7
Linda and I drive back to the motel. As we stand at the back stairway, as she’s about to say goodbye and head up the stairs that lead to the second floor, that’s when her friends come out. I meet the other girl and the guy. They’ve been worried, but now they’re smiling and friendly, glad to meet this new fellow, named Jack, who she introduces.
They all seem nice enough but I’m not saying hello. And the reason I’m not is that I’m wondering who they really are and what they know about Anne. I’m not saying, “Nice to meet you,” because I’m asking them questions. I’ve looked at the car, with its California license plate, but I still haven’t convinced myself it isn’t my car.
I ask them about the gas station in New Jersey. They tell me they’ve never been there. I ask them why they’re driving separate cars, and the man — the other woman is quiet — tells me, in a British accent, that they’re taking a car to his mother, that it’s his mother’s car and they’re driving it for her.
Standing there in the middle of the stairway, I’m vaguely aware that I’m speaking too loudly, with too much excitement, but I can’t help it. I’m seeing them across some kind of gap, and because it’s my gap, they don’t quite understand. They seem to be honest, friendly, good-looking people telling me about their trip, and the more they talk, the more I realize they’re actually telling me the truth.
And thank god for envy, because without it I could easily let their honesty open my eyes. I could very easily believe that the car is not my car, and convince myself of that. It’s amazing how little attention I’d actually given my car when it was mine. It was just a car. Nothing I took the time to notice really, so that now, faced with my lack of awareness, I’m wishing I’d lived a little differently. If I had I might know. And because I don’t know, I feel lost. I have no idea what I’m doing, only that I have to keep doing it. I started with a belief that used to be mine, and now that belief is a habit so I keep it alive.
In my, not heart or mind, but in my sadness and my desperation, and my desire to keep my life intact, I can’t believe them. And at the same time I can’t not believe them. I’m caught in the gap of envy, between what I want to be happening and what actually is. And what I want is surety. No negative capability for me. I want what they have. I envy them their ability to move forward with ease and confidence. Although they’re not all Americans, they have the confidence and complacence of Americans, the attitude of ownership that makes them seem American. And since I’m also American, I want the same set of sureties. Although I despise the attitude, I want the kind of confidence which might protect me from the desire for things to be different. And I don’t feel I have it.
They’re talking to me and saying things to me and I’m making appropriate responses. There’s still the gap between where I am (with the well-intentioned people) and where I want to be (with my belief that they’re the cause of my pain), but after a while, maintaining that gap is just too difficult. Without knowing it and without intending it, I step out of the limbo of that gap, break through the membrane between what I want to believe and what is there. These people are there and I see what they are, and however briefly, I see that they’re not the lovers of Anne or the abductors of Anne. I see, through my own needs and desires, to them.
“Are you staying in Lexington?” I say, and the man, whose name is Geoff, says that they’re driving on. To Colorado. “Where in Colorado?” I ask, and he tells me they have some friends outside of Boulder. “Really?” I say. “That’s where I’m going.”
“Maybe we’ll see you,” he says, and they all nod, and I tell them sure, maybe so.
And then I let them go. In my mind I let go of the idea that the maroon car is my car, and that these people are somehow my enemies. There’s a difference between wanting what they have and wanting them not to have it, and I say good night.
I go back to my room. I lie on my bed, my feet crossed, looking up at the plaster of the ceiling. I stare at the cracks in the plaster, seeing the branching lines become like hieroglyphs, and as my eyes defocus, the picture formed by the lines becomes more and more abstract, and after a while the lines are gone and even the ceiling is gone, and I see, in my mind, the gas station in New Jersey.
I see Anne, pulling up in Chaucer, bending forward, looking at me from the driver’s seat. I’m coming out of the convenience store. She’s sitting in the car, her hands on the steering wheel, and then suddenly there’s a blur in my peripheral vision. A dark car, the sound of brakes, and the car driving by. I remember cursing the driver for coming so close, for possibly hitting my car. I remember checking the side of the car, thinking they might have scraped it as they passed. I remember Anne’s face, looking up at me through the window.
In the morning, as is my habit, I part the curtains to check on the two parked cars in the parking lot. Both the cars are gone.
I make coffee at a miniature coffeemaker in the room, and then I get dressed. I set my room key on the television, go to my own little car, and as I leave the circular road and drive to the highway entrance I run into a traffic jam. I get out, walk past the idling cars in the street, and there, at the front of the line of cars, is a procession, a procession of children dressed in sparkling costumes, some as animals, some as gods or goddesses. A portable music device is playing dance music, and the children have learned the steps and they’re dancing to the music. Parents are walking alongside, watching, and more than just parents, the whole community is participating in the event. Even I, standing by a stall with a woman selling Mexican food, am part of it. I buy a taco from the woman, and when the dance is over I get back in my car. Everyone else is driving away, going where they have to be going, and so that’s what I do.
IV. (Luxuria)
1
Human beings have a barrier, a membrane that separates our everyday life from our sexual life. I call it the sexual membrane. It’s a protective device, enabling us to function in a day-to-day way during the day, but also, by lifting it up or pulling it aside, a sexual, passionate part of ourselves is also available. Anne had such a thin membrane it was sometimes hard to tell what side she was on. Not that she was always thinking about sex, or engaging in sexual activity, but that to go from the everyday side to the sexual side took very little effort. Which is the beauty of the membrane: this permeability. It’s possible to go back and forth as many times as you want. And although it’s designed to allow for easy crossing, from one side to the other, sometimes, when you’re on one side of the membrane, you tend to forget that the other side exists.
And it’s not just sexual.
Driving through the river valleys and rolling hills of the midsection of America, through St. Louis and Kansas City and Topeka, I rarely stopped to eat. I was stopping for gas because the car needed gas, but food and eating had become ideas only, and I was losing interest in them. Driving along with my arm out the window I was unworried about sunburn, uninterested in the scenery or the historical markers. I was just driving, determined to keep Anne uppermost in my thoughts. And she was. My mind flitted from thought to thought and she was there all right, but the thoughts I had did not engender the feeling I wanted. My thoughts were connected to loss and sadness and I was looking for more positive and motivating emotions. Loss and sadness had their place, but their tendency was to pull me into myself, and I wanted to pull myself out, into the world. And the problem, I thought, was desire. If I would have a little more desire then my thoughts — and by virtue of my thoughts, my life — would automatically focus on the world and enter the world and pull me away from my suffering.