Each and All
by
John Kuti
* * * * *
John Kuti
Copyright 2013 by John Kuti
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
To Jamie Brown who showed me how to live.
Chapter 1
Nearly a century before, a group of ordinary men stood with their children before a big brick schoolhouse they had helped to build. A simple black and white photo was then struck. The dark suits and the sombre faces in the photo told that life was struggle and life was a cold hard road. There was an exception in the one man who stood grinning in his best suit, his hand firmly on the shoulder of his four-year old son.
George Marshall looked at the old photo in the glass cabinet, standing in the same high school in the picture. He couldn’t know that the grinning man was the Grandfather of his best friend Eugene van Fleet, and he didn’t realize the boy in the photo would become the fierce middle-aged man he had known so long ago. He paid no more attention to the old photo than to the rest of the memorabilia: the trophies, the pennants, the little Red Ensign flags and the faded year books opened to pages and pages of black robed graduating classes. People die, photos fade and time is the hidden, irregular pulse of life.
Waves of laughter rolled down the halls as George Marshall stood looking at the images of young faces, lost places and memory.
A century of graduates, a wake for a century of what had been, awake for the thrivers and survivors gathering in the dried blood black brick old school that had been reopened to receive them before its impending demolition.
The huge suburban high school in Toronto where George now taught drama had few souvenirs. A few brass trophies and a shiny brass honour role were all the traditions they could muster. The dusty past had given way to a tenuous, anxious, perpetual present. People were now too mobile, too alone for tradition. Looking in the souvenir case was like looking at an extinct kind of human being.
George never liked feeling old. George never liked feeling mortal. He certainly didn’t like the thought that he was half as old as the musty old school that had once held his youth.
George walked down the hall past the rooms he remembered so well, noticing the Bristol board dates thumb tacked to each door indicating where each half-decade of graduates was supposed to gather. It was a room to a decade from 1920 until the 1960s. Then each half-decade of the sixties needed three rooms each, to house the generation of children that exploded after the Second World War. The decade of the ‘70s was back to single rooms because that was when the new high school was built, leaving the old school to the problem children, the challenged children, the not so beautiful losers of the city.
Feeling ill at ease and strangely nervous, George found one of the rooms where his graduating class was supposed to gather. Unexpectedly, it was dead quiet. The door was closed. He went inside.
He remembered the room. He remembered the three years of Latin classes and the small bull of a man who taught them pedantically, distractedly and most times with an undertone of rage that left everyone slightly breathless with an unknown, expectant fear. He remembered the face and the tense posture but, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the man’s name. There was the desk at the back of the room where he had sat beside Eugene for all three years. Those were the years George’s life had begun. This room had seen him shed his shyness. His confidence and his wit and intelligence had grown full with his long hair, a confidence that had made him the enemy of the nameless teacher he had learned so subtly to provoke. He became the class rebel, and this tense room was where he had learned to perform. Now the room was empty, the big generation somewhere else. Someone had written in big chalk letters; ROOM TOO FULL---GONE TO CAFETERIA!
Above the notice someone had begun a survey of the class. George read the headings and smiled. Empty echoes. Someone had turned the blackboard into a horizontal chart with columns for everything you would ever want to know about somebody you knew thirty years before.
Name; Married to (list… with dates); Higher Education (list… degrees); Occupation (list… with salaries);
Children (names, ages) ; Current Sex Life (times a month); Necessary Medications (legal and not); Necessary Vices ( list…Be honest); Sold-out (yes or no).
There was only one name, one person who had dared to write down the particulars of their life for everyone to see, and George’s heart felt the distant splash of desire at the memory of the girl who had carried the name so languidly into the room. Three rows over and two seats down. She had been so beautiful. George remembered his memory of her body and remembered his vague memory of his own. And she was here, thirty years older. She was here, his best friend’s old great love who he had screwed just that once.
He read what she’d written in each of the columns. Name: Laura Burdans; Married: Bill Porter, 1973-1976--- Ian McCall, 1980-Present; Higher Education (B.A. Waterloo; M.A. York;) Occupation (publicist-$62,000); Children (Amanda, 16) Sex Life (varies wildly) ; Necessary Medications (fine wine, fine wine, fine wine, great Scotch);Necessary Vices (Vanity and communication devices); Sold-out (Absolutely!!!!)
George had no idea why he wanted to come to the last reunion of his old school, but now he was glad he had come. His nervousness was gone; he would go looking for Laura.
First, he went up to the blackboard and wrote the particulars of his own life: his name; his three marriages to women he called the three queens of indulgence, in “years that were just a blur” ; his children he called ingrate one, two and three; his occupation he described as Haberdasher to the Stars, his income unseemly; his sex life he also described as wonderfully unseemly; his medications and vices he replied to with a capitalized Yes; he said he had sold-out, but had waited for his price.
Then George decided he’d have to be Haberdasher to the Stars for the rest of the evening because the thing that he hated most about what he had become was what he had become: a half hearted high school teacher. His indulgently expensive clothes and his style had let him sell strangers the idea that he dressed the rich and famous and earned obscene amounts of money doing it. He loved putting people on. What better strangers than those who had known him when. It was Showtime.
George found Laura in the hall outside the gym. Some girls become women the way a colt fills the form of a thoroughbred, becoming sleek power, grace and self-assurance. The fresh beauty of her youth had become the ripe beauty of style. She looked up and gathered his eyes and smiled. She remembered and George’s heart flushed knowing it. He went straight to her and put out his hand and she took it softly.
“Aren’t you gorgeous!” he said and meant it.
“You cleaned up pretty well yourself.” she replied. “I see you still have the pony tail.”
“And I see you’re still the best blond in a bottle.”
“It’s funny, but I don’t remember your hair being that colour.” she said, and the two women Laura had been talking to laughed. It was true. The other women remembered him and now he remembered them vaguely. With Laura they had been part of the social elite in their class . He and Eugene used to call them the debutantes. Now the debutantes were impressed with him and he could see it. The clothes had made the man, the man they would have never guessed he would become. He ignored their eyes and purposely focused his grin on Laura, leaving them with the same feeling he was sure they remembered only too well.
“It’s so gre
at to see you.” he said to Laura.
“And you too.” she replied .
“I’m surprised you came to this.” he said.
“Really, why’s that? she asked him, and he told her that he always thought she would become as big city girl and leave behind the small town dust of her youth.
“And I somehow never thought that you would become a big city boy. That’s what you are, aren’t you?”
“A big city boy, that’s me.”
They took in each other like art appraisers, looking for surgery to account for the fact they both looked ten years younger than they were; in shape and in style. Her hair was no longer long and flowing as it had been in her youth but was cut hard at her jaw line by someone who did it as well as hair could be cut. Her clothes spoke of money but also had the crisp professional air of someone who earned it herself. Her big eyes and full lips were made up perfectly and her skin still had the soft translucence of youth. Time had not been as hard on Laura as it had on either of her other two friends, a fact that was lost on no one. Reluctantly, everyone eventually had to resign themselves to life’s inexorable entropy; flesh fell, time passed and dreams died in the cold light of day in and day out.
Laura introduced the women to George. Do you remember Joanne Page, Sally Connolly?”
“Of course I remember. Don’t you look great?”
“So what do you do now, Laura?” he asked.
“I used to be a talent agent, but now I specialize in more neurotically refined big egos, I’m a book publicist. I work with authors.” Her mellow voice made the cold words warm even though, like all the others, she was almost shouting to be heard over the noise of all the people in the school hallway.
“Authors are better than actors?” asked Sally.
“Marginally.” Laura replied.
The blast of a thousand voices rolling over old rock tunes poured from the cafeteria and the gymnasium doors on the other side of the hall.
“You have to come and meet my husband. He’s holding a table in the cafeteria. We should get back.” Sally said to Joanne. “There’s just too many moving bodies. I can hardly hear myself speak.” That she had barely spoken at all did not seem to matter.
George looked at Laura for a signal, almost like they had coupled. “We’ll join you in a little while.” Laura said to her friends as they left. Then she asked George if he knew whether Eugene had come to the reunion.
“Gene, didn’t you hear, he’s dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease. He’s still on that farm and has about fourteen adopted children, can you believe it?”
“Oh my God.” Laura said and looked into George’s eyes for some explanation.
He told her that it was true, that Eugene was dying. He still saw Gene often and had planned to go to the farm that night after the reunion. He said he had to be careful because he wasn’t allowed to stay if he showed up with even the subtlest sign of inebriation. His wife was very very fierce with him.
A wife, fourteen children, and an incurable disease were all images that crushed the memory Laura had of the blonde boy she had known, the boy with the powerful body and the flow-blu porcelain eyes, and the Mercedes Benz with the Gull Wing doors. It was all so ‘Movie of the Week.’
“Let’s go. I need to dance.” she said as she took George’s hand.
As they pushed their way through the bodies in the wide gym doors, George could feel the power in the grip of her soft hand. Inside the gym there was an amazing mixture of generations and reformed remnants of old cliques. The only thing missing was youth. Almost everyone in the room was at pushing forty and fifty and sixty. The sixties hard rock turned to ballads. The first one was, ‘Tonight.’
Great banners and long streamers of white and red crepe were may-poled from the ceiling of the big gymnasium. Below a big crepe ball at the apex of the streamers hung a banner that said, “Our Century.” And so it was.
And there they were, in suits and dresses, the generations turning colour in a seasonal reverse where drab russet and gray suits and earth tone dresses on the older people slowly brightened until there was the brilliant display of red and yellow and gold of the baby boom generation. Wool became satin; satin became polyester; polyester became cotton then silk. George and Laura were silk.
George didn’t have to shout quite so loud when he asked Laura if she remembered West Side Story. She had been Maria; he had been one of the Jets in the high school production of their senior year. It had been at the cast party where they had both got so drunk. George could barely remember the details of his lost virginity. They had had a fuzzy one night history that he had never shared with Eugene. It was the one secret that he kept from his friend forever. Laura knew why George was asking. It was a memory Laura had no interest in reviving.
“And no one wants a fellow with a social disease.” George sang very loudly, and got a few strange glances from the crowd. She led him onto the dance floor and he was surprised and thrilled at how close she danced.
Dancing close, they spoke past each other as they tried to make small talk. George asked about her husband; he had noticed her ring. She told him her husband’s name and that he was a lawyer. When he asked how marriage was, she told him it was like the girl with the curl.
“So is it very good or horrid right now?” he asked.
“It’s not that good, but I don’t want to talk.” she replied and they danced until the next song and then they danced again. Halfway through it she asked George to tell her about Eugene. He stopped dancing and stood away from her.
“Do you really want to stay here?” he asked, “Maybe we should go for a walk so we can talk.” Laura wasn’t sure. She wanted to know more. But she didn’t want to talk; she only wanted to listen. For some reason, with George, the idea of talking about her own life made her stomach turn.
“Maybe later.” she said and pulled into George and they danced.
At one table people were calling out names and other people were shouting back what they knew about the person whose name had been called. As they listened to the names being called, both George and Laura realized that it was their own graduating class sitting at the table by the edge of the dance floor. George danced her closer so they could listen to the gossip of thirty years, in the voices that had changed so little in bodies they could barely recognize. Their class was a table of wet, heavy peonies fading on thick fleshy stems.
“Molly Berman.” someone shouted, and voices replied that she married Peter Abbot, that she lived in Grand Bend, that she had three children and did catering. More names followed with children and husbands and occupations and diseases and divorces. In a pause, while people were searching for more names of absent classmates, George shouted from the dance floor Laura’s maiden name, Laura Burdans.
“Laura Burdans married an artist.” someone shouted, “No she married a vet.” “I know for a fact she’s married to a lawyer who works for the mob.”
People laughed as Laura shouted from the dance floor, “He’s never had anything to do with the mob. He mostly defends hookers and junkies.”
The whole table had turned its attention to the dance floor and people screamed when they recognized Laura and then George.
“George Marshall. It’s George Marshall.” someone shouted as George and Laura stopped dancing and walked up to the table ringed with their old classmates.
“So what are you two doing together?” someone asked pointedly.
“Oh, we’re not together.” said Laura.
“I promised the lady I could score her some really fine weed.” replied George.
“You have some for me?” came a voice from the crowd.
“I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck; I know a narc when I see one.” George shot back and everyone roared because that was exactly who he was talking to.
“You’re under arrest in the name of her majesty the Queen” said the middle-aged man in the cheap blue suit.
&n
bsp; “O.K., I want to know who did the life experience chart on the blackboard in the old Latin class?” George got blank stares from the entire group and so he explained about the columns on the blackboard listing names, occupations, salaries, medications and vices and if and whether they had sold out. He got more blanks stares. “Well, I was thinking what a poorly done survey it was.” George continued, “Just think of the categories that were missed: the nature of one’s blended families; the range of alternate therapies and self-help groups; a list of support groups and twelve step programs; and most important of all a list of the failed dietary and exercise regimes. These are the experiences that are really important to know after thirty years of acquired wisdom.” People just looked at him. He was pleased with himself and went on. “Let’s start with blended families. Is a child who wasn’t yours until you married its mother and adopted that child, still yours when the mother divorces you? The answer is, yes you still pay,”
“You’re still a trouble maker.” said the mounted policeman in the cheap blue suit.
“Pay no attention. Pay George no mind.” said Laura, and as ever, everyone was glad to give their attention to her. A couple of the women took over the conversation, making a big fuss over Laura, telling her how wonderful she looked, asking about her work, her children, and her husband and her home. There were no empty chairs, so they had to make do by taking her hand and pulling her close so they could fuss over her. She let them. She liked it.
While the women held Laura, the Mountie began to interrogate George. It felt good to lie to the cops. ‘I sell suits to movie stars, officer,’’ I make more money than should legally be allowed, officer.’ Yes I am looking good, and what’s even better you are definitely not.’
The Mountie got up from where he was sitting and joined George. He did not like asking questions from an inferior position.
“So Marshall, you actually remember my name?” the Mountie asked.
“Of course, you’re Bill Schiff our star half back.”
“That’s me, the star halfback. So, how much does a suit like that cost?”
“About three grand; Brioni. You should think about it. A great suit is a sure fire way to a fast promotion.” George tried to sound as serious and salesman-like as he could.
“A fast way to an internal investigation.” the Mountie replied.
“That explains your suit.” George needled, “Does Disney still own the rights on the red suit?”
“No, I think we got that back.”
The jocks and the freaks still couldn’t stand one another. George felt good that the freaks had won. At least that’s what he thought.
“So what kind of car do you drive?” the Mountie asked, changing the subject.
“A 72 Porsche T 90. It’s absolutely mint, black cherry maroon. It gets more valuable every year while everyone else shovels their money in the doors of banks and car companies.”
George explained how Eugene and his kids restored old classic cars and, for a hundred dollars a year, they would service it so that no part ever failed, no rust ever settled. And they guaranteed to buy the car back for whatever you paid to have it restored.
“That’s a good deal for him if they only appreciate.” said the Mountie sceptically.
“Nobody’s ever brought one back. Just think of it, never lose a dime on a car and still have absolute reliability.” George boasted.
“Maybe I’ll give him a call.”
“Sure, but there’s usually a long waiting list.” George added.
One of the men sitting at the table spoke up over the noise and the music and said he thought that George taught high school in Toronto.
“I volunteer in one of the drama departments...” George began but was interrupted by a loud speakered voice announcing that the non-cardiac challenged dance gala was about to begin. The booming voice introduced two frail looking old people who walked to the centre of the stage. The taped music began and the two fragile looking old folks exploded gently into the varsity drag. She wore a silk flapper dress covered in fringes and he wore grey slacks, a red striped shirt and a cardigan sweater with a big W on its breast.
Thin bodies came alive with an amazing energy, the strut, the kick, the slide had such freedom and exuberance. The dance was off the ground filling a space for yards around, on the ground, in the air. The money rush of the twenties had created white children who had discovered their bodies could move and that they were free to move them any way they chose. Dancing independently, the same steps side-by-side: Step-kick; step-kick; step- kick. Freedom-license; freedom-license; freedom- license. Black bottom, Oh mister! In a minute they were done, and the two old folks left the stage gasping and laughing and holding hands like children.
Then it was the Great Depression and dances from when freedom lost its license. The elegance of imagination, the perfection of Rogers and Astaire saw four couples in tails and taffeta gowns glide around the stage; ‘the way we danced till three, no ,no , they can’t take that away from me,’ Dreams of elegance and luxury, lost and found, flowed in the music and more imperfectly through the bodies of the dancers on stage. The blackest clouds should have a silver lining, or so everyone had hoped. The steps had the perfect order, elegance and control that life had lost after the roar of the twenties. Gentle lifts came from the touch of a silk-gloved hand. The dancer’s hair was frozen in perfect, permanent waves. The way the world could only be imagined turned and swirled on polished shoes and high heeled pumps. People held on, mostly.
The dancers ended the medley of Cole Porter and Gershwin. Their proper flushed faces, as they took bows at the front of stage, seemed to say that there really was something that no one could ever take away.
Then on-came the fourties, Jump and jive! Laura came over to stand beside George to watch the energy explode on the stage. Gray haired senior citizens bounced to the beat of the big band sound.
Over the music the announcer shouted, “It’s Benny Goodman and his band and, ‘Let’s Dance.’
The big band, the big war, women work but men still lead; Bobby socks and screams all over the floor. Drums! Krupa! Rich! Uptown Saturday night! White children with black rhythm. The class system kicked to smithereens. The working-class and black jazz grabbed culture and never let it go. Country kid’s dreams of sophistication and luxury became city kid’s dreams of fun; general issue, off the line, mass produced, kick up your heels fun. Spike Jones was spelled with an S and he really did know what was happening. People let go, almost completely.
Full skirts and wide serge pants, leather shoes shone, and the old folks flew, 78 revolutions to the minute, their hard black records all there was to face the world’s great horror. These were the people that saved freedom. They did what they had to and all they got for it was fun. It was their only legacy that was never really lost. They danced and danced and when it was over they really did look like they had won the war. They came off the floor as a group and it was obvious these people were still friends.
They say for every boy and girl there’s ....a white sport coat and a pink carnation.
The ‘50s slowed from 78 to 45 to 33 and a third rpm. Snooky Lanson , Teresa Brewer and the Singing Rage , Miss Patty Page. The Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy had become a Doggie in the Window, and everyone was interested in its price. The fight for freedom became the thermonuclear threat to all that’s good and holy. Where soldiers would once get ready to die; now children learned to crawl under their desks anticipating the day that the whole world would fry. It made for rather subdued times. It made people nervous about standing out and being different, so white people took back their music from the dark forces and bodies moved once again in measured steps, in 4 /4 time. Remember the Tennessee Waltz.
The dancers on the stage wore penny loafers, crinolines and sports jackets that pressed close, and held on hard. There was a lot to be afraid of: the red menace; pinkos and pink slips too, everything but pink carna
tions. They danced like someone was going to tap them on the shoulder. And when the music stopped, they came off the dance floor, quietly, quickly and still absolutely in control of their breathing.
Boom! Boom! Boom! The dance floor filled with a sea of bodies. Everybody split and it was the Wa Watusi . Jungle music! Black rules!!! Everybody let go and nobody touched. The bodies, and the energy of the bodies jammed together, took over as they took over everything. Middle-class city kids imagined they were poor and black and free just to be. Black people sang their songs for them, and taught them how to dance. Elvis shook his ass right up on stage. Freedom’s just another word; head out on the highway. It’s whatever comes your way. Amplified, all base -no trouble, the backbeat pounded once more in the old school gymnasium the way George and Laura remembered. And it was bye bye Miss American High.
And as they always did, the other generations in the room just watched the explosion of raw emotion, the flashing, jerking, electro-shock thrashing of middle-aged people who were dressed in feathers and blue jeans and tie- dyed bandanas. Just give me a head with a hair! And when they came off the stage it was absolutely obvious there was no way to stay forever young.
Then came disco! Hot sex, cool clothes and cooler attitudes. Style vanquished substance. Yippies became Yuppies and everyone learned that you had to strut your stuff. People danced together alone, they danced to be seen and admired, they danced because that was the time they were reaqlly alive. Hot bodies and cool times, looking for Mr. Goodbar. Fun was all that was left. It was diva time, no time to stop. Stayin ali i i i i ive! The dancers on the stage were the youngest people in the room and when they came off the stage they weren’t very winded, they still carried the lovely flexibility of youth; they still carried the attitude and posture of their expensive, sexually expressive style.
Then it was over. Every generation had danced what they were. Every generation had stayed what they were.
George and Laura applauded with everyone else. When the noise died down and the music had yet to begin again, Laura asked George what this generation’s dances would be.
“Slam dances, I suppose.” he replied and they felt a sad uneasiness at the thought.
Dragged back to their classmates, it would only be an hour of small talk before the old stories became harder to recall and the fun and the laughter were forced from other times.
It was Laura who finally excused herself from the group, saying she had a long drive back to Toronto.
“You mean you’re not going to hang around and trash some classrooms?” George asked. “Just think, this is the last night for the old school. Wouldn’t it feel good to do a little payback?”
“Maybe you can walk me to my car?” she asked George, and that was how the two of them left together to a table of suspicious minds.
Inside his Porsche in the school parking lot, George looked at Laura and smiled. The silence of the warm September night enclosed them like an afterglow, a distant glow of streetlights, soft lights.
“Can I tempt you with an 88 Margeaux?” he asked pulling a bottle from the back of the Porsche.
“You once could have had me for less.” she replied.
“It’s funny a how great wine can affect a woman’s libido.” He was serious. “It’s funny how little there is worth remembering from those times.” he added, reflecting on their reunion with their classmates still in the gym.
“You can blow through thirty years of memories in an hour.” she agreed.
“We’re so much more interesting than those people.” he said, pompously, self mockingly.
“So much more.” she agreed.
“Let’s go parking.” he said mischievously.
She had no idea that he was serious. “Let’s just drive for a while.” she replied and got in his car.
He handed her the wine bottle and the corkscrew, turned the key and the Porsche echoed with its throaty voice.
In a few minutes they were sailing along empty country roads, fast and faster through the turns, the roar of the engine and the wind noise soothing their silence. Laura held the open bottle in her lap as they curved along the high escarpment looking out over the moonlight flooding the black fields and the shiny water of the incredibly long, beautiful freshwater bay. Silence. Laura had forgotten how empty the countryside was. She had forgotten the long drives, the summer beaches, the sweet air and nowhere to go, nowhere to be.
George loved driving the back roads because he could go fast and not worry about the police or the fact that his license was still under suspension. First-gear, it’s all right. He was wishing Laura would pour him a drink. He was wishing the buzz he had when he had walked in the school was still there. He liked to drink and drive because he could do it so well that no one would ever suspect. He loved having finally recovered the recklessness of youth. In fact he was more reckless now than he was when he was young. He liked that.
Laura asked George if he was married, she hadn’t noticed a ring.
“Three wives in twelve years taught me that marriage was beyond my pay grade. Three kids taught me the folly of mandatory procreation. But I’m finally free of support payments. I’m finally free of everyone’s grudging expectations. I assume you’ve been far more successful at mating and breeding.”
“I think I learned my lesson from my first divorce. I have a daughter and until last year she was great. Now it’s like she invented rebellion, the day- glow hair, the attitude and the anger, and staying out to party until dawn. We’re trying to out wait her.”
“Somebody should tell you children are going to grow up and think you’re scum. So what kind of lawyering does your husband do?” he asked, as he pushed the Porsche through a lovely tight bend.
“He’s a lawyer. Nothing special, he does mostly low-end criminal stuff. He’s good with Amanda. My work is usually so hectic and unpredictable; he’s the one who’s had to take up most of the slack.” Talking about her life in small talk wasn’t one of her favourite things. “So middle-aged and single is better?” she asked.
“Anything is better than serial marriage. I’ve been on my own since forty, and it’s been a lot more interesting than anything that had to do with being a husband and Daddy. How old is your daughter?” he asked. He really wanted a drink. He kept looking over at the open wine bottle breathing in Laura’s lap.
“She’s sixteen going on terribly two.” she replied, caustically.
The old Porsche sang down through the gears when George found an old road through some woods and turned the car slowly through tall juniper trees. Near the edge of the escarpment he turned off the engine and they looked out over the white and yellow and amber lights of houses and clusters of houses spaced far apart in the shimmering blackness.
George reached behind him and pulled two crystal glasses from the wicker box behind the seat where he had gotten the wine.
“So if I tell you about Gene, it won’t it spoil the mood?” he asked. “Did Gene ever bring you here?”
“Yes. Did he tell you about this place?” she asked.
“Ya, he did.” His voice fell. “He’s pretty bad. He still has movement in his arms but he can’t speak at all. He has this 50,000 dollar computer that reads his eye movements on an alphabet chart that prints to a screen or to a voice synthesizer that lets him speak like Stephen Hawking.
“Like Stephen Hawking? Does he look like Stephen Hawking?” she asked.
“No, he looks more like a waxy Fred Astaire. There’s been a fair bit of wasting, although the family exercises him every day.” George took the wine bottle and poured the dark shining liquid into the glass. The moonlight shone into it. The moonlight lit their faces and shone in their eyes. Laura drank quickly and the dry, mellow, deep richness of the wine struck her sweetly with one of the few pleasures that she completely understood.
“This is wonderful.” she said, “Tell me about his wife.. and his children. He really has fourt
een children? My God!” Her curiosity and sorrow caught in her chest like a corkscrew to her heart, like a feeling she just couldn’t get down. And the feeling didn’t change as she listened to George describe the circumstances of her old boyfriend’s life. His wife was small, dark and had a blazing smile that got her almost anything she wanted. She was a combination of earth mother and capitalist dynamo. She was the driving force behind their lumber business, their antique business, their antique reproduction business, their car restoration business, the farm and the yearly camp that brought a dozen foster families to live and work together every summer.
“The second kid they adopted, Tranh, who’s now almost forty, I guess, turned out to be a Wall Street Wizard. He started buying stocks in the early seventies and now the family has so much money it’s disgusting. Every one of the kids is a multi-millionaire.”
“On that old farm?! It’s hard to believe.” Laura remembered the farm and the huge brick house and the obvious lack of money. “What’s his wife’s name?”
“Sharon. Sherry baby. I don’t think I’ve ever been her favorite person. It’s funny because I like her, I really like her. She’s still pretty good-looking for a farm wife. She has these big eyes that just lock on to you. She knows what she wants and there aren’t many people who can resist her. She loves Gene like a she wolf, its fierce.”
“Really. And they had fourteen children. Fourteen?”
“Actually it was sixteen but two of the kids died, one from an accident, the other because he had a lot of health problems from the time they adopted him. They adopted the kids over twenty-five years, and they were mostly rejects in the system. Most of them are grown but there are still a bunch living at home. It was interesting that they chose to adopt kids, and only older kids between five and ten, kids that would’ve probably never had a family if they hadn’t been for them.”
“Saint Eugene.”
“Who would’ve guessed it?”
“When I knew him, all he ever cared about was that Gull Wing car. When I first started to date him, that’s about all I cared about too.” she said, amazed at what she had been hearing .
“Although he did have a pretty sweet body.”
“I guess you would know.” he teased.
“It was a long time ago.”
“So how did it compare to mine?” he said with a smirk.
“What are you talking about?” She snapped her head to look at him.
“You took my virginity. The cast party for Westside story; you can’t tell me that you don’t remember?”
“Yes I can.” She started to laugh. “I was such as slut. But I thought I was a more discrete slut.”
“Thanks.”
“You were Gene’s best friend. We really did it?”
“I’m glad it was so memorable.” She laughed at his feigned hurt feelings and then he laughed too. The chest ache inside her got bigger. “So how are they dealing with his dying? It must be a nightmare.”
“Not really, I guess denial is the cornerstone of life’s shitpile. They act like it’s the same old Gene”
They both finished their glasses of wine and George refilled them to the brim.
“You obviously aren’t a fanatic about drinking and driving.”
“I’d have to quit my job, if I was.” she replied.
“You should come and see Eugene. He’d love to see you.”
Laura’s eyes rolled back in her head at the thought. “I’d be sick.” And the very thought of it moved the chest lump down into her gut.
“When I told him that I was going to the reunion he asked me to look for you.” He could see she was getting very uncomfortable.
“There’s no point to it. It’s out of the question.”
“Right.” He let the silence of the evening fall between them and it was then that he realized he still wanted her. He was back at high school but with all he had learned since, so he knew he could make it more than memorable. She was fifty years old and in this place where she used to make out with Gene, he guessed she was starting to remember her teenage heat.
“I don’t really sell suits for a living.” he confessed. “I teach drama in high school in Rosedale.”
“It must pay pretty well, fine threads, fine wine, classic car.” She was intrigued at his style and amazed that he ended up being one of the enemy. “As I recall, you hated teachers.”
“It pays well enough, once your child support payments are done. I still hate teachers. But it’s what failed actors end up doing.”
“You were an actor. I should have guessed. Why did I never hear about you?”
“Probably because I was a failed actor in L.A. Just think, you could have been my agent.”
“That would have been good.” she sighed and focused on her wine. “I don’t really want to share life stories. I’d like to finish my wine and get back. I do have a long drive.”
“So what made you give up your old slutty ways? I suppose that at your age it’s counterproductive.”
“What do you mean counterproductive? It’s just difficult, tacky. It’s hard enough to keep a relationship going without that kind of a distraction, not to mention the time. There’s never any time.”
“Once a woman passes a certain age men are pretty nervous about what comes in the package with sex. Young women have the real power to blind side a man because men think that sex is just sex when you’re young, just like it was for them. One of the things I do is give a little course to certain exceptional young women to teach them how to have power over men.”
“And the fee for this course would be?”
“Just the joy in the teaching.” he said, his eyes sparkling .
“And this joyful teaching includes some sexual contact? These wouldn’t be your students I’m hoping.”
“No, that would be stupid. I’ve never given the course to anyone before they graduate. It’s usually the summer following, and it’s all very consensual, usually the girls come with a reference from a previous graduate. I insist that the first month of the course is nothing but talk.”
“Well that should teach them what men are like.” she teased.
“I’m sure you figured it all out in your twenties, but it would have saved you a whole lot of grief and got you a whole lot further in life if you’d had my course when you graduated from high school.”
“What is it that someone like you could have taught me all those many many years ago, to save me such grief and offer me such opportunity?” She was almost angry. George was almost sure then that he had her.
“When woman are young they don’t realize that power over men comes with understanding how much men are dependent on their imaginations. A man thinks of sex through his whole life about once every thirty seconds. And when you think of how little real sexual content there is in life, it means that a woman who understands how to manipulate imaginary sexual content can pretty much control any man. It’s not what you do that inspires a man’s imagination, it’s what you might do, and more to the point, it’s what you just might want him to do. What I offer a young woman is the power to inflame a man’s imagination until it’s white hot. Every man wants a beautiful woman’s approval. Every man wants a beautiful woman to tell him what to do. Surely you know that as well as anyone.”
Now she was intrigued. Men were not supposed to know those kind of secrets.
She took the last of the wine and filled her glass. She asked him to describe this so-called course. He was more than glad to do that.
“There are three great powers in the world: money, guns and imagination. Imagination is by far the most powerful. It can get people to do things money and guns can’t begin to do. And those who control people’s imaginations will eventually control the money and the guns anyway. Some men are born knowing the power of the imagination, but they are the rare exception. It usually takes a woman to know what to do with it. It takes a woman to know what to as
k a man to do. The few women who know it are the ones who control the world.”
With the wine and the atmosphere, she wasn’t really sure that he wasn’t right. What she was sure of was the effect of what he was saying would have on an ambitious, beautiful young woman, as she had been once, long ago
“You should write a book, like The Rules. If you can do this as a course, you’d have a best-seller for sure.”
“And I could trot out a whole lot of powerful, well placed, beautiful graduates to take on the talk-show circuit, to give short glowing references”
“That would be a problem, if you had a sense of honor. That would make you the exception among writers. But I want to know more about the particulars of this course. Just what do you do for them and what do they do for you?” she asked seriously.
“If we open another bottle of wine.” he said and reached into the wicker basket. He uncorked the wine and set it to breathe beside them. “Just like you, my ladies all first thought that what I was after was just getting in their pants, like every other man. They learned it was inevitably true but what was different with me was that I was not only offering to give them power, I was insisting that they be willing to take it and use it and understand it or there would really be no point to the sex.”
“The line of the century.” Laura said as she poured herself another glass of wine.
“It’s only a line if it’s bullshit. I really don’t think I’d be boasting, if I said I never had an unsatisfied student. In fact most of the sex I get outside of the course is with woman who come back to see me. And I know it is not for the sex that they really come back, it’s because power is lonely. Powerful women are usually quite lonely, wouldn’t you say?”
“So tell me the specifics of this course.” She wanted to know.
“Mostly, the course is just talk. The first thing I ask a woman is which two phrases can control any man. I don’t think even you know the answer to that.” He could see that she had no idea of an answer. He could see she was waiting for his. “The two phrases are: I really think you can do that, and I really hoped you would do better than that.” Laura stared at him, her condescension and skepticism fallen from her eyes. He went on. “A man’s imagination has two poles: pleasing a woman and disappointing a woman. Those two poles are the carrot and the stick any woman can use to draw and to drive a man’s imagination. And a woman who can drive a man’s imagination can make a man go anywhere and do anything she chooses. In this world, that is real power, in some cases, absolute power. The most interesting thing about a man’s sexual imagination is that it’s not the sex, stupid; it’s about wanting to have someone wanting the sex. What could happen is far more exciting than what does. That’s what men think about when they think about sex all those innumerable times in the day. A woman who knows that can do anything she wants with a man. The first lesson in the course is learning many ways to say’ I think what you’re doing is making me excited’, the second lesson is learning many ways to say’ I hoped you could do it better than that.’”
“It’s insidious. You’re betraying your gender, you realize? So what’s the next lesson?”
George sipped his wine and fixed his seat so it reclined and he was more comfortable. Laura had to sit up and turn to look at him as he talked.
“As I said, the first month is mostly just talking. I teach a woman to explore her imagination, and what’s more important, to learn to express it out loud. Most people are uncomfortable with expressing themselves sexually. But what they’re even more uncomfortable doing is asking someone else to express themselves sexually. First we learn to imagine what we want, then we learn how to ask for it. Do you still know how to imagine?” he asked Laura.
“Sure I do. Go on.”
“Then you must know how to ask for what you imagine?” he pursued.
“Let’s leave me out of this. I thought you’d give a better description of this course than that.”
“You’re a natural. Your husband must live at your feet.” he teased.
“Right. Just where he belongs.”
“From the imagining we move to watching. We explore videos. I let them come to my apartment when I’m not there and look through my collection of real fine porn. They have to watch and remember, and when I come home they have to tell what they saw and how they would change it, and what they would imagine they would like to do. It’s really just an improvisational acting course. An example, what would you want to be wearing and how would you like it done if you were to ask me to undress you. Think about the timing, the order, if and how you’d like to be touched. Think of your eyes and your body. Think of your breathing and how it would rise and fall. “
“You’re Svengali! This is almost hypnotic. At least when you have had enough wine.” She wanted to break his rhythm. She could feel the rise in the sexual energy enclosed in the little sports car.
“You have no time for an imagination. Admit it!” George demanded. “This is the first time that you talked about sex and felt anything for a very long time. Why don’t you lie back and I’ll fire your imagination with only one single question.” He let her think about it and then went on,” And I won’t move or touch you. “ He reached around her and she let him fold back the car seat so that she was looking up through the back window at the white explosion of stars.
“So what’s the one question?” she asked softly.
“I want you to silently imagine what you’d have me do in this situation if we were just actors and you were directing your own script?”
He was looking down into her lily still eyes and he bent down and kissed her, just as she expected he would. She let him. She liked it. Her mouth turned to mercury, to geranium petals. Desire to nipples, desire, fluttering desire. He sat back and looked at her.
“When was the last time you remember a great kiss?” he asked, gently.
“You know how to hurt and excite at the same time, don’t you?”
“It’s my life.” He moved to kiss her again and she held him off gently. Softly his voice followed his fingers.” Then close your eyes and imagine. Imagine what you would want to have happen. Imagine what you’d want me to do. Imagine the feelings. Imagine the details. Anything possible, anything you’d like. It’s your own sweet silent secret.” He sat back in his chair and gave her the time and the silence to let herself go.
She knew that he wanted to connect her imagination to his reality. She knew she could make this real. Yes or no. Do or don’t. Go home or go on. It was like being young again. The silence stretched through the sky: the constellation of lust; the constellation of trust; the constellations of youth and middle-age; the constellation of novelty; and the great black hole of betrayal.
“Stop thinking. Imagine. It’s not anything you even have to do or say.” The wine and the starlight and his voice let her relax, and after a moment, a long awkward moment, she did imagine. A seam of light opened above her. She saw a shooting star that night and remembered him. The silence in the erotic tension reached into her diaphragm, changed her breathing, she loved the idea of directing. Finally, after five long minutes she could actually feel her heart pounding. She’d played out the scene in her mind. Do it. Do it. Do it! She’d choose only one small part of it. She’d do it. She sat up and leaned forward and kissed George’s temple and spoke in a whisper.
“I only want to feel the tip your tongue.” She reached for the door handle and got out of the car. He saw her body lay back and cover the window that followed the gentle curve that was the back of the Porsche. He felt her weight settle back and depress the springs of the under carriage. He decided to let her wait. George had learned from acting that timing was everything, and the big secret of timing was knowing just how long to let people wait. For her it would be long enough to absorb the juniper smell and the starlight but not long enough so she started to wonder what he was doing.
He opened th
e light aluminum door of the Porsche and walked back to where she had leaned back over the curved back of the car. Her blond hair was flooded with moonlight on the black cherry darkness of the gleaming paint. Her eyes were closed, her expensive sandals dug into the ground at her heels. He kneeled down and reached up under her skirt and pushed her onto the roof, his hands tight on her long lovely thighs. The white shot silk skirt flowed over her legs as the license plate on the back of the car appeared between then, ‘Yours to Discover’. She imagined the view through the window beneath her. She was a great director.
Her silk underwear came down her legs and he left them dangling from one foot. Timing, waiting. She was waiting for more. Only the tip of his tongue. More.
It was then that he touched her most sensitive gear. Now more.
She felt his breath and then the wet touch and then her legs rose into the stars. Like Hoar Frost dissolving, her thoughts and her flesh melted to his touch. Slowly, delicately, patiently, cool became hot which then became wet and wetter. And more!
It was like years melting away. It was like tears falling on his tongue. Where she had been young and lovely, it was young and lovely again. More!
And true to his word and her direction, it was only the tip of his tongue. And when she couldn’t help it, her voice rose into her throat in a soft moan that rose in the silence, rose in her breathing, rose in her blood, wet heavy petals fluttering in the cool night air.
And then he pulled away and waited. He was so good. It was so good. It had been so long! Only the tip! Please, more!
Once again, with perfect timing, the tip of his tongue and the pearl in the oil met with a long static charge. And her voice rose slowly and slowly and she was dissolved, and out of the pool of her deep diaphragm everything exploded and she screamed and she screamed where finally no one could hear, musky and husky and low.
More! And more! And more!
Move over Molly Bloom!
Her legs fell out of the stars and George let her skirt fall back down her legs and left her lying there, draped down the roof of the car. He left her alone so she would remember. He left her alone so she’d have to come to him. He had walked to the edge of the cliff and waited, knowing she would eventually be dealing with the reality of finding and pulling on her drawers. He was surprised at how long it took her to join him. He was actually about to go back to the car where there was a flask of single malt Scotch he was really starting to need.
He cut off any qualifying remarks she might make by making them for her. “I know this probably wasn’t a good idea. I know this probably won’t happen again. I know that was very nice but, I know we should probably be going. Is there anything else that I left out?”
“Not a thing. Except it was a little better than nice.” He took her hand when she said it, and in a way, that was even better than better than nice
“We could make this a habit.” he said after a moment.
“In another thirty years, we should be so lucky.” And she took back her hand and walked to the car. There was a click and the little soft boom of the door closing, and George stayed for a minute while they let each other wait. He wanted a drink.
She’d put back her seat until it was fully reclined and she was staring through the back window at the stars. George found his flask in the wicker basket and the taste of the Scotch was mellow and strong and real.
It was past midnight when they slid out onto the black empty roads. A strange distance and intimacy lay between them as Laura watched the stars through the back window, a touch of guilt with the lovely mix of fine wine and sexual release. She watched him drinking from a small silver flask and was amazed to be where she was. She thought that her wild days were long behind her, but she couldn’t help but admit to herself that he gave her a rush, a quiet rush like the wind sliding over them outside.
Both of them felt it, even though neither could express it, that they weren’t yet finished with each other. Unconsciously, what they felt was the worst thing about middle-age, the fact that no one any longer was really interested in knowing who you are. They thought they were interested. They mistook the novelty and the physical intensity and the drama of connecting for the personal interest that used to come with all that.
“Do you like phone sex?” he asked.
“I don’t plan on seeing you again. It makes me nervous that you’re thinking of calling.” She didn’t like having to deal with romantic possibilities. She wanted to have the moment and then let it go.
“Of course. Busy lady. We really don’t have anything in common except exceptional imaginations. I only asked because it just seemed like such a waste, imagination wise.” Sex had its doors and sex had its windows. They had walked through a door and looked back out a window. It took a long time to find the latches and locks to keep someone out once they had come inside.
“So do you ever go out with women your own age?” she asked, changing the subject.
“No, but you’re probably the exception that would prove the rule. Aside from the obvious reasons, I usually prefer young women. The difference between young and mature women is that even the most perceptive young woman has no real sense of perspective. Most men get tired of being seen in perspective. With you, I find it a refreshing change. Besides, I’d like to think that this time you’ll remember me.”
“I’ll remember you. And I’m sure you’ll remember me.” The wine had really loosened her tongue. “You know who you are? You’re the wizard of Oz. Behind all the special effects: the car, the cologne, the clothes and the wine is just a guy selling snake oil.” His ego was the dead bolt she meant to throw in the door.
“I thought it was you that makes her living flogging people to the public?”
She ignored his cut. “You won’t forget tonight and you won’t see me again because a man never forgets a woman who knows how to call his bluff. And a man never knows what to do when she’s done it. What do you think, Georgie?” And from the moment on, whenever they were alone she always called him Georgie.
“I think it’s you that’s bluffing.” He was chuckling. He wanted to look condescending and superior. He did. “Should I give Eugene you’re regards?” he asked, “I’m staying there tonight.” She was annoyed at his laugh.
“I’d rather you didn’t. What would be the point?”
“To send a greeting to an old dying boyfriend.” and he said it with none of the acid that was in the words.
When they turned into the parking lot of the old high school, Laura’s car was all-alone in the darkness. George pulled up beside the driver’s door and shut off the Porsche. Silence. She sat up and looked at him. A handshake was foolish; a kiss just wasn’t going to happen.
“I’ll let you put up the seat, if it’s all right?” she said softly.
He didn’t answer her question. “Remember it’s not what happened, it’s what could have happened.” he said, “Good night.”
“Good night Georgie.” She opened the door and slid her long legs out and she rose and left him there, the door gently slamming behind her.
George watched Laura get in her four year old black BMW, bring it to life and spray gravel as she tore quickly away.
Chapter 2