We were watching our reflection undulating on the surface of the water and then we saw the kicking. His legs were kicking just below the surface, breaking up the mirror, and I thought this was a signal that he was about to come up. He was kicking and kicking at the surface of the water and then the kicking stopped.
I assumed this was part of the trick, to create suspense, and so we waited. The sun got lower in the sky, the skateboarders rode away, new tourists replaced the old tourists, and we waited. And while we waited, while he was gone, down there under the water, it seemed to me the ripples of water radiating out from the place where he jumped were more orderly or more beautiful than I’d noticed before.
And that’s when his head popped up.
And the funny thing was, when his head popped up I felt happiness and sadness. I was happy and sad. I was happy that he was alive. And I was sad; he was still alive.
The meeting to discuss some changes to the look-alike story was Alan’s idea. I’d shown him my finished article and he’d given me directions to a spa in Culver City. Although the place referred to itself as a spa, it was really just an old bathhouse with some private rooms. I walked through the glass entrance doors into the lobby where I told a woman behind the desk that I was waiting for my friend. She looked on her clipboard sheet, called over an older man with a towel around his neck, and he led me down a wide hall, around a corner and into a room. There was a tub filled with bubbling water and a place to lie down, and at the moment Alan was coming up from under the steaming water.
“Ahh,” he said. “You’ve arrived.”
I took off my clothes, folded them neatly on a wicker chair, and stepped down the steps into the bubbly water.
“Don’t feel the water,” he said. “Let the water feel you.” That was another side of Alan, from when he used to spend time at Esalen.
“How long have you been in?”
“Are you letting it feel you?”
I let myself relax a little, sliding farther into the water.
“Now it’s feeling you,” he said, and he took a breath, and for a moment he disappeared under the water.
When he came back up I thought we would start discussing the look-alike story, but before that could happen he declared he wanted a massage. And he wanted me to have one too. He used the word massage, but every time he did he raised his eyebrows as if trying to make that word mean something else, and I didn’t know what it was supposed to be meaning exactly, but it appeared to mean more than merely some therapeutic kneading of muscle and skin.
I told him I needed more time with the look-alike revisions, that the subject, meaning Scott, was intriguing me, but the article needed work. “Don’t be afraid to finish,” he said, and ducked his head into the water. It was difficult carrying on the conversation because Alan kept ducking his head, occasionally telling me that I needed to grease my wheel, and that there was something he wanted me to see.
“See?” Everything was beginning to have quotation marks at this point, which often happened with Alan. Things became “things” and good became “good,” and I could almost understand that, but sometimes there were quotation marks around the quotation marks.
“How’s your friend Alison?”
“Fine,” I said.
“I see,” he said, but instead of looking at me, he started giggling, telling me he’d met someone named Betty. He raised his eyebrows again when he said the name Betty, as if to indicate that Betty was more than a name, as if “Betty” was something he knew about, which I would also want to know about, shortly.
There’d been a choice when he booked the room, whether to have a communal room or a private room, and I didn’t know why he’d wanted a private room until he stood up, stepped out of the water, and put a towel around his waist.
I was soaking in the warm bubbles, and I could feel the cold air flowing into the room when he walked out the door. And I could see, when he came back, that he wasn’t alone, that a short, dark-haired girl was holding his arm. She arrived in her blue bikini. He introduced her as Betty.
I was nude and he had the towel around his waist, and when the girl in the small bikini sat on the edge of the tub I lowered myself deeper into the water. Alan tossed the towel, got into the tub, and I could see what his idea was.
Steve Martin made a movie version of Cyrano de Bergerac in 1987, and the basic plot was taken from a play by Edmond Rostand. In the play, Cyrano is in love with a girl named Roxane, but she is attracted to a handsome, age-appropriate soldier. So Cyrano becomes the voice of the soldier. He, the poet, tells the soldier what to say, and speaking through this other person, but using the emotions he’s feeling, he woos Roxane. Because his love for her is true, and because the honesty and sincerity of that truth is obvious, Roxane falls in love. She falls in love with the words, and because the words are coming out of the mouth of the soldier, she thinks she’s in love with the handsome soldier, but really she’s in love with Cyrano. The two stories end differently but the basic plot is the same.
When Steve Martin starred in the movie version, he played opposite Darryl Hannah, a one-time mermaid who now played the part of a scientist. Because of his monstrously long proboscis, Steve Martin (as Cyrano) doesn’t think he’s attractive to the ladies, and when the handsome, strong-jawed soldier — in the movie he’s a firefighter — enlists his help to woo this scientist, Steve Martin (as Cyrano) is torn. But he proceeds. And the ruse works. Darryl Hannah falls in love with the handsome man, but as the wooing continues, Cyrano falls more and more in love with her, a woman he’s separated from by his own dissembling.
That’s what Alan was trying to do with me. Even though I was the writer, he was trying to be my Cyrano.
Betty quietly slid into the tub and took off her bikini top. She was sitting beside Alan, across the tub, but the next thing I knew Alan was scooting over to my side of the tub so that her round face was facing the two of us. We watched her across the roiling water, and it’s possible she enjoyed being watched. Every now and then she let her body float up to the surface of the water.
Then Alan whispered to me, “Your boobies are sweet.”
I looked at him as if. .
“Just say it.”
And because I knew what he was doing, and because I wasn’t interested in doing it, when he said to me, “Your tits are fantastic,” instead of saying that, I told Betty she was lovely.
She smiled.
Alan whispered in my ear, “You look lonesome over there.”
What Alan was proposing was that I change my behavior, for just one moment, to let go of who I was.
“Your body rocks.” That was Alan prompting me.
I shook my head and smiled at Betty.
“Come on, Jack Man,” he said. “Indulge me.”
“No way.”
“Please?”
“Alan here thinks you’re quite attractive,” I said to Betty. “There.”