Chapter Thirty-two

“TO ONE OF MY favorite boys, in all the years,” toasted Miss Pettibone. “It was only a few sessions, but you were so so . . . so special to me.”

She was drunk. Charlie thought. Amateur drinkers talk too much; it’s the pros who become deathly silent. God bless the toxicity monks in the bar’s darkest corner, wondering at which drink it all went to hell.

“So pleased you will be matriculating to NYU next semester,” said Miss Pettibone, slurring her words. To Charlie, it sounded like “you will be masturbating a Jew next semester.” He looked over at his brunette girlfriend and her shiny brown hair. There are worse fates, I suppose.

“Watch, he’ll forget all about the townies,” said Gary.

Gary, shirtless, was also drunk. He was going to miss Charlie. “You made this little town a little more interesting, Charlie Green,” he said.

Martine was upstairs, going through business documents.

“I’m going to check on Martine,” said Charlie.

The Smiths bartender was playing “Is It Really So Strange.” Gary hunched over his seventh beer, asking Miss Pettibone if she’d like to touch his recently acquired nipple ring. Martine had lit the fireplace, first of the season.

I’ll miss this stuff, thought Charlie. I’ll miss how brisk it gets by the river in October, how the town wears its seasons. The bounty of hearth smells, twelve months out of the year. Walking upstairs, he saw Miss Pettibone pull at Gary’s nipple ring and giggle. God, I love humans, he thought, deciding he was not an actual human, just someone who loved them.

*

“l will really miss this place, Martine.”

“And we will miss you, Charlie.”

“Before I leave, do you need anything? Anything at all? My dad knows really good lawyers. I mean, I heard you got into some—”

“Just do me one favor,” said Martine. She rose to hug him. “Make love your top priority, even if it kills you.”

“I think it already has,” said Charlie. Martine’s Indian arms were so strong, he thought from inside the hug.

“No,” she said. “There’s more for you.”

The hug lasted too long, and when it was over Charlie felt sluggish, infected by a soul too old for his body. Or maybe he’d donated whatever was left of his youth to the wise if heartbroken Martine. He hadn’t had a real drink since his mother died, but now he needed a vodka.

Downstairs at the bar, Miss Pettibone and Gary were deep in conversation, while Monica Miller swayed to the Smiths, Rolling Rock in hand.

“Rodin saw gods in slabs of white marble,” said Gary to Miss Pettibone.

“And I see gods everyplace that I shouldn’t,” said Miss Pettibone.

They’re going to have sex tonight, thought Charlie. He poured himself a vodka, went over to Monica Miller, and moved with her.

“Is It Really So Strange,” sang The Smiths.

No, he thought. Unfortunately, it’s not anymore.

*

As the river receded into highway, Charlie felt canine, looking out the open window, trying to make sense of the whirring world. Monica Miller drove, and spoke about upgrading to a king-size futon; about how they should both be psych majors; about a girl in her year who had already gotten married.

“Not that there’s any pressure,” said Monica Miller, then squeezed his thigh. “I know a perfect place to hang that painting. Is it really worth two million bucks?”

It was, maybe more. And then there was the inheritance from his mother, a sum he didn’t care to know. A coffin nail of a number which, once revealed, would surely erase her once and for all.

“Maybe I’ll just give it all away,” said Charlie. “Start from scratch.”

“No, don’t do that,” said Monica Miller. “I mean, it’s your money, of course. It’s just that one day you might have a family, and you’ll need it for things like college, and the house.”

The house, he thought. She means our house.

The smell of another’s house. The smell of another’s life. Monica Miller’s apartment. Something chicken cutlet in the kitchen. An insufficiently cleaned ashtray by the famous fire escape window. A scented candle in the bathroom. Apple Pie.

“Maybe we should buy a different candle,” said Charlie. “One that smells like L’Oréal shampoo.”

“You’re so silly. Hey, let’s hang up that painting.”

*

There was something cozy about a tepid romance, thought Charlie. A blanket of adequacy is draped over us.

Their first few weeks together, Monica Miller attended NYU, and Charlie roamed neighborhoods. A strict rotation. Chinatown on Mondays. Little Italy on Tuesdays, where he’d had a brief affair with a cannoli maker’s plump daughter. No guilt, none at all. She was older. Beautiful accent. And listened well to Charlie’s stories about Paula. Paris. I’ve turned into my mother, he thought, babbling about the old country and an old romance.

Those weekend nights, Monica Miller insisted on the neighborhood bar, the one with the fondue for four. The other couple included a guy named Reginald, who was older, already on Wall Street at John’s firm.

“Your brother’s a fucking legend,” he’d said. “Took me for my first haircut with his special barber.”

Haircut, thought Charlie.

“Charlie has a thing about haircuts,” said Monica Miller. “But I do like your hair short, Reggie.”

Apparently they’d dated at some point, and much to his own surprise, it threatened Charlie. While he wasn’t in love, Monica Miller was his source of femininity, quite possibly his life’s permanent placeholder for Paula; losing her would mean losing Paula again.

“But you like my hair messy, right, Monica?” asked Charlie. “Tousled.”

It means messy, Haircut, he thought. Human, fallible, real. I’m no Haircut. I have irrational hair.

“Yes, I do, sweetie,” said Monica Miller and grabbed a handful.

*

Her Perillo Tour had further hardened Mrs. Henderson about men; over a bottomless carafe of Pino Grigio at the Leaning Tower Trattoria, one in her group admitted to offing her philandering husband.

“He had a heart condition, Paula, so Mrs. Rosato put on a werewolf mask and popped out of the closet. The cheating asshole dropped dead.”

Mrs. Henderson and Paula were having dinner at La Villa Gallici’s bar, the only American bar in Aix-en-Provence.

Charlie would like it here, thought Paula.

“Not all men are evil, Mom,” she said.

“Oh please, dear, of course they are. What the heck is salade niçoise?”

She’d arrived the night before in time for the family meal, chirping about Perillo Tours. Paula’s French family were greatly amused by the loud, round American, who insisted on doing the dishes. Paula had missed her mother; she missed seeing someone she knew. There had been one night, after a literally sensational stroll in her beloved lavender field, that she was tempted to page Charlie’s beeper, but what if he didn’t call back? And what if that meant he’d found someone else? What if all men were evil?

Maybe Mom is right, she thought. I’ll just date myself forever.

“Excuse me, monsieur?” said Mrs. Henderson to a man at the bar in a yellow suit, wearing an outrageously foppish handkerchief.

“Mom, don’t.”

“Oh, shush, Paula.”

“Monsieur, what the heck is in a salade niçoise?”

He gritted his teeth. “Tuna, madame. And the oeuf, and the haricot vert, and of course the potato, and then—Audrey Hepburn. Look who it is!” he said, pointing at Paula.

“I’m not following you, monsieur,” said Mrs. Henderson, herself annoyed after weeks of language barriers.

I don’t look anything like her, thought Paula.

“Your daughter is Hepburn, and of course her boyfriend thinks he’s Bogart, Madame,” said the man. “Americans are good at pretend, oui?”

“I don’t have a boyfriend,” said Paula.

The man held up a finger, then rifled through a folder. “Alors, Mister Charles Green.”

“What about him?” asked Mrs. Henderson.

“Let us not play games,” said the man. “What is done is done.”

“How do you know Charlie?” asked Paula. Now she stood, bothered by the man’s coyness and the grandeur of his handkerchief.

“I met him here. Right over here,” said the man. She did have a nice figure, he thought. For an American. “He made quite the sacrifice for you, just like his hero, Humphrey Bogart.” He snorted out a laugh.

“What sacrifice?” asked Paula.

“Yeah, what sacrifice?” asked Mrs. Henderson.

“Let me put it in a way you will understand: Without his donation to, eh, le zoologique, you, mademoiselle, would have been sent home. You cannot work in France without the visa.”

“Oh my God, he was here,” said Paula, collapsing back into her bar seat. “I know the night. I know it. I sensed him. I even think I heard his stupid Walkman.”

“What the hell’s going on?” asked Mrs. Henderson.

Again, the man put a finger in the air, and again he rifled through his folder, and again he said, “Alors, Mister Charles Green.”

“Charlie and Paula have called it quits, just so you know,” said Mrs. Henderson. “He broke her heart, with this other girl. Typical.”

Paula poured herself a glass of wine from the man’s bottle.

Ordinarily, the man would have slapped a person—man or woman—for such brazen behavior, but he let it go. This is a woman that men fight for, he thought. That they will die for. Très Français.

“So, he did exactly what?” asked Paula.

“He was très français; loving you from, ah, how do you say . . . distance sacrificielle.”

“Excuse my French,” said Mrs. Henderson, “but you can please speak a fucking language that I can understand?”

“D’accord,” said the man. “But only for her ears.” He whispered to Paula while Mrs. Henderson shook her big head and asked yet another customer about the meaning of salade niçoise.

“He did that for me?” asked Paula.

“Pour toi.”

“I felt him that night.”

So rare to witness such passion, thought the man. This young couple could really be French.

“I felt his sweetness,” said Paula. “His Charlie-ness.”

“Oh, please,” said Mrs. Henderson.

“No, she should obey these feelings,” said the man. I have no feelings, he thought. I did once as a child, but I am French, so they will not return until I am old and then they will kill me while another old man plays the accordion. D’accord? D’accord.

Paula took the man’s hands and kissed them, then rose to leave the bar. “I need to make a phone call.”

“I’ll order for you, hon,” said Mrs. Henderson. “I’ll order us that crazy-sounding salad. The kids these days,” she said to the man, “they think they invented romance, but it was our generation, am I right, or what?”

“No, Madame. It is them.”

Every generation thinks they invented sex, he thought.

*

Charlie and Monica Miller took Reginald to lunch at Adam’s Rib. He’d recently been dumped by Monica Miller’s best girlfriend and was apparently heartbroken—although, to Charlie, his heart seemed perfectly intact, as was the case with all Haircuts who couldn’t handle the opportunity cost of true love.

“Let’s go to the Carlyle Hotel next week for Thanksgiving,” said Monica Miller. “The three of us. My parents are doing their soup kitchen thing.”

“Maybe we should do the soup kitchen thing,” said Charlie. Angelina would approve, he thought. She’d had to work every Thanksgiving of his young life.

“Maybe we could go to Puerto Rico, you know, just us, and surprise Angelina by cooking her Thanksgiving dinner,” he said.

“I’d be down for some Thanksgiving,” said Reginald. “I have much to be thankful for.” He winked at Monica Miller.

Thanks for nothing, Reggie, thought Charlie.

“The Carlyle it is, Reggie,” said Monica Miller. “Maybe before lunch, we could all go feed the homeless. Just, like, go around Washington Square Park and give them plates of food.”

“I’d be down for that,” said Reginald. “I want to be a better person.”

Such bullshit.

“Really sorry about your horrible breakup,” Charlie said to Reginald. Haircuts didn’t get sarcasm. Literal bastards.

“Thanks, man. Your brother’s been totally supportive at work. And you guys are the best. Love hurts, man.”

Then why are you smiling?

Reginald had barely touched his Eve’s cut of roast beef. There was an Adam’s cut that came with a bone, but the Eve’s cut was boneless and more petite. Haircuts watch their figures, thought Charlie. I’ve gained twenty-three pounds of muscle since my first day of college; I could kick Reggie’s ass.

“Charlie and I are here for you, Reggie,” said Monica Miller. “Let’s get lemon meringue pie for dessert. It’s Charlie’s favorite.”

“I once wrote an entire short story about the two constituent colors of that beautiful pie,” said Charlie. “Canary Yellow. God’s Beard White. To think there was a time I wanted to be a writer. Why not just observe the colors in silence? Impress your God with your restraint. You can ruin a perfectly good slice of pie by writing about it. I used to ruin everything.”

The words that precede a life bookmark are tattooed on God’s bicep. He must have a huge bicep. Something about stuffing. Something about vegetarian stuffing. Something about vegetarian stuffing with Italian sausage. Something about stuffing.

“For Thanksgiving,” said Monica Miller. “The Carlyle Hotel makes an amazing vegetarian stuffing, but with all of this Italian sausage.”

Then it’s not really vegetarian.

“I’d be down for some complex stuffing,” said Reginald.

For the rest of her days, Monica Miller would swear that for a brief moment, Charlie’s brown eyes flashed the lightest teal. Then came the techno-jouncy jingle: “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.”

Monica Miller was horrified by Charlie’s beet-red face, his hands so desperate to capture the beeper, and then his eyes: they must have become half his face reading the exotic numbers. How he jolted up from his seat.

“I’m sorry,” said Charlie, backing away. “I need—I need—”

“What?” asked Monica Miller. “You need what?” But she knew. “Go,” she said. “Call her.”

“Yeah, man,” said Reginald. “Take your time.”

“Quiet,” she told Reginald. “Just be quiet.”

*

Before Charlie could even ask, the Adam’s Rib bartender had produced the shiny black rotary house phone.

“But it’s long distance,” said Charlie.

“Not a problem,” said the Adam’s Rib bartender. “What’s the number?”

“It says +33 4 42 23 29 23.”

The Adam’s Rib bartender took his own sweet time dialing all the numbers, finally holding the receiver above them both, so that Charlie could hear that queer French double beep.

“Here you go,” said the Adam’s Rib bartender.

What a shiny old phone, thought Charlie. I bet someone cleans and polishes it every night in the hopes that one day it might be used for the most important phone call of a man’s life.

“Hello?” asked Paula.

“Hi,” said Charlie.

“Hi,” she said. “Hi.”

And then, the Adam’s Rib bartender? He vanished. Into thin air. But not before slipping a coaster beneath his customer’s elbow; his customer who was on the horn to Europe, who was smiling, who didn’t know where he was. That he was at a bar.