We uttered it at the same time: “Vishnukrishnu!”
She took the tablecloth from Roussillon, threw it briskly on the rug with one determined flap that made the cloth rustle like a pennant on a windy day. I put on my favorite recording of the Goldberg Variations, uncorked a bottle of red, and watched her bring plate after plate from the kitchen. Then came the puzzling moment. There were no napkins, neither cloth nor paper ones. We looked everywhere. That Venegas woman probably uses them to wipe her nose with. Was there a roll of paper towels anywhere? “I looked everywhere,” said Clara, “es gibt kein paper towels.” She’d checked all the cabinets in the kitchen—Nada, she said. There was, I said, only one solution left. I hadn’t even finished saying it when she burst out into hysterical laughter.
“Can you think of a better option?” I asked.
She shook her head, still unable to contain the laughter.
“It’s your house, you get it.”
So I found a full roll and brought it to our picnic, placed it next to her.
“I can’t believe you’re making me eat with a roll of toilet paper staring at me. To your health and a Happy New Year.” I reached over and placed what turned out to be a prolonged kiss below her ear. “And many more times again, many, many.”
I loved the way she had removed her boots and was reclining on the floor facing me, with one bare tanned foot on the other, staring at me with her lingering, sometimes sullen gaze. Once or twice she’d caught me staring at her feet, and I could tell she liked that; she knew what I was thinking, and I knew she knew, and I loved it. A week ago they were on sand, now they’re on my rug. We were no longer just friends, and there was clearly much more between us than ordinary man-woman friendship, but I didn’t know what any of this was or where it was headed or whether it had already crested and this was all we were ever going to be together. For the first time in days I was willing to see that what stood between us was not a gray, barren no-man’s-land littered with craters and mines but something else, though uncharted and as silent and snow-hushed as the Nativity itself, filled with the hopeful, aching mirth that lasts no longer than improvised truces when guns go silent on December 25, and enemy soldiers climb out of their trenches to light a cigarette, but then forget to light another.
At some point I said I’d let her hear all the Silotis I’d been able to buy.
“Which is the best?” she asked.
“Yours.”
“My point exactly.”
•
Our picnic lasted over two hours, especially since she turned on the television and, without either of us meaning to, we watched The Godfather, starting from the murder of Sollozzo and of the crooked policeman till the near-end, when Michael Corleone has everyone eliminated and tells his brother-in-law, whom he’s about to have killed as well, “Ah, that little farce you played with my sister. You think that would fool a Corleone?” “Ah, you think that would fool a Corleone?” she repeated. Afterward, we listened to my new versions of the Handel. We discussed Rohmer again, but stayed clear of tonight’s films. I didn’t want to know where she was going after our picnic, did not want to ask, did not want specifics. Knowing might hurt more than aching to know.
“What is it that he says?” I asked.
“Ah, you think that would fool a Corleone?”
I loved how she said it. “Say it again.”
“Ah, you think that would fool a Corleone?”
But then, just as she was about to pour me more red wine, she tipped over her glass, which had been standing quite steadily on a large dictionary. The little that remained in her glass left a small red pool on the carpet that soon disappeared into the dark-hued lozenges of the Persian rug. Her sudden apologies reminded me of the spontaneous and effusive Clara I’d seen when she had turned around and kissed me in Max’s dining room. I tried to calm her, told her not to worry, and rushed into the kitchen to find a rag.
“Dab, don’t rub. Dab,” she repeated.
I tried to do as told.
“You’re still rubbing, not dabbing.”
“You do it, then.”
“Let me,” she said, first imitating my rubbing motions far from the rug, then showing me how it should be done.
“Now I need salt,” she said.
I gave her the salt shaker.
She laughed at me. Where did I keep the salt?
I brought her a giant box of kosher salt. Clara poured a generous mound on the wine stain.
“Why on earth do you have such a giant box of salt but no food in the house?”
“Rose garden lived here and cooked a lot — which also explains the very large containers of spices. Food’s lying low these days,” I added.
“What did she do?”
“Cooked big dinners.”
“No, I mean what did she do to get booted from the rose garden?”
“Told me I should dab, not rub.”
“And where is she now?”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Gone.”
I looked at the neat little mound she’d carefully evened with the flat of her fingers and which bore four finger-length furrows that I knew I’d never have the heart to remove. I shall keep this forever and ask Mrs. Venegas not to even think of touching or of vacuuming the salt. And if she does remove it, I’m sure I’ll have the stain to remember this day by, the way people put plaques at the site where a meteor struck the earth but left no trace of itself save for the crater bearing its name now. She was the meteor, I the gaping hollow. On December 28 Clara and I picnicked on my floor, and here’s the proof. As soon as she’d leave — I knew myself — I’d stare at those tiny creases marking the spaces between her fingers and say to myself, Clara was here.
“Hopefully there won’t be a stain.”
“Hopefully,” I said, “there will.”
“Printz,” she said reproachfully. Both of us understood. After a short pause, she suddenly added, “Dishes!”
We brought the dishes back to the kitchen, and she dropped them in the sink.
“We forgot dessert,” she said.
“No, we didn’t. I bought chocolate lesbians.”
“I didn’t see.”
“Surprise! But on one condition—”
“What condition?” Concern rippling down her face. I knew I’d made her nervous.
“On condition you say, Ah, you think that would fool a Corleone?’”
My heart was racing.
“The things you think of!”
She opened the three packs of cookies and laid them out by twos. If you wedged each one in between your toes, I’d bring my mouth there and bite each one—The things I think of, you said?
“Still want tea?” I asked.
“Quick tea,” she said. “I have to get going soon.”
I don’t know what had made me think she’d forget about her date with otherpeoples. How silly of me. But how totally insensitive of her to remember. Part of me went so far as to believe that she enjoyed breaking our little routine, enjoyed throwing me off, enjoyed watching me hope she’d forgotten, only then to yank me back to reality and remind me that she hadn’t.
But I also knew that to ascribe such motives was like attributing an intention to a storm or looking for a meaning behind the sudden death of a friend with whom we’d been playing tennis just two hours earlier.
We boiled water in the microwave oven — two minutes. Then dipped Earl Grey tea bags in the boiling water — one minute. Within seven minutes, we were done with tea. Bad sex tea. Very, very bad sex tea, she repeated, not Lydian at all.
Then she stood up and went to one of the windows to watch yet another white cold gray winter day wear itself out. She didn’t say anything about Rohmer. I didn’t say anything either.