The next day I met Jane at a movie theater, a multiplex on Sunset Boulevard. The site of this particular theater had once been the site of an old Cinerama theater, and I mention it because the history of Cinerama is partly a history of utopia. In the early 1950s television was taking over, and as a way to make movies more popular, the people in charge decided to widen the screen, to make the events on the screen bigger and therefore more real. They thought they were imagining the future, the modern way to see movies, and I was thinking about this when I saw Jane standing behind a glass wall.
I waved to her, walked inside, and the first thing she noticed was my hair. “You have a new haircut.”
“Yes,” I said, and I did.
That morning I’d gone to a drugstore, bought an electric shaver, stood at my bathroom sink, and starting at the sides, I shaved my head. I adjusted the shaver to leave as much as I could, but I shaved off anything that was white, or silver, whatever it was, working the shaver along my scalp until any hair that reminded me of Steve was gone.
“You could be a Marine.”
“It’s a buzz cut,” I said.
I thought she’d want to touch the short, soft hairs, so I lowered my head, but she wasn’t interested. She suggested we go to a café.
That sounded good to me but first she had to use the bathroom, so we rode up the escalator and she went in a door marked with an illustrated woman and I went in the other door. Because the bathrooms shared a common wall, the doors were next to each other, and as I walked to the urinal I was thinking about Steve Martin, but instead of walking like him, now I was trying to walk as unlike him as possible. I wanted to be with Jane but I wanted to do it as something other than Steve, and since Steve felt good, and since Jane only knew me as Steve, it took some concentration. I stood at the urinal, slumped and un-charming, and as I shook off the last drops, I could hear through the wall the sound of water falling on water. Jane, I was sure, was sitting in a stall on the other side of the wall, peeing, and to me, the fact of our acting on the same impulse at the same moment, connected us. The wall was a barrier, but our urinating connected us through the barrier, and this made me feel optimistic.
We drove our separate cars to a café she liked on Sunset, found a table, and I sat across from her, with my back to the window. Couples were together and people sat alone with computers. I ordered tea, Jane ordered a hamburger with french fries, and when our food arrived I raised my mug. “Bon appétit,” I said, and I realized I was saying something Steve would say, as if Jane was a trigger for the Steve in me. And in an effort to counteract the impulse of Steve, I changed my posture, slumping a little lower in my chair. The table wobbled, but just slightly, and she said, “Have some,” referring to her french fries. She forked onto my bread plate some of her food, and the way she was reaching across the table, with both arms stretched out, was like bridging, or trying to bridge, the distance between us.
“I’m glad to see you,” I said.
“You’re glad to see me eating, you mean?”
She smiled, and then we both smiled, and behind the smile I could see her vulnerability. Part of me wanted to seem like Steve and assuage that vulnerability, but another part of me, the part I was listening to, didn’t. So I didn’t, and when she finished eating she stood up.
“Should I follow you?”
She shrugged.
“Where’s your car?”
“Around the corner.”
And I would like to say that when I walked with her, out of the restaurant and around the corner, I was following my desire, or better yet, that I was following the fruit of desire which is love. I was hoping that her desire would influence my desire, and together our mutual desire would create a space for happiness. I wanted to reach out past all the façades of being, and the question is, How do you do it?
We walked out into the sunlight, into the dry air and the cumulus clouds, and I followed her around the corner and up the sidewalk. We were walking between lawns in front of houses, past palm trees and hibiscus bushes, and when she saw her car she stepped into the street. Holding her keys, she walked to her car, stood by her door, and with a familiar arm-thrown-out-in-invitation gesture, she told me her door was unlocked.
She was talking about her passenger door, and I took a step forward, so that I was standing on thick grass. And let’s say I was feeling the buoyancy of the grass through the soles of my shoes. Let’s say I could imagine myself, walking across the grass to her passenger door, opening the door and getting into her car. Let’s say I was feeling the possibility of Steve, the lightness and buoyancy of being Steve. And as the fractions of seconds ticked by, I was resisting that possibility. I was telling myself that Jane was the real thing, and that this was what I needed, but Steve and Jane were connected in my mind, and because Steve was not the real thing, I continued resisting. I stepped off the grass and crossed between the two fenders and walked to the street where she was standing. She was standing there and I was standing there, and as if we’d been having a conversation, she looked at me and said, “Sometimes I get the feeling you don’t really see me.”
“I see you,” I said. I could feel my heart speeding up. “I’m seeing you now.”
“You’re looking at me now.”
“Right,” I said, and even as I said it, I realized I wanted to say something else. And I tried to find, in my body, a different response, but it wasn’t easy because all I could hear was my heart. No cars were driving on the street so the street was oddly quiet, and we stood like that for another second or two and then she opened her driver’s side door.
“Where are you going?” I said.
She looked at me and then she got in her car. She closed the door, rolled the window down, and looked up. “You’re welcome to come.”
“I could follow you,” I said. “Where are you going?” I kept asking her where she was going, but I knew where she was going. Home. She was asking me to go home with her and that’s what I wanted to happen. Or had wanted. But now I wanted something else. I couldn’t seem to be with Jane without being Steve, and I decided, at least temporarily, at least until I’d gotten rid of Steve, to let Jane go. I told her about my car. My car was parked in a different residential neighborhood, in a one-hour-only zone, and if I got in her car. . “I’m in a one-hour-only zone,” I said.
“You’re not coming?” she said.
“My car.”
“Because of your car?”
“I’ll call you,” I said. “How about that?”
“That’s fine. Call me,” and then she reached forward, started the car, and I could see our conversation was over. I didn’t necessarily want it to be over but now she was waiting for me to stand back so she could pull her car into the street.
Both her hands were on the steering wheel, and although we didn’t always kiss goodbye, I wanted at least to seal our affection. Even if I didn’t ride with her now, I wanted the possibility of doing so at a later date. That’s why I stepped closer. But she was low in the car seat, and when I bent down to the empty space of the open window, she just looked at me. She didn’t prepare to be kissed.