706: “I said to myself . . .”
What a Piece of Work I Am, Chapter 29 begins
29
“I SAID TO MYSELF, ‘Ariane, let’s face it. Things haven’t been going your way. You need a change. Time to travel another path.’ ”
“I love it when people talk about what they’ve told themselves, because actually people don’t ever tell themselves anything that way, as if they were talking to themselves.”
“I did.”
“Sure.”
“Stood in front of the mirror, looked myself in the eye and said, ‘Time to travel another path.’ ”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Yes, indeed. Just in case anybody was in the next room, peeking through the cracks. The Ernies. Or Raskol. Or any of Raskol’s little friends.” She pounced on me and began tickling me in the ribs.
“All right, all right,” I said.
“Maybe I really should have literally tried another path—run away, see the world. But I was basically broke. I needed a job, but I didn’t want to go back to Captain White’s—”
“No sense retracing your steps.”
“So one night I headed over to Corinne’s. I stopped outside the door, to compose myself, and, of course, I had the feeling that everything was beginning to play itself out all over again—”
“Déjà vu.”
“You can call it that.”
I nodded.
“You can call it that if you want to equate my experience with the experiences of everyone else who has ever had a sensation of any kind about a repetition of a past experience.”
“Oops,” I said.
“On the other hand, you might prefer to acknowledge that mine was a singular experience. That mine is an individual life.”
“Sorry.”
“This is important. I want you to tell me that you agree that my life isn’t equivalent to any other.”
“Right. I mean, no. It isn’t. You’re you, and there’s nobody else like you.”
“And my life doesn’t stand for anyone else’s life, either.”
“No. It doesn’t. It’s it, and that’s that.”
“Okay. Hold that thought. Forever.”
“You bet.”
“There I was, outside the door to Corinne’s, and I took a moment to get myself under control. I didn’t want to go barging in, asking about a job, making everything obvious, so I took that moment, and then I walked in. Cool, calm, collected.”
“You walked right to the end of the bar nearest to the door, where Panama Red was chewing a toothpick and wiping a glass.”
“I got quite a reception.”
“Whistles, whoops, applause.”
“They were delighted to see me.”
“I’m sure you were always well received at Corinne’s, but this seemed excessive, and you suffered a moment of panic—”
“Not panic.”
“A moment of self-doubt. Despite yourself, you glanced in the mirror to make sure that you weren’t wearing that damned clam hat.”
“I acknowledged the greeting with a smile. Surreptitiously, I looked around the room. There wasn’t much of a crowd, just a weeknight crowd, but from the corner of my eye I spotted someone interesting—that is, someone who interested me. The old man I had seen in the window. It was your grandfather, Peter.”
“My grandfather?”
“Yes. John Leroy.”
“Everybody called him Jack.”
“He was sitting at a table in the back of the room. From that spot he couldn’t have failed to catch sight of me when I walked in, but he didn’t seem to notice me at all. He was looking at nothing.”
“Just sitting there? Forlorn?”
“Yes. Hopeless. He wasn’t looking at me, but I knew that everyone else was watching me. I had a pretty good audience, so I put on a show.”
[to be continued]
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