My idea of Dan’s loneliness came mainly from watching what was taking place at the table behind Dan’s back.
Leslie Constant, the Englishwoman, was gazing at Sherwin Lang. These two were, by this point in the evening, deep in their sexual negotiations, establishing, over bacon and eggs, toast, coffee, and beer, all the important sadomasochistic patterns and dynamics of the relationship ahead: who would come on strong, and who would express a characteristic ambivalence; who would regularly weep, and who would be perceived as the cause of all the tears; who would become doting and remorseful after a fight, and who would rely on casual sarcasm and renewed quarreling to mediate the terms of reconciliation and attachment. Everything — though who can ever really say how things will play out in other people’s entanglements? — seemed contained in the archetypal tableau struck by this man and this woman with their dinner plates and Sherwin’s impressive collection of empty brown beer bottles pushed aside so that nothing might stand between them. Leslie was the designated aggressor. Her elbows were propped on the table and her chin rested in her hands. Her blond head tilted sideways and downward, slightly — forcing Leslie to gaze up in order to make eye contact with Sherwin. She was looking at Lang in exactly the manner of a timorous girl trying out her charms on a handsome, withdrawn adult. Has this stock approach ever failed as a feminine courtship tactic? Sherwin crossed his arms before his chest. He appeared, in his weird, too-tight coat, like a subject for a daguerreotype. Lang held on tightly to his bottle; he pressed himself against the rigid, wooden back of his chair — how else survive Leslie’s intimate onslaught? — the seducing alcoholic in retreat, giving the woman permission to answer his seduction, to push in closer and closer, and to signal, with her body craning toward his across their table, her woundedness, her availability, her readiness to collapse into dependency.
At the next table over, Peter Konwicki seemed to be leading a small, intense, by-invitation-only academic conference; all his child-psychology trainees listed heavily toward their table’s masculine center of power. Konwicki tipped his chair back, using it as a rocker. He crossed his legs. This was a strong move, because it made Peter look precariously unbalanced, yet — with one leg angled up and hoisted over the other, leaving only a single ugly brown shoe touching the floor — daringly in control of his situation. He rocked. The students leaned in. You could say, watching Peter tip farther and farther back in his Pancake House chair, that he was acting out his own inner condition, a state I would briefly describe as an a priori primary process imbalance, regulated by extraordinary superego functioning. This impression of deep psychic instability mirrored in physical disequilibrium was accentuated by Konwicki’s hypermanic talking style: much waving of the arms and hands. He gestured at his followers like a man lecturing to the back rows in a large hall — or, more to the point, I thought, like someone on the street shouting complicated directions to foreigners.
“I want you all to observe closely and pay attention to what you see,” he instructed the students. “We have a rare opportunity, tonight, to witness a man in the throes of what lay people call a nervous breakdown.” At this point Konwicki leaned forward on his tilted-back chair. This allowed him to make quite dramatic rocking motions. He lowered his voice and spoke in a loud stage whisper. “Direct your eyes to the torrentially sweating hands and arms and the rashy contact dermatitis around the neck. Notice also Tom’s violently labored breathing and periodic twitching, and the convulsing of the hips, legs, and feet. These are symptoms of a catastrophic anxiety disorder that is manifestly sexual in nature. The subject has regressed to a classically pre-oedipal position, in order to reorganize psychosexual reality and survive trauma. The fixation on unassisted flight and the collapse of subjective time are diagnosable side effects and, while not common, also not unknown in the literature. Would anyone care to comment on the probable outcome?”
“Psychotic break with sudden onset of schizophrenic episodes, uh, possibly hostile behavior leading to a gradual dissolution of coherent identity, necessitating antipsychotic medicalization and … let’s see … lifelong hospitalization?” guessed Konwicki’s nervous star pupil, Bob.
“Complete reorientation of sexual identity and a basic repudiation of socially binding mores and conventions, including the marriage contract?” predicted a second-year candidate (female, brunette, named Katharine) specializing in gender assignment as a function of social class.
“Watch and learn,” said Konwicki.
It was, it must’ve been, after nine at night. Wind blew against the northern windowpanes. The wind carried the clouds that drifted off the river. No one was eating anymore. A family that had been sharing a booth near the door was gone. I had not noticed them paying their bill. Their table was a mess and so was the floor around it; small children had been there. The two teenagers in a corner by the restrooms were, I saw, still nestled down in brooding, reclusive, adolescent communion. The boy put money in a miniature jukebox on the wall beside the table; then the girl and he leaned heads forward across the tabletop to study selections. He rotated the jukebox knob. They breathed into one another’s faces. I imagined that this boy and girl were Rebecca’s sexually experienced friends, waiting for her to punch out at eleven so they could all escape into the boy’s car. Sexuality notwithstanding, the teenagers looked like children to me, which is to say they looked chubby and unformed, whereas Rebecca had become, in my eyes, a woman. I stared at her bone structure, the shadowy, depressed temples and thin nose and boyish, squared jawline; and I was afraid I might giggle with pleasure, and she would misunderstand my feelings and not be flattered. She smelled to me like woodsmoke and some kind of unfamiliar soap and — faintly, not at all unpleasantly — vomit. It was impossible to kiss her without everyone seeing. I could hear, as we sailed beneath the foam-tile ceiling, fragments of conversation, little comments people made about therapy, about Krakower Institute business, about each other and about the two of us, me and Rebecca transported off the ground in Bernhardt’s arms.
It was the commentary from my own booth that I found most interesting and threatening.
“Look at them up there, Manuel. This can’t be a good thing. Tom should act his age and be more professional. He should know better. He only wants to eat her pussy,” said Maria.
Manuel replied, “What has Tom done? He has reached out his hand in friendship to a young person. Perhaps it is true that our friend enjoys a fantasy of passionate cunnilingus with a beautiful girl. Men in cafes are known to dream of the waitress.”
“This place is a far cry from a cafe, Manuel. And that girl is a teenager. She’s in high school.” Maria sounded angry and mean; she cried out, loudly enough for everyone, including Rebecca, to hear, “Tom is going too far! He’s going too far!”
Manuel answered — brilliantly, I thought—“Tom is a man.”