The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (17 page)

A very pretty young woman sat behind a transparent desk reading a copy of
Princess Daisy.
She looked up and smiled. “Hi, Leslie.”

“Hi, Sally. Sally, this is Paul Domenica. He just arrived.”

They smiled at each other and, to break the ice, Paul said something about how much his girlfriend had liked the book.

“Oh, it’s a hot-fudge sundae. Paul, I can’t stop reading.”

“You’d better not let your boss catch you.”

“Oh, Leslie, he’s the one who gave it to me!”

All of them laughed while Paul and Ms Baker sat down on a couch. It was very comfortable.

“OK, Paul, you said you’ve decided?”

“Yes, I want to go here.” He looked at the coloured brochures on his lap and held up the red one.

“The Movie Rooms? That’s fine!”

“He’s got good taste,” Sally piped up from across the room. Paul felt like he’d given the right answer in Maths class.

“Now, I don’t want to push you, Paul, but do you know yet which Movie Room? I know it’s a big choice, but—”

“Jane Fonda. Period. I don’t have to think for a minute.”

“You like her, huh?” Ms Baker gave Paul’s knee a naughty little slap.

“I love Jane Fonda!”

The phone on Sally’s desk purred and she had it in her hand in an instant. “Yes, sir, he’s right here now. What? No, it’s not necessary. He has already chosen the Movie Rooms. Excuse me? Jane Fonda.”

The person on the other end of the line said something and Sally laughed. She winked at Paul and Ms Baker. “He said the same thing I did, Paul. ‘He’s got good taste.’ ”

Paul looked at Ms Baker, wondering who Sally was talking about. The woman held up a finger for him to wait until the secretary was off the phone.

“Yes, sir. Your next appointment is in half an hour.” She listened for a moment and then hung up. She shook her head. “He’s in the best mood lately. I haven’t seen him this perky in months.”

Paul was about to ask who they were talking about when a door opened somewhere and the Devil came out dressed in a grey three-piece suit. He was obviously in a hurry, but the moment he saw Paul and Ms Baker he smiled broadly and came over to them. “Paul Domenica. Los Angeles, California. How do you do, Paul?” He put out a hand and, without the slightest hesitation, Paul took it. It was deliciously warm. It was a good, firm handshake. Paul liked that. Paul liked
him.

“Such good people we’re getting these days, eh, Sally?” The secretary smiled and nodded. “Well, I’m off. Be back in half an hour. Sally, you take care of Paul for me, you hear?”

“Yes, sir!”

When the Devil was gone, Paul turned to Ms Baker with a quizzical look. “Was I supposed to have an appointment with him?”

“Only if you were undecided, Paul. But don’t worry about that.” She started to get up from the couch.

Paul touched her arm. Somewhere in his heart he felt a single ping of fear, like someone hitting a good crystal glass with his finger. “What, uh, what happens with him if you’re undecided?”

Ms Baker looked at him with that special sort of expression people get when they’re looking out of the car window at an excruciatingly horrible car wreck. Time took a deep breath and there wasn’t a sound in the room.

In that moment, Paul understood everything, and the ping of fear turned into a giant Chinese gong. “Oh.” He looked at the floor and wondered if he’d be able to stand up on his own.

“Paul, don’t worry, you’re all set! All we have to do now is get you settled in.”

The tone of her voice was warm and reassuring. Paul looked at her, then at the secretary. Oddly enough, both had identical expressions on their faces; friendly, almost loving, but absolutely the same. Paul didn’t know whether to be cheered or frightened by this.

“Come on, Paul.”

They said goodbye to Sally and left the nice office for the white corridors again. This time, however, either the whiteness or the endlessness was ominous and not at all like LA airport.

They walked and walked. Paul wanted to talk but found he had nothing to say. Ms Baker seemed in more of a hurry now, and when Paul glanced over at her, her face was a blank.

Suddenly, without warning, they turned a corner and the familiar white gave over to a red identical to the red on the cover of the Movie Room brochure. Paul looked at Ms Baker again. She smiled and hefted her papers. “We’re getting close, Paul. Not long now!”

And then they were there. A red door. Again no sign or number—just a red door that Ms Baker stopped in front of and pointed to.

“
Ici, monsieur.
This is it.” She looked at him and her face was happy and animated again. “You’re just in time for the beginning of
The Chase.
Jane Fonda and Marlon Brando. Not a bad cast, eh? Then comes
Barbarella, Klute, Coming Home, Nine to Five.
What about that? Pretty good for your first time around!”

“And after that?” Paul’s eyes narrowed because it had finally begun to dawn on him what was about to happen.

Ms Baker frowned for the first time. “After that? You see all of the other movies she made. However many that is. Isn’t that wonderful? What more could you ask—”

“Again and again?” His fingers were now very cold.

“You—”

“Without stop? All of Jane Fonda’s movies again and again without stop?”

Ms Baker sighed and looked a little bored. “Yes, Paul, again and again. Again and again and again and again and again and again ...” While she spoke she pointed to the door and it opened.

The first thing Paul saw in the middle of that darkness was the familiar face which he, at one time, would have died for.

I
T BEGAN INNOCENTLY ENOUGH,
sort of. They loved each other. They wanted to grow old together, and that is the only real proof of great love. But recently there was one thing, one large speck of dust on their otherwise-clear lens: sex. It had always been fine with them, and there
were
times when they revelled in each other. But sleep with another person a thousand nights and some of sex’s phosphorescence rubs off under the touch of familiar fingers.

One time, as they worked to catch each other’s rhythms, she said something by accident that made him smile and want to talk about later.

“You shouldn’t!”

He hadn’t been doing anything new or special, so he assumed she was fantasizing a naughty scene with someone else! That thought excited him, particularly because he’d fantasized too—enough times to know it could add a dark, piquant sauce to the ... recipe.

Afterwards, in the blue dark, he touched her hand and asked about it.

“I’m embarrassed.” But then she giggled—her sign she was willing to talk about it.

“Come on, don’t be embarrassed. I’ve done it too. I promise! It’s just another way.”

“You promise you won’t misunderstand?”

“I promise.”

“OK, but I’m really embarrassed.”

He squeezed her hand and knew not to say anything or else she would shut right up.

“Well, it’s not anyone in particular. Just this man. It’s a fantasy. I see him on a subway and can’t stop looking at him.”

“How’s he dressed?”

“The way I like—jacket and tie, maybe in a nice suit. But he’s also wearing fresh white tennis sneakers, which throws the whole thing off in a great way. It’s a touch of humour that says he wears what he wants and doesn’t give a damn what others think.”

“OK. So what happens then?”

She took a deep breath and let it all out slowly before continuing. “I see him and can’t stop looking, as I said. He’s sexy and that’s part of it, sure, but there are other things that make him more special than just that.

“He has these great Frenchman’s eyes, and is carrying a book I’ve been meaning to read for a long time. Finally he looks at me and I’m hooked completely. The best part is, he doesn’t check out my body or anything. Just looks at me and I know he’s interested. I love that ... He doesn’t go over me like I’m a new car in the showroom.”

Her story is much more detailed than he’d have thought. In his own fantasies, he’d make eyes at waitresses in high heels or shopgirls with thick lips. Things were arranged. They’d go back to her apartment. (Conveniently, whoever “she” is always lives alone.) Once there, they’d go to it with enthusiasm and curiosity.

Moments pass before he realizes she’s begun speaking again.

“... follows me when I get off the subway. Knowing he’s there behind makes me incredibly excited. I know what’s going to happen and I know I’ll do it, no matter what.”

She talked on, giving the most minute, loving details. She and Mr White Sneakers never speak, not once. As things get more intense, they slow down until it’s all movement under water.

The only thing that
is
ever said is her line, “You shouldn’t!” once it’s actually happening, and she feels her only small pang of guilt. But that passes quickly because the experience is too rare and extreme to think of guilt.

When she was finished telling it all, there was a silence thick as fur between them. She mumbled something about it not being a very original fantasy.

“Don’t say that! Don’t degrade it! What do you care, so long as it excites
you
? What difference does it make how original it is? I bet three-quarters of most people’s sex fantasies are either about taking or being taken.

“What’s his name?”

“Who, the man? I have no idea. He never tells me.”

“What do you
want
his name to be?”

“I never thought about it. What a funny question.”

He went into the kitchen for some wine. When he returned, the light on her side of the bed was on and she was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees.

“Peter Copeland.” She smiled at him and shrugged as if a little embarrassed.

“Peter Copeland? Sounds like a Harvard man.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. It sounds like the kind of name he would have.”

“OK. Is it always the same fantasy? Do you ever make up others about him?”

She took a sip of wine and thought about it. She no longer seemed uncomfortable talking about Peter Copeland now that he was out and had a name.

“Usually the same—the subway, what he wears ... How he follows me. It’s enough.”

The phrase hit him hard. He’d had so many different fantasies with so many different predictable faces and settings. “It’s enough.” He was jealous of her and her Peter Copeland, content with each other and their silent, mutual fever.

The next day, walking to work, he stopped in the middle of the street and started to smile. At a florist’s, he bought ten tulips, her favourite flower, and arranged to have them sent over to their apartment. On the enclosed card he wrote, “I hope you like tulips. They’re my favourite. Thanks for putting the comet over last night’s sky. Peter.”

And in bed that night, he changed everything. He became an entirely different person in the dark. She couldn’t see him so he could have been anyone. He wanted to be Peter Copeland but didn’t know how.

Usually they spoke, but in this half-hour when they owned each other, he said nothing. From the beginning she understood and responded eagerly. Whenever they sailed towards something familiar, their own from their years together, he steered them away. Then she took over and was strong or passive when he least expected it.

It was all better than he had imagined, and once again he grew so jealous of Peter Copeland. No stranger, however wonderful, deserved what she offered now. The only things he had ever given
his
dream lovers were both anonymous and forgettable.

At the end, when she again said, “You shouldn’t!” he was thrilled she was saying it both to him and someone else. A moment later he wished it were only him.

The next day he bought the book she had been wanting to read. Inside he wrote, “I think you’ll like this. Peter.” She discovered it under her pillow. Sitting down on the bed, she held it on her lap, both hands on top of it and very still. What was he doing? Did she like it?

Their diversity and willingness to go in so many new directions both awed and scared them a little. Both wondered who they were doing this for—themselves or the other? Peter Copeland had become so real in their lives. Yet if each were capable of drawing a portrait of him, there would be two completely different pictures.

That week their nights were long, exhausting experiments. He couldn’t ask her what she liked because it all had to remain silent; spoken only through touch and movement. Every night they were excited and looking at the clock by eight. Whatever they used to do before was unimportant and forgotten. Soon they would slip into their new second skins and whatever was left of the day would hide because it did not know them.

On Thursday she was out walking and decided to buy him a present. In a store, a salesman spread beautiful cashmere sweaters over a glass counter. Lilac. Taupe. Black. She couldn’t decide. Only after leaving the store did she realize she’d chosen one that would look better on Copeland than her husband. That startled her, but she made no move to return it. She simply wouldn’t tell him.

At work he realized he’d written the name
PETER COPELAND
three times on a pad of paper in front of him at the sales meeting. He didn’t even know he was doing it. Each time the script was completely different; as if he were trying to forge rather than create the other man’s signature.

“What’s for dinner?”

“Your favourite—chilli.”

He doesn’t like chilli.

There was no chilli—her little joke—but the tulips he sent were in a new black and yellow vase on the dining table between them. They were like a third person in the room. He wanted to tell her about writing Copeland’s name in the meeting, but the important flowers were enough of the other’s presence for the moment.

He looked at them again and realized he was not looking at the same ones he’d bought: those were pink, these were deep red. Where did she put his?

“It’s tulip season again, huh?”

She smiled and nodded.

“I saw some great pink ones the other day. I knew I should have gotten them for you. Somebody beat me to it, huh?”