Not his.
Hers.
Ruth's face.
“No,” I said again, and then poured the rest of my drink over the dryness I heard in my voice. “No, I think that would be very unwise.”
“Then you could stay on.”
“Yes, but I couldn't work.” I looked at him with some exasperation. My head was starting to buzz. It wasn't a very cheerful buzz, but all the same I signaled the waiter, who had been lurking nearby, for another. “Right now I'm having trouble remembering how to tie my own shoelaces.” No. Wrong. That was hip and it sounded good, but it wasn't the truth-my shoelaces had nothing to do with it. “Roger, I'm depressed.”
“Bereaved people shouldn't sell the house after the funeral,” Roger said, and in my state of buzziness that seemed extremely witty-worthy of H. L. Mencken, in fact. I laughed. Roger smiled, but I could tell he was serious. “It's true,” he said. “One of the few interesting courses I ever took in college was called the Psychology of Human Stress-one of these nifty little blocks they give you to fill up the final eight weeks of your senior year after you're done student teaching—”
“You were going to be a teacher?” I asked startled. I couldn't see Roger teaching-and then, all of a sudden I could.
“I did teach for six years,” Roger said. “Four in high school and two in elementary. But that's beside the point. This course took up human stress situations like marriage, divorce, imprisonment, and bereavement. The course wasn't really a Signposts for Better Living sort of deal, but if you kept your eyes open you couldn't help but notice a few. One was this thing about living out at least the first six months of a really deep bereavement in the house where you and your loved one were living when the death occurred.”
“Roger, this is not the same thing.” I sipped my new drink, which tasted just like my old drink. It occurred to me that I was getting fried. It also occurred to me that I didn't care in the slightest.
“But it is,” He said, leaning solemnly toward me. “In a queer way Ruth is dead to you now. You may see her from time to time over the years, but if the break is as final and complete as that letter sounds, the Ruth we could call your Lover-Ruth is dead to you. And you are grieving.”
I opened my mouth to tell him he was full of shit, and then I closed it again because he was at least partly right. That's what carrying a torch really means, isn't it? You're grieving for the lover who died-the lover who is dead to you, anyway.
“People tend to think of 'grief' and 'depression' as interchangeable terms,” Roger said. His tone was a good deal more pedantic than usual, and his eyes were rimmed with red. It occurred to me that Roger was getting fried, too. “They're really not. There's an element of depression in grief, of course, but there are a whole slew of other feelings as well, ranging from guilt and sadness to anger and relief. A person who runs from the scene of those feelings is a person in retreat from the inevitable. He arrives in a new place and discovers he feels exactly the same mixture of emotions we call grief-except now he feels homesickness as well, and a feeling of having lost the essential linkage which eventually turn grief into remembrance.”
“You remember all of that from an eight-week psychology block course you took eighteen years ago?” Roger sipped modestly at his drink. “Sure,” he said. “I got an A.”
“Bullshit you do.”
“I also banged the grad student who taught the course. What a piece of ass she was.”
“It's not my apartment I was planning to leave,” I said, although I had no idea if I intended to leave it or not... and I know that wasn't his point anyway.
“It wouldn't matter whether you left that two-room cockroach condo or not,” he said. “You know what I'm talking about here. Your job is your house.”
“Yeah? Well the roof is sure leaking,” I said, and even that seemed sort of witty to me. I was getting fried, all right.
“I want you to help me fix the leak, John,” he said, leaning forward earnestly. “That's what I'm saying. That's why I asked you out tonight. And your agreement is the only thing capable of mitigating what is undoubtedly going to be one of the most beastly hangovers of my life. Help us both. Stay on.”
“You'll pardon me if all of this sounds just a little bit self-serving and fortuitous.”
He sat back. “I respect you,” he said a trifle coldly, “but I also like you, John. If I didn't I wouldn't be breaking my ass to keep you on.” He hesitated, seemed on the point of saying something more, then didn't. His eyes said it for him: And humiliating myself by damn' near begging.
“I just don't understand why you're trying so hard,” I said. “I mean, I'm flattered, but—”
“Because if anyone can bring in a book or create an idea that will keep Zenith from going belly-up, it's you,” he said. There was an intensity in his eyes I found almost frightening. “I know how fucking embarrassed you were by the whole Detweiller business, but—”
“Please,” I said. “Let's not add insult to injury.”
“I had no intention of even bringing it up,” he said. “It's just that your very openness to such an off-the-wall proposition—”
“It was off the wall, all right—”
“Will you shut up and listen? Your response to the Detweiller query showed you're still alive to a potentially commercial idea. Herb or Bill would simply have dropped his letter in the circular file.”
“And we all would have been a lot better off,” I said, but I saw where he was going and would be lying if I didn't say I was flattered... and that I felt a little better about the Detweiller affair for the first time since my humiliation at the police station.
“This time,” he agreed. “But those guys also would have turned down V. C. Andrews with her Toys in the Attic series, or some brand new idea. Boom, into the circular file and then back to contemplating their navels.” He paused. “I need you, Johnny, and I think it would be good if you stayed-for you, for me, for Zenith. There's no other way I can put it. Think it over and give me your answer. I'll accept it either way.”
“You'd be paying me for the equivalent of cutting out paper dolls, Roger.”
“That's a chance I'm willing to take.”
I thought about it. I'd started to clean out my desk that day and hadn't gotten very far-to paraphrase Poe, who would have thought the old desk could have had so much crap in it? Or maybe it was just me, and that crack about not even being able to tie my own shoelaces wasn't so wrong, after all. I'd gotten two empty cardboard cartons from Riddley's room (which smells oddly green lately, like fresh marijuana-and no, I didn't see any) and did nothing but stare from one to the other. Maybe with a little more time I could at least complete the elementary job of cleaning up my old life before starting some unimaginable new one. It's just that I've felt so fucking dreary. “Suppose we table the resignation until the end of the month,” I said. “would that ease your mind?”
He smiled. “It's not the best I'd hoped for,” he said, “but it's not the worst I was afraid of, either. I'll take it. And now I think we better order while we can still sit up straight.”
We ordered steaks, and ate them, but by then my mouth was too numb to taste much. I suppose I just ought to be grateful that no one had to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on either of us.
As we were leaving-holding onto each other, assisted by the anxious maitre d' (who no doubt only wanted to get us the fuck out of there before we broke something), Roger told me: “Something else I learned in that psychology course—”
“What did you say they called it? The Psychology of Damaged Souls?”