The Bookstore (41 page)

“Stop it.”

“I don’t want to stop it. I want you and me to discuss those perfect breasts. Did you like them?”

“They were very nice.”

“I am going back for more napkins.”

He does. I sigh.

He comes back. He asks me how my work is going. I begin to tell him that I have nearly finished the PowerPoint to go with the paper. His face takes on a dreamy aspect.

“Mitchell.”

He looks a question.

“Did you ask me about my work so that I would talk, and you could think about that girl’s breasts?”

“Yes. Yes. Esme? I love how you get me. I love it.”

“That’s nice. But there is a better way. If you want to think about the breasts, sit here and think about them all by yourself. You don’t need me for this.”

I stand up, sling my bag on my shoulder, raise my hand in farewell. He leans back in his seat, grins.

“You’re so wrong. You’re the point of the whole exercise.”

A CHAT MESSAGE
comes through around ten
P.M
., as I am studying in my apartment. It is from Mitchell. It says, —I got her number

—Whose number?

—The girl

—In the coffee shop?

—Yes, ma’am.

—Good for you

—I want her

I am suddenly aware of all my veins, of the fact that they are a network all over and through me, so if my blood goes cold, all of me goes cold. It is always on the periphery of my relationship with Mitchell, that there will be another girl, that I will not be enough for him. My heart is pounding. I must not be long, must not let him think that I have gone cold, or that my heart is pounding.

—Then have her.

—I want her with you.

I gasp now, which just goes to show that gasps, which before this moment I always believed had an element of performance in them, can be real and unforced expressions of shock.

—Are you there?

—Yes.

—Do you understand? That I would like to have sex with you and Elise together?

I think,
Elise? Esme and Elise?

—Do you know her?

—I know her now. I went up to her after you left, and explained.

—Explained?

—Yes. I told her that we are engaged. I told her that you are pregnant, and that is making you very, very horny. And that we both found her very attractive.

—You didn’t say that. I didn’t find her attractive, Mitchell.

—Yes, you did—I saw it in your eyes. You were turned on by her breasts too.

—I wasn’t.

I pause. I sound so
dowdy
. And they were so round, so creamy white, so flawless. Like a Titian.

I write:

—I just have a very highly developed aesthetic sense.

—As do I. I also have a very highly developed erotic sense. In fact, I have buckets of eroticism. Buckets of it.

—Buckets and eroticism don’t go together.

Mitchell is typing. Mitchell has entered text.
I wait.

—I want to watch you touch her. I want you both to be completely naked in front of me. I want her to kiss your beautiful belly. You will caress her perfect breasts.

He then lists all the things I am to do to her, and she to me, with a precision that is impressive, although I think he overdoes the adverbs. Greedily, for example.

—Say yes, Esme, say yes. Stretch yourself towards this; embrace it. Don’t shy away, don’t say you can’t possibly, because you’re English. Sexuality is a sliding scale. Just type three letters. Type yes. Say it. Yes, yes, I will. Yes.

My fingers are on the keyboard. I am turned on by what he is writing. The shock and the eroticism merge and mingle. The shock is the eroticism. The transgression is the point.

I type Y-e-s to see what it looks like on the screen, but I do not
send it. I look at it, there, the “Yes,” quivering in the comment bar, between being and nonbeing. I backspace it into nothingness and type “no” without a capital, and send it.

There is a silence. The italics do not say that Mitchell is typing.

—I’m sorry, Mitchell, I just could not do it.

Mitchell van Leuven is no longer online.

He can make me feel desolate in seconds. I think of calling him, but it is too abject; I will not. I think instead of going to bed with my toothbrush, but that’s too depressing considering the realms of sexual experimentation I’ve just refused. When the chat message appeared, I was in the middle of reading an interview with Patrick Procktor before he became old and serious (prior to which he was young and serious). I’ll just carry on with that.

The next day, I text Mitchell to say I would like to see him, and a reply comes back after what I imagine is a carefully timed delay, saying that he is planning to spend a quiet night marking papers. I wish he was in front of me so I could slap him.

However right I am, however wrong he is, I spend far too much of the day wondering if I could do it, and why I said no. Am I just backing away from experience? Am I too conservative, am I bourgeois rather than aristocratic? Was I dishonest as well as unadventurous to say no?

I call up the chat and read it again. Over and over, I imagine saying yes, giving myself to the sensuality of it, slipping into it as easily as slipping between cool white sheets. But then I imagine watching as Mitchell caresses that girl’s body, and I can’t. And what happens afterwards?
Well, Elise, that was awfully nice, thanks very much, see you round.

But does that leave me saying no to life? The everlasting no?

For my dinner, in a momentous departure from my normal ordered world, I eat a pint of Stonyfield French vanilla yogurt with cream on the top, followed by most of a packet of those thin ginger cookies that are shaped like flowers. While I eat them, I read
W
magazine. After that, I have a caffeinated coffee, the first in months. It tastes wonderful.

I have a shower after dinner. At about eight thirty, I open my lovely American closet and get out my mackintosh. It is knee-length, pale blue, with a Peter Pan collar and enormous pale blue buttons. I bought it because I thought it had a Jackie Kennedy flavor.

I take off all of my clothes, all of them, and then I put on the mackintosh. The lining is cool and slick against my skin. I button it up to the top and put on a pair of high-heeled shoes.

I walk to the subway.

I didn’t bring a book, I left them all behind. I wait for the local at 116th Street, it comes, I get on it, sit down next to a woman. The man opposite is looking at me. Ordinarily I would look away; now I force myself to look back at him. I say to him with my mind,
Underneath this coat, I am stark naked. Yes. Really. It’s just the coat and the shoes
.

He’s the one who looks away. I feel a little rejected.

At Times Square I have to go up and down lots of steps. I hope I don’t trip. I take the Q train, and this time there are no seats. I am jostled, I stand with everyone else, holding the pole.

The secret of it is thrilling. I feel deliciously wicked, subversive, powerful. Everyone else is definitely wearing all their clothes. How boring.

When I get to Sutton Place, I press the button for Mitchell’s apartment, and it is only then, once I have pressed and I wait in the silence, that it flashes into my mind that he is there, and that he is there with Elise, in some sort of balletic and performative erotic congress. I feel every cell that was keyed up to the bursting point suddenly droop. I am not the epitome of sexual daring; I am jealous and ordinary, just a girl in a blue mac.

The buzzer buzzes. Mitchell’s voice, offhandedly questioning. It does not sound as if it was interrupted from astonishing sex. I get buzzed in. In the lift, the keying up begins again. There is a mirror. I look quite pretty.

I stand in the tiny lobby of his apartment for a second to collect myself. There are two huge pottery elephants, a palm. I raise
my hand to knock on the inner door as he opens it. He is standing there, looking pleased to see me, looking very handsome.

I step forward, and kiss him full on the mouth. Then I whisper into his ear.

“Underneath this coat, I am absolutely and completely naked.” I did mean to just stand and unbutton, but I changed my mind in favor of the whisper.

Mitchell takes a step back from me, looks me up and down, locks my gaze with his.

Then he says, loudly, without turning his head away, “Mother, Esme’s here. Would you pour her a drink?”

Olivia appears from the sitting room.

“Esme, how charming to see you,” she says. I am given her cool kiss.

“You look a little overheated,” says Mitchell, wickedly. “Is it warm out?”

“Yes,” says Olivia, “Yes, Esme, do take off your coat and come through. I think there is some tonic water in the fridge; would you like some? Or perhaps just water? Have you eaten?”

“Just water, please,” I say, “I—I am not stopping. I was just passing.”

Nobody just passes Sutton Place.

“I came,” I say, “to borrow some
New Yorker
s. Because they will make the finishing touches to my paper—I was thinking that having a look through your old
New Yorker
s would help me with what I am trying to say.”

“And what are you trying to say?” Mitchell asks. He lifts his eyebrows.

“That—it is about Lacan, in fact, and the privacy options on Facebook—the idea of feeling yourself under the possible gaze of someone you can’t see, about the possibility of there being someone looking at you that you don’t see, nor even know—that we are aware of how we have access to power only through male power—how that is constituted on Facebook . . .”

Olivia comes back with the glass of water.

“Cornelius is on Facebook,” she says.

“And how do the
New Yorker
s contribute to your paper?” asks Mitchell.

“The cartoons,” I say, though that is just nonsense. “But more the adverts.”

“Interesting. But surely fashion magazines, or even pornography, would be better targets for your attention? And I am afraid I am all out of those.”

“Mitchell, if you are going to ask her these questions, at least let her take off her coat.”

“Yes. Esme. Take off your coat.”

“Thank you, but I—I am on a very tight deadline. Mrs. van Leuven—Olivia—it is nice to see you . . .”

“Yes; I hope we will see you both in Sag Harbor again shortly? Beeky is going to be there in a couple of weeks, I think.”

Mitchell walks away towards the bathroom and comes back with a sizable pile of
New Yorker
s. I clasp them to my chest, and nod a good-bye to them both.

The lift comes. I expect Mitchell to engineer himself into coming down with me, but he doesn’t move.

“Good luck with the paper,” he says. His face is alight with unholy laughter.

I am in the lift again, and this time I am leaning against the mirror, not looking into it.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I
give the paper. For the few days before it I am wholly focused on it. When I finally stand up before the other art history graduates, as well as Mitchell, who is dutifully sitting at the front, I realize that I have written something that is too close to me, that is too raw, too felt—I am sending out each word laden with myself. Here I am. This is all of me. All they want is a competent academic paper—they are getting a self-absorbed essence that is both gift and obligation. It is too late to change it and give them something that doesn’t reveal anything. They’ll notice if I read Robert Hughes out and pretend it is me. The thing I have to remember is that I am the only person who will care that I am giving myself instead of a paper. Nobody else will pay any attention.