Charles Baxter - The Feast of Love

Why is the light given? you think. Why is the light taken away?

Down at the center of the mall, the fountain has stopped surging into the de-ionized air, and the water sits there, gathering dust. Here and there in the far recesses of the mall, the customers move around, totally unmotivated, confused and abandoned, quite conclusively Monday-morning, and everything we’ve got here for sale loses its allure. Nothing but wallflower commodities, spinster products. Two old people, arm in arm, help each other walk toward the exit.

Across the acres of merchandise a vast silence prevails.

“Wow. This is amazing,” Chloé says, and I nod in agreement. “You know what this makes me think of?” she asks.

“What?”

“Well, uh, your candles going out.” She smiles at me, and one of her blond eyebrows lifts, as she thinks of what to say next. But she doesn’t say anything, eloquently sexy in her silence.

“Hmm,” I say, pretending to think this over. But actually I am thinking it over.

Chloé and I go back into Jitters. She ambles toward the back, taking off her apron, swaying as she goes, her hips alive to their possibilities. She sits down in a sort of wing chair back near the rest room, and seems to doze off. Oscar keeps her busy at night. I’ll wake her up when the customers return. I’m a demanding boss but a fair one.

Then two things happen. I go up to the woman who’s been sitting at a small table near the front, reading the New York Times. I say to her, “How can you read in this light? It’s so dim.”

“I’m used to dim bulbs,” she says, not looking up.

“In that case, you’d be right at home here.”

She seems startled by my witticism, and smiles at me, and in the dim light I can see that her eyes are blue. We introduce ourselves eventually, and I find out that her name is Diana.

Not to get ahead of myself here, but she becomes my second wife.

The other thing that happens is that before the lights go back on in the mall, a strange little man with greasy hair appears outside what I guess you’d call our doorway. He stands there and stands there, shifting from one foot to the other. He’s not large, but he looks strong and wiry, and when I first see him I get the impression that he’s not really looking over the brioche, he’s searching for someone, and then he finds what he’s searching for, which is Chloé. Even though she’s at the back, taking a catnap, he’s staring at her.

“May I help you?” I ask him, to fill the time.

He shakes his head. From where I’m standing, I can smell the whiskey on his breath. I can even tell that it’s cheap whiskey, a Canadian blend, the worst of all possible whiskies. The next time I look over in his direction, he’s vanished.

When I tell Chloé about him, and I describe him to her, all she says is, “Yuck. It’s the Bat. Señor Creep-o-rama.” Then she looks at her watch. “Where’s Oscar? He should be here by now? Where’s Oscar, Mr. S?”

I tell her I don’t know. But right at one o’clock, on the dot, Oscar swaggers into Jitters. After soul-kissing him, Chloé tells Oscar about the Bat’s mysterious apparitional appearance. All Oscar says is, “Dumb old man.” Then he puts his apron on.

But I am not really thinking about them because I am thinking about Diana, having already obtained her phone number. I took courage because she hadn’t been demeaned as yet with someone else’s engagement or wedding ring, I had taken care to notice. Before the lights came back on in the mall, I was thinking of eat-ing supper with this woman, Diana, whose blue eyes and stay-puttedness in the midst of storm and wrack had banished from my mind all thought of eulogies and votive candles and little white crosses accompanied by plastic flowers that poked up through the dirt and unfolded their zombie blossoms on a cheerless Monday morning.

“LISTEN, UH, what did you say your name was?” Diana asks.

“Charlie.”

“Listen, Charlie. I mean, I suppose this is all very interesting and everything, but it gives me the willies. First of all my story is not a story. Second of all, it’s not yours. It’s mine, isn’t it? I thought my life was mine and not yours. Third of all, I… I just lost my train of thought. Oh, I know: it’s all private. My life is not in the public domain. All right? Please don’t write about me.”

“Oh, I won’t. Not exactly. But I’ll invent a replica of you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t. I don’t really have time to argue. I’m a busy woman. I’m an osteopath, you know.”

“Oh, that’s fascinating,” I say without irony, because I mean it. “An osteopath? What do osteopaths do? Do you mind my asking? I’ve always been confused about osteopaths.”

“No, sorry, I don’t have time to explain. You can look it up.”

“Okay. Maybe I’ll make you into a lawyer.”

“A lawyer? How can you do that? Incidentally, what did you say this project of yours is called?”

“The Feast of Love.”

“Ah -huh. Just like Bradley’s painting. I got that, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Just like Bradley’s painting.”

“It’s the best thing he ever did,” she says.

“There you go,” I tell her. “See, you have opinions to contribute, too.”

“That wasn’t an opinion,” she says. “I didn’t say anything. And I’m not going to say anything, believe me.”

“Okay,” I tell her. “But you’ll wish you had talked to me.”

“What does that mean?” she asks. “Are you threatening me? I should give you a piece of advice. As a favor. Free. Here it is. Don’t threaten me.” Her voice somehow manages to rise and to stay calm simultaneously. “Don’t threaten people, especially lawyers. Don’t threaten your own characters. It’s for your own good. You’ll wind up in a mess of litigation and … subplots.” She pauses. Then she seems to laugh. At least I think it’s a laugh. “You’re probably an intelligent man. Let’s not beat this shit to death. You get the point.”

THE POINT WAS, I didn’t need a lover. I already had one of those, a married man who sometimes came over and who brought bunches of beautiful cut flowers, or soup he had made at home the night before.

He’d sneak the soup, carrot-leek being my favorite, out of his house in Tupperware containers, pretending he would serve it to himself for lunch. How he snuck the containers back was not my concern. He favored white shirts with French cuffs, lightly starched, though he sometimes wore a leather jacket and sunglasses to my place for his beauty’s sake. The last time he tried that I said, “You look like one of the Village People, sweetie,” kidding him, and he never wore those clothes again. As a back-door man he was devoted to me, and reliable. He wasn’t a lawyer, thank God. He worked for a pharmaceutical company, and his hours were flexible. I wasn’t in love with him so far as I could tell, but I liked him, sometimes to bursting, and I enjoyed talking to him, going to bed with him, and cooking meals with him, anything you could do inside four walls and away from public view.

He was athletic and fierce, funny when he wanted to be, and affectionate. As a lover, he was so companionable and enthusiastic, and he was clean as a knife. He had a thick head of hair, absolutely gorgeous features, and kiss-curls at the neck. I only saw him sweat hard when we were physically locked together, and his sweat had no odor, none, though his body did, a wonderful breadlike smell. We could have sex all day. He could make me come over and over again, but he didn’t bring me to a boil. How can I put this accurately? As follows: I didn’t have to sit up any further than normal for him and take more than the usual notice. Maybe I should have.