Jess Row - Your Face in Mine

My mouth hangs open for a moment, and then I start to laugh. Sorry, I say. It’s just the last comparison I was expect—

You’re forgetting how much of the Nineties I spent inside . In that crap-ass old house turned crash pad. I watched so much TV it would make your eyes bleed. Kept it on during the day, while I was answering calls and fiddling on the computer. It’s an easy way to neutralize bugs and wiretaps. Damn, I must have watched every episode of Seinfeld and Friends six or seven times. I’m a walking encyclopedia of about six years of pop-culture detritus. JonBenét Ramsey? Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp? The O.J. trial? I watched every minute of the O.J. trial on Court TV. What I wouldn’t give to expunge all that nonsense from my brain. While you were in college becoming fluent in — how many? five? — languages, I was at home selling drugs and watching Oprah .

This last line booms out across the pool, and I look up, wondering if anyone is paying attention. The crowd is beginning to thin out; I can see a couple inside through the French doors, the woman jingling her keys, wishing Paul and Noreen into view so they can say a quick goodbye.

Martin, I say, are you afraid, at all, of what’s going to happen? Of — losing this ? Has it even crossed your mind?

Because what? People won’t talk to me once they know?

You think they will?

Frankly? It’s immaterial. We won’t be able to stay here for long. We’ll have to relocate to someplace with more privacy. Once the payouts start coming in we’ll get a place in L.A. or New York. Maybe one of those towns in Westchester or North Jersey or Connecticut. There’s going to be paparazzi. At least for a while. Sherry and Tamika will go to prep school. Maybe Europe. Or, ideally, Asia. Someplace that teaches Mandarin and has tight security.

That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?

Well, okay. Presumptuous, anyhow. First I have to convince Robin that it’s all okay. You’re not wrong, you know. I’m concerned about it. I need her on my side. Publicly and privately. I’ve got to strategize that part. But that’s my concern, nothing for you to worry about. You’ll get paid no matter what. As long as this is a viable operation, you’ll get paid.

Speaking of which, I say, I’ve been thinking that after we get back from Bangkok I’m going to want to spend some time on my own. Getting my thoughts together. Writing the manuscript.

Where do you want to be? Where does a writer like to be a writer these days? Want me to rent you a studio in Brooklyn? Or Paris? Short-term apartments are a breeze in Paris. Though if I were you I’d stay in Thailand. Get a house on the beach in Pattaya, or Krabi. For what you’d pay for a studio in Park Slope you could have your own beach house in Pattaya with a staff of six.

I’ll take care of it.

You’re turning down free rent? If I were your wife, I’d say that’s a terrible fiscal decision.

It’s such an odd and hurtful thing to say that I shrink back, as if he’d pinched me on the arm.

No, no, no, he says. What I meant was, you need a friend, Kelly. A second opinion.

What I need, I say, is my own time and space.

Because you’re ambivalent about signing on? Still? I thought we went over this. I thought you gave me a pledge.

Martin, I say, stretching out my legs, who wouldn’t be ambivalent? Who, in their right mind, would be one hundred percent in ? Can you think of someone? Maybe you should hire them instead. I mean, have you considered the long-term implications of this, the things they’re going to say about you? This is going to make Malik Williams look like Mister Rogers. What you’re talking about — one way of looking at it — is that this is the most fucked-up reverse-eugenics experiment since Tuskegee. You’re going to be accused of some kind of bioethical genocide. Trying to destroy race as a category.

I’m not on a mission to destroy racism, he says, and I’m not on a mission to destroy races. What I think is that people should have options. I believe in free choice. That’s the American way, right? I mean, not now. Now it’s purely a matter of speculation. The technology has to develop, the procedures have to develop, the processes have to get streamlined and affordable . I’m like a hand-lathed Daimler-Benz back in the 1890s, twenty years before Ford invented the assembly line. Maybe I’ll never even see it in my lifetime. But you want to know the essence, the kernel, of this thing we’re doing? It’s just that. Choice. Options. All that outrage, all that kicking and fussing, it’s always just a period before the whole thing gets absorbed and normalized. All that energy has to be expended.

Okay. Okay. Anyway, beyond all that. Beyond the theoretical questions. You’ve been incredibly generous to me. And you’re promising more—

I am. You want specifics, now, finally? Let me break it down. Fifteen percent of the whole package. Interview deals, photo deals, the book, the movie. Whatever else. Corporate sponsorships. Other relationships. We’ll get it on paper when there’s some product from your end. For now it’s a handshake deal. But this is what I mean: serious money. Money for you to have a fresh start.

Can I be completely honest? It’s freaking me out a little. The numbers. You know I’m not a money person. But the check, the offers, the language you use: it’s disturbing to me. It doesn’t feel right.

Because?

Well, if I knew that, I’d have said it already, wouldn’t I?

You think I’ve got some hidden agenda other than my hidden agenda? Some meta — hidden agenda? I think you’ve been dipping into too much postmodern theory. Foucault will screw you up. I learned that after one semester in college. You’re always looking for the man behind the man behind the curtain.

Well — and here I give him my best teacher’s laugh, my seen-it-all Harvard laugh — one of my professors said, you can hate Foucault, but you can’t argue with him. In other words, just because you’re not paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.

Listen. Maybe we should turn this conversation around. I mean, look, you’ve heard just about every bad thing there is to know about me. What about you? What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done, Kelly? Isn’t that fair game?

Nothing I’m too ashamed to admit.

Seriously? No secrets, in a whole thirty-odd years of life? Never cheated on Wendy? Or anyone? No secret girlfriends, no escorts, porn habits, nothing?

You make me feel like a Puritan.

And what about what happened with Alan?

My face turns hot, then cold; my pulse skitters in my wrists. What do you mean? I say. What happened with Alan when?

Oh, come on. You mean you didn’t see my car? Really , Kelly? You didn’t see it?

See it when?

See it pulling up behind you when you left? When he OD’d, when you were in the house to see it? I mean, evidently. When I went in it couldn’t have been more than five minutes later, and he was gone. I mean stone-cold dead . I kept meaning to ask you about it. I thought you’d come forward. Even at the funeral, I was expecting you’d say something.

I thought Cheryl found the body.

I was there, trying to call her, when Cheryl came home. It’s all in the police report. You missed us both by less than fifteen minutes.

He looks at me blandly, splaying his fingers across his knee. Something about his posture reminds me of a Roman fresco: a philosopher lounging about, toga thrown across his legs, pointing a languid finger at the heavens. Stress him, I’m beginning to see, and he becomes more relaxed. More at one with his own certainties. While I have hot crabs of panic crawling over my face.