The Feast of Love - Charles Baxter [6]
“You shouldn’t do that. Get lost in nostalgia, I mean. But Diana was beautiful,” I say.
“She still is. And I’m not nostalgic.”
“But she was unfaithful to you,” I tell him. “You can’t love someone who does that.”
“I almost could. She was powerful. She had me in a kind of spell, I’m not kidding.” He looks straight at me. “Nearly a goddess, Diana. I could let her destroy me. In flames. I’d go down in flames watching her.”
Just as he finishes this sentence, some noise — it sounds like a crow cawing — filters down to us from very high in the nearby trees. Odd: I cannot remember ever hearing a crow at night. At the same time that I have this thought, I hear a man laugh twice, distantly, from the houses behind us. A horribly mean laugh, this is. It makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
“Oh, by the way,” I say, “I just came from the football stadium. Guess what I saw.”
“They’re going to put a big fence around that place.” He laughs. “Didn’t you know that? A big fence. With a gigantic new Vegas-style scoreboard. People like you keep trying to get in.”
“There’s no fence around it now,” I tell him.
“I can see where this is going,” Bradley snorts. “Walking around at night, you’re soaking up material for your book, The Feast of Love, and what to your wandering eyes should appear? I know exactly what appeared. You saw some kids who’d snuck into the stadium and were actively naked on the fifty-yard line.”
“Well, yes.” I wait, disappointed. “How did you know? I mean, I thought it was rather sweet. And you know, I was touched.”
“Touched.”
“It’s hard to describe. Their . . .”
His curiosity gleams at me from his permanently love-struck face.
“Oh, you know,” I say. “The waning moon was shining down on them. Like A Midsummer Night’s Dream, or something of the sort.”
“All right, sure. I know. Love on the field of play. Happens all the time, though,” he says in a calmer and possibly sedated voice. For a moment I wonder if he’s on Prozac. “Didn’t you know that? I grew up around here, so I should know. Kids sneaking in, it’s a big deal for them, they can point to the fifty-yard line and say, ‘Hey, man, guess what I did down there with my girlfriend? That’s where I got laid, Bub, right down there where that big guy is being taken off on a stretcher.’ ”
“Well,” I say, “I gotta go.”
He grabs my arm in a strong grip. “No you don’t. That’s the most ridiculous claim I ever heard. It’s two in the morning. You don’t have to go anywhere.”
“My wife’s expecting me back.”
He sits up suddenly. “Listen, Charlie,” he says. “I’ve got an idea. It’ll solve all your problems and it’ll solve mine. Why don’t you let me talk? Let everybody talk. I’ll send you people, you know, actual people, for a change, like for instance human beings who genuinely exist, and you listen to them for a while. Everybody’s got a story, and we’ll just start telling you the stories we have.”
“What do you think I am, an anthropologist?” I mull it over. “No, sorry, Bradley, it won’t work. I’d have to fictionalize you. I’d have to fictionalize this dog here.” I pat Junior on the head. Junior smiles again: a very stupid and very friendly dog, but not a character in a novel.
“Well, change your habits. And, believe me, it will work. Listen to this.” He clears his throat. “Okay. Chapter One. Every relationship has at least one really good day . . .”
TWO
EVERY RELATIONSHIP HAS at least one really good day. What I mean is, no matter how sour things go, there’s always that day. That day is always in your possession. That’s the day you remember. You get old and you think: well, at least I had that day. It happened once. You think all the variables might just