About Schmidt - Louis Begley [65]
Elaine might like that.
She’d hate it. So would Lilly—and Nina and Lisa. You know that those two are crazy about Elaine. There would be a solid front against me!
Like the Maginot Line, right? Then maybe the only solution is to stop. If the girl is so intelligent, and you have explained everything to her, she should understand. You could even introduce her to somebody more suitable—for instance, a younger me!
But I don’t want to stop! That’s like saying I should tear up a flower bed. If I put the problem of duplicity aside, which I can’t, I’ve got something happening to me that’s quite marvelous. I’ve been transformed into a brand-new man, admired and desired for some qualities I can’t even see, and this by a girl who is like a daydream, except that she is absolutely real! You know the normal me: important and self-important, days cut up in thirty-minute segments of appointments with other men like me, weekends here or on the Coast, and vacations planned by Elaine months in advance, like that Christmas trip we’re making with the usual idiots, intermittent orgies of spending money and paying bills, and every eighteen months or so the ritual fit of nerves about a film I know is going to turn out pretty much all right. Do you think it’s easy to give up this new thing that’s grown up in my life? Could such a thing—so unpolluted by my permanent self—happen again?
Ah, the mirage of fugitive youth!
That’s another problem. How long can I keep it up, this sort of stuff—I mean physically? And what happens when I slow down?
That will take a while, especially if you’re not in New York all the time. By the way, are you jealous? I mean, do you care whether you are the only one?
I don’t dare to be. She has asked me a slightly different question, whether I wanted her to be faithful. I said that would be an unfair request, since I am not faithful to her. She was so genuinely shocked that I had to explain it was only with Elaine!
Schmidt found it difficult to comment on this revelation. A moment of thoughtful silence followed, interrupted by Gil.
Look, what about this guy? Are you going to call the police?
Perhaps tomorrow. I feel too tired. There is no rush; by now he might be anywhere, including, of course, my backyard. There isn’t much I can tell you. I met him, if that’s what you want to call it, on the bus. He sat down next to me and stank. I don’t think I could bear to touch him. I believe he sensed my revulsion and used it to terrorize me. This is an abstract way of putting it, but it’s as good as any other. I saw him a second time, through the window of O’Henry’s, and had the same feeling of panic. What was the meaning of tonight? A coincidence? Was he looking for a house with a front door that was unlocked, happened to check mine out, and took a shit on my doormat out of frustration? Is he following me around because he knows he can scare me? Whatever it is, I don’t like it.
I don’t either. Let me know what you decide to do.
After Gil left, Schmidt had another, indecently large, drink of brandy. It was not the first time that having listened to one of his friend’s tales of woe he wished he had the same sort of problems to contend with. The visit from the man, on the other hand, was right up his own alley Shame and paralysis! Was he expected to call the police and ask Sergeant Smith to rescue him from a bum defecating on his doorstep? Wouldn’t it be more decorous to get a crowbar, like Gil, or the ax handle he already owned, and brain the fellow when he pulled his next stunt? But his nerve would fail; he was unmanned by that strange hobo; it was the effect, which he had never seen, of a snake on a bird. Two birds with one stone: there was something wrong with that pun that brandy prevented him from identifying, but it was all the same. The Amazon island would put plenty of distance between him, the man, and all pretense of Christmas cheer.
VIII
TELEPHONE CONVERSATIONS the next day.
Although it’s past ten, Schmidt is in bed, perhaps asleep, covers wound around him tightly, like a shroud, to keep the warmth