“Sure,” I say. “Why not?”
“I was thinking maybe this Saturday. If you have time. Oh, I wanted to ask you, whatever happened to the Nazi guy? The one they caught?”
“He’s gone. He never showed up for trial.”
“Really?”
“He took off for Argentina. Well, he’s gone, so that’s what the cops think. They’ll never find him.”
“Wow. Well, at least it’s over. At least you can get on with your life.”
“Right.”
“So, anyway,” she says, “come on, I need your brain. You should know. What would make him happy? What does Chuck really want?”
MULTIPLE CHOICE
He spotted her immediately from — his word — afar. The Famous
a) Playwright
b) Congressman
c) Musician
had espied her sylvan, fragile beauty at once, he tells her on their first date, an old-Hollywood-glam steakhouse, sanguine leather booths and five à la carte asparagus spears for twelve dollars, and heels and nail polish and mascara she was unused to but felt circumstances demanded, these unique circumstances, having been singled out, discerned, plucked from the madding crowd by this Renowned and Brilliant Man. It was her singular grace, he says, that he could not help noticing — even from afar, yes — the delicate strain of tendons at her throat, the soul-rich, beckoning light from her eyes as she
a) listened to the staged reading of his new, long-awaited play, a drama of history’s oppressed women now empowered, resurrected from obscurity, the unrelenting theme of his canon (and she has long admired the unabashed passion of his work, never mind the ticket/donation at the fund-raiser for a local women’s shelter was the equivalent of seventeen days’ rent),
b) licked envelopes at his grassroots reelection campaign HQ (the drudge role she’d volunteered for to flesh out alone-but-not-lonely weekends, although a sincere admirer of his legislative agenda, of course, his long-ago, one-term House of Representatives crusade for the rights of the poor and meek of his district and the earth),
c) sat by herself front row at his comeback coffeehouse concert, twirling a thin lock of hair (and tears welling to those heart-beating, heart-breaking lyrics of his, admiring the chivalric warble in his voice, his
troubadour’s promise of courtly love and eternal-though-tortured devotion in all those unironic, yearning songs of her yearning adolescence),
and so he had to seize the rare and precious moment, he tells her. He had no choice. He could not allow this recognized her to just slip by and away. So that is why he sent, could not help sending
a) his personal assistant
b) an intern
c) a roadie
to approach her, proffer the invitation to this dinner, something he is still apologizing for over a purple gash of tenderloin. I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, he swears. I didn’t mean to have you summoned. You are not some random
a) fan
b) constituent
c) groupie
to me, not at all. I was intimidated by you, he confides. I am just so out of practice at being back in the world these days. Forgive me?
But there is no need for apology; she understands, is sure of his assessment. It confirms her most secret, or hoped-for, sense of her true value, her rarified self. She knows she is not some incidental happy-hour appetizer, the careless newsstand grab of a free weekly. She suspects she is superiorly intelligent, despite a lack of obvious results, a showy CV or lucrative job that would finally unburden her of those student loans. Her beauty is subtle but evident to the discerning eye, an eye her thirteen past lovers/boyfriends/FWBs had never quite honed. Her potential is simmering — there will be a top-tier graduate school down the road, she assures herself, or a wildly creative flowering, perhaps a dedicated career with an environmental nonprofit — gaining its strength and unique bouquet, and look, here at last is a man who has recognized her incipient exceptionality, an older, wiser, ways-of-the-world man, with a parfumier’s sophisticated nose and an appreciation of quiet style. She forgives him his clumsy gaffe. But, emboldened, she encourages his unease. She puts him graciously in his place; of course she does not trust him, she tells him, given his reputation. Of course she is suspicious, given his timing, this sudden return-splash to the public eye of his. Are you now truly
a) sober?
b) legally divorced?
c) drug-free?
she queries. Is his act really together now, is he sincere? She evaluates his responses with stern professorial squints. She offers insightful critique of his faults. He is eager, flustered, little-boyish, cannot finish his steak, urges her to doggy-bag it and the remaining asparagus spear home. He would think less of her were she not so wary of him, he tells her, and he is grateful for both her spirit and her open mind. He is delighted by her integrity. She does not even know how powerful she is. He will prove himself, if she will just give him a chance. They agree he is worthy, or at least potentially so, and she agrees to bestow upon him more of her precious, rarified time.
ON THEIR SECOND date — rare, unsustainable sushi — he reveals his deepest-pain story, what once triggered and drove his legendary self-destructiveness but has also and since been the fueling, bolstering heartthrob of his life’s work. She has heard the story before — she once viewed long, channel-surfing seconds of a cable documentary on him, his struggle to overcome the distressful childhood to Make Something of Himself — but that is just superficial, salivating press, he tells her, media mumbo jumbo, the Journalism 101 exercise unable to penetrate mere persona. No, he must share his most intimate self with her, alone; he cannot hide from her his private pain, not if he wishes her to understand, or — far more important — to reveal her own pain, the pain he sees in her soul-bruised eyes, the pain he does so fervently wish her to share, to trust him with, and so he cannot help telling her himself about
a) his sister, older, adored, and the ripening scent of womanhood he went boyhood sniffing for, her female bathroom smell, black soapy hairs in the tub drain and sticky panties in the hamper, how she stumbled past his bedroom door late that one night, a yell to the sleepy, unwatchful parents that she was home safe from her date, how he lay silent and listening and heard her enter her room, heard the door close and the click of the lock, heard her window creak open slowly, deliberately slow, heard her stumble-crawl through and out to disappear again and the slow, disappearing roll of tires on pavement and then she was disappeared forever, stolen taken abducted, an abandoned car found with a mere smear of her blood but they never found her, more of her or her body, and he is tormented to this day forever by her absence and absent scent, for his silence that fateful night, for not watching over her, keeping her at home, safe,
b) his mother, so unmoored after his
good-riddance godless dog of a
father was gone for good this time,
and he was five years old, six, the
Man of the House
, she’d whisper,
Sleep with me tonight, honey
,
you’ll protect me, won’t you?
and he grew yearning and used to her moist nylon nightie heat and oniony whiff, seven years old, eight, but how he came home that one day to the sound of urgent naked flesh-struggle inside, how he burst in and hurled himself brave at her naked hairy attacker, but then she screamed at him — at him! — to