Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

“Does she have a telephone number?”

“ What do you want. Tell me.”

Bob gave her a scaled-back version of the truth.

“She knows nothing about Sweeting-Aldren,” said Madame Krasner. “ Nothing . I’m not going to give you number.”

“Would you give her mine?”

“Who are you. Tell me. Who are you. What do you want, really.”

“I was a good friend of hers.”

“Eh. She has so many good friends. She lives in London. She has wonderful husband. Three children. What do you want, that she doesn’t have. No. No. I’m not going to tell you her number. You try someone else.”

“Would you give her my number?”

“She lives in London. Her number is not listed. I’m very sorry.” Bob pulled on his hair. Then Madame Krasner gave him Anna’s number. “Very expensive to call,” she said. “Not like calling here. Very expensive. You see, she has money . Oh, does she have money. What can you give, that she doesn’t have?”

It was dinnertime in London. Through the dining-room windows, Bob could see Louis standing in the pine trees, the bright sun making shadows of the eyes behind his glasses. The red of Melanie’s lipstick was in the pinpricks in the mouthpiece of the telephone. He dialed Anna’s number, and after three rings Anna herself answered. He said his name. She said:

“Who?”

“Bob Holland.”

“. Oh, yes, Bob, how are you?”

“Anna, listen, I’m trying to find out if Sweeting-Aldren drilled a very deep well in Peabody in 1970. Do you happen to remember?”

The hissing silence on the line was unbroken for so long that he began to think there was no one there. Ghostly tone sequences chattered beneath the hiss. On some continent or other, a phone rang once, twice. Then he heard a burst of male and female laughter, a sociable tumult somewhere very close to where Anna was standing. “I’m sorry, Bob,” she said. “What is it that you wanted to know?”

He repeated his question. Again there was a silence, and again a burst of laughter. “I. don’t really know, Bob. I. can’t answer that,” Anna said.

“What do you mean you can’t answer that? Do you think there might have been a well?”

“Bob, we have some guests over. I’m very sorry.”

“I’ve seen your paper,” he said. “You know there was a well. They’ve been pumping waste into it and causing earthquakes. You have to tell me what you know. I won’t use your name, but you have to tell me.”

“Bob, I really have to get off the phone now.”

“A simple yes or no. Was there a well?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Why won’t you answer me? Would you rather talk to the press? Or the police?”

The hissing on the line had ceased; he was speaking to a dead phone. He dialed again.

“Anna—”

“Bob, I’m busy and I don’t want to talk to you.” Her voice was hard, controlled, angry. “It’s better if you don’t call me.”

“A yes or a no. Please.”

“I’m sorry, Bob. I have to go.”

“Anna—”

“Goodbye, Bob.”

As a reward for getting her MBA and as consolation for having to start work at the Bank of Boston, Eileen had been vacationing on the Côte d’Azur with Peter. They rented a Peugeot at the airport in Nice and were delighted in Monaco, snubbed in Cannes, drunk in St. Tropez, and painlessly relieved of cash in the smaller towns along the way. At least once a day they ran into recent classmates of Eileen’s. They would be climbing a cobblestone hill past shops with bunches of dried lavender and Provençal scarves swinging and flapping in the mistral, and they would come upon a Roman ruin surrounded by cafés, and from the blinding aluminum chairs a chorus of female voices would chime: “Eileen! Eileen.” Peter would clench his teeth and mutter “Jesus Christ” and roll his eyes invisibly behind his Ray-Bans, because he thought Americans in France should be mute chameleons, but Eileen would step immediately into the shade of the plastic Cinzano or Pernod umbrella where the guys were sitting tight-lipped and training their Ray-Ban gazes on distant cypresses or an azure bay — just like Peter — and the girls were eager to exchange data on who all they’d seen from their class so far (ultimately Eileen saw or heard of a total of thirty-five of them, so the Cote d’Azur was a very popular reward for Harvard MBA recipients this year), while Peter, having crossed to the far side of the square, sunned himself on a block of marble hewn by Roman slaves.

Peter did, in fact, look very European, and Eileen knew he spoke fine French. But when they sat down in a cafe and a waiter came, Peter would look up and his lips would move a little bit, but no sound would come out, and the waiter, not being psychic, would turn to Eileen, who would say, “Uncaffay poor moi, ay oon Pernod poor lum,” and then, to Peter, in a whisper squeaky with exasperation, after the waiter had left: “You have to tell him what you want! ” Whereupon Peter’s face would freeze into a smile so fierce and mocking and afraid that at length she felt sorry for him. She kissed his ear, tousled his hair, rubbed his thigh, and said she loved him. There ensued a silence, her face clouding up. “Do you love me?”

He grinned more fiercely yet and leaned across the table and gave her a not terribly welcome French kiss, still without having spoken a word since they sat down in the café.

In the afternoon they went to beaches. The question at a beach was always: Should she or shouldn’t she? She was an island of suburban-Chicago modesty in a sea of Euroflesh — Norman mammaries, Belgian genitalia shaded by overhangs of Belgian flab, Dutch teats that were tiny and quivered, uncircumcised Parisian penises that she studied with sly and helpless fascination. Peter reclined on his elbows, staring over his surfer trunks and tanned toes at the emerald waves, while she tried to make up her mind. “I’m going to do it,” she said finally.

Peter yawned. “That’s what you said yesterday.”

“Well but today I am.”

He stared at the waves.

Reaching behind her back with both hands, she took hold of the hook of her bathing-suit top. She sat like this for five seconds. “Should I do it?”

“Think carefully,” he said. “It’s an important decision.”

She pouted. “I’m not going to do it.”

He stared at the waves. She threw sand at him. He brushed himself off with light little sweeps of his fingers, as if his skin were a record he didn’t want to scratch. The next time he looked at her she was sitting upright on her towel, chin angled towards the sun, with her top on the sand beside her. They hardly spoke until they went back to their hotel, but there he pawed and clutched her body ardently, licking her breasts and climbing her, shuddering with lust like a dog while she smiled at the ceiling, unable to imagine a more perfect contentment.

The following afternoon she announced: “I’m not going to do it.” White glare from car chrome and café spoons and a certain someone’s Ray-Bans had been drilling into her head since breakfast. The hotel bed had been hot and full of expired alcohol fumes; she was also pretty sure she was getting a urinary-tract infection.

“It’s up to you,” said Peter, staring at the waves.

She chewed a fingernail and blinked morosely. Like her mother, no matter how tired she was, she had boundless energy for vacillation. “Do you think I should?”