not a problem since I orgasm at least once each time, but I don’t always see what’s in it for him.

He’s very cute, though, as well as being rich. Once or twice he’s acted strange—all gloomy and smoky and wouldn’t speak at all—but mostly he’s fun to be with, except I don’t always know if he’s joking or what. He won’t ever talk—I mean, really TALK—about anything personal, but I guess it takes time to build up communication.

What I’d like to do now is take a photo of him sleeping. The flash would wake him, though, and I
haven’t got my tripod and his kit is down in the car. I’ll take lots of shots of him tomorrow. Maybe I’ll take a shot of him taking a shot of me. No, that should be a third person really, to make the point: a third person taking a photo of two people, hiding behind their cameras, shooting each other, with the trees and fallen leaves all around them and the lake in the background. It’s so beautiful up here. We’ve just caught the trees before they shed the last of their leaves.

Well, I guess we’ll have a nice day tomorrow. I don’t know if he will want to go on the lake, but we’ll drive around it and he said there was a neat place in William Wordsworth’s hometown where we could have tea— that means tea and cakes here. I ought to go to bed if I’m going to be in any kind of shape in the morning. But I’m not sleepy. What I’d really like right now is a joint, but I’m fresh out. Okay, what I’ll do is, I’ll copy out these two poems now, then go to bed.

I

A Russian dissident sits across from me in the park.
He must be a dissident because
he’s Russian, and he’s
here
in New York City.
Does he know that Central Park
is
muggers only
after dark?

A woman with a toddler walks past
if you can call it
walking:
that motherbaby dance.
Right and left he staggers
leading
distracted
only going forward diagonally
by chance.

Soon I’ll pack my camera
my notebook
my ballpoint pen
and come home to
where
she still combs her hair
for you.

You dig, you say, my fishnet tights
my jaunty ass
my cigarette
but now I sit and wonder
do wives wear fishnet tights—in Russia?