Maybe it was California where things first started to go wrong. I don’t remember clearly anymore. But I do know that when I got back and the autumn began to roll in, I made an attempt to organize my life. I was lucky. There was work to be done in the shop. Yes, the shop. It—or rather they—really did exist. Three of them: Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. Like all careful coke men, Lenny had developed certain legit fronts. Panache was one of them. Of course, he had very little to do with it. He did the buying, in a haphazard kind of way, and left the selling to others. Boy, was it a mess. A funky little place back from Washington Square, crammed with Colombian jewelery, sweaters, and leather goods; about as much sense of design as a Liverpool junk shop. It was perfect for me. I redesigned, redecorated, and reopened it. It was something to do, something that I was good at. A kind of independence. Also a way of getting a green card. Design Consultant. Lenny’s lawyers started the wheels grinding. If I was going to stay in New York, it was either that or marriage. And neither of us wanted marriage. Even then. Maybe we could already see the rocks in the distance.
Certainly by the autumn it was clear that something was poisoning the water. He had changed. There had been so much life to him, vitality as well as charm. Not just with me but with the rest of the world. Gradually that began to evaporate. When I look back on it, I suspect it had begun almost as soon as we got home, as if once the coke had been shifted, once the job was done, his whole metabolism started to change. He became stiller, more contained, and finally withdrawn. Of course there had always been that element in him, the sudden switch-off. But this was different. This was calculated distance, a kind of emotional paralysis almost. It wasn’t that he was lazy. My God, far from it. He would spend whole days in his study or out at the library reading. And not just anything. Very particular books. Check out the bookshelves and you’ll see. I tell you, Marla, you’d have a lot in common. He would have these academic obsessions. History, politics, even literature. There would be weeks when all he’d read or talk about would be the medieval church in Europe, the campaigns of Napoleon, or the work of Carlos Fuentes. And all with such discipline. He’d get all the right books—he even has an account with Blackwell’s in Oxford—he’d take notes and then hold seminars in his head, or with me over the dinner table. And he was good. But there was such iron in his method, like an athlete in continual training, as if he was always trying to prove something. But what? I asked him once why he hadn’t become an academic. But by that time he’d stopped volunteering information about himself. God, when I think about it now I realize how little I still know about him. A New England boy from a rich family who dropped out of college rather than follow in his father’s footsteps, squandered a fortune from his grandfather’s legacy, and then used the last $100,000 to finance his first shipment. The rest is mystery. At first I saw his secrecy as a challenge. By late autumn I knew it was simply the shape of things to come. I suppose that’s when I started to get scared, and begin to wonder whether all this study wasn’t just a substitute for something missing.
Then, out of the blue one morning, he announced that he was going to do another run. I knew then I was losing. It wasn’t the money. There was still plenty of that. He just wanted to plug in again. Not to the coke—he could have done that anytime—but to the fault line, the excitement. That was what mattered to him. That, not the coke, was the drug, and it worked by long-term release. Now it was wearing off, it was time for another shot. I had a choice. To go with him or stay behind.
I went. My visa was about to expire, and I needed an extension till my green card came through. The New York store needed more merchandise, and I wanted to bring in some new ideas, build on the success. Excuses. I went because I was terrifled of being left behind. It was a disaster. We spent four weeks in Bogotá, trampling underfoot the memories of the time before. I hated that city the second time around. Coming straight out of the American dream, its poverty was obscene, especially as we were there to make money—and a grotesque amount of it.
When I tried to explain my disgust to Lenny, he told me it wasn’t the time or the place. I started to do coke again, just to get me through. Lenny was doing it too. Yet another part of the ritual. Love the drug and she will love you: made in her image you can do anything. Except it wasn’t like that for me. Not this time. This time all she gave me was paranoia. Lenny was high. I was freaked. We grew further and further apart. And this time all the sunshine on the islands could do nothing to melt the ice.
Back in New York the reentry was even worse. Lenny went off to the office, and I stayed home and snorted my way through a couple of grams waiting for him to come back. Communication had broken down entirely. On the islands I had wanted to talk about what was happening to us. He, still “doing the business,” did not. When he finally arrived home four days later, he was too tired and I was too stoned to say anything. When he got up the next day, he acted exactly according to custom. He put a bag of white profit in the drawer, never touched it again, and went back to his books. In both of his love affairs he had gained control. In both of mine I was going under.
Cocaine. The most addictive nonaddictive drug in the world. It’s clever though. Its hold is more subtle than most. All the time you’re taking it, it whispers in your ear that you’re doing fine, coping well. That’s what I believed. That I was in control, that I had the whole thing down and there was nothing to worry about. It was just that New York was such a fast city, and in order to hustle with it you needed to get up your own speed. And I had the excuse of the shop. Busy girl, busy life. Of course I needed a little extra energy. So there would be a line or two before I went out in the morning. Then another line or three to get me through the day. And a few more to speed up the evening; to make me sparkle, make me shine, make me able to ignore what was going on.
And, of course, at some level I knew what I was doing. I knew it was a symbol of things destroyed. But while I took it, the coke made me feel as strong as Lenny. And I needed that. The times spent together became a complete nightmare. At the beginning there was still the occasional abstract conversation about this or that, but often I’d be too coked to listen. I would begrudge the pauses and the time it took him to make his point. My attention span was nil, and we lost patience with each other. He “left” completely. Sometimes literally—he would take off for Westchester without telling me, come back a week later. And the more he withdrew the more I snorted, to block out his contempt for my weakness. Within a month of coming back I must have been getting through a couple of grams a day. Why not? It was always there. He made sure of that. And, after all, it was my profit too. I had aided and abetted its safe passage. I ran his legitimate business for him. I warmed his sheets. It was mine as well as his. And all the time he just sat and watched, as if I were some kind of controlled experiment. And, of course, I knew that it was all a test that I was being put through. And that I was failing.
It was a kind of suicide. In my more lucid moments I understood that it wasn’t just about Lenny either. Everything always connects finally, doesn’t it? Family patterns—how many years of my life did I waste trying to get my father to notice me? I suppose in a way I was bidding for both of them. Except I was hardly in the greatest of shapes for a contest. The coke was taking its toll. My nerves were closer to the surface. I couldn’t handle people. Even the simplest of human contacts left me impatient. I was like a walking emery board. I stopped listening, even to myself. I got scratchy and tight and frightened, and I wouldn’t let anyone in. Not that anyone tried. I had no friends, Marla. That was one of the prices I’d paid for Lenny. I’m not making excuses. It was my fault. I was in orbit, all contact with ground control lost. But it was his fault too. He could have helped. And he didn’t.
In the end, I stopped myself. I got pregnant. Accidentally, but no doubt on some level on purpose. Unlike Our Lady’s, it was not an immaculate conception. By that time we had almost stopped fucking. But one night I was particularly out of it and more or less pushed him into making
love to me, although love is hardly the word for it. For both of us I think it was more an act of anger. Anyway, I had forgotten to take the pill, and by the time I remembered four days later it was too late. I realized almost immediately. Then had to wait four weeks for some smart uptown gynecologist to tell me what I already knew and to offer guarded congratulations. That night I told Lenny. It was February 14, Valentine’s Day. The perfect irony. I asked him to take me out to dinner because there was something I wanted to say to him. We went to some fancy place on Columbus, all palm trees and salads. I remember I even put on a new dress for the occasion, although by that time it was like dressing a wraith, I was so thin. The thinnest pregnant woman in the world. A good joke, I thought at the time.
And so I told him. I don’t know what I had expected. Maybe I’d had some romantic notion that it would bring us together, that he’d take me in his arms, stroke my hair, and say, like in the movies, “It’s OK, Elly. I know things have been bad, but I love you and together we’ll work it out.” I wasn’t thinking very straight by then. Anyway, his screenplay was a little more realistic. He looked at me over the white tablecloth and said, “Is it mine?” which even in the circumstances I found a little cruel. And when I assured him that it was, he replied, “Well, I think you’d better get rid of it.” Just like that. And then I began to cry—or maybe sob would be a more accurate description. Six months of tears. When people started staring at us from the other tables, he paid the bill and took me home. Then he went out for the rest of the night.
The next morning he came into the bedroom and told me he was going away for a while. He suggested I do the same. He had put eight thousand dollars in my checking account for me to use in any way I wanted. It was my decision, but he wasn’t ready to have a kid, and in his opinion neither was I.
It was just like that first morning in Bogotá. The same dreadful coldness. The memory of it gave me courage, stung me into fighting back. Fighting ice with fire. I exploded, told him he was as responsible as I was, for all of it, the whole fucking mess, and that he had no right to walk out on me. His answer was to deliver a speech. At least that was what it felt like. It was so rehearsed and so bloodless that I couldn’t help wondering if he hadn’t used it before.
“Elly, you know as well as I do what’s happened between us. You walked into this with your eyes open, and now you’re going to have to walk out of it the same way.”
“Without any help from you, of course. Because to show some understanding would be admitting weakness, wouldn’t it?” I tried to keep my voice steady, to meet fact with fact, but I couldn’t do it. Instead I said what I meant. “You are a bastard.”
It didn’t penetrate. “This won’t help us, Elly. I told you right from the beginning. I said it as clearly as I knew how because you were important and I wanted you to understand. It was your choice. You had everything you wanted, and you screwed it up. If you can’t play the game you shouldn’t join in. You make my life dangerous when you’re like this—”
“And you can’t have that, can you, Lenny?” I smashed back. “Because it’s as cold and clear-cut as that, isn’t it? My God, for a man who’s so smart you are so dumb. What do you think this is all about, eh? Me having a good time? Christ, didn’t it ever occur to you that the coke was just a substitute? That the reason I took it was because it gave me something you couldn’t?”
That pricked him. Despite himself, he was interested. “A substitute for what?”
“Attention.” The word shot like a missile across the room. “Yeah, attention. For the short amount of time when we got on together, the coke gave me its full attention. It made me feel important. Wanted. Needed. And it gave me something else. Something that no lover of yours should ever be without. It gave me self-containment. It made me as impenetrable as you. And that’s what made your absence bearable. Of course, you can do without it. You don’t need help to grow cold. You are already. That’s why your precious white mistress doesn’t dominate you. I took coke to be like you. To make living with you less painful. But unfortunately I couldn’t mold myself in your image. However many ounces I shoved up my nose, I still needed. And I still loved. More fool me.”
I hadn’t meant to say so much. The effort exhausted me. Too many tears and too little sleep. And no drug to numb the pain. I remember that I turned over in the bed, away from him, and lay with my eyes closed, waiting for him to leave. I heard the floor creak, then felt the weight of his body as he sat down beside me on the bed. I kept my eyes tightly shut. He put a hand on my shoulder. Not a sustained touch, but a real one. More real than for a long time. I didn’t move. I didn’t want to cry in front of him, to give him the pleasure of my weakness. Not again.
When he spoke I could almost have believed I was hearing the man I had once loved on an island. There was something close to tenderness in his voice. “Elly, you’re not telling either of us anything we didn’t already know. You always knew there would be limitations, priorities. No, I don’t need people in the same way. I never have. That’s just how I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t care for you. I’ve stayed with you longer than I’ve stayed with any other woman because you seemed to understand that instinctively. But I can’t change for you. Yeah, I know I’ve given you a rough time. But you pushed me and you knew the score. I’m not the one who has changed.”
I wondered if that were true, if I had once found easy something that I could now no longer bear. It didn’t matter anymore. The air was full of splintered glass, and there seemed nowhere to tread where we wouldn’t draw blood. I didn’t trust myself to speak. After a while I felt him stand up and walk away.
Then I heard him say: “It’s your decision, Elly. All of it. I met a woman in Bogotá ten months ago. She was bright and clean and independent. If you come across her again, tell her I would like her back. I’ll be gone for a while. Maybe she’ll be here when I return.”
And so he left. And I didn’t see him again for two months. I called you that day, February 15. But you were out, and somehow I didn’t have the courage to pick up the phone again. That evening I hired a car and drove to Vermont. It was a hard winter. Everything was ice and snow. I booked myself into this beautiful old hotel, all open fires and brass bedsteads with mounds of quilted covers. That night I flushed ten grams of cocaine down the washbasin, dosed myself with Valium, and stuck it out. At the end of the week I called my fancy gynecologist and set up an abortion. I paid a share of Lenny’s profits for a high-class vacuuming of my womb and then squandered a little more on a plane ticket to Hawaii. I spent six weeks lying out in tropical sunshine doing nothing but trying to work out why the fuck I still loved him. I wrote to you a couple of times, but the letters never got posted. I guess I didn’t want to hear what you would have to say. I slept with a few men and instantly forgot them. He did bestride my narrow world like a Colossus, and I could find no place where his shadow didn’t touch me. I thought about it until I knew the thoughts by heart. And then I made one final attempt to sort it out. I flew back to America. I went to the only person who I knew had been closer to Lenny than I had. To J.T., Lenny’s ex-partner, the guy whose house we had stayed in the summer before. It was a long shot. He’s not exactly the world’s most outgoing person—you’ll see when you meet him—but he’d known Lenny for years—lived with him, scammed with him, traveled with him, seen him, presumably, with other women. He was the nearest, in fact, that Lenny had ever got to a friend. And although we hadn’t exactly become close that summer, he’d been OK with me—even Lenny had been impressed. It was J.T. or no one. And I needed advice.
If he was surprised he didn’t show it. Just picked me up at the airport and drove me back to the guesthouse, no questions asked. For two days I sat watching the ocean, remembering the times Lenny and I had spent there until it hurt too much to think about. Then I plucked up the courage to talk. I told J.T. something of what had been going on; the rest I think he guessed. I waited for his comments. He said very little. And, of course, what he did say I already kne
w. That there had been other women, and that the affairs had never outlasted the marriage. That Lenny loved me in his fashion, but that his fashion would not—could not—change, and that if I couldn’t live with that, then I should leave. It was my decision. But if I decided to stay, then he would advise me to say nothing of this visit. Lenny, he implied, would see it as a betrayal. Their friendship, it seemed, did not include emotional confidences.
There was nothing more to say. He took me to the airport, and I bought a ticket for London but at the last minute took a plane to New York instead. When we left the ground I was sure I was going to leave him, but somewhere over the continent I became haunted by memories and a kind of Dory Previn stubbornness that finally I alone could “cater to his passion and his pride.” Romantic shit, I know, but still powerful. By the time we touched down, I had decided to give it one more try. I took a taxi into town and walked back into the apartment, brown, clean, and bright, but not, I know now, independent. I was asking him to take me back.
He had been home a couple of weeks and was still riding high from a scam well done. He looked gorgeous, so defined, so sure of who he was. And I knew it was stupid, but I wanted him. And more important, I wanted him to want me. Enough to make it happen. We talked for a while, prowled around each other, and then went to bed. In the morning I made my pitch. I told him that I would stay and play by the rules, but that I couldn’t live that way forever. That if there was to be a future, he would have to think about his loyalties and finally decide between us. Her and me. And he listened and nodded and said he understood. Said that he too had done some thinking and that yes, for a while at least, he would give her up and see how it affected us. I was amazed, entranced, suspicious. I both believed and did not believe him. And so we began again.