With or Without You (20 page)

Why did I have to process every situation?

Why couldn’t I simply give myself up to a new experience?

I contemplated this, coming quickly to the answer: It’s my nature. Research and report. Edit and revise. Work slowly, steadily, methodically. Don’t rush through your work or you might get something wrong.

It’s difficult to live spontaneously when you’re always fact checking, when you’re always questioning yourself, adding in the proper footnotes. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Besides, why try to live in the moment when you can live vicariously through your best friend’s exploits? Isn’t that easier than letting yourself be free enough to try something new, something that might possibly get you hurt? Yes, I’d been adventurous with Nora and Dean – but that was one time, one night of fantasy in a life of predictability.

But maybe with the right person, maybe with Anthony, I could give into new things without a fight. Because there were so many things to explore, and Anthony might be the perfect partner to join me in my quest for knowledge.

I climbed back into the sofa bed and pulled up the sumptuous lilac covers. The street noises faded, the honks and sounds of car engines melded together, became a lullaby that I heard but could no longer recognise. When I dreamed this time, it was about the Christmas party ten months before, the tiny strands of white lights glimmering about the room, the warmth from many bodies moving on the makeshift dance floor, the throbbing music of a jazz band hired to play for the evening.

Anthony had his strong arms around me under the mistletoe. My voice did not interfere, did not offer up the folklore behind this plant. I shut up with the facts for once. Anthony’s dark curly hair hung loose and long to his shoulders, out of its normal ponytail. His suede jacket
was deliciously soft to the touch. His lips on mine made me feel drunk, as if I had downed glass after glass of the champagne being served by dapper-looking actors in tuxes and tails.

I dreamed about the kiss.

For the rest of the night, I dreamed about the kiss. Every moment of it, every nuance. And since words are my life, words are my world, at 9 a.m., I woke up with two specific words in my head: warm lips.

‘You’re up early for a Saturday,’ I observed as I walked into Nora’s sunlit kitchen. As might be expected, her kitchen décor surpasses the eclectic to border on the insane. She has a collection of antique egg beaters, and they dangle from every square inch of the ceiling, making the room feel smaller than it actually is and somewhat menacing. The refrigerator is covered with silver chrome; her cabinets are painted glossy indigo; and in the centre of her slate kitchen floor is a chalk outline of a body, as if left by a police investigation.

‘Not early,’ she corrected me, ‘I’m up
late
.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m
still
up,’ she said slowly, as if speaking to someone who wasn’t fluent in her language.

I couldn’t believe it. ‘How can you do that?’

‘Do what?’ She wasn’t paying me much attention, focused intently on the computer screen in front of her. She had her laptop set up on the sparkly gold Formica counter.

‘How do you stay up all night and still seem so refreshed?’

‘Travis and I fucked in the shower,’ she answered, grinning, ‘so I’m all nice and clean.’

She went back to staring at her computer.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked now, leaning over to pour myself a cup of coffee. ‘Playing Solitaire?’ This is Nora’s favourite way to relax.

‘You know I never play it on the computer.’

‘That’s right. You like the feel of the cards in your hands. It’s the one place where you are anti-technology. So what
are
you doing?’

‘Posting on my blog. I want to write about what happened last night. We cut down the number of contestants considerably, you know? And since all of the hopefuls submitted headshots, I’m putting scarlet Xs on the ones who are no longer in the running.’ That seemed a bit cruel, but I didn’t comment.

‘Did the Tantric Sex girl make it?’

‘What do you think?’

I was quiet for a moment. ‘Yes, I think you kept her.’

‘Mm-hmm,’ she said. ‘That flower trick was absolutely lovely. I know Anthony wouldn’t have drank the thing, but it showed spark and spunk. You gotta love that.’

‘Who else is in?’

‘You wouldn’t remember the names, I think, but the man who created your Slow Comfortable Screw got in. He’s yummy.’

I poured myself a cup of coffee and took a sip. ‘So’s Anthony.’

‘Then why are you sleeping on my sofa?’

‘You told me not to fuck him on the first night.’

‘I did not.’ She sounded aghast. ‘I asked you whether or not you wanted to.’

‘I wanted to,’ I said with a sigh.

‘Then let me ask again:
Why are you sleeping on my sofa
?’

‘I don’t know. He translated the papers for me, and he made me all confused.’

‘He did a bad job?’

‘He did an excellent job,’ I told her, ‘but –’

‘But what?’

I didn’t know if I could confess the rest to her. What would Nora say if I told her I thought he might be playing a game with me? I found that I just couldn’t do it. Not yet.

‘But what?’ Nora asked again, looking up from the
computer, giving me her total attention. On the screen behind her, I saw that she’d crossed out the faces of more than twenty contestants. I felt sad for those people. They had taken a risk and been shot down. I hesitated another moment, and then I chickened out.

‘Maybe I’m too inexperienced for him,’ I said. ‘He’s dated some of the top artists in the world. The really extreme avant-garde ones.’

‘So? You’re a total catch, Eleanor. You don’t give yourself enough credit.’

‘What if he wants someone who knows what they’re doing?’

‘You know what you’re doing.’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t. Not really. What should I do? What would you do in my situation?’

She was quiet for a moment, and I could tell she had a difficult time envisioning herself in my situation. Nora is always in control. She always knows what she’s doing. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘you’re not a virgin –’

‘But I’m not avant-garde, either.’

She hesitated for another moment. Then she said, ‘You know what I’d do? I’d take the upper hand.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’d tell him that I had a surprise for him, and then I’d go into his office with a little bag of toys.’

‘Toys?’ I thought I knew what she meant, but I couldn’t believe she’d think this would work for me.

‘Go to one of the sex stores on Hollywood and buy yourself a pair of cuffs. Or better yet, take the ones from my dresser drawer. They’re velvet-lined. Just wait until Dean wakes up.’

‘I thought you said Travis …’

‘I said I
showered
with Travis. Dean came over after.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘After.’ Like that made sense. But I guess it did. In Nora’s world all things are possible.

‘When are you going to announce the winners?’ I asked after I’d showered. Showered alone, of course, not with
Dean, Travis, Anthony or any combination thereof. Mmm, but there was a thought. Had even Nora ever had three men at once?

‘The Masquerade Ball.’

‘On Halloween?’

She nodded. ‘It’s only a few days away. It seems like the perfect time to make such an important announcement. The press will be there, and we have a great band lined up.’

‘Are you sure about your choices?’

She nodded. ‘I always am, Eli. How about you? Are you sure about yours?’

I looked down at my hands rather than looking at her. No, I wasn’t. What if I’d chosen to go home with Anthony the night before? Nora seemed to be reading my mind.

‘Everything will work out,’ she whispered, as if she were some sort of oracle, herself, as if she knew the future. I was not so sure.

I leaned back against the wall of her kitchen, dreading the weekend in front of me. I’d have to go back to the apartment, pack my belongings, find a storage facility. I’d have to face the drudge of reality. ‘How do you know?’ I asked Nora.

‘Because it will. Good things are going to happen to us –’ she smiled ‘– both of us. I can sense it.’

I had just taken my first sip of Columbian coffee on Monday morning when Anthony came to my office. Before he arrived, I had been sitting on my black swivel chair, thinking about going shopping with Nora. Shopping for things I’d never normally buy, never normally need. Suddenly ‘normal’ didn’t appeal to me any more.

The weekend had been a downer. Confronting Byron had taken all of my energy. He’d broken up with Gwen after the scene at Nora’s club – according to his story, anyway. My guess was that she’d dumped him. He hadn’t fully believed that the two of us were over. It was as if he’d thought that now that he’d gotten Gwen out of his system, we could pick up where we’d left off.

Nora was flabbergasted when I’d told her. ‘How could he think you’d take him back?’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ I explained. ‘He thought of it more like taking me back.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘He’s always been like that, turning things around. He wanted to make me feel as if I’d been the one who drove him into Gwen’s arms, but now that he’d seen the light, we could continue on our path.’

‘I hope you told him about Dean.’

I bit down on my smile, and she beamed at me. But the revelation hadn’t made moving out any easier. We’d had another knock-down fight, and I hadn’t been able to collect the rest of my belongings.

Although I’d brought my favourite suits with me from the apartment, I was already nearly out of underwear. Nora had insisted that we were due for a visit to Kitten’s
Top Drawer, even though it’s a dangerous activity for her. Nora spends hundreds of dollars on lingerie because she often wears underwear as outerwear. I’ve gone shopping with her every so often, but I always wind up with the most tastefully quiet ensembles one might imagine. And always black. But now, my thoughts took me to a different place. I knew that with each rustle of satin, each bit of lace, I would picture performing a striptease for Anthony.

My mind was on panties, frilly pastels with dreamy decorative designs, as Anthony knocked and opened the door. As soon as I saw him, I took too big a sip of my coffee and burned my tongue, but he didn’t seem to notice. Or didn’t seem to care.

His arrival was unexpected, surprising me before the java had sparked the synapses in my brain. Just seeing him made me think about my dreams from Friday night. Truly, the first wet dream I’d ever had.

‘I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you get my messages?’

I shook my head. While Anthony stared at me, I lifted the handset of my office phone. It beeped repeatedly, indicating at least one message on my voicemail. Instead of listening, I hung up the phone and looked at Anthony, waiting for him to tell me whatever information he’d left on the machine.

Ignoring the chair, he sat on the edge of my desk, then looked around the office, taking it in. My office is down the hall from his tiny space, at the other end of the building. Mine is twice the size, painted a pale yellow, with framed prints of my favorite ARTSI posters and paintings on the walls. I decided early on that if I couldn’t actually have an office with a window, at least I could create my own views.

Anthony was obviously wide awake, apparently one of those morning people I’ve read about. He exuded energy and, when he moved, I smelled fresh air, thought of him riding in his convertible to work, picking up the
fragrance of the jacaranda trees that were currently dropping their purple blossoms everywhere in town. The streets near the museum were carpeted with the slippery petals.

‘I spent all weekend doing research,’ Anthony said. ‘The journal contained words that I simply couldn’t translate. I think I told you one or two of them in the papers on Friday night:
hetairai
,
deikteriades
. And I told you that after looking them up, I discovered that they were levels of prostitutes, which helped immensely. I grabbed one of those huge volumes on ancient Greece from the library. I couldn’t find anything more modern than the nineteen-forties, and the text is disgustingly dense. But I did learn several things. I learned that the women in the top level, the
hetairai
, had peculiar methods of meeting up with their clients.’

He looked at me to see if I was paying attention. When I nodded, he continued. ‘Every day, men who were interested in having a little fun would walk through the cemetery. On the headstones, a man would write the name of the prostitute he hoped to sleep with and he would list a monetary amount. The prostitutes would send their servants through the graveyard to read the offers –’

‘Servants?’ I interrupted.

‘These weren’t streetwalkers, you have to understand. They were powerful women who got a lot of money for what they offered. If the women were willing to accept the offer, they would write a proposed meeting time on the stones. If they weren’t interested, they would let the man know on the headstone. This could cause embarrassment, since all in the town could read the rejection.’

He paused, then continued, ‘I couldn’t find much else about the prostitutes, except that there were most definitely orgies, just like the journal says. There was lesbianism, and there were dildoes.’

God, I couldn’t believe we were having this discussion. At work. At barely nine in the morning.

‘Did you get a chance to read the paper today?’ he asked. He thrust one hand into his pocket, and pulled out a folded clipping.

‘Not yet. I just got here.’ I pulled my coffee cup closer, as if it were some sort of security blanket. Steam curled upwards from the porcelain mug.

‘There’s a piece reprinted from Reuters. It’s tiny, just a filler on the back page. But it’s the kind of thing I keep a look out for, the type of piece Janice is always posting on the bulletin board in the commissary. This time, the tagline of Athens caught my attention. Archaeologists have discovered what they believe to be a two-thousand-year-old dildo in a brothel in Athens. I think the museum should buy it and place it in the Greek room with your journal.’