“Adele, what did you want to talk about?”
“I’m talking about it.”
Nachman shut his eyes for a second, as if things would be different when he opened them. Nothing was different.
“Ivan phoned again a few days ago. Believe me, I was very clear and firm. I said I wouldn’t meet him. I said that I felt bad about having done so in the past. I told him exactly how I felt. He started begging. I said no, no, no. The next day, he walked into my office. I almost fainted. He looked worse than shit. But the mustache was there, and old feelings were stirred. I was transported. What could I do? Even if I were a happily married woman, the old feelings would be there. I was helpless.”
“Helpless? You?”
“Give me a break, Nachman.”
“All right, you were helpless.”
“So we went to a motel … Try to understand, Nachman. It’s been going on for years, and I never told anyone. Motels. You wouldn’t believe how many motels I’ve been in. Did you know that a lot of Indians are in the motel business?”
“I can’t begin to tell you how interesting that is to me. Hindus or Muslims?”
“That’s enough. I don’t like being teased. So we went to the motel, a squalid dump at the edge of a trailer park.”
A picture came. A motel room. The walls are water-stained and the paint is peeling away. Adele is standing beside a bed where a man lies. His eyes peer over a huge mustache, gazing at Adele as she steps into her panties. She pulls them up, then plucks the material free of the crease in her behind. At that instant Nachman’s wineglass was set before him. He reached too quickly and knocked the glass over. Wine splattered Adele.
Nachman said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
Adele’s tank top bore dark splotches like the shadows of maple leaves.
“They once threw stones,” Adele said. “I’m getting off easy.”
“What can I say?”
“I wanted you to listen. You don’t have to say anything.”
Adele swept her tongue across the front of her teeth. A tiny dark green shape, perhaps a piece of arugula, was plastered against Adele’s front tooth. Nachman ordered another glass of wine.
“If I hadn’t seen you yesterday,” he said, “nobody would ever have known.”
“These things often come out. I told Ivan it was over. I think he heard me this time. Why don’t you order a sandwich or something? I already had a salad.”
Nachman didn’t want anything.
Outside the restaurant, they stopped for a moment in the sunlight and looked up the avenue toward the County Museum.
“We should go there someday,” said Nachman. “See the show and then go somewhere and have lunch.”
“I’d like that.”
Nachman kissed Adele on the cheek. She said, “Do you think I should … now that I’ve told you.”
“Yes. Tell Norbert.”
Nachman sounded principled, but he was already worried about whether Adele would invite him to dinner again. It would be a great loss if she decided that she had said too much and would prefer not to have Nachman around at the same time as her husband.
She had said she was bad, but not evil. Nachman wasn’t sure what she meant. He supposed it had to do with Norbert’s integrity. How he lived, consciously or not, in the eyes of other people. That was important to Adele. She wanted to protect Norbert. It was an aesthetic as well as a moral consideration. She’d had a long affair with Ivan, the mustache, but everything had ended in the motel. Nachman decided that bad Adele remained lovable.
A week later, Norbert phoned. It was late evening. Nachman heard fatigue and displeasure in Norbert’s voice. It sounded like anger or controlled pain. All that had troubled Nachman earlier rushed into mind. He felt regret and shame. He braced internally, expecting to hear Norbert say, “You’re a rat, Nachman. I’m furious at you.”
Nachman hadn’t told Norbert what he’d seen on Fairfax Avenue, and he’d met Adele for lunch, thereby making himself complicitous. Nachman had agonized over those things, but to know what you’re doing is not the same as fully appreciating the terribleness of it. Nachman pressed the receiver hard against his ear. He’d never felt worse. If punishment were available to people the moment they deserved it, Nachman would have been punished days before. He could then show Norbert the receipt. Nachman suddenly realized that every move a person made was to one degree or another criminal, and that there was a great shortage of punishment. These thoughts occurred in the instant before Norbert said, “Would you like to go for a drive? I bought a new car.”
Norbert hadn’t denounced him, thank God, but Nachman didn’t look forward to the drive. Who knows what might be said? Who knows what lies Nachman might be obliged to tell? Nachman put down the receiver. He had been holding it in a sweaty clutch. His heart was beating quickly and heavily.
Fifteen minutes later, Norbert came by in his new car. It had a big engine and a dashboard like the flight panel of an airliner. Nachman had no idea what company made the car, and he wasn’t curious. If the car nourished Norbert’s spirit with fantasies of power, that was good.
“I like your new car,” said Nachman. “Really great. Beautiful.”
“Umm,” said Norbert, as if distracted.
Norbert drove out of the city along the San Diego Freeway. When a stretch of open road appeared, he stepped hard on the gas pedal. Nachman’s spine pressed against the seat.
“Too fast, don’t you think?” said Nachman.
“Are you serious?” There was contempt in Norbert’s question. He continued, “I do a hundred and fifty in the desert.”
Nachman glanced at the speedometer, saw that it read ninety-five, and then glanced at Norbert. What was he thinking? Norbert sat rigidly, staring down the road as if hypnotized by a point far off in the darkness. He was driving toward that point at greater and greater speed. But he was getting no closer, because the point existed only within Norbert, and they would probably be dead before he reached it. Minutes passed with only the drone of the big engine. The road rushed toward them and was swept under the devouring hood. Nachman watched cars and trucks far ahead loom suddenly and vanish in a blur and whoosh. Lights of oncoming traffic slashed by, going the other way. Slower lights of houses in the distance, along either side of the highway, moved like ships at sea. Norbert was driving well over a hundred miles per hour, speeding deeper into the night. Nachman was terrified, but trying to be a good friend, he said nothing to ruin Norbert’s mood. Norbert needed to drive fast, needed to terrify Nachman. If Nachman demanded to be let out, Norbert would doubtless slow down and apologize. Maybe he was waiting for Nachman to lose his composure. Nachman forced himself to abide silently in terror. He deserved it; he accepted it. Part of him imagined that he wanted it.
Norbert seemed abruptly to soften, to relent. He continued to stare straight ahead and was no less self-absorbed, but he slowed the car, then left the highway and returned to it in the direction of Santa Monica.
“Let’s have a drink,” he said.
With no enthusiasm, Nachman said, “Do you know a place?”
“I know a place.”
Norbert drove into Venice, and then to a bar in the middle of a long, poorly lighted street. It was a dark room with low ceilings and sawdust on the floor. Surfer types were shooting pool in the rear. Their girlfriends, scrawny blond kids who looked much alike, sat on a bench against a wall and smoked. Men in motorcycle leather were drinking beer at one end of the bar. Nachman would never have come to this place alone. But Norbert had a thick neck and broad shoulders. He was also fearless. He descended from Russian peasants. Shrewd, strong, dark, stocky, he had never once been sick, and never had a toothache. He’d played rugby in college, a game where men hurtle against one another, as in American football, but with no girlish helmets or shoulder pads. The atmosphere of the bar, like driving fast at night, suited Norbert’s mood. Nachman didn’t want to stay, but felt he owed his friend company the way convicts owe a debt to society. Norbert said, “I want a vodka martini. You, too?”