“Yes,” I said, looking back at him, wondering if this meant he had made those too.
“More than mine?”
I looked back at the sky and said no.
“Why not?”
“Yours are inside a house.”
His face became cold, as if disappointed. He looked away.
I quickly added, “And, your clouds are also more substantial, more dense, some of them, and more … puffy-like.” I made some gestures to illustrate just how puffy and cottony his clouds had struck me. “And their color, also, is more beautiful, more bright, more sharply white.”
He laughed, affectionately I believe, even gratefully.
“Thanks,” he said.
He rowed us back to shore, and we went for a walk in the woods.
We treaded over slightly rough terrain. He led the way, parting the branches, and was considerate about not letting them whip back in my face. A couple of times, his flimsy shirt and pants got caught on some thorns and I helped deliver him. I could see he was not in his element here, like he had been on the pond. But soon we arrived at his element. A river. Along the edge of which we sat.
First moves are an interesting subject. A male friend of mine once told me that the first move between himself and his girlfriend was made when they were sitting on a bench and it became more awkward to not make a move than to make one. Damon and I were sitting on a rock and I waited for the move that would make the situation less awkward rather than more. He must not have shared my outlook, however, because no move was made. I could have done it myself, of course, but wanted to give him a chance to do it first. The evening was still young and I was still optimistic.
“Dinner must have arrived by now,” he said, after a while.
We walked back to the house and went in through the living room’s sliding glass doors. Damon walked straight through to the front door. He unlocked it and entered that horrid, instructionless entrance hall I had waited in earlier. Now waiting for us on the chair and on the floor was what, in a moment, was revealed to me as our dinner, in large paper bags that Damon took to the kitchen, saying he’d be back soon.
I didn’t mind being left to myself, to relax and feel unselfconscious, after a whole afternoon of his intense presence. Few activities in life are as tiring as that of hoping to be liked. I felt like a smile, frozen for hours by politeness until it twitched from exhaustion. My charm muscles, wherever they were located, were aching.
After impersonating a jewel all afternoon and aiming my sparks of brilliance at Damon’s heart, mind, and groin, I was dying to stop.
In case it isn’t clear what sparks of brilliance I’m referring to, I must explain that some people’s attempts at being charming consist in not doing many of the things they would normally do; in other words, repressing large portions of their personality. I was such a person. Taking this route to charm, I realize, is misguided. At least in my case I think it is. I hope it is. But it’s also instinctive. So when I refer to my sparks, I largely mean my few repressed words and gestures. If such a phenomenon were to exist in physics or cosmology — and maybe it does — I imagine it might be called something like: positive absences.
I paced the living room, itching to vent my lack of inhibition before Damon came back. First off, I hummed “The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Music,” to draw pleasure from the room’s reverberation, followed by a tune from “The Double Life of Veronique”—always my favorites when it came to testing the resonance of a hard, bare, and promisingly resonant room. As I walked around, I kicked my heels on the marble parquet and increased the loudness of my humming. I was surprised at how good it was, the reverberation; I had almost expected the clouds to act like carpet, absorbing and ruining the echo.
Still wound up, I ran my fingers along the back of the couch to make sure it was as awfully vinyl as it looked. It was. The kind that likes to stick to your skin. I opened my mouth a little, and my eyes a lot, to give the couch the gaping treatment such an unworthy fabric in such a beautiful living room deserved. At least it was a rough, textured vinyl, so it did not shine. I scraped my fingernails across it, producing a menacing, grating sound. I kept this up a little longer than one would expect.
Having entertained myself sufficiently for now with the couch, I directed my attention to my next object of fascination (other than the clouds, which I didn’t want to harm or dishevel): the musical fountain. I stuck my finger under one of the drops to block its fall. As expected, I pierced a hole in the melody. I watched the drop tremble on my fingertip, fragile and vulnerable, like a tear, crushed it against my neck like perfume.
“A poetic end for a musical drop,” said Damon, watching me from the doorway. “Dinner’s outside.”
I followed him onto the terrace, trying to console myself with the thought: better to have been caught catching one of his drops than using his couch as an emery board.
Outside, a table was set for two. The food had been ordered from a nearby restaurant; a practice he often indulged in, he informed me. A very good restaurant, I decided, after my first bite.
I didn’t like how much I liked him. It frightened me. I didn’t want to be in such a vulnerable position. I was in no mood to suffer over love; that most frivolous yet most potent source of suffering.
I stared at Damon and tried to find defects. I looked for a flaw in his face. The problem was, he looked like a model. I tried to find that unattractive. Some women did. I didn’t see why I couldn’t: that typical charming smile. So … typical of gorgeous men.
The physical plane wasn’t working. Perhaps I’d have more luck on the intellectual one.
For example: Good music makes no sound. What rubbish. Unfortunately, it was not entirely uninteresting rubbish.
Why not then try coming down on his mannerisms. Yes, mannerisms are a good thing to pick on. I searched. His were so … They were perfect, actually.
No. Don’t give up. There had to be a flaw. Try harder. I held my breath and clenched many muscles and stared at him hard, until I felt my eyes bulging.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, just as I found what I was looking for.
“No.”
“You look a little flushed.”
“I don’t feel flushed.”
What I had found was a slight popping out of the jawline on both sides when he chewed. I latched on to that for dear life, as onto a life buoy. But it was a very flimsy buoy that could only keep me afloat while he was chewing; as soon as the slightest wave came along, such as one of Damon’s ordinary charming or surprising comments, the buoy and I would sink. And there were other waves as well, such as the fact that everybody’s jaw does that when they chew. I fought the wave: just because everybody’s jaw does that doesn’t mean it’s not unattractive. I held on to the buoy.
But it and I were no match for him. He was simply so prodigious, in every way. At least in my eyes.
Before dessert, I grew cold.
We moved indoors and sat at the end of a long glass table and ate a floating island. A dessert I had never heard of or seen before, it consisted of a large bowl of warm liquid custard, with whipped egg whites floating in it. After serving me and himself, he pushed the large bowl to the side.
We ate slowly and talked, and I was smoking, and I noticed absentmindedly that my cigarette had never produced so much smoke. So absorbed was I by our conversation that it took me a while to notice that I could barely see Damon’s face behind the smoke. This phenomenon was gradually becoming more pronounced, which I found extremely strange, and I wondered what could be wrong with my cigarette. I was about to remark on it when I realized my cigarette contributed only slightly to the effect. We were not sitting in a cloud of smoke, but in a cloud, period. It must have drifted onto us. I interrupted our conversation to briefly express my delight.