Jonathan Lethem - You Don't Love Me Yet

Lucinda felt gripped by an irrational jealousy. Had an old lover called him on the telephone? The instrument in question was banished to a far corner of the loft, a single ancient black enamel model with a rotary dial. It rang seldom and was answered, in Lucinda’s sight, never. She’d stayed at the complainer’s loft around the clock lately, up with him past dawn after rehearsals, then sleeping late into the next day, when she’d wake to find Carl preparing breakfast at two or three in the afternoon. Hardly worth returning to her apartment before the band convened again. Besides, once she’d ferried in some spare underwear and socks there was nothing to return for. After rehearsal and dinner she’d help the others pack their instruments, then escort them into the corridor and elevator. She had no wish to rub in anyone’s face that she enjoyed special privileges yet no interest in hiding it, either. She felt a certain munificence in having ushered the band through so much, lyrics, gig, new member, new rehearsal space. Any trace of resentment in the others Lucinda chalked to confusion, perhaps even fear at what had overtaken them: the possibility of success. She now adopted Falmouth’s attitude: most artists were their own worst enemies. As for her, she’d left hesitation behind with her apartment, her hamper full of dirty clothes, her phone blinking with who-knew-what messages. She was no longer curious what the foot sign thought. The answer to any remaining question was yes : yes to staying beside the complainer, yes to what she felt when she was beside him. The answer to any other question, questions to do with the band’s feelings, or Matthew’s, anything outside the loft and the music they made there, was: yes, quit asking. Don’t imagine a broader ratification was due, from the foot sign or anywhere else. Embrace the bay leaf of the moment, which, unlike the foot sign, wasn’t divided into happy and sad but was instead sweet and fearful on both of its faces.

But who called the complainer’s telephone? It did ring. That he never answered it seemed to speak of the richness of his existence, and of their joint existence, now that she’d moved in with him in all but name. Other people’s apartments, including her own, seemed by comparison little more than foyers for the containment of telephones, tiny shoe boxes where to ignore a call might be to lose a chance to shift oneself from the shoe box into the broader realm of human life. In the complainer’s loft life was complete, so the telephone seemed negligible, a toad in a moat. Once she’d seen how he ignored it she forgave him not answering her earlier calls. Yet his phone did ring. If it had been Lucinda who was being ignored before, who was it now? Some old liaison, looking to suck dregs, or have dregs sucked?

The tall beautiful girl from the yellow chair?

The complainer was still toasting. “Just as the quality of a sporting event is determined by the level of play of the losing team, or the quality of a love affair by the way you feel when you’re apart. Or of a secret, by its telling.”

“I like this theory,” said Falmouth. “Let me try. The quality of a restaurant meal, by the appetizers. Of a film, by its subplot.”

“By the minor characters, I’d think,” said Matthew.

“Bedwin went to film school,” said Denise. “What is it, Bedwin, subplot or minor characters?”

He thought it over. “I had a professor who used to say that every movie had one actor you wished the whole movie was about. In a bad one you might only see them for a minute, they’d be playing a bellhop in a hotel or something. In a pretty good movie they’d have a supporting part. In a great movie you’d have the same feeling of wishing the movie was about them and they’d turn up in every scene. Right after that whoever it was would be a star in their next movie, but they’d never be as good.”

“Here’s another,” said Falmouth. “The quality of a dinner party is determined by the side conversations, unheard by the majority of the table.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Matthew. “If the best talk is going on behind my back, I’m bored.”

“I’ve got one,” said Bedwin. “It’s about a rock band.”

No one was sure they wanted to hear the principle applied to a rock band, but it was impossible to discourage Bedwin’s hard-fought attempts at conversation.

“Lay it on us,” said Matthew.

“The quality of a Rolling Stones record is determined by the quality of the one song that Keith Richards sings. Like Exile on Main Street and “Happy” or Some Girls and “Before They Make Me Run.”

“Oh, no, Bedwin, that’s no good at all,” said Denise despairingly.

“Why not?”

“Denise thinks you’re ruining the fun,” said Matthew. “We were talking about universal principles and you turned it into rock trivia.”

“I don’t understand a word he said,” said Falmouth. “Let’s change the subject.” He took the open bottle and topped off their glasses. Wine had no particular influence on Lucinda here, so she could drink as much as she liked. Here she was never drunk and always dreamy, as though adjusted to the intoxication of the surroundings, the roseate glow of the furniture, the imperial views of Los Angeles, so timeless and far away.

“A rock band by its worst, most incompetent member,” said Carl, unexpectedly resuming, as though to salvage Bedwin’s attempt. “The greatness of a song, by its worst singer.”

“I’ll drink to that,” said Matthew distantly.

Light caught the complainer’s glass as he lofted it above his ravaged spaghetti. The bell of crystal was smudged with heavy fingerprints, and bore lip-shaped gobbets of sauce around its rim. The complainer’s appetite painted every clear surface it touched. I am like that glass, thought Lucinda, happily.

the cassette tape of New Zealand bands was still stuck in Matthew’s player, chiming circular chords, when Lucinda opened the door of his car where he waited for her outside Carl’s building, but he snapped it off defensively as she slid into her seat. The day’s air was bleachy and shadowless, its temperature that of a sleeping body. Lucinda winced in the glare, bargaining with a hangover the breakfast beer she’d chugged did nothing to alleviate.

Matthew had returned Shelf the Flyer to the zoo the night before, a solo clandestine operation. His stealthiness, Lucinda supposed, formed a gesture of dignity in defeat, as well as a warning to Dr. Marian that he retained the capacity to breach her defenses. What remained today was to bring in not the animal but himself. To accept amnesty, to be allowed to resume watching over his wards and drawing a paycheck. In this perhaps more difficult hurdle he’d asked Lucinda to escort him inside, to act as witness to seal the result of her earlier negotiations. She found it impossible to say no, though as she felt the weight in the air between them she wondered, too late, if the request had as much to do with a wish to bear her away from Carl’s loft. It was Lucinda’s first time outside the loft in most of a week. As they drove to the zoo in perfect silence she felt the whining surface of the highway through the Mazda’s flimsy chassis. Restored to ground level, she felt antlike, exposed, alarmed.

Arrived, they strolled among the exhibits, browsing incognito on the eucalyptus-littered paths. In the noon sun the zoo resembled a tray of compartments that had been shaken and plunked back to earth by some careless child, the inhabitants of each exhibit dizzy, pressing themselves to the walls or bars of their enclosures as if expecting to be lifted and shaken again. A hyena rolled its eyes at them, begging with a sideways tongue. Three giraffes bunched as if tethered at the ankles. Woolly goats teetered in gutters.