Jonathan Franzen - Strong Motion - A Novel

When the bathroom door began to open, Louis stepped over quickly to block Eileen’s escape. He found himself face to face with the person in the Mylar suit.

The door closed defensively. Louis turned a corner and found two bedrooms and another closed bathroom door. Suitcases were opened up like sandwiches on the floor of the larger bedroom. Perched on a rattan hamper, glittering in the streetlight the Levolors let in, was Milton Friedman’s cage.

Louis knocked on the bathroom door, air rasping hard in the vents of his mask. The door opened a crack and Eileen peered out anxiously. “Maybe you can help me?” She let him in and locked the door. “I can’t get the toilet unplugged.”

“You have a plunger?”

She pushed one eagerly into his hands. The tip of her necktie was wet. “You have to get a good seal,” he said, bearing down through the cloudy, pinkened water. It appeared to be a matter of a tampon. Eileen looked on with her fingers knit together, and when the water suddenly dropped and made the familiar flushing sound, she said, “Thank you so much,” and unlocked the door. He grabbed the knob.

“What?” she said, retreating from him.

“Talk time.”

It was interesting to see how her superficiality fell away, like a shell of dry Elmer’s glue coming loose, and exposed a tired, vacant face. She tried a smile. “You having a nice time?”

“Do you know what I just figured out?” He crossed his arms and put his back against the door. “I just figured out why you didn’t return my calls. You didn’t return my calls because you’re not living in your apartment. You’re living here.”

“Yeah, Louis,” she said in a different voice, “I don’t even have that apartment anymore. My machine’s right here. When was the last time you tried to call?”

“And you didn’t bother to tell me.”

“I knew you were coming tonight, I thought I’d tell you now.”

“But you didn’t tell me now. I had to come and ask.”

“Yeah, you had to come and ask.”

“So the idea is you’re living with him now.”

She laughed. “I guess so.”

“You guess so. You’re only sleeping in the same bed with him.”

“Is this what you wanted to talk to me about? What bed I’m sleeping in?” She took a twisted towel off a rack and began to fold it and pet it. “My little brother wants to talk to me about who I’m sleeping with. I guess he thinks that’s what brothers are for.” She put the towel back on the rack. “Will you let me out now, please?”

“Eileen, the guy’s a snake.”

“Oh, is that so?” The pitch of her voice neared the upper range of human hearing. “My fiancé is a snake? That’s very nice of you, Louis. That’s very thoughtful.”

“Ah, fiancé, fiancé .” He couldn’t figure out these women and their “fiancés.” They wielded the word like a weapon; it didn’t seem natural. “You should have said so sooner. I meant to say, he is a prince!”

She reached and yanked the mask down below his chin. “You are so hateful. You never gave him a chance! You are so so hateful.”

“That’s what Mom tells me too.”

“And so cool too. You’ve always got an answer.”

“Can I help it if he’s a snake?”

“He is not a snake . He is a very, very vulnerable and sensitive person.”

“Who when I last saw him was making suggestive remarks to my — to the person I brought to your party.”

“Well, maybe he has less inhibitions than you do. Maybe he has less inhibitions than anybody in our family. I mean it, Louis, I know Peter and you don’t. I don’t see why you think you can just go calling somebody I care for a — a — a snake!”

“Ah, ‘care for.’ You ‘care for’ him and you’re—”

“YOU’RE a snake! YOU’RE a snake!”

“You ‘care for’ him and you’re going to marry him. Makes sense, I’m sure he cares for you too, Eileen. But I wonder if maybe you’re not being taken for a ride. Let me ask you a question, this little property here, do you guys rent or own?”

“That is none of your business.”

Louis threw his head back into the door. “Meaning you actually managed to do it. You actually kept after her until she couldn’t stand it anymore and she broke down and gave you whatever you needed to buy this place. Isn’t that right? Isn’t that right? You were so ruthless you actually got her to cough up money she says she doesn’t even have yet. Isn’t that right? ”

Eileen looked at him so furiously he was sure she was going to hit him. But instead she opened the glass shower door, stepped in, and shut the door behind her. Her voice echoed dully in the stall. “I’m not coming out till you’re gone.”

He was too close to tears to say anything for a moment. It was the money, the money. He thought of the transfer of those funds and felt a column of tears pushing on the inside of his head, from his throat to his eyes. Behind the shower door the shadowy outline of his sister had sunk to its knees. The wet, hollow sound of her crying was like something in the pipes. He wished he’d never left Houston.

“What do you think about when you think about me?” he asked her, looking into his eyes in the mirror. “Do you think of an enemy? Do you think of a person, who knows you and used to play with you? Or do you ever even think about me at all?”

Eileen sniffled and gasped. “He is not a snake.”

“Yeah, I don’t even have anything against him anymore. I mean, you’re right, I don’t know him. And it doesn’t matter anyway. I’m not going to bother you anymore.”

In reply she only cried. Louis started to leave the bathroom, but something he’d seen in the mirror without seeing it now registered. He unfastened his fallen mask and put it in his pocket. The face he was looking at was both softer and older, more sensual, than the face he considered his own. He thought: I’m not such a bad-looking guy . For some reason the thought brought a rush of fear to his head and heart, the fear you feel when you fall in love; when you swing out to pass a car on a narrow road; when someone catches you in a lie.

Renée was standing in the kitchen doorway, her back arched a little so that her neck and shoulders rested against the jamb. Her beer bottle was empty. When Louis appeared, she gave him a weak, ironic smile, as if to indicate both boredom and a diminished faith in his ability to relieve it. He asked her: “Do you want to be here?”

She shrugged. “Sure. Do you not?”

“No, but you can stay if you want. Or we can go get something to eat or something.”

Neither alternative seemed to appeal to her much. “Let’s go,” she said.

The last they saw of the party was the man in the Mylar suit doing a gorilla dance for the amusement of the other guests.

Outside, there was a moon. The silver smoothness of the street was broken here and there by manhole covers and the furry remains of squirrels. “Is something wrong?” Renée said.

“Yeah, a bunch of stuff. Mainly I’m sorry I dragged you to this party.”

“Don’t be. It was interesting. Although. ”

“Although what a waste of a parking space.”

In the car he divided his attention equally between the road and his silent passenger. The more she didn’t look at him, the more he turned to look at her. Her upturned nose, her pale cheeks, her whole thirty-year-old head, of which the plain wedge of dark hair, with its overlay of individual and meandering white strands, seemed the truest part. Spillages of orange street light ran over and over down the front of her dress, turning it an orange that was black in the orange context.

“You have pretty hair,” he essayed.

She shifted sharply in the bucket seat, repositioning her legs and shoulders like a person with a stomach cramp.