“Never mind. Point is, halfway through The Snakepit, which was this old forties melodrama, I realize I’m not watching the movie. I’m lying on the floor with my head on a throw pillow and instead I’m watching the Philosopher’s Daughter with her boyfriend, Tom or Bill or Gary or whatever his name was, the two of them draped over each other on the couch. I can see the TV light flickering over them, I can even see the little black-and-white reflection of the screen in her eyes. He’s behind her with one hand on her hip, and she’s curled against him with her head on his arm, and he’s, like, half-asleep, bored out of his mind, but she’s absolutely rapt, okay, she’s watching this dopey old picture like it’s, I dunno, Citizen Kane. And I’m watching her, I can’t take my eyes off her, and I’m thinking: I want to be that guy. I want to be the guy with her on the couch with my hand on her hip and her head on my arm. Only, believe me, I wouldn’t look so fucking bored.”
Kevin stares at nothing, reliving the moment.
“Anyway,” he starts up again, abruptly, “one by one, everybody else crawled off to find places to sleep, and it was just me and the Philosopher’s Daughter and her sleeping boyfriend. By now we’re watching The Big Country, which has got to be one of the most overblown, overproduced, boring Westerns I’ve ever seen. Nothing happens for, like, hours. Gregory Peck plays this sea captain who’s engaged to a rancher’s daughter, only he ends up in love with a schoolteacher played by Audrey Hepburn. Or maybe not Audrey Hepburn, but somebody just like her. Point is, for most of the movie, Peck gets insulted, beaten, and abused by all the cowboys, especially Charlton Heston, who all think he’s just the most pathetic”—almost says “pussy,” but says instead—“sissy imaginable. He’s got some sort of Quaker thing going, won’t talk back, won’t fight, unless he’s absolutely forced into it.”
Kevin inches forward.
“Lousy, frustrating, infuriating movie, because you want Gregory Peck to deck somebody, or shoot somebody, or at least take the girl he loves away from that bonehead Charlton Heston. Instead, he’s doing Atticus Finch, only with less balls.” Easy, thinks Kevin. “Meantime, I’m half-watching this goddamn movie, and half-watching the Philosopher’s Daughter nestled in the arms of this asshole who has no idea how lucky he is. And the thing is, she knows I’m watching her. She catches me at it, and she doesn’t look away. She doesn’t say anything, doesn’t smile, doesn’t frown, just watches me back until I can’t stand it anymore, and I have to look back at the screen. And that’s the moment I knew I was in love with her, and it’s also the moment when I knew that I was as big a pussy as Gregory Peck in that movie, because I was afraid to do anything about it.”
“So do something,” says Claudia unexpectedly. “Tell her.”
He’s surprised she spoke up, he’s half-certain he’s boring her senseless, but she’s leaning across the table, watching him intently.
“I did!” he says. “Eventually. I mean, even Gregory Peck rode off in the sunset with the schoolteacher. So after her boyfriend left for Europe, I ended up taking her out to see bands two, three times a week. I was working at a record store that summer and I used to get comp tickets, so I took her to see some pretty amazing stuff — U2, before they were really big, okay? But the thing is, these weren’t like dates, per se, it was more like, hey, I’ve got tickets to this thing, you want to go? And she always said yes. We used to go dancing all the time, too, sometimes at clubs, sometimes at parties at people’s houses we knew, and sometimes,” Kevin laughs, “sometimes we’d walk the streets near campus on a Friday or Saturday night until we found a big party, and just walk in. I mean, nobody cared, everybody was usually pretty drunk already, it was…” He’s lost in the memory for a moment.
“God, she was a great dancer!” He sighs. “This is going to sound really stupid, but she danced like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club, back when Molly Ringwald was really something. Do you remember how she danced? She used to toss herself back and forth, like that.”
He almost demonstrates from his chair, but to his surprise, the thoracic surgeon nods.
“And one night we were at a party, dancing, drinking beer, and we went out on the porch of this house.” He pauses. “I don’t remember the address, but I could find it for you again, it’s still there, out on West Liberty, in the Old West Side. Won’t mean anything to you.” He waves his hand, clearing the air before him. “But that was the night I… That was the night we were… That was the night I decided to…” Pause. “Well, I didn’t decide anything, it just happened, because we were both really relaxed and happy, we’d both been drinking but we weren’t really drunk, we were just dancing without thinking about anything, brushing up against each other and touching and…”
Kevin can feel the mild midwestern heat of that summer, not like the stifling heat here in Austin. He can hear the crickets, the throb of the bass from the stereo inside the house, the cries of the dancers inside, the thump of their feet. He can see the Philosopher’s Daughter leaning against the porch railing in the dark, irresistibly silhouetted against the glow of a streetlight. He can see the red spark of her cigarette.
“We went out to take a break, to cool off, and she asked me, ‘Do you think I dance like a geek? Am I totally embarrassing myself?’ And I couldn’t help myself, so before I had a chance to think about it I said, ‘I love the way you dance. You’re adorable.’ God, I just…”
Twenty-five years after the fact, even in the Texas heat, Kevin’s blushing.
“Thing is, she had this way of watching you like she thought you were really funny, or really stupid, or stupid in a really funny way, and she’d laugh at you, but I didn’t care, because she had the loveliest laugh. I can’t explain it, but she was always watching you like she was right on the cusp of derision. But in a nice way, if that makes sense. And even in the dark on the porch, even when I couldn’t see her face, I knew she was watching me like that.”
Somehow in the heat, Kevin’s face feels cool again.
“So of course that’s when I told her I loved her. Just blurted it out.” Pause. “Dead silence.” The thump of the bass. The crickets. The Philosopher’s Daughter in exquisite silhouette, saying nothing. “They were playing the B-52s inside the house, ‘Rock Lobster,’ and everyone was chanting, ‘Down, down,’ and sinking slowly to the floor in a big tangle. Meantime, me, on the porch, having just handed my beating heart to this girl, I just stood there like an asshole, listening to dead silence from the girl I just said I loved.” Kevin stops.
“What happened?” says Claudia after a moment.
“Here’s the thing,” says Kevin hoarsely. “This is why I thought of this right now. This was my moment like the one with your father. This is why I brought this up. You know what she said to me?”
Claudia waits.
“She said to me, ‘Kevin,’ she said to me, ‘I don’t think I could love you.’ Bad enough, right? Under the circumstances.”
Claudia says nothing.
“Bear in mind, we’re in the dark, I can’t see her face, I can’t see her eyes. But she can see through me like a fucking x-ray. And if she laughs right now?” Kevin shakes his head. “But I’ll give her this much, she knew better than to laugh. Even she wasn’t that cruel.”