Jonathan Lethem - You Don't Love Me Yet

“My god, Bedwin, that’s brilliant.”

“I know, I know.” He seemed not to be taking credit. Rather, the film’s profundities had exfoliated themselves under his watch. And now hers as well.

“What about this one?” Lucinda said. “Look, it says ‘Perfect Beer.’”

“Uh, you’re right, it does.”

“What do you think that’s about?”

“I don’t know, Lucinda, I guess that was just a brand of beer at the time that they were advertising in the bar.”

“I know, but ‘Perfect’? Doesn’t that seem like they’re at least slightly overstating the case?”

“Overstating which case?”

“What beer is perfect, right?”

“But it’s not a fragment,” said Bedwin. “The words are whole.” His tone failed to mask disappointment.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, the scotch causing her to slur now.

“It’s okay,” he whispered back, ever suggestible.

“I’m just getting the feel.”

“It’s your first time,” he said generously.

“You’ve opened my eyes.”

Bedwin goggled behind his frames, flattered beyond speech. She lifted the glasses from his face and placed her forefinger alongside his nose, to smooth the ruddy gutter where the glasses had pressed his tender flesh, soothing him like a lobster for the slaughter. His lips parted. She kissed him. She hadn’t lied. He’d opened her eyes, not to the insane excavation of text fragments from the movie about murderous train engineers but to Bedwin himself, his nobility and beauty. She ached to feel his precarious attention shifted entirely to the subject of her.

The band’s secret genius was also Lucinda’s, hiding in plain sight. It was Bedwin she loved, the answer to the question she’d only just formed. Wasn’t he, after all, the true author of ‘Monster Eyes,’ before it had been poisoned by her with the complainer’s lyrics? Bedwin lurked patiently, waiting to be recognized. If he watched her for a hundred or more times she’d reveal fragments he could painstakingly trace and study. Unlike Fritz Lang’s film, she’d never be the same twice. In Bedwin she’d never inspire monster eyes, no. Someone so helpless could never discard her. As she kissed Bedwin and laughed and pulled him nearer to her she realized she’d be to him as Carl had been to her: enlivening, total, incomprehensible. Only she’d never abandon him, never quit her new life.

“Oh, wow, gosh, Lucinda,” Bedwin breathed, from behind his panting return of her kisses, unwilling to stop but needing to register amazement.

“Yes, it’s crazy, it’s good.”

“Wow, but I had no idea you felt—”

“I know, it’s incredible we didn’t think of it sooner.”

“I guess—”

“Don’t guess, there’s nothing to guess.” Lucinda covered him, tipped him. Bedwin’s legs wriggled from beneath him and he and Lucinda fell enlaced, to occupy the oasis of carpet in Bedwin’s vault, his snail shell. The film played in the background, urgent pensive voices under the soundtrack, We weren’t meant to be happy…it’s always too late, isn’t it? If only we’d been luckier, if something had happened to him in the yards… Lucinda invaded Bedwin’s T-shirt, palmed the knob of bone over his heart, the sprouts of hair defending his largish nipples. He licked and snuffled against her neck, supporting himself on his elbows, his fingertips gentle at her waist. She tugged her own blouse free.

“Lucinda?”

“Yes?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sleeping with Carl?”

“I was, but I’m not anymore.”

“Oh. Can I ask you something else?”

“Yes, Bedwin, anything.”

“Did Carl really write the lyrics to ‘Monster Eyes’ and those other songs?”

“Yes, Bedwin, he did. I mean, the parts that you didn’t write or I didn’t write.”

“What parts did you write?”

“Just some of ‘Monster Eyes,’ I guess. Not the others. That was all you and Carl.”

Bedwin’s breath came in ragged shudders as Lucinda’s hand ranged to his belly.

“Is it okay?”

“Yes,” he managed. “It’s just strange.”

“This, you mean? Or collaborating with Carl?”

“Both.”

She tried to smother his doubts on either subject, clambering so her unbound breasts swam onto his chest, whirling her tongue at his ear. She tore at the fly buttons of his jeans, which gave way easily.

“Luce—”

“Bed.”

“Oh—”

She might have expected he’d be reticent, soft and afraid in his underwear, needing to be teased or beguiled. Instead he sprang into her palm, too ready, and all at once jetted soggily across her wrist.

“Oh, Bedwin,” she said, astonished.

“Sorry.”

“No, don’t be sorry.”

“I can’t help it.”

“There are ways—”

“No, not that. I mean I can’t help being sorry.”

Blue ghosts swam through the room. Lucinda blotted her wrist against Bedwin’s shirt. He sighed his remorseful satisfaction, his spidery hands still idling at her waist. Lucinda lingered so early in her arc of arousal that any chance of reciprocity felt absurd. Bedwin stood as much chance of locating her desire now as of expertly piloting a steam shovel or minesweeper. She kissed the top of his head. He groped for his glasses, which were crushed beneath her hip. As he replaced them on his face he turned from her.

“I didn’t know I meant anything to you,” he said simply.

“Oh, Bedwin.”

“I miss a lot of things. Stuff goes over my head.”

“You’re the smartest—”

“Listen to me. I’m shy. I’m not stupid. I can’t meet people’s eyes. I don’t know if you understand what that’s like. There’s a whole world going on around me, I’m aware of that. It’s not because I don’t want to look at you, Lucinda. It’s that I don’t want to be seen. I’m afraid of what you’ll see inside me. I’m ashamed, like you’ll look in my eyes and see some kind of foul matter, something messed up.”

“You’re a beautiful man, Bedwin.” Even as she spoke she understood they could never be together, that she’d come to him drunk on shame herself, reeling from the complainer’s rejection. She saw Bedwin whole and real at last. Beautiful, in his way, he wasn’t hers, had never been.

“I know there’s a price for looking away,” he said. “Everyone else is making stuff happen with their eyes. Connections, transactions. I don’t know if you can understand how angry I feel sometimes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. I just didn’t know that you could see me. You always seemed a little, uh, frantic. I hope you don’t mind my saying that.”

“It’s okay. I probably am frantic.”

They were silent again, Bedwin straightening himself, rotating his head as if to shake water from his ear. Then he abruptly plunged to kiss her breasts, still bared in the blue gloom.

“Oh, Bedwin, no.”

“What?”

“Just not now.”

“Okay. Lucinda?”

“Yes?”

“What are we going to tell Denise?”

“What do you mean, tell Denise?”

“You know.”

A horror fell on her at his words. She had every idea what Bedwin was talking about, all at once.

“I thought she just liked feeding you a lot of root beer and baloney sandwiches,” she said.

“Ginger ale, Lucinda.” A tone of hurt entered Bedwin’s voice, as though this distinction was the world. Perhaps for him it was. It was just the sort of thing Denise would observe and attend to. Lucinda considered how a whole life, two lives, could be comprised of such gestures.

“Was there anything else between you?”

“Not technically, no.”

“What do you mean, technically?”