This All Happened(18)

            That was ten years ago.

            Doesnt matter. Does it matter to you? I mean, do you have any sexual feelings for me?

            I guess not. But I didnt know it was because we’d slept together.

            Well, thanks a lot.

            That’s not what I meant.

            Maisie: With most men I have to watch it. Or they watch it. But with you I’m perfectly comfortable.

            So youre saying―

            I’m saying you should watch out for Alex.

            We’re only ever flirting.

            I think she’s interested in you.

            We leave it at that. She asks how things are with Lydia. Me: We were thinking about getting married.

            Maisie nods at this. Maisie got us together in the first place, and now I can see she’s having doubts.

            Maisie: My flaw is I’m convincing. I can convince people to do things, even if theyre the wrong things to do.

            You dont think we should get married.

            I’m not saying anything. I’m just worried that the right thing gets done.

            Well, how do we look from the outside? From your angle?

            You look infatuated. Which beauty can drug you on. You have to work through infatuation.

            And how do you know if youre infatuated?

            Your work suffers.

            Maisie says you have to watch yourself in any relationship, or you’ll end up in torment.

            I ask how she’s doing with Oliver.

            Well, she says, I speak of torment. You can’t run a relationship solely on flair and conversation and desire for life.

            I say: It’s warming yourself at a fire. When it dies down youre cold.

            Maisie: It’s like watching a movie of the one you love. What do you mean?

            It’s like when you enter a movie and youre absorbed. But it’s the world of a movie, separate from you. After two hours you’ll leave, entertained, but you return to your own world. And the movie knows nothing of your life.

            We both silently gauge ourselves by this.

            19 Yearning. I want a real love and a woman fully mine and I am fully hers. A deeply entrenched togetherness in some kind of alchemical bond that is inseparable and you change and become a different person because of that woman. You would almost die, yes you probably would die, a shell or a core of you would wither, if that woman left you or you left her. Something else always blooms in the aftermath, but deep chunks would be ripped out and isnt that fear part of a deep love? A thing that we are all desperately craving and searching, smelling, listening for, even when we arent conscious of it. And any other arrangement or agreement is fine for the time but is always susceptible to outside forces that will gnaw on the hawsers and dissolve you like sugar in liquid. I know Lydia has gone through this type of deep love with Earl, a love where she craved him all day long and then came home to him almost lunging and yes she was shocked and hurt by this kind of love and maybe what she has now is a nurtured and careful and indeed beautiful thing and maybe that’s good for her, who am I to say. But I want to caution her against this separation of self from me, if that’s what she is doing or trying to maintain. Give me a rooted thing that is fierce and dedicated and incredibly powerful in head heart and animal.

            20 I’m at Maisie’s and she’s on the phone, so I’m talking to Una. She says, Dad only recently discovered the drive-you-thru. He didnt know how to talk to the man on the intercom.