All That Is (33 page)

“You know, I never had the chance to tell you that I’m sorry about what happened,” Anet said. “I mean about my mother and the house. I don’t really know all the details.”

“They’re not worth going into.”

“You don’t hate her?”

“No, no,” he said easily.

He was sitting with her daughter now, to whom he had always been careful not to show too much attention or false affection. He was able now to think freely about her.

“Who is that?” she asked.

It was a painting on the jacket of a book on Picasso that was on the coffee table, a disjointed portrait of eyes and a mouth out of place.

“Marie-Thérèse Walter,” he said.

“Who is Marie-Thérèse Walter?”

“She’s a famous model of Picasso’s. He met her when she was seventeen. He saw her outside a Metro station and gave her his card. He began to paint her and fell in love with her. They had a child. Picasso was much older than she was—I’m leaving out a lot of it—but when he died she committed suicide.”

“How old was she then?”

“Oh, she must have been in her sixties. I think she was born in about 1910. Picasso was 1881. I just read that again the other day.”

“Do you know what Sophie called you? Do you remember Sophie? She called you the professor.”

“Did she? Where is Sophie?”

“She’s at Duke.”

“You know what I have to say to Sophie?”

“What?”

“Oh, well, I don’t really have anything to say to her. Listen, do you want to do something?” he said. “Stay here a minute.”

He went into the kitchen. She could hear the refrigerator door open and after a few moments close. He came back with something in his hand, a small, folded piece of white paper. He put it on the table and began to unfold it. It was a packet with silver foil inside. She watched him open the foil and there was a lump of something dark, like wet tobacco.

“What is it?”

“It’s hash.”

There was the moment like the one at a dance when before taking your partner’s hand for the first time, you know without touching whether he or she can dance or be any good.

“Where did you get it?” she asked calmly.

“From Tony. The tall English fellow. He gave it to me. It’s Moroccan. Shall we try it? You use this little white pipe.”

He started carefully pushing some of the brown lump into the bowl of the pipe.

“Do you do this a lot?”

“No,” he said. “Never.”

“Don’t pack it too tight. You should have said you smoked it all the time.”

“You’d have seen right through me,” he said.

He lit a match and held it close to the bowl, sucking on the stem. Nothing happened. He lit another match and after a few tries drew in a little smoke. He inhaled it and coughed, handing the pipe to her. She drew on it and passed it back to him. They took turns without talking. In a few minutes they were high. He felt a gorgeous well-being and sense of
ascent. He had occasionally smoked grass, not very often, sometimes at dinner parties, sometimes in the library afterwards with the hostess and one or another of the guests. He remembered a dizzying night in a divorcée’s apartment when he’d asked where the bathroom was, and she took him through a number of rooms into hers, her bathroom, and turned on the light and he was in a palace of mirrors, bottles, and creams, brightly lit. There were overlapped towels on the floor.

“Should I leave you alone?” she had said.

“Just for a minute,” he managed to say.

“Are you sure?”

And once he’d been given a couple of joints by a handsome Romanian he happened to meet. He smoked one of them with Eddins in the office, and they were laughing helplessly when Gretchen came in. They thought she had gone home.

“What are you guys doing?” she said. “I know what you’re doing.”

Bowman tried to keep from laughing.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Nothing,” he said and broke out laughing again.

“You two are really stoned,” she said.

This was different. He felt things shimmering, shifting. He looked at her as she drew on the pipe, her brows, the line of her jaw. He was able to observe her closely. She had shut her eyes.

“Are you wearing perfume?” he said.

“Perfume?” she said vaguely.

“You are.”

“No.”

He took the pipe. The hash was almost gone. He drew in and looked to see if there was a glow. He touched the ash. It was cold. They sat for a while in silence.

“How are you?” he said.

She didn’t answer. The TV was playing without sound.

She smiled and tried to but couldn’t express something.

“We should go out,” she said.

“It’s too late. Too late. The museums will be closed. I don’t know if you want to do that anyway.”

“Let’s go out,” she said and stood up.

He tried to focus on the idea.

“We can’t. I’m too high.”

“Nobody will know,” she said.

“All right. If you say so.”

He composed himself. He knew he was incapable of going anywhere.

On the street there were few people. They went a little way down the block. He was too loose.

“No, I don’t want to walk,” he said. “Let’s take a cab.”

It seemed almost immediately that one stopped. As they got in, the driver said,

“Where to?”

“Anet.”

“Yes.”

“Where do you live? You want to go home? Oh,” he said to the driver, “just drive around.”

“Where do you want to go?” the driver said.

“Drive down, no, go across Fifty-Ninth to Park, no, don’t do that. Go to the West Side Highway and go uptown. Then I’ll tell you.”

They sat back as they drove. It was now dark and they were going along the river. On the far side was an almost continuous line of buildings, houses and apartments lit like hives, some of them very big, bigger than he seemed to remember. He was going to explain it, how there used to be nothing aross there, but it was of no interest. Light shone on the surface of the river. He remembered the ride with Christine, the night he first met her. Cars went past them. The necklace of the George Washington Bridge hung like a strand of jewels.

“Where are we going?” she said. “We’ve been driving and driving.”

He told the driver to turn around.

“You’re right, that’s enough of this,” he said to her. “Are you hungry?”

“Yes.”

After a while he said,

“Driver, get off at Ninety-Sixth Street, will you? Go over to Second Avenue. We’ll go to a place I know,” he said to her.

They finally stopped at Elio’s. He managed to pay the cab driver, counting the money out twice. Inside there was a crowd. The bartender said hello. The tables in front that were the best were all filled. An editor
he knew saw him and wanted to talk. The owner, whom he knew very well, told them they would have to wait fifteen or twenty minutes for a table. He said they would eat at the bar. This is Anet Vassilaros, he said.

The bar was equally busy. The bartender, Alberto—he knew him—spread a large white napkin on the bar in front of each of them and put down knives and forks and a folded napkin.

“Something to drink?” he asked.

“Anet, do you want anything? No,” he decided. “I don’t think so.”

He ordered a glass of red wine, however, and she drank some of it. Conversations were going on all around them. The backs of people. He was nothing like her father, she was thinking, he was in a different world. They sat side by side. People were edging past. The bartender was taking orders for drinks from the waiters, making them, and ringing up checks. He came towards them holding two dishes of food. The owner came while they were eating and apologized for not having been able to seat them.

“No, this was better,” Bowman said. “Did I introduce you?”

“Yes. Anet.”

The editor stopped by them on his way out. Bowman didn’t bother to introduce him.

“You haven’t introduced us,” the editor said.

“I thought you knew one another,” Bowman said.

“No, we don’t.”

“I can’t do it right now,” Bowman said.

The owner came back and sat on a stool beside them. Things were becoming a little quieter. It had been a busy night—she hadn’t had time to eat dinner herself. People leaving paused to say good night.

“Let me buy you an after-dinner drink,” she said. “Do you like rum? We got in some really good rum. Let me get you some. Alberto, where’s that bottle of the good rum?”

The rum was strong but extremely smooth. Anet didn’t drink any and the three of them sat talking for a while. More people came in, and the owner left them. They went back to the apartment. They had left the party, and Anet curled up on the couch. He gently removed her shoes. He felt colonial for some reason, as if in Kenya or Martinique, the heat of the rum. She was asleep. He felt completely assured. He gathered up
her legs, put an arm beneath her, and carried her into the bedroom. She hadn’t protested but as he laid her on the bed he felt she was not asleep. Nevertheless, he went out of the room for a few moments. He looked at the couch where she had been lying. It was all happening, it seemed, by itself. He went back into the bedroom and quietly, after taking off his own shoes, lay down beside her. Before he could consider anything else she half-turned and rolled against him, like a child. He put his arm around her and began slowly caressing her back, slipping his hand beneath her blouse. The feel of her bare skin was glorious. He wanted to touch her everywhere. Their heads were close as they lay there, and after a while they began to kiss.

From then it became more intense and also uncertain. He had pulled up her skirt rather than trying to remove it. Her legs were incredibly youthful. She was wearing panties and he began slipping them off, but she resisted. He caressed her. She was responsive, but when he tried once again she pressed her legs together.

“No,” she said. “Please.”

She moved from side to side and pushed his hand away, but he was insistent. Finally, not without relief, she gave in. She became his partner in it, more or less, and at length felt him climax, not realizing it at the time. They lay quietly together.

“You all right?”

“Yes.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

After a few moments,

“Where’s the bathroom?” she asked.

When she came back she had taken off her skirt. She got in bed again.

“You’re a great thing,” he said.

“I probably disappointed you.”

“No,” he said, “far from it. You didn’t disappoint me. You wouldn’t know how to.”

“Why is that?”

“You just wouldn’t,” he said and after a pause, “I have to go away later this week.”

It was a sudden inspiration. It came about simply.

“I have to go to Paris,” he said.

“Nice.”

“For three or four days. Have you ever been there?”

“When I was a little girl we went.”

“Do you want to come?”

“To Paris? Oh, I can’t.”

“Why is that? You’re not doing anything except looking for a job.”

“I’m supposed to go out to my mother’s this weekend.”

“Just say you can’t. Say that you have an interview.”

“An interview,” she said.

“Say that you’ll come the following week.”

Lying this close he could feel her complicity.

“Call her tomorrow and it won’t be at the last minute. You’ve done things like this before.”

“Not really. I wouldn’t want her to find out.”

“She won’t.”

Going home the next morning she wanted to shower and change clothes. She thought of what she had done, fucked her mother’s former boyfriend, Philip. She hadn’t intended to—she hadn’t seen him in almost four years—but somehow it had happened. It had been a surprise. She felt an illicit pleasure and entirely grown up.

They landed in the early morning and from the moment they got off the plane even the air itself seemed different, perhaps it was her imagination. They had only cabin baggage and there was no wait, the customs men lazily waved them through. In the big arrival hall while he changed some money, Anet noticed almost with surprise that all the newspapers were in French. They went out the door and found a taxi.

Paris, the legendary Paris, they were driving towards it at eight in the morning on a highway that became more and more filled with traffic as they drove. They didn’t bother to talk. They sat back in the seat as they had done the first night. His suit was slightly creased, his collar open at the neck. He sat looking out of the window like an actor after a performance. She was a little worn from the flight as well though excited. Occasionally they exchanged a word or two.

After a while the outlying houses of the
banlieues
began to appear, first separate and apart and then becoming groups and solid blocks with shops of some kind and bars. In long lines of cars they inched into the city and then sped along the streets. They went to a hotel on rue Monsieur le Prince down from the Odèon. The restaurant where he had once seen Jean Cocteau on his very first trip to Paris was up at the
place
. In the other direction was the boulevard with all that was going on.

Their room was on an upper floor and looked down on a large, enclosed space that was actually a school playground. Past the roofs at the far end were other roofs and chimneys and the myriad small streets, some of which he knew. They stood at the floor-length window, which had an ironwork railing outside.

“Seem familiar to you?”

“Oh, no. I was only five years old when I was here.”

“Are you tired? Are you hungry?”

“I am a little hungry.”

“Go ahead and get ready. I’ll take you to a wonderful place for breakfast.”

In a big brasserie on boulevard Montparnasse, half-empty in the morning, they had orange juice, croissants, fresh butter, jam, and the bread that is found only in France, along with coffee. From there they went walking to Saint-Sulpice and down the small streets, Sabot, Dragon, where the shops were just opening like flowers, to the famous Deux Magots though she had never heard of it. It was a beautiful day. They sat and had coffee and went on along narrow sidewalks with slender iron bollards, brushing shoulders with students and older women, down to the river to look at Notre Dame. He had shown her only a part of what he knew.