Look At Me_ A Novel Part 18

Philippe ducked his head abjectly. "No problem," he said. "Today was great for me."

"Oh, good," Victoria said with relief, and I sensed that she really was glad-that the Frenchman's happiness and entertainment weighed on her as one of a great many responsibilities. "Oh, my G.o.d, is it three-fifteen? I'm late for a meeting," she cried.

And with that, they swirled away, Thomas and Victoria bolting ahead, the Frenchman flapping in their wake like a giant crow, leather bag swinging from his shoulder.

I wandered through Midtown, b.u.mped and jostled by people swollen to twice their normal size by winter coats. My mind felt weirdly blank, as if Thomas and Victoria had absconded with my thoughts. In their presence I'd felt buoyed by frothy excitement, a jittery sense that the events they narrated were already in motion, hurtling me inexorably along. But the excitement had turned out to be Thomas's and Victoria's, not mine; I wasn't excited anymore. I was tired. Since jumping off my balcony, I'd been sleeping ten or eleven hours a night.

So here it was: exposure. The very thing I had craved since childhood, perhaps the only thing I had never tired of or ceased to love or changed my mind about-now offered to me inexplicably, unexpectedly, over lunch. A chance to tell who broke me and how. Blab to the world and get paid. Court the audience I had always desired.

Yet I felt cowed. I could hardly read anymore, hardly write. I despised talking about myself. For years I had lied to avoid it, feinting and darting, obfuscating slyly, lying because it was easier, because I felt like it. Lying to erase the truth, though this never seemed to work. I knew I was thirty-five; I'd tried to forget, but the knowledge stayed in me. As a liar, I had failed.

I couldn't do it. This came to me on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-first Street, and the surprise of it made me go still. I stood there, sustaining frisks and jabs from behind, mutters of impatience. "Go around me," I commanded. I was trying to think. I would sign the contract, cash the seventy-five-hundred-dollar check, and that would be it. Not a bad haul for a two-hour lunch. Another few mortgage payments.

The mirrored room had opened its doors to me finally, after so long! But it was too late, I was too tired. Too accustomed to my exile.

I began walking quickly away from Midtown, away from Thomas and Victoria and Ordinaries and Extraordinaries and Future Plans/Fantasies. As I walked, my exhaustion began to lift, and I was suffused by a sense of lightness, rejuvenation at the thought of spurning the single thing I had always craved.

I headed south on Seventh Avenue, returning instinctively to the land of soot and bricks and faded signs, the land of Anthony Halliday, whom obviously I wouldn't visit. We had not spoken since our brutal parting in the taxi. I a.s.sumed we never would again.

I'm free, I thought, swinging my arms. And I felt the possibility of a different kind of life, a life in which I wanted different things.

There were no more old signs left in Times Square; they'd been obscured by new gla.s.s buildings and slick elastic tarps emblazoned with luscious photographs of models. Paint itself had been outmoded. But on a side street a few blocks south of Forty-second, I spotted the remnants of a ghostly typewriter high on a brick wall, a device reminiscent of a theater, its keys arrayed in staggered rows. "Stefani's Fine Writing Machines" was scrolled above it in faint, elegant script.

Childhood Memory: Pretending with my sister that our lives were a twenty-four-hour movie.

Regret/Missed Opportunity: I'd forgotten every line of "The Eve of St. Agnes."

Hobby: Looking at old painted blah blah blah.

And I realized, then, with fascination, with horror, that the mercenary part of me was already pacing the confines of my life, taking measurements, briskly surveying the furniture, formatting my thoughts to Thomas Keene's specifications and calculating their price.

In rebellion, I reviewed the list of other things I could sell: apartment, clothing, sectional couch. They were only things; first one, then another, then another. Then they would all be gone. But a story was invisible, infinite, it had no size or shape. Information. It could fill the world or fit inside a fingernail.

Watershed Experience: Having once come so near to fame that I knew its smell, its taste, the whir of its invisible generator.

Regret: I'd never forgotten it.

Of course I was going to do this thing. And now I was tired once again. Disappointed in myself.

I stopped at a bank to check my balance, an activity I engaged in seldom these days because it depressed me to watch my savings plummet in dizzy response to my high mortgage and one-way cash flow. But I wanted to see how long my new seventy-five-hundred bucks might possibly last. As I pulled out my cash card, Irene Maitlock's business card, that lost, irretrievable prize, dropped into my palm. I felt a s.h.i.+ver of significance. Irene Maitlock. I conjured her instantly, just looking at the name: her tentativeness and drab hair, her absurd sincerity-I saw her as if she were standing in front of me. She was the inversion of Victoria Knight; Victoria backwards. Victoria inside out. Holding Irene's card, I felt a jolt of strength.

If I was doing this thing, I was taking the reporter with me. Whether she wanted it or not. And she would, I told myself. She was interested in me.

I walked straight to a pay phone and called her, listening to her flat, slightly nasal voice ("Hi, it's Irene. Please leave a message?"). Irene Maitlock, journalist. I wanted to see her office, what it looked like. How a journalist lived.

"It's Charlotte Swenson," I said. "You tried to interview me about a month ago. Call me," I said, and left the number. "Call as soon as possible."

I hailed a taxi, leaned back in the seat and shut my eyes. With Irene's help, I could perform the tasks of an Extraordinary Person. She could read and write, for one thing. And I trusted her.

In my apartment, I found a message on my machine from Anthony Halliday. I called him back without taking off my coat.

"I'm sorry," I said, the instant I heard his voice.

"I'm supposed to say that," he said. And then he did. "I'm worried I hurt you."

"Impossible."

"I mean your head. After your acci-"

"Didn't even feel it." I'd taken so much Advil in the first days after my encounter with the taxi window that I'd barely felt the clothes on my body.

"Nothing was-broken or anything?"

"The opposite. You worked out a kink in my neck," came my spirited riposte, but each word was a tiny pain pellet breaking open inside me. "And you?"

"Intact."

"Still reformed?" I asked, then cringed as the retort I myself would have made, despite your best efforts despite your best efforts, jeered at me.

"Knock wood," was all he said.

"I'm glad." And I was glad. "Good luck."

"And to you, Charlotte."

Still in my coat, I lay down on my couch. Missed Opportunity/ Regret: That I'd wrecked my evening with Anthony Halliday before I'd managed to pull his zipper down, to see and feel him so that at the very least I could remember him now. I imagined it, the sound of the zipper (pulling down my own, meanwhile), reaching inside, his inadvertent s.h.i.+ver, like horseflesh. Then ripping off his s.h.i.+rt in the time-honored fas.h.i.+on, making every b.u.t.ton pop.

Masturbation: a word with all the sensuality of suitcases tumbling from a closet shelf, another one falling just when you think the noise has stopped. A futile and lonely act, I'd always thought, but I'd missed the boat, I decided now, misunderstood the joys to be had from declining to introduce yet another human being into one's life. New discoveries at thirty-five, or twenty-eight, whatever the h.e.l.l I was, pulling that zipper down, the sound, the flinch- Floating, waiting for my ringing ears to stop, I heard the telephone and reached for it dreamily, a.s.suming it would be Halliday with a telephonic response to the telepathic delights I'd just administered.

"Hi, Charlotte. It's Irene."

"Oh!"

"You left me a message?"

"Yes! I did!" Feeling indecent with my pants around my knees, I wriggled to yank them back up and in the process dropped the phone, which bounced under the couch.

"h.e.l.lo?" I heard her calling into the upholstery. "Charlotte?"

"Here I am!" I shouted. "Right here." Pulling. Zipping. Smoothing my hair. I dropped to my belly and fished for the phone. "h.e.l.lo," I said breathlessly.

"You called me," Irene said. "I'm calling you back."

"Yes, I did call. Because I've reconsidered. I-I want to work with you on that story for the Post. Post. And I really will cooperate." And I really will cooperate."

There was a long silence. "Gosh," she finally said. "I've sort of moved on, actually."

"You found another model?"

"No, I just-let it drop."

"Oh, I see," I said, relieved, somehow, that I hadn't been replaced. "Because actually, there's something else. But I'd rather explain it in person."

"Explain what?" She sounded deeply wary.

"Well, it's complicated," I said. "Could we just ... I'll come to your office if you want, or you can come here? Or we can meet at a cafe, or a bar ..." I stopped, disliking the begging note that had crawled into my voice.

"There's no reason for us to meet," she said, "and I don't have the time." It was a no. She was saying no. "That's my other line, Charlotte, I have to go," she said. "Good-"

"I'm coming to your office," I said. "At the Post. Post. I have your card. It's four-thirty. I'll be there in-" I have your card. It's four-thirty. I'll be there in-"

"No!" she said sharply, and I thought she sounded afraid. "Don't do that."

My G.o.d, I thought, was I really that bad? Bad enough that the notion of my arrival at her office was actually frightening frightening?

"I'll come to your apartment," Irene said, her voice gritty with resentment. "What's your address?" I provided it. "I'll be there by six," she said, and hung up before my ironic "I look forward to it" had landed.

I sat on my couch looking over my balcony, trying to make sense of our exchange. Something was at work here that I didn't understand, some missing fact.

I pulled open my balcony door and let cold wind scour the apartment. Then I peeled off my clothes and abraded myself against a scalding shower. The past was up for sale.

Irene arrived ten minutes late, stepping into my apartment with visible trepidation. She wore a gray wool skirt and jacket. Her tortoisesh.e.l.l hair hung loose, just as before, but she wore mascara today, and light blue eyeliner which was back in style that season, though I doubted she knew it. The sight of her there in her too-dark stockings and clunky loafers and ridiculous gray wool filled me with unexpected pleasure. I was glad to see her.

I settled her down in a comfortable nook of couch and poured her a gla.s.s of water, which she chose over my offer of wine.

"So," I said, sitting across from her and cradling my first drink of the day, a Riesling that winked at me so alluringly that I felt like dousing my face with it. "What's new in the world of crime?"

She told me she was finis.h.i.+ng a piece on private detectives.

"I know a private detective!" I cried, with bizarre urgency. "His name is Anthony Halliday."

Irene gave me an odd look. "I never came across him," she said.

"Just wondered," I said mildly. And then, without further ado, "Listen, Irene, I have a business proposal for you." I laid it out: Ordinary. Extraordinary. Options. Access. $80,000. $300,000. Exposure. Media. Soup. Nuts.

"I'm asking you to be the writer," I concluded. "We'd split everything fifty-fifty, beginning with the option. I'll get a check for seventy-five hundred as soon as I sign the contract." I felt like Thomas. Except that Thomas believed his project would revitalize the world, whereas I believed-well, I didn't believe that.

Irene's face underwent myriad changes while I spoke: confusion, intrigue, disbelief. Finally she said, "That's one of the more surreal things I've heard lately."

"I knew you would say that!"

"Charlotte," Irene said, and then sighed. "I'm used to writing things for some purpose. This really doesn't have one."

"It has a purpose," I a.s.sured her. "Its purpose is to make us rich."

"That's not enough," she said ruefully.

"But wait a minute. Remember those things you talked about before, when you tried to interview me? About ident.i.ty and ... and ident.i.ty? Things like that?" I concluded feebly. "You seemed very interested."

"I am interested in ident.i.ty," Irene said. "But a.s.sembling your life story for some Orwellian on-line service that'll probably never see the light of day is not a viable way of exploring that interest."

And now I saw the problem. The missing fact. With breathtaking clarity, I gleaned it: Irene didn't like me.

"It doesn't have to be my life, exactly," I hedged, determined to sustain my breezy tone despite the wounded sensation I felt. "We wouldn't have to see each other much. I'd give you the raw material and the rest would be up to you; you could tell it any way you want, you could make it up. In fact I'd rather you did make it up...." My breezy tone was intact, but I'd leapt to my feet and was standing on tiptoe. Irene began to laugh.

"Come on, Charlotte," she said, burying her face in her hands. "Why me?"

"I don't know."

Rubbing her eyes had smudged Irene's mascara, and she looked perplexed. But despite these outward signals of noncapitulation, I felt an irrational quiver of hope (or was it the Riesling slipping into my bloodstream?). Irene was here, in my apartment, arguing with me. She could have been at home with her husband, or working at the Post Post, or a hundred miles away, but she was here, on my couch. I had learned enough about seductions over the years to know this: real desire, the kind that gnaws and lasts, was nearly always mutual. It seemed conceivable that whatever was compelling me to talk to Irene would also make her want to listen.

"Frankly, Charlotte, even if you get someone to do this thing for you," she said, "and for the money you probably will-I can't see you going through with it. You won't answer questions-you think interviews are a sham. You gave me a lecture about it!"

"I'm going to change," I said stiffly. "I'm in the process of changing." After a moment I said, "I've changed."

She eyed me skeptically.

I excused myself and went to the kitchen to refill my gla.s.s. I poured a gla.s.s of wine for Irene, too, just in case. Then I stood at the sink and strategized. Either I would make some headway in the next few minutes, or it was over. It was over, and I was alone in my apartment with a face full of t.i.tanium.

Back in the living room, I handed Irene the wine, which she took. Good sign, I thought. "Irene, ask me anything," I told her very seriously. "And I promise I'll answer truthfully."

It was a show of good faith, a free trial of my services. I sat on the couch and waited in dread for her to speak. There was a long silence, and then she sipped the wine. Good sign, I thought.

"Okay," she said, with disheartening indifference. "How did you get in your accident?"

I nodded, indicating readiness. Then I fought the urge to lie down, as I'd done when she interviewed me before. No, this time I would sit. I would look at her. At least a minute pa.s.sed while I tried to organize my thoughts. Where were the facts? My memory, the pig, just smirked at me.

"You can't," Irene said. She was smiling now. "Look at you. You actually can't."

"I can." My body was grinding with the effort. Answer the question. I had a frightened sensation I remembered from certain tests, foreign language tests in which the questions were spoken aloud, vanis.h.i.+ng even as I clutched at them with my mind.

"You can't! You can't do it," she said, and laughed. Her light, laughing shadow self-there it was. I felt her relief, her eagerness to return, unenc.u.mbered, to the husband she loved.

I gritted my teeth, resisting the urge to retreat to my bedroom and shut the door. You brought her here, I reminded myself; she'll be more than happy to go. "Okay," I said weakly, and decided I would make something up. Except that sheer avoidance was my game. Feinting and darting, that was my game. Finally I shut my eyes, which helped. "I met a man," I began, my voice emerging like a bark, or a yelp, "called Z."

Breathless, I cracked an eye to look at Irene and found that her laughter and even her smile had disappeared. She was listening.

"Z," I said, and with the repet.i.tion of his name I felt myself collapse against the inside of a door-I'd taken that bit of ground. "At first, I hardly noticed him," I advanced, with great effort. "But at some point I realized he was watching me. I could feel it. Sometimes I felt it even when I couldn't see him."

I opened my eyes. She had slipped off her shoes. Good sign, I thought. They were worn and scuffed, the scarred leather inked in with a black Magic Marker.

"One night," I went on, squeezing the words from my solar plexus, "I saw a shape inside his s.h.i.+rt, like a shadow. It was a wire. You know, like a microphone. He'd been taping me. Taping everyone I knew, for months. I didn't know why."

I swallowed dryly. I'd heard people describe withdrawal symptoms, the dreadful convulsing of it. But what was I withdrawing from?

"I wasn't angry," I said. "Or scared. The opposite, almost."

I stopped, exhausted. After a moment Irene turned to me, her cheeks flushed. "So, what happened?" she asked, and I felt the warm reach of her curiosity.