Paul looks over at her and smiles. "Depends what you think a lot is," he says.
Rennie shuts up. She's led a sheltered life, he's telling her. Now she's annoyed with herself for acting so shocked. Squealing at mice, standing on a chair with your skirts hitched up, that's the category. Girl.
Paul drives through the darkness with elaborate slowness, for her benefit. "You can go faster," she says. "I'm not about to throw up." He smiles, but he doesn't.
The Driftwood at night is much the same as the Driftwood by day, except that it's floodlit. There's a half-hearted steel band and two couples are dancing to it. The women are wearing shirts made from fake flour sacks; the blonde is taking pictures with a flashcube camera, the brunette is wearing a captain's cap, backwards. One of the men has a green shirt with parrots on it. The other one is shorter, fatter, with the fronts of his legs so badly burned that the skin is peeling off in rags. He's wearing a red T-shirt that says BIONIC COCK. It's the usual bunch, from Wisconsin Rennie decides, dentists and their wives fresh off the plane, their flesh like uncooked Dover sole, flying down to run themselves briefly under the grill. The dentists come here, the dental assistants go to Barbados, that's the difference.
Rennie and Paul sit at a metal table and Rennie orders a ginger ale. She's not going to get sick in the jeep again, once was enough. She's thinking about the man on his knees in the dark road, but what is there to think? Except that she's not hungry. She watches the awkward stiff-legged dancers, the steel-band men, who are supple, double-jointed almost, glancing at them with a contempt that is almost but not quite indifference.
"Dentists from Wisconsin?" she says to Paul.
"Actually they're Swedes," he says. "There's been a rash of Swedes lately. Swedes tell other Swedes, back in Sweden. Then all of a sudden the place is swarming with them."
"How can you tell?" says Rennie, impressed.
Paul smiles at her. "I found out," he says. "It's not hard. Everyone finds out about everyone else around here, they're curious. It's a small place, anything new or out of the ordinary gets noticed pretty fast. A lot of people are curious about you, for instance."
"I'm not out of the ordinary," says Rennie.
"Here you are," he says. "You're at the wrong hotel, for one thing. It's mostly package tours and little old ladies who stay there. You should be at the Driftwood." He pauses, and Rennie feels she has to supply an answer.
"Pure economics," she says. "It's a cheap magazine."
Paul nods, as if this is acceptable. "They wonder why you aren't with a man," he says. "If you'd come on a boat they'd know why, they'd figure you're just boat-hopping. Girls do that quite a bit here, it's like hitchhiking, in more ways than one. But you don't seem the type. Anyway, they know you came in on the plane." A smile, another pause. It occurs to Rennie that it may not be they who want to know these things about her, it may only be Paul. A small prickle goes down her spine.
"If they know so much, they must know what I'm doing here," she says, keeping her voice even. "It's business. I'm doing a travel piece. I hardly need a chaperone for that."
Paul smiles. "White women have a bad reputation down here," he says. "For one thing, they're too rich; for another they lower the moral tone."
"Come on," says Rennie.
"I'm just telling you what they think," says Paul. "The women here think they spoil the local men. They don't like the way white women dress, either. You'd never see a local woman wearing shorts or even pants, they think it's degenerate. If they started behaving like that their men would beat the shit out of them. If you tried any of that Women's Lib stuff down here they'd only laugh. They say that's for the white women. Everyone knows white women are naturally lazy and they don't want to do a woman's proper work, and that's why they hire black women to do their work for them." He looks at her with something between a challenge and a smirk, which Rennie finds irritating.
"Is that why you like it here?" she says. "You get your grapes peeled for you?"
"Don't blame it on me," Paul says, with a little shrug. "I didn't invent it."
He's watching her react, so she tries not to. After a minute he goes on. "They also think you aren't only a journalist. They don't believe you're really just writing for a magazine."
"But I am!" says Rennie. "Why wouldn't they believe that?"
"They don't know much about magazines," says Paul. "Anyway, almost nobody here is who they say they are at first. They aren't even who somebody else thinks they are. In this place you get at least three versions of everything, and if you're lucky one of them is true. That's if you're lucky."
"Does all this apply to you?" says Rennie, and Paul laughs.
"Let me put it this way," he says. "For ten thousand dollars you can buy a St. Antoine passport; officially, I mean, unofficially it costs more. That's if you've got the right connections. If you want to, you can open your own private bank. The government even helps you do it, for a cut of the action. Certain kinds of people find it very convenient."
"What are you telling me?" says Rennie, who senses increasingly she's been asked out to dinner for a reason, which is not the same as the reason she had for accepting. She looks into his light-blue eyes, which are too light, too blue. They've seen too much water. Burned out, she thinks.
Paul smiles, a kindly threatening smile. "I like you," he says. "I guess I'm trying to tell you not to get too mixed up in local politics. That is, if you really are writing a travel piece."
"Local politics?" says Rennie, taken by surprise.
Paul sighs. "You remind me of a certain kind of girl back home," he says. "The kind who move to New York from the Midwest and get jobs on magazines."
"In what way?" says Rennie, dismayed.
"For one thing you're nice," says Paul. "You'd rather not be, you'd rather be something else, tough or sharp or something like that, but you're nice, you can't help it. Naive. But you think you have to prove you're not merely nice, so you get into things you shouldn't. You want to know more than other people, am I right?"
"I don't have the faintest idea what you're talking about," says Rennie, who feels seen through. She wonders if he's right. Once he would have been, once there were all kinds of things she wanted to know. Now she's tired of it.
Paul sighs. "Okay," he says. "Just remember, nothing that goes on here has anything to do with you. And I'd stay away from Minnow."
"Dr. Minnow?" says Rennie. "Why?"
"Ellis doesn't like him," says Paul. "Neither do some other people."
"I hardly know him," says Rennie.
"You had lunch with him," says Paul, almost accusingly.
Rennie laughs. "Am I going to get shot, for having lunch?"
Paul doesn't think this is funny. "Probably not," he says. "They mostly shoot their own. Let's go get something to eat."
Under an open-sided hut with fake thatching there's a buffet laid out, bowls of salad, platters of roast beef, lime pies, chocolate cakes with hibiscus flowers stuck into them. As much as you can eat. There are more people now, piling food high on their plates. To Rennie, they all look Swedish.
She takes her plate back to the table. Paul is silent now and absent. It's almost as if he's in a hurry to get away. Rennie sits across from him, eating shrimp and feeling like a blind date, the comic-book kind with buck teeth and pimples. In situations like this she reverts to trying to please, or is it appease? Maybe he's with the CIA, it would all fit in, the warning and the neo-hippie haircut, camouflage, and the time in Cambodia, and the boats he shouldn't be able to afford. The more she thinks about it the more sense it makes. She's innocent, she doesn't want him to get the wrong impression, he might end up putting some kind of weird drug into her guava jam. Does he think she's a dangerous subversive because she had lunch with Dr. Minnow? She wonders how she can convince him that she is who she is. Would he believe drain-chain jewellery?
Finally she asks him about tennis courts. She wants things to return to normal; she wants the situation to normalize, as they say
on the news. "Tennis courts?" Paul says, as if he's never heard of them.
Rennie feels that she's been investigated and dismissed, she's been pronounced negligible, and this is either because Paul believes her or because he doesn't. Which is worse, to be irrelevant or to be dishonest? Whichever it is has erased her as far as he's concerned. As for her, all she can think of is how to recapture his interest, now that it's no longer there. She's almost forgotten there's some of her missing. She realizes she was looking forward, though to what she doesn't know. An event, that's all. Something. She's had enough blank space recently to last her for a long time.
Rennie and Jocasta were trying on used fur coats in the Sally Ann at Richmond and Spadina. According to Jocasta this was the best Sally Ann in the city. It was really Jocasta who was trying them on, since Rennie didn't have much interest in used fur coats, she stuck to her classic down-fill from Eddie Bauer's. They were supposed to be shopping for Rennie; Jocasta thought it would make her feel better if she went out and bought something. But she should have known. With Jocasta you always ended up in the Sally Ann.
I won't wear seal though, said Jocasta. I draw the line. Look at this, what do you think it is?
Dyed rabbit, said Rennie. You're safe.
Jocasta turned the pockets inside out. There was a stained handkerchief in one of them. What I'm really looking for, she said, is a black hat with a pheasant feather, you know those curved ones? Gloria Swanson. How's everything?
I'm having a thing with this man, said Rennie, who had resolved many times never to discuss this with anyone, especially Jocasta.
Jocasta looked at her. The pause was just a little too long, and Rennie could hear Jocasta wondering how much of her was gone, chopped away; under all that, you couldn't tell really. A thing with a man. Bizarre. Possibly even gross.
That's wizard, said Jocasta, who liked resurrecting outmoded slang. Love or sex?
I'm not sure, said Rennie.
Love, Jocasta said. Lucky you. I can't seem to get it up for love any more. It's such an effort.
She slipped her arms into a late forties lantern-sleeve muskrat, while Rennie held it for her. A little tatty around the collar, but not bad, said Jocasta. So it's walking-on-air time, a little pitty-pat of the heart, steamy dreams, a little how-you-say purple passion? Spots on the neck, wet pits? Buying your trousseau yet?
Not exactly, said Rennie. He's married.
Before Daniel, Rennie had never paid much attention to married men. The mere fact that they were married ruled them out, not because they were off-limits but because they had demonstrated their banality. Having a married man would be like having a Group of Seven washable silkscreen reproduction in your livingroom. Only banks had those any more, and not the best banks, either.
Lately, though, she'd been seeing it from a different angle. Maybe Daniel wasn't an afterglow from the past; maybe he was the wave of the future. As Jocasta said about her wardrobe, save it up. Never throw anything away, because time is circular and sooner or later it all comes round again. Maybe experiments in living, trying it out first, and infinitely renegotiable relationships were fading fast. Soon Daniel would be in, limited options would be in. No way out would be in. Group of Seven silkscreens were coming back too, among the ultra nouveau wave, but they had to be washable.
Sometimes married is better than not married, Jocasta said. They've got their own lives, they don't need to muck up yours. You can do it in the afternoon, have a nice fuck, hear all about how important you are in their life, listen to their little troubles, their mortgage, the way their kid grinds chewed-up caramels into the shag, how they had to get the clutch on the Volvo replaced, and then you can go out with someone fun at night. I used to like stoles, but you know those little shortie jackets they used to wear with formals? With the handkerchief pocket. They're better.
You don't quite see it, said Rennie. He's really married. He thinks of himself as married.
You mean he says stuff like his wife doesn't understand him, Jocasta said. That can be boring. Usually their wife understands them backwards, that's the problem. I went through all that ten years ago, when I was still a junior buyer for Creeds. Every time I had to go to New York; it was the goddamn supervisor. He thought I was so dirty, you know? Turkeyville! I must have been desperate, I hadn't discovered cucumbers then. What they usually mean is that their wives won't go down on them, as far as I can figure out. Kids? Let me guess. Two.
Three and a half, Rennie said.
You mean one's brain-damaged? said Jocasta, looking over her shoulder in the mirror. Waltz length. Remember waltz length?
No, said Rennie. His wife's pregnant again.
And he loves his wife, of course, said Jocasta. And she loves him. Right?
I'm afraid so, said Rennie.
Daniel had not said I'm afraid so. He'd said I think so.
You mean you don't know? said Rennie.
We don't talk about it, he said. I guess she does. She does.
So sit back and enjoy it, said Jocasta. What do you have to worry about? Except Jake, but he's cool.
Rennie wondered how cool Jake actually was. She hadn't told him about Daniel. Daniel, however, asked about Jake almost every time they saw each other. How's Jake? he would say hopefully, and Rennie would always say, Fine. She knew about bookends, she knew that one wouldn't work without the other. Any damage to Jake and Daniel would be off and running. He wouldn't want to be stuck with the whole package. She might be the icing on his cake but she sure as hell wasn't the cake.
Jake's a grownup, she said. Open-ended is one of his favourite words.
Well, there you go, said Jocasta. Nifty. Two's better than one any day, as long as you don't go all soft and grubby and Heartbreak Hotel.
You still don't see it, said Rennie. Nothing's happening.
Nothing? said Jocasta.
Unless you count some pretty frantic hand-holding, said Rennie. She was embarrassed to have to admit this, she knew how abnormal it was, but she wasn't as embarrassed as she would have been once. The fact was that she wasn't sure whether she wanted it or not, an affair with Daniel. It would not be what you would call relaxed, it wouldn't be very much fun. Pulling the plug on all that repression. It would be like going over Niagara Falls in a spin-dryer, you could get injured that way.
Why not? said Jocasta.
I told you, said Rennie. He's too married.
They looked at one another. Nothing, said Jocasta. Weird. She put her hand on Rennie's shoulder. Listen, she said, it could be worse. Look at it this way. I mean, an affair's just another affair, what else is new? It's like one chocolate bar after another; you start having these fantasies about being a nun, and you know what, they're enjoyable. But nothing, that's kind of romantic; he must think a lot of you. There's something to be said for nothing.
After the chocolate cake they drive back, straight back, no stopping in the woods this time. Rennie sits jolting in the front seat, trying not to feel disappointed. What does she need it for anyway? It's foolishness, as her grandmother would say. Her mother too. They all have the category, it gets passed down like a cedar chest, though they each put different things into it.
When they reach the hotel Paul doesn't touch her, not even a peck on the cheek. He opens his door and gets out, whistling through his teeth. He doesn't take her hand to help her down, he takes her arm, and he doesn't go as far as her room. He waits at the bottom of the stone stairs until she reaches the top, that's all.
Rennie walks down the green wooden corridor, feeling very tired. What is she supposed to make of all this? Why is she trying to make anything? He asked her for dinner and dinner is what she got. She remembers seeing a film, years ago, about the effects of atomic radiation on the courtship instincts of animals: birds ignoring each other or attacking instead of dancing, fish going around in lopsided circles instead of spawning, turtles leaving their eggs to fry in the sun, unfertilized anyway. Maybe this is what accounts for the New Chastity: a few too many deadly rays za
pping the pineal gland. The signals are all screwed up and nobody understands any more what they used to mean.
What she remembers most clearly about the evening is not even Paul. It's the deaf and dumb man on his knees in the street, the two men kicking at him, then watching him with that detachment, that almost friendly interest.
A long time ago, about a year ago, Jocasta said, I think it would be a great idea if all the men were turned into women and all the women were turned into men, even just for a day. Then they'd all know exactly how the other ones would like to be treated. When they got changed back, I mean. Don't you think that's a great idea?
It's a great idea, said Rennie.
But would you vote for it? said Jocasta.
Probably not, said Rennie.
That's the problem with great ideas, said Jocasta. Nobody votes for them.
Jocasta thinks it would be a great idea if all the men were changed into women and all the women were changed into men for a week. Then they'd each know how to treat the other ones when they got changed back, said Rennie.
Jocasta's full of crap, said Jake. And too bony. Bony women shouldn't wear V-necks.
What's the matter with it? said Rennie. Wouldn't you like to know to how women want to be treated? Wouldn't it make you irresistible?
Not if everyone else knew it too, said Jake. But first of all, that isn't what would happen. The women would say, Now I've got you, you prick. Now it's my turn. They'd all become rapists. Want to bet?
What would the men say? said Rennie.
Who knows? said Jake. Maybe they'd just say, Oh shit. Maybe they'd say they don't feel like it tonight because they're getting their periods. Maybe they'd want to have babies. Myself, I could do without it. Feh.
That would take more than a week, said Rennie.
Anyway, said Jake, do you really know how you want to be treated? You ever met anyone who does?
You mean any women, don't you, said Rennie.
Skip the semantics, said Jake. Tell the truth. Tell me how you want to be treated. In twenty-five words or less. You say it, I'll do it.
Rennie began to laugh. All right, she said. Is that a promise?
Later she said, It depends who by.