I agreed with Marcia about Fellini using water as a unifying metaphor, especially in the fountain scene. “The Fountain of Life, right?”
“Very good,” she said, lying naked beside me, sharing a Salem.
“He’s there with her,” I went on, “in the fountain, water falling all around …”
“So baptismal,” she observed.
“Very much so,” I agreed. “Yes.”
We belonged to the University Foreign Film Society, which featured a discussion each week after the movie, but we never stayed for it, preferring to return to her apartment for sex, afterwards discussing the movie ourselves. So far we’d seen Bergman’s Seventh Seal, which we both considered completely brilliant; Truffaut’s Breathless, which I thought was completely brilliant, but Marcia regarded as somewhat flawed; Kurosawa’s Stray Dog, which we agreed was excellent, but not quite brilliant; and tonight’s La Dolce Vita, which we hadn’t decided on yet.
“But then, what happens next?” she said. “Remember?”
“I’m trying to think …”
“Suddenly … ?”
“He kisses her?”
“The water, what happens to the water.”
“Right, it’s turned off. The fountain goes dry. They’re just standing there.”
“Modern man,” she said, “in a spiritual drought.”
“Bingo.”
She lit another cigarette.
I said something about Anita Ekberg having remarkably large breasts.
“That’s real insightful.”
“No, I’m saying, they were probably, you know …”
“Fake?”
“Symbolic.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know … the milk of human kindness?”
She laughed, getting up. “I gotta pee.”
I lay there smoking, staring up at a complicated network of cracks in the ceiling. During the movie I felt sure they would eventually show Anita Ekberg’s entire tits, this being an Italian movie, but they never did. Marcia’s tits were tiny but I liked them and in fact I liked her entire long scrawny body quite a lot. Sometimes during sex I felt like we must be in love, or very nearly, the heated way we carried on and the things we said, looking each other dead in the eye, like lovers in a European movie—film, I mean. She was always correcting me about that: America made movies, Europe made films.
When she came back from the bathroom we talked some more about La Dolce Vita and the various ways Fellini showed modern man in a spiritual drought, and decided the film was completely brilliant, and had some more sex.
Afterwards she lit another cigarette. I waited for her to pass it to me but she didn’t. She lay there staring up at the ceiling and told me she wished to be alone.
“What’s the matter?”
She didn’t answer.
“What’d I do?”
“Please just go.”
“Tell me. What’d I do?”
“Please? Just go?”
I didn’t understand. I thought I’d performed pretty well, sexually and conversationally. But this was her apartment, so I got up and started pulling on my clothes.
“What are you doing?” she said, sitting up.
“You told me to go. So I’m going.”
“Just like that?”
I shrugged. “It’s your apartment.”
“You could at least pretend to be hurt.”
“I am hurt. I don’t have to pretend.”
“Well? So?”
I looked at her.
She seemed to be waiting.
I told her, “I don’t understand. What do you want me to do?”
“Something, for God sakes.”
It occurred to me what she wanted. She wanted a scene. I did my best. Turning up my palms I said to her, “I mean, you just tell me to go? Like I’m some kind of a …”
“Go ahead. Say it,” she told me, stabbing out her cigarette in the ash tray. “You’ve been wanting to. Let’s hear it. Let’s have it allll out.”
“Like I’m some kind of a …” I needed a script. “Some kind of a …”
“Oh, forget it,” she said, and lay back down.
“Fine,” I told her, “gladly,” and resumed getting dressed.
She sat up again. “Wait, John. Please don’t go? I’m so afraid.” She really looked it too.
“Afraid of what,” I asked her.
She lay back again, staring at the ceiling. “Of Nothing,” she said. “The great … vast … endless … absolute … Nothing.”
I sat on the edge of the bed. “Yes,” I said to her, deepening my voice a little. “I know what you mean.”
“Hold me, John? Please hold me?”
I reached down and pulled her bony body up into my arms.
“Oh, God,” she said, “life is so devoid of meaning.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s like we’re in some kind of a … I don’t know, some kind of spiritual drought.”
She started shaking and I held her tight and said her name because I thought she was crying, but she wasn’t, she was laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said, unable to stop.
I let go of her, got up and once again resumed getting dressed. “I don’t need this bullshit, Marcia,” I told her, buttoning my shirt. “You know? I really and truly don’t need this.”
“Oh, is that right,” she said, sitting up again. “So what do you need, John? Can you tell me? Do you even know? I’m serious. Do you?”
“Well … I guess that pretty much depends on what you mean by ‘need.’ On the one hand—”
“Oh, go away,” she told me with disgust, throwing herself down again, this time rolling over to face the wall.
I looked at her there, all curled up, showing the bones of her spine. “Marcia, I don’t understand. What’s the matter? Honest to God, I don’t even know anymore if you’re—”
“Stop torturing me!” she cried, curling up even more.
I stood there, dressed now. I didn’t want to leave her like this, in a state, even a mostly cinematic one. But she was wearing me out. I sat on the edge of the bed, my back to her.
“Marcia?”
I waited.
“What,” she finally said.
“Want to go get something to eat?”
“It’s too late, John. Don’t you understand? It’s too late.”
“The Junction’s open till midnight.”
“I hate that place.”
“All right, fine,” I said, giving up. I told her goodnight and started to leave.
“Oh, for God sakes,” she said, rolling away from the wall. “If you’re gonna go pout …”
I waited while she got dressed.