And then, following an after-dinner drink, which Josh alone foregoes, it is time to return to Dadda. Handshakes are exchanged. This is not a period in which men embrace in public. Anna remains in the kitchen, calls out a goodbye when it becomes clear that Izzy’s guests are clearing out.
And still there is no story of consequence beyond what I think of as the unacknowledged unspoken. Our story, if it ever claims itself, is embedded in unimagined, perhaps unimaginable possibility. Of course there is the trip back to be dramatized with Lisa and Harry in the back seat, amusing themselves at the Tarkovskys’ expense. Josh, on the other hand, is an unwitting eavesdropper, ashamed of his unwillingness to defend the older writer from his cruel satirists. There is some compensation, however, in his situation. He can imagine writing the story of this dinner at the Tarkovskys’ one day to Berger’s disadvantage and there’s the more immediate compensation of Genevieve’s sly hand in his lap as he drives. They will have great sex that night, perhaps their best ever, fueled by the fallout of the visit. Genevieve will leave the next day to attend graduate school in California and they will not see each other again for almost a year.
Berger and Lisa Strata will sleep this night in their own rooms, which one assumes, has been Berger’s decision, wanting to keep something in the tank for the final gestures of his book, which is stored each night in a refrigerator to protect it from nuclear attack or local conflagration. We are still in the era of typewriters and longhand and it is not easy to protect ones creations from the unforeseen.
Lisa will reward this slight by doing a painting of Berger from memory, showing the back of his head neatly coiffed, doubled in surreal surprise by a mirror image of the same. The painting entitled “The Other Side of Fame” will be a critic pleaser in her next one-woman show, singled out for praise in virtually every review.
Tarkovsky will write a generous blurb for Joshua’s first novel which will appear in large type on the back cover and, had there not been a newspaper strike at the novel’s appearance, would have played a significant part in the book’s reception.
In short order, Berger will publish the novel he had completed at Dadda and he will win a Pullitzer for it, his first of several.
None of these consequences is a particular surprise to the attentive observer and none is a direct consequence of the trip from Dadda to Copington to visit IM Tarkovsky.
Something seems to have been left out, something important that has slipped our attention.
Eighteen months after the Tarkovsky visit, Joshua will separate from his wife and move into a furnished room not far from Genevieve’s loft apartment in what will later be known as the East Village. A year or so down the road, a time punctuated by a series of agreements never to see the other again, Joshua and Genevieve will move in together, marry, have children, separate, divorce.
Let’s backtrack a moment, not all the way back to that summer at Dadda, which is at the center of our narrative, but back to a period when Joshua and Genevieve have temporarily broken up.
During that period, Berger and Genevieve run into each other circumstantially and Berger bestirs himself to be charming, remembering how smart and sexy Genevieve seemed that evening at Tarkovsky’s. As they are going in the same direction, they walk together for a while at Berger’s urging. When they are about to separate, he invites her to come up to his place for a glass of wine. Genevieve declines — she has an appointment with her therapist in twenty minutes — but promises she will come by another time. Berger takes her number, but never gets around to calling. Two weeks later, they run into each other again at the very moment Berger is wondering where he had deposited the slip of paper with Genevieve’s number on it.
This second meeting, in which the fingerprints of fate seemed notable, offers the opportunity for each to make good on failed promises. “I’m just around the corner,” Berger says. “Why don’t you come up for a glass of wine?”
“I don’t know,” she says, which is not so much a rejection of his offer as an opportunity for Berger to make his petition easier for her to accept.
“What don’t you know?” he asks. “What makes this such a hard decision for you?”
“One glass of wine and that’s it,” she says. “Okay?”
“Absolutely,” he says. “I never urge anyone to do anything she doesn’t want to do. I think we understand each other.”
And so they walk together (and apart) to Berger’s brownstone duplex apartment, which is actually three blocks away from where they had been. They chat as they walk. He seems interested in her story, which in her telling is never quite the same story twice.
What is Genevieve thinking? one wonders. She can always say no, she might be telling herself, if it comes to whatever it’s likely to come to. If she doesn’t say no — perhaps he won’t even make a pass — she can always tell Josh she had, assuming that she and Josh get together again, which remains an angry hope and an inescapable expectation. More to the point, she gets off on living dangerously, she always has, so however it plays out, the frisson of her visit is likely worth whatever the ultimate price of admission.
The apartment is unexpectedly incomplete, bookcases partially filled, unpacked boxes on the floor, paintings guarding their potential space on the wall. This is mostly true of the living room where they sit, facing each other across an oversized slate coffee table, drinking expensive French wine.
“How are things going with you and Josh?” he asks her.
“Okay,” she says. “Why do you want to know? I wouldn’t think that would interest you.”
“Everything about you interests me,” he says.
“You’re just making conversation,” she says.
“Yes,” he says. “Do you like the wine?”
She knows or thinks she knows or doesn’t know she knows that if she wants to be in charge of herself, a second glass of wine is a mistake. She knows that, doesn’t she? She has cautioned herself in advance not to have more than one glass of wine, though at the same time she wants to be open to the moment, to collaborate with the moment in making her decision.
It is already too late. With a self-effacing laugh, she lets him fill up her glass for a second time.
She also knows, or some part of her does, that if she sleeps with Berger, which is the obvious endgame of his determined kindness, that Josh would hold it against her virtually forever. That’s his problem of course and only marginally hers. And it is very good wine to which the label attests and her taste buds insistently acknowledge.
And still she thinks, not now, not this time, or why not? She sips carefully, savoring the wine.
“How is it you’re not living with anyone?” she hears herself ask him.
“I don’t know,” he says. “That’s just the way it is at the moment.”
“Is it?”
“It is,” he says. “Do you think I should be living with someone?”
Another laugh escapes her, occupies the space between them. She wonders at the source of the laugh and considers, against her saner judgment, turning her head. “It’s none of my business,” she says. “With someone like you, it probably makes no difference anyway. Whoever you’re with, you’re always alone.”
Berger says nothing, looks away, looks back, looks like someone on the deck of a ship with the wind blowing in his face. “That’s a cruel thing to say,” he says. “It’s also very shrewd. Possibly even true.”
She feels flattered by his compliment, though it is not an unmixed pleasure, and she chokes back a thank you, which is all too readily and embarrassingly available.
And when is he going to make his move? she wonders. Berger may well be wondering the same thing himself.