Cult Classic(22)

Vadis lived the kind of ultra-rural life that, because it took place in New York, was considered hip. She owned a car. She composted. She knew the name of her butcher. She had a butcher.

“You’re wet,” she announced, hugging Boots with her free arm.

“You’re observant,” he said.

He put her pussy willows in a jug on the floor.

“Like a bull in the glass shop,” he murmured.

I could sense his pride in a bad joke setting in. I gave him a simpering smile to keep it from going airborne once more.

“Why are you taking a shower?” she asked, sniffing around him in circles. “Have you killed a man?”

“Because I came from the gym and I’m going to get a beer with my friends. Is this satisfactory to you?”

“Oh,” she said, “well, that’s reasonable. Lola, you have a man who goes to the gym and drinks beer. It’s like a catalog. Hold on to this one.”

Deciding this comment was within an acceptable range of sarcasm, Boots gave her a “ha” and retreated into our bedroom. Vadis and I sat on the sofa, where she launched into a story about a guy she’d started sleeping with who was insisting on day dates. I posited that if I were dating Vadis and being siloed into sex, I, too, would inquire about music festivals and walks in the park.

“Maybe,” she said, having lost all interest in her own quandary.

Courtship for her was a simple affair. Vadis: I like your shirt. Suitor: I like your bone structure. Anyone who wanted more was deemed a nuisance and dismissed.

She yawned and complained her jaw hurt.

“From giving head!” she shouted over her shoulder.

“Why do you have to do that? He doesn’t care who you blow.”

“Maybe that’s why.”

Rocket examined the pussy willows with great interest. Vadis slid out a branch and gave it to her, a gift she accepted with shock followed by reckless abandon. Boots emerged, holding a single shoe, staring down at a pile of shoes by the door.

“Where’s your friend?” he said to the shoe. “Ah-ha!”

When the door shut behind him, the cat darted into the bedroom to reclaim the bed and I could feel Vadis’s presence unfurl in the apartment.

“I like what you haven’t done with the place.”

“Wine?” I offered.

“Yes, please. Is it white?”

“It’s red.”

“Either way.”

I cracked the cork so that half of it got jammed in the neck of the bottle. The only way out was down, so I drowned it with a chopstick.

“Watch out for shards,” I said, handing her a glass.

We were silent for a moment, curled up on the sofa. Vadis scraped at her nail polish with her teeth. She told me she was bored of her love life, that it wasn’t part of her the way it was part of me. She said she envied me my string of boyfriends. Not in the way married people envied it, but the reverse. To Vadis, I was a relationship person, the conventional one. Then she began grilling me about Amos. Where had we gone? Did he give me a reason for being at the restaurant? I told her we had a drink, that we fought but not really. What else was there to say? The world did not spin off its axis. She strummed those long fingers on the back of my sofa.

“There is one weird thing,” I said.

She sat up straight as a rod.

“I wound up at the same spot last night and guess who was there?”

“Morgan Freeman?”

“Was that just on the tip of your tongue?”

She shrugged.

“Willis Klee.”

She snarfed her wine onto the sofa cushions and it dribbled down her peasant blouse like a dainty nosebleed.

“Vadis!”

“Sorry. Willis Willis?!”

“You remember Willis? Ten points for you.”

“I listen.”

“Yeah but no, you don’t.”

She got up, wet some paper towel over the sink, and began blotting her chest. The water hit a spoon and splashed everywhere.

“Olympians I will always remember.”

It’s not that Vadis was an unkind person but she could never be confused for a curious person. Wanting to encourage this behavior, I told her about my conversation with Willis. I had not told her about the abortion when I had it. We weren’t as close then; she’d just started working at the magazine before her party, the one where I’d met Willis. But now Vadis hung on every detail, desperate for as much of a transcript as I could reproduce. When I was through, she sank back into the sofa as if she’d been tossed there.

“As you know,” she announced, “I don’t believe in coincidences.”

“Did I know that?”

“I believe you were meant to run into both of them.”

“And now I have.”

I used her knee as support as I got up to retrieve the wine.

“And how does that make you feel?”

I spun around. She was patting her shirt, waiting for a response.

“I don’t know. I feel like time passed and certain boats came by and I didn’t get on board. Or else I wanted to be on a boat but was pushed overboard and so, sure, that makes me reflect on the seaworthiness of the boat I’m in now and it’s just all very nautical.”

“You have so much difficulty letting go of the past,” she decided, wheels turning. “Like, more than anyone I know. Like with the matchbooks.”