Tag: Under the Table Books

Friendship Dialogues #2

This is the sequel to Friendship Dialogues #1.

Mark is sixty-four, a book editor and denizen of a neighborhood where Berkeley morphs into Oakland. Though the pandemic rages on, he has embarked on a friendship with Bernice, who is fifty-seven, and with Bernice’s closest friends Angela, sixty-three, and Marlene, sixty. He thinks of Bernice as his primary friend in the troika of women friends, and has yet to imagine spending time with either Angela or Marlene without Bernice in the mix.

So he is initially surprised and subsequently pleased when on a cold cloudy morning in March he gets a call from Marlene, who is French, asking if he’d like to go on a walk with her.

“I walk my neighbor’s dog Juno every day,” she explains, “because Jacqueline, my neighbor, needs a new hip and cannot walk very far, and now she is dog sitting her daughter’s dog Chico who is young and big, and Juno is big, too, and the two dogs are too much for me, so I thought perhaps you would like some exercise and could help me.”

“I’d be happy to,” says Mark, who finds Marlene delightful. “When do you envision this walk happening?”

“Now?” she says, laughing. “I’m sorry for such short notice, but I just thought of you and got your number from Bernice and called you.”

“I can be there in twenty minutes,” he says, ever amazed by the exigencies of fate.

“Perfect,” she says. “They say it might rain, but I don’t think so.”

Juno, it turns out, is a very large five-year-old half Saint Bernard, half Golden Retriever, friendly and well trained. Chico, still growing at eleven months, is even bigger than Juno. Half Great Dane and half Black Lab, Chico is formidably strong and barely trained at all.

Fortunately, Chico immediately likes Mark, and Mark keeps him on a short firm leash, which Chico also seems to like. So Marlene handles Juno, who she’s known since Juno was a puppy, Mark handles Chico, and they take the dogs on a brisk three-mile jaunt with two poop stops for each dog, and a few pissing stops, too.

When they get back to Marlene’s and return the dogs to Jacqueline, Marlene invites Mark to have tea and sandwiches on her patio.

Mark: I’d love to, Marlene, but rain is imminent and I am not allowed inside your house.

Marlene: Yes, you are. If it starts to rain you can come in my kitchen and we will leave the door and windows open.

Mark sits at a large round table on Marlene’s patio adjacent to her lily pond. Warm from their walk and comfy in his down jacket and wool pants, he converses with Marlene through the sliding glass door of her kitchen.

Marlene: Do you like avocado and bacon together?

Mark: Love them. I’m avoiding dairy these days, though not eggs, and I eat meat.

Marlene: I love this combination of bacon and avocado. I have buckwheat bread without gluten for you and I will have my French bread. Lettuce and mustard and mayonnaise. It will be delicious.

Mark: I’m drooling in anticipation.

Marlene: Did you enjoy walking the dogs? It was fun. Yes?

Mark: It was great. I love those dogs. Makes me want to get one, only I’d probably get something a little smaller.

Marlene: I’m so glad you love them because Jacqueline has Chico for another week and I could use your help if you have the time. I will make you a good lunch every day to thank you.

Hearing her say this, Mark is moved to tears. Marlene comes out with their sandwiches and finds Mark crying.

Marlene: (concerned) Are you okay, Mark?

Mark: Yes, I’m fine. I just… I’m happy to know that for the next week I’ll be walking the dogs with you and having lunch with you and doing something I want to do and not being alone working at a job I hate. It’s a mitzvah getting to be with you every day. A gift.

Marlene: A gift for me, too. I’ll get the tea.

She goes back inside and Mark has another cry before Marlene returns with the tea tray.

Mark: I feel like I’m on the French Riviera. In winter.

Marlene sits across the table from him, she pours their tea, and they remove their masks.

Marlene: Have you ever been to the French Riviera?

Mark: No. I’ve never been to Europe.

Marlene: (surprised) Why not? You seem so sophisticated. I would have guessed you’ve been many times.

Mark: I’ve rarely had much money beyond survival expenses, and the few times I did have a little extra, going to Europe was not high on my list.

Marlene: What was high on your list, if I may ask?

Mark: Buying my son a car before he left for college. Buying him a guitar. Taking the train across Canada to visit a friend in Nova Scotia. Getting a new roof for my house. But even so, I still feel like I’m on the French Riviera.

Marlene: I haven’t traveled much in the last ten years. Now that my parents are gone, I have no reason to go back to France. When I was in the movie business I traveled so much it was not my idea of a holiday. But I have been many times to the French Riviera and this is exactly like it. I designed my backyard as a replica of the Riviera.

Mark: You’re kidding.

Marlene: No, they have lily ponds everywhere on the Riviera. (laughs) Yes, I’m kidding.

Mark: Were you ever in a movie? Surely some director would have wanted you enhancing a scene or two.

Marlene: I could have been, but I said No. It was important to me to be recognized for my work, not for being attractive. I was very proud of myself for my success in a field where men are so dominant, and yet I only made two movies I even like a little. I’m not ashamed, but I don’t like to dwell in that unhappy past.

Mark: What made it unhappy?

Marlene: I told you. The movies I worked on were shameful. Big budget thrillers. Not a meaningful line in any of them. And the last film I worked on was a very big science-fiction movie. I was contracted to make four of those movies. But when the first one was done, I was done, too, and it took me many years to recover.

Mark: From that one movie or the sum total of the movies you made?

Marlene: The sum total. A good way to say it.

Mark: I’m sorry.

Marlene: It was a long time ago. Seventeen years. Now I design sets for Bernice’s plays, and I even wield a hammer and saw, you know, and make little worlds for the actors to play in. It makes me happy even if the plays are like television shows now. It’s fun, and the people are wonderful. (muses) I haven’t talked about my movies in a long time. I was surprised to hear the bitterness in my voice. I thought I was done with all that.

Mark: Bitter memories bring their bitterness to the surface when we unearth them.

Marlene: Yes, but it was a long time ago and I have done good therapy about it, so…

Mark: I’ve read a number of books about neuroscience, and it seems our brains record everything that ever happens to us, and those recordings contain the emotions associated with those memories. So even though you’ve made peace with those bitter times, your memories of working on those movies still trigger bitterness. I guess the trick is not reattaching to those feelings so they can dissipate.

Marlene: I think so. And since I met you, I’ve been letting go of my bitter feelings about men. That’s why I called you. Before I met you I would never have called a man to help me. But you changed my idea of what a man can be, so I asked you for help, and I’m glad I did.

Mark: How have I changed your idea of what a man can be?

Marlene: In many ways. You are not condescending. You are a good listener. You don’t just look at me as someone for sex or not for sex. You share your feelings. You cry. You tell the truth. You don’t hide behind a false persona. You don’t monopolize the conversation. You’re very kind. And you make excellent guacamole.

Mark: These are all firsts for you vis-à-vis a man?

Marlene: Not all firsts for me, but the first time they have been true of the same man who is not gay.

Mark: Bernice says I’m her first male friend who isn’t gay.

Marlene: Well because you know how to be a friend. Most men don’t even know how to be friends with other men, and they don’t have a clue about how to relate to a woman as a whole person. To be good friends, we have to be vulnerable to each other, and men are not supposed to be vulnerable because that is a feminine attribute, and for a man to be feminine is to verge on being gay. I know it’s not politically correct, but I think many men choose to be gay because then they can be vulnerable and share their feelings and not always have to be ready to fight.

Mark: There’s a reason men are the way they are. It’s how we’re shaped by our culture.

Marlene: Yes, but somehow you avoided this shaping. No?

Mark: No, I didn’t. I used to look at women with sex in mind, and still do sometimes. And until fifteen years ago I’d never shared my emotional self with anyone except my best friend Harry who was gay. Never cried in front of anyone. And from twelve to fifty I tried out all sorts of false personas to see if any of them might work better than who I really am.

Marlene: And did they?

Mark: In the short term, sometimes. Got me laid a few times. Got me a job or two. But I never could keep up the pretense. I’m a terrible liar.

Marlene: I’m surprised. You seem so authentic to me.

Mark: I’m glad. I feel I am now. And I’ve always been a good listener. I find other people fascinating. I’ve always liked helping other people, and I’ve always loved to cook. It was how I connected with my mother, though I didn’t master guacamole until a few years ago when I was determined to match the guacamole of my favorite Mexican restaurant.

Marlene: What happened fifteen years ago?

Mark: I went into therapy with a Buddhist psychologist who helped me be okay with who I am.

Marlene: A woman?

Mark: Yes, and that was key.

Marlene: Why?

Mark: Because I needed her feminine energy as much I needed her insight and compassion. I needed to be loved for who I am by a woman. And though she didn’t love me romantically, she loved me in ways I’d never been loved by anyone, even my mother. And I think that’s what most men lack in their lives. Strong women who love us but don’t take any shit from us and encourage us to be fully ourselves, even if that means being frightened and anxious and vulnerable.

Marlene: You found a good teacher.

Mark: I found a good teacher.

Marlene: Do you meditate every day?

Mark: I do a stretching routine every morning before I shackle myself to my desk, and at the end of the stretching I sit for twenty minutes in hope of quieting the chattering mind, though I’m not often successful.

Marlene: I hope you won’t mind my saying this, but I think it would be good for you to quit your job as soon as you can. It can’t be good for you to do something you hate day after day, year after year. Do you really need the money so much? And if you do, maybe there is something else you could do besides a job you hate.

Mark: I think I need the money so much until I’m sixty-six and Social Security kicks in, but maybe I don’t. I think I don’t yet have enough to safely retire, but maybe I do. I appreciate your suggestion to re-examine my situation.

Marlene: I just keep hearing how much you dislike your work, and I don’t want you to keep suffering. You’re a good person, Mark. You deserve a happier life.

Mark: Now I may cry again.

Marlene: That’s okay. I might cry with you.

The rain begins to fall.

Mark: I think I won’t come in. I really need to get back to work.

Marlene: Shall we say another dog walk tomorrow at eleven o’clock?

Mark: I’ll be here barring a tempest.

When Mark gets home from Marlene’s, he makes a cup of coffee, sits down at his desk, and resumes editing a murder mystery he’s been working on for a month and is nearly done with. As he methodically works his way through the last few pages of the laughably unoriginal whodunit, he thinks of Marlene saying, “It can’t be good for you to do something you hate day after day, year after year. Do you really need the money so much?”

After changing the last confusing he to the name of the detective, Mark puts down his pen, gets up from his desk, walks into his living room, gazes out his window at the rain, and hears Marlene saying, “You’re a good person, Mark. You deserve a happier life.”

And he decides he is done being a book editor.

“Unless,” he adds, speaking to the rain, “it’s my own book.”

fin

One Fell Swoop

Tags bitter memories, dog walking Juno and Chico, Friendship Dialogues #2, good friends have to be vulnerable to each other, how to be a friend, Mark and Bernice and Marlene, Mark lunches with Marlene, sequel to Friendship Dialogues #1, strong women who love us, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Friendship Dialogues #1

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #9.

Mark is sixty-four and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Despite the strictures of the pandemic, he had five dates with Bernice, who is fifty-seven, before the focus of their connection shifted from possibly having a relationship to becoming friends. In the process of making this shift, Mark met Bernice’s closest friends Angela, sixty-three, and Marlene, sixty, and now Mark is becoming friends with Angela and Marlene, too.

“As much as we like each other,” Mark explains in a phone conversation with his pal Alex, “it seems highly unlikely that Bernice and I will end up in a relationship, though it seems likely we’ll be friends.”

“How do you feel about that?” asks Alex, who has been married to Denise for thirty-seven years and has no female friends other than Denise’s friends.

“I feel fine,” says Mark, who wasn’t looking for new friends when he started using Find the One, the relationship web site where he met Bernice. “Though part of me must still be hoping for a relationship with her because when I logged in to Find the One yesterday to peruse the latest possibilities, I felt like I was cheating on her.”

Alex laughs. “Spoken like a true monogamist.”

Saturday dawns sunny and unusually warm for March, and Mark uses the prospect of lunch at Marlene’s as his carrot for putting in a couple hours editing a whodunit, after which he makes a big batch of guacamole for the upcoming lunch with his three new friends.

Bernice arrives at Mark’s house at 11:30 and she and Mark walk the mile to Marlene’s together. She’s wearing a summery turquoise dress and a dark green mask and schlepps a big round basket containing salad and tortilla chips and Mark’s guacamole as they traverse neighborhoods of mostly older houses, the majority of the inhabitants Internet Technology peeps who supplanted the blue collar families that abided here before the dawn of the digital age.

They are both happy and relaxed, the self-imposed pressure of trying to impress each other mostly gone now.

Mark: You look marvelous as always. Who does your hair?

Bernice: (laughs) Before the pandemic, I would only go to Francois at Tricky Curls, but since the closures I’ve allowed Marlene to make two attempts.

Mark: Looks fine to me.

Bernice: Well she is a great artist. Who cuts your hair?

Mark: Before the pandemic, Denise did. Wife of my pal Alex. She’s French, too. So we both have French haircutters. But since the pandemic began, I go to some guy I meet at my mirror every few months. We communicate telepathically and he hacks the longer stuff back. We aim for symmetry and settle for what we get.

Bernice: You look fine. Short unkempt hair is all the rage now.

Mark: That’s me. Always on the cutting edge of fashion.

Bernice: Yet another thing we have in common.

They walk another block, marveling at how warm the day.

Mark: So… we’re friends now.

Bernice: Yeah. How do you like it so far?

Mark: Very much. How do you like it?

Bernice: I love it. You’re my very first male friend who isn’t gay.

Mark: Do you have many gay male friends?

Bernice: Honey, I’m in show biz. I’ve managed a theatre company for twenty years, and before that I was a script supervisor on fourteen movies, otherwise known as the continuity person. And before that I was an aspiring actor. So, yes, I have many gay male friends. Do you have any gay male friends?

Mark: I used to. My best friend was gay, but he died and I don’t currently have any gay friends. Well, that’s not true. I correspond with a lesbian and a sometimes lesbian.

Bernice: I’m sorry you lost your friend.

Mark: Harry was a marvel. You would have loved him. Pianist. Composer. Full of fun.

They walk in silence for a time.

Mark: So you were an actor and a continuity person. You didn’t tell me that when we were trying to concoct a relationship.

Bernice: (frowns) I know. Came out easy as pie now that we’re friends.

Mark: And I didn’t tell you that I was an aspiring actor. I must have been embarrassed about that before we were friends.

Bernice: Did you go to LA and try to make it in the movies?

Mark: No. New York. Did the whole bartender by night, acting workshops and auditions by day. For three exhausting humiliating years. Then I came back to California and morphed into a book editor while trying to get parts in plays and indie films. (laughs) I was a colossal failure, but I loved trying.

Bernice: You didn’t fail, Mark. You just didn’t realize that trying was your success. That’s what I realize now when I look back on all the things I’ve done in my life. I never failed. I just didn’t understand that trying was my practice. As the Buddhist teachers say, we practice to practice, not to get somewhere, not to win some prize. When you practice the guitar you’re not failing. You’re practicing.

Mark: And lately I’ve been failing to practice. But I know what you mean and I thank you for reminding me.

Bernice: I do occasionally have a small part in one of our plays. But acting in plays has never been my bliss. I wanted to be in movies. I’ve never been keen on playing the same part over and over again, but I love becoming someone else in relation to other people. That’s my favorite part about acting.

Mark: So is that where you and Marlene met? In Hollywood?

Bernice: Yes, she was the art director on two films I worked on, and we became instant friends. And then a year after I moved here to take the job managing the theatre company, she moved up here, too, and I eventually enticed her to design some sets for us, and she turned out to be a fabulous actor.

Mark: Was she a success in Hollywood, speaking of success?

Bernice: She art directed some very big movies and made lots of money, and if you ask her about her movie career she’ll say they paid her a fortune to make crap look good.

Mark: And how did you meet Angela?

Bernice: She is the accountant for our company. We met twenty years ago and fell in love as best friends will. Isn’t she just the most brilliant deadpan comedian?

Mark: She’s great. Every spoke of your troika is great.

Bernice: And so are you, my friend. So are you.

On Marlene’s terrace, frogs and turtles sunning themselves on lily pads in her big pond, Marlene serves a lunch of chicken enchiladas, spicy tomato rice, refried beans, salad, and guacamole. The women have beer, Mark water with a slice of lemon. Angela and Bernice and Marlene share a big table, Marlene and Angela wearing floppy sunhats and sun dresses, while Mark sits at a smaller table ten feet from them.

Marlene: You don’t drink any alcohol, Mark?

Mark: I have the occasional sip of wine and the occasional sip of beer. I love the taste, but I’m allergic to alcohol and more than a little makes me ill.

Angela: Do you smoke pot?

Mark: No. I used to, but not anymore.

Angela: Why did you stop?

Mark: Well… I was addicted and it was ruining my life. So I quit.

Marlene: Good choice, Mark.

Angela: The three of us sometimes smoke pot together. We like getting high and watching a movie or dancing or… whatever.

Mark: Sounds wonderful. I loved getting stoned before I became addicted. But then it ceased to be about love and was all about needing to be high so I could feel okay about being here. You know what I mean?

Angela: Oh I do. Believe me, I do.

Mark: I believe you.

Bernice: Fortunately, we’re all cheap dates, so a puff or two usually does the trick.

Marlene: Speaking of getting high, I’m getting high on this guacamole. You must give me your recipe.

Mark: I’ll write it down before I go.

Marlene: Oh you can just email it to me.

Bernice: I’ll send you her email.

Mark: Great. So… what have you all been up to since we breakfasted at my place an eternity ago?

Angela: I’ve been doing other people’s taxes. Crunch time. Eight hours a day. Any more than that and the numbers begin to blur.

Mark: I know what you mean. I can only edit for a few hours at a time and then my brain stops working and I have to stop looking at words and get up and move around.

Marlene: How many hours a day do you work?

Mark: Five or six, and to make my forty hours I work every day.

Marlene: You don’t take weekends off?

Mark: (attempts French accent) What is this thing you call weekend?

Bernice: I can’t remember. The days all blur together now.

Marlene: I still keep my weekends separate from the weekdays, though I haven’t had a job since the pandemic began.

Mark: So what do you do with your time?

Marlene: I exercise for two hours in the morning before breakfast, yoga and Pilates online, and then after breakfast I draw for an hour or so. Then I take my neighbor’s dog for a walk, then I write emails, then I have lunch with tea and read, and then I visit friends in-person or on the computer. Then I might go shopping or do gardening work, and then it’s supper, and after supper I might watch a movie or take a long bath. Often I do something with Bernice or Angela or both of them.

Bernice: You’re so disciplined.

Marlene: Well, I have to be. I’m very prone to melancholy, so without the structure I will become morose and it isn’t good for me.

Mark: Sounds like a good life.

Marlene: It is. I’m very lucky.

Mark: Did you study art in college?

Marlene: Yes. I studied drawing and painting and sculpture in France, and then specifically set design and art direction for films in Switzerland.

Mark: And then you conquered Hollywood.

Marlene: (laughs) Au contraire. Hollywood demolished me. So much work to make crap look good, and one day I woke up and realized I was growing old and all I’d done with my life was help promote stereotypes of women as whores and men as vengeful heroes.

Mark: Do you ever wish you’d stayed in France? Made more complex dramas?

Marlene: Sometimes. Not often. France was quite stifling for me in many ways.

Angela: Not to change the subject, but these enchiladas are to die for.

Bernice: They are so good.

Mark: Fantastic. And I’m a serious enchilada aficionado.

Marlene: I’m glad you like them. (looks at Mark) I’m so sorry you can’t be at our table. But in a few months we will all be vaccinated and then we can sit together.

Mark: In the meantime, I appreciate your wish.

A pleasant silence falls as they enjoy the delicious lunch.

Angela: (to Mark) Bernice says you edit murder mysteries. Anything you’d recommend? I gobble them like candy.

Mark: I’m not the one to ask about that. Having edited hundreds of them, I now loathe the genre, though I do understand their appeal. In fact, a big part of my job is insuring that the books deliver that particular high the reader is reading for.

Marlene: If you hate the genre, why not edit some other kind of books?

Mark: Not to avoid your question, but perhaps the best way to answer you would be to ask why didn’t you art direct movies that weren’t crap?

Marlene: They make very few movies in America that are not crap, and most of the ones that are not crap either don’t pay their art directors very well or those jobs go to the few men at the top of the art director pyramid.

Mark: Well… they publish very few books in America that are not crap. And the relatively small publisher I work for can’t afford to publish books that aren’t moneymakers, which precludes most books that are not crap.

Angela: I think that’s so sad.

Mark: Depends on what you like to read. I mean… only a very small percentage of our population buys books of any kind, let alone literary works, and that same population is two or three generations removed from the golden age of American literature that ended, for all intents and purposes, in the 1960s. And they probably wouldn’t like fiction of that quality if it were published today because the collective taste has changed, forever altered by television and the subsequent versions of television most people now access on their phones.

Marlene: Which is why I’m reading Dickens again. He holds up well.

Angela: And I read murder mysteries.

Bernice: And twenty years from now they’ll say the golden age was the early 2000s, and on we’ll go.

Mark: Thus it has always been. I was recently reading Twain’s autobiography and he reeled off the names of a dozen or so of his most famous contemporaries circa 1900 and I’d never heard of any of them.

Angela: So maybe it’s not so sad. Things just change.

Marlene: I wish I could look at it that way, but it feels like a death to me. The contemporary plays we do now, they feel so much like television shows.

Mark: They are. Because that’s all the younger writers know about. They’re not going to imitate Eugene O’Neil or Arthur Miller or Samuel Beckett. They’re going to write in ways that feel familiar to them.

Angela: (to Mark) Bernice tells us you write plays.

Mark: I’ve written a few. And I’ve gotten a handful of stellar rejection letters, but I fear I may already be a dead writer, though my body has yet to die. I stopped watching television when I was nineteen and traveled down a long road of reading great dead writers, so I don’t really speak the language of now.

Bernice: Which brings up an interesting question. Why write something or create something for which there is no audience?

Mark: It’s not only an interesting question, it is the fundamental question for artists who make original art. And my answer is that some part of me must still believe there is an audience for what I do if only by some miracle it gets to live on a larger stage than my desk.

Marlene: And my answer is we create what we create regardless of what anyone else thinks. Otherwise it’s not art. It’s commercial art, maybe, but not art.

Bernice: And my answer is a combination of both your answers. I assume the poem has come to me for a reason I’ll discover after I get the thing written down. Then I can decide if it’s something I want to share or just needed to get out. Like a bowel movement.

Marlene: (laughs) I have drawn many pictures of this sort.

Angela: And I don’t write or draw or create anything. I read murder mysteries and watch television, lots of television, especially British stuff. And you’re right, Mark. I’ve tried to read Faulkner and Nabokov and Dickens and Philip Roth and John Updike and I find it all impenetrable and nothing I care about. I couldn’t even read Harry Potter. But I love murder mysteries.

Marlene: What do you love about them, darling?

Angela: I love the suspense and the danger and the needing to know who did it.

Mark: You identify with the detective.

Angela: I do. I feel like I’m there, and I’m in danger, and I’ve got to find out who the killer is before they kill me.

Mark: That’s my job, Angela. Making the writing is good enough so the reader will identify with the detective and feel the detective is not merely solving a crime, but defying death.

Marlene: I’ve always wondered what the appeal was. And now I know. But it’s nothing I want to read. I feel like I’m defying death every day. Isn’t that what life is? Defying death?

Bernice: And eating good food while we’re at it.

Masked again and trying to stay six feet apart, Mark and Bernice take their time walking home from Marlene’s.

Bernice: Mark?

Mark: Yes?

Bernice: I watch television. And if we were in a relationship I would still watch television.

Mark: And I would watch it with you sometimes, just to be with you.

Bernice: I also drink beer and wine and sometimes scotch on the rocks and every now and then I smoke pot.

Mark: Would you allow me the occasional sip of your booze?

Bernice: I would. But I also like lots of plays by writers who are not dead.

Mark: You could educate me, and if I didn’t like a play you liked, we could have revealing discussions about why you like the play and I don’t.

Bernice: You say all the right things.

Mark: So do you.

Bernice: Do you think you’re still hoping to be in a relationship with me?

Mark: Probably. But I’m also fine with being your friend and never being in a relationship with you.

Bernice: How about taking ballroom dance lessons? Would you do that for me if we were in a relationship?

Mark: I would do that for you as your friend. And that goes for watching television with you and having sips of your booze and discussing contemporary plays. We don’t have to wait. We can do it all now.

Bernice: But no sex.

Mark: No, I’d even have sex with you as your friend.

Bernice: I don’t think that would work. Not yet anyway.

Mark: I wonder why you brought up being in a relationship when we were having so much fun being friends.

Bernice: Maybe because I can talk about it now without being afraid I’ll say the wrong thing.

Mark: Well that’s good.

Bernice: So now, once again, if not for the pandemic we would probably kiss, wouldn’t we?

Mark: That’s nonsense. If we want to kiss each other, we will. We’re both healthy and strong and neither of us has the virus. And we both know it.

Bernice: So why don’t you try to kiss me?

Mark: Because I love being your friend and I want to see where it takes us.

They stop walking and look at each other.

Bernice: I want to see where it takes us, too. I think the reason I brought up being in a relationship is that the more time I spend with you, the more I like you, and maybe I’m afraid you’ll fall in love with someone else and I’ll miss my chance.

Mark: I’m flattered. But I don’t think the fear of missing your chance is a good reason to start a relationship.

Bernice: No, of course not, but… I saw the way you were looking at Marlene and… she really likes you.

Mark: The mind boggles.

They resume walking.

Bernice: I’m being an idiot, aren’t I?

Mark: Yeah, but you’re very cute when you’re being an idiot.

Bernice: You’re just saying that to make me feel better.

Mark: No, it’s true. You get very open and vulnerable when you talk about your fears, and you become more beautiful than ever, which is an extreme kind of cuteness.

Bernice: (laughs) I like being your friend.

Mark: Ditto.

Bernice: Imagine me holding your hand.

Mark: Imagine me really liking it.

fin

Light Song

Tags addicted to pot, an extreme kind of cuteness, Bernice and Angela and Marlene, French haircutters, Friendship Dialogues #1, great dead writers, guacamole and enchiladas, Light Song, Mark and Bernice, murder mysteries, pandemic courtship, sequel to Relationship Interview #9, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books, why create something for which there is no audience

Uncategorized

Relationship Interview #9

Post author By toddric
Post date February 10, 2021
No Comments on Relationship Interview #9

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #8.

For their fifth official date since meeting through Find The One, a relationship web site, Bernice comes for breakfast at Mark’s house on a sunny morning in early March and brings her friends Marlene and Angela, both of whom also attended Date #4.

Bernice is fifty-seven and manages a theatre company. Mark is sixty-four and edits how-to books and murder mysteries. Marlene is sixty, French, an artist and actor, and Angela is sixty-three, an accountant originally from New Jersey.

They gather on Mark’s backyard terrace, and because the pandemic is still raging, the women, who are in a bubble together, sit at one table and Mark sits at another. They keep their masks on until Mark serves the pancakes and coffee, and when everyone is seated, they remove their masks.

Mark: Here we are together again.

Angela: I’m so happy we are. Things ended too abruptly yesterday.

Marlene: I’m happy, too. You make very good coffee, Mark. Many people don’t, you know. They think they do, but they don’t.

Mark: I try to buy the freshest beans. Maybe that’s the trick.

Bernice: I love these pancakes. Old family recipe?

Mark: No that’s a recent acquisition from my friend Denise. She’s gluten free and these use millet and sorghum and tapioca flour.

Marlene: So delicate. Are you gluten free? I could not do without my French bread.

Mark: I’m experimenting. Less wheat seems to suit me. Less lots of things seem to suit me these days as I ramble through my sixties.

Angela: I know what you mean.

They chat a while more about dietary matters before Mark steers the conversation in another direction.

Mark: So last night when Bernice came by, we spoke of friendship and she mentioned the rules of friendship. And I wonder what those are.

Bernice: I meant how friends treat each other differently than people in relationships often treat each other.

Mark: I sense what you mean, but I’m unclear about how friendship rules differ from relationship rules.

Angela: They shouldn’t. That’s what ruins most relationships. They don’t treat each other like friends.

Marlene: The two times in my life I married, I chose men I assumed were my friends. But once we were married, they seemed to forget we were separate people. They began to take offense at things I liked and what I said and what I wanted to do and where I wanted to go, and they could not see how they were trying to make me into some kind of female echo of them. So I got out of those marriages and have not been tempted to marry again.

Bernice: I would never tell Marlene or Angela what they should do with their lives or how they should dress or what they should or shouldn’t like. But that’s what people in relationships do to each other all the time.

Mark: So would one rule be: Never Criticize Each Other?

Marlene: Yes, because we must accept our friends for who they are. We like them as they are. That’s why we chose them to be our friend and they chose us, not because we want to change them into someone else.

Bernice: Something happens to people when they identify as a couple instead of as two individuals, as if they believe they own the other person now. Doesn’t happen to everybody, but it happens to lots of people.

Angela: It happened to my ex-husband. After we got married, he absolutely thought he owned me and he was constantly trying to make me adhere to his idea of how things should be. And I put up with that for nineteen years until our daughter graduated from high school, and then it was divorce him or die. And I’m not exaggerating.

Mark: So… No Owning Each Other would be another rule of friendship.

Bernice: No owning each other and no being cruel to each other and no hiding things from each other.

Mark: And no being afraid of each other.

Marlene: Why would you be friends with someone you feared? You could never be yourself.

Mark: Why would you marry someone you feared, as so many people do?

Bernice: Because the rules governing marriage and the rules governing friendships aren’t the same rules. They should be, but they aren’t.

Mark: Even now? In the so-called advanced societies?

Marlene: Did your marriages follow the rules of friendship?

Mark: No. My marriages followed the rules of addict and enabler, I the enabler.

Angela: Mine, too.

Marlene: Have you ever been in a relationship with someone who was also your friend?

Mark: No, but I’m only sixty-four. Surely there’s still time.

Bernice: Theoretically, but maybe not. Maybe just the fact that you’re still actively pursuing a relationship means you’re not looking for a friend. You’re looking for a mate.

Mark: I can’t look for both in the same person?

Bernice: You can. You are. I’m just saying you might not find them because you’re looking for both.

Mark: Are you suggesting I stop looking?

Bernice: No. I’m suggesting I stop looking. That’s why I said I wanted to be your friend with the rules of friendship. That’s the gift you gave me, Mark. You let me play out my usual neurotic bullshit in relation to a man who also happens to be a fine human being, with both of us constrained by the pandemic, so I could finally understand that until I can be totally comfortable with you as my friend, there’s no point in trying to have a relationship with you. I’ll just revert to my old patterns, and the pretense of a healthy relationship will vanish.

Mark: Oh but not this time, Bernice. This time will be different. I’m not like those other guys. I’m something special. I’m your knight in shining armor. I’ll be your best friend and your dream lover and your muse, and while I’m at it I’ll give you the secret to eternal life and the five sure ways to make a million dollars with no up-front investment.

The women laugh.

Angela: You’re a good cook, too.

Marlene: Friends don’t want anything from their friends except to be appreciated for who they are. If a person wants more than this from you… beware.

Angela: Friends help each other. They don’t hinder.

Mark: Do they judge each other?

Marlene: Of course. We’re human. But then we stop judging because this is our friend.

Bernice: Unless we think they’re going terribly wrong or doing something self-destructive. Then we’ll say something. We’ll intervene as lovingly as we can.

Mark: What about sex?

Bernice: What about sex?

Mark: Well… it seems to me if we eliminate sex or sexual desire from the equation, a relationship would be indistinguishable from friendship. I, for instance, could join your bubble and be one of four people, not one man with three women. We could be four friends. But if you and I became lovers, we would be a relationship and two women. Yes?

Marlene: Yes, that’s true.

Mark: Even if I was a friend of your troika for years and years, the minute I became lovers with one of you, or for that matter the minute two of you became lovers, then the equation would change, because in this society relationships outweigh friendships.

Bernice: Maybe so.

Marlene: Not maybe. Yes, they do.

Angela: They shouldn’t, but they do.

Mark: So then applying the rules of friendship to a relationship will make the relationship better, but it will alter all pre-existing friendships. And that, it seems to me, is tragic.

Marlene: Not necessarily. If you and one of my friends are happy in a relationship, my friendship may be altered but not degraded, and I would gain you as a friend.

Angela: Friends want their friends to be happy.

Bernice: Amen.

Marlene: The truth is, close friends, friends like the three of us, are in a relationship, only without sex. We didn’t ask anyone else to be in our bubble, though we all have other friends. So the difference is not as distinct as you imply.

Mark: I’m not implying anything. I’m trying to understand how I might be in a relationship with someone in an intimate trio such as yours while abiding by the rules of friendship. How would that work?

Bernice: We can’t know until we become friends.

Mark: You and I? Or all four of us?

Bernice: You and I in the context of all four of us.

Mark: So now I’m dating the three of you?

Angela: Friends don’t so much date as do things together.

Marlene: Friends spend time together, but we don’t call it dating.

Mark: So are you inviting me to become a friend of your bubble?

Bernice: I am inviting you to be my friend. I won’t speak for Marlene or Angela.

Angela: Based on this breakfast alone, I’d love to be your friend.

Marlene: I like you very much, Mark, and I would be happy to be your friend, though at the moment you are more Bernice’s friend than my friend, but I’m enjoying getting to know you.

Mark: (looks at Bernice) So are you and I done dating?

Bernice: I guess so. But not done being friends. If you want to keep being friends.

Mark: I do. Though this isn’t how I imagined things evolving between us, but I much prefer it to never seeing you again. (looks at Angela) And I really like you, Angela. (looks at Marlene) And I really like you, Marlene. So…(raises coffee cup) here’s to our nascent friendships. May they mature into something wonderful.

They all raise their cups and drink.

Marlene: I love that you used the word nascent.

Angela: So do I.

Bernice: He’s such a poet.

Mark: (to Bernice) It may take me a while to stop focusing on you as the woman I desire.

Marlene: Why stop? She’s a lovely woman.

Mark: Well so are you? Shall I focus my desire on you, too?

Marlene: I don’t know. I might like it. But I might not. I suppose it would depend on the quality of your focus.

Angela: She would like it.

Bernice: How could you not focus your desire on her? She’s gorgeous.

Marlene: (to Bernice) You’re sweet to say so, darling.

Mark: I’m confused.

Bernice: (laughs) Welcome to my world.

Marlene: Shall we have lunch on Saturday at my house? It’s supposed to be sunny and warm. Are you free, Mark?

Mark: Free as a bird. What can I bring?

Bernice: He makes a fabulous guacamole.

Angela: Oh bring that. I love guacamole.

Marlene: Yes, and I will make chicken enchiladas.

Bernice: And I’ll bring a salad and chips for the guacamole.

Angela: And I’ll bring the tomato rice and refried beans.

Mark: (gazes at Bernice) You want to come here first and we’ll walk over together?

Bernice: I’d love to.

Marlene: Shall we say noon?

Mark: Noon is perfect.

Angela: You know I have to tell you something, Mark. I don’t know if you realize what an unusual man you are, but you are. I keep thinking you’re gonna just throw up your hands and say, ‘Enough already. I can’t handle this. It didn’t work. I’ll go back to the web site and hunt for somebody else.’ But you don’t. You’re open to what’s happening, which is, of course, a testament to how much you like Bernice, but it’s also a testament to your resiliency and your curiosity and your openness and your goodness. You’re really a good person, and that’s why I said I would love to be your friend.

Mark: (puts a hand on his heart) Thank you Angela. Imagine me hugging you.

Angela: (laughs) I do. And it’s nice. You’re a good hugger. I knew you would be.

fin

Just Love

Tags Angela and Marlene, Bernice and Mark, friends want their friends to be happy, Just Love, No Owning Each Other, Relationship Interview #9, relationship rules, rules of addict and enabler, rules of friendship, sequel to Interview Relationship #8, this time will be different, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Relationship Interview #8

Post author By toddric
Post date February 6, 2021
No Comments on Relationship Interview #8

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #7.

Mark and Bernice have gotten together in-person four times since they met through Find The One, a relationship-starting web site. Bernice is fifty-seven and the manager of a theatre company. Mark is sixty-four and an editor of how-to books and murder mysteries.

Their fourth meeting took place in the backyard of the home of Bernice’s close friend Marlene, with Marlene and Angela, another of Bernice’s closest friends, joining them. Everyone had a good time, the gathering was cut short by rain, and because of the pandemic Mark couldn’t enter Marlene’s house and had to walk home in the downpour.

On his homeward trek, his umbrella inadequate in the deluge, Mark is perplexed by how angry he feels. He doesn’t mind the rain, he very much enjoyed meeting Bernice’s friends, and he loved seeing Bernice again. Yet he is angry and grows angrier by the minute when it dawns on him that for the last month he has shared the most intimate details of his life with Bernice, yet only today found out she is in a bubble with Marlene and Angela; and he only knows that because Marlene told him.

He recalls several times when he commiserated with Bernice about the emotional stress of living alone during the pandemic, and he is baffled and hurt that she never mentioned her arrangement with Marlene and Angela, an omission that makes him doubt everything Bernice ever said to him.

Bernice is initially ecstatic about how things went with Mark in the company of Marlene and Angela, but when Marlene says Mark seemed startled when she mentioned their bubble, Bernice’s ecstasy vanishes.

Bernice: (in shock) Now he’ll think I lied to him and he won’t ever want to see me again.

Angela: Of course he will. He’s crazy about you.

Marlene: I don’t know. He might not want to see you again. You told us he was more hurt by dishonesty than infidelity.

Bernice: I’m an idiot. A fucking idiot.

Marlene: Why didn’t you tell him about our bubble?

Bernice: I don’t know. I must have been afraid to tell him.

Angela: Why would you be afraid?

Bernice: I must have thought he would disapprove.

Marlene: He doesn’t seem to be the kind of person who would disapprove of friends weathering a storm together.

Bernice: No he wouldn’t disapprove, but…

Angela: Your previous partners might?

Bernice: Yes, but not Mark.

Marlene: (embracing her) I’m so sorry, dear. He might forgive you if you explain to him.

Angela: Call him. Tell him what you just realized.

Marlene: Yes, and do so without apology. Just say this is what happened and ask him to start over with you.

Mark is drenched and cold and sad when he gets home. He takes a hot bath and decides not to have anything more to do with Bernice.

Luxuriating in his warm house, dressed in an old T-shirt and sweatpants, he makes a cup of coffee and settles down in his study to put in a few hours editing a murder mystery rife with confusing pronouns and the crazy-making overuse of the word it. Mark has completely rewritten all four of this particular author’s books, and they are all bestsellers and have made the author wealthy, though not a better writer.

When the inevitable headache takes hold after twenty minutes of clarifying who he and she and they and them are, Mark returns to the kitchen and makes another cup of coffee. While he waits for the coffee to brew, he picks up the latest New Yorker and thereby uncovers his answering machine with two messages awaiting him.

The first message is from his best friend Alex.

Alex: (British) Mark. Tis I. Denise and I are making our shopping list for tomorrow’s foray into the viral soup. We loved the bottle of white wine you gave us, and sadly I recycled the bottle without writing the name down. If you remember the make and serial number, please enlighten us. And in any case, call me.

The next message is from Bernice.

Bernice: Hi Mark. I hope you didn’t get too wet walking home. I’m calling because I regret not telling you I’m in a bubble with Marlene and Angela. I was afraid to share that with you and I don’t know why except I must have been afraid you would disapprove, though I know you wouldn’t. I’m just flailing around here trying not to drown. I imagine you’ve had enough of me, but if by some chance you want to keep trying I would like to start over with you. If you’d rather not, I understand. And just so you know, Angela thinks you’re a peach and Marlene thinks you’re delightful, and I think so, too.

Mark listens to Bernice’s message two more times and calls Alex.

Alex: Ah Mark. Tell me you’ve remembered the vintage details of that lovely white you brought us. Denise loved it so much she had a third glass with supper, a previously unheard of event, and she became nostalgic and laughed and cried and rejoiced at being alive. Hence we are desperate to buy a case.

Mark: Crane Lake. Sauvignon Blanc. 2019.

Alex: Brilliant. What news of the fair Bernice and today’s soiree?

Mark: Do you have a minute?

Alex: I have dozens of minutes.

Mark: Well I got to Marlene’s house…

Alex: The French gal?

Mark: Yes, the French gal.

Alex: Continue.

Mark: So I got there before Bernice and Angela arrived, and Marlene informed me that she and Bernice and Angela are in a bubble together, something Bernice never mentioned to me. And when I was walking home after our short-but-sweet gathering, I realized that Bernice has always presented herself to me as someone not in a bubble with other people and therefore suffering in all the ways I suffer living alone during this pandemic. And it made me furious to realize that everything she’s ever said to me was couched in a lie, and possibly lots of lies, and I decided I didn’t want to have anything more to do with her.

Alex: Oh Mark, I’m so sorry. Though I doubt everything she said was a lie. It’s hard sometimes to let down our guard, especially for women in this dangerous world. Not that you aren’t right to end things with her, but to suggest this is consistent with her fear of revealing herself to you. A bubble is, after all, an intimate consortium.

Mark: Would you mind listening to the message she left on my answering machine just now?

Alex: No, wouldn’t mind at all. The voyeur in me thrills at the prospect of hearing her voice.

Mark plays Bernice’s message for Alex.

Alex: Could you run that again, please?

Mark plays the message again.

Alex: My God what a voice. She could soothe lions and resolve international disputes and melt the hardest of hearts. I hear no deceit in her voice, not a trace. Only honest love.

Mark: You hear love in her voice?

Alex: I do. Not old love, but new love full of promise. I have an image of a bridge being built across a chasm, the two sides meeting for the first time in the middle, the bridge nowhere near complete, but at least now there is a way across if one goes carefully.

Mark: I’ll listen again with that in mind. Thank you, Alex.

Alex: You’re welcome, dear friend. Keep me posted.

Mark: Will do.

After supper, Mark calls Bernice.

Bernice: Oh Mark, I’m so glad you called. May I come over?

Mark: Now?

Bernice: Yes. I’ll stand on your front porch and you can stay inside and be warm and dry. I really want to see you.

Mark: Okay, but…

Bernice: I’ll be there in ten minutes.

Mark goes to change his clothes, but stops halfway to his bedroom.

Mark: Fuck it. She can see me in a T-shirt and sweatpants. The real me.

Mark makes cocoa while he waits for Bernice to arrive. When his doorbell sounds he puts on his mask and carries two mugs of piping hot cocoa to the front door. Bernice is wearing her long winter coat, a burgundy beret pulled down over her ears, and a black mask.

Bernice: (from ten feet away) Hi.

Mark: Hi. Cocoa?

Bernice: Thank you.

She takes the cocoa from him and returns to a safe distance away.

Mark: You can set the mug on the railing there if you want to let it cool down.

Bernice: (sets the cocoa on the railing) So… I really like you, Mark. Very much. Hugely. And I don’t want to be afraid of you. And I’m not really afraid of you, but sometimes when we’re together I’m afraid to say what I want to say and so I either don’t say it or I say something else that isn’t a lie, but isn’t truly what I want to say, and you honestly respond to these not-lies that aren’t really what I want to say and I never know how to get things back to saying what I want to say without first telling you I’ve been lying, which I haven’t been, except in a way I have. I don’t always do this with you, only sometimes. And I’m never this way around Marlene and Angela, which is why I wanted them to be with us today.

Mark: So what you’re saying is you’re a fucked up person. Well I’m a fucked up person, too. And we’re both trying to get unfucked up while trying to start a relationship, which we don’t seem to be very good at. So now we have to decide if we want to keep trying or not.

Bernice: Right.

Mark: We obviously like each other, but that may not be enough to overcome all the emotional shit we keep running into. In other words, it’s a gamble. A big gamble. Do you want to keep gambling with me? And do I want to keep gambling with you?

Bernice: I want to be friends with you. With the rules of friendship. I don’t ever want to lie to you again, though I’ll probably tell more not-lies that aren’t really what I want to say because that’s my neurotic tendency, but I’ll try not to and I invite you to sound the alarm whenever you think I might be doing that.

Mark: The alarm? Should I make a beeping noise?

Bernice: That would be fine, though it might be a little weird in front of other people.

Mark: I could sing my favorite lines from ‘Someone To Watch Over Me.’

Bernice: How do they go?

Mark: (sings) There’s a somebody I’m longin’ to see, I hope that she, turns out to be, someone who’ll watch over me.

Bernice: Wow. You have a beautiful voice. And you’re a tenor, not a baritone.

Mark: I’m told you have a beautiful voice, too. Want to sing something for me?

Bernice: (sings the opening lyrics to ‘I Thank You’) You didn’t have to love me like you did, but you did, but you did. And I thank you.

Mark: You know if we weren’t in a pandemic I would definitely try to kiss you now.

Bernice: And I would definitely let you kiss me. And then we’d go to bed and fuck our brains out.

Mark: God I hope this friendship thing works out.

Bernice: Me, too. Because it’s clearly way too early to fuck our brains out.

Mark: True, but not too early to invite our brains to shut the fuck up so our hearts can talk to each other.

Bernice: I think you’re wonderful. And that’s what I really wanted to say. So maybe we just needed to add a little profanity to the conversation.

Mark: Yeah and we need to stop worrying about what the other person thinks of us. You know what I mean? Fuck the other person.

Bernice: Exactly. (laughs) Fuck the other person.

Mark: (laughing) So when’s our next date?

Bernice: Tomorrow? Supposed to be sunny.

Mark: Well we know how that goes. But assuming it is sunny… breakfast on my terrazzo at ten?

Bernice: I’ll be here.

Mark: Great.

Bernice: What can I bring?

Mark: Fruit. Some kind of fruit to go with pancakes.

Bernice: Fruit it is. I’m so glad you didn’t say nothing.

Mark: You can bring Marlene and Angela if you want. Just let me know how many are coming so I’ll know how much batter to make.

Bernice: Really? I can invite Marlene and Angela?

Mark: Why not? You’re in a bubble with them. You can all sit at the same table, rubbing shoulders and snarfling on each other, and I’ll sit ten feet away reveling in my good fortune to have three delightful women visiting me.

Bernice: Probably won’t be three. Angela has a full-time job and works during the week.

Mark: What does she do, by the way?

Bernice: She’s an accountant and this is the height of tax season.

Mark: Invite her anyway. Even accountants need to eat.

Bernice: I’ll call you.

Mark: Good. Drive safely.

Bernice: I will. And…

Mark: Yes?

Bernice: You look good in a T-shirt. You have beautiful arms. And that’s really what I wanted to say. You have beautiful arms.

fin

Beautiful

Tags a bubble is an intimate consortium, Alex and Denise, Beautiful, Bernice and Mark, even accountants need to eat, flailing around trying not to drown, I Thank You, Marlene and Angela, more hurt by dishonesty than infidelity, Relationship Interview #8, sequel to Interview Relationship #7, Someone To Watch Over Me, Todd Walton, two sides meeting for the first time, Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Relationship Interview #7

Post author By toddric
Post date February 3, 2021
No Comments on Relationship Interview #7

This is the sequel to Relationship Interview #6.

Mark and Bernice have had three dates since they met through Find The One, a web site for people seeking life partners. Bernice is fifty-seven, Mark sixty-four. Bernice is the manager of a theatre company, Mark an editor for a book publisher.

The day after their third date, Mark calls Bernice to arrange their next meeting and is surprised and disappointed when Bernice expresses ambivalence about seeing him again and ends their conversation by saying she will call him when she has a better understanding of what’s going on with her.

Mark is by turns angry and sad for the next three days, and he assumes he will never hear from Bernice again. On the fourth day he wakes feeling glad he allowed himself to fall in love with Bernice because in doing so he rekindled his desire to connect with other people. So he calls a few friends and makes dates for walks and get-togethers, and his friends are happy he reached out to them.

On the evening of the eighth day after he last heard from Bernice, Mark is sitting on his living room sofa watching a basketball game on television when the phone rings.

Mark: (picks up the phone) Hello?

Bernice: Mark? It’s Bernice. Is this a good time to talk?

Mark: (his eyes filling with tears) Can you hold on a minute?

Bernice: Yes, of course.

Mark turns off the television and goes out his front door to stand in the cold air and have a good cry. He comes back inside, resumes his place on the sofa, and picks up the phone.

Mark: You still there?

Bernice: I’m here. You okay?

Mark: I’m fine. How are you?

Bernice: I’m doing better now. Had a rough week. I wanted to call you every day, but I was such a mess I couldn’t. I’m sorry.

Mark: No need to apologize. I’m sorry to hear you’ve been having such a hard time.

Bernice: Would you like to see me again?

Mark: Yes.

Bernice: Would you mind if we meet at my friend Marlene’s house, and Marlene and Angela join us?

Mark: (considers this) I don’t mind, but… may I ask why?

Bernice: Well… I’ve been talking to Marlene and Angela about you, and I realize I’m afraid to reveal more of myself to you.

Mark: Why do you think you’re afraid of me?

Bernice: Because prior to meeting you… at this point in getting to know a man, I would either end things or go to bed with him. And if I go to bed with him, I stop being who I really am and start pretending to be the person I think he wants me to be.

Mark: Why would you do that?

Bernice: Because I’m afraid you won’t find the real me desirable. That if you know who I really am, you won’t like me.

Mark: Oh Bernice, I’ve done the same thing my whole life. Only I didn’t do it with you. Didn’t stuff my feelings or pretend to be someone I’m not. And when I thought you were ending things I was sad for a few days, but then I was fine. And I was glad we had our three dates.

Bernice: I loved our three dates. So much.

Mark: Good. And when we meet at Marlene’s you’ll have her and Angela to support you and protect you, and you can be who you really are because you’ll be with your best friends who love you.

At noon on a cold cloudy day in late February, Mark dresses warmly, dons his gray mask, and walks eleven blocks to Marlene’s beautiful two-story house on a quiet street of houses built in the early 1900s. Per Bernice’s directions, Mark goes to the backyard gate where he is greeted by Marlene, a striking woman of sixty wearing a long black skirt and a peach blouse, her blonde hair in a ponytail, her mask the blue of her eyes.

Marlene: (with a French accent) Bon jour Mark. How prompt you are. Please follow me.

Mark follows Marlene down a walkway bordered by dense stands of bamboo.

Marlene: Bernice and Angela are late as usual. I assume you know this about Bernice.

Mark: Yes. We’ve had three dates and she’s been a little late to each of them.

They emerge into a backyard featuring a large lily pond. On the patio next to the pond are four chairs arrayed around a glass table, the chairs ten feet apart from each other.

Marlene: Please sit where you like.

Mark: (sits in a chair with a view of the pond) Love your pond. Are there fish?

Marlene: Oh yes. Goldfish, koi, mosquito fish, and turtles and always tadpoles and frogs. May I get you something to drink? A cup of tea? It’s so cold today. It was supposed to be warmer and now it looks like it’s going to rain.

Mark: Tea would be wonderful.

Marlene: Black or herbal?

Mark: Mint?

Marlene: I have mint in a pot on my kitchen windowsill. I will cut fresh leaves for you.

Mark: Thank you.

Marlene disappears into her house. Mark gets up to look for fish and turtles and frogs in the pond. Marlene returns and sets Mark’s mug of tea on the table.

Marlene: Here you are.

Mark: (picks up the mug and returns to his chair) Thank you.

Marlene: (sits in the chair with her back to the house) So… you are a book editor.

Mark: I am. And you are an actor and set designer.

Marlene: I suppose so, though I’m not acting or designing anything right now. Just surviving, you know. Hoping for this virus to go away soon, though I don’t think it will be soon.

Mark: Beautiful place to survive in.

Marlene: Yes, I’m very lucky. And we have our bubble, Bernice and Angela and I. Did she tell you?

Mark: No. That’s wonderful. I wish I had a bubble with someone.

Marlene: You’ve been alone the whole time?

Mark: Well I have two cats, but no humans in my bubble.

Marlene: I can’t imagine. I would have gone mad without Bernice and Angela to just relax with, you know. To not always wear masks and be afraid of each other.

Mark: If this ever happens again, I will definitely create a bubble with a few friends. We’ve already agreed to that.

Marlene: I hope this never happens again. But if it does, yes, you must make a bubble with your friends.

Angela and Bernice arrive.

Marlene: Here they are. Not so late. But I think it might rain soon and I’m so sorry I can’t invite you inside.

Mark: Don’t be sorry. We need the rain.

Bernice emerges into the backyard first, her short brown hair just washed, her mask green, a black winter coat over a burgundy blouse and blue jeans. Angela appears next. She is sixty-three with frizzy gray hair, red-frame glasses, and a black mask. Her winter coat is blue, her blouse gray, her slacks brown.

Bernice: (smiling radiantly) Hi Mark. I knew you’d get here before me. This is Angela.

Angela: (a New Jersey accent) Hello Mark. I’ve heard so much about you.

Bernice: (laughing) Yes you have.

Mark: Nice to meet you.

Marlene: (gets up) I was just starting to interrogate him. He’s having mint tea. What for you two?

Bernice: Wine for me, please.

Angela: Tea sounds good. Black, please. So cold today. And it was supposed to be sunny.

Marlene goes back inside. Angela and Bernice sit down and remove their masks, so Mark removes his.

Angela: (to Mark) With a nose and a mouth you’re a whole different person.

Mark: So are you.

Bernice: (to Mark) I’m always surprised when you take off your mask. I don’t know who I’m expecting, but I’m always surprised when I see your face.

Mark: Pleasantly, I hope.

Bernice: Yes. Pleasantly.

Mark: And I’m always amazed at how beautiful you are.

Marlene emerges from the house with a tray bearing a cup of tea and two wine glasses brimming with white wine. She sets the tray on the table, takes one of the glasses of wine, sits, and removes her mask.

Marlene: What did I miss?

Bernice: (getting her glass of wine) I was just saying I’m always surprised when Mark takes off his mask because his face is never what I’m expecting.

Angela: And Mark said he’s always amazed at how beautiful Bernice is.

Marlene: (to Mark) Your lips are the big surprise for me. You are no grim patriarch. Why I expected that, I don’t know.

Angela: (to Mark) You have beautiful lips. I thought the corners would turn down, but they turn up so you seem to be smiling.

Marlene: Bernice’s lips turn up at the corners, too. But not mine. When I was a girl, my mother warned me not to smile too much. She said smiling makes ugly wrinkles on the face. Can you imagine? Telling a child not to smile? And I believed her, so for all my life I tried not to smile, which is why people think I’m unhappy. But I’m not. I just don’t often smile.

Mark: Takes hundreds of conscious repetitions to create new brain maps to replace the old ones. I’m learning to play the guitar at this late date, and my fingers and brain balk at learning new tricks.

Angela: Do you take lessons online?

Mark: No, I go to my teacher every two weeks. We sit ten feet apart on his porch. He’s an old friend, so we talk as much as we play. But I’m learning. Slowly but surely.

Bernice: Angela plays the guitar.

Angela: Folk songs. Nothing fancy. I strum the basic chords.

Bernice: She sings beautifully, too. So does Marlene.

Marlene: And so do you, dear.

Angela: Not only that, but we sing on key. One day we’ll sing for you.

Mark: I can’t wait.

Marlene: Are you Jewish, Mark?

Mark: What gave me away? My frequent use of Yiddish?

Marlene: No. (laughs) I don’t know. It just came to me to ask.

Mark: My mother was Jewish, my father an agnostic Unitarian. Are you Jewish?

Marlene: No, I’m a lapsed Catholic. I still dream of nuns.

Angela: I’m Jewish. Of course everyone from New Jersey is Jewish, even the non-Jews.

Mark: (to Bernice) We never got around to our religious affiliations on our first three dates.

Bernice: You mentioned sending your son a card for Hanukkah, so I surmised you were at least half.

Mark: And you?

Bernice: My father was a zealous atheist, my mother a closeted Jew.

Mark: Do you think of yourself as Jewish?

Bernice: No, though I’ve tried to.

Mark: What do you mean?

Bernice: When I was in my forties I joined a shul and studied Hebrew, but I felt oppressed by the grim dogma.

Mark: Me, too.

Angela: Too bad you didn’t have a woman rabbi. Some radical mystic to rampage through the Talmud with you.

Marlene: No, a thousand years ago when they deemed all the wise women witches and annihilated us by the millions, what were we to do?

Bernice: Hide our true natures or die.

Angela: Play the parts written for us by men with no sense of humor. Think how different things would be if our oppressors had been funny.

Mark: I wonder what relationships were like before the great annihilation began.

Marlene: Women were more masculine, men more feminine. And when we danced around the fires at night we were wild and free.

Mark: Sounds good to me.

Angela: Did you have a sister, Mark?

Mark: A brother. But I grew up with two cousins who were like sisters to me, Elaine and Jean. Elaine was my age, Jean a year older. They were strong and athletic and light years smarter than I was, so I knew from the get go women were my superiors.

Marlene: Do you still think women are superior to men?

Mark: I do. In all ways except brute strength.

The sky darkens ominously.

Marlene: Oh no. The rain is coming.

Angela: (to Mark) Have you ever been in love with a man?

Mark: Sexually? No. Emotionally? Yes.

Rain begins to fall.

Marlene: Oh Mark, I’m so sorry you can’t come inside.

Mark: (gets up and opens his umbrella) Not to worry. I like walking in the rain. It was a pleasure being with all of you.

Bernice: (to Mark) I’ll call you.

Mark: I hope so.

When Mark is gone, Angela and Marlene and Bernice hurry inside.

Bernice: Well? Did you like him?

Angela: What’s not to like?

Marlene: I didn’t think I would, but I did. And he is definitely not a melancholic. And he made me laugh. I can’t remember the last time a man made me laugh.

Angela: He’s a peach.

Bernice: Can we have him over again soon?

Marlene: Of course. He’s delightful.

Angela: Hold the presses. Headline. Marlene Declares Man Delightful.

Marlene: Of course he was on his best behavior, so maybe he tricked me.

Bernice: He’s always that way. He loved both of you. Did you see his eyes sparkling?

Angela: Next sunny weekend let’s have a barbecue.

Bernice: You see why I want to kiss him.

Angela: Who wouldn’t?

Marlene: When he took off his mask, his tender lips were the big surprise.

fin

Rain

Tags being who you really are, his lips were the big surprise, Mark and Bernice, Marlene and Angela, Relationship Interview #7, sequel to Relationship Interview #6, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Relationship Interview #5

Post author By toddric
Post date January 27, 2021
No Comments on Relationship Interview #5

(this is the sequel to Relationship Interview #4)

Mark and Bernice met through Find The One, a web site designed to assist people in their search for life partners. Their first date went well, and now, two days later, they meet again for a walk on the beach.

Bernice is fifty-seven, five-foot-eight, trim, with short brown hair going gray. Mark is sixty-four, not quite six-feet-tall, burly, with gray hair turning white.

The February day in northern California is sunny and cool. Bernice and Mark wear masks as required by the virus protocols, Mark’s mask gray, Bernice’s red. As they walk along the shore they try to keep roughly ten feet apart, though again and again they inch closer to each other, partly to hear the other more clearly, partly because they are drawn to each other.

Bernice: (stops walking) You have a son? We talked for an hour at the café and you never mentioned him. How old is he? What his name?

Mark: His name is Dean. He’s thirty-five. I haven’t seen or heard from him in fifteen years. He lives in Salinas. I send him a card and money on his birthday and a card and money for Hanukkah. He cashes the checks, so I know he’s alive, but he doesn’t communicate with me.

Bernice: Do you know why?

Mark: I have an inkling.

Bernice: Which is?

Mark: His mother and I divorced when he was eight, and we had joint custody of him until he was eighteen, during which time neither my ex-wife nor I remarried. Then a few months after Dean turned eighteen, my ex-wife remarried and Dean refused to go to her wedding. He said he would never speak to her again, and thereafter lived with me full-time until he went off to college. When I remarried a year later, he said he would never speak to me again, though he allowed me to pay his college tuition and living expenses until he graduated with a degree in Computer Graphics. And my inkling is that so long as neither of his parents remarried, he felt we were still a family. But when we married others he felt betrayed.

Bernice: Sounds… infantile. Sorry.

Mark: No, no. It’s fine. Infantile is an appropriate word for Dean at nineteen. I have no idea what he’s like now at thirty-five, but the last time I saw him, he was still very childish in many ways, like a surly eight-year-old, which was one of the many reasons I divorced his mother. She did everything she could to keep him a baby, while I did what I could to help him grow up, though I am hardly objective about this.

(They walk on in silence.)

Bernice: I have a daughter.

Mark: (stops walking) You’re kidding.

Bernice: No. Her name is April. She’s thirty. And I do hear from her now and then when she calls to ask for money, but I haven’t seen her in seven years. And the reason I didn’t mention her at the café is that I didn’t want to ruin the wonderful time we were having.

(Bernice takes off her mask and gazes at Mark, so he removes his mask and gazes at her.)

Mark: I think that’s why I didn’t mention Dean.

Bernice: I like your face. You look very kind. Do you have a dog?

Mark: (laughs) No dog. Two cats. Ariel and Harpo. I love seeing your face. You’re by far the most beautiful woman I’ve ever gone on a walk with. Do you have a dog?

Bernice: No. Just one very large cat named Victoria, though if I ever live in a house instead of an apartment, I will get a dog. Victoria be damned.

(They put on their masks and continue walking.)

Mark: What does April do for a living?

Bernice: She says she’s an actress ever on the verge of a big break, but I think that’s highly unlikely. As far as I know she hasn’t been in a play or a film since she was a Drama major in college for a year. She’s very beautiful and very seductive, as was her father, so I imagine she finds men to take care of her. I don’t know if that’s true, but that’s what I imagine.

Mark: Where does she live?

Bernice: Los Angeles. Where else?

Mark: New York?

Bernice: Too cold for April. She likes warm weather and swimming pools. And the sad thing is she very well could be a successful actress if she’d ever tried. But she doesn’t know how to work at anything. She only knows how to seduce others into taking care of her.

Mark: Have you forgiven yourself regarding her?

Bernice: For the most part. Have you forgiven yourself regarding Dean?

Mark: Yes. When I finally understood he was the result of our disastrous parental equation resulting from our disastrous relational equation, and not from any conscious doing on my part, I was able to forgive myself.

Bernice: I think most of us are born of disastrous parental equations, and then we seek those same equations in our relationships, knowing no other equations until we get well. If we’re so lucky.

Mark: Strange, isn’t it? These children we loved so much turning into people we don’t know anymore, when we thought we would know them and love them for the rest of our lives.

Bernice: Yes. Very strange and very sad. Whenever I see women my age happily engaged with their grownup daughters, I cry. Can’t help it.

Mark: I’m the same.

Bernice: Did your parents still love you after you became your own person?

Mark: My mother did, though she didn’t really know me, didn’t want to know me after I became something she didn’t want me to be.

Bernice: What did she want you to be?

Mark: A doctor. And failing there, a lawyer. And worst case scenario, a college professor. But definitely not a writer working at any old job to support my writing habit. How about your parents? Did they love you after you became you?

Bernice: If they ever loved me it was before I can remember. As I told you, my father was an abusive alcoholic, my mother his desperate slave. My brother and I were merely extra burdens for her to bear as she sacrificed herself to the monster.

Mark: Yet you turned out so sweet. Was there a loving grandmother in the mix?

Bernice: No, but we had a wonderful nanny, Nana Rose, who loved me from the day I was born until I was ten, and she loved my brother Robert even more. She was from Tennessee and I loved her more than anything.

Mark: A nanny. Your parents must have had money.

Bernice: My father was a doctor.

Mark: And are you close to your brother?

Bernice: Was. He died at the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Darling man. I miss him still.

(They walk for a time without speaking.)

Mark: And here we are.

Bernice: Here we are.

Mark: Where the past need not impinge.

Bernice: Unless we let it.

Mark: How goes your present life? Dates with suitors aside.

Bernice: I love my job. Love the people I work with. Most of them. The theatre is shuttered until the virus is conquered. We’re guessing it will be another year at least before we can safely put on plays inside again. We’re looking into outdoor venues for the summer. But right now is all about staying afloat until the blessed day, begging patrons for money to pay the bills and the salaries of our skeleton crew. How about your present life?

Mark: Books are thriving in the pandemic, but I’ve had my fill of editing. Hope to retire in a few years and do more of my own writing again. Maybe move to a smaller town. Simplify. Maybe get a dog. A medium-sized mutt.

Bernice: What do you write?

Mark: Stories. Plays.

Bernice: I’d love to read something of yours.

Mark: Oh I’ll have to get up my courage first.

Bernice: Yes. Courage. I write, too. Poetry mostly, though I’ve read so many plays, the form is in me now, and my poems often morph into scenes with dialogue.

Mark: (stops walking) By the way… I think you’re marvelous. I could talk to you forever.

Bernice: The feeling is mutual.

Mark: Oh good. Shall we have another date after this one?

Bernice: Yes. And this time you call me.

Mark: Yes. This time I will call you.

fin

You Me

Tags Bernice and Mark, dogs and cats, parental equations, relationship equations, Relationship Interview #5, sequel to Relationship Interview #4, son and daughter, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Relationship Interview #4

Post author By toddric
Post date January 24, 2021
No Comments on Relationship Interview #4

Mark and Bernice meet through Find The One, a web site designed to assist people in their search for life partners. Satisfied with what they intuit about each other from their brief emails, Mark and Bernice arrange to meet at a café with outdoor seating, both of them masked.

Mark, sixty-four, is seated and nearly finished with his latte, two shots, before Bernice, fifty-seven, arrives.

Bernice: (sitting down across the table from Mark) Sorry I’m late. (laughs anxiously) I’m a notorious late-nik.

Mark: Not to worry. I’m a notorious early-nik so I’m used to waiting.

Bernice: Uh oh. You come early. I come late. (laughs again) This might not work.

Mark: Maybe not. But since we’re here shall we have a look at each other unmasked?

Bernice: Okay. Hold your breath.

(They take off their masks and gaze at each other for a long moment before putting their masks back on.)

Bernice: You’re very attractive.

Mark: You’re too kind. And you really are attractive.

Bernice: Aren’t we self-effacing? (laughs) So be honest, did you feel insulted by my being late? I really tried to be on time, but I just… I never budget enough time for anything.

Mark: I felt mildly peeved, but not insulted. I’m used to people being late. Everyone I’ve arranged to meet with so far has been late. And almost everyone I know arrives late. It seems to be how most people are.

Bernice: Have you met lots of women this way? Through the web site?

Mark: You’re the fourth. In five months. How about you?

Bernice: (looks up, trying to remember) Maybe… seventeen? Twenty? In three months?

Mark: Wow. Seventeen or twenty. Did any of them get past the first meeting?

(The waiter arrives. Bernice orders a latte, two shots, and Mark orders another.)

Bernice: A few got a second date, but none of them lasted more than two.

Mark: They must have been disappointed.

Bernice: Yeah, I think they were. And I don’t like disappointing people, so this has been hard for me. Were you… did any of the previous women not want to continue with you, or…

Mark: The one woman I really liked ended our meeting after thirty minutes and I never heard from her again. The other two wanted to keep seeing me, but I chose to end things after two dates with each of them. They were lovely people but we didn’t mesh intellectually or sense-of-humorly.

Bernice: Why do you think the one you liked didn’t want to see you again?

Mark: I don’t know. We were having a great time. Or I was. We had lots in common, she got my jokes, we laughed, we both spoke in complete sentences. And then out of the blue, or so it seemed to me, she said, “I have to go,” and got up and left. I think maybe she was looking for someone a bit more fantastic.

Bernice: What do you mean? Royalty? Movie star? Billionaire?

Mark: I think maybe younger. Or seeming younger. Like you. I wouldn’t have guessed you were fifty-seven. I would have guessed forty-two.

Bernice: You’re sweet.

Mark: But you know what I mean. You’re a very young seeming fifty-seven. I’m sixty-four and nobody’s gonna guess I’m fifty-anything.

Bernice: I would have guessed fifty-seven.

Mark: Well now you’re the sweet one.

(The waitress brings the lattes.)

Bernice: So you’ve been married twice. We won’t count the first one. What happened with wife number two?

Mark: Wife number two was ten years younger than I and liked sleeping with other men. And when I finally became aware of that, five years into our marriage, I divorced her as fast as I could.

Bernice: She’d been cheating on you the whole time?

Mark: After the first year. Or so she said. She was a fabulous liar, so who knows? She might have started in the minute we got back from our honeymoon. I trusted her. I believed she believed our wedding vows. Silly me.

Bernice: So how long has it been since you were in a relationship?

Mark: Seven years. How long has it been for you?

Bernice: Seven years also.

Mark: (wistful) Long time.

Bernice: I don’t really mind being alone. I think I’d like to be in a relationship, but not if it isn’t as good as being alone, and so far that’s never happened for me.

Mark: I know what you mean. I long to be in a good relationship, but not just a relationship.

Bernice: Though maybe that’s not fair, comparing a relationship to living alone. They’re so different.

Mark: I don’t think this is about being fair. It’s about really liking someone and wanting to share your life with them. We were designed to share. Evolved to share. Do you know about mirror neurons?

Bernice: Do I know about mirror neurons? I am one giant mirror neuron. That’s my problem. I become whoever I’m with. If I’m with a jerk, I become a surrogate jerk.

Mark: Ah.

Bernice: What does that mean? Ah?

Mark: I mean you’re describing someone who doesn’t have a solid sense of self.

Bernice: Oh I have a solid sense of self. And I like myself, too. What I have is a lifelong pattern, as the child of an alcoholic father and his enabler, my mother, of sacrificing my needs and desires to support the abuser. Which is why I do so much better alone. Because then I take care of myself instead of spending all my energy taking care of the narcissist.

Mark: (bows his head) Amen.

Bernice: I’m much better than I used to be about getting involved with self-serving narcissists, but I have to be very careful or the pattern begins to assert itself and blinds me to what the other person really is.

Mark: (nodding) I’m an enabler, too. And I’ve never been in a relationship with another enabler. I’ve met a few I was smitten with, but we were like those magnets that get close and then repel each other. I mean… how would that even work? How does an enabler enable an enabler?

Bernice: I suppose we could enable each other.

Mark: What a concept. The mind boggles.

Bernice: Yet you seem so confident. So easy in your body. Surely someone along the way enabled you.

Mark: (nods) Yeah, I was a happy kid with some good friends who had parents who were wonderful to me, and my father didn’t become terribly abusive until I was ten and I became some sort of threat to him. I had a few excellent teachers who encouraged me. And I’ve been alone and not in a relationship for most of my life, and I’ve had some wonderful friendships. It’s only in relationships when I’m unconsciously attracted to abusers and my enabling takes over. Took over. I’m done with that.

Bernice: How do you know?

Mark: I know because I woke up. After fifty-six years of living under that terrible spell, I woke up. And now that I’m awake, when the tendrils of the trance touch me, they no longer entice, but rather make me physically ill.

Bernice: Good for you. I’m not entirely awake yet, but I’m getting there. And I’m actually amazed and happy we’re talking about this on our first date. Or on any date. None of the others… I don’t think they could talk about this. Even on the fortieth date.

Mark: This being?

Bernice: What really runs us. The problematic parts of who we are. Or in your case… were. On my other dates at this point we’d be naming our favorite movies and favorite ethnic cuisines.

Mark: Young Frankenstein. Mexican Thai Chinese Indian.

Bernice: Mostly Martha. Mexican Thai Chinese Indian.

Mark: I love Mostly Martha.

Bernice: I love Young Frankenstein.

Mark: Nor have we delved into our occupations. You manage a theatre company.

Bernice: And you are an editor for a publishing company. But more importantly your favorite movie is Young Frankenstein, the ultimate enabler’s fantasy about a decent likable man who, through persistent kindness and a series of miracles, transforms the abusive monster into a sweet loving person.

Mark: (his jaw drops) Oh my God. How did I never get that?

Bernice: Too obvious maybe. Or maybe you were distracted by the beautiful lab assistant enabling the enabler.

Mark: (nods in agreement) And Mostly Martha is about a woman terrified of intimacy saved by an Italian chef versed in the arts of sensuality.

Bernice: Exactly. Speaking of the problematic parts of who we are.

Mark: Are you afraid of intimacy?

Bernice: Terrified, though I crave it.

Mark: And sensuality?

Bernice: I get a two-hour massage every week from an earth goddess. My way of practicing safe sex.

Mark: (frowns) Sex? What is this thing you call sex?

Bernice: Naked with another in a bed.

Mark: Tell me more. A memory stirs in the dark recesses of my mind.

Bernice: (laughs) So now you want to talk dirty on the first date, too?

Mark: No. I’m too shy, but… dare I hope to see you again?

Bernice: (takes a deep breath) Yes, I’d love to see you again. What do we do for a second date?

Mark: How about a walk on the beach?

Bernice: I can’t tomorrow, but the next day is good for me.

Mark: Okay, so…how about we leave it that you call me? That way if you have second thoughts, etcetera.

Bernice: Okay. I’ll call you.

Mark: And if you don’t call me, that’s fine.

Bernice: (perplexed) Why would it be fine? I said I’d call you. Don’t you want me to?

Mark: I do want you to. Very much. But…

Bernice: But what?

Mark: I want you to feel free to change your mind.

Bernice: Do you want me to change my mind?

Mark: No, but…

Bernice: But what?

Mark: (quietly) Part of me expects you will.

Bernice: Ah.

Mark: What does your Ah mean?

Bernice: My Ah means you’re a person who drills the hole in the bottom of his own boat and then wonders why his boat sank.

Mark: (considers this) I think you misjudge me. And if giving you my blessing not to call me sinks the boat of our newborn connection, so be it. I said what I said to let you know you don’t have to worry about my well being should doubt overtake you. We have confessed to each other what we were in our previous relationships, and we have told each other what we don’t ever want to do again, which is be dependent on someone else needing us.

Bernice: (nodding) I get it. I do. And… are you hungry? I am. They have excellent guacamole and chips here. And the enchiladas are superb.

Mark: (smiles) Funny you should mention being hungry, for I am very.

fin

If You Will

Tags enablers and narcissists, intimacy and sensuality, Mark and Bernice, Mostly Martha, problematic parts of who we are, Relationship Interview #4, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books, Young Frankenstein

Uncategorized

The Cook and the Mouse and the Cat

Post author By toddric
Post date January 20, 2021
No Comments on The Cook and the Mouse and the Cat

Francois

This is a story about a woman named Genevieve. She is a cook for two writers who live in a beautiful house in Lausanne, not far from Lake Geneva. Genevieve is fifty-seven and has blonde hair turning silver. She lives with her husband Henri, a gardener, in a cottage next door to the beautiful house where the writers live.

Genevieve’s parents were bakers who had a bakery in Lausanne called Bon Pain. Genevieve began working in the bakery when she was eight. She loved to bake and she became adept at making delicious breads and pies and cookies. Indeed, Genevieve might have inherited the family business except when she was sixteen she fell in love and ran off with a young man to Zurich where she found work in a restaurant and eventually became an excellent chef, though the young man left her for another.

She reconciled with her parents when she was in her thirties and began spending her holidays in Lausanne. On one of those holidays she met Henri, a gardener, and they fell in love and she moved back to Lausanne and married Henri. For the first few years of their marriage, they lived in a small house on a large estate where Henri was one of three gardeners, and Genevieve was a chef in a fine restaurant.

When Genevieve was forty-four and Henri was forty-one, she was hired by the University of Lausanne to be the housekeeper and cook in the house where writers would come to live for years at a time, and Henri was hired as the gardener and caretaker of the property. They have lived in the cottage next to the writers’ house now for thirteen years and hope to live there for many more years.

The kitchen in the writers’ house is large and airy, modern but not too modern, and Genevieve would change nothing except have a bigger oven and an eight-burner stove instead of a six-burner. But these are small things and she is content to wait until either the stove or the oven needs replacing, which won’t be for some years yet.

Our story begins one winter morning when Genevieve arrives in the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast for the writers and finds evidence that a mouse or mice invaded the kitchen during the night.

“Mon dieu,” says Genevieve, who speaks French, a little German, and very little English. “Twelve years without a sign of a mouse, and now this.”

She has a cup of coffee to sharpen her senses and makes a careful search of the kitchen cupboards and under the sink and behind the refrigerator. And at the bottom of the wall adjacent to the oven she finds a small hole in front of which is a tiny telltale mouse turd.

“Monsieur or Madame mouse?” says Genevieve, speaking to the hole in the wall. “May I have a word with you? I promise not to hurt you if you will come out and speak to me.”

The whiskered snout of a small brown mouse emerges from the hole. “It’s Madame. Madame Fifi.”

“Bonjour Madame Fifi,” says Genevieve, who loves all animals, even mice. “I see you have found a nice warm place to live. Are you planning to stay long?”

“As long as I can,” says the mouse, sticking her head out a little further to have a look at Genevieve.

“Are you alone in there?” asks Genevieve, smiling at the cute little rodent.

“I am presently alone,” says the mouse, “though I am pregnant, so soon there will be more of us.”

“Ah,” says Genevieve, pursing her lips. “This is unfortunate and I must ask you to leave before you give birth.”

“Ask all you want,” says the mouse, somewhat haughtily, “but I’m staying. It’s dreadfully cold outside, the rats in the woodshed are merciless, and food is scarce, though not in your marvelous kitchen.”

“If you were the only mouse in my kitchen and you did not show yourself during the day, I would have no problem with you living here. But I cannot have mice. A mouse, yes. Mice, no.”

“Alas,” says the mouse, “pregnancy is never my choice. I am powerless to elude the males of my kind, even my own progeny. So babies will be born.”

“Could you bear them elsewhere and return here alone?” asks Genevieve, who has grown fond of the mouse.

“Nay. I’m a good mother,” says the mouse with a note of pride in her voice. “This is my nature.”

“Then I must get a cat,” says Genevieve, regretfully.

“If you must, you must,” says the mouse, stoically. “I can only be a mouse.”

So Genevieve tells Henri and the writers about the mouse, and everyone agrees a cat would be a welcome addition to the kitchen, mice or no mice.

Henri makes inquiries and a one-year-old orange and white cat named Francois is gotten from a fishmonger with too many cats. Francois, a most affectionate feline, is overjoyed to move from a cold wet shed into a warm house where people pet him and tell him he is beautiful and feed him well, though not too well lest he have no appetite for mice.

One morning, a year after Francois joined the household, Genevieve is alone with Francois in the kitchen.

“Now tell me Francois,” says Genevieve, scratching Francois behind his ears, “have you killed all the mice?”

“All but one,” says Francois, loving Genevieve’s touch. “Her name is Madame Fifi and she told me you declared that if she is the only mouse in the house I am not to eat her, and so I have not, though I have caught her twice and would have eaten her had she not been the last.”

“But is it not your nature to kill and eat her?” says Genevieve, astounded by Francois’s story. “How could you resist?”

“It is my nature to kill and eat mice, yes,” says Francois, purring as Genevieve pets him. “But it is also my nature to be prudent. And since you do not feed me quite enough to leave me full at night, I very much appreciate the mouthfuls of meat Madame Fifi provides me when her babies come of age and venture forth from the hole in search of food.”

“You are a most ingenious cat, Francois,” says Genevieve, gazing fondly at her pet, “and since I rarely find a mouse turd in my kitchen, I will leave the mouse situation to you.”

Some months later, on another morning when Francois and Genevieve are alone in the kitchen, Francois says, “Genevieve, I have sad news.”

“Tell me,” says Genevieve, bending down to stroke Francois’s glossy fur.

“Madame Fifi is dead. I came upon her corpse last night and put her behind the oven.”

“Does this mean there are no more mice in the house now?” asks Genevieve, gazing sadly at the little hole in the wall.

“No more just yet,” says Francois, “though Madame Fifi’s lair waits only for another mouse to discover that commodious hideout.”

“Shall I have Henri fill up the hole?” asks Genevieve, gazing at Francois. “And feed you more at night?”

“Yes, please,” says Francois, rubbing against Genevieve’s legs. “There are plenty of mice to catch in the garden by day.”

“And do you think Madame Fifi will be the last mouse to live in my kitchen?” asks Genevieve, putting on a pair of old gardening gloves to pick up the stiff little body and throw the corpse outside for the crows to find.

“For a time she will be the last,” says Francois, purring loudly as Genevieve pours milk into his bowl. “But as I’m sure you know, there are no end of mice in the world.”

fin

Simple Song (Shy)

Tags Francois the cat, Genevieve the cook, Henri the gardener, Madame Fifi the mouse, no end of mice in the world, short story, The Cook and the Mouse and the Cat, the writers house in Lausanne, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Rosalind Finds the Plot

On a warm day in August, Rosalind Peoples is taking a bath in a huge white claw-foot bathtub with enormous brass fixtures, the bathroom filled with summer sunlight. Rosalind and her mother Dez Peoples, a well-known American poet, are the guests of Oliver Rochambeau, a French movie star, at his spectacular estate in Burgundy, a 19^th Century villa surrounded by vineyards and olive groves.

Dez is sixty-eight, Rosalind thirty, and they are ostensibly visiting Oliver, who is sixty-four, to work on a screenplay based on Dez’s collection of poems In Lausanne. However, the real purpose of their visit is for Oliver and Dez to carry on with their love affair—Oliver married, Dez not.

Rosalind wishes Oliver would divorce his wife and marry Dez, though Dez says she doesn’t want to marry Oliver. For his part, Oliver loves his wife, the delightful British actress Aurelia Nichols, and has no plans to divorce her. Aurelia spends most of her time in England where she is a mainstay on a long-running BBC drama and doesn’t mind Oliver’s affairs so long as he is a good and loving husband, which he is.

Dez and Rosalind have four months remaining on a five-year fellowship that has provided them with a lovely house in Lausanne, Switzerland, along with generous monthly stipends. At year’s end, barring unforeseen largesse, they must return to America, specifically to the small town of Ophelia near Seattle, though neither of them wants to go back to America. They have applied for permanent residency in Switzerland, but have been told the chances of gaining such status are slim.

Five months ago, Dez published In Love Poems, her sixteenth volume of poetry. The book of seventy-seven love poems came out in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Danish, and Portuguese editions simultaneously with the English edition and is a great success in Europe.

The screenplay of In Lausanne has yet to materialize because Oliver and his movie sidekick Paul Descartes and the several writers they hired over the last year and eight months have failed to come up with a story line uniting the poems into a movie Paul and Oliver want to make.

Rosalind was in love with Paul for several months after he and Oliver descended upon them in Lausanne to secure the movie rights to In Lausanne, and Paul was likewise smitten with Rosalind. But unlike Oliver, Paul is not one to have affairs, and he remained faithful to his then-fiancé now-wife Mariana Borba rather than succumb to his attraction to Rosalind.

After recovering from her infatuation with Paul, Rosalind met a charming Swiss fellow named Leon, and they have been lovers for seven months now. Leon is a piano tuner and pianist a few years older than Rosalind. He says he will gladly marry her, which would allow her to go on living in Switzerland but won’t solve Dez’s citizenship dilemma; and Rosalind wouldn’t think of staying in Europe if her mother is exiled to America.

Hunger eventually overcomes the pleasure of lolling in the warm bath, so Rosalind climbs out of the tub and stands at the second-story window overlooking Oliver’s vineyards. As she gazes down at the vines heavy with grapes, she is startled by a vision of how to shape the forty-two poems of In Lausanne into a comedy drama she knows Paul and Oliver and Dez will love.

“Oh my God,” she says in English, which she rarely speaks now that French is her everyday language. “How did we not see it?”

Rosalind finds Dez and Oliver on the veranda having coffee at a big dining table shaded by an enormous blue umbrella, both wearing floppy sunhats and short-sleeved shirts and dark glasses.

Dez has the dreamy look of a woman well loved and appears to Rosalind to have shed ten years since she and Oliver began their love affair a year ago.

Oliver, his mother British, his father French, a rakishly handsome fellow with curly black hair going gray, greets Rosalind in English with a Devonshire accent. “Ah fair Rosalind. Did you tell the kitchen what you want for breakfast?”

“I did,” says Rosalind, sitting across from Oliver and Dez. “Merci.”

“I’m taking your mother to see Cathedrale Saint-Etienne today,” says Oliver, smiling warmly at Rosalind. “Would you like to join us?”

“No merci,” says Rosalind, glad to see her mother so relaxed and happy. “I’m working on something I hope to dazzle you with when Paul and Mariana come tomorrow.”

“Is this about the screenplay?” says Oliver, excited. “Tell us.”

“Not quite yet,” says Rosalind, nodding graciously to the young woman who serves her coffee. “I want to make sure I’m not imagining things before I make my presentation.”

“I know there’s a movie in there,” says Oliver, making a fist and thumping the table. “But it eludes us.”

“Thank goodness I don’t care,” says Dez, gazing at her lover. “Though I’d love to see you as the gardener and Paul as the man who is forever lost.”

Oliver frowns. “I, the gardener? No, I see Paul in that role.”

“Either way,” says Dez, looking at Rosalind. “Who do you see as the gardener, darling?”

“I’m less concerned with casting right now,” says Rosalind, sipping her coffee, “than with narrative flow.”

“Plot,” says Oliver, beseeching the sky. “The elusive plot.”

“Elusive?” says Rosalind, arching her eyebrow. “Or too obvious?”

“If you find a viable plot for this movie,” says Oliver, raising a declarative finger, “we will hire you to write the screenplay.”

“Then I’ll finally have a career,” says Rosalind, making a goofy face at her mother. “Other than attendant to the queen.”

“I prefer duchess,” says Dez, making an equally goofy face at her daughter. “Far too much responsibility being a queen.”

When Oliver and Dez motor off to the cathedral, Rosalind sequesters herself in her bedroom with a copy of In Lausanne and writes the titles of the forty-two poems onto pieces of white typing paper, one title writ large per page. Now she numbers the titles 1 to 42 and lays the pages out on her queen-sized bed in seven rows, six pages to a row.

After studying the arrangement of pages for some minutes, she moves Poem #7, The Gardener Goes Fishing, to where Poem #1 is, and moves Poem #1, The Unlikely Rose, to where Poem #14 is, and moves Poem #14, The Cook and the Mouse and the Cat, to where Poem #2 is, and continues reordering the pages until all the poems have changed places.

Satisfied with the new order of poems, she renumbers the pages to match their places in the modified sequence, gathers the pages in their new order, sits down on the bed, and slowly leafs through the pages to confirm the new sequence does, indeed, make an intriguing story with a beginning, middle, and end.

Walking in the olive grove in the late afternoon, Rosalind considers whether she wants to write a screenplay based on her mother’s poems, and she decides she does.

And the moment she makes her decision, she feels something shift inside her.

“I know what I am,” she says, looking up at the myriad silver leaves. “I’m a story teller.”

Paul Descartes, a beautiful Frenchman in his thirties famous for his comedies, and Paul’s Portuguese wife Mariana Borba, also in her thirties, famous for her beauty, arrive at Oliver’s villa the next morning to stay for a few days and unwind after six weeks of filming a big-budget thriller in Miami.

During lunch on the veranda, Mariana says in French, “This was the last American movie I will ever be in. Paul is contracted to do another, but I would rather make movies about real people, not violent cartoons. I did not become an actor to be in cartoons.”

“The Americans are very good at choreographing car chases and scenes of violence,” says Paul, nodding in agreement, “but their stories and dialogue are idiotic. For example, in the movie we just made, which they are calling Secret Killers—original, no?—the hero played by Lloyd Carter, a rogue government agent fighting a host of villains, says to me, ‘We go through that door, our chances of surviving are not good.’ And I reply, ‘What else is new?’ We shoot the scene this way seven times and it falls flat every time. So I say to the director, ‘What if instead of What else is new? I say Then why go through the door?’ And when I suggest this to him, everyone on the set laughs.”

“A big laugh,” says Mariana, laughing at her memory of the film crew laughing uproariously at Paul’s rejoinder.

“And Lloyd,” says Paul, continuing, “gets very excited and says, ‘Yes, then I will say You got a better idea? And I say, ‘We could go for coffee at a nice café.’ And again, everyone on the set bursts into laughter. And the director glares at me and says, “This is not a comedy.” And I say ‘Yes, I know, but you do want a laugh here, don’t you?’ And he says, ‘That’s none of your business. That’s why we have writers.’ So I shut up because they were paying me more money than I have ever been paid to be in a movie and we did the scene again with What else is new? And that was that.”

“You could not pay me to go to this movie,” says Mariana, shaking her head. “Though they paid me a fortune to be in five scenes with Lloyd. In three scenes I wear bikinis, in one scene a transparent nightgown, in the last scene… nothing.”

“For that,” says Oliver, nodding thoughtfully, “I would go to this movie.”

“Speaking of movies,” says Paul, turning to Rosalind, “Oliver tells me you have a new idea for In Lausanne? I so want to make this movie, but we have yet to find the story that ties everything together.”

“I found it,” says Rosalind, smiling at her mother.

“And if you like her story,” says Dez, looking at Paul, “Oliver promised Rosalind you would hire her to write the screenplay.”

“Yes, of course,” says Paul, nodding emphatically. “What is the story?”

“I will make my presentation after lunch,” says Rosalind, sipping her wine. “Lest we be too distracted by this marvelous food.”

When everyone is seated in the living room, Rosalind stands before them and says, “Once upon a time there were four people. A charming fellow who is forever lost, a woman who is a cook and speaks to animals, a man who is a gardener and speaks to plants and insects and birds, and a woman who has a dog and is looking for love. In fact, they are all looking for love.

“At the beginning of our story we spend some time with each of the four people and we are fascinated and amused by their eccentricities and kindness to others. Then each of them sets out on a journey. The woman with a dog is the only one of the four who knows she is looking for love, but they all are, and that becomes clear as we watch them on their adventures.

“Then the woman who is a cook meets the fellow who is forever lost and they fall in love, and the gardener meets the woman with a dog and they fall in love, too. However, through a series of delightful twists and turns, the gardener becomes paired with the woman who is a cook, and the man who is forever lost becomes lovers with the woman with a dog, and in the end they are neighbors, all of them good friends. The final scene is a supper in the home of the woman who is a cook, our foursome very much who they have always been, only now they are together and content.”

Having told the story, Rosalind presents Oliver and Paul and Mariana each with a list of the forty-two poems from In Lausanne in the order of the story she just told.

Paul quickly reads the list and jumps up to embrace Rosalind. “You found our movie,” he cries. “It was there all the while.”

“Fantastic,” says Mariana, the next to embrace Rosalind. “Now this is a movie I will gladly pay to see.”

“Oh you won’t have to pay,” says Rosalind, looking into Mariana’s eyes. “Because you will be the woman with a dog.”

Upon their return to Lausanne, Dez gets a call from Karl Fleury, the sponsor of their fellowship from the University of Lausanne, asking if he might come see her.

Karl comes to lunch the next day and during dessert Karl announces that because of Dez’s valuable contributions to Swiss culture, attested to by a petition signed by hundreds of Swiss artists and writers and academics, Dez and Rosalind have been granted permanent residency by the Swiss government.

“And,” says Karl, his eyes sparkling, “the university would like to offer you a three-year extension of your fellowships and residency at The Writer’s House.”

“Oh Karl, dear Karl, thank you,” says Dez, rising to embrace Rosalind. “Now I won’t have to kill myself.”

“You’re not serious,” says Karl, startled into nervous laughter.

mother and daughter cling to each other

sobbing in relief and joy.

fin

Lounge Act In Heaven

Tags love affair, Marian Borba, Oliver Rochambeau and Paul Descartes, reordering the pages, Rosalind and Dez In Lausanne, Rosalind Finds the Plot, screenplay of In Lausanne, sequel to Only Be Rosalind, short story, the poems have changed places, there all the while, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books

Uncategorized

Only Be Rosalind

Dez Peoples is sixty-six, an American poet living in Lausanne, Switzerland with her daughter Rosalind, who is twenty-eight, a photographer and writer. They have lived in Lausanne for three years and have two years remaining on a fellowship from the University of Lausanne that provides them with a lovely house and monthly stipends more than sufficient for their needs.

Six months ago, Dez published her fifteenth volume of poems called In Lausanne, the American edition appearing a month before the German, French, and Spanish editions came out in Europe, after which In Lausanne became a cause célèbre.

On a glorious afternoon in April, Dez and Rosalind return to their house from a long ramble along Lake Geneva with Rosalind’s cute brown mutt Bianca, and they are just sitting down to a late lunch when someone knocks confidently on the front door.

Genevieve, Dez and Rosalind’s charming housekeeper and cook, answers the door and says in French to the two men waiting there, “May I help you?”

“Yes, my name is Oliver Rochambeau,” one of the men replies, his voice a resonant baritone. “And this is my friend Paul Descartes. We would very much like to speak to Dez Peoples. Is she at home today?”

“Madame sees visitors by appointment on Thursdays,” says Genevieve, who has made this speech many times to those wishing to see Dez. “I will give you a card with the number to call to make an appointment.”

“Oh is there no possibility of seeing her today?” asks the other man with some urgency, his voice a pleasing tenor. “We are only here for the afternoon and then we’re returning to Burgundy. We would only take a moment of her time.”

“I’m very sorry,” says Genevieve, who has the feeling she knows these men, but can’t remember where she’s seen them before. “Many people wish to speak to her.”

Rosalind, who has been listening from the kitchen, appears with appointment book in hand, smiles at the two handsome men—one of whom she guesses is fifty-three, the other thirty-five—and says in her fair French, “Hello. I’m Dez’s secretary. Would you like to make an appointment to meet with her?”

“You can only be Rosalind,” says the younger of the two men in fair English. “You are just as your mother describes you in She Walks Her Dog, only much more beautiful.”

“I am Rosalind,” she says, sticking to French. “Who are you?”

“I am Paul Descartes,” he says, bowing to her. “And this is my colleague Oliver Rochambeau. We are hopeful of securing the film rights to your mother’s book In Lausanne.”

“Ah,” exclaims Genevieve, clapping her hands. “Now I know who you are. The funny detectives. These are my husband’s favorite movies. Please don’t leave. I must go get him.”

“Well,” says Rosalind, pleasantly disarmed, “you may as well come in. We’re just sitting down to lunch. Please join us.”

When Genevieve’s husband Henri comes in from the garden, Dez insists Henri and Genevieve join them for lunch, which prompts Genevieve to open an excellent bottle of French chardonnay to go with her fish stew.

Oliver tastes the stew and says, “Mon dieu. I have never tasted better.”

“Incroyable,” says Paul, gazing wide-eyed at Genevieve.

“The fish was caught this morning,” says Genevieve, blushing. “And the onions and potatoes and herbs came from Henri’s garden just this morning.”

“A genius cook for a genius poet,” says Oliver, raising his glass to Dez. “To your extraordinary poetry.”

“To Genevieve,” says Dez, raising her glass.

“We are in the book, you know. Henri and I,” says Genevieve, smiling at her husband. “I am the cook in The Cook and the Mouse and the Cat, and Henri is the gardener in the seven poems about the gardener.”

“I love the gardener poems,” says Paul, grinning at Henri. “You’re immortal now.”

“No, no, no, no, no,” says Henri, shivering with delight to be praised by his favorite movie star. “I’m just a gardener.”

“When I read your poems in French,” says Oliver, gazing at Dez, “they are like little mysteries, you know. Addictive. And they always make me smile at the end. But when I read them in English they are great comedy. I assume you wrote them in English.”

“Yes,” says Dez, who is having a most extraordinary experience sitting across from Oliver, her attraction to him overwhelming. “I only write in English. So far. Though I have begun to dream in French.”

“We are told,” says Rosalind, tickled by her mother’s infatuation with Oliver, “that the German and Spanish translations are funny, too, but the French translation is more nostalgic, or as you say mysterious.”

“French humor is so different than English humor,” says Paul, gazing at Rosalind as if seeing a vision. “Not the physical comedy, of course. But the languages are so different. Did you laugh the first time you read these poems?”

“I did,” says Rosalind, profoundly smitten with Paul. “I had no idea Mama could be so funny in writing. I mean… she’s very funny in… in life, but her poems before In Lausanne were never so funny.”

“The first time I saw your movie The Stolen Jewels,” says Henri, gawking at Oliver, “I laughed until I cried. The scene where you keep handing the food under the table thinking Paul is there and he has long ago crawled away and it is those two big dogs who keep nudging your leg and you keep feeding them? I have watched that scene hundreds of times and I always laugh so hard. This is genius to me.”

“We have a DVD,” says Genevieve, pouring out the last of the wine into Dez and Rosalind’s glasses. “Sometimes we just watch the cooking scenes and laugh.”

“I am so happy to have met you,” says Henri, getting up from the table and bowing to Oliver and Paul. “Please excuse me. I must finish in the garden before dusk.”

“I will go now, too,” says Genevieve, following Henri. “We hope to see you again.”

“What a charming couple,” says Oliver, switching to English. “And what a cook is Genevieve. Be careful some rich movie star doesn’t steal them away from you.”

“Oh they are not ours,” says Dez in English. “They are attached to this house which we’ve been given for five years by the university, after which other writers will take our place.”

“Then take them with you,” says Paul, nodding emphatically.

“That is beyond our means,” says Dez, suddenly weary and wishing these enchanting men would go.

Sensing her weariness, Oliver says, “We will leave you now, but if we could meet tomorrow morning after breakfast to discuss the movie rights to your book, we will find a hotel room and come again tomorrow. If not, we will speed home to Burgundy and I’ll call you if that seems better for you.”

“Tomorrow at ten will be fine,” says Dez, very much wanting to see him again.

“Excellent,” says Oliver, finishing his wine. “Thank you for the marvelous lunch. It was a great pleasure to meet you.”

“A delight,” says Paul, winking at Rosalind.

When Paul and Oliver are gone, Dez and Rosalind retire to the living room—Dez lying down on the sofa, Rosalind collapsing in an armchair.

Silence reigns before they both speak at once, Dez saying, “I can’t believe…” and Rosalind saying, “Can you believe…”

“You go first,” says Dez, closing her eyes and seeing Oliver gazing at her.

“Oh my God, Mama, I’m in love,” says Rosalind, hugging herself. “Has there ever been a more beautiful enchanting man than Paul?”

“Only Oliver,” says Dez, imagining his arms around her. “I haven’t felt this way in forty years, if I ever felt this way. I thought I might have an orgasm during lunch just looking at him and hearing his voice. I really did.”

“They’re probably both married,” says Rosalind, pouting. “Though I saw no rings. You don’t think they could be gay, do you?”

“If Oliver is gay, I am gay,” says Dez, who feels she has become someone entirely different than whoever she was before she met Oliver. “Would you borrow the DVD of their movie from Genevieve? I need to see him again or go mad.”

“Oh Mama, you really are in love,” says Rosalind, who has never known her mother to be in love with anyone.

“Is this love?” says Dez, falling asleep. “Being demolished?”

When Dez wakes two hours later, she finds a comforter over her and Rosalind sitting at the table by the window writing in her notebook.

“What time is it, darling,” asks Dez, speaking English.

Rosalind looks up and smiles. “Not quite six. And you called me darling. You must still be in love with Oliver.”

Dez sits up. “So it wasn’t a dream. They exist. Oliver and Paul.”

“They exist,” says Rosalind, closing her notebook. “And we both fell in love with them as have thousands of other women before us. I sleuthed around on the Internet. They’re both huge stars in Europe. Oliver’s mother is British, his father French. He’s been in lots of French movies and lots of British television shows. Paul is entirely French, a comedian and acrobat and singer turned movie actor. They’ve made three movies together as the Funny Detectives. Henri loaned us two of their movies. The Stolen Jewels and The Pilfered Recipe.”

“How old is Oliver?” asks Dez, holding her breath.

“Sixty-two,” says Roz, coming to sit with her mother on the sofa.

“Married?”

“He’s been married twice and has two grown daughters. I don’t think he’s married now, but he may be in a relationship with a British actress. Not sure.”

“And Paul?”

“Paul is thirty-four and engaged to a Portuguese actress named Mariana Borba who was in the last two Funny Detective movies. She’s insanely beautiful, so my only hope is that you make it a condition of the movie sale that Paul dump her and marry me. Please Mama?”

“Of course, darling,” says Dez, putting her arms around her daughter. “Shall we watch one of their movies before supper?”

They sit side-by-side on the sofa and watch The Stolen Jewels on Rosalind’s big laptop computer. The movie is brilliantly silly, the two detectives going undercover as a chef and a waiter in a gourmet restaurant in Paris where murders of restaurant critics and rival restaurateurs occur at regular intervals throughout the film.

Paul plays the part of Victor, a man of few words, keenly observant and capable of remarkable feats of dexterity and strength except in the presence of attractive women whose mere glances in his direction transform him into a colossal goofball. He masquerades as a waiter and is by turns phenomenally graceful and hilariously clumsy.

Oliver plays James, a man of dubious intelligence who frequently shares with Victor his deductive reasoning reminiscent of Sherlock Holmes’s reasoning in those classic mysteries. However, unlike Sherlock, James is invariably wrong. Yet in the end, the two funny guys catch the murderers and save the day.

At movie’s end, Rosalind says, “I wish we’d never met them. They’ve set the bar impossibly high. Who could ever compare to Paul?”

“Only Oliver,” says Dez, wistfully. “But I could never live with him. I would be too distracted to ever write again. I’d just follow him around worshipping him.”

“So sayeth the renowned feminist poet,” says Rosalind, nudging her mother.

“Feminism schmeminism,” says Dez, getting up. “Let’s go out for supper.”

“You know who Oliver is?” says Dez, as she and Rosalind walk home in the moonlight from Brasserie Saint-Laurent, their favorite restaurant in Lausanne.

“A handsome charming movie star,” says Rosalind, stating the obvious.

“He’s my masculine alter ego.” Dez laughs. “Listen to me. I’ve lost my mind.”

“I think it’s wonderful we both fell in love,” says Rosalind, gazing up at the nearly full moon. “Regardless of outcome, I like knowing I still can. I was beginning to wonder.”

“I assumed I couldn’t,” says Dez, thinking back over her life and finding no evidence of feeling about anyone as she feels about Oliver. “But it turns out I could. I’m speaking of love, not lust. I fell in lust all the time before you were born.”

“But you do you lust after Oliver,” says Rosalind as they arrive home. “Hence the near orgasm at lunch. Lust certainly plays a large part in my attraction to Paul. I felt like we were having telepathic sex at lunch today. I was anyway.”

“Maybe that’s all this is,” says Dez, unlocking the front door. “Lust at sixty-six. I haven’t lusted after anyone in twenty-nine years, not since lust made you, my darling.”

They have chamomile tea and oatmeal cookies in the kitchen before going to bed.

“Doesn’t it strike you as a bit far fetched, if not absurd,” says Dez, frowning at Rosalind, “that they want to buy the movie rights to In Lausanne? What movie, I wonder, do they see in that collection of poems?”

“Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life was based on a poem,” says Rosalind, tossing a little piece of cookie to her dog Bianca. “When I was sleuthing around about Oliver and Paul, I also asked about movies based on poems, and there are quite a few. The Charge of the Light Brigade. It’s A Wonderful Life. Alice’s Restaurant. Several more. Poems that tell good stories.”

“Yes, but those poems all have plots,” says Dez, chuckling at the thought of her poems becoming scenes in a movie. “Mine are merely moments of the continuum.”

“That’s what stories are,” says Rosalind, thinking of Paul’s amazing strength and grace in The Stolen Jewels. “Maybe they’ll want you to help them write the screenplay and they’ll need to meet with you many times.”

“Yes. And they’ll come to realize they can’t live without us,” says Dez, yawning. “And we’ll have a double wedding and live happily ever after.”

“Where?” asks Rosalind, yawning, too. “Where will we live happily ever after?”

“Here,” says Dez, finishing her tea. “In Lausanne.”

After breakfast the next morning, Dez tries on three different dresses in front of the full-length mirror in her bedroom, and when she is in her last dress, by far the most revealing of the three, she comes out of the trance she’s been in since meeting Oliver and sees she is sixty-six, not fifty-one or forty-three or thirty-four.

So she hangs up her dresses and puts on a favorite turquoise dress shirt, turquoise earrings, and black jeans, captures her graying brown hair in a ponytail, and says to her reflection, “You are a handsome woman in your sixties. Oliver has come for your poems, not for you.”

Rosalind puts on her sexiest dress, a summery green opalescent curve-clinging scoop-necked thing, paints her lips burgundy, and impales her short auburn hair with a red rose bud.

Oliver and Paul arrive promptly at ten, both wearing white summer suits, and Oliver present Dez with a bouquet of seven spectacular roses, which Genevieve puts in a white porcelain vase and makes the centerpiece of the kitchen table where Dez and Rosalind and Paul and Oliver convene for coffee and Genevieve’s just-baked cinnamon coffee cake.

“So…” says Oliver, looking at Dez, “we would like to offer you 10,000 euros for a one-year option of the movie rights to In Lausanne, against a purchase price of 150,000 euros should the film be made. And you would get two per cent of the net proceeds, should there be any, which is highly unlikely.”

“Hence the movie business maxim,” says Paul, whose gaze keeps returning to Rosalind’s lips, “the money you get is the money you get.”

“Okay,” says Dez, who is greatly relieved to be over her infatuation with Oliver, though she still thinks he’s marvelous.

“Okay?” says Oliver, placing a hand on his heart. “Yes? Fantastic. I will have our agent contact your agent and we will go from there.”

“I don’t have an agent,” says Dez, feeling glad she doesn’t. “My editor at Werner Schaffen is Dirk Rosenfeld. I will ask him to represent me.”

“Whatever you like,” says Oliver, nodding. “We are absolutely thrilled to have the chance to make a movie from your poems.”

“We’ve made lots of money with our silly movies,” says Paul, exchanging glances with Oliver, “and now we want to make something more meaningful. Something deeper. Something that touches the soul, not just the funny bone, but the funny bone, too.”

“We can’t wait to see what you come up with,” says Rosalind, looking at Paul and thinking I would do anything to be with you.

“Which brings up another matter,” says Oliver, placing his hands together as in prayer. “We would love to show you the screenplay as it develops and hear your critique, for which we will pay you.”

“No need to pay us,” says Dez, shaking her head. “We’d love to see the drafts and tell you what we think.”

“Well then,” says Oliver, looking at Paul and Rosalind and lastly at Dez, “we will take no more of your time.”

“You are welcome to take as much of our time as you want,” says Dez, speaking without forethought. “We are in love with you and hope to see you again.”

“The feeling is mutual,” says Paul, delighted by Dez’s candor. “I’m about to shoot two movies in quick succession, sadly neither with Oliver, after which I plan to turn my full attention to In Lausanne.”

“Whereas I am not so busy,” says Oliver, sounding happy to say so, “and I would love to visit you here and for you to come stay with me in Burgundy where we can work on the screenplay and I will be your tour guide.”

When Oliver and Paul drive away—Paul having kissed Rosalind on the lips in parting—Dez and Rosalind walk with Bianca on a footpath tracing the shore of Lake Geneva.

“I may write a hundred love poems now,” says Dez, holding Rosalind’s hand. “What will you do?”

“I will live for as long as I can,” says Rosalind, smiling dreamily, “in the magic of his kiss.”

fin

Here We Go

Tags Dez Peoples poet, French humor and English humor, Funny Detectives, Genevieve and Henri, In Lausanne, lust at sixty-six, movie rights to poetry, movie stars, Oliver Rochambeau and Paul Descartes, Only Be Rosalind, poetry, Rosalind Peoples, sequel to Rosalind and Dez In Lausanne, short story, the money you get is the money you get, The Pilfered Recipe, The Stolen Jewels, Todd Walton, Under the Table Books