Wherever they went people would say, oh tell us the story of how you kids got religion.
Eve didn’t particularly like the way Fairlie told the story, which was one of the side effects of the incident. It seemed unfair, since it was her idea to have the Witnesses in the first place, for him to tell the story more than she got to tell it. I mention this to indicate that even during their happy times the seeds of dissension were being sown.
Shortly after they were robbed blind, Fairlie got a job with his father’s firm, clipping coupons. His mercurial rise was a legend in its own time. While he was away transacting business, Eve pursued her own interests.
One morning they woke up to find themselves in a bed of suffering married seven years. Then it was all over but the recriminations.
Eve put it down to a learning experience, though couldn’t articulate what it was she had learned that she hadn’t already known from the word go.
A record of their next to last fight follows.
Fairlie: (Striding into the room) Eve, I’d like to talk to you.
Eve: (Feeling trapped by his presence, playing nervously with her hair, moving it back and forth across her shoulder) Please don’t. If you go away for an hour, it doesn’t matter to me where you go, I’ll be gone when you get back.
Fairlie: (Offering a view of his erection in profile, wanting to grab her, graciously) Why should you be the one to have to leave?
Eve: You asked me to leave, damn it, didn’t you? (Thinking of smashing him on the head with a bat, hitting him over and over, arm weary from her labors, until his head was pulp, body looped over stiffly like celluloid.)
Fairlie: After you, Eve, it will be hard to find someone who measures up. (When the fastball is gone, you must learn deception to stay in the big leagues, changes of pace, artifice, screwballs and knuckleballs, tricks of dispassion.)
Eve: (Made ashamed by his compliment, touched to deeper rage) I’d like to finish my packing if you don’t mind.
Fairlie: (Promising himself that he will not grab at her no matter what, grabs her arm) Look.
(The end)
From another source we learn that Eve punches him in the stomach, Fairlie laughing holds her by the wrists as if two snakes in his hands, let’s go to bed, he whispers, let’s;
She would go, she thinks, if he would ask in a way that would permit her to, says under no circumstance whatsoever my god will I ever let you stick that thing in me again. Smells whisky on his familiar breath, bourbon or Irish, when he lifts her from behind and thrusts her out of the apartment without her suitcase.
I’ll make a scene, she says softly, if you don’t let me in this instant. Her breath coming heavy as it does in panic. You mucky bastard.
In her suitcase, finishing her packing for her, Fairlie finds a photo of another man. He studies it for some time. It’s not even anyone I know, he says. It seemed unfair.
Eve comes back in say ten minutes to finish the fight. At least give me my purse, she says mournfully at the door. I don’t have a cent, not a cent.
That’s your tough luck; he says.
He unpacks her suitcase looking for clues. Something about her has always eluded his grasp, not everything of course — he has known her in and out for seven years.
Eve threatens to bring the police if not admitted.
It is a forefinger of fiction that you find what you’re looking for, when not aware in advance of the hidden purpose of the quest. What Fairlie finds is an old letter — the condition of the paper indicates its age — written by Eve, apparently unsent, to someone named Harris.
Dear Harris (So the letter begins).
It is difficult for me to write your name, a totemistic superstition no doubt. I am embarrassed that you will read the “dear” as literally as it sounds in my head when I write it. I know, though I would like to be wrong, that you will think this letter indulgent, or, worse, schoolgirlish. But I want to break through to you — is there any way to do that? — to tell you who I am. God, doesn’t that sound pretentious. If one day I ceased to exist would it, dear Harris, affect your life in the slightest.
When Eve let herself in with the key she had gotten from the super she discovered Fairlie reading her letter.
Please give that back to me, she said.
He ripped the letter in half and handed it to her.
It was as if he had torn her in two. If she had had a gun, she would have killed him without a qualm. Giddy, lightheaded, she whirled around and around in her imagination on perfect point, folded the two halves in half and ripped the letter evenly in quarters, then in eighths. When it was like confetti she sprinkled the pieces at Fairlie as if blessing him with holy water. Still, some part of her, though she had never felt so light before, was deeply offended. She felt like a flower opened beyond any further opening, inviolable. Her sense of her own power astonished her. It was as if she were a laser beam and could burn him to dust (the thought itself erotic to her) by the merest touch. When she came toward him he actually flinched, putting his hands in front of his face. She grabbed him. What do you think you’re doing? he said. She tumbled him to the floor and though Fairlie was not indifferent to the opportunity, took her pleasure by force as if it were a debt he had for seven years refused to pay. Fairlie’s view of it was somewhat different. As he saw it, what seemed like mysterious behavior on Eve’s part had, like all things, a perfectly simple explanation. Eve had let herself go because he had showed her he cared for her by destroying the letter.
You couldn’t go two steps in any direction without becoming aware of the general decline in cultural standards. Where would it all end?
He thought afterward that they might make it up, but she was afraid of the violence of her feelings (or so he interpreted her behavior) and moved out some minutes after their bout of love on the floor.
Her leaving as she did — the peculiar timing of it — embittered him, made him feel cheated. He said some nasty things about her to friends, tried unsuccessfully on more than one occasion to get her to come back. She would always hold a special place in his feelings, he thought. Was there another girl in the world like her?
They had one more fight but there was no heart in it and then by accord, perhaps merely by drift, went through with the divorce.
Another Look at the Blackbird
My name is unimportant. They call me Sam. If I had another name, I’ve already forgotten it. This is the story of my first caper.
One night, frying my back on a foam rubber sofa in the living room of friends, unable to sleep for discomfort and jealousy, I noticed that the door to Mellisa Markey’s bedroom was open. Otherwise, I would have never, uninvited, soft shoed into her room. The open door was my invitation. Everything, insofar as I understood anything, had a reason even if it was no reason.
As I entered Mellisa’s hothouse of a room I could see that something was wrong. She was lying on her side, her back to me, the covers down, the whole show given away. The lady was asleep or pretending, I thought. I moved to the foot of the bed — a pink sheet in a wad on the floor as if in sleep, he, she, they, someone had kicked the thing off. I was sorry it hadn’t been me with her. “Are you okay?” I asked. She may have been wearing the clothes she was born in but looked a damned sight better than any baby I had ever seen. Looking, I got hungry, had the urge to take her by surprise. The thing is, it wasn’t my style. No private dick worth his salt would be caught dead doing it with an unconscious girl.