Trust Exercise(63)
David talked more about the subversiveness of Doc, and Martin interrupted him with comments like, “Isn’t he just a pathetic sod?” shrewdly disguising from the admiring young actors and David his neurotic need for limitless compliments on the complexity of his character as false modesty dressed up as jokey self-deprecation. It was a virtuoso feeling-state lasagna and everybody ate it up and gave Martin back just what he wanted: more laughter, along with protests that his character wasn’t a “sod” at all but an Everyman and maybe even a Jesus.
In addition to dissecting Martin’s high-level bullshit, which had the welcome effect of making her feel less ashamed of her youthful past self that had found him so brilliant, Karen entertained herself by trying to guess how long it would take any of the men to notice her sitting there, not contributing a word to the conversation. But they were all drinking beer, and she wasn’t, so they weren’t even on the same clock. “I think we ought to see the gun in Act One,” she interrupted. “Like Chekhov says. If we’re going to hear a gun in Act Two we’ve got to see it in Act One.”
“Actually, he says that if we see it in Act One, it’s gotta go off by Act Two. But, same difference. That’s a cool point, Karen.”
“I can imagine Doc, like, digging around for something under the bar at some point and just slapping the gun on the bar to get it out of the way,” one of the actors remarked.
“All bar owners keep a handgun,” said another.
“Is that true?” Martin said. “So bloody American. It’s not true in England.”
“Welcome to Bloody America.”
“Maybe he takes it out when the Girl first appears, sorta slaps it on the bar like, Scram, or else?”
“I like that,” said David. “We’ll need a prop gun, but we needed one anyway. Recorded gun noises are lame.”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Karen.
The four young actors planned to linger to see a band that was coming on later so David and Martin and Karen walked out as a trio onto the ruined street of cracked concrete slabs sprouting weeds and other former warehouses that hadn’t yet turned into bar/performance spaces. A few blocks away were railroad tracks on the literal wrong side of which the whole area sat; on the right side, a few miles away across total wasteland, you could see the tidy shape of downtown sticking up, where the traffic lights worked. David might have parked anywhere, there was nothing but parking, but he’d parked directly behind Karen on the desolate street so that, going back to their cars, they were walking together. David’s sports car, with the phone, was long gone. The driver’s-side window of his current vehicle was a black plastic trash bag. Karen’s much envied convertible was also long gone. She drove a practical unblemished car that David recognized only because he’d seen it so often. The shattered sidewalk and desolate street stretched away to an unseen horizon. Black infinity stretched overhead. Out here, on the literal wrong side of the tracks, there wasn’t enough light pollution to lower the salmon-orange haze that was their city’s night sky over them like a comforting blanket. David parking behind Karen was a companionable gesture, in the way of herd animals sidling up to each other at dusk, to less feel the darkness and cold. It made Karen wonder, as they unlocked their cars, whether he was less confident of his judgment than he’d pretended. “Even if he was fooling around with his students,” David had said just a few nights ago, “it’s not a fucking crime. Our standards have gotten so overreaching. We can’t drive without wearing a seat belt and can’t fuck unless the government says it’s okay? We know they all consented.”
“How do we know?” Karen asked in her I’m-not-arguing-just-curious tone.
“He says they did—and sue me, but so far no one’s shown me one good reason not to believe him. Now they say that they didn’t consent, years or a whole decade later. Why’s that?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t prove that they’re lying.”
“Well what about you? Whatever your thing was with him, you weren’t some helpless victim. You gave him the keys to your car. He moved into your house.”
“All true,” Karen said.
“You weren’t some helpless victim,” David persisted. There was a strange fervor in his voice when they talked about Martin. “You could have walked away—you could have kicked him out! Mr. Kingsley kicked him out—and you took him in. If anyone was helpless, it was Martin.”
“I’m not arguing with you,” said Karen. No, she was not some helpless victim. It wasn’t David’s business to decide this, but it happened to be true. Still, that evening he had wanted to prove something, and this evening, as they unlocked their cars, Martin standing there dragging on his cigarette for dear life and pretending to admire the hideous view, Karen sensed David feeling unsure that he’d succeeded in proving it. And when David was feeling unsure, he wouldn’t rest until extracting reassurance.
“Coming to The Bar?” David said with poorly hidden insistence.
“The cost of soda’s too high. Heading home,” Karen said.
“Do come, Karen, we haven’t had a proper chat,” Martin said with poorly faked insistence, so obviously wanting her to leave that she almost stayed just to spite him. But no.