“Fantasies?”
“Yes, fantasies!” he barks. “Fantasies of running my fingers through your gray curls until your wig falls off. Of peeling that strangely erotic gelatinous monstrosity off you and enlacing you in my arms. I even have fantasies of not peeling that thing off you and enlacing you in my arms anyway and making love to you with that thing still on.”
To this, all I say is, “Please come over. I miss you.”
“Okay, I’m here,” he says, an hour later, covered in snow and carrying takeout sushi.
We watch a movie chastely on the couch. We eat, and chat for an hour about this and that. He goes home.
AND THEN, I feel it slipping. A sadness sets in. He’s less talkative. More pensive. Our frustrating nonsexual relationship seems to be taking a toll on him, and I get a sense it’s affecting other areas of his life as well. He’s less interested in his job. He skips network meetings. His anchoring of the news is detached and glum. I’m worried. I don’t want to be responsible — even indirectly — for any damage to his career, health or happiness.
Maybe it’s selfish of me to want a friendship from him. Maybe I should let him go.
But I can’t. I tried it, didn’t like it.
A COUPLE OF days later, when I’m in Peter’s neighborhood, I call him to see if he’d like me to stop by and say hello.
He hesitates. “Yes, actually. Why don’t you come over. I’d like to talk to you.”
At Peter’s place, we sit on the couch. He looks at me sadly and says, “The time has come for me to stop seeing you.”
I’m taken off guard. “But, you’re not ‘seeing’ me. We’re not dating. We’re just friends.”
“I know. I gave it my best effort, but friendship with you doesn’t work. Not for me.”
I don’t respond.
“It’s better for us this way,” he says. “My frustration at wanting more from our relationship outweighs the delight of your company. In fact, the more delightful your company is, the more unpleasant it is for me to be in it.”
Even though I’m heartsick, I decide to respect his decision.
As I head back home, I try to persuade myself that he’s right and that it was too hard for me, too. I’m so downtrodden that when I enter my building I hardly hear Adam the doorman telling me I’m a shameless display of genetic deficiency. And he throws in “Vile serpent” for good measure.
I KNOW I should move on with my life, try to forget Peter, but I keep pondering our situation, wishing we could remain in each other’s lives.
And that’s not the only thing I’m tormented by. I’m also saddened by Lily’s relationship with Strad, which hasn’t been going well for quite a while now. Since Vieques, he remained nice enough and adequately loving and affectionate, but there was a faint sadness that hung over him most of the time, that Lily couldn’t help but sense. And he hasn’t mentioned marriage since Vieques.
He sometimes makes insensitive comments, which Lily tries not to take personally because she knows she’s not the only one he’s done this to. She often heard him complain about having to walk on eggshells around various customers, friends, and family members, even way back when she used to work with him in the musical instruments store. When she mentioned this to Georgia, Georgia replied, “Walking on eggshells is what stupid people call the effort required not to offend someone. For smart people, not offending takes no effort.”
Lily knew Strad wasn’t stupid, otherwise she couldn’t have fallen in love with him. But as for his emotional intelligence, it did seem a little higher when she was beautiful.
Lily has gone back to trying to compose a piece that will beautify her permanently. But her heart’s not in it. The prospect of manipulating love through unnatural means doesn’t appeal to her as much as it once did.
Even though she fails to compose that piece, in the process of trying she ends up developing a different and hugely significant musical skilclass="underline" the ability to beautify — and create a desire for — things even when they’re not there.
Yet Lily is barely interested in her new stunning accomplishment. She’s preoccupied by her relationship with Strad.
Georgia, on the other hand, is very affected by Lily’s achievement. “You dwarf me, Lily,” she tells her. “It’s demoralizing. Every time I get over it, you come up with some new and even greater accomplishment that makes all of my accomplishments seem even punier than before. For example, today I was going to tell you guys that last night I finished writing my novel, but now it hardly seems worth mentioning.”
We explode with congratulations and cheer. We ask her if we can read it. She says not yet, but soon. She says she e-mailed it to her agent this morning and wants to wait and hear her reaction.
GEORGIA DECIDES THAT she will throw a party at my apartment in two weeks to cheer Lily and me up. She says she’s also secretly throwing this party for herself to celebrate the completion of her novel and because she hasn’t had a party in a while and it’s overdue.
Georgia has mixed feelings about the parties she throws, which she always holds in my apartment because of space considerations. She invites lots of people from the literary world, yet she has trouble tolerating them. But she can’t help inviting them. It’s a compulsive need — wanting to be in the loop while loathing the loop.
LILY’S RELATIONSHIP WITH Strad continues to go downhill.
There is one thing, especially, that really bothers her.
One night, before they go to bed, she brings it up. “I see you, sometimes, staring at a photo of me while listening to your iPod.”
He looks uncomfortable, feigns not knowing why she’d point that out.
“I know that on your iPod you have the music that changes my appearance. Is that what you were listening to?”
Doing some quick thinking, he answers, “Yes, actually. I find it exciting that my girlfriend is such a virtuoso.”
“Really? It didn’t seem to do much for you that time we went to the Building of Piano Rooms and I — as Lily — beautified the pen. It didn’t make you interested in me romantically.”
“It did do a lot for me. But we’d been friends for so long… I didn’t think of you romantically back then…”
“And now?”
“Let me show you.” He kisses her and takes it from there.
She’s touched by his effort to be nice, but it feels forced.
Lying in bed afterward, she wonders if maybe she’s simply spoiled. After all, up to about a month ago she’d been made love to by a man who thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world. It makes a difference.
She’s grateful at least that he doesn’t ask her to go back to the way things were: with the mask or the music on always. She’d find it humiliating.
But Lily knows their problems have to be faced. Therefore, she decides she will confront him with the beautiful version of herself one last time. She hopes his reaction, whatever it will be, will help her figure out what should be done about their relationship.
So the next day, she takes Strad to the Building of Piano Rooms, pretending it will be fun to redo that old afternoon that didn’t go the way she’d hoped.
At the front desk, Lily asks for the same room as before. It happens to be available. It’s just as small and bare as she remembers it. Strad sits in the white plastic chair, much closer to her than that first time.
For a few minutes, she plays him various short pieces, nothing special. And then, she launches into the piece that beautifies her — the one so familiar to them both.
She watches his face. She can practically see, reflected in his eyes, the hideous mask that is her external appearance lifting from her face.