‘What, Lula Mae?’
‘How come you’re here with me?’
‘What a question!’
‘I don’t want the obvious answer — most men like a bit of strange and most men who see me want to have me. I’m looking for the you/me specifics that resulted in our sleeping together for what is now the fifth time. Don’t you wonder where it’s coming from and where it’s going?’
‘When I’m with you I’m not thinking of that,’ says Max.
‘What about when you’re not with me?’
‘Then I try not to think of it.’
‘Say more.’
‘Much of the time I don’t understand what I do. And all of the time I don’t understand my life. Do you understand yours?’
‘Until now I don’t think I’ve tried to. What about you and Lola?’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Are you in love with her?’
‘Yes.’
‘And is she in love with you?’
‘Looks that way.’
‘You’re not sure?’
‘She’s very careful with words.’
‘But you’ve slept with her, yes?’
‘I feel disloyal, talking about her like this.’
‘That’s a hot one: you don’t feel disloyal shagging me but you don’t like to talk about her while you’re in my bed.’
‘Life is full of anomalies, Lula Mae.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘OK, I’ve slept with her.’
At this point Max’s mind is unable to refrain from a little cluck of disapproval.
‘What?’ says Max.
‘You know very well what,’ says his mind. ‘Shtupping Lula Mae is already an intrusion into Lola’s privacy but this kind of talk makes it worse.’
‘Lola’s privacy!’
‘That’s right. Your nakedness and your lovemaking are private to Lola. Now you’ve exposed Lola’s nakedness to Lula Mae.’ Another little cluck.
‘I’m not a good man,’ says Max.
‘Could do better,’ says his mind.
‘Hello?’ says Lula Mae. ‘Are you there?’
‘More or less,’ says Max.
‘If you and Lola are in love,’ says Lula Mae, ‘why did you look me up in Holborn?’
‘You told me where you worked and then you gave me your going-away view. I’d have had to be dead not to respond.’
‘OK, that was one time. What about since then? What are you looking for with me?’
‘I don’t know. I guess I’m just greedy. What about you? Your attractions aren’t just physical, you could pretty well have any man you fancied. Why are you spending time with me?’
‘When it started I was a little bit trying to make up for all the girls you couldn’t get in high school. Your face is full of never-had-enough and I was touched by it.’
‘And the greatest of these is charity,’ says Max. ‘You’re a real Christian, Lula Mae.’
‘In my way. But now it’s become something else.’
‘What?’
‘I haven’t figured it out yet, but it’s got me taking a long hard look at myself.’
‘And what are you seeing?’
‘A woman who’s been walking through a maze where all the pathways bring you out again and you never reach the centre.’
‘What’s at the centre?’
‘Maybe I’ll never know. In the meantime …’ She rolls over on to Max and he stops asking questions.
23 Freying Now?
March 1997. Ring, ring. With the smell of Lula Mae still in his nostrils and the taste of her in his mouth Max picks up the phone and says hello.
‘Hi,’ says Lola. ‘It’s me.’
‘Hi,’ says Max. That voice of hers! Always that clear stream in a dappled wood.
‘I’m taking a day off,’ says Lola. ‘This Friday is the vernal equinox.’
‘Yes,’ says Max, ‘the same thing happened last year.’
‘And Friday, of course, is Freya’s day,’ says Lola, ‘very auspicious for what I have in mind.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s a mystery drive to a picnic at a special place. Can I pick you up around ten?’
‘I’ll be ready.’ After they ring off he says to himself, ‘This isn’t right, I must wind things up with Lula Mae.’
‘And not before time,’ says his mind.
‘I know,’ says Max. ‘At first I thought she was someone I could walk away from and no harm done on either side but it’s not that simple.’
‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ says Max, ‘she could have any man she wanted. But I have the feeling that she’s always wanted a kind of man she’s never had.’
‘And you’re it?’
‘Well, yes. I’m nothing much to look at and I’m not a great lover but it might be that I appreciate her in a way no other man has.’
‘I’d have to have a heart of stone not to fall about laughing at that,’ says his mind.
‘You may scoff.’
‘I just did.’
‘I’ll see her one last time,’ says Max, ‘and I’ll tell her it’s over.’
‘That’s the way to do it,’ says his mind.
24 Girl Talk 2
March 1997. The moon waxes and wanes, the sea responds with spring tides and neap tides, the waves fling up the pebbles with a grating roar and draw back again as they did when Matthew Arnold listened on Dover Beach.
A few days after Max and Lula Mae’s fifth get-together Lula Mae and Irma Lustig are lunching again at The Garibaldi. Irma flickers an eyelid and a red-shirted waiter appears with a bottle of Chianti. He opens it, pours a taster for Irma, she tastes it and fractionally inclines her head. The waiter pours two glasses and vanishes. ‘Zum wohl,’ says Irma.
‘Happy days,’ says Lula Mae.
‘What’s new?’ says Irma.
‘I’m pregnant,’ says Lula Mae.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ says Irma.
‘I thought you told me to be careful.’
‘And you carefully got pregnant. You’re not going to tell me it was an accident?’
‘Not really. All of a sudden I didn’t feel like taking the pill.’
‘Ovulation makes one hot to trot.’
‘Yup.’
‘Your interesting Max was the lucky man?’
‘Lucky or not, he’s the one.’
‘I seem to remember that he craved recognition from your kind of woman. Do you think he craved this much?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Are you keeping it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you told him?’
‘No.’
‘Are you going to tell him?’
‘I haven’t decided.’
‘Why not?’
‘He says he’s in love with Lola Bessington.’
‘Miss Too-Sure-of-Herself?’
‘Yes. I’d feel bad about coming between them but I doubt that she’s the right woman for him. He needs someone whose moral standards aren’t too exacting.’
‘And you are the right woman?’
‘I have doubts about that too. Sometimes I think being a single mother is more my style but at other times the idea of a proper family is tempting.’
‘Everest Technology gets more and more complicated,’ says Irma, ‘but there’s nothing as complicated as men and women.’
‘And we all come without manuals,’ says Lula Mae.
While Lula Mae and Irma tuck into their lasagne and drink their Chianti the not-yet-risen moon is waxing, comet Hale-Bopp trails its fiery tail unseen, night and day are approaching parity, and Lola Bessington, between customers at the Coliseum Shop, listens to Die Winterreise with tears running down her cheeks.
25 Boy Talk