I DROVE TO GEORGETOWN AND CRUISED PAST CINDY’S HOUSE. Sure enough, a light was on in her bedroom window. I felt like dumping the fifty pairs of boots on her doorstep, but if I did that someone would just steal them. I wasn’t despairing enough to want to lose fifty pairs of boots.
Despair or not, I had difficulty accepting what had happened. Once Cindy’s confidence had collapsed, our relationship had begun to seem almost real. Women were often accusing me of only choosing weak, insecure, dependent women. It was the weak, insecure, and dependent women I chose who flung the accusation at me most often. A good percentage of the women I chose spent most of our time together explaining why it was wrong for me to have chosen them. Cindy had even done that, although she did it in a rather oblique way, by explaining to me constantly why I wasn’t successful enough for her.
Now that she had the most famous editor in America maybe she could relax, on that score.
I drove to Alexandria and sat in the parking lot of a motel for twenty minutes but I didn’t go in and get a room. While I was sitting there I called Coffee, but her dope dealer answered so I hung up.
The next time I killed the motor I was in front of Jean’s house. The downstairs was dark but a light was on in her bedroom. I have a theory that women love surprise arrivals, and now I had an excellent opportunity to test it. Despite this theory, I didn’t jump right out of the car and run over and ring the doorbell. I sat in the car almost as long as I had sat in the motel parking lot.
On the other hand I knew I had to act. It was getting late. The light in Jean’s bedroom could go off any second, in which case it would seem ten times more difficult to go up and knock on her door. A woman who had just gone to bed might destroy my theory. She might not welcome a surprise arrival from someone she was mad at anyway.
Finally I got out and walked up her steps. For perhaps a minute I just stood there, looking at the door. Then it occurred to me someone might see me and mistake me for a burglar, so I knocked.
The knock rang loudly in the quiet neighborhood. At least it seemed loud to me, but nothing happened. Jean didn’t come downstairs.
I knocked again, more loudly still. That got results. Lights began to go on in the house. An upstairs light came on, illuminating the stairs. Then I saw Jean scamper downstairs, in a bathrobe, but she didn’t head for the front door. She headed for the kitchen. A light came on in the dining room. Then she peeped into the living room and switched that light on too.
Only then did she approach the door, crossing the living room cautiously.
“Who is it?” she asked, without opening the door.
“Me,” I said.
“Jack?” she said. “Is that you?”
“Yep,” I said.
She opened the door a crack and looked out at me, her eyes very large. When she saw it was me she heaved an enormous sigh.
“Jesus, you scared the piss out of me,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I should have called.”
It only occurred to me then that I could have called from across the street. In my anxiety I had forgotten my own telephone.
“Why did you turn on so many lights?” I asked.
“So I could see who I was being murdered by,” Jean said. “Why do you think? Nobody’s knocked at my door this time of night in several years. I get scared, you know.”
She opened the door a little bit more, but just to get a better look at me rather than to let me in. It was not a friendly appraisal, exactly. As her fear subsided, anger took its place. It came to her suddenly that she was very mad at me.
“What are you doing here anyway?” she asked. “Who told you you could come and knock on my door in the middle of the night?”
“It’s not that late,” I said, although it was.
Jean opened the door and came out on the porch, brushing against me as she did but not looking at me again. She stood on her top step and looked at my car, which was sitting innocently in the street.
“Why are you looking at my car?” I asked. She really looked angry.
“It’s parked in my street,” she said. “I’ll look at it if I want to.”
“There’s no point in hating a car,” I said.
“How stupid do you think I am?” she said.
“I don’t think you’re stupid.”
“You have no right to show up here,” she said. “It’s my house, I like to invite the people that show up here.”
“I know,” I said.
“You don’t, you don’t!” she said emphatically. “You don’t know how it scares me when people I’m not expecting show up at my door. I hate it. I get totally scared.”
“You shouldn’t be living alone if you’re so scared,” I said.
Jean looked at me contemptuously.
“I’m sorry I said that,” I said.
“Go on,” she said, after a moment. “Tell me you make a lot of mistakes.”
Then she sat down on her top step. She was barefoot and it was a cold night. I sat down, too, but not too close to her. I was worried about her feet.
“Aren’t your feet cold?” I asked. “Don’t you have some house shoes?”
“My feet are none of your business,” she said.
“Don’t be so mad,” I said. “I won’t lie to you anymore.”
“Yes you will,” she said. “Can’t you even be honest about the fact that you lie?”
Actually, it wasn’t easy to be honest. Despite almost constant lying, I think of myself as pretty honest. There seems to be some paradox, pitting truth against literal statement, that I have never understood. My view was that I only lied in the hope of achieving a better truth, but that was never the view of the people I lied to when they discovered the lie.
It seemed to me a complex subject, but it didn’t seem so to Jean, or to most of the women I knew. To them a lie was a lie, invariably bad. I have never been able to persuade a single woman that certain lies were the route to a happier truth.
“It was a minor lie,” I said, deciding not to try and argue ethical theory with a woman whose feet were freezing on the cold steps.
“All the more reason it was disgusting,” Jean said. “A major lie, such as concealing that you have a wife or something, I could understand. You might conceal that you had a wife in order to get to fuck me, which is at least an understandable motive. Why tell me some stupid little lie about Miami?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t want to try and re-create the grounds of that lie.
“You better say something,” she said. “I’m not going to sit out here freezing if you won’t even talk to me.”
“Why do we have to sit out here?” I asked. “Couldn’t we go in the house?”
“No,” Jean said. “You’re not getting in my house. I don’t want it. I don’t trust you anymore.”
“How about my car?” I asked.
“Why should I trust your car?” she asked.
“I mean how about getting in it. It’s warm.”
“You’d think it was below zero,” she said. “If I leave the house one of the girls might wake up. And anyway I don’t want to sit in a car with you.”
She didn’t seem quite so mad.
“Let’s hear about the woman in Miami,” she said. “I assume this was your glamorous friend.”
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Why was it so important that you go see her in Miami?”
“She was in trouble. At least she thought she was. It turned out she wasn’t.”
“The plot thickens,” Jean said. “He likes women who appear to be in trouble but actually aren’t. If they appear to be in trouble then you can appear to come to the rescue.”
I didn’t say anything.
“That’s one of the worst syndromes,” Jean said. “It’s revolting it’s so sexist.”
“Maybe I can outgrow it,” I said.
“No, I have a feeling you need to feel you’re coming to the rescue,” she said. “Otherwise why did you follow me out of the auction that day when I was crying. It’s probably an unbreakable pattern with you—coming to the rescue.”
I didn’t argue. For all I knew she was right.
“I don’t need rescuing,” she said. “You’re dishonest and you can’t stay put.”
We sat for a bit.
“Finish the story,” Jean said. “How come the glamorous friend in Miami got out of trouble so quick?”
“A very important man fell in love with her,” I said. “I’ll probably never see her again.”
“Unless the very important man falls out of love with her,” Jean said. “In that case she’ll really need you. You can really come to the rescue.”
She looked at me for a minute, a little disgusted. I think she was mostly disgusted with herself for letting the conversation continue for so long.
“I don’t think she’ll need me again,” I said. “They’ve bought a six-million-dollar horse farm already.”
Jean stood up. “Six million, huh?” she said.
I nodded.
“Well, so what?” she said. “I had a guy that rich once. Jimmy could buy a horse farm if he wanted to. Catching a rich guy is not an impossible feat.”
“You don’t have to compete with her,” I said. “That’s over.”
“Just until she needs rescuing,” Jean said. “That gives her an edge, in my book. I certainly don’t intend to get in a position where I need rescuing by the likes of you. And if I do I won’t tell you.”
“I’m going to come back and show you the boots I got,” I said. “Sometime when you’ve got shoes on.”
Jean looked over her shoulder, but didn’t say anything. She didn’t seem to be softening much. She went in, and the lights in the downstairs went off, one by one. Then the light over the stairs went off. But the light in her bedroom was still on when I drove away.