SO he’s going to have dinner with Liz at the Black Hole. Showering, dressing, getting ready — it all feels comfortingly familiar. For a while, before they moved out of the city to Lincoln, he and Liz must have eaten at the Black Hole once a week. It was a time when they were eating out nearly every evening because they were both so busy. They’d finally given up on the idea of children, had even abandoned their halfhearted investigation into adoption, and Liz had thrown herself into work at John Hancock, determined to impress people and to rise, and succeeding at both. They kept returning to the Black Hole because it was comfortable in the way that old corduroys are. There was the added comfort of feeling anonymous: even though they ate there so often, no one connected with the place ever gave any sign of recognizing them. How pleasant it is to be no one now and then. They could just sit, talk a little if they were in the mood, or barely talk at all if they were too tired or stunned from work, hiding their silence in the business of eating an Indian meal — tearing bread apart, scooping rice up, transferring curries from bowls to plates. Those were wonderful evenings, it seemed, but after Liz left, Matthew began to wonder. Maybe what he’d taken for silent contentment was to her just silence, or worse. No. All that is over. Fourteen years of marriage. Fourteen months apart. It’s over. She’s coming back.
NOW he’s on his way to the restaurant, walking, aware of a certain lightness in his step, in his heart. He’s smiling. If he could carry a tune, he would probably be whistling. He feels as close to attractive as he ever manages to feel now, since he became convinced that he had passed the best point in his appearance, peaked without ever having been aware of it. Now in the morning, when he’s getting ready to leave the house, he seems to see only bad news. Perhaps he looks too closely, but he knows that if he doesn’t examine himself carefully before going out into public, his body is sure to embarrass him: hideous hairs, to choose the first example that presents itself, would sprout from the bridge of his nose if he didn’t pluck them with the tiny tweezers Liz gave him as a stocking stuffer one Christmas. Ah, but tonight he has no thought of that — hardly any thought. All offensive hairs have been plucked or clipped. He feels fine. Having Liz call and suggest that they have dinner together has certainly made him feel better. He put some mousse on his hair and combed it straight back, in a style he picked up from advertisements for Italian suits.
[to be continued]
In Topical Guide 484, Mark Dorset considers Anonymity, Being “No One”: Advantages of; Advertising: Appeal to Desire to Enhance One’s Self-Image; and Fashion, Its Inconstant Nature from this episode.
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