Our Country Friends(31)
“Let’s maybe turn around,” she said.
A towheaded child jumped on a trampoline and did a spectacular somersault as if he were on television. He smiled and waved at Dee upon completion. “Real nice!” she shouted his way. Ed tugged at the sleeves of his City Hunter jacket.
They walked back in silence until she asked him for another cigarette. “You’re going to get me addicted again,” she said, and Ed thought he heard honey in her voice. As the cigarette slipped between her lips, as her eyes narrowed to accept the hit of nicotine, as his vintage lighter bathed the cigarette’s tip in flames, Ed put his other hand around her and pressed her bony shoulder in a way he assumed was friendly, once, twice. You could do this—in other words, light a cigarette for a person, and tap their shoulder while doing so. Almost as a way of steadying oneself while wielding the lighter. On the other hand, many years ago at a rural train station in Slovakia, a handsome man had propositioned Ed over a cigarette in a similar fashion—lighter, shoulder press, shoulder press—and, hungry for experience, he had given it some thought.
What the hell was he doing now? His emotions were a pregnant corgi escaping into the street. Maybe it was the tenor of the times. Single people were scared of dying alone. He remembered the anxiety of entering the Big Island Bungalow, of seeing just how little awaited him. Maybe there was nothing to lose anymore. (Although this morning, upon waking, upon thinking of her, he had righted the photograph of the Kīlauea volcano above his bed, in case Dee ever paid him an extended visit.) Two dogs were snarling at them from behind an electric fence. Only Ed flinched; Dee just kept smoking. Next time they saw something beautiful, he would ask her.
The sun returned as soon as they entered the liberal estates section of the road, where hate had “no home.” They walked past a babbling brook that may have been spring asserting itself in full or a broken pipe up the road. Cattails ran along its length, bowing in the wind, shimmering like grain. The time seemed right now. “So I wanted to try that Tr?? Emotions app with you,” Ed said. She looked up, startled, and Ed thought she was about to say something polite, so he continued: “Just for scientific reasons to be sure. I’m exactly like you. I don’t fall in love. Not for two decades, at least. And it clearly doesn’t work on you either.” He was babbling like the brook.
“So you just want to disprove it?” Dee asked.
“Maybe that’s it. I feel like our lives are so much under the spell of technology these days.”
“But I think it does work for some people,” Dee said. Ed assumed she meant the Actor. Was she aware of his feelings for her? It seemed like everyone else was.
“Forget it,” Ed said. “It was just a stupid thought. I guess I’m bored. It’s just a parlor game in the end.”
“I don’t know,” Dee said. “There’s something offensive about it. ‘Spell of technology,’ like you said. We sign away our rights, and Karen makes a shitload of money. And for what? Many of us have worked so hard to channel our emotions away from easy love.”
“Exactly right!” Ed said. They were so alike in some ways. But he felt dejected by the fact that she wouldn’t try the application with him and that she wasn’t looking for “easy love.” They stood before a barn rotted away through the decades by a series of economic downturns, its gambrel roof see-through enough to permit a view of the mountains on the other side of the river. Clouds cast shadows over the mountains, like dark spots on an X-ray. They were less than six feet apart, and he wanted nothing in his life but the smell of her cheap floral shampoo. If he reached over and took her hand, he surmised that it would be hard, callused, not from the farmwork her ancestors knew but from the steady urban anxiety that was her life now, the constant rubbing of thumb against forefinger.
He watched her stare through the transparent barn, smoking, smoking. She was thinking that she had never met anyone like Ed. He was so outside the system he probably was the system. He reminded her a little of the luxury-watch journalist who had tried to date her, the one who chewed on the left side of his mustache until it curled. They were both fussy, with their clothes, their words and mannerisms, the way they stood both ramrod straight and internally slouched. Did a content person live inside those well-groomed shells? When he lit her cigarette, twice, he had broadcast both shyness and sex, which is why she had requested the second one. No algorithm at work, just a man shuffling through his card deck looking for a trump. Could she have sex with him, then cast him aside? It would be hard given the Japanese reality show format of the next few weeks or months on the Senderovsky estate.
And also, what was the deal with the hand always cupping the ear? Was he receiving instructions from his extraterrestrial masters?
But she was mostly preoccupied with other matters. Even before the virus, there had not been enough attacks on her book. Recently, she had had to take matters into her own hands, had tried to ignite controversy and get invited to a morning show, but the situation kept changing, and there was little room to maneuver. Should she please that Laotian American student at the expensive Minneapolis liberal arts college or incite her?
They walked back toward the house, both in thought.
As they passed the sheep farm, the driver of a black pickup truck with heavily tinted windows, charging down the road at double the speed limit, slammed on the brakes and cruised to within a few meters of them, the engine flexing under the hood, the crackling sound of coolant being displaced. A hazy, presumably male figure waved at Dee, then, not receiving a wave back, floored the gas, skirting right past Ed, enveloping him in the pickup’s fumes.