Jonathan Lethem - Men and Cartoons

“We're not evidence of anything,” said Vivian Relf. She shook his hand again. “Enjoy the party.”

THE NEXT time was on an airplane, a coast-to-coast flight. Doran sat in first class. Vivian Relf trundled past him, headed deep into the tail, carry-on hugged to her chest. She didn't spot him.

He mused on sending back champagne with the stewardess, as in a cocktail lounge— From the man in 3A . There was probably a really solid reason they didn't allow that. A hundred solid reasons. He didn't dwell on Vivian Relf, watched a movie instead. Barbarian hordes were vanquished in waves of slaughter, twenty thousand feet above the plain.

They spoke at the baggage carousel. She didn't seem overly surprised to see him there.

“As unrelated baggage mysteriously commingles in the dark belly of an airplane only to be redistributed to its proper possessor in the glare of daylight on the whirring metal belt, so you repeatedly graze my awareness in shunting through the dimmed portals of my life,” he said. “Doran Close.”

“Vivian Relf,” she said, shaking his hand. “But I suspect you knew that.”

“Then you've gathered that I'm obsessed with you.”

“No, it's that nobody ever forgets my name. It's one of those that sticks in your head.”

“Ah.”

She stared at him oddly, waiting. He spotted, beneath her sleeve, the unmistakable laminated wristlet of a hospital stay, imprinted RELF, VIVIAN, RM 315.

“I'd propose we share a cab but friends are waiting to pick me up in the white zone.” He jerked his thumb at the curb.

“The odds are we're anyway pointed in incompatible directions.”

“Ah, if I've learned anything at all in this life it's not to monkey with the odds.”

There was a commotion. Some sort of clog at the mouth where baggage was disgorged. An impatient commuter clambered up to straddle the chugging belt. He rolled up suit sleeves and tugged the jammed suitcases out of the chute. The backlog tumbled loose, a miniature avalanche. Doran's suitcase was among those freed. Vivian Relf still waited, peering into the hole as though at a distant horizon. Doran, feeling giddy, left her there.

All that week, between appointments with art collectors and gallerists, he spied for her in the museums and bistros of the vast metropolis, plagued by the ghost of certainty they'd come here, to this far place, this neutral site, apart but together , in order to forge some long-delayed truce or compact. The shrouded visages of the locals formed a kind of brick wall, an edifice which met his gaze everywhere: forehead, eyebrows, glasses, grim-drawn lips, cell phones, sandwiches. Against this background she'd have blazed like a sun. But never appeared.

Oh Vivian Relf! Oh eclipse, oh pale penumbra of my yearning!

Pink slip, eviction notice, deleted icon, oh!

Stalked in alleys of my absent noons, there's nobody

knows you better than I!

Translucent voracious Relf-self, I vow here

Never again once to murk you

With pallid tropes of familiarity or recognition

You, pure apparition, onion—

Veil of veils only!

DORAN CLOSE, in his capacity as director of acquisitions in drawings and prints, had several times had lunch with Vander Polymus, the editor of Wall Art . He'd heard Polymus mention that he, Polymus, was married. He'd never met the man's wife, though, and it was a surprise, as he stepped across Polymus's threshold for the dinner party, bottle of Cabernet Franc in a scarf of tissue thrust forward in greeting, to discover that the amiable ogre was married to someone he recognized. Not from some previous museum fete or gallery opening but from another life, another frame of reference, years before. Really, from another postulated version of his life, his sense, once, of who he'd be. He knew her despite the boyishly short haircut, the jarring slash of lipstick and bruises of eyeshadow, the freight of silver bracelets: Vander Polymus was married to Vivian Relf.

Meeting her eyes, Doran unconsciously reached up and brushed his fingertips to his shaved skull.

“Doran, Viv,” said Polymus, grabbing Doran by the shoulder and tugging him inside. “Throw your coat on the bed. I'll take that. C'mon. Hope you like pernil and bacalao!”

“Hello,” she said, and as Doran relinquished the bottle she took his hand to shake.

“Vivian Relf,” said Doran.

“Vivian Polymus,” she confirmed.

“Shall we pry open your bottle?” said Vander Polymus. “Is it something special? I've got a Rioja I'm itching to sample. You know each other?”

“We met, once,” said Vivian. “Other side of the world.”

Doran wanted to emend her once , but couldn't find his voice.

“Did you fucking fuck my wife?” chortled Polymus, fingers combing his beard. “You'll have to tell me all about it, but save it for dinner. There's people I want you to meet.”

So came the accustomed hurdles: the bottles opened and appreciated; the little dinner-party geometries: No, but of course I know your name or If I'm not wrong your gallery represents my dear friend Zeus ; the hard and runny cheeses and the bowl of aggravatingly addictive salted nuts; the dawning apprehension that a single woman in the party of eight had been tipped his way by the scheming Polymus and another couple, who'd brought her along — much as, so long ago, Vivian Relf had been shopped at parties by the couple she'd been visiting. Hurdles? Really these were placed low as croquet wickets. Yet they had to be negotiated for a time, deftly, with a smile, before Doran could at last find himself seated. Beside the single woman, of course, but gratefully, as well, across from Polymus's wife. Vivian Relf.

He raised his glass to her, slightly, wishing to draw her nearer, wishing they could tip their heads together for murmuring.

“I used to think I'd keep running into you forever,” he said.

She only smiled. Her husband intruded from the end of the table, his voice commanding. “What is it with you two?” Irrationally, Polymus's own impatience seemed to encompass the years since Doran and Vivian's first meeting, the otherwise forgettable, and forgotten, party. Doran wondered if anyone else on the planet had reason to recall that vanished archipelago of fume, conversation, and disco, tonight or ever. The ancient party was like a radio signal dopplering through outer space, it seemed to him now.

“You fuck him, Viv?” said Polymus. “Inquiring minds want to know.”

“No,” said Vivian Relf-Polymus. “No, but we were probably flirting. This was a long time ago.”

Polymus and his wife had captured the attention of the whole table, with evident mutual pleasure.

“We had this funny thing,” Doran felt compelled to explain. “You remember? We didn't know anyone in common. You seemed really familiar, but we'd never met before.”

This drew a handful of polite laughs, cued principally by the word funny , and perhaps by Doran's jocular tone. Beneath it he felt desperate. Vander Polymus only scowled, as for comic effect he might scowl at an awkwardly hung painting, or at a critical notice with which he violently disagreed.

“What I remember is you had these awful friends,” said Vivian. “They didn't hesitate to show they found me a poor way for you to be spending your time. What was that tall moody boy's name?”

“Top,” said Doran, only remembering as he blurted it. He hadn't thought of Top for years, had in fact forgotten Top was present at the Vivian Relf Party.

“Were you breaking up with some girl that night?”

“No,” said Doran. “Nothing like that.” He couldn't remember.

“If looks could kill.”