Jonathan Lethem: You Don't Love Me Yet

“I don’t know,” he said tenderly. “It’s possible. Am I astronaut food for you?”

“I almost called you from my apartment last night,” she said, hearing her breath interfere with the syllables, knowing he heard it too.

“Why didn’t you?”

“The foot said no.”

He hesitated. “Is the foot a friend of yours?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then you should listen to him.”

“The foot’s not a he.”

“Oh.”

“I have to go now,” she said, suddenly abashed.

“Why?”

“I haven’t eaten dinner.”

“Are you going to masturbate?”

“Not on the telephone.”

bedwin opened his door with a shocked look on his face. Lucinda stood with a white, grease-spotty bag containing two piping slices fetched from Hard Times, the pizzeria at the base of the hill above which Bedwin’s tiny cottage apartment was perched, hoping to bribe her way into his digs. The nature of his home life had been a subject of keen speculation among the other members of the band.

“Want something to eat?”

Bedwin only stared. He was fully dressed in his usual costume: sneakers, plaid shirt buttoned to his Adam’s apple, analog wristwatch, glasses. Lucinda imagined him sleeping in it.

“Can I come in?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Did I interrupt something?”

“No, I was just, uh, watching a movie.”

“What movie?” She followed him through his door, into a low passage lined with book-tumbled shelves, claustrophobically close.

“It’s called Human Desire . By Fritz Lang.”

Bedwin lifted the takeout bag from Lucinda’s hands and scuttled into the kitchen, stranding her in a room whose every surface was crazed with media. Records and videotapes and compact discs strained every shelf to its limit, along walls layered with ephemera: concert tickets, 45s thumbtacked through their spindle holes, and Magic Markered set lists retrieved from the floors of concert stages, many with chunks of duct tape still clinging to their edges. His two armchairs were populated by tottering books, piled so high they served as dusty dummy companions. The television, stacked with the videocassette player on a milk crate, faced an empty patch of carpet. Its screen displayed the black-and-white image of a locomotive, trembling in frozen static beneath the word PAUSE in blue.

Bedwin returned from the kitchen with two small plates in hand, the triangles of pizza draped over their edges. “I don’t have any beer or anything.”

“That’s okay.” She’d quaffed a beer beforehand, looking to take the edge off her panicky enthusiasm. “The movie good?”

He looked shocked again. “It’s one of the ten greatest films of all time.”

“So you’ve seen it before.”

“I guess you could say I’m studying it.”

“I don’t want to interrupt if you need to—”

“No, it’s fine. But if you want to watch it I don’t mind rewinding to the beginning.”

“That’s okay.”

“Sure,” he said, his tone only slightly injured.

“I’d love to see it another time,” she said. “I wanted…”

Bedwin waited, his pupils wide. The two of them stood balancing pizza on tiny plates, crowded together in the room’s clear spot.

“Is there a place to sit in the kitchen?”

“Sure, sure.”

They perched at two corners of Bedwin’s red linoleum table, their pizza before them. Bedwin nibbled, ready to understand her invasion here. Lucinda imagined she could say or do anything and rely on his obedience, a disturbing prospect, actually. Perhaps she’d underestimated the responsibilities entailed in invading the sanctum of a mind as tender as Bedwin’s. In the room behind them the player reached some limit and clicked off the film, the space filling with blue light and a dim undertone of static.

Her own agenda boiling within her, Lucinda tried to pacify herself with a few bites of pizza before pulling the crumpled yellow sheets from her bag and smoothing them across the table between them.

“Look, here’s the thing,” she said. “I have some more ideas for songs. Do you like ‘Monster Eyes’?”

“It’s so great,” he said, with fannish sincerity and awe.

“Maybe we can do it again. Look.”

The five sheets were headed with titles. Beneath them, fragments of lyrics lurched in urgent scrawl to the margins, oblivious to printed lines. The jottings resembled crazed dictation, perhaps some Ouija boardist’s blind record. She hadn’t examined them since fleeing the gallery, but she didn’t have to. Bedwin would see and understand. Each notion would make the root of a song as good, as unexpected and pure, as “Monster Eyes.” Bedwin only had to set them to music.

“What’s that—‘Astronaut Food’?”

“Yes.”

“I like that.” Bedwin murmured phrases to himself, discovering them aloud. “Secrets from yourself…bomb-shelter provisions…”

“And this one,” she said, overeager, rustling pages. Bedwin flinched, taken aback. “‘Dirty Yellow Chair.’ See?”

“Yes…it all looks terrific, Lucinda.” He spoke gently, wonderingly.

“Nobody has to know I gave you these. Let’s just pretend you came up with them yourself, okay?”

“You don’t want to write them with me?”

“No. Just take them. You don’t need any help from me, you know it.”

“I shouldn’t tell the others?”

“It’ll confuse them. Matthew won’t like it. You’re our songwriter. These are just ideas, anyway. They’ll be your songs.”

“Sure, sure. Lucinda?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay? Because you seem a little excited, I mean maybe a little bit upset about something.”

“Nothing, I mean, nothing’s wrong, everything’s great.”

“Okay, no problem, I was just checking.”

“Maybe I’ll let you get back to your movie now.”

“You could watch a little. It’s really a tremendously interesting film. Or at least finish your pizza.”

“I’m not really hungry,” said Lucinda. She stood, brushing her lips free of possibly imaginary flour. She’d barely eaten. She recalled the last words of her talk with the complainer and felt the urgent call of her fingertips to her own body. She ought to be in the bathtub, afloat in silence and dark, so that she could recapture the twilight realm of the phone call. She might even call him: she thought this for the pleasure of thinking it, even as she was certain she wouldn’t. But she needed to be home, to dwell on their talk. Her errand had been essential: she needed to deliver the yellow crib sheets, the guilty jottings. Those were for the band, and they belonged here with Bedwin. She’d had to deliver them, and now she had to go. Even as she skirted the table’s edge and high-stepped through the blue-glowing piles of books and records she realized she’d forgotten to tell Bedwin about the Aparty, the gig of playing silently. It didn’t matter. The songs were more important. She’d brought them to him and he’d understood. She’d announce the gig to the band at their next practice.

Bedwin followed her halfway, magnetized in confusion, holding his slice up near his mouth.

“Thanks, Lucinda, for, you know, coming by.”

“Sure. Forget it. Just write those songs.”

“Yes.”

“Goodbye, Bedwin.”

lucinda lowered a cauliflower head into her basket, where, with a five-pound bag of Integral Fare’s own granola, it dragged at her arm like a cannonball. She hoisted the freight to her hip and browsed in the greens for something featherweight, a bundle of rocket or watercress to camouflage her sorry load. Integral Fare ought to issue backpacks for those like her, shoppers embarrassed to push a monumental rolling cart with items scant enough for the express line. As she reached into the display a robot sprinkler began its misting cycle, instantly soaking her sleeve.