IT WAS MEANT to be my very last divorce dinner with Dianah. I was determined to stick to the business at hand and insist that either she get a lawyer, or I get a lawyer, or we both get lawyers. Whatever divorce settlement she wanted, she could have. I, for one, would contest nothing except further procrastination on the matter.
To underscore my businesslike mood, I wore a businesslike suit for the occasion. Dark blue suit. Rust red tie. Light blue shirt. The expression on my face was one of firm resolve offset by a touch of fairness.
Our dinner at our French restaurant was at eight. I was early as usual.
“Ah, Monsieur,” Claude the maitre d’ greeted me with the fullness of emotion one normally associates with Muslim pilgrims beholding Mecca. “Monsieur Karoo, so wonderful to see you. So very, very, wonderful. It has been so long since …” He went on, wanting to know how I’d been. Was Madame joining me tonight?
He clasped my right hand with both of his and didn’t so much shake it as cherish it for a while.
Instead of going to the bar, where I normally waited for Dianah to show up, I told Claude I would prefer to wait at our table.
“But of course,” Claude said.
He led. I followed.
In my many years of dining here, I had never seen the place so deserted. It was less than half full. Either it was an off night, or our French restaurant was in decline. Those things happened. Empires, restaurants had diseases of their own and once the decline set in, it was next to impossible to reverse.
It seemed fitting that my last divorce dinner with Dianah would take place in an atmosphere such as this.
I had my choice of tables, but force of habit made me choose one next to a table that was occupied. Two couples in their late thirties or early forties.
The last thing I wanted for this last divorce dinner with Dianah was privacy. An audience, even a small one, was an indispensable component of my being alone with her and her being alone with me. Our kind of privacy demanded a public.
My waiter came and he, like Claude, expressed jubilation at seeing me again. Despite my long absence, he hinted at an ongoing intimacy between us by offering to bring me my usual drink.
“A gin and tonic for the monsieur?” he asked with a knowing grin.
I hated to disappoint him, I really did, but I was determined to have my last divorce dinner with Dianah without the charade of playing drunk and without the device of a drink in my hand. I was turning over a new leaf and I wanted Dianah to know it.
“No, thank you, Bernard,” I told him. “Not tonight.”
Instead, I ordered a large bottle of domestic mineral water.
Bernard bowed, but in a funereal way, and left. I lit a cigarette and gave myself over to the conversation at the table next to mine.
The foursome there were having a roundtable discussion (around a square table) about the swastika. The history of the swastika. The varieties of swastikas to be found. They talked as if they had all read the same book on the subject.
“It’s a very ancient sign, much older than the Christian cross. It predates Christianity by … I’m not really sure … by a lot. It’s eastern in origin.”
“Mayan, wasn’t it?”
“I’m not really sure if it was Mayan, although …”
“Tibet, I thought.”
“The word itself is Sanskrit. It means well-being in Sanskrit …”
“But the sign itself came to be seen as a sign of creativity, creation in general.”
“What I thought was so ironic was that in England they gave away these little swastika pins during World War I to those who exceeded some goal for selling war bonds. Isn’t that just …”
Bernard arrived with my mineral water. He was the picture of despair. Not only was it an off night at the restaurant, but one of his most reliable customer-drunks had switched from gin to Poland Spring.
I sipped my mineral water and lit another cigarette.
I had to keep reminding myself, as I waited for Dianah to show up, that it was mineral water I was drinking, not alcohol, and that no symptoms of intoxication were expected of me. Force of habit was such that just by holding a glass of something with ice in my hand, I was ready to playact the part of the doomed drunk. It was not something I had foreseen. There were apparently withdrawal symptoms even when one was no longer addicted to anything other than oneself.
At eight thirty (I checked my watch when I saw her), half an hour late, Dianah showed up.
She looked stunning. So stunning, and so aware of it, that as she walked toward me in that inimitable way of hers, she made it seem that the restaurant was packed and that the empty tables were all occupied by discerning men and women gazing at her, admiring her beautiful green off-the-shoulder dress, her stunning hairdo, her regal carriage, her deep, dark tan.
Her platinum blond hair was like Halley’s Comet coming toward me. It was shinier than ever. It had been regilded or re-platinumed or something, and its fiery glow, especially in contrast to her deep, dark tan, was dazzling, intimidating. It was like the glow of the Burning Bush.
“Thou shalt not,” her hair, her eyes, her whole being radiated a single message my way. “No, no, no, darling, whatever it is that thou thinks thou will, thou shall not. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever, sweetheart.”
We exchanged kisses the way sworn enemies exchange prisoners of war.
She took a moment (as if out of her hectic schedule) to take in the suit I was wearing and the mineral water I was drinking. Pursing her lips, she measured me with her eyes.
“I haven’t seen you wear that blue suit since the last time you tried to put your life back together again. Looks good on you, darling. A bit snug, but nice.”
“If that’s a compliment, thank you.”
“If that’s a thank-you, you’re welcome.”
Comfortably seated, she unburdened herself of a long significant sigh, whose lush sound underscored the brief silence that followed between us.
Smiling a sumptuous smile, she looked at me. I looked at her.
The foursome next to us were now talking about Singapore.
“I’ll tell you one thing,” one of the two men said, “there’s no malaise in Malaysia, that’s for sure.”
His quip was greeted with a peppering of appreciative laughter. Dianah and I responded with appreciative smiles of our own in his direction.
She sat across from me in silence as if she were sitting for a portrait. There was a look of pity in her eyes. Pity for me. For the kind of man I was. Had always been. And, as far as she was concerned, always would be.
Always.
She wasn’t indicting me. She was merely reintroducing me to myself, just in case I had forgotten who I was.
All I was when I was with Dianah was my past. To sit at a table with her was to be swept back in time to the mausoleum of our marriage where, as in the Bible, alterations were not tolerated. She was so certain that my destiny was something that had already occurred, so positive that my character was incapable of change of any kind, that I found myself succumbing to the narcoleptic nostalgia of it all, as if to the strains of an old love song.
Her eyes, her smile, her whole knowing air invited me to play the part she considered to be my true identity. The doomed alcoholic. The worthless husband. The man manqué.
There was a promise in her eyes of loving devotion to that man.
I felt myself slipping to accommodate her.
This was, after all, our very last divorce dinner.
What harm could there be in making this woman happy, whom I’d made miserable for so many years, by now accepting her assessment of me? If she still had the capacity to pity me after all these years, the very least I could do was to have the generosity of spirit to be worthy of it and be pitiful. This one last time. For old time’s sake.
The arrival of our waiter, Bernard, broke the silence and the spell, and with the ordering of the wine and, later, dinner, our bloodletting began.
The waiter wants to pour some wine into my glass to let me taste it, but I cover my glass with my hand. None for me, thank you. He pours a glass for Dianah.
Dianah sips her wine. I sip my mineral water.
“You’re not drinking?”
“No, I quit.”
“Yes.”
Little migrainelike wrinkles of anxiety appear in the corners of her eyes. If what I’m saying is true, then her whole theory of my doomed character is in question.
“I’m so proud of you,” she says.
“Thank you.”
“When did you quit?”
“Just this minute,” I tell her. “This will be the first drink that I didn’t have all day.”
She breathes a little easier now and smiles.
I light another cigarette.
“So,” she sighs. “Here we are. I’m sure you have so much to tell me. You seem to be bursting with news and I’m dying to hear it. I hope you don’t mind me drinking while we talk.”
“No, not in the least. Please, sip away. How is the wine?” I ask, as if desperate for a glass.
“It’s wonderful. It really is.” She turns the bottle and reads the label.
“Nice tan you’ve got there,” I tell her and stare at her bare brown shoulder. “It’s one of the most splendid early October tans I’ve ever seen.”
“Thank you, darling. Good of you to notice.”
From her shoulder, my gaze rolls downhill and comes to a full stop in the crotch of her cleavage.
I know those breasts well and know the heart that beats under them.
They remind me that when I’m with Dianah I’m like one of those spotted owls whose natural habitat no longer exists. The sight of Dianah sitting there across the table from me makes me feel profoundly homeless but, at the same time, through some emotional alchemy, this very homelessness becomes, in her presence, my natural habitat.
Bad marriages are a marvel. They can make even homelessness feel homey.
I realize (too late) that the only way for me to get a divorce from Dianah is not to be there when the divorce happens. To be with her is to be married not only to her but to the man I no longer want to be.
It was folly, I now realize, to think I could come here in my business suit and discuss divorce with her. Merely to talk with Dianah is to renew our marriage vows.
I could have come there with a team of lawyers and this divorce dinner would have been doomed because it was doomed from the very start.
I raise my arm and signal to Bernard. He comes. I order a gin and tonic. He couldn’t be more pleased.
My capitulation to a reconfirmation of who she thinks I am has a very beneficial effect on Dianah.
She is now free to try to save me from myself.
She reaches across the table and places her hand on mine.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have that drink,” she says.
“Of course I shouldn’t. But I will.”
And I do.
I swill my drinks one after another. In between my drinks, I swill the wine. When the bottle is emptied, I order another and the waiter comes and brings it to our table and then the waiter goes.
We are, or Dianah is, discussing my life now. And the woman in my life. “This Lilly person,” Dianah keeps calling her. I keep correcting her and telling her that it’s not Lilly but Leila. Leila Millar.
A few other couples arrive while we talk and they occupy the empty tables around us.
“And how long have you known this girl?”
“She’s not a girl, Dianah.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. This woman. What’s her name again?”
“Leila. Leila Millar with an a.”
“Is that her real name or her stage name? You did say she’s an actress, didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did. Yes, she is.”
“I bet she is. I bet she’s a brilliant actress. But it does sound like one of those names that a starlet might assume. Leila Millar.” Issuing out of Dianah’s mouth, Leila’s name acquires a fictitious quality, belonging to someone I don’t know.
I drink my drink and light another cigarette.
“Her name is Leila Millar,” I say.
“I don’t really care what her name is,” Dianah says, “or how many she has. I was just curious how well you knew her, that’s all. I suppose it’s not really any of my business how well you know her or don’t know her. That’s your affair. But I’m forced to make it my affair when you involve our son in these pathetic little affairs of yours. You’ve never done that before. You were always a perfectly miserable husband and a perfectly miserable father, but at least you exercised some sense of propriety in the manner in which you carried on with your sluts. You kept Billy away from them. You had a talent for being decent while doing deplorable things. But now …”
I am dead drunk as far as Dianah is concerned, as far as our waiters are concerned, as far as the people sitting at the tables around us are concerned. But the more I pretend to be this besotted caricature of a worthless husband on the outside, the more certain I become and the clearer I see the Saul Karoo on the inside, that other Saul whom I fondly regard as the real me, the worthwhile and loving Saul whose salvation and synthesis awaits him at the confluence of the three rivers in Pittsburgh.
The more I present myself to Dianah in this false light, the closer I feel to the true Saul within, who’s incapable of falsehooods and lies. Faking one brings the true one into focus.
The waiter comes and the waiter goes.
I’ve played drunk around Dianah before, but I feel inspired tonight to outdo myself and be not just a drunk but a bravura drunk. The way I see it, this will be my farewell performance to the role I’ve created for myself. There’ll be no more impostors to play after Pittsburgh, so I might as well give it all I’ve got tonight.
I am only sorry that this last performance of our farewell tour is being played to a half-filled house. But we’re troopers, both of us. Public professionals. Low attendance isn’t going to deter us. If anything, it’s a challenge to be overcome. Dianah’s vocal delivery improves. Sharpens. Her selection of assumed poses gains in precision. The very wattage in her glowing platinum blond hair increases. It’s not the Burning Bush anymore. It becomes a forest fire. She’s a diva. A diva with a death dress on.
I try to hold up my half of this marriage we’re performing. I pull out all stops. I premeditate and then execute knocking over a full glass of wine. No inebriated buffoon, no matter how drunk, could have pulled it off better. The wine spills on the tablecloth. The glass rolls off the table and breaks on the floor. Heads turn.
The waiter comes and performs gracious housekeeping. He mops up. He sweeps up. He brings me another glass. He pours me some more wine.
And then Dianah and I resume the performance of our marriage in concert.
“All your sluts,” Dianah is saying.
We don’t mind the waiter anymore. We go on in front of him while he serves us our dinner selections, medallions of venison in wine sauce for her, half a roasted chicken for me, with French fries.
“And another gin and tonic for the monsieur.” I tap him on the shoulder as he’s leaving. To my ear, at least, I’m slurring my words with pissed-to-the-gills authenticity.
As if for latecomers, Dianah sings out again:
“All those sluts, all those sluts of yours …”
She makes the s’s of the “sluts” sizzle. My God, she’s in such good voice tonight. Clear as a bell. The voice of Schwarzkopf and the dramatic delivery of Maria Callas. I almost feel unworthy to be dismembered by so much talent. Drunk and disgusting as I’m pretending to be, I feel my stature growing in the eyes of the rapt onlookers.
Sensing, as any great artist can, that she has the audience in the palm of her hand, Dianah then proceeds with the litany of my many, many sluts.
She knows them all. Knows the names of all the women I ever slept with. I have forgotten them, but she hasn’t. She is my memory. She goes in chronological order, beginning with the sluts I slept with in the early years of our marriage. Moving on then to the middle years, and so on.
“Mona, that slut Mona, that slut Sally, and then we have the Rachels, three of them, three sluts of three different sizes and shapes …”
She goes on like this, on and on, building up a rhythm and a cadence that, knowing her, will probably result in some grand summation after the last slut has been named.
“ … that squinty-eyed slut, Peggy, that you picked up at the McNabs’ party.”
She pauses at the end of the list, and it is a dramatic pause. The question hangs in the air: What does all this mean? All these sluts? And who is that man, that creature, that drunken slutmonger who is sitting across the table from her, eating French fries with his hands?
The foursome at the table next to ours are sitting on the edge of their seats. They want to know what kind of a miserable beast I am.
I myself am dying to know.
Having created and then controlled the length of the suspense by her silence, Dianah shifts gears and goes into her denouement.
“You seem to be looking for somebody, darling. Some holy grail of a girl or a woman or whatever. It is a sad and infantile practice among men in general to behave as you have behaved, so I can find it in my heart to justify your behavior on the grounds of pack-rat conformity and arrested emotional growth. But what piques my curiosity is not so much that you want to fuck all these sluts …”
One can feel a tremor run through the room and see spines stiffen at the sound of that word, “fuck.”
I have to hand it to Dianah. She is magnificent. She pronounced that four-letter word unflinchingly, keeping her dignity intact, managing to convey its sewer connotation without being tainted by it in the least. The word has tainted the object of her scorn, me, not her. It is dazzling.
“ … but,” she goes on, “that these unfortunate beings should want to fuck you. I have fucked you, darling, and frankly, I’m mystified that women exist, other than myself, who want to have you in bed with them. There are, at least, mitigating factors in my case. We are married. We have a son. I have overlooked your shortcomings as a lover in the hope that some day …”
I burst out laughing at this point and miss the rest of her indictment. I don’t want to laugh. The last thing I want to do is interrupt Dianah in mid-diatribe, but I can’t help myself.
Even while I’m laughing helplessly, I try to reassure Dianah (and our onlookers) that I’m not laughing at anything she has said, but, rather, at the sudden appearance at our table of a waiter bearing in his arms this siege cannon called the pepper mill.
“Some fresh ground pepper for you this evening?” he asks, and his request makes me hysterical. I laugh so hard, I can’t catch my breath. I just wave him on to pepper away.
And he does.
I laugh and laugh like a drunken old fool in an amusement park.
“I’m glad you find all this so funny, darling,” Dianah tells me. She is trembling a little as she speaks, trying to hold on to her self-control. “I really am. The humor of your life escapes me completely, but I’m gratified that you can still manage to find something amusing about it. I suspect you’ll need that sense of humor and then some when you discover, as even you inevitably must, what awaits you in the end.”
She seems to have something in particular in mind for my inevitable end. And the way she says it, with that knowing air of hers, makes it seem that she sees it. My end. That it’s not far off.
“What is it that awaits me in the end?” I roar. “Is it death, is that what it is? I bet it’s death. Death runs in my family, you know, My dad died. His dad died. And so on.”
“You’ll find out, sweetheart,” she says. There is savage satisfaction in her eyes. Her knowing air and the fiery hair suddenly give her an oracular quality. She knows something I don’t.
A dread goes through me, but lasts only a fraction of a second, and then the law of opposites comes to my rescue.
The real Saul inside me is immune to her calamitous prophecy.
“Dianah, Dianah.” I say her name twice, and then I say it a third time. “Dianah,” I say, gesturing with my arms all over the place like some inept Shakespearean actor demented with booze. “You see before you a man who is sorry that he was ever born. But having been born, and having it on good authority that I will someday die, all I have ever done was to try to find a little happiness. In between the bookends of my birth and demise. A little happiness. Just a little. Surely,” I roar, determined to be heard by my fellow diners, “surely, even a man like me deserves a little happiness in his life.”
She ponders my argument as if it were an application to a country club and then says:
“That’s where you’re wrong, darling.”
She seems to be sorry to have to be the one to tell me this, but tell it to me she must, because that’s the kind of woman she is. Honest to a fault.
“Wrong!” I roar. I’m in a bit of a vocal rut. Vocal variety eludes me. I can only roar. “Wrong? What do you mean, I’m wrong? How can I be wrong? Everyone—” I spread my arms wide open and turn my torso left and right, as if trying to embrace every single diner in my rebuttal “—and I mean everyone, everyone has a right to be happy.”
My manifesto is designed to be greeted by general applause from the sparse but attentive crowd. But, alas, none comes. Not even a polite smattering. What comes instead is Dianah’s reply.
“No,” she says, “not everyone.” And she says it as if she has not only the common law but the constitutional and the moral law also on her side.
“A man like you does not have a right to be happy. Not after all the harm you’ve done to others. For you now to sit there and have the nerve to claim a right to happiness is to abandon even the rudiments of being a responsible human being. In your former wretchedness, you were at least worthy of compassion. In your present insistence that you have a right to be happy, you can only inspire contempt from your many victims.”
“Victims,” I roar. “What victims?”
“Darling, darling,” she sighs, “my poor, pathetic darling, don’t you realize that everyone you ever get to know becomes your victim? This Lilly person will also become your victim if she’s not already. Every woman, man, and child who was ever touched by your life has become your victim. Yes, even children. Not even children are safe from you. I hate to bring this up in public,” she says, upping the volume of her voice with ease, so that everyone around us can hear just how much she hates bringing this up.
“But you leave me no choice,” she says. “You and your right to happiness. What about the happiness of that sweet little girl? I don’t know what you did to her and I don’t want to know, but …”
“What sweet little girl?” I roar. “What’re you talking about?”
“Laurie. Laurie Dohrn.” She nails the n at the end of Dohrn as if with a hammer.
I fumble for another cigarette, while the visage of the girl in question flutters like a sail in front of my eyes.
The way she looked when I picked her up.
Our limo ride to Cafe Luxembourg.
The way I felt in the limo.
The way it all …
“I don’t know what you did to her and I really don’t want to know. All I know is what she told her mother, and what her mother told me. The poor child was hysterical. She kept saying over and over again how disgusting you were that night. Her word, not mine. How disgusting you were, how wrong it all was and how she never wanted to see you again. This wasn’t one of your sluts, Saul. One of your women. This wasn’t even a grown-up. A child, that’s what she was. A mere child who looked up to you as to a father she adored, and you …”
She shakes her head. She sighs. She can’t go on. Another dramatic silence ensues.
Dianah has her audience in the palm of her hand. They’re waiting for the gory details. In the sudden sepulchral silence of the restaurant, there is a sudden, salivating hunger to hear more. There is a craving for the flesh of children.
Laurie, despite her youth, was not a child, but Dianah’s use of that word and the response of those around us to it have created in an instant an atmosphere almost identical to the one that prevailed at that ill-fated dinner with Cromwell at Cafe Luxembourg.
Then and there, Laurie was debauched in person. Here and now, in another restaurant, she is being debauched and devoured by proxy. Everyone wanted a little piece of Laurie that night. Everyone wants a little piece of her this night. I pretended I was drunk then. I’m pretending that I’m drunk now.
“What in God’s name did you do to her, Saul?” Dianah asks me.
They all wait for my reply.
“I can’t remember,” I say.
I remember it all, of course.
The way Laurie looked at me. The way Cromwell looked at her. I had the youngest one there. The Cambodian girl. The sight and sound of those little bells.
“I really can’t remember.”
My evasion is a disappointment to our onlookers. It makes them angry at me. I had a duty to give them the details.
“The thing is, Dianah, the thing is this. It’s not a question of what I’ve done in the past and to whom, but rather who I am now. You see, I’m not the same man anymore. I’ve changed.”
“Changed?” Dianah says and leans back in her seat.
“Yes, changed.”
“You?”
“Me.”
“I’m all ears, darling. I really am. I’m all eyes too, but since I can’t discern any change in you with my eyes, other than the excess weight you’re putting on, I’m fully prepared to be all ears.” She pauses, smiles, tilts her head to the right and says, “I’m listening.”
“On the inside,” I tell her. “I’ve changed on the inside.”
My words, by design, sound shallow and lacking all conviction. Dianah’s raised eyebrows mock me. But I don’t need her to mock me. I am mocking myself for reasons of my own. The more I make it seem that my change is a complete fabrication, the easier it is to see myself as completely changed. The one brings the other into focus.
“How long have I known you, sweetheart?”
“Feels like centuries,” I tell her.
“And in all those years, how often have I heard you tell me about the treasures that lie buried ‘deep, deep inside of you’? How often have you promised to change? How often have you gone through the charade of going on one of your treasure-hunting expeditions to look for the jewels that lie buried in the deep, deep—yes, you’re so very deep, darling—in the deep portions of your soul? Has anyone ever benefited from all that promise that lies buried deep, deep inside of you? I’m not really picking on you, darling, if that’s what you think. I’m really not.”
She has another bite of venison and another sip of wine and then continues:
“But you really must face up to the consequences of your character. There is nothing deep, deep inside of you. At least, nothing worthwhile. There really isn’t. If your ship has sunk, sweetheart, as I think it has, then it has sunk empty. So please, have a little respect for my intelligence. Don’t tell me how you’ve changed on the inside while at the same time pursuing what you call your right to happiness with yet another slut.”
“She’s not a slut. She’s a wonderful woman.”
“Fine. Let us assume for a moment that she is.”
“There’s no assuming. She is. She just is.”
“All right. So be it. She’s a wonderful woman. But can you, before you pass out, can you answer me just one question? What would a wonderful woman see in you, Saul? Surely you’re not a complete fool, darling. So tell me. What is it that you have, or think that you have, to offer to any woman, wonderful or not?”
I pretend to be stumped by the question.
She is amused in a merry-eyed and malignant way. Her lips move, as if she’s savoring something she could say but prefers not to.
It bothers me, this look of hers. Her knowing air. It’s as if she’s come armed this evening with something beyond her usual arsenal.
I light another cigarette and wonder, should I spill another glass of wine? Should I lean back in my chair and fall backwards to the floor? Or maybe run my fingers through my hair, as if forgetting about the lit cigarette I’m holding, singeing my hair, setting it on fire, as a diversion from the malignancy of her eyes?
“How well do you know Billy?” she finally asks.
“We’re very close. Getting closer and closer all the time.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Closer to what, darling?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? ‘Closer to what?’ What are you talking about, Dianah?”
“It stands to reason, if people are getting closer and closer, that they must be getting closer and closer to something, right?”
“To each other. To the truth of who we are.”
By trivializing the word “truth” for her benefit, I experience the beauty and the full meaning of the real truth awaiting me and Billy and Leila in Pittsburgh.
“Mmmm,” she says, nodding. She’s in such wonderful voice tonight that she can even make her consonants sing. “The truth, is it?”
“Yes, the truth,” I shout. I can’t roar anymore.
“Just checking. And this truth is something wonderful, is it?”
“Ask Billy, if you don’t believe me.”
“I don’t have to ask Billy anything. He confides in me, you know. He has all along. He had to confide to somebody, and since he had no father to speak of—or to speak to—he confided in me, his mother.”
“You’re not his real mother, Dianah.” I can’t help saying this. It’s a cheap way to hurt her. I regret it as soon as I say it, but I probably would have regretted it had I not said it.
“Ah, Saul,” she sighs, and shakes her head. “That’s not like you, darling. To say something like that. Maybe you have changed after all. But let us not stray from the topic at hand, and the topic, I believe, is truth. Of all the people on this planet, you alone seem to have this childlike conception of truth as something wonderful. Probably because you’ve never experienced truth. It’s as if you were separated from truth at birth and have been longing for it ever since, confident that when it finally comes back into your life, it will do so as a loving nurse with soft arms. That’s not how truth works, sweetheart. Billy confides in me. He tells me everything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? He tells you everything. Everything what? You seem to want to tell me something, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I don’t.”
She wipes the corners of her mouth with her napkin.
“I’ll say no more,” she says.
“Why not?”
“I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
Her lips pinched, her hair aglow, her eyes gleaming with malevolence, she sits across the table from me like an image of Nemesis come to life.
And then her features soften. The image of Nemesis vanishes. There is pity in her eyes again. For me. Shortly, I know, she will make me an offer.
The offer comes.
“Do you know what I think? I think we should go home, darling.”
She glories in her ability to make such an offer to a man like me after all I’ve done to her. Glories in the act of self-sacrifice she’s making. She’s a marriage martyr, offering to take me back where I belong. To bear me away. Like a cross it is her destiny to bear.
I know I’m not a mighty cross. Not really a burden to her. Not a blessing, certainly, but not a burden. A lesser cross of some kind. Something small, but always in fashion as a distinctive accessory to her lifestyle. Like a nice little cross, fashioned at Tiffany’s, dangling from her neck on a simple golden chain. A doomed, worthless husband. I would go so well with almost anything.
The offer sits there, as it were, on the table among the leftovers of our meal.
It is, in its own way, a tempting offer.
The great So What of the soul speaks within me and urges me to accept it.
It’s not Leila or my love for her that makes me resist. Nor is it something called personal integrity, a trait I’ve never had. It is, instead, a dread. The dread of the virtual reality of our marriage. The dread of the virtual life we would live were I to return to her. The dread that when death finally comes, it will be virtual death as well and I will discover that not even death has divorced me from Dianah.
She awaits my reply.
I gather myself and, in my very best drunken laughter, I laugh at her and her offer and then say, “I wish I were a Muslim. I love their divorce ceremonies. All they do is this”—I gesture toward her as if blessing her—“I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you.”
I laugh as if my laughter were part of the divorce ceremony I am performing.
Her face stiffens. She stands up. I remain seated. Her hairdo glows above me like a full moon.
“I guess there’s nothing left to say, then,” she says.
“No,” I reply. “Not a thing. But that’s never stopped us before.”
She stands, and remains standing, looking down at me.
“I hope you have a wonderful life with your whore,” she finally says. “I really do.”
“She is not my whore.”
Her face goes Cubist at my response. Becomes broken-up facets of a single face. A smile detaches itself from the rest of her features and becomes independent, free-floating, ferocious.
“Whose whore is she, then?” she asks.
Then she departs. With dignity. With such dignity and grace that I turn in my chair to admire the way she exits the restaurant.
The show, our show, is over, and our audience, such as they are, are now forced to resume their own lives again, at their own tables.
My waiter comes with the bill. I look it over the way a drunk might look at the driver’s manual for a rocket ship. I’m in a generous mood. I top the tips I left last time I dined here. If I could, I would leave tips for the diners who have remained.
Then, ever conscious of the need to be consistent in my portrayal of myself, I get up pretending to be so drunk that I have to hold on to the empty chairs I pass for support.
My slow departure has a unifying effect on the dozen or so diners scattered around the room. They consult each other with their eyes, as when a doomed but not very dangerous passenger stumbles through a subway car late at night.