Sol Stein - Other people

I stared at the telephone. Then I dialed Jane.

"Hello, stranger," she said.

"Don't be coy, Jane. It's only been a few days."

"You left me something to think about."

"Your husband on the road tonight?"

"Wait, I'll ask him."

"Don't be stu-…" I heard her laughing.

Then she said, "What time?"

"Seven all right?"

"See you at seven."

It was damn near seven-thirty when I got to Jane's. Oh I had left my office on time all right, it's just that I found every nondirect street in that part of the county to keep me from getting there. I built up a head of steam that should have warned me to call her and call it off.

"Sorry, I'm late," I said.

She made drinks. Not a word.

"I'm sorry about the way that other evening worked out," I said.

"Did you see her again?"

"Yes."

"How did it work out?"

"Well, as a matter of fact not too good."

"Oh?"

"Would you believe old Thomassy just couldn't get it up?"

She put her drink down.

"You never had that kind of trouble with me."

"No I haven't."

"And you're here to try it out again to see if it's a permanent malfunction or just the other broad who puts you off."

I like directness in women only to a degree.

Affecting calm, I said in my best judicial voice, "Now Jane, your relationship, I mean yours with me, preceded my knowing the other lady by—"

"Francine, in case you've forgotten her name."

"You sound angry."

"Me? Angry?"

"Well, bitter?"

"Me? Bitter? I've just been waiting here for my favorite lawyer, knowing he would turn up sooner or later for a quick bang. I just hadn't expected it to be a litmus paper test to find if the fire'd gone out."

"You keeping talking that way," I said, "and it will stay out."

"That'd be an interesting revenge. For me. And for several others."

"I thought you liked my company."

"I did. But I felt like a Martian when that other woman was here. You had special all over your face. You falling in love, George, at your age?"

"Don't be silly."

"If falling in love is silly, I'm not silly. I haven't been in love in twenty-two years. It doesn't interfere."

"Jane, you're a smart woman."

"I thought I was a good lay."

"A good lay and a smart woman. Can I move over to where you are?"

"You never asked for permission before. That's a bad sign."

She is back, back, back, twice a week Francine will be coming after work, a reunion, I welcome her, how well she appears (Aphrodite, Venus, Helen!) wafting into my study, at a gesture from me lying down, smoothing her skirt over her mound as if to level it into insignificance, but I know it is there, fur over flesh over bone guarding the inviolate — violated — lips over lips. I sit behind her head where I can steal with my eyes the configuration of her unbound breasts as she lies there spilling words from which I must pluck the clues to feed back to her so that she will understand herself. How will she understand that I am in violation of everything except honesty in my feelings for her?

Talk.

I will listen.

Of course I want her to talk about me, and if not, about herself. But how many women over the years have lain on that couch and talked to the air about how their lovers talk to them about their wives, and the men, caught in the vortex of two women, who cannot keep from telling each about the other under the disguise of news or gossip. And now what does Francine tell me, who lusts to hear almost anything else except what she now says.

Thomassy, she says, is not particularly good looking, not in the way a Robert Redford or a Paul Newman seems attractive to so many women, he has a face that is his, she says, dark without the sun, intent features focusing all business one moment, laughing the next, it is his vitality, his command, he has the law in his hands because he understands how minds work!

The mind, I want to interrupt her, is my province, not Thomassy's!

Other men, she says, drift like boys drift.

Perhaps Thomassy drifts, I suggest. If he is such a great courtroom performer, such a skilled people-manipulator, should he not be on a bigger stage, fighting front-page cases, making a fortune like other lawyers?

He is not interested in publicity, she says. She is giving him a medal. An award. The award is herself.

Has she thought about the discrepancy in their backgrounds?

Yes, she says, he's not like Bill, not like her father and her father's friends, isn't it wonderful?

Has she thought about the difference in their ages? I ask.

Yes, it would be better if there were not so many years between.

Why does she think so?

Because he will die too soon.

Can you understand how I am near to going out of my mind listening to my sweet Francine in love?

I must take risks.

Why did you return to therapy? I ask.

He was impotent with me, she says.

I am ready to scream Look at me behind you a man of sixty with a thick bulge in his pants from watching and wanting you, there is no justice in this world!

I only speak the last words: "no justice in this world."

That, she says, is why Thomassy attracts her so, he has long ago recognized there is no justice in the justice system, and he fills the void with his manipulative skills. He is not like the hypocrites she works with, she says, or the people in Washington, Paris, London, Moscow, Peking, in the throne rooms and in the streets, there isn't a shred of false idealism left in his bones.

Why does he not fill me? she says.

I am silent.

Why is a man sometimes impotent?

I am silent.

It can't be guilt, he has no obligation to any other. It can't be shame, he has been a lover of others for decades, women who come and go.

Perhaps, I say, he thinks you won't go.

Now she is silent.

Perhaps, I say, he is afraid of permanence.

I don't want to be a quick fuck, she says angrily.

No one wants to be, I say. If you admire realism so much, why are you not a realist? Perhaps you threaten him.

With what? she says, up on an elbow, turning to face me. I motion her back to a lying position. Am I protecting the anguish on my own face?

With what am I threatening him? she repeats.

With love.

We are both silent. Then I say, love disarms. It is impervious to reason and to control. If both love, there is nothing to win.

The aim of Thomassy's existence, I say, is to win. Just as mine is to cure. You cannot always win.

You cannot always cure, she says.

Ah, I say, but in love something happens. Do you know the form of glue that is called epoxy, made of two substances which when melded become another? The process is called curing. Love always cures, changes from heart-thumping, irrational, wild cacophony to something different, also called love, a peace with each other.

That is beautiful, she says.

I have had a lifetime to think about it, I say. Then I add: epoxy, when cured, is hard. In all the years of my practice I have never heard of a case of impotence that did not change if circumstances changed enough. Sometimes merely habit is enough.

She is quiet. I watch her body breathe. I have turned her over to my rival not because I am a good man but because I am a weak man, accustomed to helping others be strong. It is time to go, I tell her. The hour is up. I will see you Thursday.

She gets up, brushes down her skirt over her hips as if I am invisible, then leaves, a flurry of hips and buttocks and legs through the door, going to find Thomassy, pushed by me.

Koch is a saint. I left without saying goodbye. I had to get to a phone.