“It’s okay that you’re married,” he said. “I’m married, too.”
“Oh, well, now, you didn’t mention that the last time we met.”
She was teasing him again. Mocking. Insulting. But she was not walking away. She had remembered him, had remembered a brief encounter from months earlier, and she was interested in him, in his possibilities. Wasn’t she?
“No, I didn’t mention my marriage,” he said. “But I didn’t mention it because I’m not sure how to define it. Technically speaking, I’m separated.”
“Are you separated because you like to hit on strangers in airports?” she asked.
Wow. How exactly was he supposed to respond to that? He supposed his answer was going to forever change his life. Or at least decide if this woman was going to have sex with him. But he was not afraid of rejection, so why not tell the truth?
“Strictly speaking,” he said, “I am not separated because I hit on strangers in airports. In fact, I can’t recall another time when I hit on anybody in an airport. I am separated because I cheated on my wife.”
Paul couldn’t read her expression. Was she impressed or disgusted by his honesty?
“Do you have kids?” she asked.
“Three daughters. Eighteen, sixteen, and fifteen. I am surrounded by women.”
“So you cheated on your daughters, not just your wife?”
Yes, it was true. Paul hated to think of it that way. But he knew his betrayal of his wife was, in some primal way, the lesser crime. What kind of message was he sending to the world when he betrayed the young women — his offspring — who would carry his name — his DNA — into the future?
“Yes,” Paul said. “I cheated on my daughters. And that’s pathetic. It’s like I’ve put a letter in a bottle, and I’ve dropped it in the ocean, and it will someday wash up onshore, and somebody will find it, open it, and read it, and it will say, Hello, People of the Future, my name is Paul Nonetheless, and I was a small and lonely man.”
“You have a wife and three daughters and you still feel lonely?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s true. Sad and true.”
“Do you think you’re as lonely, let’s say, as a Russian orphan sleeping with thirty other orphans in a communal crib in the basement of a hospital in Tragikistan or somewhere?”
“No,” Paul said. “I am not that lonely.”
“Last week, outside of Spokane, a man and his kids got into a car wreck. He was critically injured, paralyzed from the neck down, and all five of his kids were killed. They were driving to pick up the mother at the train station. So tell me, do you think you are as lonely as that woman is right now?”
Wow, this woman had a gift for shaming!
“No,” Paul said. “I am not that lonely. Not even close.”
“Okay, good. You do realize that, grading on a curve, your loneliness is completely average.”
“Yes, I realize that. Compared to all the lonely in the world, mine is pretty boring.”
“Good,” she said. “You might be an adulterous bastard, but at least you’re a self-aware adulterous bastard.”
She waited for his response, but he had nothing to say. He couldn’t dispute the accuracy of her judgment of his questionable morals, nor could he offer her compelling evidence of his goodness. He was as she thought he was.
“My father cheated on us, too,” she said. “We all knew it. My mother knew it. But he never admitted to it. He kept cheating and my mother kept ignoring it. They were married for fifty-two years and he cheated during all of them. Had to go on the damn Viagra so he could cheat well into his golden years. I think Viagra was invented so that extramarital assholes could have extra years to be assholes.
“But you know the worst thing?” she asked. “At the end, my father got cancer and he was dying and you’d think that would be the time to confess all, to get right with God, you know? But nope, on his deathbed, my father pledged his eternal and undying love to my mother. And you know what?”
“What?”
“She believed him.”
Paul wanted to ask her why she doubted her father’s love. Well, of course, Paul knew why she doubted it, but why couldn’t her father have been telling the truth? Despite all the adultery and lies, all the shame and anger, perhaps her father had deeply and honestly loved her mother. If his last act on earth was a declaration of love, didn’t that make him a loving man? Could an adulterous man also be a good man? But Paul couldn’t say any of this, couldn’t ask these questions. He knew it would only sound like the moral relativism of a liar, a cheater, and a thief.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff to you. I don’t say this stuff to anybody, and here I am, talking to you like we’re friends.”
Paul figured silence was the best possible response to her candor.
“Okay, then,” she said, “I guess that’s it. I don’t want to miss my flight. It was really nice to see you again. I’m not sure why. But it was.”
She walked away. He watched her. He knew he should let her go. What attraction could he have for her now? He was the cheating husband of a cheated wife and the lying father of deceived daughters. But he couldn’t let her go. Not yet. So he chased after her again.
“Hey,” he said, and touched her shoulder.
“Just let me go,” she said. A flash of anger. Her first flash of anger at him.
“Listen,” he said. “I was going to let you go. But I couldn’t. I mean, don’t you think it’s amazing that we’ve run into each other twice in two different airports?”
“It’s just a coincidence.”
“It’s more than that. You know it’s more than that. We’ve got some connection. I can feel it. And I think you can feel it, too.”
“I have a nice ass. And a great smile. And you have pretty eyes and good hair. And you wear movie stars’ clothes. That’s why we noticed each other. But I have news for us, buddy, there’s about two hundred women in this airport who are better-looking than me, and about two hundred and one men who are better-looking than you.”
“But we’ve seen each other twice. And you remembered me.”
“We saw each other twice because we are traveling salespeople in a capitalistic country. If we paid attention, I bet you we would notice the same twelve people over and over again.”
Okay, so she was belittling him and their magical connection. And insulting his beloved country, too. But she was still talking to him. She’d tried to walk away, but he’d caught her, and she was engaged in a somewhat real conversation with him. He suddenly realized that he knew nothing of substance about this woman. He only knew her opinions of his character.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re making progress. I sell clothes. But you already knew that. What do you sell?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Tell me.”
“It will kill your dreams,” she said.
That hyperbole made Paul laugh.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
“I work for a bank,” she said.
“So, wow, you’re a banker,” Paul said, and tried to hide his disappointment. She could have said that she did live-animal testing — smeared mascara directly into the eyes of chimpanzees — and Paul would have felt better about her career choice.
“But I’m not the kind of banker you’re thinking about,” she said.
“What kind of banker are you?” Paul asked, and studied her casual, if stylish, clothing. What kind of banker wore blue jeans? Perhaps a trustworthy banker? Perhaps the morality of any banker was inversely proportional to the quality of his or her clothing?
“Have you ever heard of microlending?” she asked.