Lucky Us (11 page)

Jason and I were not delicate with each other, and I banged my head twice on the wrought-iron bedstead, which was quite funny at the time. “Ga-boing,” I said, and Jason kissed my scalp. Afterward he made me a Swiss cheese sandwich to take back to work.

S
O
I
MADE
it a habit. Repeating myself was easy: first one time and then the next time. It was mostly my doing, not Jason's, I was the one to blame. Jason was still busy on the side with his Melanie person, although she wasn't any big deal, as far as I could tell. Once or twice he called me at work, but really I was the one who arranged our meetings—at lunch, on evenings when Gabe worked late, on my days off when I said I was at my studio.

My body was different when I was with Jason. There is something to be said for being in the same boat with someone who is touching you everywhere. For the bits of
time we were together, I wasn't weeping for myself. I went back to my old conceited joy in my much-praised body parts. I got queenly again. Once I thought,
my blood is happy,
one of those blind phrases that float in on waves of other sensations.

This went on for weeks and weeks. I didn't tell anyone, not Dawn or Fiona or anybody at work, which was quite unusual for me. I had never been secretive before, but my double life felt natural to me. I had a hidden existence anyway, didn't I, active warfare surging under my skin. I took to sneakiness right away, the planning and finagling, the lies by omission and the outright fibs.

On the other hand, who was the man I loved? Gabe. Gabe first and foremost, Gabe above all others. Gabe forever; where would I ever find another like him? I went through my days and nights with him, as before, and I felt no differently about him. I was glad at the sight of him, I sought his opinion on anything I was thinking about, I woke up thankful for his body next to me in bed, the sound of his voice pleased me when he came through the door.

What did I think I was doing then? I thought I was fooling around, just that. I believed Jason was a harmless hobby, which didn't have to set off any trouble as long as I kept the facts to myself. I didn't think Gabe could guess unless I let him guess. There were certain aspects of my
days, my painting, for instance, that he had never paid much attention to, and neither of us were snoops.

O
NE
F
RIDAY NIGHT
Fiona and Ira had a dinner party. It was a big buffet in their loft. Ira made these blue martinis everyone thought were very hip and Fiona made some kind of unimpressive pasta. I thought, what a tidy little married couple they're turning out to be, which was sour and unfair of me.

Gabe was amused by the martinis. “They numb your eyeballs,” he said. “I'm not complaining.”

“What would numb eyeballs be like?” Bruce said. “You could only see very bright colors?”

“Oh, please. Some people
paint
that way,” Dawn said. “You know those blatant kinds of paintings? I hate that.”

“Eric Tomlinson does that,” Ira said. “And younger people. Marsha Blisenski. Jason Alterbitt.”

I didn't blink at Jason's name. There were people there who knew him, an overlap between his crowd and this one, and I almost wanted to talk about him. I almost said, oh, you should see his new paintings.

“I think my
throat
is numb from this stuff,” I said instead. “My larynx has turned blue, I think.”

Gabe said, “I'm going to dream in blue tonight and piss blue in the morning.”

I put my arm around him to show how tickled I was by his eloquence. I was very publicly affectionate that night. I hung on Gabe's neck when the martinis started to hit me and I slid my hip against his flank. “I think you're tired,” he said. “Too much gin.”

“Tequila,” Ira said. “That's the worst the next day.” Ira told a long story about the honeymoon he and Fiona had taken in Cancún. The two of them had hangovers from many happy margaritas and they fell asleep on the beach for hours. They would have died of acute sunburn, really, if Ira's pesky parents hadn't phoned that afternoon. Fiona spent the next day covered with ice packs and ointment, and Ira went out and sprained his ankle playing beach volleyball. “We had a great time though,” Fiona said. None of the elements—expensive resort, hovering in-laws, leaping husband—sounded like anything about to happen to me.

“At least you didn't get pregnant on your honeymoon like Princess Di,” Dawn said. “Poor Diana. She would've had a better honeymoon with Dodi, I bet.”

“Priscilla Presley too,” I said. “Lisa Marie was conceived right after the wedding.”

“Ever read what Priscilla said about Elvis on the honeymoon?” Bruce said.

“The man had no secrets,” Ira said.

“I'd love to see the lingerie Di had for her honeymoon,” Dawn said. “Can you imagine?”

“I like my own items,” I said. “Maybe I'll auction mine off.” I slid the neck of my blouse to one side to show everybody my shrimp-pink camisole. I showed the strap and the fluid hang of the hem-stitched top, and the women said, “Oh, gorgeous,” and Ira said, “Whoo! Have mercy.”

“It's okay,” I said to Gabe. “I'm not showing any more.”

“Suit yourself,” Gabe said. “It's up to you.”

I tried, after that, not to ruffle Gabe, but I kept forgetting. I jiggled to the music on the stereo with my bobbing knee next to Ira's, I told one guy how cute he looked in his haircut, I fed another guy a piece of cake from my fork. I was bursting with enthusiasm for my adorable self. I couldn't remember whether I always did these things or not.

I got sleepy at the end, and nodded out on Gabe's shoulder. He woke me up by shaking my arm. “No snoozing here,” he said. “Time to go.”

Gabe didn't speak at all in the cab on the way home. “What's the matter?” I said. “What?”

He gave me a sharp look. “Nothing,” he said. “Nothing.”

F
IONA WANTED TO
know how much dope I had smoked before showing up at her party, and in my repudiation of this notion, I talked about how my moods had just been so wild lately, and I heard myself hinting coyly about my love life, and then I spilled the beans.

Fiona said, “Are you kidding? You're not kidding?” When she heard Jason was the one, she said, “
Elisa,
” in a long groan of disappointment. “This is not smart of you.”

“So?” I said. “That's life.”

“Please don't talk to me like you're some idiot,” she said.

“It's not a big deal,” I said.

“Fuck up your relationship right now of all possible moments in your life? I would call that major.”

“I'm just going to go on with this a little longer. It doesn't have to have repercussions.”

“You think he won't find out,” Fiona said, “but people always find out. Sooner or later.”

“I can't have a little more time? I can't be allowed that?”

“Don't kid yourself,” Fiona said. “It never happens that a woman in your position is fought over by two men. Never.”

I
HUNG UP
the phone angry with Fiona, who had become, I thought, quite the stodgy matron. But Dawn, who heard the news from Fiona, said, “You're being greedy and it'll get you in trouble. That's all I'm saying.”

How pragmatic they were, my girlfriends. I might have listened, although nobody ever does listen. Every time I was with Jason, he would say to me, as I was leaving, “So call me,” or, “Next Thursday, right?” and I was so pleased to hear him speak this way. I knew I might not hear any of it the next time, and that was really all I worried about, as far as I worried at all.

We were very busy at the store right when the weather got warmer in May. People remembered then that they were going to be in pleasanter places soon and needed cameras, as one of our ads said, to hold on to the good times. “That's a futile exercise, holding on to the moment,” I said to my friend Ed.

“I would keep these existential insights to myself if I were you,” Ed said. He thought we should have ads that said, “Throw money away! Buy a camera that's beyond your comprehension!”

I was just as glad to be occupied with hordes of customers and not to think about my own life. At home Elisa
was acting silly and odd. She was too lively, too obliging and brightly sweet. With
me
. I was insulted.

I thought she might be medically worse and not telling me, holding on to some piece of private bad news. Everything physical about her looked the same, but I didn't know everything to look for. It wasn't like her to keep some unhappy piece of information to herself, her way was to utter first and think later. She might want to spare me, although that didn't feel quite right either.

It was demoralizing to think of being
spared
. Where could she have gotten the idea that I would turn away from taking up my burden? I had known this woman for four years and lived with her for three. But perhaps she thought I had already turned away. She must have seen the lower fear in me, for myself. Some things can't be hidden; most things can't.

I didn't speak about Elisa very much at work, except to Ed. Ed was the other quiet one at the store. On weekends he liked to go hiking upstate. Ed, who had lost his lover Howard to AIDS, was one source of my original reading material on Elisa's situation.

Today he only wanted to make cracks about some guy in an Armani trenchcoat. Did I know what those things cost?

“It looks too big on him,” I said. But it turned out I had
the wrong guy. What did I know? “My raincoat is just as hip,” I said.

“That's so endearing that you think that,” Ed said.

“If you had a humongous amount of money, like if you won the lottery,” Charelle from the video department said to me, “you'd just look at the check and not know how to spend it. Wouldn't you?”

“I resent this view of me as some kind of old monastic,” I said. I opened my sports jacket to model it for them.

“Look at the man's moves,” Ed said. “Poetry in motion.”

“Elisa says that to me every night,” I said.

Charelle guffawed and patted me on the shoulder, the lewd old dude. When she went off to check a camcorder for a customer, I said to Ed, “Elisa's acting antsy these days. Very jumpy and hyper. Also she doesn't stay asleep at night. What do you think that means, the not sleeping?”

“Let her be,” Ed said. “Don't crowd her.”

I'd never crowded anyone in my life. It irked me that Ed would suggest any such thing, and I kept away from him for the rest of the afternoon.

B
UT WHEN
I went home that night, I was careful not to crowd Elisa. She was lying on the floor when I came in, listening to a very loud salsa version of “Hot Hot Hot.” She waved at me, on the beat, when I came in. “
Hola, chica,
” I said, although I really wanted to watch the news.

After dinner I got interested in a program on the ecology of the Alps. “People are always killing themselves climbing those mountains,” Elisa said. “Why do they do it?”

“For the view,” I said. “They like to work hard to see things from a sublime and inhuman distance. Really.”

“You sound like Bruce.” Bruce, her old friend, had become a fairly serious Buddhist, a follower of the Dalai Lama and other Tibetan-lineage teachers. I liked Bruce. I pointed out to Elisa that Tibet was called the Roof of the World.

“I hate heights,” Elisa said. She was being shallow on purpose. In our early days she had sometimes been like that. I don't know why she liked that defense, it wasn't really her.

“Y
OU'VE LET YOUR
pasta get cold,” I said.

“This is so good, Gabe,” she said, holding up a congealed forkful. “You outdid yourself on this one.”

“I'm glad.”

“Also the salad is terrific. You make the best salad, you do.”

On TV I watched the deep blue expanse of night sky and the moon spilling its light over the snowy cap of the Jungfrau, and when we finished eating I went into the bedroom to read. I didn't want to hear Elisa being pert and jittery anymore.

I meant to start reading a novel, but I got caught up in one of the AIDS magazines littering the bedroom. There was a feature about a man who had directed his last film from his sickbed and another about a mother who said, “I tell my kids, be glad for each day and don't let the shit-heads get you down.” All that uplifting bravery soothed me. I did not feel encouraged—the filmmaker in the article was already dead—but I did feel enlarged and reminded of what was important. Wasn't the one bonus of this (even Elisa said so) that it freed you not to care about what didn't matter?

The magazine was also filled with ads from pharmaceutical companies—colorful drawings of the virus with speeding arrows to show how its replication might be blocked. The chattiness of the ads (“put some freedom in your HIV medication schedule”) made me think of how many thousands of people were taking this stuff every
day. It was crazy that Elisa was not on any of these drugs yet, and I had let her be crazy, in her own fluffy and evasive way.

Elisa was calling me from the living room. “You have to see this,” she yelled.

I went out to look. Homer Simpson was making a fool of himself again. “I thought the mountains were on,” I said.

“They've been replaced.”

“I wouldn't mind seeing the Alps someday,” I said.

“So far you're not going anywhere. That I can see.”

“What?”

“Never mind,” she said. “Go back and read.”

“You asked me to watch.”

“Forget it,” she said. “You think anything I watch on TV is too dumb.”

“I like
The Simpsons
. I do.”

“No, you don't.”

“I don't ask you to read
Thus Spake Zarathustra,
” I said. “I don't make intellectual demands on you.”