MICHAEL DOUGLAS ACTED FOR YEARS, BUT AT SOME POINT IN his sixties retired to run a series of coffee shops: not just to own them and to oversee them, but to work in them. This endeavor was fairly successful, and yet it always seemed to me that he was not in his proper place, and that he would do well to go back to Hollywood. When tired, fingers stained, smelling of coffee, he waved to me from behind the counter, and then later on the street seemed almost entranced by his own fatigue, I saw him not as a businessman or a barista, but only as a worried and exhausted man, and it was clear to me that he did not really care for coffee, but that all he wanted was for the day to be over.
I liked to be with him, and I used to stay in the shops as long as I could. I liked the big one on Maple Street, and the small one on Oak, and the one that shared space with a bookstore—and I liked his philosophy, which was clear, though rather spiritless and rhetorical. I suppose I was fond of him on his own account, though I can’t say that for certain. He was an intelligent, kindhearted, genuine man, and not a bore, but I remember that when he confided to me his most treasured secrets and spoke of our relation to each other as friendship, it disturbed me, and I was conscious of an awkwardness. In his affection for me there was something inappropriate, tiresome, and I should have greatly preferred commonplace friendly relations.
The fact is that I was extremely attracted to his wife, Catherine Zeta-Jones. I was not in love with her, but I was attracted by her face, her eyes, her voice, her walk. I missed her when I did not see her for a long time, and my imagination pictured no one at that time so eagerly as that young, beautiful, elegant woman. I had no definite designs in regard to her, and did not dream of anything of the sort, yet for some reason, whenever we were left alone, I remembered that her husband looked upon me as his friend, and I felt awkward. When she came to talk to me about Arabica beans or told me something interesting, I listened with pleasure, and yet at the same time for some reason the reflection that she loved her husband, that he was my friend, and that she herself looked upon me as his friend, intruded. My spirits flagged and I became listless, awkward, and dull. She noticed this change and would usually say:
“You are dull without Michael. We should go get him.”
And when Michael Douglas came in, she would say:
“Well, here is your friend now. Aren’t you happy?”
So passed a year and a half.
It somehow happened one July Sunday that Michael Douglas and I, having nothing better to do, drove out about twenty minutes to a bakery that was making what people insisted were the best muffins in the world. They were in fact wonderful, and we stayed and tried their other baked goods as well, and when the sun set the evening came on—the evening which I shall probably never forget in my life.
After sampling cranberry and blueberry and chocolate-spice muffins, we realized it was nearly dinnertime. We had left the car, Michael Douglas’s car, at a body shop for an extremely minor repair, and so we walked a short distance to a diner to get a sandwich while we waited. A few tables away we saw someone we both knew, a man named Gary Busey. He watched us carefully. Gary Busey had worked for me at my electronics store, though I had fired him for drinking, and after that he had worked for Michael Douglas, and been fired for the same reason. Gary Busey was dissolute, in look and in character. He had been a film star, and so had belonged to the privileged class; but however carefully I scrutinized his exhausted, respectful, and always perspiring face, his red beard now turning gray, his pitifully torn jacket and his red shirt, I could not discover in him the faintest trace of anything we associate with privilege. He had bright eyes and a bright smile that made as little sense as the rest of him.
Gary Busey spoke of himself as a man of education, and used to say that he had been in graduate school but had not finished his studies there, as he was expelled for smoking; then he had sung in a band and lived for two years in a monastery, from which he was also expelled, but this time not for smoking but for his weakness. He had walked all over two states, had been effectively banished from both the movie industry and the music industry. At last, being stranded in our state, he had served as a night watchman, as a groundskeeper at a park, as a manager at a dog kennel, had married a cook who was a widow and rather a loose character, and had so hopelessly sunk into a menial position, and grown so used to filth and dirt, that he even spoke of his privileged origin with a certain skepticism, the way you’d speculate about a mythological beast.
At the time I am describing, he was hanging about without a job, calling himself an independent contractor. His wife had disappeared months before with one of her coworkers from the restaurant.
From the diner we went to the park and sat on a bench, waiting for the car to be ready. Gary Busey had followed us out of the diner; he stood a little way off and put his hand in front of his mouth in order to cough in it respectfully if need be. By now it was dark; there was a strong smell of evening dampness, and the moon was on the point of rising. There were only two clouds in the clear starry sky exactly over our heads: one big one and one smaller; alone in the sky they were racing after one another like mother and child.
“What a glorious day!” said Michael Douglas.
“In the extreme,” Gary Busey said, and he coughed respectfully into his hand. “How was it, Michael Douglas, you thought to visit these parts?” he added in an ingratiating voice, evidently anxious to get up a conversation.
Michael Douglas made no answer. Gary Busey heaved a deep sigh and said softly, not looking at us: “I suffer solely through a cause to which I must answer only to my Lord. No doubt about it, I am a hopeless and incompetent man; but believe me, I am hungry and worse off than a dog. Forgive me, Michael Douglas.”
Michael Douglas was not listening, but sat musing with his head propped on his fists. The park bordered on a river, and in the distance we could see the river as it left land behind, the water meadows on the near side of it, and the crimson glare of a campfire about which black figures were moving. And beyond the fire, farther away, there were other lights, another park much like the one in which we sat. There was singing there. On the river, and here and there on the meadows, a mist was rising. High narrow coils of mist, thick and white as milk, were trailing over the river, hiding the reflection of the stars. Every minute they changed their form, and it seemed as though some were embracing, others were bowing, others lifting up their heads as though they were praying. Probably they reminded Michael Douglas of ghosts and of the dead, for he turned to face me and asked with a mournful smile:
“Tell me, my dear fellow, why is it that when we want to tell some terrible, mysterious, and fantastic story, we draw our material not from life but from the world of ghosts and of the shadows beyond the grave?”
“We are frightened of what we don’t understand.”
“And do you understand life? Tell me: do you understand life better than the world beyond the grave?”
Michael Douglas was sitting quite close to me, so that I felt his breath upon my cheek. In the evening twilight his face seemed paler than ever. His eyes were sad, truthful, and a little frightened, as though he were about to tell me something horrible. He looked into my eyes and went on:
“Our life and the life beyond the grave are equally incomprehensible and horrible. If anyone is afraid of ghosts, he ought to be afraid, too, of me, and of those lights and of the sky. If you think about it, all of that is no less fantastic and beyond our grasp than apparitions from the other world. Hamlet did not kill himself because he was afraid of the visions that might haunt his dreams after death. I like that famous soliloquy of his but it never touched my soul. I will confess to you as a friend that in moments of depression I have sometimes pictured to myself the hour of my death. I’ve invented thousands of the gloomiest visions, and I have succeeded in working myself up to an agonizing exaltation, to a state of nightmare, and I assure you, it didn’t seem to me more terrible than reality.
“What I mean is, apparitions are terrible, but life is terrible, too. I don’t understand life and I am afraid of it. I don’t know; perhaps I am a morbid person. It seems to a sound, healthy man that he understands everything he sees and hears, but that seeming is lost to me, and from day to day I poison myself with terror. There is a disease, the fear of open spaces, but my disease is the fear of life. When I lie on the grass and watch a little beetle which was born yesterday and understands nothing, it seems to me that its life consists of nothing but fear, and in it I see myself.”
“What is it exactly you are frightened of?” I asked.
“Of everything. I am not by nature a profound thinker, and I take little interest in such questions as the life beyond the grave, the destiny of humanity, and, in fact, I am rarely carried away to the heights. What chiefly frightens me is the common routine of life from which none of us can escape. I am incapable of distinguishing what is true and what is false in my actions, and they worry me. I recognize that education and the conditions of life have imprisoned me in a narrow circle of falsity, that my whole life is nothing else than a daily effort to deceive myself and other people, and to avoid noticing it; and I am frightened at the thought that to the day of my death I shall not escape from this falsity. Today I do something and tomorrow I do not understand why I did it. I entered acting, did it for years, and one day felt it was separate from me. I began to work with coffee but feel that separating from me as well. I see that we know very little and so make mistakes every day. We are unjust, we slander one another and spoil each other’s lives, we waste all our powers on trash which we do not need and which hinders us from living; and that frightens me, because I don’t understand why and for whom it is necessary.
“I don’t understand men, my dear fellow, and I am afraid of them. It frightens me to look at most people, and I don’t know for what higher objects they are suffering and what they are living for. If life is an enjoyment, then they are unnecessary, superfluous; if the object and meaning of life is to be found in economic struggle and unending, hopeless ignorance, I can’t understand for whom and what this torture is necessary. I understand no one and nothing. Kindly try to understand this specimen, for instance,” said Michael Douglas, pointing to Gary Busey. “Think of him!”
Noticing that we were looking at him, Gary Busey coughed deferentially into his fist and said:
“I was always a good worker and often a good man, but the great trouble has been spirits: those I have had to drink, those I have seen floating around me. If a poor fellow like me were shown consideration and given a place, I would do right by that generosity. My word’s my bond.”
Gary Busey was speaking passionately, and a man walking by stopped to listen. Then his cell phone rang and he turned away to answer it. That gave Michael Douglas occasion to look at his watch.
“It’s seven,” said Michael Douglas. “Time to get the car and go. Yes, my dear fellow,” he sighed, “if only you knew how afraid I am of my ordinary everyday thoughts, in which one would have thought there should be nothing dreadful. To prevent myself from thinking, I distract my mind with work and try to tire myself out that I may sleep sound at night. Children, a wife—all that seems ordinary with other people; but how that weighs upon me, my dear fellow!”
He rubbed his face with his hands, cleared his throat, and laughed.
“If I could only tell you how I have played the fool in my life!” he said. “They all tell me that I have a sweet wife, charming children, and that I am a good husband and father. They think I am very happy and envy me. But since it has come to that, I will tell you in secret: my happy family life is only a grievous misunderstanding, and I am afraid of it.” His pale face was distorted by a wry smile. He put his arm round my waist and went on in an undertone:
“You are my true friend; I believe in you and have a deep respect for you. Heaven gave us friendship that we may open our hearts and escape from the secrets that weigh upon us. Let me take advantage of your friendly feeling for me and tell you the whole truth.
“My home life, which seems to you so enchanting, is my chief misery and my chief terror. I got married in a strange and stupid way. I must tell you that I was madly in love with Catherine before I married her, and was courting her for two years. I asked her to marry me five times, and she refused me because she did not care for me in the least. The sixth, when burning with passion I crawled on my knees before her and implored her to take a beggar and marry me, she consented. What she said to me was: ‘I don’t love you, but I will be true to you.’ I accepted that condition with rapture. At the time I understood what that meant, but I swear to God I don’t understand it now. ‘I don’t love you, but I will be true to you.’ What does that mean? It’s a fog, a darkness.
“I love her now as intensely as I did the day we were married, while she, I believe, is as indifferent as ever, and I believe she is glad when I go away from home. I don’t know for certain whether she cares for me or not—I don’t know, I don’t know; but, as you see, we live under the same roof, call each other ‘thou,’ sleep together, have children, our property is in common. What does it mean, what does it mean? What is the object of it? And do you understand it at all, my dear fellow? It’s cruel torture! Because I don’t understand our relations, I hate, sometimes her, sometimes myself, sometimes both at once. Everything is in a tangle in my brain; I torment myself and grow stupid. And as though to spite me, she grows more beautiful every day, she is getting more wonderful. I fancy her hair is marvelous, and her smile is like no other woman’s. I love her, and I know that my love is hopeless. Hopeless love for a woman by whom one has two children! Is that intelligible? And isn’t it terrible? Isn’t it more terrible than ghosts?”
He was in the mood to have talked on a good deal longer, but luckily the auto repairman called. Our car was ready. We walked over there, and Gary Busey followed us, and suddenly, with an aggrieved look in his eyes, spoke to Michael Douglas.
“Let me come back to work for you,” he said, blinking furiously and tilting his head on one side. “I am dying of hunger!”
“Okay,” said Michael Douglas. “Show up tomorrow. Work a week, and we’ll see.”
“Certainly, sir,” said Gary Busey, overjoyed. “I’ll come today, sir.”
It was a five-mile drive home. Michael Douglas, glad that he had at last opened his heart to his friend, spoke cheerfully, telling me that if everything had been satisfactory in his home life, he should have returned to Washington and worked for a think tank. The country could have used him, he knew. America needed new policies; to turn away from that was not admirable. He generalized with pleasure and expressed regret that he would be parting from me early next morning, as he was catering an event.
And I felt awkward and depressed, and it seemed to me that I was deceiving the man. And at the same time it was pleasant to me. I gazed at the immense crimson moon that was rising, and pictured the tall, graceful, fair woman, with her pale face, always well-dressed and fragrant with some special scent, and for some reason it pleased me to think she did not love her husband.
On reaching home, we sat down to supper. Catherine Zeta-Jones, laughing, mocked our purchases one by one, and I thought that she certainly had wonderful hair and that her smile was unlike any other woman’s. I watched her, and I wanted to detect in every look and movement that she did not love her husband, and I fancied that I did see it.
Michael Douglas was soon struggling with sleep. After supper he sat with us for ten minutes and said:
“Do what you want, but I have to be up at four. I’m going to bed.”
He kissed his wife tenderly, pressed my hand with warmth and gratitude, and made me promise that I would certainly come for dinner the following week. He told me it was too late for him to drive me home, but that I could sleep in the guest room if I wanted rather than taking a car.
Catherine Zeta-Jones always sat up late, and on this occasion I was glad.
“And now,” I began when we were left alone, “and now you’ll be kind and play me something.”
I felt no desire for music, but I did not know how to begin the conversation. She sat down to the piano and played, I don’t remember what. I sat down beside her and looked at her long white hands and tried to read something on her cold, indifferent face. Then she smiled at something and looked at me.
“You are dull without your friend,” she said.
I laughed.
“It would be enough for friendship to be here once a month, but I turn up oftener than once a week.”
Saying this, I got up and walked from one end of the room to the other. She too got up and walked away to the fireplace.
“What do you mean to say by that?” she said, raising her large, clear eyes and looking at me.
I made no answer.
“What you say is not true,” she went on, after a moment’s thought. “You only come here on account of Michael. Well, I am very glad. One does not often see such friendships nowadays.”
Not knowing what to say, I asked: “Want to go sit in the backyard?”
I went out upon the patio. Nervous shudders were running over my head and I felt chilly with excitement. I was convinced now that our conversation would be utterly trivial, and that there was nothing particular we should be able to say to one another, but that night what I did not dare to dream of was bound to happen—that it was bound to be that night or never.
“Nice weather,” I said aloud.
“It makes absolutely no difference to me,” she answered from inside the house.
I went back in. Catherine was standing, as before, near the fireplace, with her hands behind her back, looking away and thinking of something.
“Why does it make no difference to you?” I asked.
“Because I am bored. You are only bored without your friend, but I am always bored. But that probably doesn’t interest you. “
I sat down to the piano and struck a few chords, waiting to hear what she would say.
“Please don’t stand on ceremony,” she said, looking angrily at me, and she seemed as though on the point of crying with vexation. “If you are sleepy, go to bed. Because you are Michael’s friend, you are not in duty bound to be bored with his wife’s company. I don’t want a sacrifice. Please go.”
I did not, of course, go to bed. She went out on the patio while I remained inside and spent five minutes turning over the music. Then I went out, too. We stood close together in the shadow of the curtains, and below us were the steps bathed in moonlight. The black shadows of the trees stretched across the flower beds and the yellow sand of the paths.
“I have to leave in the morning, too,” I said.
“Of course, if my husband’s not at home you can’t stay here,” she said sarcastically. “I can imagine how miserable you would be if you were actually interested in me! Wait a bit: one day I shall throw myself at you. . . . I shall see with what horror you will run away from me. That would be interesting.”
Her words and her pale face were angry, but her eyes were full of tender passionate love. I already looked upon this lovely creature as my property, and then for the first time I noticed that she had dark eyebrows, exquisite eyebrows. I had never seen such eyebrows before. The thought that I might at once press her to my heart, caress her, touch her wonderful hair, seemed to me such a miracle that I laughed and shut my eyes.
“It’s bedtime now. Have a peaceful night,” she said.
“I don’t want a peaceful night,” I said, laughing, following her inside. “I shall curse this night if it is a peaceful one.”
I held her hand and walked her to the stairs. I saw by her face that she understood me, and was glad that I understood her, too.
I went to my room. Near the books on the table lay Michael Douglas’s hat, and that reminded me of his affection for me. I went back to the patio and walked a bit in the yard. The mist had risen here, too, and the same tall, narrow, ghostly shapes that I had seen earlier on the river were trailing round the trees and bushes and wrapping about them. What a pity I could not talk to them!
In the extraordinarily transparent air, each leaf, each drop of dew, stood out distinctly; it was all smiling at me in the stillness, half asleep. There was a mound in the garden; I went up it and sat down. I was tormented by a delicious feeling. I knew for certain that in a moment I should hold in my arms, should press to my heart, her magnificent body, should kiss her eyebrows; and I wanted to disbelieve it, to tantalize myself, and was sorry that she had cost me so little trouble and had yielded so soon.
But suddenly I heard heavy footsteps. A man of medium height appeared down the street, and I recognized him as Gary Busey. He leaned against a tree and heaved a deep sigh, then lay down. A minute later he got up and lay on the other side of the tree. The gnats and the dampness of the night prevented his sleeping.
“Oh, life!” he said. “Wretched, bitter life!”
Looking at his bent, wasted body and hearing his heavy, noisy sighs, I thought of an unhappy, bitter life of which the confession had been made to me that day, and I felt uneasy and frightened at my blissful mood. I came down the knoll and went to the house.
Life, as he thinks, is terrible, I thought, so don’t stand on ceremony with it, bend it to your will, and until it crushes you, snatch all you can wring from it.
Catherine was standing on the verandah. I put my arms round her without a word and began greedily kissing her eyebrows, her temples, her neck.
In my room she told me she had loved me for a long time, more than a year. She vowed eternal love, cried and begged me to take her away with me. I repeatedly took her to the window to look at her face in the moonlight, and she seemed to me a lovely dream, and I made haste to hold her tight to convince myself of the truth of it. It was long since I had known such raptures. Yet somewhere far away at the bottom of my heart I felt an awkwardness, and I was ill at ease. In her love for me there was something incongruous and burdensome, just as in Michael Douglas’s friendship. It was a great, serious passion with tears and vows, and I wanted nothing serious in it—no tears, no vows, no talk of the future. Let that moonlight night flash through our lives like a meteor.
At three o’clock she went out of my room, and, while I was standing in the doorway, looking after her, at the end of the corridor Michael Douglas suddenly made his appearance; she started and stood aside to let him pass, and her whole figure was expressive of repulsion. He gave a strange smile, coughed, and came into my room.
“I left my hat here yesterday,” he said without looking at me.
He found it and, holding it in both hands, put it on his head; then he looked at my confused face, at my slippers, and said in a strange, husky voice unlike his own:
“I suppose it must be my fate that I should understand nothing. . . . If you understand anything, I congratulate you. It’s all darkness before my eyes.”
And he went out, clearing his throat. Afterward in the kitchen I saw him standing by the coffeemaker. His hands were trembling, he was in nervous haste and kept looking round; probably he was feeling terror. Then he went out to his car and left.
Shortly afterward I called a car for myself. The sun was already rising, and the mist of the previous day clung timidly to the bushes. On my way I saw Gary Busey walking on the side of the road. He was wobbling, either from fatigue or from drunkenness.
The terror of Michael Douglas, the thought of whom I could not get out of my head, infected me. I thought of what had happened and could make nothing of it. I looked at the rooks, and it seemed so strange and terrible that they were flying.
Why have I done this? I kept asking myself in bewilderment and despair. Why has it turned out like this and not differently? Why did she have to have feelings? Why did he have to come into the room for his hat? Does it all come down to a hat?
I have not seen Michael Douglas nor his wife since. I am told that they are still living together.