—That’s not entirely true, I said, feeling myself flush.
—Joan. This is why you met me. Don’t you think so? Everything happens for a reason. Even the scary things.
We had moved outside to her terrible yard with its yellow-green grass and its Char-Broil kettle grill. It felt like we were in Alabama instead of Southern California, and she was mocking me with her continental accent and her absolute beauty, and I wanted to dislike her very much. But I also felt she was on my side. It was hard to experience the feeling, let alone explain its effect. I wanted her to hold me. My whole life I’d been waiting for a woman to hold me.
We drank our wine and grilled the fish and the sun lowered and some more breeze came. I felt a little nauseous and Alice decided it was time to eat. She set the table and served the salad. It was a wonderful salad, with the banana blossoms julienned and the vibrant pinwheels of watermelon radish, the arugula coated with olive oil and bright lemon and a dusting of pecorino across the top. It was odd to eat something so fresh on stained armchairs in that unkempt yard with a gorgeous woman. A lot about Alice was a contradiction, but that was true of most beautiful women. There was one poet, one author, they knew backward and forward, which lent them some intractable intellect. Once I knew a beautiful girl from the Midwest who had read everything Barry Hannah had ever written and that was it. That was all she knew. The more obscure the writer, the more suicidal, the better.
—I told Vic about Big Sky after the first weekend when I didn’t hear from him at all. I was so desperate I just wanted to tell somebody who cared for me. I wanted Vic to tell me I would hear from him again.
—Oh, Alice said. That’s always it, isn’t it. Will he call me again? Just tell me I’ll hear from him again, even if it’s only so he can say, This is over.
Alice took a bite. She ate like a European—small, neat forkfuls. A piece of fish with a strip of arugula or radish. Mixing things.
—You grilled the fish perfectly, she said.
I thanked her and she nodded impatiently while chewing, reminding me of my mother, and gestured with her hand for me to go on.
—I told him, and I was breathing heavily, and I was scared. He could tell. We were out to lunch. It was a Monday at this Bavarian bar far from our office and I was drinking Belgian ale though I hate Belgian ale, and he was staring at me with his beady eyes. I kept looking at my phone to see if Big Sky had written and I could just sail out of there, leave Vic forever, the whole disease of it. And this is where it gets awful. Just sickening.
—Yes, tell me.
—Vic told me to write to him. He told me to give him a directive. He told me to write and say, Was just thinking of you. I’m making martinis at five. Stop by when you knock off for the day.
—That’s somewhat good advice, Alice said.
—It was scary, he had this look on his face like he was accessing a haunted part of himself. Then he sat there with me and we waited. I said, I cannot believe I just wrote that. And Vic said, You had to, it’s fine, he’ll come. And I said, Jesus, that is so unlike me. And Vic smirked, and I remember this verbatim, he said, He’ll be rock-hard the second he opens that email, kid.
Alice doubled over in disgust. I’d thought I would feel shame recounting that, but instead I felt relief. So I continued.
—By now he had this very strange look on his face, this very strange mask. His eyes glittered, he wasn’t sad but enraged, even—
—Turned on.
—Yes. And he said, So tell me about him. And I said, Huh? And he just repeated himself. Tell me about him. Blankly. Straightforward. As though he were just any man and I were just any girl. He said, Is it nice? And I kept saying, What? And he just kept saying those same words, Tell me about him. What’s it like? Is it nice? And finally I said, What? The sex? And he said, Yeah. I said, Aren’t you bored with this? And he said, Nope. I remember that, specifically. Nope. I said, I told you everything. Which of course wasn’t completely true, but I told him so much. I had certainly told him more than a woman has ever told a man who loves her about another man she’s been fucking. And Vic said, Is he a total stud? And I said, Yeah, in a sort of strange way. He’s unthreateningly assertive. Now, this, of course, was the thing that most drew me to Big Sky, but Vic, like every man, didn’t care about that. He sailed over that. He said, Big? Just that, like that. Big? I said, Yes, because I wanted to torture him a little, because how dare he talk to me that way.
—That’s the right thing you should have felt.
—But I was cruel.
—We’ll see.
—And he said, Huge? So I said, Not huge, but big. And he said, Nice. Heavy cummer? And I looked at the tables around us. I was always looking at the tables around us, everywhere we went. I was always feeling depraved and hideous. I said, Who are you? Are you a porn writer? I didn’t understand where this was coming from. And he could see that I was angry and confused, so he said, Aw, come on, kid.
—He was trying to get off.
—But I was never that way. I’d done so many questionable things in my life, but I was prudish in these respects. You know?
—I can see that about you. You’re a little girl in many ways.
—I told Vic the best part was kissing, and the way he held me while we did, and the way we moved against each other. And he laid down a fifty-dollar bill and said, Awesome. Have a great afternoon, kid. Let me know what he says. I’ve gotta get back to the office. I know you don’t like to walk back with me anymore, your morals and such. So I’ll leave you to it.
And I said, I can feel it, he’s not gonna respond, and I’m going to feel like an asshole. And Vic said, He’ll come, trust me. And if he doesn’t, like I said, it’s not because he doesn’t want to. I thanked him for being a good friend, in a very strange way. And he said, Okay, catch you in a bit. He’ll come. Just wish I was the one getting that note. And, seriously, of course. Look, I love you. I really do. Sometimes I think you don’t get that.
—And then, Alice said, he went to jerk off in the office bathroom.
—But you don’t understand, I said, there was something more. There was love there. He loved me.
—That’s not love. That’s abuse.
—He finished my project for me. I had that big project, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t concentrate on it because of Big Sky, who, as you know, did show up that night, and after he left, I was wounded all over again, and Vic did it for me that week. He’d been there, he’d listened about all the other boys, all the other men. I didn’t tell you everything.
—So you’d been telling him about other men you were with.
—Yes, a doorman, for example, that I slipped my room number to in San Francisco.
—That’s hot, Alice said.
The way a woman could make you feel sensual was utterly different than a way a man could. Especially a beautiful woman. I looked at her big nose, at her big white teeth. Her ferocious eyebrows and her nude fat lips. It was a mystery where the striking beauty came from. It came from everything at once, and although it was hard to put my finger on, I didn’t for a moment doubt it. Unlike my own, which I’d been doubting in mirrors my whole life.
—And the young kid, Jack, I said.
—So he suffered, listening about all these men.