“Yes.” Lois didn’t ask again, though clearly the question remained in the air, to be reckoned with. She wondered if he had another woman somewhere — that is, a woman — she was only an old friend herself, a former wife. And besides, what could she expect from a man who didn’t answer her questions?
“Oscar Patton wants to marry me,” she said without warning. That got him. Peter raised his head, looked around like a man coming out of a trench in the middle of a battle to see what the noise was about. ‘You don’t like Oscar much, do you?” she asked.
“I don’t think you ought to marry him,” he said quickly.
“Why not?” The question issued as a challenge.
He didn’t answer at first, not prepared at the moment to tell her of his own plans, mainly because he had only plans for plans, a man who didn’t want to build a house unless he could also build the ground under it.
“Oscar and I get along very well together,” she added.
“You know why not,” he said, as much as he could say.
She shook her head. “I don’t. You have to tell me.”
They stared at each other across the table, old lovers — it was all there for a moment, everything that hadn’t been said, in the whisper of their eyes. Peter looked away, shaken.
“I couldn’t bear another bad marriage,” she said.
“I like Oscar much better than I did,” he said to be fair, the luck (too much of it) on his side.
“He doesn’t like you,” she said, a small smile at Oscar’s expense. “He says you’re destructive, Peter — self-destructive, too — that you set impossible terms for yourself, that you eventually cause a lot of harm to everyone around you because you’re incapable of compromise which is sanity.” She recited it as if it were a lesson she had memorized.
Peter looked at his hands, his nails dirty.
“It’s just that he’s jealous,” she said. “He thinks I see too much of you.”
“What do you think?”
“I think we ought to have our coffee in the living room.”
They resettled in the living room, Peter on the sofa, Lois in a charcoal yellow armchair, an unpractically low teak coffee table arbitrated between them.
“When you’re not around, Oscar’s a fine person,” she said, stirring her coffee, watching the circle within circles. She glanced up quickly to catch the unguarded moment of his response, saw nothing she hadn’t seen before. There was nothing to see. His face impassive, the pain in his eyes old news. “If I marry Oscar,” she said, “we won’t be able to be friends any more.” Her voice unnaturally high. “Oscar won’t stand for you being around. You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded.
“Does it matter to you that we won’t be able to see each other?” She poured him another cup of coffee, her hand trembling. Their hands touched, she moved back to her chair.
“Of course it matters to me,” he said, meaning it, wondering how much it really mattered. “That’s why,” he said solemnly, “I don’t have any right to tell you not to marry him.” He had a sense of being virtuous, which he immediately distrusted.
“You don’t take milk, do you?” she said, putting some in her own coffee. “That’s funny. When we were married, if you remember — but I’m sure you don’t — it was the other way around. I took it black then.” Her face turned toward him, wistful, years younger. Then: “You know you’re a liar.”
He laughed uneasily. “What are you talking about?” His voice cracking.
Lois stood up, stamped her foot, turned away, back, possessed, a child again, nibbling a finger. “You …” The phone rang. “You fraud,” she whispered, poised between nostalgia and intention, rushing off suddenly to the kitchen to answer her call.
Waiting for Lois, Peter gave himself over to the comfort of the couch, took off his shoes, loosened his belt — he had eaten too much. A sense of well-being, an excess of it, dulled his needs. He yawned, looked around, fought against sleep. The room was too small, overpopulated with taste: one of Lois’s paintings, a new one — an olive-faced woman in a room of flowers — peered at him from a cramped space of wall between two windows — the painting the only flaw in the room’s caution. The flowers more human than the girl — he knew the feeling. Which one was Lois? he wondered, knowing too well that she was all of them, but mostly, becalmed by terror, the olive girl. He drowsed, an invalid of comfort. Play it cool, a voice in him said (the new Becker), you’re winning, kid. Huh? How about that? He nudged the man next to him, who turned out — a coincidence — to be Oscar Patton.
“I’m sorry, Oscar,” he said, “but I’m taking Lois away from you for her own good. I had to do it, old man. It’s the rules of the street. I saw her first, married her first, held her hand at her first abortion. I hope you’ll be a good sport about it.” Peter offered his hand, which Patton pretended not to notice. “You’re taking it very well,” the doctor said blandly. “I’m proud of you, Peter. In your case, if you’ll allow me a professional judgment, the illusion is everything. Life itself. Destroy the illusion and …” His hand drew a cutting line across his throat. “Do you see what I’m getting at? Your common, run-of-the-mill sense of victory, as in this case, is all illusion anyway. Mortality, Peter, is its own defeat — life is compromise. So, you win her — so what? She’s a fairly attractive, unhappy woman in her late thirties. No great bargain. Anyway, I’m letting you have this sense of victory for your own good, Peter, so you can accept the larger defeats ahead of you with the proper respect and terror. If loss comes too easily, you don’t take it seriously.” He lowered his voice. “Beware of complacency, schmuck.” “Fuck you” was all Peter could think to say, but he withheld this timeless judgment, turned it on himself, since, half awake, he knew that Patton wasn’t actually in the room with him. He opened his eyes. The furniture sat erect, visitors on their best behavior. Lois returned, carrying bravely a smile like a wilted flower.
“I hope you’re in the mood for company,” she said, fluttery, looking around for something to do. “Oscar will be here in about twenty minutes.”
He nodded, finished a cup of cold coffee, not surprised.
“He asked to come over, Peter. I couldn’t tell him not to.” She picked up the coffee cups, then forgetting what she meant to do with them, put them down again in approximately the same place.
Her confusion made him uneasy. “Do you want me to leave?”
She shook her head. “I told him you were here. It would look worse if you left.”
He compromised with his anger. “You have enough furniture in here without me,” he said, a solemn kidder. “Lois, if you want me to stay, I will, but not for Patton’s sake.”
“For my sake?” She put her hands on his shoulders, flirted with him.
“Are you in love with Patton?” he asked, charmed into jealousy.
“If I were,” she said sweetly, “you’d be the last to know.”
When Patton arrived to occupy his chair, Lois gave him her undivided attention, as though Peter weren’t even in the room. And still it was clear to Peter, which made everything so much worse, that Patton, pampered like an honored guest, patronized by the woman he had asked to marry him, was the outsider — his place usurped. And Patton, for all the professional charm of his confidence, seemed to have a sense of it. The doctor sat at attention, white-maned, sucking an unfit pipe with absent-minded grace, a little more tired than usual. It was as though he had been sitting there for years waiting for a train, and was beginning to have some doubts that he was in the right place.