Whenever You Call (14 page)

I was becoming more and more, well, for want of a better word,
odd
about reality, which I could only assume stemmed from my interactions with Mr. Rabbitfish, who also appeared to have a strange relationship with reality. I kept feeling as though the floorboards under my feet were shifting and sliding, or that the shadows on the ceiling above me whispered. I closed my eyes tightly and concentrated on opening my ears so that the whispers would grow loud enough to actually hear what was being said. At first, all I could make out was a roaring cacophony of sound. Then, pop! I felt like I’d gone through the wardrobe door and into my own little Narnia. Quiet, peaceful, still.

The utter silence was such an intense experience that I popped right back out again. I opened my eyes. Little sparkly white lights, like infinitesimal fireflies, scattered in front of me. I knew then, in a way almost impossible to verify or explain, that nothing was as I had always thought it was.

Isaac suddenly spoke out loud, shocking the shit out of me.

“You know, don’t you?” he said.

I bit my lip to keep from blurting out the usual disclaimer, as in, “What the fuck do you mean?”

Instead, I nodded my head.

Apparently, he could see the motion, or he simply understood, because he said, “I always thought you had it in you.”

“What exactly?”

“The mystery.”

I hesitated. Actually, I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, and I also thought he was beginning to sound way too New Age'y for me to stomach. But I was glad to have him to talk to because, yes,
nothing was as I had always thought it was.

“I think we had some kind of divine experience when we made love,” he said.

I had no idea what he meant. And I hated the word
divine
. It sounded so fake and stupid. I could hardly bear to hear it in my head, just as a thought, much less the way it sounded spoken out loud in Isaac’s voice, the voice of a future Buddhist monk.

Divine.

Yuck.

I fell back on the ubiquitous, “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do,” Isaac whispered, “but you’re just not ready to admit it.”

At that moment, I felt like turning the clock ahead so that it would be time for him to go. If my reality shifts had to do with the
divine
, I wanted nothing to do with it. Nothing.

“I’m sorry, Isaac, but I have no patience for this kind of mumbo jumbo.”

He turned over in bed carefully. Now he faced me, but still no part of him touched any part of me. “I can have visitors at the monastery.”

“That surprises me.” I knew why he was mentioning this. He wanted me to visit him.

“I think you might find it interesting.”

“You know, the trouble with zealous converts is that they’re always trying to convert everyone else!” I turned towards him in bed and my right foot kicked him gently in the shin.

“Buddhists don’t proselytize.” His voice remained calm.

It was so annoying the way he never got annoyed.

“Isaac, I really don’t think it would be good for me to come visit you.” I was worried about hurting his feelings. “I need to go forward in my life, not backwards. You know I care about your happiness and stuff, but I just don’t see us being friends, especially with you living in a Vermont monastery.”

Isaac laughed.

“Shhh, the boys’ll hear you,” I hissed.

“They’re the ones who told me I should get laid tonight.”

I groaned. “I’m their
mother
.”

“Not really.” Isaac chuckled again.

“I am absolutely their mother.”

“They think of you more as a friend.”

His hand inched across the bed, under the covers. He touched my arm. “Let’s see what happens this time.”

I had zero sexual desire. And though I knew I could probably get aroused in a couple of minutes, I also knew I didn’t want to. So, I was faced with the old me again because, in the past, I would’ve gone along with him, despite my own inclinations, simply to please Isaac.

“I don’t think so,” I said. But I took my other hand and wrapped it around his, where he touched my arm.

He said, “I’m not going to be able to fall asleep.”

“Me neither.”

“Would you mind if I took off now?” He shifted in bed. “I could be there as the dawn came up. Sort of feels right.”

“I think that’s a good idea.” I tried not to reveal the glee I felt.

We both threw back the covers.

“Maybe I’ll take a quick sponge bath before I go.”

“Sure, go right ahead.”

While Isaac made splashing noises in my basement bathroom, I rolled up the deflated mattress and stuffed it into a trash bag, then folded and put away all the bedding. I’d turned on a few lights, and now I crept up to the kitchen. I found a thermos, made a cup of coffee, and poured the coffee into the thermos. I’d baked blueberry muffins for the boys’ breakfast, so I bagged two of them. When I tiptoed back downstairs, he was in the living room, stuffing his dop kit into his small duffle.

I held up the baggy of muffins and the thermos. “Here’s something to eat and hot coffee.”

He turned around. “God, that’s so nice.”

My throat constricted. I was swept with grief, much more so than at any time when our marriage was in its death throes. The emotion, and the
surprise
of the emotion, made it even worse. I burst into tears, threw my arms around him, and hugged tight. I felt his body release and then I knew he was crying, too.

“We’re so silly,” I said.

He pulled away, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Thank you for your tears.”

That was as bad as the word
divine
. “Isaac!”

He laughed. “Okay, okay.”

I pounded his chest. “You’re no angel and you’ll never be an angel, so quit trying.”

“I promise.”

I walked him out to his car. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and the moon was already lowering in the clear sky. As my eyes adjusted, it seemed more light than dark.

We hugged again and, without a word between us, he settled behind the driver’s wheel. He slammed the car door and the noise echoed through the silence. I lifted one hand and waved, but his gaze was on the road ahead and he never looked back.

A
L’S
WOUND JIG-JAGGED LIKE lightning across his face. When he smiled, it wrinkled and made me wince.

“Does it hurt?”

“Nope.”

“Why are you being such a good sport about this? You should be furious with me.” I sipped my vodka martini.

“Number one, this means you owe me, big-time.”

I nodded. True enough. Couldn’t argue.

“Number two, I just got the biggest part of my life
because
of the scar.” He gulped his beer. “They’re making a Stephen King film about a Harvard scientist who falsifies his research on mad cow disease, only to find out that his
nonexistent
data is not only true, but an infectious element has been released into Boston’s famous clam chowder and half the city is infected with mad cow.”

What a peculiar plot, but if anyone could make it work, Stephen King could. Naturally I wondered whether Al had actually gotten the starring role of the scientist, but since that seemed unlikely, I kept my mouth shut. We were in a small neighborhood bar just off Davis Square, a place I’d never been to. It reminded me of Al’s descriptions of the bar in “Tie Me To the Bedpost,” which probably explained why I was agitated. Just like in his story, a woman’s scream could reverberate through the place any minute, and fiction become nonfiction. I shifted my feet across the old wooden floor and felt sticky patches cling to their soles.

“I’m one of the lab techs who might be responsible for the outbreak. It’s just incredible to get this part, and it’s all because of this.” He touched his face.

“What if it heals quickly?”

He opened his eyes at me. “You never stop
thinking
, do you?”

I wasn’t sure how he meant for me to take that comment, but I was pleased. I thought it was a compliment to be thought of as a thinker, though perhaps not all women would agree. Maybe it was an age thing. Eventually, I would be old. I’d have only the dance of my mind to offer in love because my body had folded into itself like origami, though the origami comparison might be overly optimistic. More like a crumpled paper bag.

Rob continued, “My part in the script is next week—the scar should stay nice and gruesome until the filming finishes.”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

He asked about how it was going at The Harvest, and I described my fall on the first night, which was rapidly becoming one of my favorite stories of all time. Indeed, so good that it was tempting to imagine using it in a novel, though I’m not sure what novel I was referring to since I wasn’t actually writing one. After more chitchat, I knew Al was waiting to hear what I thought of
his
novel.

“I haven’t gotten too far with your book,” I said.

He nodded eagerly.

“But I will say that you’ve got an interesting main character. I like Rabbit, and I’m intrigued by him.”

“Okay.”

I sipped my martini. “I’m not too sure about the mystery part, and since you’re billing this as a mystery, that’s very important.”

“What do you mean?”

Ah, there it was. Whenever anyone asked for help on their unpublished writing, they really wanted to hear that it was stupendous and instantly publishable. No criticism desired, thank you very much. I will say that I’d never been this way myself. Or I was pretty sure I hadn’t been. More likely, my problem was a lack of confidence, not too much. It was tempting, at times, to conclude that either too much or too little confidence was the key to whether or not you became a successful writer. But the truth was more nuanced than that. Some people did well when they were propelled by their own self-confidence, and others did equally well when trying to
prove
that they were worthy.

“I’m not an expert on the mystery genre,” I said.

He interrupted, “I am.”

I stared around the room for a minute, hoping to intimidate him. Like, remember,
I’m the successful published novelist
.

“I’ve really read hundreds of them,” he said, “as well as all the guidebooks on writing mysteries.”

He had fucking eyes. Or, eyes that fucked. I thought the experience with Isaac had taken the edge off my sexual desire, but the strangeness of that act with him had been as unsatisfactory as eating fat-free ice cream. I seemed to have discovered my desire all fresh and new. Ready and willing.

I gestured with my hands, opened like blossoming flowers.
You know best, then.

“But, what were you going to say?” Al said.

I had to decide about him. I picked up the martini and contemplated it, suddenly having no desire to drink. “Do you find that you don’t want to drink when you’re bar tending?”

“That’s not an unusual reaction.” He grinned. “Though some go in the opposite direction.”

He turned his head to stare at all the women who were staring at him.

Which was when I figured out that I’d have to get drunk in order to go to bed with him and since I had no desire to sip at my martini, much less finish it, much less get drunk, it was obvious I didn’t really want to go to bed with Al. I felt like the color gray. What had happened to me? It seemed okay not to have a sex life because of a rational decision to be celibate, but quite another to simply … idly … oddly … have no
desire
for a sex life. If I don’t experience desire, then who will desire me?

Or, if I am not desired, how shall I desire?

Or. Oh, forget it. I felt too forlorn to carry on. Also, frankly, worn out. I’d worked the lunch shift, and on Friday, the restaurant had been much busier. It was now after nine o’clock at night and all I really wanted was a hot bath and a hot bed. Ideally, I’d have a hot guy in the hot bed, but only if the hot guy was well known to me, the kind of guy who didn’t mind my flannel nightgown and scrubbed face. That wouldn’t be Al.

So, decided.

Al reached across the booth’s table and touched my index finger where it curled around the stem of the martini glass. It shouldn’t have worked. I was too disinterested, and mature, to react at the touch of a single finger. But it did. The current from his body jumped into my hand, ricocheted up my arm, tickled my neck, and landed with a delightful buzz in my ear. My head tucked to the right, cuddling it.

So, decided.

We went back to my place, rather than his, because that’s what I wanted to do. It meant I, presumably, lost a little power by not being in an environment where I could just up and leave when I wanted, if I wanted. But I was confident that I wouldn’t hesitate to send him home.

I made him follow me in his own car, a VW Beetle with brakes that squealed loudly enough for me to hear at every stop sign and light. I glanced in the rearview mirror, expecting him to pull an apologetic face, but he was obviously unaware. Once I started, I couldn’t stop checking the mirror, watching him, and wondering about what I was going to do. I thought about Jen, as I usually did when I was moving in a dramatic direction. She wouldn’t approve, but she hadn’t felt his finger. Although I had to admit that even if she’d experienced the pleasure of his touch, she still wouldn’t approve.

Next, I considered Isaac’s opinion. He wouldn’t approve either, given that he was now a monk-in-training with, undoubtedly, clear ideas about how the sexual connection should be sacred. I was shocked that I even knew the word
sacred.
I mean, of course I understood the definition of sacred, and I’d certainly read the word somewhere over the course of my lifetime, but I didn’t think I’d ever used it in my own head, as a personal thought.
Say-crede.
Isaac had said we’d experienced something divine when we had sex, and now I was thinking about this concept called
sacred sex
. Not a subject I’d usually wonder about. Perhaps it came from my long-ago visit to India, where they celebrated the idea of tantric sex as a holy act.

I’d always had what I would call a great sex life, but I knew there was a difference between great sex without love, and great sex with love. Yet, oddly, it somehow seemed like the moments of sex I might characterize as sacred sex were the ones that happened
without
love. Not all my experiences of lust warranted being called sacred, but
none
of the sex done under the auspices love could be called sacred. How weird was that?

The best experience I ever had, meaning the best sex I’d ever had, was with a guy whose name wild period between marriages. This was the first “between marriages” that I’d experienced, and I established the pattern of traveling far away to heal, celebrate, fuck my brains out, call it whatever. So, there I was in East Africa, camping on the shore of Lake Navaisha. To begin with, Kenya was a country made-to-order for screwing. Its beauty wasn’t ancient, like Egypt or Greece, nor was it wild like Australia or Mongolia. It was beauty at war with itself. Endless beauty jammed against endless beauty, jostling for attention. I was part of a small tour group of mostly Brits, and I’d already gone to bed with the single available man, who turned out to be, for the most part, gay.
I never knew.
I was twenty-five years old and going through that

We’d spent the day out on the lake in a slow-moving motor boat, fishing. I’d never fished before, and this was real good fishing. We trolled along, the sun shining from a perfect blue sky, and we reeled ’em in. A constant source of tilapia.

I hadn’t wanted to fish because I knew they came out of the water alive and squirming, at which point I’d be required to remove the hook in their mouths and kill them. None of this sounded appealing to me, but it turned out differently when you were on a pseudo-safari in East Africa. A fellow camper, female, caught the first fish, landed it, and then gave the rod to an African who whisked it away. Reassured, I cast the way I’d been instructed and watched, mesmerized, as the line drifted, tightened, and then, tugged. Thrilled, I rapidly turned the handle and saw the line get tighter and tighter. Someone behind me said, “Pull it up, pull it up,” so I yanked the whole rod straight into the air, above my head. More rapid handle-turning, with voices loud and faint at the same time, egging me on. I landed the first of many fish.

Around the campfire later that night, Africans fried the fish in butter and served it with hot spicy fried potatoes. My skin was stretched and burned by too much sun, and my head whirled a bit from several rum and cokes. It seemed at the time, and still seems so today, that it was the best meal of my life. I crouched over the plate, trying not to wolf the food, and then doing exactly that. We were sipping hot, sweet tea when a man appeared on the periphery of our group. He greeted us with a loud Scottish accent. Our safari leader welcomed him and offered a mug of tea, which he accepted. As luck would have it, and in those days I was always lucky, he sat next to me. He may have said his name then, to the whole group in those first few minutes. I didn’t hear him if he did. We continued to talk, though I could never recall what we talked about.

It was as if he belonged to me. I
knew
him and I longed for him in my bed, though I could scarcely make out his features and I wasn’t really listening to anything he said. It was a connection without any substance at all. Neither words nor touch. A
wireless
connection. Slowly, the others drifted off to bed. Then our leader said goodnight. I didn’t wonder about how to make it happen. It would happen. Finally, when we were alone and the fire burning low, he reached over and took my hand. Ever practical, we held hands on our way to the outdoor loo, then inched back to my tent. We went slowly, with care and no rush. You usually imagine that a passionate sexual experience involves desperate grappling and tearing of clothing. But this stranger and I moved in slow motion.

Because Kenyan nights were chilly, he wore a wool sweater, which I gently pulled over his head without catching his chin or ears. Then he unbuttoned my sweater. Silent, we undressed each other. We could hear the rustle of animals outside, nothing serious or scary. Mostly just the monkeys scavenging. And the wind picked up so that the sides of my tent undulated. The smell of wood smoke from the campfire drifted with the wind. I kept the lantern light low and ran my hands over his chest. He was older than I. I could feel his age in his loose skin, and the way his muscles seemed to have more depth and strength.

His hands rested on my waist, with the fingers splayed over each hipbone. He tugged at them, pulling me to him and I felt his erection slip between my legs. We fit perfectly. That was the moment when it began to be, as I see now in retrospect, sacred. I guess I mean that the entire event was mysterious. I never knew why it happened, or who he was, yet I felt as though something significant had taken place. This wasn’t just sex. Nor was it making love. This was
union.
He fell asleep next to me, crammed onto the narrow camp bed, but sometime in the early morning he left, as I thought, to go to the loo. He never came back.

I didn’t know whether it
mattered
. Sacred sex, lust-driven sex, loving sex, even celibacy. Did any of it make any difference? Yes and no, yes and no. It made a difference and it didn’t. And, suddenly, I thought about the fact that the one sexual experience I would characterize as sacred had been after … a … fishing trip.

Rabbitfish.

Here I was, on my way to screwing a guy who’d written about a man named Rabbit (obviously an alter-ego), and my mind had managed to remember, during this relatively short car ride, a long-ago fishing trip. Rabbit, plus fish, equals Rabbitfish.

Perhaps I was having sacred sex with Mr. Rabbitfish, albeit without involving either the body or the mind. But the spirit, or the soul, or whatever I could choose to call that third thing, seemed to be conspiring to create a feeling of connection with the mysterious Mr. Rabbitfish. And, yes, maybe I was overstating it. We weren’t there
yet
, but we were heading for it. I had an uncomfortable feeling that I shouldn’t sleep with Al. Not that anyone, particularly Rabbitfish, would know. Not that, in real life, I had any kind of concrete relationship with Rabbitfish. Not that I really believed it mattered if I experienced a one-night stand.