“You have a lot of different nightgowns,” Dench had replied.
“They’re all the dresses I once wore onstage.” And as she had gotten dressed for her walk, he’d said, “Don’t forget the coffee this time. Last time you forgot the coffee.”
“It’s good to have a business partner,” Milt said now. “But it isn’t everything.”
“He’s sort of a genius,” she lied. Did she feel the need to put Dench in competition with Milt’s dead wife?
“So you’ve met some geniuses.” He smiled. “You’re having fun then. A life with geniuses in it: very good.”
She lived with so much mockery this did not bother her at all. She looked deeply into his eyes and found the muck-speckled blue there, the lenses cut out from cataracts. She would see the cut edges in the light.
“Do you think our landlord, Ian, would miss a few of his books?”
“No one misses a few of their books. It’s just the naked truth. Look at the sign down the road,” Dench said.
The out-of-business Borders with its missing d: perhaps Dench had stolen it for himself, stashing it under the bed; she didn’t dare look.
“Old Milt has a little book nook — I thought I’d contribute.”
“I see.”
“I’d only take a few. I can’t donate my own since they all have the most embarrassing underlinings. In ink.” Plus exclamation points that ran down the page like a fence by Christo. Perhaps it was genetic. She had once found in her grandmother’s shelves her mother’s own frighteningly marked-up copy of The House of Mirth. The word whoa appeared on every other page.
“Come here. Lie on top of me.” Dench’s face was a cross between longing and ordering lunch.
“I’ll squash you. I’ve gained five pounds eating muffins with Milt.” He grabbed her hand, but she gently pulled it away. “Give me some time. I’m going to cut out the sweets and have a few toes removed.”
She had put on a necklace, of freshwater pearls so small they were like grains of arborio rice decorating the letters of Decatur. She combed a little rat’s nest into the crown of her hair to perk it up. She dabbed on some scent: fig was the new vanilla! As she went out the door, Dench said, “Win them with your beauty, but catch them off guard with your soul.” Then there was the pregnant pause, the instruments all cutting out at once — until he added, in a chilly tone, “Don’t even bother with my coffee. I mean really: don’t bother.” After that she heard only her own footsteps.
“I brought you a couple books,” she said to Milton. “For your nook.”
“Well, thank you. Haven’t had any takers yet but there’s still room.” He looked at the titles she had brought: Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and Lady Macbeth in the Gilded Age. “Excellent.”
They once again went inside and ate muffins. Forget coffee: this time she had not even brought the dog.
She began to do this regularly, supplying Milt with more of her landlord’s books. He had taken to looking so happy to see her, his eyes brightening (blue, she had read once, was the true color of the sun) so much she could see what he must have looked like when he was young. He was probably the bachelor that all the old ladies were after. And when he had married there were probably some broken hearts. He had the look of a gentleman, but one who was used to the attention of women, even as the uriny smell of an old man had crept over him. “Here we are: two lonely fools,” he said to KC once. It had the sound of a line he’d said before. Nonetheless, she found herself opening up to him, telling him of her life, and he was sympathetic, nodding, his peeled-back eyes taking on a special shine, and only once or twice did he have to lean forward disconcertingly to murmur, “Say that again?” She didn’t mention Dench anymore. And the part of her that might consider this and know why was overshadowed by the unknowing part, which she knew in advance was the only source of any self-forgiveness. Ignorance ironically arranged for future self-knowledge. Life was never perfect.
When she twice stayed into the afternoon to fix Milt something to eat and once stopped by later to cook a simple dinner, Dench confronted her. “Once more I must ask: What are you doing?”
“He’s a frail old man on the outs with his stepdaughters. He could use someone to help him with meals.”
“You’re fattening him for the kill?” They were looking into the abyss of the other, or so they both probably thought.
“What the hell are you talking about? He’s alone!”
“A lone what?”
“A lone ranger for God’s sake, what is wrong with you?”
“I don’t understand what you’re pretending.”
“I’m not pretending. What I don’t get is you: I thought I was doing what you wanted!”
He tilted his head quizzically the way he sometimes did when he was pretending to be a different person. Who are you doing that head-tilt thing for, she did not say.
“I don’t know what I want,” he said. “And I don’t know what you’re doing.”
“You know exactly what I’m doing.”
“Is that what you think? Hmmmm. Are we always such a mystery to ourselves and to others?”
“Is a disappointment the same as a mystery?”
“A disappointment is rarely a mystery.”
“I’m starting to lose confidence in you, Dench.” Losing confidence was more violent than losing love. Losing love was a slow dying, but losing confidence was a quick coup, a floor that opened right up and swallowed.
Now he lifted his face beatifically, as if to catch some light no one else could see. His eyes closed, and he began rubbing his hands through his hair. It was her least favorite thing that he did in the head-tilting department. “Sorry to interrupt your self-massage,” she said and turned to go and then turned back to say, “And don’t give me that line about someone has to do it.”
“Someone doesn’t have to. But someone should.” The muttered snark in their house was a kind of creature — perhaps the one in their walls.
“Yes, well, you’re an expert on should.”
It broke her heart that they had come to this: if one knew the future, all the unexpected glimpses of the beloved, one might have trouble finding the courage to go on. This was probably the reason nine-tenths of the human brain had been rendered useless: to make you stupidly intrepid. One was working with only the animal brain, the Pringle brain. The wizard-god brain, the one that could see the future and move objects without touching them, was asleep. Fucking bastard.
The books she brought this time were Instinct for Death and The Fin de Millennial Lear. She and Milt stood before the nook and placed the volumes inside.
“Now you must come in and play the piano for me. At long last I’ve had it tuned.” Milt smiled. “You are even allowed to sing, if you so desire.”
She was starting again to see how large the house was, since if they entered through a different door she had no idea where she was. There were two side doors and a back one in addition to the front two. Two front doors! Life was hard enough — having to make that kind of decision every day could wear a person out.
She sat down at the piano, with its bell-like sound and real ivory keys, chipped and grainy. As a joke she played “The Spinning Song,” but he didn’t laugh, only smiled, as if perhaps it were Scarlatti. Then she played and sang her love song to the chef, and then she did “Body and Soul” and then her own deconstructed version of “Down by the River,” right there inside the house with no requests to leave and go down by an actual river. And then she thought that was probably enough and pulled her arms back, closed her mouth, and in imitation of Dench closed her eyes, lifted her face to the ceiling, and smoothed back her hair, prepping it for the wig maker. Then she shook her arms in the air and popped her eyes open.