John Kenney - Talk to Me

“I’m sorry?”

“A dominatrix. She flies around the world. Very high-end clientele. She tried to show me the ideal blow job technique once using a peeled banana. But I was hungry and I ate the banana. What would Freud say, Ted?”

Diana chuckled.

“Doesn’t her husband mind?” Ted asked.

“No. She bought more bananas. Ted, I should do stand-up. For Chrissakes, I’m joking. No, Leopold is gay. They’ve been together for thirty-five years. Best marriage I know.”

“Sounds like Claire and me.”

Here Diana raised her eyebrows. She looked like she was going to say something but stopped.

“Thank you for coming to this, Ted, especially considering your new status as feminist pariah. I joke. Also for your paltry donation. Ten grand more would’ve killed you? Ted, they’re poor. They’re homeless. Do you find it hard, Ted?”

“Do I find what hard?”

“Dirty,” Diana said, flirting smile. Ted was lost. “Caring,” Diana said, switching gears fast. Ted said nothing.

“Your catatonic expression and weird silence tell me yes, you find it hard. Let me tell you what happens to me. I watch the nightly news. Not yours, by the way. The shootings. The racial divide. The refugees from the wars we ignore. The pain is overwhelming. What are we to do? With the information? With the outrage? Is voting enough? Throwing a lovely and perfectly planned fund-raiser? Because I don’t think it is anymore. I feel like something fundamental is breaking. Now that could also be the recent change from Lexapro to Wellbutrin. I have this nonstop buzzy thing in my head. My question is this: Are we worse people than we used to be?”

Ted opened his mouth to respond, but Diana said, “Don’t speak, Ted. You looked like you were going to speak and it was a rhetorical question. I think the ugly truth is that we’ve always been awful. Humans, I mean. Not just the rich. I’m funny, Ted. And I think you’re partially to blame. You, the media. This new world we are living in? Every conceivable horrible image is at our fingertips, being pushed on you every minute of the day. You don’t do news. You do horror. The nightly horror, with Ted Grayson. What is to be done? I am a woman of substantial means and I feel powerless. Should I tweet my outrage, Ted? Should I tweet it? I’m no Luddite. I like technology. But fuck Twitter. Toxic trash. I say that, I might add, as a substantial investor. Should I go on a TV show, on Fox, on MSNBC, and shout about it, go for cheap applause? Tell me what to do. Because most times, knowing I can do nothing… I drift. Ted, I was four pages into the devastating piece on reparations on The Atlantic ’s website when a pop-up ad appeared for Fossil watches. Do you know what I did? I clicked on the ad, spent five minutes looking around the Fossil site, bought a beautiful messenger bag. That site led me to another site about handmade bicycles, which led to a story about a company that does high-end tours of Italy, which led me to book a trip next summer to Italy. Which I’m so excited about. How’s Claire?”

Claire was a schoolgirl at a dance with the handsomest boy. Here, on the lawn, in a dress she loved, heat lamps under the white tent keeping the evening chill away. She had long ago buried any hope of feeling this way again. She was surprised to find it still there. Surprised at how wonderful it felt.

Claire had known Dodge was going to be at the fund-raiser. But she still felt the electricity in her when she saw him. This secret of theirs. She would conduct herself as she always did. She’d simply stand in this small group, chatting, feeling Dodge’s eyes on her. The way it made her stomach tingle, the tips of her fingers. She felt like someone in a novel, a Virginia Woolf novel, the young girl having the affair. Which one was that? Mrs. Dalloway , maybe. Or Tolstoy. She was Anna. Dodge was Vronsky. The illicit affair, being wooed by this dashing man, slowly succumbing to it, as Claire had. Not looking for it. Telling her suitor no, in fact, that she was a woman of high ideals who refused sordid things. But the attraction was too powerful. Anna’s/Claire’s awful husband. Count what’s-his-name. Older and unattractive, though Claire still found Ted annoyingly and effortlessly handsome.

Had she been a good wife? She asked herself this from time to time. Had she played any role in the marriage’s ultimate ruin? Could she have reached across the divide? At her angriest, she was sure it was entirely Ted’s fault. But late at night, not quite sure of herself, she wondered if she weren’t at least partially to blame, if she hadn’t superimposed her ideals of what he should be, ignoring the things he was. No. Wait. This was getting away from her. Also, didn’t Anna throw herself under a train at the end, after ruining most everyone’s lives? She was thinking about Anna under the train, furrowing her brow, when she saw Ted and Diana strolling across the lawn toward their little group. This couldn’t be. Diana wouldn’t do that. Wait. Yes, she would, the tramp, the slut. Claire could see it all on Diana’s face. Were Diana and Ted having a thing? She knew Diana would but, somehow, she also knew that Ted wouldn’t. Yes, he’d had flings, but she knew they meant nothing to him. Why was she standing up for Ted’s flings? Diana and Ted were ruining Claire’s reverie. She closed her eyes, tried to retrace the path, to find that good feeling from a moment ago. It was gone. Claire looked over at Dodge, who was looking at her. He had a smile on his face, a man in love.

“Is that him?” Diana asked, looking past Ted.

“Who?” Ted asked.

“The man she’s leaving you for.”

Ted stared at Diana before he turned and followed Diana’s gaze. There, across the lawn, under the white tent, in a group of six people chatting harmlessly, Claire among them, Ted saw him.

“Dodge Ramsey,” Diana said. “Some kind of international lawyer. He’s a lord or something. A viscount, whatever that is. Has his own plane. But then, who doesn’t?”

Ted watched his soon-to-be-ex-wife gaze at her boyfriend and it was so clear, so startlingly obvious, that she loved him. Ted felt a wave of jealousy and anger. Dodge looked happy. He’s happy, Ted. He was smiling and talking and he was the center of the conversation, people laughing at his witty stories.

“Poor Ted,” Diana said.

Ted turned to see Diana staring at him.

“How long have you known?”

“A bit.”

Diana’s eyebrows went up like a cartoon. “Bit late to the story, aren’t we, Captain Anchor Boy?”

Ted didn’t know what to say.

“C’mon,” Diana said. “Let’s have some fun. Let’s see how awkward we can make this.”

She slipped her arm through Ted’s and led him over to the group.

“Who needs a drink?”

It was Diana. She had Ted and a waiter in tow, the waiter holding a tray with flutes of champagne.

Ted shook hands with two men who smiled and both said it was nice to see him again and yet Ted had no memory of ever having met them. He air-kissed another woman who also seemed to know him well and then shook Dodge’s hand, which seemed quite strong. He didn’t know what to do with Claire, whether to kiss her, shake her hand, or ignore her.

As the waiter left, there was a moment, just the briefest time, when the air was wonderfully thick with tension. And it had nothing to do with Claire and Dodge. It had everything to do with Ted. Ted and his video. He felt it in the way that they didn’t look at him and instead examined the grass as if they were turf specialists. But Diana was too expert at working a room to let the awkwardness last.

“He’s going to ban the immigrants and cut off Medicare for the elderly now. What do we think? What are we going to do?”