I couldn’t call the girlfriend up, and there was no way of asking Jasper for her phone number without his taking out a restraining order against me, so one morning I woke early and staked out his hut, waiting for her to leave, and when she did I trailed her. The frequency of their relations, if not the seriousness, I was able to ascertain by the adroit way she navigated through the labyrinth. I walked behind her, watching her curvaceous body swing this way and that. As I followed her, I wondered how you go about addressing someone’s treachery. I decided you just come out with it.
“Hey, you!” I said.
She turned quickly and gave me the kind of smile that can really castrate a man. “Hello, Mr. Dean.”
“Don’t give me that. I have something to say to you.”
She looked at me with all the sweet, innocent patience in the world. I launched right into it. “I saw you the other day.”
“Where?”
“Kissing someone I didn’t father.”
She let out an uncertain gulp of air and lowered her eyes. “Mr. Dean,” she said, but that’s all she said.
“So what have you got to say for yourself? Are you going to tell Jasper, or am I?”
“There’s no reason to tell Jasper. The thing is, we used to go out together, and I’ve had a hard time forgetting about him, and I thought…well, it doesn’t matter what I thought, but he doesn’t want me. And I don’t want him anymore. And I do love Jasper. I just…Please don’t tell him. I’ll break up with him, but I won’t tell him.”
“I don’t want you to break up with him. I don’t care if you’re my son’s girlfriend or not. But if you are, you can’t cheat on him. And if you do, you have to tell him. Look- let me tell you a story. One time I was in love with my brother’s girlfriend. Her name was Caroline Potts. Hang on, maybe I’d better start at the beginning. People always want to know what Terry Dean was like as a child. They expect tales of kiddie violence and corruption in the heart of an infant. They imagine a miniature criminal crawling around the playpen perpetrating acts of immorality in between feedings. Ridiculous! Was Hitler goose-stepping all the way to his mother’s breast?”
“Mr. Dean, I have to go.”
“Oh, well, I’m glad we cleared that up,” I said, and as she walked away, I couldn’t work out for the life of me what we had cleared up, if anything.
Later that night Jasper walked in on Anouk and me in bed. He flipped out. I don’t know why it caused him such profound embarrassment- maybe the Oedipal project is most effective in broken families such as ours; the son’s desire to kill the father and fuck the mother is less repulsive an idea if it is the mother-substitute the boy desires to sleep with. As if to confirm my revolting theory, Jasper acted very hurt and even furious. I suppose at some point in life we give in to a senseless outburst that serves to rob us of all credibility, and this was Jasper’s. There was no logical reason why he should oppose this occasional physical and sweaty union of Anouk’s and mine, and he knew it too, but the next thing he came and told me was that he was moving out. We stood in silence for a minute. It was a large minute, not long but wide and cavernous.
I smiled. I felt the weight of my smile. It was exceedingly heavy.
His exit threatened to last a century but was over surprisingly quickly. After he said, “I’ll phone you,” I listened to the furious song of his footsteps retreating and I wanted to call him back and guilt-trip him into staying in contact with me.
He was gone.
I was alone.
My presence weighed as heavily on me as my concrete smile.
So! He’s left me in my dark crevice, in my solitary whirlwind. Children are a complete failure, aren’t they? I don’t know how people can derive any lasting satisfaction out of them.
I couldn’t believe he was gone.
My son!
The sperm that got away!
My failed abortion!
I stepped outside and looked at the stars tattooed on the night sky. It was one of those magnetic nights when you feel everything is either drawn to your body or is repelled by it. All this time I had thought my son was striving to be my mirror opposite, but he wasn’t- he had become my polar opposite instead, and that had sent him careering away.
A week later I felt lost in a dark and heavy cloud. Anouk hadn’t turned up for a couple of days and I sat in her studio, surrounded by plaster genitalia, feeling deeply ashamed because I was bored. What right does a dying man have to be bored? Time was killing me and I retaliated by killing time. Jasper was gone; Anouk had abandoned me. The only person I had left was Eddie, but I really could stand him only for short bursts. It’s a shame you can’t go out and see people for just ten minutes. That’s all the human contact I need to carry me through life for three days- then I need ten minutes more. But you can’t invite someone over for ten minutes. They stay and stay and never leave, and I always have to say something jarring like “You go now.” For many years I tried the favorite, “I won’t keep you any longer,” or “I don’t want to take up any more of your time,” but that never worked. There are far too many people who don’t have anything to do and have nowhere to go and who would like nothing better than to squander their whole lives chatting. I’ve never understood it.
When I heard Anouk’s voice calling my name, a gust of pure joy blew through my heart and I shouted, “I’m here! In the studio!” and I felt the pulse of sexual desire fire up. At once I had the imprudent notion that I should take off my clothes. I hardly even remember peeling them off, I was in such a fervor for union, and by the time she came to the doorway I was fully naked, beaming at her. At first I didn’t understand the frown on her face; then I thought about how I’d been lurking in ambush among the world’s largest collection of genitals, and my own, by comparison, didn’t compare. In my defense, the genitals around me were not to scale.
Then she said, “Um, I’m not alone.” And who should stick his impeccable head through the doorway but Oscar Hobbs.
In a testament to his unshakable coolness, he launched right into it. “I have some news for you,” he said. “I’d like to help you realize one of your ideas.”
I felt about to either shatter or freeze into a solid block. “For God’s sake, why?” I said briskly, then, “Which one?”
“I thought we’d discuss it. Which one would you most like to see realized?”
Good question. I had no clue. I closed my eyes, took a long breath, and dove into my brain. I swam down deep, and in the space of a minute I must have picked up and discarded over a hundred silly schemes. Then I found the one I wanted- an idea with handles. My eyelids sprang open.
“I’d like to start making everyone in Australia a millionaire,” I announced.
“Smart choice,” he said, and I understood immediately that we understood each other. “How do you intend to do that?”
“Trust me. I’ve got it all worked out.”
“Trust you?”
“Obviously, since you’re a major player in a multinational conglomerate, I can’t trust you. So you’ll have to trust me. When it’s time, I’ll tell you the details.”
Oscar gave Anouk the briefest of looks before his eyes returned to me.
“OK,” he said.
“OK? Wait a minute- are you serious about this?”
“Yes.”
In the awkward silence that followed this improbable turn of events, I noticed how the customarily expressionless Oscar was looking at Anouk as if he were struggling against something in his nature. What did it mean? Had Anouk promised him sexual favors? Had she made some strange, unpleasant pact for my benefit? The niggling suspicion compromised my sudden success. That’s how it always is- you never get a complete victory; there are always strings attached. Still, I didn’t hesitate to accept his offer. That was followed by another unexpected slug in the guts, the crushing look of disillusionment on Anouk’s face, as if by accepting Oscar’s offer I had proved myself to be less than she imagined. That I couldn’t understand. This was her idea, wasn’t it?