“Listen,” Paul said to the beautiful stranger. “I don’t know you. And you don’t know me. But I want to talk to you—and listen to you; that’s even more important—I want to talk and listen to you for a few hours. I want to share stories. That’s it. That’s it exactly. I think you have important stories to tell. Stories I need to hear.”
She laughed and shook her head. Did he amuse her? Or bemuse her? There was an important difference: Women sometimes slept with bemusing men, but they usually married amusing men.
“So, listen,” Paul said. “I am perfectly willing to miss my flight and have coffee with you right here in the airport—and if that makes you feel vulnerable, just remember there are dozens of heavily armed security guards all around us—so, please, if you’re inclined to spend some time with a complete but devastatingly handsome stranger, I would love your company.”
“Well,” she said. “You are cute. And I like your suit.”
“It used to belong to Gene Kelly. He wore it in one of his movies.”
“Singin’ in the Rain?”
“No, one of the bad ones. When people talk about the golden age of Hollywood musicals, they don’t realize that almost all of them were bad.”
“Are you a musician?”
“Uh, no, I sell used clothes. Vintage clothes. But only the beautiful stuff, you know?”
“Like your suit.”
“Yes, like my suit.”
“Sounds like a cool job.”
“It is a cool job. I have, like, one of the coolest lives ever. You should know that.”
“I’m sure you are a very cool individual. But I’m married, and my husband is waiting for me at baggage claim.”
“I don’t want this to be a comment on the institution of marriage itself, which I believe in, but I want you to know that your marriage, while great for your husband and you, is an absolute tragedy for me. I’m talking Greek tragedy. I’m talking mothers-killing-their-children level of tragedy. If you listened to my heart, you’d hear that it just keeps beating Medea, Medea, Medea. And yes, I know the rhythm is off on that. Makes me sound like I have a heart murmur.”
She laughed. He’d made her laugh three or four times since they’d met. He’d turned the avenging and murderous Medea into a sexy punch line. How many men could do that?
“Hey,” she said. “Thank you for the—uh—attention. You’ve made my day. Really. But I must go. I’ll see you in the next life.”
She turned to leave, but then she paused—O, che sarà!—leaned in close to Paul, and gave him a soft kiss on the cheek. Then she laughed again and walked away. No, it wasn’t just a walk. It was a magical act of transportation. Delirious, Paul watched her leave. He marveled at the gifts of strangers, at the way in which a five-minute relationship can be as gratifying and complete (and sexless!) as a thirteen-year marriage. Then he made his way back through security and to his gate, caught his flight to North Carolina, and bought a pair of 1962 Levi’s for $1,250.
Of course, Paul was a liar, a cheater, and a thief. He’d pursued the beautiful airport stranger without giving much thought to his own marriage. And sure, he was separated, and his wife and three teenage daughters were living in the family home while Paul lived in a one-bedroom on Capitol Hill, but he was still married and wanted to remain married. He loved his wife, didn’t he? Well, of course he did. She was lovely (was more than that, really) and smart and funny and all those things an attractive human being is supposed to be, and she in turn thought Paul was a lovely, smart, funny, and attractive human being. They had built a marriage based on their shared love of sixties soul music on vinyl—and vintage clothes, of course. Or perhaps Paul had built this life and his wife had followed along. In any case, they were happy, extraordinarily happy, right? Jesus, it was easy to stay happy in a first-world democracy. What kind of madman would stay that long in an unhappy marriage, especially in an age when people divorced so easily? Yes, Paul loved his wife; he was in love with her. He was sure he could pass a lie-detector test on that one. And he loved his three daughters. He was more sure about that.
But if he was so happy, if he was so in love with his wife and daughters, why was he separated from them? Sadly, it was all about sex—or, rather, the lack of sex. Simply and crudely stated, Paul had lost the desire to fuck his wife. How had that happened? Paul didn’t know, exactly. And he couldn’t talk to anybody about it. How could he tell his friends, his circle of men, that he had no interest in sleeping with the sexiest woman any of them had ever met? She was so beautiful that she intimidated many of his friends. His best friend, Jacob, had once drunkenly confessed that he still couldn’t look her directly in the eyes.
“I’ve known her, what, almost twenty years?” Jacob had said. “And I still have to look at her out of the corner of my eye. I’m the godfather to your daughters, and I have to talk to their mother with my sideways vision. You remember the time we all got drunk and naked in my hot tub? She was so amazing, so perfect, that I had to run around the corner and throw up. Your wife was so beautiful she made me sick. I hope you know how lucky you are, you lucky bastard.”
Yes, Paul knew he was lucky: He had a great job, great daughters, and a great wife that he didn’t want to fuck. And so he, the lucky bastard, had sex with every other possible partner. During his marriage, Paul had had sex with eight other women: two employees, three ex-girlfriends, two of his friends’ wives, and a woman with one of the largest used-clothing stores on eBay.
After that last affair, a clumsy and incomplete coupling in a San Francisco apartment crowded with vintage sundresses and UPS boxes, Paul had confessed to his wife. Oh, no, he didn’t confess to all his infidelities. That would have been too much. It would have been cruel. Instead, he only admitted to the one but carefully inserted details of the other seven, so that his confession would be at least fractionally honest. His wife had listened silently, packed him a bag, and kicked him out of the house. What was the last thing she’d said? “I can’t believe you fucked somebody from eBay.”
And so, for a year now, Paul had lived apart from his family. And had been working hard to win back their love. He’d been chaste while recourting his wife. But he was quite sure that she doubted his newly found fidelity—he traveled too damn much ever to be thought of as a good candidate for stability—and he’d heard from his daughters that a couple of men, handsome strangers, had come calling on his wife. He couldn’t sleep some nights when he thought about other men’s hands and cocks and mouths touching his wife. How strange, Paul thought, to be jealous of other men’s lust for the woman who had only wanted, and had lost, her husband’s lust. And stranger and more contradictory, Paul vanquished his jealousy by furiously masturbating while fantasizing about his dream wife fucking dream men. Feeling like a fool, but hard anyway, Paul stroked as other men—nightmares—pushed into his wife. And when those vision men came hard, Paul also came hard. Everybody was arched and twisted. And oh, Paul was afraid—terrified—of how good it felt. What oath, what marital vow, did he break by imagining his wife’s infidelity? None, he supposed, but he felt primitive, like the first ape that fell from the high trees and, upon landing, decided to live upright, use tools, and evolve. Dear wife, Paul wanted to say, I’m quite sure that you will despise me for these thoughts, and I respect your need to keep our lives private, to relock the doors of our home, but I, primal and vain, still need to boast about my fears and sins. Inside my cave, I build fires to scare away the ghosts and keep the local predators at bay, or perhaps I build fires to attract hungry carnivores. Could I be that dumb? Dear wife, watch me celebrate what I lack. I am as opposable as my thumbs. Ah, Paul thought, who cares about the color of a man’s skin when his true identity is much deeper—subterranean—and far more diverse and disturbing than the ethnicity of his mother and father? And yet, nobody had ever argued for the civil rights of contradictory masturbators. “Chances are,” Paul often sang to himself while thinking of his marriage. “Chances are.” And he was singing that song in a Los Angeles
International Airport bookstore—on his way home from the largest flea market in Southern California—when he saw the beautiful stranger who had rebuffed him three months earlier at O’Hare.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s Sara Smile.”
She looked up from the book she was skimming—some best-selling and clever book about the one hundred greatest movies ever made—and stared at Paul. She was puzzled at first, but then she remembered him.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s Nonetheless.”
Paul was quite sure this was the first time in the history of English that the word nonetheless had caused a massive erection. He fought mightily against the desire to kiss the stranger hard on the mouth.
“Wow,” she said. “This is surprising, huh?”
“I can’t believe you remember me,” Paul said.
“I can’t believe it either,” she said. Then she quickly set down the book she’d been browsing. “These airport books, you know? They’re entertaining crap.”
Her embarrassment was lovely.
“I don’t underestimate the power of popular entertainment,” Paul said.
“Oh, okay, I guess,” she said. “Wait, no. Let me amend that. I actually have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I guess I don’t either,” Paul said. “I was trying to impress you with some faux philosophy.”
She smiled. Paul wanted to lick her teeth. Once again, she was wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt. Why is it that some women can turn that simple outfit into royal garb? God, he wanted her. Want, want, want. Can you buy and sell want on eBay?
“Are you still married?” he asked.
She laughed.
“Damn,” she said. “You’re as obvious as a thirteen-year-old. When are you going to start pawing at my breasts?”
“It’s okay that you’re married,” he said. “I’m married, too.”
“Oh, well, now, you didn’t mention that the last time we met.”
She was teasing him again. Mocking. Insulting. But she was not walking away. She had remembered him, had remembered a brief encounter from months earlier, and she was interested in him, in his possibilities. Wasn’t she?
“No, I didn’t mention my marriage,” he said. “But I didn’t mention it because I’m not sure how to define it. Technically speaking, I’m separated.”
“Are you separated because you like to hit on strangers in airports?” she asked.
Wow. How exactly was he supposed to respond to that? He supposed his answer was going to forever change his life. Or at least decide if this woman was going to have sex with him. But he was not afraid of rejection, so why not tell the truth?
“Strictly speaking,” he said, “I am not separated because I hit on strangers in airports. In fact, I can’t recall another time when I hit on anybody in an airport. I am separated because I cheated on my wife.”
Paul couldn’t read her expression. Was she impressed or disgusted by his honesty?
“Do you have kids?” she asked.
“Three daughters. Eighteen, sixteen, and fifteen. I am surrounded by women.”
“So you cheated on your daughters, not just your wife?”
Yes, it was true. Paul hated to think of it that way. But he knew his betrayal of his wife was, in some primal way, the lesser crime. What kind of message was he sending to the world when he betrayed the young women—his offspring—who would carry his name—his DNA—into the future?
“Yes,” Paul said. “I cheated on my daughters. And that’s pathetic. It’s like I’ve put a letter in a bottle, and I’ve dropped it in the ocean, and it will someday wash up onshore, and somebody will find it, open it, and read it, and it will say, Hello, People of the Future, my name is Paul Nonetheless, and I was a small and lonely man.”
“You have a wife and three daughters and you still feel lonely?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s true. Sad and true.”
“Do you think you’re as lonely, let’s say, as a Russian orphan sleeping with thirty other orphans in a communal crib in the basement of a hospital in Tragikistan or somewhere?”
“No,” Paul said. “I am not that lonely.”
“Last week, outside of Spokane, a man and his kids got into a car wreck. He was critically injured, paralyzed from the neck down, and all five of his kids were killed. They were driving to pick up the mother at the train station. So tell me, do you think you are as lonely as that woman is right now?”
Wow, this woman had a gift for shaming!
“No,” Paul said. “I am not that lonely. Not even close.”
“Okay, good. You do realize that, grading on a curve, your loneliness is completely average.”
“Yes, I realize that. Compared to all the lonely in the world, mine is pretty boring.”
“Good,” she said. “You might be an adulterous bastard, but at least you’re a self-aware adulterous bastard.”
She waited for his response, but he had nothing to say. He couldn’t dispute the accuracy of her judgment of his questionable morals, nor could he offer her compelling evidence of his goodness. He was as she thought he was.
“My father cheated on us, too,” she said. “We all knew it. My mother knew it. But he never admitted to it. He kept cheating and my mother kept ignoring it. They were married for fifty-two years and he cheated during all of them. Had to go on the damn Viagra so he could cheat well into his golden years. I think Viagra was invented so that extramarital assholes could have extra years to be assholes.
“But you know the worst thing?” she asked. “At the end, my father got cancer and he was dying and you’d think that would be the time to confess all, to get right with God, you know? But nope, on his deathbed, my father pledged his eternal and undying love to my mother. And you know what?”
“What?”
“She believed him.”
Paul wanted to ask her why she doubted her father’s love. Well, of course, Paul knew why she doubted it, but why couldn’t her father have been telling the truth? Despite all the adultery and lies, all the shame and anger, perhaps her father had deeply and honestly loved her mother. If his last act on earth was a declaration of love, didn’t that make him a loving man? Could an adulterous man also be a good man? But Paul couldn’t say any of this, couldn’t ask these questions. He knew it would only sound like the moral relativism of a liar, a cheater, and a thief.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this stuff to you. I don’t say this stuff to anybody, and here I am, talking to you like we’re friends.”
Paul figured silence was the best possible response to her candor.
“Okay, then,” she said, “I guess that’s it. I don’t want to miss my flight. It was really nice to see you again. I’m not sure why. But it was.”
She walked away. He watched her. He knew he should let her go. What attraction could he have for her now? He was the cheating husband of a cheated wife and the lying father of deceived daughters. But he couldn’t let her go. Not yet. So he chased after her again.
“Hey,” he said, and touched her shoulder.
“Just let me go,” she said. A flash of anger. Her first flash of anger at him.
“Listen,” he said. “I was going to let you go. But I couldn’t. I mean, don’t you think it’s amazing that we’ve run into each other twice in two different airports?”
“It’s just a coincidence.”
“It’s more than that. You know it’s more than that. We’ve got some connection. I can feel it. And I think you can feel it, too.”
“I have a nice ass. And a great smile. And you have pretty eyes and good hair. And you wear movie stars’ clothes. That’s why we noticed each other. But I have news for us, buddy, there’s about two hundred women in this airport who are better-looking than me, and about two hundred and one men who are better-looking than you.”
“But we’ve seen each other twice. And you remembered me.”
“We saw each other twice because we are traveling salespeopl
e in a capitalistic country. If we paid attention, I bet you we would notice the same twelve people over and over again.”
Okay, so she was belittling him and their magical connection. And insulting his beloved country, too. But she was still talking to him. She’d tried to walk away, but he’d caught her, and she was engaged in a somewhat real conversation with him. He suddenly realized that he knew nothing of substance about this woman. He only knew her opinions of his character.
“Okay,” he said. “We’re making progress. I sell clothes. But you already knew that. What do you sell?”
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
“Yes, I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Tell me.”
“It will kill your dreams,” she said.
That hyperbole made Paul laugh.
“Come on, it can’t be that bad.”
“I work for a bank,” she said.
“So, wow, you’re a banker,” Paul said, and tried to hide his disappointment. She could have said that she did live-animal testing—smeared mascara directly into the eyes of chimpanzees—and Paul would have felt better about her career choice.
“But I’m not the kind of banker you’re thinking about,” she said.
“What kind of banker are you?” Paul asked, and studied her casual, if stylish, clothing. What kind of banker wore blue jeans? Perhaps a trustworthy banker? Perhaps the morality of any banker was inversely proportional to the quality of his or her clothing?
“Have you ever heard of microlending?” she asked.
“Yeah, that’s where you get regular people to loan money to poor people in other countries. To start small businesses and stuff, right?”
“Basically, yes, but my company focuses on microlending to unique entrepreneurs in the United States.”
“Ah, so what’s your bank called?”
“We’re in the start-up phase, so I don’t want to get into that quite yet.”