The Pillow Friend (22 page)

“Lynne's married.”

“Of course she is, and intends staying that way. Which is why I'm the perfect lover: I come equipped with a comfortable hotel room and a guarantee that I won't be around long enough for things to get messy. I don't flatter myself that it's really me she's attracted to—I'm a poet, and even poets have their groupies.”

She felt as if she'd swallowed something heavy. “Well, I'm glad I could help you escape. My car's just a couple of blocks away. What hotel are you staying at?”

“Oh,
don't
.”

He stepped in front of her, forcing her to stop, and bent down anxiously, peering into her face in the gathering dark. “Why do women always think that everything a man says about another woman is meant to refer to them? You're about ninety-eight percent of the reason I wanted to get away from her. I'm not completely helpless; a firm no thank-you and a handshake at the door of my hotel would have saved my virtue. But I'm not actually interested in an early night alone. What I am interested in is you. I'd like to get to know you properly, have a conversation which isn't interrupted by someone else every three minutes. Please say you'll have dinner with me. If you don't find the prospect too revolting?”

She took him to her favorite Mexican restaurant and there, over the
sopa de elote
and fish cooked in banana leaves, they talked about themselves. Some of the things he told her about his life she already knew, or had guessed, from the poems and the research she had done—his affinity for the west of Scotland, the travels in India, his love of sailing—but she didn't let on. She soaked up every detail he let spill, as compelled and fascinated by this secondhand life as by some long-anticipated novel. When he asked, in turn, about her life, she was impatient, answered as briefly as possible, and pressed on with her questions. She wanted every crumb, every morsel about his childhood in Liverpool, the years of blue-collar jobs after leaving school at sixteen before going to teacher training college, and his life now, as a primary school teacher and a poet. She was fascinated by every detail, whether it was gossip about literary figures he had met, or the facts of his daily existence. She might never have such a chance again and couldn't bear to waste a minute of it by talking about herself.

“Now look here,” he said sternly. “I've already been interviewed by someone from the
Austin American Flag Stateswoman Blatt
or whatever the thing is called, and there's a student reporter coming to grill me tomorrow morning—I'm sick and tired of talking about myself! I want to hear about
you
.”

“My life is so boring compared to yours.”

“Not to me.”

“I could sum up my life history in about two minutes. I've never been abroad, I've only ever had the one job—well, apart from waitressing—you've just done so many more things, known so many more interesting people, been places . . . I've never even been out of Texas!”

“There's time,” he said. “I must have at least nine or ten years on you.”

“Eleven.”

“There, you're not even thirty yet!”

“Twenty-nine in two weeks. But when you were twenty-nine—well, you'd had two collections of poetry published, and been to India.”

“I was twenty-nine when I went to India. I thought I had to change my life. You know the poem by Rilke?”

She nodded, her heart pounding.

“I had it by heart that year. I was—it was a strange time. Being thirty seems nothing now, but then . . . back then it was all ‘never trust anybody over thirty,' and I'd spent most of my twenties absolutely certain I'd peg out before then, and there I was, twenty-nine and in rude good health, living in a squat, it's true, and smoking dope and conducting affairs with two women at the same time, but with my certification in hand, just about to get a proper job—the sort my parents would approve of—as a teacher, and . . .” He shrugged. “The women found out about each other and they both dumped me. I had a falling-out with someone who'd been very important to my career. . . . I thought there might never be a third book. Off I went to India, in search of my fate. I had to do something.”

“I've been feeling like that. Feeling I need to make a move. But it's hard to know what to do.”

“Don't go to India.”

She smiled and shook her head.

“Tell me about your writing. You've said hardly anything about it. What do you write? How did you begin?”

She shrugged dismissively, but gave him an honest answer. “I wanted to be a poet when I was very young, but I kind of gave that up in college—there was so much bad poetry being published in all the little magazines, and nobody really cared about it. I got depressed. I didn't even want to try to compete. I wrote prose instead. Stories. Little fairy tales, mostly. I sold one to a science fiction magazine the year I graduated, and a few others here and there over the years. And then one story just got longer and longer until it became a book—that was my children's book. Young adult, really. It's a fantasy. I've written a second one but I'm still waiting to hear from my publisher about it—I think I'm going to want to rewrite parts of it no matter what she says. And I've got an idea for another one, but I'm not sure it would be suitable for children. It might just be a regular novel. Or an irregular novel.” She laughed uneasily. Her voice suddenly sounded loud and blaring to herself, too loud, boastful. She hoped he didn't think she was egotistical, or trying to impress him. “There's not a lot to say about writing. I do it, it takes up a lot of my time—sometimes, it seems to be the most important, dominating fact of my life, but it's like a dream, it goes on mostly inside my head, it's very personal. I spend hours and hours dreaming these stories, but there isn't much I can say about the process.”

“I know,” he said, meeting her eyes. “I know. That's exactly how I feel. Exactly.” They went on looking at each other for what might have been a very long time, or no time at all.

It was nearly midnight when she dropped him off in front of the Driskill Hotel.

“I'll see you tomorrow,” he said, with a warm look, and got out of the car. She watched him walking away, waited until he was out of sight before she pulled away from the curb.

She had stopped drinking hours ago but was drunk with happiness, the sound of his voice still ringing in her ears. She could no longer remember if Graham Storey was as she had imagined him or not—he was real now. But she didn't feel sad about leaving him because she still felt she was carrying his presence with her.

The rented house she shared with Melinda Akers was dark when she pulled into the driveway, and she felt a moment's disappointment that she wouldn't be able to tell her housemate about the evening's adventure. Not that Melinda would understand exactly what it had meant to her, but it would be nice just to say his name out loud to someone else.

As she let herself in and made her way through the dark, quiet house, she thought about calling Roxanne. She would understand, and it was earlier in California. She didn't turn on a light until she was inside her own bedroom with the door closed. When she did, she saw at once that there was someone in her bed.

The naked man sat up, pushing spiky black hair out of his eyes. “So whereya been?”

It was Jack, of course, Jack Laroche, drummer for the Dead Babies, proofreader for the Texas State Legislature, and her boyfriend for the past six months. She liked him a lot, she even thought sometimes that she loved him, but for the whole of this evening in Graham Storey's company she had managed to forget his very existence.

Ashamed of herself, even a little shocked, she got mad. “I didn't know we had a date.”

“Date?” He sat up. “God, I'm sorry. Was I supposed to meet you somewhere?”

“No. That's the point. We didn't have a date and I wasn't expecting you so I made other plans and—”

“Ahh, that's okay.” He patted the blanket. “Come on to bed. I'm not mad at you, honest. You missed one helluva good dinner, cooked by yours truly, but that's okay, Melinda and her Big Guy were mighty appreciative. And if you're a good girl, I'll—”

“Why should you be mad at me? We didn't have a date, I didn't ask you to come over and cook for me. I can cook for myself.”

“Opinions differ on that score. Anyway, it doesn't matter.”

“It
does
matter. This is my room, in case you've forgotten. I live here; you don't. Who invited you into my bed?”

She knew as she saw his face tighten with hurt that she was being unfair.

“I didn't know I needed an invitation.”

“Look, we're not living together, right? We're not married. You don't have this automatic claim on me whenever you feel like it. I don't like being taken for granted.”

“I don't take you for granted.”

“No? What's this, then? You come over, I'm out, so you invite yourself to spend the night.”

“Why not? You never had any objections to sleeping with me before. I'm not going to force myself on you—we don't have to have sex just because I'm in your bed—even if we always have. If you want to stay up late I'm not going to complain.”

“You're not getting it.”

“What? You want us to go back in time? You want us to start
dating
again? I thought you hated dating.”

She fidgeted uncomfortably. “It's just . . . what if I want to go do something by myself?”

“Go and do it.”

“I don't mean
now
.” She couldn't call Roxanne to tell her about Graham with Jack in the next room. “I mean, I don't think you should just assume that we're going to see each other, be together, sleep together, every night.”

“I don't. I haven't been coming over here after my gigs, reeking of beer and cigarettes and trying to crawl into bed with you, have I?”

She felt suddenly very tired. She wanted to go to bed alone but she couldn't bring herself to throw him out. There hadn't been a car parked in front of the house, so he must have hitched or taken the bus. It would be a very long, dark walk home for him

“It's just—look, I'm exhausted, and I was expecting to crawl into bed and go straight to sleep.”

“I ain't stopping you.”

“I know.” She didn't move. “Look—tomorrow night—I'm going to a poetry reading on campus.”

“And you don't want me to come with you.”

“You'd hate it, you know you would.”

“Are you going with somebody else?”

“No.”

“Well, what time is it over? We could do something after, go to a late movie at the Dobie or hit some of the clubs—”

“No. Just forget tomorrow night. I'm busy tomorrow night, that's all.”

“And I've got a gig on Saturday. So do we see each other on Sunday? Can I have a date with you on Sunday?”

“Yeah, sure, why not.” She began to undress.

“I'll come over as soon as I get up, that'll be lunchtime. We can take a picnic to Zilker Park, maybe borrow somebody's dog and a Frisbee and have an old-fashioned good time.”

“Okay.”

“I'm sorry I made you mad. I didn't mean to take you for granted. I'd never do that; I know I'm only here on sufferance.”

“Oh, Jack, shut up.” She tried not to look at him as she finished undressing; she didn't want to catch his eye. She pulled on her kimono and went down the hall to the bathroom, thinking about the man in her bed, comparing him to Graham. She liked Jack a lot, she found him irresistibly sexy, but there was no
magic
. And how could you have love without magic? She'd had sex with seven men and had applied the word “love” to three of them, although always uneasily. She knew, intellectually, that what she had felt for Alex Hill in high school had been only an adolescent crush, a fevered fantasy briefly made flesh, but it still seemed more real to her than anything that had happened since. Her reunion with him in college had ended up being little more than a one-night stand, and after graduation, although they had kept in touch with occasional phone calls, neither had made any effort to build or sustain a relationship. It made her sad sometimes, but she knew it was sensible to let go. The Alex Hill she'd been in love with had never really existed.

She was hoping Jack would be asleep when she got back, but although he was lying still with his eyes closed, she knew he was awake. The sight of his long, smooth back and the warmth of him as she slipped into bed aroused her. Her feelings had been at such a pitch all evening, she longed for physical consummation. But making love with Jack was out of the question; it wouldn't be fair to him.

Neither was it fair to him to go to sleep without a word, a kiss, a hug to let him know it wasn't his fault and she wasn't angry. They had never slept together without first making love, and it seemed wrong that the first time should be in the wake of a quarrel.

Just to let him know she wasn't angry, she moved closer, put her arms around him and kissed the knob at the base of his neck. She snuggled up against him and closed her eyes, meaning to sleep, but he felt so nice, she couldn't seem to stop herself rubbing against him and kissing his back and shoulders.

They ended up making love, of course, and she fell asleep blissful, mindless, satiated.

She bought a ticket and went into the auditorium like anyone else, like a stranger, and took a seat in the front row. When Graham Storey came onstage, wearing a white, open-necked shirt, dark blue corduroy trousers, and a dark blue jacket a little too small for him, he was a stranger until he looked at her. When their eyes met, a shiver went through her and she knew they would make love that night.