Nicholson Baker - The Fermata

“You must be starving,” said Joyce. “I know I am. Some bread?”

“Thanks.”

Chewing, she regarded me. “Do you have more to say?”

“Yes.” I had felt confident, even cocky, moments before, but I now noticed that my hands were unsteady as I stuffed a piece of bread in my mouth. “I’ve never told anyone what I’m telling you,” I said. “I tried to tell someone obliquely, but it wasn’t a success.”

Joyce said, “Why are you telling me, then? I mean, I’m delighted that you are — I think. But don’t you want to continue to keep all this to yourself if you’ve kept it to yourself for this long?”

I said, “I’m tired of having this big secret life and not being able to tell anyone.” And suddenly I did feel enormously tired of it. I felt as if I was going to get slightly weepy, but fortunately I didn’t. “I like you and I just want to tell you. I’ve written about it in the memoiry thing that I’ve been working on, and though I haven’t shown that to anyone, having done that, gone public on the page, I seem able to accept more easily the fact that people will know. It feels inevitable now, though of course it isn’t. It’s the next step. Also, I’ve used the Fold to do things that might make you uncomfortable, if you knew about them, and if they are going to make you uncomfortable, I’d rather that happened now and not later.”

“The Told’?”

I went into the terminology in some detail. We ordered. I told her about the equation with the garment-care symbols, and about colliding with the parking meter and stealing two shrimp. I gave her a bowdlerized account of my experience in the electromagnet. Finally I worked up the nerve to mention that at selected times in the past I had used the Fold to take off women’s clothes without their knowledge.

“Ah— now I see where we’re going,” Joyce said. “That’s not so good. That is not so hot.”

“I know, I know, I know, I know,” I said, shaking my head. “But when I’m doing it it doesn’t seem bad. It seems wonderful, good, positive — it seems like the most constructive thing I could possibly be doing. I just don’t understand why it should be so bad and wrong for me to take a woman’s clothes off, as long as she doesn’t know about it. I mean really, what’s the big deal?”

“How much of their clothing do you take off?” She sipped some wine, looking at me intently. Her eyes were the color of peat moss; her pupils were dilated.

“Oh, it depends,” I said. “Sometimes I don’t take any off, sometimes I go down to the bra, sometimes I do go a touch further.”

“You’ve never told anyone about this practice of yours?”

“Not directly. I’ve come close several times, but no.”

She touched her mouth with her napkin. Then she narrowed her eyes. “But now you’ve decided to tell me. And you know why? I know why. You’re telling me because you took my clothes off, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

She let her hand fall to the table. Now she looked sad — sad rather than shocked. “I can’t believe you did that.”

To draw her attention away from her disappointment in me, I asked, “You mean you can’t believe that I am telling the truth, or you can’t believe that I would do something that rude and crude?”

“Both,” she said. “God, I’m so fucking sick of liars and sneaks and cheats and weirdos. God.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed. “Last year I was in a relationship with a guy for two months, and it turned out that he was married. He simply forgot to tell me that he had a nuclear family in Washington, D.C. And now this.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But can I say that right now I’m the opposite of the married guy? I’m trying not to deceive you. I’m telling you right out that, yes, I took some of your clothes off. I assumed you wouldn’t mind. If I had known as a definite fact beforehand that you would have minded, I wouldn’t have done it. I know I was probably deluding myself. You looked wonderful. Your pubic hair was like a bicycle seat.”

“Oh Jesus. When was this?” She looked up at me, as if establishing the date would help.

I took off my glasses and put my hands over my eyes to think. “It’s hard for me to get dates right, because I’ve been spending so much time lately in the Fold, writing. It was the first week I worked at MassBank. You were walking across the floor one time wearing that blue-gray knit dress.” I put my glasses back on, which made me remember that she had said back then that she liked my glasses. I felt there was still hope. “That is a really nifty dress. You had your hair in a French braid, if that’s what they’re called. You were carrying some files. And I just wanted to see more of you . What can I say?”

“Arno, wouldn’t it have been just as easy to ask me out?”

“No! It was very, very hard to ask you out today. It’s just not something I do lightly.”

“Tell me exactly what happened,” she said.

“When I took off your clothes? Do you really want to hear this?”

“No, it’s hideous, but go on.”

“Well — I just snapped my fingers and got everything to stop and I scooted over to you in my chair and lifted up your dress. It was so light, it felt so good, the knit. I lifted it up over your pantyhose and over your hips and made a sort of knot in it at your waist. Your legs felt really warm through the pantyhose. Pantyhose material is strange stuff, like a substance from another planet, unpleasant when you first touch it, and yet the warmth of your skin radiates through it and humanizes it. So I kind of whisked my hands over your legs and I felt your hipbones, and before you know it, I had pulled your pantyhose down and I had my hand in your pubic hair.”

“ ‘Before I know it’ is right,” said Joyce, pointing her knife at me. “I didn’t know it, Arno. I didn’t have a clue that your hand was in my pubic hair. Doesn’t that trouble you?”

“No, because I fell in love with you with my hand in your pubic hair.”

Joyce made an exasperated sound. “Everything’s ruined and out of order! I was really pleased that you asked me out for dinner tonight. Really pleased. And now it’s all confused.”

“I also went to your apartment. I borrowed your keys.”

“No.” Joyce was incredulous. “No.”

“Yes. I’ve seen your mattress pad.”

“Arno, this is terrible. I don’t know what to think. First of all, I don’t believe a word of it.”

“Under an antique bottle in your sunporch, I put a fortune-cookie fortune I found in a bowl on top of your refrigerator. It says, ‘Smile when you are ready.’ ”

“You need help.”

“I beg your pardon! I’m not a bad person. If you ask me to go away now, I’ll go away. I’m harmless. I’m just a temp! I was curious about your apartment, that’s all.” I waited for Joyce to say something, but she didn’t. “All right. This evening has nosedived. Still, I’m glad to hear that you were pleased to be asked out. That’s something. Would you like some more wine?”

“Just a touch, thanks. Ope, ope, that’s plenty.” She drank a little of it. I let her think things over. We were silent for a stretch.

“I should go,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

Then she said, “Prove it to me. I want you to do what you say you can do right now.”

“You want me to stop time?”

“Yes, I do.”

“All right. I’ll do it right now. Ready?”

She nodded.

I snapped my fingers. I sat still for a while, breathing softly, nearly as motionless as the rest of the animal and vegetable kingdoms. Then I began tapping my hand on my napkin. I refilled Joyce’s water glass. I went to the bathroom and checked how I looked. I looked fine — a little sheepish and worried about the eyes. I sat down again and poked around at my plate, but I didn’t want to eat anything without Joyce “there.” I didn’t enjoy the enveloping silence this time, as I usually did; it was like sitting at a table with someone who wasn’t speaking to me. In fact, it wasn’t like that, it was that. I didn’t want to be under the Fermata at all just then; I wanted time to be rolling forward at a nice brisk clip, so that Joyce would get used to the things that I had told her and forgive me for them, if forgiveness was still a possibility. It might take weeks.