Any Woman's Blues (32 page)

He called, sounding sane, measured, in control of himself. He proposed lunch. And I, feeling strong enough to deal with so moderate a request, accepted. Maybe lunch would confirm that I’d finally broken the obsession. Sybille and Emmie were against my going, so I went.

 

 

Lunch. Lunch between lovers. Dart and I used to joke that when you start having lunch and actually eating, it’s already over.

Once the date was set, I began preparing. Manicure, pedicure, facial, silk underwear . . . Apparently, meeting Dart is an enterprise that requires new clothes, a non-Thoreauvian enterprise, in short. Beware. Since AA, I have begun to measure everything in those terms.

The dominatrix requires new clothes, the Viva Venezia Ball requires new clothes, Danny Doland required new clothes, lunch with Dart requires new clothes. The message is clear. These are things I should avoid.

But the truth is, I’m not
that
free yet.

We meet at Da Silvano in New York. (Nice little irony in that.)

He’s late.

I’m wearing, over the silk underwear, a very tailored white linen suit with a modified miniskirt. I’m as excited as I was watching the dominatrix, and the feelings are not so very different.

He walks in looking dazzling: blue, blue eyes (or are they new blue contact lenses?), a new blue shirt that some besotted lady must have given him (I
know
it in my bones), khaki shorts, sneakers, Walkman.

We clasp hands. Conversation
ignites.
As if we’ve never been apart.

We sit at a table and talk, eye beams locked—as in the old days. It is all still here, the magic, the chemistry. If he touched my leg, I’d come.

Dart (leaning over the table, stroking my arm): “I’ve missed you so.”

Leila: “Me too.”

Dart: “I love you; there’s nobody like you. Nobody’s ever loved me like you did. Nobody ever will.”

Leila: “That’s true enough.”

He tells me about the bimbo, at my urging. “She loves me,” he says. Not: “I love her.”

Dart: “I’m doing what my father did—marrying a trust fund. She’s tough, has mean eyes. Not sweet like you.”

Leila: “Then
why?
”

He can’t answer this, but I could: her toughness makes him feel more secure than my sweetness did. He’s flipped from S to M. Now he’s the one getting beat.

Leila: “Who’s the boss in the relationship?”

Dart: “I am.”

I smile at him and stroke his hand, knowing better.

Dart: “We should have gotten married.”

Leila: “Darling, we
are
married—in our hearts. How could we be
more
married?”

He weeps. Dart has always been good at weeping on cue.

Dart: “We should take a trip together.”

Leila: “When?”

Dart: “I don’t know—we could manage it.”

Leila: “What about Little Miss Mean Eyes? Sorry. Her name?”

Dart: “Sylvie.”

I remember all the messages Natasha took from a Sylvie. They go back two or possibly three years. My gorge rises. I cross my legs in my spike sandals and watch Dart get turned on. Two can play this game as well as one.

Leila: “Wouldn’t Sylvie be suspicious?”

Dart: “She gives me lots of space.”

No choice, I guess. Mmm. Being the coveted mistress rather than the live-in lady has a certain charm. Suddenly, just by being unavailable,
I
become the prize. Dart has an erection under his khaki shorts. It turns me on. I hear Sybille’s voice saying: “That’s his
profession
—having an erection.” But what does she know about The Land of Fuck? A lot, probably.

We make plans for our mythical trip. I know it’s mythical—does
he?
I will tell my proper millionaire I’m going away to do research (Dart doesn’t have to know I broke up with him weeks ago), and he will tell Sylvie
some
thing (he never bothers much about excuses), and we will go . . . where? We can’t decide.

Dart (romantic): “Venice again. Venice again with you. I’d cut off one nut for Venice again with you.”

Leila (practical): “It would ruin our stay in Venice.”

Dart: “Or Wyoming. Remember Wyoming?”

Leila: “Who could ever forget? And Dubrovnik.”

Dart (smiling his rehearsed smile): “Hong Kong.”

We speak of everything: the fictitious trip, my fictitious fiancé, his (perhaps
also
fictitious) fiancée, his million (as usual) projects. Why am I not more angry at him? Because I have discharged my anger in the
Pandora’s Box
collage? Because I still love him? Because, having passed through some barrier in myself, I have transcended anger? But in my sane mind I do not trust him. And I know I won’t sleep with him.

Am I teasing him or teasing myself?

Dart: “You look so beautiful.”

Leila (thinking of Nighttown): “It must be the life I’m leading.”

Dart: “How’s your Program?”

Leila: “I’ve had slips—but it’s also changed my life. I get furious at the Program a lot, rebel against it. I know there’s more to life than church basements—but it’s also a gift. It’s sent me back to Zen, to Thoreau, to meditation. Things I dabbled in years ago but never understood at all. And perhaps am only beginning to . . .” (I realize I am saying too much, turning him off. He partly left because I needed to get sober.) “This stuff is better left unsaid. How’s
yours?
”

Dart: “I have a beer now and then.”

Leila (knowing I shouldn’t ask): “Do you go to meetings?”

Dart: “The Program
infuriates
me. All those people substituting one addiction for another. I wouldn’t get drunk with those people—why should I get sober with them!”

Leila (changing the subject): “What does Sylvie call you?”

Dart: “She calls me D.D. or Darton-Darton. . . . Sometimes she calls me Trick ’n’ Treat.”

Leila (grimly): “She sounds funny.”

Dart (a tear running down his cheek): “At least Sylvie and I are both struggling together. With you, I was always a seed in the shadow of your forest. I never felt equal. I was blocked.”

Leila (knowing the bullshit for what it is, yet also feeling his pain): “Darling, I understand; I understand
everything.
”

And I
do
. I even know that in some strange way this is much harder for him than for me—though he has a new lover and I don’t, though he supposedly abandoned
me,
though my friends would say he used me.

Not true.

Ada has taught me that we use each other, that we both give and both take, that we both create the psychodrama.

Was it a fair exchange? Who knows? As I often say to the twins, “Life is not fair.”

Dart: “People are so cruel. They love to see love fail. It breaks my heart to run into our old friends.”

Leila: “Me too.”

I know what he means. The gloating when love breaks down is almost worse than the breakdown itself. All those people so eager to tell you the worst about your former lover. Why can’t they shut up?

We kiss when we say goodbye. The kiss doesn’t quite work. The continents have shifted; the shorelines no longer fit together. We were madly in love as we sat in that restaurant—and now
pffft
. . . gone.

I
know
he would meet me in Venice or Wyoming or Dubrovnik. But
why?
Somewhere between his final departure with Sylvie, AA,
Pandora’s Box,
and Madame Ada, I’ve let him go almost without even knowing it, released him into the universe. He knows that, and perhaps it’s why he’s offering to come back. He knows I won’t take him. And
I
know it. The obsession is gone. And in its wake? Sadness—overpowering sadness—which even cancels out the lust he stirs.

 

 

Now I am at the Gritti, waiting for Julian, who arrives in three days. And I am wretched. I should never have come—even for a week. I have suddenly been hurled back in time. I miss Dart in my
kishkes
—not to mention below. Is this a sort of phantom-limb phenomenon? Having lost him, I wish I could
un
lose him? Having struggled to let him go, I now want him back. Having gotten free, I long for my bondage. I’m terrified I’m going to drink. But it is my heart that is mainly afflicted. It is empty as a dock after an ocean liner has left. Is it Dart I miss, or am I nostalgic for the old hole in my heart? Am I nostalgic only for my pain?

They have given me the same room we had at the start of our idyll—Hemingway’s room. Venice, as always, is a city of ghosts, and you never know from one visit to another whether the ghosts will be benign or malign.

I step into this palatial room alone, exhausted, drained—as you always are when all your molecules have been rearranged by a transatlantic flight—and I crash. This is the room where Dart and I made love six times a night, the room where we screamed and barked and tangled like baby animals, the room we never left till after dark—when we would go out and prowl the streets of Venice by night, speaking of Ruskin, of Byron, of Tintoretto, of Shakespeare, and of how much we loved each other—only to come back to the room and make love again.

Dart is gone, and I have tried to replace him with meditation, with group love, with domination, with solitary work, with writing in my notebook, with my sane mind. Tonight none of that seems enough. The dybbuk is back, my serenity smashed. I have lost Dart—or lost my love of Dart—and I have lost my last baby. I have lost my baby self. I have had a summer of celibacy (if you don’t count Danny or the dominatrix!), and it has made me strong—but now all my bravery has fled, and I am in despair. The silk Fortuny walls seem to have all the love we made in their shining threads. I throw myself on the bed, distraught, hopeless.

All my old hotel room angst returns. All the panic and pain I thought the Program had banished. (These are the worst moments of a “free” woman’s life: alone after jet lag, alone after miscarriage, alone after passionate love, alone after lunch with one’s former lover.)

Everyone has someone, and I am alone! Why can I make nothing last? Why must I keep bolting and remaking my life? Why do I outgrow every man I join my life with? Or do I just throw love away with my two hands, using growth as an excuse?

Sadness, pain, despair. I rummage in my luggage for one of my little AA books and read the thought for today:

Fuck that!

I will throw myself in the lagoon. To die in Venice would be, at least, artistically correct. Isn’t Venice where artists go to die?

I switch on the light, grab some stationery, and scrawl a note to Dart.

I fold up the letter, address it carefully to the apartment in Hoboken (Hoboken!) where he lives with his little bimbo, amid my books, the clothes I bought him, the film stills I did of him. I tell myself that tomorrow I’ll send this missive to him by courier. Tomorrow. Meanwhile, try to sleep.

But sleep eludes me in my jet-lagged state.

I toss and turn, masturbate—slowly and longingly, thinking of him—then, frenziedly,
not
thinking of him. I turn on the light and start to read a friend’s translation of the Book of Job (which I brought along because it matches my mood). When I come to the line “Remember life is a breath,” I break down and cry. It’s 3:00 A.M. in Italy but only 9:00 P.M. the previous night in Hoboken.

I dial Dart’s number. Perkily, jauntily, an answering machine picks up.

It’s the bimbo’s nasal voice.

“This is the home of Darton Donegal and Sylvie Slansky. We can’t come to the phone right now, but if you’ll leave a message, we’ll get back to you.
Beep!
”

What is this new, organized Dart? When I knew him, he had no forwarding address, no answering machine, no beep.

HOTEL GRITTI PALACE
VENEZIA

HOTEL
GRITTI PALACE
VENEZIA