You Don't Love Me Yet (4 page)

Lucinda didn’t speak. Panting from their ascent to the monkey terraces they quit walking, parked in front of a lemur with cartoon-hobo eyes.

“Do you think Matthew is happy in the band?” said Denise.

“I think he’s depressed,” said Lucinda irritably. “I think his life is practically falling apart.”

“Really? He seemed okay to me.”

“He’s terrible, terrible.”

“Do you think he’ll leave the band?”

“Never. We’re all he has.”

“What about you?”

“I love the band. The band is fine. It’s even better now that Matthew and I have broken up. A lot of the great rock-and-roll bands are founded in breakups, love triangles, love-hate situations. The band couldn’t be better.”

Lucinda heard herself parroting Falmouth, and shut up. Turning her back on the dewy moonish lemur, she grabbed Denise’s arm, tugged the smaller woman to her side, so they stood hip to hip. They stepped in tandem, feeling an alliance beyond the grasp of language. They were the girls in the nameless band, the rhythm section.

“Let’s go back and see that mountain goat with his crazy red penis.”

“Maybe he’ll catch her and fuck her.”

“He’ll never catch her. She always stays on the other side of that little fake mountain. The zoo made a mistake, they brought the wrong goats, she doesn’t like him. He’s going slowly insane.”

“Maybe, but maybe she’ll let him catch her. I think it might be today. I want to see.”

“I bet they all fuck at night,” said Lucinda. “The whole zoo. All night every night, when we’re not looking.”

t
hrough her kitchen’s rear window on Reservoir Street Lucinda could see, over the rooftop of a tire shop and against a background of shaggy palms, the high rotating sign of the Foot Clinic. It depicted a cartoon foot with features and tiny limbs: one side a happy, cared-for foot, beaming and confident, white-gloved hands jubilantly upraised, the other side a moaning, broken-down foot, neglected and weary, grasping at crutches and with its big toe wreathed in bandages. Lucinda’s view took in a three-quarters slice of the sign as it turned in its vigil over Sunset Boulevard: happy foot and sad foot suspended in dialogue forever. The two images presented not so much a one-or-the-other choice as an eternal marriage of opposites, the emblem of some ancient foot-based philosophical system. This was Lucinda’s oracle: one glance to pick out the sad or happy foot, and a coin was flipped, to legislate any decision she’d delegated to the foot god.

Beside the candle on her table lay half a Cafe Tropical Cuban sandwich in a nest of foil, a torn scrap of canary paper with a phone number scribbled on it, a Polaroid snapshot of a supine yellowish kangaroo in a band of shaded concrete, and a cordless telephone.

When Lucinda had parted from Denise and returned to the gallery she’d found the hubbub dissipated, the journalists and Falmouth gone, the fort held down by the interns, the two girls settled into a rhythm, answering the steadily blinking phones and transcribing complaints. Lucinda rejoined them. After the evening surge had peaked one of the interns leaned in at Lucinda’s cubicle and passed her the scrap of paper.

“He said you’d know who he was,” the intern announced drily.

Now, fingertips nudging the dangerous scrap of paper, the boundary-smashing digits, Lucinda glanced up. The foot sign completed a turn, face wheeling into view: sad foot. Lucinda left her phone untouched.

Instead she took the Polaroid to her desk and located a ballpoint pen, an envelope, and a stamp. Writing left-handed to disguise her script, she lettered I NEED YOU in capitals on the photograph’s fat bottom margin, practically engraving the words in the glossy sandwich of paper. Then, still with her left hand, she wrote MATTHEW PLANGENT on the envelope, and below it, Matthew’s address. Slid the Polaroid into the envelope. Touched her tongue to the flap’s glue and sealed it. Stamped it and put it in her purse.

three

t
he song, “Shaft of Light, Piece of String,” sounded fantastic. They were playing it in a narrow hallway, but the crowd was happy. You couldn’t keep from thinking the stage should have been put at one end or another instead of in the middle of the hallway so we wouldn’t keep having to crane their necks to acknowledge the audience on the other side, but nobody minded. Lucinda said she heard a rat or a squirrel under the stage, it was distracting. “Shaft of Light, Piece of String” had seven choruses. Bedwin really was a genius. The band finally had a name, but nobody could remember whether it was Famous Vomit Ferry or Long-Term Pity Houseguest, and hadn’t the word “houseguest” already been used somewhere? Denise sang something that sounded like a hymn, it was unexpected for the drummer to sing but we tried to act cool about it, they didn’t want to offend her because it was religious. The stage was too tall. The chorus of the new song went “I’m a little doughnut” but Matthew kept saying “I want a little doughnut.” It was too late to correct him. The audience really liked it anyway. Famous Pity Magnet was really popular and they sounded really good.

The band was dreaming.

w
e’re going to have a party,” Jules Harvey explained in his dry, blank voice, as he fingered his heavy black frames and gazed down at the tablecloth. Harvey sounded astonished by his own words, uncertain they’d reach his listeners’ ears before wafting off in the breezeless air. Falmouth sat studying Lucinda for her response, his arms crossed against his suit as though bodily containing impatience. The three sat around a table on the Red Lion’s patio, neglecting steins of afternoon lager that had been plunked down by a waitress in lederhosen. A rap beat blared from a car on the street below, fracturing the boulevard’s gelled soundscape.

“Okay,” said Lucinda, confused. Harvey, in his Detroit Tigers baseball cap and sneakers, and Falmouth, overdressed at one o’clock in a seersucker suit and yellow tie, had swept in together and nabbed her from her cubicle for the meeting. The two had bored her with small talk before finally announcing their project. Now she waited to understand.

“Jules is a promoter,” said Falmouth. “We’re collaborating on a happening.”

“I have a rather large loft,” said Jules Harvey apologetically.

“It’s going to be a dance party,” said Falmouth. “Only the rule is you can’t bring anyone you know. And you have to wear headphones. You have to listen to whatever you prefer to dance to, your own mix. If people don’t have their own headphones we’ll provide them at the door, like neckties and jackets at a club. What I want is a sea of dancing bodies, each to their own private music. I might call it Party of Strangers. Or maybe Aparty, like
apart
,
y
.”

“I get it.”

Falmouth held up a cautioning finger. “There’s more. Instead of beginning and ending gradually and spontaneously, like the usual party, I want the start to be perfectly regimented. Everyone has to arrive at exactly such and such o’clock and begin dancing immediately. Latecomers will be turned away. And then at the end, same thing. I may buy a starter’s pistol.”

“Falmouth had been thinking the backdrop ought to be perfect silence,” said Jules Harvey. “But I suggested it might be even better to have a band playing, very quietly, with nobody paying any attention.”

“I thought your little consortium might want the gig,” said Falmouth. He spoke grudgingly, as though Jules Harvey had persuaded him against his instincts. Harvey had a talent for insinuating himself, Lucinda suspected. She felt a pang of sympathy for Falmouth, usually so eager to patronize others, here so effortlessly co-opted.

“Attractive people playing and singing in the classic format: guitar, drums, singer, etcetera,” said Jules Harvey. “Falmouth gave me the impression that you and your friends could answer the call. Only you must be able to play exceedingly quietly. Really, you should be nearly inaudible.” He spoke with the same plodding earnestness with which he’d praised her armpit.

“I suppose it’s possible,” said Lucinda. She took a long drink of her beer.

“Between Jules’s efforts and my own, we ought to stir up a certain amount of attention,” said Falmouth. “Who knows? It could be the break you’ve been waiting for.”

“I’ll have to talk to the others,” she said.

“Falmouth forgot to tell me the name of your band,” said Harvey.

“We haven’t—”

“Maybe there should also be food no one is allowed to eat,” said Falmouth, his attention meandering. In his typical way, Falmouth now took it for granted that the band was enlisted. “Cooks might be preparing something to one side. Delicious smells emanating through the party. And then servers in black tie could load up trays and stand ready at the edges of the dance. Suddenly, just as they take a first step into the room, I fire the pistol a second time, the party’s over, and everyone is whisked out of the room before they can eat anything.”

She envisioned presenting this chance to the band: their first gig, a thing they’d have expected to come by way of Denise, their beacon of professionalism, or Bedwin or Matthew, who knew musicians—anyone but Lucinda, their self-taught bassist. Matthew, distrusting Falmouth, would take the offer for an insult. She’d need to emphasize Jules Harvey, the famous party promoter, and his rather large loft. They’d be forced to play inaudibly, sure, but to a huge crowd. Most bands debuted to barely anyone at all, to a handful of drunks. Here, they’d be an element in an artwork. Falmouth’s allure, his knack for offhand success, would infect them. And Jules Harvey’s eerie sincerity would ensure nobody mistook the band for merely one of Falmouth’s mean jokes. Harvey would make it clear they were picked for a reason, attractive people in the classic format. After showing how quietly they could play they’d give evidence of what else they were capable of, the quiet, nearly overlooked band, the art band, the band not like any other.

s
he was the most beautiful woman I ever slept with. Except in a way I never did. It’s a funny story, actually.”

“Tell me.” The other cubicles were dark. Falmouth had left early, his interest in complaint already wandering, perhaps overtaken by his Aparty. Lucinda was alone in the gallery when he called, her fabulous complainer. She’d switched off the lamp at her own desk and leaned into the shadow, beyond the spill of ambient light from the storefront’s fluorescents. No one passing on the street would know she was there. No one expected her anywhere. There was no rehearsal. If he hadn’t called her at the gallery she might have dialed his number, which nested in her pocket, inscribed on paper softened to tissue from handling. She might have dialed it or not. She might have again consulted the foot to decide. It didn’t matter. He’d called.

“She was the kind of beautiful woman who makes other women angry,” he said. “They’d see her and begin accidentally breaking stuff or getting stomachaches and needing to go home. She was a kind of beautiful catastrophe in that way. She’d ruin parties.”

“I’m not like that,” said Lucinda.

“Beautiful, or envious?”

“Envious.”

“I had that feeling about you.”

This was what she wanted to hear, his feelings about her. Yet he didn’t know her. Lucinda and the complainer were occult to each other, their mingled voices a conspiracy of imagination. For all she knew he could be only blocks away. Yet for now, his previous existence on earth was fascinating and horrible and she had to know more.

“What made her so beautiful?” It sickened her slightly to ask, as though she were one of the women with stomachaches, fleeing parties.

“She was tall and smooth and strange,” he said. “Like an alien, with impossibly long limbs. You couldn’t keep from staring at her, picturing her in certain situations, all tangled in sheets.”

“How did you meet?”

“She was the wife of someone I used to know. They got married when she was eighteen or nineteen, I think. He used to stand around guarding her all the time, as if he was shielding her body from a blast. She’d have this look on her face that was sort of bored and panicked at the same time. It was like she was a hostage and they were trying to find a place in the world to hide her. I pitied them in a lot of ways.”

“What happened?”

“It was a few years later when I saw her again. At a dinner party. Their marriage had fallen apart, I never knew the details, but she was alone. I think by then she was trying to make up for some of what she’d missed, marrying so young. But it was hard for her. She stood out, she was too immaculate in a way, she had some kind of gawky elegance that made it difficult for her to get properly defiled.”

“Go on.”

“We talked. You know, about sex.”

“And—”

“I told her I couldn’t explain why but that I only wanted one thing from her, and that was to make her come with my mouth while she was watching television. And ideally while she smoked a cigarette, too, but she wasn’t a smoker.”

“You can’t have everything.”

“No.”

“So that’s why you never slept with her? Because the television was on?”

“It was just something to talk about the first few times. I’d talk and she’d listen, and laugh at me. She had this deep laugh, you didn’t know where it came from because she had a normal, mild voice, but then this stomach-based laugh would chuckle out of her, like she was laughing at you with her whole soul. The laugh was revealing, but what it revealed was her distance. It let you know how far away she’d gone to hide from her body and from the world and the responses of all the men she’d met.”

Lucinda didn’t want to joke now, didn’t want to risk interrupting his story. She waited, the only sound the humming of Falmouth’s ionizer as it labored at the room’s dead air. She could hear him listening, too, sensed his satisfaction at this deepening between them, her breath-held anticipation of his words.

“One night I guess she got tired of laughing and saying no and she took me to her apartment, this huge place she’d lived in during her marriage. Once she’d decided, we didn’t discuss anything. It was a somber ritual, as if we felt answerable to some third party we didn’t want to disappoint. She had a television but no cable, so we put in a video. Her former husband was a film scholar, he’d left all these videos behind. It was in another language, something Scandinavian. The glow was the only light in the room. I guess she was reading the subtitles. I couldn’t.”

Lucinda released a soft click from the well of her throat.

“It took a really long time. I think she must have watched half that movie. And when it was over she was still quiet. I could tell she was just waiting for me to leave. I assumed that was the end of it, but she called me about a week later and told me I could visit again if I wanted. This time it didn’t take so long and when she came she started laughing at me, that same fathomless lunatic belly laugh. I was just kneeling there in my clothes between her long legs and I guess I looked sort of stupid. She sashed up her robe and just started laughing.”

“I’d laugh too,” said Lucinda softly.

“Of course you would.”

“Finish the story.”

“It became a regular thing for a while. I’d visit her apartment and she’d put in a video and sprawl on her chair in front of the television, it was a ratty yellow armchair, and throw her robe open. And she’d laugh afterward. She’d just look at me and laugh madly, and I’d laugh too. It was like I was escorting her on some long passage from where her reserve and her beauty had exiled her, only the voyage could never be finished for her. She’d come and laugh and then it would be time for me to go. Nothing was ever discussed. After a few times I began to push a little. I told her I wanted to tie her up, tie her to the bed or a chair, take away her control. I promised I wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want me to do, wouldn’t do more than I’d done, if that was what she wanted. I only wanted to bind up her limbs and stop her from laughing, maybe, restore the trepidation she’d felt that first time. When I brought it up she’d only laugh and turn on the television. Then we’d drown ourselves in dialogue from foreign films and the little sounds she’d make and the flickers on the wall and the colors projected on her stomach and her filthy yellow chair. She always tried not to make any sounds until she had to. Then she’d explode and start laughing and send me out to my car. It was a perfect relationship, so I had to wreck it.”

“How?”

“I kept pushing, trying to get her to allow me to tie her up. And one day she let me. I had no idea what to do, I’d spent all my energy just persuading her, never imagining it would come true. So, I brought over all my neckties and cinched her to the bed. I covered her eyes, too. And turned on the overhead light, which I’d never done. And then it was suddenly over. I had her there, I was able to stare as long as I liked. I could see her breathe and wait, her stomach trembling. But there wasn’t anything left to do. I didn’t say anything. I just went into the kitchen and ate some of her food. She began mewing, this sound that was practically like a kitten or a bat—meanwhile I was raiding the fridge. Then I found a pair of scissors, and I went in and silently cut the tie that held her right wrist to the bedpost, then placed the scissors on the table beside her, where she’d be able to find them. Then I left.”