Listening to Billie (20 page)

“What I don’t understand” Reed said, with a tight gesture of his hands, a tightening in his voice, “is why we have to be so absolute. We’ve tried it before. It never works out.”

“I don’t know why either,” Daria agreed. “I only know it’s true. Seeing each other ‘sometimes’ doesn’t work out. It ends by being my whole life.”

He gulped at wine, a famous burgundy, which he could barely taste. “It’s always seemed so harsh, so
uncivilized
to me,” he said. “Breaking up, the way people do. One day in bed, the next not speaking.”

This had been said with such weariness, the fatigue of too many affairs, a lifetime of love affairs. Which Daria recognized. “I’ve never ‘broken up’ with anyone before,” she tartly reminded him. “And I don’t mean not to speak. Of course not.”

He had intuitively, as always, read her mind, and her negative judgment. “I know, I’ve made a sort of career of love affairs,” he admitted. “I guess I should have been a woman. Supposedly that’s okay for them.”

She smiled. “Not any more.”

“Well, anyway. I always hate endings. Girls even seem to like them.” He was thinking of Eliza, whom Daria did not know about. Reed was discreet—Eliza, too.

“I don’t like this,” Daria said honestly. “It was much more fun to begin. If I hadn’t been so frightened—”

“Well, my God, here we are in Amsterdam, where we’ve always meant to come. Why not rebegin, instead? You’re my great love, you know that.”

This had been said mockingly, but it was true; Daria knew
this, and she felt an inexplicable pity for him. He was almost forty, heavier and less beautiful than he used to be. She said, “I love you, too,” being both kind and polite, if a little naïve. “But I’ve changed too much. I need some kind of freedom. I don’t know—”

“Will you divorce Smith?”

“Probably. I’m not sure.”

“Beautiful Daria, I don’t understand you at all.”

“I don’t understand myself. I just know that I need to change things in my life. It’s odd: sometimes I feel as old as Josephine, more like her sister than Eliza’s.” Daria was wearing soft pale wool clothes, fine and filmy, in loose folds around her slender neck, her shoulders. Now with a gesture of self-sufficiency, she pulled her collar close.

“Are you cold?”

“No, maybe tired.”

“Why aren’t you sadder? Christ, Daria, think how we’ve been.”

“Reed, I’m sorry. And I do think.”

“In any case, we need more wine. A nice white, with dessert?”

“I really don’t want dessert.”

“Well, we could have the wine anyway. It’s so incredibly beautiful here. Enough to break your heart.”

They had spent the afternoon walking around the city—to which, as a treat, or possibly a test, Daria came alone, Smith being both busy and permissive. And Reed simply arrived, that morning. They went to the Van Gogh Museum, and had lunch there, at its terrace snack bar. And then they walked: past brilliant flower stalls and elegant dark stores, high narrow brick houses that seemed to lean toward the canals, walking always along by the dark smooth water, with yellow leaves adrift. The lovely gentle city where, all those years ago, they first met and did not then fall in love. Walking and arguing, getting nowhere but both trying to be nice, to be kind and fair.

Another glass-topped and brightly lit tourist boat slowly passed, in the dark, a barge full of craning people.

The wine arrived and Daria politely sipped at it. She was thinking that Reed had begun to drink too much. It showed in the puffiness, though slight, around his eyes.

“I wonder when you’ll fall in love with someone else,” he speculated, with a narrow look at her.

“Maybe never. You know, I’m not like you, or even much like Eliza. I should never have married so young, and maybe not at all. I don’t like people much, just children. And animals.” Daria was exhausted with the effort of this speech, and the whole day of talking, but she was a little excited, too; she had begun to gain a tiny sense of direction.

Self-absorbed, and growing sadder with more wine, Reed barely listened. “Sometimes I feel like some kind of carrier,” he told her. “Some kind of plague. Why am I so often someone’s last affair? I thought I was good at being in love.”

“You are. It’s me who isn’t,” she brought out. “That’s the whole problem with us. Love is not important to me. In fact, sometimes ‘madly in love’ just seems to mean ‘dying to fuck each other.’ ”

Reed had at times made the same observation—or, rather, reluctantly admitted it to his mind. Still, she had shocked him badly: Daria did not say “fuck.”

Four years earlier, on another fall day, in San Francisco, Daria was standing on a street corner, and she thought of Reed (the family friend). She and Smith had come up to town for the weekend to a view-filled corner suite at the Mark; that morning, coming out into the sunlight, Smith had said, “Reed’s place must be around here somewhere.” “Oh, really?” “Yes, at the end of some alley. Well, there’s my cab. I can’t drop you somewhere?” “No, thanks, I want to walk for a while.”

And she did; she walked around in the brilliant clear fall
sunlight. She looked down Sacramento Street to the Bay, and the Bay Bridge. Everything shone, wherever she looked. The narrow town houses were so elegant, perfectly kept, and the nurses and children in Huntington Park were beautiful, well kempt. Rich tourists gawked from their over-sized cars, but in that heady air everyone looked blessed.

Aware of a dizzying excitement in her blood, Daria began to walk in a certain direction, as though guided toward an address she did not know. Down a street that led north, looking toward the Golden Gate, Marin County, turning in to an alley. Past some terrible new greenish houses, miserably constructed, to a small and decrepit shingled cottage.

It was Reed’s cottage; having moved into town from Stinson Beach, he had thumbtacked a tattered white card to the door, bearing his name. Her heart stuck at the top of her throat, but at the same time she was sure of her direction; Daria knocked.

“Daria, well, what a lovely surprise.” Actually he had meant to go out, but at least Daria had missed the girl who had just left, angrily. At Daria’s knock, Reed had imagined the girl returning to make up. “Well,” he said, with an effort, nevertheless, “may I give you some coffee? I’m afraid it’s sort of a mess around here.”

Like a polite child, Daria nodded; not seeing anything, really, she was dimly aware of “things,” probably beautiful, darkly cluttered in a narrow room, and she was violently aware of Reed; gleaming sleek blond hair, wide blue eyes, fine mouth. Long perfect hands, small bare feet.

He was asking her something, from the kitchen.

“Yes, a little milk, please.”

He sat down across from her, hiding restlessness. He repeated, “Well, this is a lovely surprise. How’s Smith? He must be pleased about the way things are going.”

“Oh, yes, very; fine. We’re staying at the Mark.”

“Oh, really—how nice. You and Smith are sort of my
neighbors, then. Temporarily.” What about her was making him so nervous?

“Reed, I came to tell you. I’m absolutely in love with you. Mad. I can’t live without you.”

He had heard these words before, several times. Something about him, perhaps some deep passivity, invited them. He was used to women professing love, and also certain men. Evan Quarles following him around, staring and silent. Still, he was not blasé, and he was too kind to take anyone’s love for granted. Daria had touched him deeply, even thrilled him.

“Daria, beautiful girl, you don’t know what you’re saying, nor what you’d be getting in for, with me,” he said to her.

She was sitting with her knees close together, hands clasped on her lap. As he spoke, she flinched very slightly, tightening her hands, closing knees; then she said, “I do know, or I can imagine. A lot of trouble, probably?”

He smiled; how extremely pretty she was! “Trouble, or worse. And there’s your marriage: I like Smith.” As he said this, Reed realized that he did not like Smith very much, not really, but did he really like anyone? He had often wondered.

“I don’t care. Not about anything.”

Tears next; Reed knew the sequence. Speaking very kindly, he said, “Look, I’ll go put my shoes on, and we’ll go out and get some air, okay?”

She was sitting there docilely, not looking at him, and not crying, when he went into his bedroom. He hunted around for his socks, found his shoes, put them all on and then got up and went over to the wardrobe to comb his hair before the mirror.

Looking into the glass, he saw, reflected from the doorway—Daria, perfectly naked and absolutely beautiful.

He said, “Daria, good Christ,” and felt tears at his eyes.

That day ended in a vermilion November sunset; warm color spilled over the western horizon, at the sea, beyond the
Golden Gate; the rest of the sky was cool and clear and slowly darkening, flecked with pale evening stars.

Daria whispered, “Our bed smells of the sea.”

“Yes,” and Reed sighed, feeling a sort of pity for her—for her innocence, her new love.

They lay there, their hands clasped limply between them.

And then, breaking the spell (and destroying his pleasurable moment of pity), Daria laughed. “I’d better bathe,” she said, in a practical way that Reed found upsetting. This lovely, most curious girl will probably hurt me, he thought. And then, for years, he forgot that premonition.

Years of stray afternoons of love (actually fewer, perhaps, than in most illicit love affairs: in curious ways, they both avoided the real encounter). Breathless and desperate telephone calls, letters, telegrams. Magic and madness. A few laughs. For Daria there was the miracle of novelty; surely no one had ever felt this? For Reed there was a strange sad sense of finality; of being finally and completely “in love.”

“You’re so beautiful—”

“Tomorrow, can you—?”

“No, I guess not until Friday.”

“Can you wait?”

“No—”

“Nor I.”

“When you laugh, my skin feels lacy, like light through leaves.”

Until Daria began to tire of the sheer weight of such intensity, and to say that they should stop. End. Not see each other.

Until Amsterdam.

•  •  •

After dinner, that night in Amsterdam, they took a cab to the Amstel. And they were silent, all that distance, over bridges and canals.

Reed got out with her, but Daria gestured to the driver to remain. “Reed, darling, I’m exhausted, and you’re a little drunk. Come over for breakfast, will you?” She laughed in a light way that to Reed was alarmingly uncaring.

He found the only possible rebellious gesture to be a dismissal of the cab: he would walk the considerable distance to his own canal, his small hotel. Also, perhaps he would sober up somewhat (and besides he was really low on money).

The next day the papers announced that the Vice-President (U.S.) had resigned. Tax evasions. Bribes. All over the Amstel dining room, at breakfast, this news was read and digested, along with the excellent Dutch coffee and rolls and cheese.

Daria, whose mood that day for whatever reason was very high, was entirely pleased. She and Reed did not have a paper; they did not feel a need for further details. Daria was eating a lot; she exclaimed, “Oh, isn’t this lovely!” looking out through long windows to the strong Dutch sunlight on leaves, and trees and vines.

“Breakfast is wonderful, or—” Reed had noticed that her golden eyes have flecks of darker gold; were they new? What did this mean?

“Oh, everything. Breakfast, and that Greek V.-P. He must be like my father, that Greek shit.” Daria laughed—to Reed, chillingly.

“You dislike Greeks?”

“Of course not; simply, how could Nixon have chosen a decent person?”

Curiously: “I didn’t know you cared about politics.” He cannot remember an even vaguely political conversation with Daria.

“Oh, but I do. I once spent a whole year planning to kill the P.”

“P.?”

“The President. Isn’t that funny?” Daria laughed with the relief of one who has made a ludicrous confession: of course no one would believe her.

“That doesn’t sound like you.” But then, he reflected, neither did what she has more recently been saying: I can’t see you any more; love is not important to me.

Across the room from them, alone at a smaller table, was an American, probably a businessman, reading the Paris
Herald.
He was handsome in a burly, weathered way, large and dark; the exact opposite to Reed’s attractiveness, Daria thought. And she wondered: Would I enjoy a man like that? He me? And she smiled. Am I going to be promiscuous—is that next? But as quickly as she thought all that she realized that she was not attracted to that other man, or really, any more, to anyone. Reed would be her last lover.

However, she wanted to test her powers, and so she made a small bet with herself: I bet that I can make him turn around, and I will smile, and in a few minutes he will get up and give us (give me) his Paris
Herald
as he leaves the room.

The man turned around to Daria, who smiled. In a hurried way he got up and pushed money onto a tray; magnetized, he crossed the room, and he said, “I thought you folks might like to see this paper.” He smiled briefly to Reed, and then fully at Daria. He flashed stained teeth and hard opaque eyes. A man who would murder his wife, for gain, or if he tired of her, is what Daria read in his grimace; perhaps he had?

“Oh, thank you, how wonderful,” she trilled quickly, icily. Reed looked across at her, puzzled.

The man, who was also disconcerted, was saying something about good old Ted.

“Ted who?” Daria asked.

Reed scowled, and the strange man hurried off.

“Well, in the first place, I didn’t want the bloody paper,” Daria explained, once he was gone.

“I wonder why not. More coffee? You did know that ‘Ted’ is the V.-P.?”

“No. I don’t care.”

Reed opened the paper, and Daria checked her new pale lipstick in a mirror.

After their conversation about Miriam and Lawry, and Kathleen’s hurled accusations, Eliza did not call Kathleen; but as though nothing had happened, Kathleen continued, at intervals, to call. Nor did she seem to mind that Eliza didn’t say much; she seemed totally incurious about Eliza’s life, or perhaps to be operating on her old assumptions: sexy rich indolent Eliza would never change. But she, Kathleen, had moved into a women’s commune, in the Mission District.