"How" – she stalls – "sensible." She stalls again. "How, um, practical."
Lunch is alternately a burden, a puzzle that needs to be solved, an obstacle, and then it floats effortlessly into the realm of relief and I'm able to give a skillful performance – my overriding intelligence tunes in and lets me know that it can sense how much she wants me, but I hold back, uncommitted. She's also holding back, but flirting nonetheless. She has made a promise by asking me to lunch and I panic, once the squid is served, certain that I will never recover unless it's fulfilled. Other men notice her as they pass by our table. Sometimes I coolly bring my voice down to a whisper. I'm hearing things – noise, mysterious sounds, inside my head; her mouth opens, closes, swallows liquid, smiles, takes me in like a magnet covered with lipstick, mentions something involving fax machines, twice. I finally order a J&B on the rocks, then a cognac. She has mint-coconut sorbet. I touch, hold her hand across the table, more than a friend. Sun pours into Vanities, the restaurant empties out, it nears three. She orders a glass of chardonnay, then another, then the check. She has relaxed but something happens. My heartbeat rises and falls, momentarily stabilizes. I listen carefully. Possibilities once imagined plummet. She lowers her eyes and when she looks back at me I lower mine.
"So," she asks. "Are you seeing anyone?"
"My life is essentially uncomplicated," I say thoughtfully, caught off guard.
"What does that mean?" she asks.
I take a sip of cognac and smile secretly to myself, teasing her, dashing her hopes, her dreams of being reunited.
"Are you seeing anyone, Patrick?" she asks. "Come on, tell me.'
Thinking of Evelyn, I murmur to myself, "Yes."
"Who?" I hear her ask.
"A very large bottle of Desyrel," I say in a faraway voice, suddenly very sad.
"What?" she asks, smiling, but then she realizes something and shakes her head. "I shouldn't be drinking."
"No, I'm not really," I say, snapping out of it, then, not of my own accord, "I mean, does anyone really see anyone? Does anyone really see anyone else? Did you ever see me? See? What does that mean? Ha! See? Ha! I just don't get it. Ha!" I laugh.
After taking this in, she says, nodding; "That has a certain kind of tangled logic to it, I suppose."
Another long pause and I fearfully ask the next question. "Well, are you seeing anyone?"
She smiles, pleased with herself, and still looking down, admits, with incomparable clarity, "Well, yes, I have a boyfriend and–"
"Who?"
"What?" She looks up.
"Who is he? What's his name?"
"Robert Hall. Why?"
"With Salomon Brothers?"
"No, he's a chef."
"With Salomon Brothers?"
"Patrick, he's a chef. And co-owner of a restaurant."
"Which one?"
"Does it matter?"
"No, really, which one?" I ask, then under my breath, "I want to cross it out of my Zagat guide."
"Its called Dorsia," she says, then, "Patrick, are you okay?"
Yes, my brain does explode and my stomach bursts open inwardly – a spastic, acidic, gastric reaction; stars and planets, whole galaxies made up entirely of little white chef hats, race over the film of my vision. I choke out another question.
"Why Robert Hall?" I ask. "Why him?"
"Well, I don't know," she says, sounding a little tipsy. "I guess it has to do with being twenty-seven and–"
"Yeah? So am I. So is half of Manhattan. So what? That's no excuse to marry Robert Hall."
"Marry?" she asks, wide-eyed, defensive. "Did I say that?"
"Didn't you say marry?"
"No, I didn't, but who knows." She shrugs. "We might."
"Ter-rific."
"As I was saying, Patrick" – she glares at me, but in a playful way that makes me sick – "I think.you know that, well, time is running out. That biological clock just won't stop ticking," she says, and I'm thinking: My god, it took only two glasses of chardonnay to get her to admit this? Christ, what a lightweight. "I want to have children."
"With Robert Hall?" I ask, incredulous. "You might as well do it with Captain Lou Albano, for Christ sakes. I just don't get you. Bethany."
She touches her napkin, looking down and then out onto the sidewalk, where waiters are setting up tables for dinner. I watch them too. "Why do I sense hostility on your part, Patrick?" she asks softly, then sips her wine.
"Maybe because I'm hostile," I spit out. "Maybe because you sense this."
"Jesus, Patrick," she says, searching my face, genuinely upset. "I thought you and Robert were friends."
"What?" I ask. "I'm confused."
"Weren't you and Robert friends?"
I pause, doubtful. "Were we?"
"Yes, Patrick, you were."
"Robert Hall, Robert Hall, Robert Hall," I mutter to myself, trying to remember. "Scholarship student? President of our senior class?" I think about it a second longer, then add, "Weak chin?"
"No, Patrick," she says. "The other Robert Hall."
"I'm confusing him with the other Robert Hall?" I ask.
"Yes, Patrick," she says, exasperated.
Inwardly cringing, I close my eyes and sigh. "Robert Hall. Not the one whose parents own half of, like, Washington? Not the one who was" – I gulp – "captain of the crew team? Six feet?"
"Yes," she says. "That Robert Hall."
"But…" I stop.
"Yes? But what?" She seems prepared to wait for an answer.
"But he was a fag," I blurt out.
"No, he was not, Patrick," she says, clearly offended.
"I'm positive he was a fag." I start nodding my head.
"Why are you so positive?" she asks, not amused.
"Because he used to let frat guys – not the ones in my house – like, you know, gang bang him at parties and tie him up and stuff. At least, you know, that's what I've heard," I say sincerely, and then, more humiliated than I have ever been in my entire life, I confess, "Listen, Bethany, he offered me a… you know, a blow job once. In the, um, civics section of the library."
"Oh my god," she gasps, disgusted. "Where's the check?"
"Didn't Robert Hall get kicked out for doing his thesis on Babar? Or something like Babar?" I ask. "Babar the elephant? The, oh Jesus, French elephant?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Listen to me," I say. "Didn't he go to business school at Kellogg? At Northwestern, right?"
"He dropped out," she says without looking at me.
"Listen." I touch her hand.
She flinches and pulls back.
I try to smile. "Robert Hall's not a fag–"
"I can assure you of that," she says a tad too smugly. How can anyone get indignant over Robert Hall? Instead of saying "Oh yeah, you dumb sorry bitch" I say soothingly, "I'm sure you can," then, "Tell me about him. I want to know how things stand with the two of you," and then, smiling, furious, full of rage, I apologize. "I'm sorry."
It takes some time but she finally relents and smiles back at me and I ask her, once again, "Tell me more," and then, under my breath, smiling a rictus at her, "I'd like to slice open your beaver." The chardonnay has mellowed her, so she softens and talks freely.
I think about other things while she describes her recent past: air, water, sky, time, a moment, a point somewhere when I wanted to show her everything beautiful in the world. I have no patience for revelations, for new beginnings, for events that take place beyond the realm of my immediate vision. A young girl, a freshman, I met in a bar in Cambridge my junior year at Harvard told me early one fall that "Life is full of endless possibilities." I tried valiantly not to choke on the beer nuts I was chewing while she gushed this kidney stone of wisdom, and I calmly washed them down with the rest of a Heineken, smiled and concentrated on the dart game that was going on in the corner. Needless to say, she did not live to see her sophomore year. That winter, her body was found floating in the Charles River, decapitated, her head hung from a tree on the bank, her hair knotted around a low-hanging branch, three miles away. My rages at Harvard were less violent than the ones now and it's useless to hope that my disgust will vanish – there is just no way.