Jonathan Lethem - You Don't Love Me Yet

The fugue dissolved and they noticed Falmouth. He sat at another table, deep in the porch’s shadow, legs crossed, scribbling on a pad propped across his knee. As they turned to him he lifted his pen from the page and squinted at the results.

“What’s that?” said Lucinda.

“I’m entering a new phase of radical openness to suggestion. It took you and Jules Harvey to make me understand. You’ve been taking an admirable risk with your horrible music. From this point on my only conceptual medium will be myself. My own behavior and choices, the way I respond to the opportunities to transform daily experience into art. I’m done trying to bully others into being my canvas and oils, in other words.”

“That’s nice, but what are you doing?”

“I borrowed this pen and pad from the waitress,” he said. “She’s one of my students. It’s only ballpoint and it skips but I think that’s good, a happy accident, the kind of thing I’ll be open to from now on.”

“Okay, but what are you drawing?”

“You.”

He turned the pad around. Matthew and Lucinda were depicted in feathery blue ballpoint strokes, seated with their heads leaned together at the table, under shelter of the deck. Another figure loomed between them, paws bridging their shoulders, pointy ears brushing the porch, feet crammed under their table. Long whiskers extended from the grinning cartoon mammal’s nose, past Lucinda’s and Matthew’s heads, radiating like beams of light in a child’s drawing of the sun.

“Is that a ten-foot rat?” said Lucinda. “Or your idea of a kangaroo?”

Falmouth shrugged. “It’s me, really. A spirit-representation of my love and concern for you on this beautiful morning.”

“You’re a strange person, Falmouth.”

“Thank you.”

“Were you listening to us talk?”

“Half listening.”

“So, any half thoughts?”

“On what?” Falmouth reversed his pad and resumed sketching, squinting at them like some alfresco painter. The morning had drifted to afternoon, a sweet languor investing in their bodies and words. Cars swooped on the 101, a long block away, but the sitters on Hugo’s porch went contentedly nowhere, weekending.

“You’re a master of provocation, Falmouth. What about taking on the Los Angeles Zoo?”

“I’ve never been one for causes.”

Matthew had eased into silence, disburdened of his secrets and fears. Anyone could speak of zoos and kangaroos now. These were public facts, not some private concern.

“Think of it as a performance piece,” said Lucinda.

“I’m out of that line, I told you. Sounds more like a job for Sniffles Harvey.”

“Screw Harvey. If you help with the zoo we’d let you manage our band. Like Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground.” Lucinda pictured him as the giant mammal, his tender ghostly paws on their shoulders, guiding the band forward.

“I don’t want to manage anything, thank you.” Examining his work, Falmouth ran fingers spotty with ink over his sweaty dome and left a blue smudge high on his brow. He shrugged conclusively and tore the page from the waitress’s pad. “Here. I award you the first result, a token of my affection.”

“Thank you,” said Lucinda.

“It’s great,” said Matthew, barely looking.

“Are you hungry again?” said Falmouth. “I know it’s ridiculous, but I could eat.”

“I’m starved,” said Matthew inattentively. He stretched his legs under the table, his posture oblique and catlike. He’d shifted back into his body, recovered his vanity.

“Let’s go to San Pedro and get crabs,” said Lucinda. “It seems like nobody ever goes to San Pedro anymore.”

“That’s a long way,” said Falmouth.

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d had these crabs. Also the Mexican garlic bread they’ve got on the wharf. When’s the last time you saw the Pacific Ocean, Falmouth?”

“Oh, I’ve seen the ocean. It’s you pale starving musicians who never go west of La Cienega.”

“And the beer,” said Lucinda. “The beer tastes good by the water.”

“I’d have to get gas,” mused Matthew.

“Do they have bibs?” said Falmouth, glancing at his spotless white shirt. He flagged the waitress, motioning with her own pen for the check. They’d go to San Pedro, it was unmistakable, but there was pleasure in protracting the debate, letting their craving grow. Hugo’s kitchen was still pumping out frittatas heaped with curds for late brunchers, while sparrows crept at their feet pilfering crumbs and the indolent hours unfurled. Maybe elsewhere Lucinda’s phone rang off the hook. Maybe a disgruntled Shelf shredded Matthew’s shower curtain or was pillaging his kitchen, maybe Falmouth’s gallery had been set on fire by irate complainers, it didn’t matter. Today, the day after the Aparty, they were escape artists, had dissolved their grievances in the coffee and sunlight, and now nothing could touch them. They’d become that rarest version of themselves, uncomplainers.

he did not call. He had not called. There was no call. Not, anyway, on Saturday. By the time Matthew dropped Lucinda at her doorstep it was nearly dark again and, happily polluted with beer and lemon butter–drenched crabs and just one margarita, fingernails still grainy with pepper and salt, she’d not troubled to think of Carl, her complainer, for hours, since the moment on Hugo’s deck when, long having decided not to speak of him to Falmouth or Matthew she’d also realized she could free herself of any thought of him, for at least the day. If she were in love with him he’d return to her mind, just as if he were in love with her he’d surely ring her phone. Not that it meant the opposite if he hadn’t. He never had, she realized, never at that number, only on the complaint line. Not that she’d rushed home to check. Blotted with beer and sunshine, she’d thought of anything else, or nothing, at her doorstep. Instead embraced her friend-exes, each of whom had stepped from the car to make farewells. Or perhaps Falmouth only moved from the backseat to the passenger seat she’d vacated. Anyway, they embraced. She kissed them both with tongue, for sport. Falmouth, then Matthew. Both met her with surprised but willing mouths, as if caught forming a word to remain unspoken. They tasted of garlic and beer. Falmouth of cigarettes too. If neither utterly swooned to her kiss neither rebuffed her. Besides, she gave them barely a chance. Just tongue and a smudge of her hips and goodbye. She checked the machine with her keys still in her hand, the light switch unreached, not so much thinking of the complainer in particular, just drunken automatism. He hadn’t called. He didn’t call Sunday, either.

the receptionist wore a lab coat and black-frame glasses, and perhaps wasn’t a receptionist at all but a zoological veterinarian who’d taken a seat at the receptionist’s desk. She was too young, though, to be Dr. Marian. The girl sat alone paging through the newspaper and eating a drippy egg-salad sandwich and Lucinda had to speak to get her attention, feeling more like an intruder than she’d expected, Matthew’s paranoia rubbed off on her. She was within her public citizen’s rights to stroll into the zoo’s offices, she reminded herself.

“Excuse me for bothering you. I, ah, need to pick up some checks.”

“Checks?”

“For, um—” Lucinda mimed questing for a name on her tongue’s tip, then glanced at a scrap of paper yanked from her pocket: “Matthew, yes, Matthew Plangent.”

“I think he’s sick.”