The Life of the World to Come (12 page)

Every Saturday since mid-September, when my slow reemergence into civilized society had commenced, Boots, Emily, Sona, and I would cook dinner together at one of our apartments—a tradition that began, I discovered later, as just one stratagem among many that comprised the intricate suicide watch program my dear friends had created (unnecessarily, as it turned out) on my behalf. We'd talk about our lives, by which I mean our jobs, because, in the wild, the latter almost immediately devours the former. After the bar exam, Gracie had moved down to Washington to work for a senator—she sent along regular dispatches of the special madness rooting around in that place. Because Emily was the only one of us who had waded into a law firm, with its requisite long hours and deadening routines, we listened sympathetically to her prim disapproval of colleagues and senior partners. Sona had begun clerking for a famous judge in Manhattan back in September; her stories were more gripping even than those Boots and I—real-life death-row advocates, mind you—brought to the table each week.

“So Tatum,” Sona divulged of her illustrious boss one November evening, “he has this thing where he gives all the clerks new nicknames, almost every morning, based around a common theme. Like, we'll go in, and he'll say, ‘Good morning, Socrates', to me, and Javon will be Aristotle, and Sammy will be Plato, and that's what he'll call us for the day. So, on Thursday, Javon was Mickey Mantle, Sammy was Yogi Berra, and I was Joe DiMagglio—”

“DiMaggio,” corrected Boots.

“Right—DiMaggio. Whatever. So all day Thursday, that's what we are—‘Where are we on the summary judgment denial, Mick?' ‘Yogi, can you red-line the defense brief?' ‘DiMagglio, I need you to—”

“DiMaggio. There is no ‘L' anywhere in his name. His name is Joe DiMaggio. How is it possible you don't know that?” Boots inquired.

“Might have something to do with being born in Armenia, jackass,” Sona replied. “Now stop being racist and listen. Yesterday, I get to work, and both Javon and Sammy are out sick, so it's just me and Tatum in his wing of the courthouse. And I say, just trying to defuse that being-alone awkwardness, ‘How are you going to pick a name for me if I'm the only one here today?' You know, 'cause it's always in threes. And he thinks for a second, and gets this just fantastically creepy look on his face, and sort of eyes me up and down, and says, ‘Maybe you should be Marilyn Monroe, and
I
should be Joe DiMagglio.'”

“DiMaggio,” said Boots.

“Isn't that wild?” asked Sona, notably more intrigued than disgusted.

“What's wild,” nagged Boots, “is that you understand the context of why that's a creepy reference, but still somehow don't know the guy's name. How is that possible?”

“What I think's wild is that you're being sexually harassed at work,” added Emily.

“By a famous person, too,” I offered.

“Yes, by a famous person,” confirmed Emily. “But, for the record, I think my wild thing is sort of the headline here. It'd be great if we could stay focused on that for a second. He was really hitting on you?”

“Hard to say,” answered Sona. “But … yes. He definitely was. I'm pretty sure he's a huge pervert, too. I hear things. I see things. I mean, the man has been married four times, and—I did the math on this—those four wives were a combined seventy-one years younger than him. Seventy-one years! And his first wife was
his age
. So that's a red flag right there, right? Also: I heard from the woman who does our IT that he has, let's say, very particular tastes when it comes to his Google searches. No joke. ‘Young women nude fireplace hearth animal skin rug.' That's verbatim, too—who the hell is into hearth porn? Who uses the word ‘hearth'? It's crazy, right? ‘Young women nude safari jungle cat.' I don't know what that means, but: gross. I'm just gonna ride this one out, though, see how much dirt I can get on him in case I need it later.”

“Jesus,” I said, slowly peeling the damp label off of my beer.

“And how are things down at the hippie store?” she asked with a demonic grin.

“Uh, I think we still like it,” I responded half-heartedly, and looked to Boots for a second opinion.

“It's as good as a job can be, I guess,” he said ruefully, staring off and away. “Of course, I hate all jobs, so there's that.”

“You do not hate all jobs,” countered Emily.

“Jobs like this, I do. Jobs where you have to go in every day, and wear an arbitrary tie. I don't care how excellent the people are—I'll never stop seeing every office as a kind of prison.”

“Well. That's not juvenile or anything,” scoffed Sona.

“The people actually are fairly excellent, I'd say,” I said, again attempting to speak the language of the well-adjusted. “You really couldn't ask for better bosses than Martha and Peter.”

“I heartily concur with that part,” conceded Boots. “But still.”

As always happened, unfailingly, this conversation of ours ultimately seemed to coil, and then tighten, around the subject of my emotional health. Talk of work begat talk of life begat the game where everyone who is maybe interested in self-harm raises their hand.

“Are you still writing imaginary letters to that stupid hussy?” posed Sona as the night drew on. “What was her name again?”

“Fee-o-na,” I intoned. “And no. I've stopped all that.” This was less than true.

“You know, I never did like her,” she went on.

“Yes you did. All of you loved her, and so did I.”

“Not one bit, Mr. Brice. Not one bit. I don't remember that at all.”

She smiled broadly; Sona was a dear sometimes.

“I remember her being unreliable,” she continued. “Unpredictable, really. You never knew when she was going to attack you for no reason. I always thought of your relationship with her as, like, a lion tamer versus lion type ordeal. You were the lion tamer, by the way. I remember she had this weird mole—”

“That's outrageous,” I replied.

“How would you describe your relationship with Fiona, then, in retrospect?” ventured Emily. “Old married couple? Parent-child?”

Everybody giggled the nervous middle school giggle of water-testers.

“What about doctor-patient?” I offered, eager to demonstrate levity.

“What about patient-patient?” shot Boots.

“Hostage,” I went on, “and … emotional terrorist.”

They laughed generously, and I laughed some, too.

“Giving Tree and the Kid from
The Giving Tree,
” I concluded. “That's the one.”

It worked, and they let the subject drop for another evening. I didn't believe a damn word of it—I wanted to, wanted to be the kind of person who could let a big thing go, but—

Maybe it would come? Maybe it would come and I would believe that we were not supposed to be as we were. Maybe it would come, but it hadn't come yet.

After the plates were cleared away that same night, after the toppled carafes of wine, Boots and Emily left to see a movie, so Sona and I remained. Whenever it was only us, it never took long for Sona to loosen, ever so slightly, the stifling belt of her affectations; our conversations had a reliable tendency to dive head-first into the deep end right off the bat.

“Look, this stuff with Fiona,” she began as soon as I shut the door behind our friends.

“Yeah.”

“I don't mean to be glib about it.”

“I know that. I know you don't. It's helpful to joke about it—really, it is.”

“It's what I do. I understand you're a sensitive guy, and I appreciate that. I'm not sensitive, so, it's just what I do.”

“You don't need to explain yourself to me, Sona.”

“No, I want to. You're my friend, and I only have, like, five of those, max. And even though we're very different people—
very
different—I think you know that I care—
blech!
—that I care about how you are. I don't want you to think I don't … you know, care, about what you're dealing with.”

“I know that you care about me,” I said, conclusively.

“And you know how uncomfortable I am with you knowing that.”

“Is there a point to this?”

“I think there is, sure. Look. You know how I'm this stone cold bitch who doesn't have feelings?” she asked me, smiling the way she always did, the way she had to let you know that you could never know the earnest, honest truth. And her dark eyes would say: “track my secret,” every time.

“I know how you project that, sure. I know it isn't true.”

“Well, it isn't true,” she confided, and uncrossed her arms.

“I know,” I said after a moment.

“I'm familiar with feelings,” she said, as though I'd tried to drop an obscure reference, “and I've been, you know, exposed to them at various points in the past.”

“Gosh, Sona, that must have been, just, so hard for you,” I mocked, knowing she wouldn't bring me any closer unless she was absolutely sure that her escape pods—sarcasm, irony, affect—remained operational and nearby.

“I know how you felt when she left. I mean, I don't know—I've never had a whole …
situation
 … like that. But I … I sympathize, even if I can't really empathize, technically. She was your other half, all that shit. I get that. I really do. I'm not indifferent to your shit.”

“Sona, this whole therapy bit you're doing? You should really consider turning pro.”

“I'm doing my best to be sincere here. This kind of thing doesn't come naturally to me. Look, maybe you don't remember this, but back in the dark ages of, like, a few weeks ago, you told me that you, and I quote, ‘couldn't ignore the feeling that your world had ended.' That's some heavy shit, Leo. That stuck with me. Do you know how scary it is to hear that when you're one of the people who cares about you—a club of which I am a dues-paying member?”

“You don't pay dues.”

“
Emotional
dues, Leo.”

“I get it.”

“So, you said you were one hundred percent certain that you would never come back from Fiona. You said that. You were
dead certain
this was the end of the line.”

“I was, at the time. I was certain.”

“So?” she prodded.

“So what?”

“So, have you noticed that you don't feel that way anymore?”

I twisted in my loveseat.

“I'm still not sure that I'll ever come back from—”

“But the world, Leo! The all-consuming end of the—”

“I don't think the world has ended anymore, if that's what you're asking. Not exactly, anyway.”

“And so?” she pressed on.

“And so what?”

“And so it went away, genius. You thought you'd feel that way forever, but you didn't. You were wrong. Can we start by admitting this one truth?”

“That I was wrong?”

“No,” she hollered, “that feelings
go away
, and it's never the end of the world. That's the thing about being a person, Leo. Every feeling you've ever had went away.”

Not every feeling. She did have a point, though: by that time, I'd begun to think of my time without Fiona as something short of a death. Not quite a life—not the one I'd signed up for—but a kind of afterlife, backward-facing and foggy and still. Devoid of harps and fires alike. Neutral. Post-love.

“We're very much alike,” I fired back at her after a full minute of silence. It wouldn't be a conversation—not for us—if I didn't try to provoke Sona too.

“Are we now?”

“We are. We are.”

“Well, that's a shame,” she said, “because you're an enormous train wreck of a human being right now.”

“You kid, but the truth is, we really are very similar.”

“Flattering as that is, Mr. Brice, I gotta say I just don't see it.”

“I do. You terrify me—you know that? We are
very
much alike, Sona. I bet you've contemplated staying single forever, right?”

“Oh, so this is about that?” she lilted maniacally, gliding her feet up onto the edge of the couch.

“About what?”

“You want me to
date
you. You desperately want for me to date you. Ugh, this is just pathetic, Leo. You're better than this.”

“I don't want to date you,” I reminded her truthfully.

“Of course not,” she said, adding truthfully, “and I sure as shit don't want to date you.”

“Of course not,” I replied.

“Because that would be laughably bad for both of us. Two neurotics don't make an … erotic … hang on. Two neurotics don't make an erotic—”

“I get it,” I interrupted.

“Hang on! I'm working on an idiom.”

“We're not talking about that right now,” I went on, ignoring her.

“So what are we talking about?”

“We're talking about this. We're talking about how you've honestly considered quite seriously just being single for the entire rest of your life. I'm right?”

“So?”

“It's okay. What I'm saying is: I've thought about that too.”

“Oh please. How many girls have you been with in the last—”

“Women.”

“I actually met some of them, Leo, and they are girls.”

“They are—”

“They
act
like girls.”

“You're veering the conversation—”

“I
do not like
this conversation,” she snapped back, and retracted her feet up beneath her.

“We—I mean you and I—above all else, we don't want to let anyone who is not us inform who, fundamentally, we are,” I continued.

“We don't.”

“No.”

“I don't know what that means. At all.”