“What quality are we looking for?” I asked, unsure on what basis to choose.
“If you don’t know”, another policeman said, “who does?”
I didn’t want to make the wrong choice and get the wrong couch in trouble. “It could be any of them.”
“As if your life depended on it, pick one.”
This was a hard job. They all had certain qualities. “One or four,” I said. And then I woke.
I took a walk by myself the next day. And the day after. I managed to avoid Eva or was it that she was avoiding me? Do I have to say it? I missed her on the walks and gave anxious thought to knocking on her door, though I held off under the excuse that she didn’t want to see me. Her perfume, unless I imagined it, left a strong presence on my couch.
I consoled myself by thinking that I was my own person again, free of foreign ties. It was an ambivalent consolation. I wrote a few awkward sentences on the new novel I had started then reread the pages of the old one I had given up on. It wasn’t as bad as I remembered and I considered setting aside the new one and going back to the old. I tried to remember what I hadn’t liked about it and couldn’t. In any event, it had improved itself in my absence as if some mysterious better self had been rewriting in the dark.
I was adding to the text of the old novel when interrupted by a knock on the door. I responded eagerly and with a sense of nervous relief.
It wasn’t Eva. It was a man, who looked familiar and who I assumed was Ron. He had a grim look on his face and I wondered if he was going to hit me. “Do you know where Eva is?” he asked me.
We were about the same height and weight. I didn’t invite him in, though I considered it. “Perhaps she’s at work,” I said.
“No,” he said in a tight voice. “She’s almost always home by now.”
I tried to think of a reason for her to have been held up but nothing came to mind. “Well, I haven’t seen her.”
He didn’t go away. “Is she by any chance in your place?” he asked.
“I can assure you she’s not,” I said, mildly outraged at the charge.
“In that case do you mind if I take a look?” he said. I was standing in his way and I sensed he considered knocking me aside.
I considered stepping aside. “I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word,” I said.
“I don’t believe in violence,” he said out of the blue. I could imagine us punching each other. He reminded me of my brother, who I never thought about and hadn’t talked to in years.
I wasn’t afraid of him. “Violence always has something to say for itself,” I said.
He took a step back. “Look,” he said, “if she’s not there, it won’t hurt to let me have a quick look.”
I didn’t like having my word questioned. If she was in my apartment, would I have told him? I imagined such a scenario.
During this standoff, each of us apparently conjecturing our next move, Eva appeared at her apartment door. Noticing Ron, she called to him. He went over to her and after a few muttered words I couldn’t hear, they went into her place together.
I was unacknowledged on all fronts and went back into my empty apartment feeling misused. Or if not misused, deprived. In any event, my word had been confirmed without my having to back down.
The confrontation had worn me out and I went to sleep or at least lay down to go to sleep. I don’t know how long it was when a knocking at the door jounced me from bed. This time it was in fact Eva. “I’m sorry about Ron’s behavior,” she said.
“That’s all right,” I said. “Why didn’t he come and apologize himself.?”
“I think he was embarrassed. Ron doesn’t like to find himself in the wrong. We hadn’t an appointment for today. He came without an invitation.”
“And was angry not to find you home.”
“Something like that,” she said. “I asked him what he would have done if he found me in your apartment.”
We were standing in the doorway and though I wasn’t sure what I wanted, I stepped aside to let her by.
She stood in the middle of my living room, undecided as to where to take herself.
“I had been taking a nap when you knocked,” I said.
She seemed to be thinking about her alternatives then said, “Later.” And let herself out.
We seemed to be back on the old footing. Or the illusion of the old footing. I lay down again for my nap and had trouble sleeping, kept hearing noises at the door. Twice I went to the door and found no one there.
So I knocked at Eva’s door and invited myself in, though I got no resistance only encouragement. This time I would be the aggressor.
“Let’s go into the bedroom,” I said. I took her by the hand.
“Give me a few minutes to straighten up,” she said.
I didn’t hesitate. “Let’s just go in,” I said “You don’t need to straighten up for me. You can straighten up afterward.”
“You won’t get an argument from me,” she said.
So we had sex — I won’t call it making love — for the first time on her bed, on my terms.
Or was it really on my terms or was that the illusion she was willing to grant me in order to get what she wanted. I was internalizing Klotzman’s position here. The sex itself was almost impersonal, a determined physical act with invisible traces of emotionality. It was hard to avoid feeling some kind of affection during the act, though I strove to stay level-headed. I had a cup of tea before leaving. She didn’t ask me to stay the night for which I was grateful.
In my own bed again, I felt whatever I had sacrificed, I was still my own person.
Where does it go from here? I wasn’t sure whether I wanted it to go anywhere. I had done what I had set out to do — sleep with Eva on my terms — and I saw no need to repeat the gesture. At least not right away, not as a going concern, which is what I told Klotzman.
“That’s your business,” he said. “It’s not my part to tell you what to do.”
“That didn’t always seem the case,” I said.
“What I’ve tried to do is help you make decisions, clarify the air. I’ve never tried to impose what I thought you ought to do, certainly not from a moral standpoint.”
“Sometimes it seemed that way,” I said.
“You were misinterpreting me,” he said. “Maybe I wasn’t making myself understood.”
I acknowledged the possibility. “I don’t know what to do next with respect to Eva.”
“Why do you have to do anything? What do you want to see happen?”
“I want everything to be as it was,” I said. “Is that unrealistic?”
“I would think there’s bound to be some change in your relationship,” he said. “Some change is unavoidable.”
What he said made sense but I resisted believing it. If Ron was still in the picture, and I had reason to believe he was, I had no obligation to Eva. A rush of guilt and shame passed through me. I wanted no obligations yet everything I did or didn’t do created new ones.
It was an unforgivable mistake to dispose of my old sofa. Inanimate or not, its betrayal haunted me. I wondered if there was some place I could find it again, ask its forgiveness, and restore it to its rightful place.
On the way out, I stopped at the desk and chatted up Carol, who was doing her nails. I asked her if she would consider going to the movies with me sometime. Without lifting her eyes, she said she would consider it sometime. I waited for more but that’s all there was.
When I got home I wondered what my next step vis-à-vis Eva would be. Then I thought maybe I didn’t have to make a decision right away. The sex, the first I had had with another in a long time, a very long time, didn’t ask to repeat itself.
That night I had another lineup dream. This time I was the one positioned to make the choice and the candidates were women or mostly women. In the first slot was my former wife, looking as she did when she left me. In the second slot was Eva — all this was clear. In the third slot was a familiar-looking woman I couldn’t quite identify. In the fourth slot was Carol, clearly the youngest and prettiest. In the fifth slot was my old couch, looking the worse for its absence from my room. I was told I had five minutes to decide, which didn’t seem quite enough but I intended to use it all. It was not an easy decision but in the end I decided on the battered couch. Someone behind me said, “Wise choice,” and I woke.