The story line fell somewhere between Pygmalion and “The Frog Prince.” The bear, he was given to understand, was enchanted, under a spell. If the bear could win the unconditional love of a human being it would cast off its ursine form and emerge as the ideal partner of the person who loved it. And so he gave his heart to the bear, and fell asleep clutching it, and woke up with his arms around the woman of his, well, dreams.
Then he woke up in fact, and it was a bear he was clutching so desperately. Thank God, he thought.
Because it had been a nightmare. Because he didn’t want the bear to transform itself into anything, not even the woman of his dreams.
He rose, made the bed, tucked the bear in. And chucked the bear under its chin.
“Don’t ever change,” he told it.
The woman was exotic. She’d been born in Ceylon, her mother a Sinhalese, her father an Englishman. She had grown up in London, went to college in California, and had lately moved to New York. She had high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, a sinuous figure, and a general appearance that could have been described as Nonspecific Ethnic. Whatever restaurant Paul took her to, she looked as though she belonged there. Her name was Sindra.
They met at a lecture at NYU, where he talked about Hitchcock’s use of comic relief and where she asked the only really provocative question. Afterward, he invited her to a screening. They had four dates, and he found that her enthusiasm for film matched his own. So, more often than not, did her taste and her opinions.
Four times at the evening’s end she went home alone in a taxi. At first he was just as glad, but by the fourth time his desire for her was stronger than his inclination to end the evening alone. He found himself leaning in the window of her cab, asking her if she wouldn’t like a little company.
“Oh, I would,” she assured him. “But not tonight, Paul.”
Not tonight, darling, I’ve got a... what? A headache, a husband? What?
He called her the next morning, asked her out to yet another screening two days hence. The movie first, then a Togolese restaurant. The food was succulent, and fiery hot. “I guess there’s a famine in Togo,” he told her. “I hadn’t heard about it.”
“It’s hard to keep up. This food’s delicious.”
“It is, isn’t it?” His hand covered hers. “I’m having a wonderful time. I don’t want the night to end.”
“Neither do I.”
“Shall I come up to your place?”
“It would be so much nicer to go to yours.”
They cabbed to Bank Street. The bear, of course, was in the bed. He settled Sindra with a drink and went to stow the bear in the closet, but Sindra tagged after him. “Oh, a teddy bear!” she cried, before he could think what to do.
“My daughter’s,” he said.
“I didn’t even know you had a daughter. How old is she?”
“Seven.”
“I thought you’d been divorced longer than that.”
“What did I say, seven? I meant eleven.”
“What’s her name?”
“Doesn’t have one.”
“Your daughter doesn’t have a name?”
“I thought you meant the bear. My daughter’s name is uh Paula.”
“Apolla? The feminine of Apollo?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s an unusual name. I like it. Was it your idea or your wife’s?”
Christ! “Mine.”
“And the bear doesn’t have a name?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I just bought it for her recently, and she sleeps with it when she stays over. I sleep in the living room.”
“Yes, I should think so. Do you have any pictures?”
“Of the bear? I’m sorry, of course you meant of my daughter.”
“Quite,” she said. “I already know what the bear looks like.”
“Right.”
“Do you?”
“Shit.”
“I beg your—”
“Oh, the hell with it,” he said. “I don’t have a daughter, the marriage was childless. I sleep with the bear myself. The whole story’s too stupid to go into, but if I don’t have the bear in bed with me I don’t sleep well. Believe me, I know how ridiculous that sounds.”
Something glinted in her dark almond eyes. “I think it sounds sweet,” she said.
He felt curiously close to tears. “I’ve never told anyone,” he said. “It’s all so silly, but—”
“It’s not silly. And you never named the bear?”
“No. It’s always been just The Bear.”
“It? Is it a boy bear or a girl bear?”
“I don’t know.”
“May I see it? No clothing, so there’s no help there. Just a yellow ribbon at the throat, and that’s a sexually neutral color, isn’t it? And of course it’s not anatomically correct, in the manner of those nasty dolls they’re selling for children who haven’t the ingenuity to play doctor.” She sighed. “It would appear your bear is androgynous.”
“We, on the other hand,” he said, “are not.”
“No,” she said. “We’re not, are we?”
The bear remained in the bed with them. It was absurd to make love in the bear’s company, but it would have been more absurd to banish the thing to the closet. No matter; they soon became sufficiently aware of one another as to be quite unaware of the bear.
Then two heartbeats returning to normal, and the air cool on sweat-dampened skin. A few words, a few phrases. Drowsiness. He lay on his side, the bear in his arms. She twined herself around him.
Sleep, blissful sleep.
He woke, clutching the bear but unclutched in return. The bed was full of her scent. She, however, was gone. Sometime during the night she had risen and dressed and departed.
He called her just before noon. “I can’t possibly tell you,” he said, “how much I enjoyed being with you last night.”
“It was wonderful.”
“I woke up wanting you. But you were gone.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I never heard you leave.”
“I didn’t want to disturb you. You were sleeping like a baby.”
“Hugging my bear.”
“You looked so sweet,” she said.
“Sindra, I’d like to see you. Are you free tonight?”
There was a pause, time enough for him to begin to regret having asked. “Let me call you after lunch,” she said.
A colleague had just published an insufferably smug piece on Godard in a quarterly with a circulation in the dozens. He was reading it and clucking his tongue at it when she called. “I’m going to have to work late,” she said.
“Oh.”
“But you could come over to my place around nine-thirty or ten, if that’s not too late. We could order a pizza. And pretend there’s a famine in Italy.”
“Actually, I believe they’ve been having a drought.”
She gave him the address. “I hope you’ll come,” she said, “but you may not want to.”
“Of course I want to.”
“The thing is,” she said, “you’re not the only one with a nocturnal eccentricity.”
He tried to think what he had done that might have been characterized as eccentric, and tried to guess what eccentricity she might be about to confess. Whips and chains? Rubber attire? Enemas?
“Oh,” he said, light dawning. “You mean the bear.”
“I also sleep with an animal, Paul. And sleep poorly without it.”
His heart cast down its battlements and surrendered. “I should have known,” he said. “Sindra, we were made for each other. What kind of animal?”
“A snake.”
“A snake,” he echoed, and laughed. “Well, that’s more exotic than a bear, isn’t it? Although I suppose they’re more frequently encountered than bears in Sri Lanka. Do you know something? I don’t think I’ve ever even seen a stuffed snake.”