Alison Lurie - The Nowhere City

The hazy white spot of the sun was dropping towards the tops of the scrub thorn-trees. “Well.” He stood up, glanced around the field again (still no one in sight) and began to put on his clothes, which wasn’t easy here with nothing to lean on or sit on except sharp branches. His undershorts, his shirt, his pants, his socks, his shoes; everything was wrinkled and smudged with dust.

“Look at that,” he complained to Ceci, holding up the dust-streaked jacket of his olive-green Dacron suit.

“Yeah, me too.” Ceci grinned, showing her skirt. “Looks like we’ve been rolling on the ground or something,” she said, leaning affectionately against him.

“Your clothes aren’t so bad.” Paul brushed and slapped at his jacket. Why hadn’t they brought a blanket from the car, or even some newspapers? He shook the jacket angrily in the air. Then he remembered something, and put his hand unobtrusively into the inside pocket. His wedding ring was not there. He felt all round the pocket; then he felt around the other pockets of the jacket. Then he looked down at the ground.

“What’re you looking for?” Ceci asked.

“Uh. My ring,” he muttered unwillingly. “I put it in my jacket, but it must have fallen out.” He felt through his pockets again. “It must be here somewhere.”

Ceci said nothing. She stood waiting, making no effort to help, while Paul bent and then knelt on the stony ground, turning over gravel and disturbing leaves and twigs in a widening circle.

“Can’t you find it?” she said presently.

“I’ve got to find it.” Paul shuffled a heap of dead vegetation. He searched in his shirt pockets, and partly lifted a decaying branch.

“Is it that important?”

“Well, in a way.” Paul’s first impulse when he felt attacked was to compromise, but he corrected himself. “Yes, it’s important.” Ceci was looking at him; he went on. “I don’t mean it’s valuable. It just means something.” He stooped again to the dust and brittle leaves. After a moment, Ceci bent down too, but only to read his watch.

“Hey; it’s quarter to five,” she said. “I’ll be late. Come on.” Paul shook his head. “You can get yourself another one.”

“I cannot,” he replied crossly.

“C’mon,” Ceci coaxed, leaning against his shoulder and impeding his movements. “Forget it. It doesn’t mean all that much. It’s just a thing, and anyhow, you’re not even making it with her.”

“How do you know that?” Paul asked, looking up. His face was hot and marked with dust, and he spoke without thinking.

“Why, you told me so,” Ceci sounded surprised. “Didn’t you?”

Too late, Paul realized what he was getting into. But he was too irritated, as well as too straightforward, for deliberate deception.

“No.”

“Sure you did, too. Right at the beginning.”

“You must have misunderstood me. I never said anything like that.” Ceci’s eyes began to dilate, her mouth opened, and she took half a step back. “Maybe you assumed it,” he said more gently.

Paul started to stand up, but before he could rise very far Ceci hit him in the head with her handbag. “Ow!” he exclaimed, and toppled over sideways into a coarse, prickly bush. She hit him again, less accurately now because there were branches in the way. “For Christ’s sake!”

“You shit!” Ceci shouted. “You cheap, lying, two-timing shit!” She burst into angry tears.

Paul picked himself out of the bush. The sharp twigs clung to his clothes; he stood up, trailing shreds of Dacron suiting. He moved cautiously towards Ceci, one arm advanced to put round her shoulders, the other to ward off further blows.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Ceci did not raise her bag again; it hung limply to the ground. But she jerked aside from his touch.

“All this time!” she gasped. “Mother of God, all this time you’ve been shucking me. What a bring-down!”

“You don’t understand.” Paul did not attempt to hold Ceci again, but sort of swayed towards her. “What’s between me and Katherine has nothing to do with us. It’s a completely different kind of thing; it’s not really physical. We don’t really make love very often. And anyhow, that side of it isn’t very important. I mean, well. I don’t enjoy it very intensely physically.”

If it were possible to make the situation worse, he had done so.

“Christ almighty!” Ceci shouted, brushing aside the tears and strands of hair with which her face was streaked. Her small hands were clenched into fists: Paul thought she was going to hit him again, and took a step backwards. But she only glared, and drew her breath in like a cat hissing. “You think that’s an excuse, that you don’t like doing it with her? Man, what a hypocritical, fucked-up square you really are, underneath!”

“I don’t get it,” Paul said. He felt shell-shocked. “What do you want me to do? Hell, what do you want me to say?”

“Ah, shit.” Ceci’s voice was thick with tears. She controlled herself, and went on, “If you really liked it—say if you really dug making it with your wife, whenever she felt well enough to want to, I could pick up on that. I wouldn’t like it, but I’d have to relate. ... You thought you had to make up a cheap story for me.” She focused on Paul’s face, his expression of blank confusion. “Man, you really are dumb,” she said. “Walter was right. You’re just nowhere.”

“Listen,” she added. “I’ve got to get to the restaurant. Stella will be flipping trying to cover for me. I oughta be there now.” She turned and began to pick her way back across the field.

The mention of Walter Wong reminded Paul that he, too, had a grudge. Maybe if he named it they could compromise and this could still turn into an ordinary fight. “Ah come on,” he said to the back of her jersey, her disordered streaky gold hair, her bare scratched arms. “You’ve been involved with other people too, a lot of people. Wong, and that guy you went to San Francisco with that you told me about, and Tomaso, and maybe even John and Steve.” To extend his list, Paul included what he had only sometimes suspected, and even an improbable guess.

“I have not!” Ceci turned to face him on the bank above the road, crying again. “I mean, hell, so what if I have, that’s all the past. I didn’t even know you then.”

At these revelations, a feeling like a paring-knife turned in Paul’s intestines. But he tried to pay no attention to it. It was more important not to lose Ceci. Making an effort, he saw it from her point of view; admitted that he had, at least, let her deceive herself. But if he had known how seriously she took it—

“Ceci! Listen.” He spoke with emphasis; held out his arms to embrace her, and bounded forward. But at the same moment Ceci jumped off the edge of the bank on to the road.

Paul clasped empty space; he lost his balance, shouted “Ahh! Help!” and waved his arms wildly to avoid falling head first. His feet slid out from under him and he skidded down the bank on his back in a landslide of stones and dust.

“Oof!” He came to rest on his rear in the ditch, considerably shaken and bruised. He looked up. Ceci stood on the crest of the road watching him. For the first time that day she was laughing.

“Wow, uh, oh God!” she laughed. “Ha ha ha ha!” Her mouth was stretched wide, and the small white teeth showed in a kitten’s grin. “Wow, do you look dumb. ... Well, get up,” she added. “Don’t just lie there. Climb into your Jag and drive me to the restaurant.”

16

ju

lu

lu

mu

nu

tu

Katherine typed, with an I.B.M. electric typewriter, onto a white index card. She rolled the card out of the carriage, inserted another, and typed: