The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg (68 page)

“I guess…” Rosie says. “So, where did she go anyhow?”

“Sorry?” Morgan raises his eyebrows slightly.

Rosie looks at him.

“Oh,” he says. “Business, I suppose.”

“She travels a lot…” Rosie suggests.

Morgan is loftily forbearing, as though he were waiting for a child to conclude a tantrum, but after a moment he concedes. “Some high-end international-hotel concern, I believe. Well—” he looks at Rosie, then away. “And where might James be?”

Where indeed? Jamie didn’t get around to mentioning what she was to do in this contingency. “Actually,” Rosie says, “he’s sick.”

Terror ripples in the depths of Morgan’s beautiful face, and tears spring, astonishingly, into Rosie’s eyes; it’s as if Jamie really were sick. “It’s nothing much, I’m sure,” she says. “We ate at the Golden Calf last night. Big mistake.”

“I see,” Morgan says.

Obviously he’s realized she’s lying. “That’s too bad. Well, do ask him to give me a call if he has a moment. No, never mind, don’t bother.”

“Morgan asked if you want to seal it Wednesday,” Rosie says that night.

“I know,” Jamie says. “He called.”

“Will that take long?” Rosie asks, though she pretty much knows how long it will take, since she and Jamie sealed the other rooms.

Jamie shakes his head. “A couple of hours, maybe. How’s it been going, by the way? Any problems?”

“Problems?” Rosie says. “Painting a line?”

“Well…” Jamie says. “Listen, if you’ve finished, there really isn’t any reason for you to go back tomorrow.”

“I’ve got a bit more to do, anyhow,” Rosie says.

“It’s great you were there when Morgan came by. He won’t show up again, probably.”

A basis! Rosie is thinking—she’ll probably never catch another glimpse of that person. And did he simply assume she’d know
his
name? Of course, the fact, ha-ha, is that she did happen to.

“And in case I haven’t thanked you…This has really been great for me. I’ve gotten a lot done.”

A lot of what? “I’m going to make some tea,” Rosie says. “Want some?”

“No, thanks,” he says. “I want to wash my hair. You got any immediate plans for the tub?”

Rosie wanders into the kitchen. She’s got into the habit of thinking of this as her life, but what is it, really? An accident, a coincidence—nothing. And now Jamie’s letting go.

Already, in fact, she’s being completely colonized by the first person to happen by. Concentrate, she tells herself. Put the water in the kettle, put the kettle on the stove, turn the burner on, reach yourself a tea bag, and drop it in the cup.

This is one good reason why people take care to have a past, Rosie thinks. So their minds are full of stuff—big, heavy things. Anchors, buoys, urns, old statuary, armoires, lots of clutter, lots of buffers, so that some perfect stranger can’t just wander in and use up all the space.

Take a seat, she’d like to say. There, over in the corner, in the shadows with all that old junk. I’m making tea just now; don’t loaf around there in the middle of the room, please. Take a seat in the back, and I’ll be with you when it’s convenient.

Unfortunately, though, he’s a spreading blob. She doesn’t have any shapes to think of him in; she doesn’t know anything about him. She can’t make any observations about him, she can’t have any opinions about him, and she certainly can’t push him out of her mind—he just oozes back around the slammed door.

In fact, it seems to Rosie that all her resistance is just getting him more entrenched. Why not relax a bit? Why think every second about how much she’s thinking about him? Maybe she should just give him full run. Let him lounge around and put his feet up—she’s bound to get sick of it after a while, and throw him out.

“Hey, Rosie—” Jamie calls from the bathroom. “Can I borrow your duck?”

“Help yourself,” Rosie calls back.

Or, one thing that Ian used to do when he got stuck on something was just sit himself down in front of his computer and sort things out.
It’s right there,
he’d say,
in your mind. What’s keeping you hung up? What do you know that you don’t know you know?

“Instrumental meditation,” he’d called it. “A technique.” Taught to him by some simpleton of a therapist he’d boasted about knowing.
Taught
, Rosie thinks.
Technique.
How’s that for something to get taught—making a
list
?

Ludicrous. Still, what’s there to lose? Rosie locates some lined yellow paper in the kitchen, and brings it into Vincent’s room along with a cup of tea. She takes a sip of tea and stares at the piece of paper. Well, you can see why Ian likes that computer of his so much—it’s a crystal ball. All that information swimming around in that blue cyberspace, ready to jump to the right bait and get reeled up to the surface of the screen. Whereas you can be sure nothing’s going to just appear on this piece of paper.

Rosie sees Ian tapping the silent keys to make a list. He’s replaced by Harris, at his screen, sending out the orders that raise up and demolish the invisible empire.

“Hey,” Jamie says, pausing at Vincent’s door, a towel around his neck and his hair dripping wet.

“Which of them makes more money, do you think?” Rosie says.

“Er…” Jamie says.

Oh, great, Rosie thinks. Why not just make a general announcement? That she’s actively thinking about some people who are hardly aware of her existence. That before she’d even laid eyes on them, her mind had gone so far as to form expectations of them, without her permission, and even without her knowledge. “Those people we’re working for. I was just wondering today—which one do you think makes more?”

Jamie shrugs. “You can’t count that kind of money. It’s indivisible. No metal coins, no flappy little bills. It’s abstract. It’s a construct. It’s outer-space gunk. Their bank accounts are just big, mad-scientist thingies, with gunk gurgling around in the tubes. People like that can’t even buy a hot dog on the street.”

“She’s not beautiful,” Rosie says.

“Huh,” Jamie says. “And so?” He sits down on the bed, next to Rosie, and she takes the towel from him to dry his silky hair. “Mmm,” he says. “That feels good.”

True:
And so?
She’s going to miss Jamie one of these days. She misses him now.

“So, why do you think they got married?” Rosie says, stanching a little rivulet of water behind his ear.

“Rosie, I’m surprised at you. ‘Why’—now,
that’s
a question that won’t take you there. Why did they get married? Why does anybody marry anybody instead of anybody else? Why does anybody anything?”

Rosie lowers the towel, thinking.

“Besides, judging by the archaeological evidence, they’re perfect for each other. Don’t stop, don’t stop! The two least interesting people on the planet.”

Also true:
Why
—a completely primitive concept. Still, why
does
anybody anything, Rosie thinks, looking around the next day at the pure, breathing silence of the bedroom. Why does this person want to be with that person rather than with any other? Why did Lexi Feld get together with Arnold Schaefer? Because he was blocking her path? To Rosie neither Lexi nor Arnold ever seemed to have much in the way of attributes, let alone allure. What is it about the mere sight of Jamie that does to Morgan the strange things it does? What could have been so special about Vincent that to this day Jamie never says a word about him? What on earth could it be about some stranger, who does not, in fact, seem particularly interesting, that keeps Rosie’s attention nailed to him? And why
did
he marry that woman?

Lots of people want to have a dog around; others prefer cats. Once in a while, someone goes into the pet store and comes out with a mynah bird or a snake or a miniature African hedgehog. And even about this matter, which should be pretty simple to figure out, what do people say? They say, “It doesn’t shed” or, “You can walk it” or, “You don’t have to walk it”—whatever. In other words, no one has a clue why it’s some particular creature rather than another that causes them to exclaim, “Oh, hey, now—that’s for me!”

Rosie’s hungry, she notices. This whole Thursday has gone by as if it had been poured slowly into sand. It would be nice to have a bite with Jamie tonight, but he’s sure to be at his studio, or with Trevor. No matter. She looks around—still a few smears left to clean up.

She’ll do it tomorrow, though. It’s taken her all day to do about fifteen minutes worth of work. Because when you’re waiting, she thinks, waiting is all you can do.

So much for all the wasted head space. By afternoon of the following day, Rosie has pretty much resigned herself—
really
, she thinks—to the idea that she’s not going to be running into Harris again. Obviously she’s not going to run into him. She hadn’t actually thought she was going to run into him anyway. And she just isn’t.

How stupid this has all been. What had she actually hoped to gain by sacrificing the magic hum of her blood, anyway? Ordinary human experience? Ordinary human experience—something, obviously, only an elephant could survive.

Not a sound in the place other than the creakings of the scaffold as Rosie clambers up and down, the comforting little clicks of the paint-can lids as she removes and replaces them, and the handles of the brushes against the jars of paint and mineral spirits. Tarnished gold veils are beginning to drop through the blue at the window; soon, the planet will turn its back on the day.

In half an hour she’ll be gone. Rosie finishes cleaning up slowly. She could just take the little train back to the apartment. Or she could walk around for a while, stalling in the grimy air, or hang out at a bar, watching the early-evening drunks ricochet between desperation and pointless hope…

The room glitters with cool shadows, like a garden on the last day of summer. She should have used her time here better—her time on this job. On Wednesday, she’ll return with Jamie, and within a few hours everything she’s been doing with her day will be sealed off from her. And then what? In these weeks Jamie’s done some brand-new paintings; in these weeks Jamie’s acquired a brand-new lover.

Rosie goes to wash up and change out of her painting clothes. The silk slip is hanging over the screen, of course, glimmering, winking at her. She turns away, as if she’d encountered in genteel company someone with whom she’d once had a sordid affair.

Just one last look at the view that will cease to be hers, today, the moment she shuts the door of the apartment behind her. Bright days out on the water, indigo nights…Oh, yeah—memory!
Now
Rosie gets it;
memory
—the thing humans get to keep, a little travel kit to bring along with you. A little substitute for eternity. Pathetic. Rosie looks at her hands, her arms, every part of her body she can see that isn’t covered by her dress. No fresh paint, she’s certain. She sits down as gently as possible on the bed, and after a minute or two leans back against the cloud of pillows.

She can see only one sail now, in the darkening blue. Someone out there, gliding farther into the darkness, a hand trailing in the water, edged with light…

Later, Rosie once again finds it impossible to recapitulate in any way that seems trustworthy the thing that happened next—the last, unexpected entrance of Harris.

Unexpected? Of course not. Shocking, yes, but not unexpected. And there it all is, over and over—a wedge of dark where the door is opening, herself against the pillows, his hand resting on the doorframe, his watch flashing against his wrist—as though it were all being reflected in the falling pieces of a shattered mirror. Rosie sits herself up fast, speechless.

They stare at one another. “Not feeling well?” he says.

“No, no—” she says, her heart pounding. “I’ll be fine in a moment—”

“Mmm,” he says. He shakes his head, as if he’d fallen asleep for an instant. “Probably best to be still.” He runs a hand through his black-and-silver hair. “Very pale. Migraine? Do you get migraines?”

“Not often,” Rosie says, truthfully.

“Sometimes tea works,” he says. “They say not, but what do they know? I say it does.”

The kitchen is a million miles away. Of course Rosie can’t even hear Harris there, clattering around, let alone see him. And yet this, too, is something that happens later: watching him search for the teakettle, the cup, the saucer, observing his intent expression as he fills the kettle at the tap, waits for it to boil…

And then he returns, with a pretty little tray. “There,” he says, pleased.

The tray holds a tiny china teapot, the most beautiful cup and saucer Rosie’s ever seen, a paper napkin, a silver spoon, a small silver bowl of sugar, and a little dish containing various sorts of tea bags. “This is not the way it’s done,” Harris says. “I do know that. And, to tell you the truth, there are boxes and boxes of the real thing out there—the stuff in shreds. But all that paraphernalia! The little mesh things…” He presents her with an expression of cheery bewilderment. “I don’t know why we’ve got that stuff, anyhow. Neither of us drinks it. Just to persuade Lupe we’re legit, I suppose. Oh, Christ—lemon.”

“This is perfect,” Rosie says.

“Just as well,” Harris says, sitting down in the little chair. “Probably is no lemon.”

Rosie selects a tea bag and puts it in the cup. She looks up at Harris; he’s watching her. She pours the water out from the teapot, and nearly chokes from the stench of synthetic fruit. Harris frowns worriedly. “O.K.?” he says.

Rosie nods. “Perfect.”

“Things really do fall apart back there when Elizabeth’s away,” he says. “Not that Elizabeth’s all that domestic. But she is very…”

Rosie looks demurely at her teacup.

“…well organized,” he says. “Funny to remember, but there was a time, back in our very first place, when we used to cook a lot. Pent house,
miles
of terrace. That was all back then, when people did that. You wouldn’t remember, probably. Maybe your parents were into it.”