Jonathan Franzen - The Twenty-Seventh City - A Novel

Their waiter put two bowls of asparagus soup between them.

“Yes? What’s number one?”

“Where do you expect me to wear these?”

“In your ears!” He half stood, and did what she hadn’t thought men did, which was to remove earrings from women’s pierced ears. Her hands rose defensively, but fell back onto her napkin. He dropped her hoops into the box and, tongue curling with concentration, put in the diamonds. “You can tell your husband I gave them in appreciation of the Arch.”

He sat down. He looked at her soup. If she’d had anything in her stomach she might have thrown it up. But she picked up her spoon.

“And number two?” He cut into his soup with his own spoon and tasted it, his eyes connoisseurially unfocussed. With a hint of a nod, he came back. “Number two,” he answered, “is what do I expect in return.”

She let her eyes affirm this.

“A simple ‘Thank you’ will do.”

“Thank you.”

On the phone, he’d suggested a couple of restaurants in Clayton, but she’d asked to meet here at Balaban instead, knowing she’d feel more anonymous in the West End. In hindsight, though, she saw no reason to have avoided Clayton. People wouldn’t have thought anything of spotting her with Nissing, and what did she care if they did?

“Number three?”

Forget it. She shook her head. But she reconsidered. “Why me?”

“I couldn’t tell you,” he said. “But it was clear to me as soon as I saw you.”

“That’s not really good enough. I’m afraid that won’t do.”

The table behind her was empty, but he lowered his voice until she could hardly hear. “I see then,” he said, “that I’m required to explain my motivations while you are not, because you live in a castle and are self-explanatory, while I fly in planes and am not. I do my dance, and the lady clap a little? She is moved? She is not moved? You have a tired superiority, Barbara, and it doesn’t suit you well. If I made assumptions about you the way you’ve made them about me, I’d go so far as to guess you’ve never had an affair since you were married. This makes you a prize? At forty-three? This gives you the right to demand explanations?” He glanced over her shoulder and then looked back into her eyes. “You know you don’t speak like other people. Everyone around you is utterly reified. You know that. You speak a different language. You flaunt your sadness. You know damned well you’d like to fall in love with someone like yourself. Am I making myself at all clear?”

“Fairly clear, yes,” she said. “But we’d better talk about something else, or I’m not going to eat any lunch.”

Nissing had just paid the check, an hour later, when he mentioned that he had a plane to catch at 3:45. The news stung for a moment, but then she was glad. She was wiped out.

Outside, in a drizzle, she left him without a kiss, just a smile and a close-range wave. She didn’t believe everything he’d said, but she did believe she had him on a string.

At the first traffic light she removed her earrings. She had to go home for Luisa’s presents, the bulk of which she was bent on delivering this afternoon. The task looked easier in the light of that lunch, but it was a pity to drive all the way out to Webster Groves and back; Duane’s apartment was less than a mile away from where she’d parked.

Singh rose well before dawn, performed an abridged version of his calisthenics, took a freezing shower, and shaved. On Wednesday he’d had his hair cut radically, close in back and on the sides. To change appearance was to exaggerate the passage of time, to elude past claims of ownership, to seem to own himself. He chose his clothes with a similar end. Barbara had seen him in natty woolens, so today he would wear black denim, cancel the conservative button-downs with a sea-blue collarless. He ate a bagel with butter and brushed his teeth.

Day came, melting the opacity of the skylights into a blue translucence. There wasn’t much in the refrigerator. Singh threw it all away. He had an extra plate and two too many forks. He threw them away. He threw away superfluous socks and an illfitting shirt. He read through the Probst file and shredded ninety percent of it. He knew the essence now as he hadn’t two months ago; he was narrowing in. On the top sheet of the notes he was shredding he glimpsed spent phrases: tired superiority, in love with someone like herself . He took the garbage to the elevator and down to the alley and came back up with the building’s vacuum cleaner. He sucked what little dust there was from the green carpeting, what crumbs from the cooking zone, what hair balls from the bathroom. He telephoned Barbara, and then for a second time he listened to the conversations she’d had in the last four days, complete through the previous evening. Her composure was flawless, but that said everything; a week ago she hadn’t been composed.

AR: Where were you all day?

BP: Oh, I took some presents down to Luisa.

AR: I kept calling…

BP: I did hear the phone once or twice. I was trying to sleep. I haven’t been sleeping.

AR: I thought you might be working.

BP: No, I work all day tomorrow.

He erased the tape. Pigeons clustered. On the telephone he exchanged polysyllables with Jammu. Recently Jammu had had a mild attack of scruples, an allergic reaction to messing with lives, but she’d recovered now, and in a very few hours Singh would have the pleasure of pinning Martin Probst’s wife to a mattress.

He drove a freshly rented Pontiac Reliant to his Brentwood pied-à-terre and went in to collect his portfolio. The pictures of 236 Sherwood Drive were cautious and strangely murky, like the house itself, but apparently just what the editor wanted. Singh had paid off Joshua and Vince and sent them back to Chicago. His House days were over. He ignited a clove cigarette but thought better of smoking it. He flushed it down the toilet and left the apartment.

The Probsts’ helpful gardener was chopping ice off the front walk when Singh arrived. He returned Singh’s greeting with a piercing look and silence. Singh rang the doorbell and Barbara let him in. He observed her to see how his altered appearance affected her, and he saw that she had changed her own. She’d put up her hair with a barrette and dressed in a close-fitting T-shirt and close-fitting pants, shifting the emphasis from her body’s stalkiness to its maturity. Their mirrored strategies amused him. He forgot his line for a moment. He remembered. “Got some pictures for you.”

“No thanks,” she said, reaching up with weightless arms and kissing him. He hadn’t expected this yet. His surprise showed. She pushed away. “I’m going to go lie down, all right?”

She turned and climbed three steps and paused, facing away from him.

He leaned the portfolio against the oak chest in the hallway. He considered sitting down in the living room to watch what would happen, how long it would take her to join him. Why not. Her earnest grandeur bored him. He lowered himself onto the sofa and picked up some coffee-table reading, a book of pictures of the Arch by Joel Meyerowitz. It hadn’t been here last time. He thumbed. The advantage was his. In addition to her many reasons for being “unfaithful” to Martin, she had the heart of a bourgeoise and was eager to please. Less virtuous women would have hesitated when he’d called on Monday; less intelligent women would have flirted and dallied more brilliantly; Barbara, humorless, merely said yes and named a restaurant.

She appeared at the coffee table. “You came here to lay me, right?”

He filtered patience into his sigh. “I had a rough flight,” he said. “Do you want to sit down with me for a while?”