“You know—that’s an age when we want to seem so hip to it all. Already weary of it all. But we’re still sort of kids at heart. We’re quick to hope, eager to find the good news behind the bad, read good signs in our tea leaves and chicken bones, see good omens—like rainbows or the glow of the setting sun. Red sky at night: sailor’s delight.”
Pause.
“But, you know, we can’t tell one damned glow from another. We can’t tell the glow of love or happiness from the glow of an old myth or the glow of an extra drink.”
Another pause, for punctuation, to let that sink in. Some business with a cigarette pack: fumbling with it, removing a cigarette, then, apparently, recalling that she had intended to tell a story, catching the thread of her narrative, ignoring the cigarette, letting it hang in her fingers, at the ready when she needed it next.
“So. Maybe it was just Christmas spirit that made me susceptible to suggestion, susceptible to Greg’s proposal. Maybe, in the spirit of Christmas, I wanted to give him something, so I gave him—”
A shrug, a cute grimace, her hands brought up to shoulder level and flung outward, the cigarette dangling.
“—myself.”
At last, like Chekhov’s pistol, the cigarette got its moment. She lit it, took a long drag.
“Maybe it was just an extra drink—just Christmas cheer—or maybe I saw my chance, and took it. It is certainly true that at the time I needed—some time. Time to think. Time to myself. And Greg seemed to be offering that.
“The bar—the bar where I was recruited—was Corinne’s. Right here in Babbington. Not far from here. Not far at all. We could walk there. It had seen better days. There was no Corinne—she’d been dead for years and was by that time almost a mythical figure. The bartender was called Red, which allowed the guys who frequented the bar to say things like, ‘I tell you, when the water heater crapped out, it made me see Red!’ ”
That got a laugh.
“And they’d get a laugh—just like that. Every time. It was that kind of bar—the kind full of guys who will laugh at the same joke for years. There was pine paneling all over the place. It looked like someone’s rec room. When Greg came walking in that night, I was standing at the far end of the bar—standing or sitting—Greg and I disagree on that. I was bored, incredibly bored, and I was ready for anything. Well, not anything, but something. Something better than what was happening in my life, which was nothing. Greg caught my eye as soon as he came in. Anybody who wasn’t a regular would have attracted my attention, but Greg would have caught my eye anywhere. He was a good-looking guy. He looked as if he still knew how to enjoy himself—you know that look? I’ve thought about that look and what it actually was. You know what it was? I’ll tell you: he didn’t look as if he worked, that’s what it was. I’d been going to this bar off and on for many a year, and all the other guys I met there, whether they were working or not, always looked as if they just got off work. They were always beat looking. It’s not an inspiring sight—a couple dozen worn-out guys, drooping over their beers. Greg didn’t look that way at all. He looked as if work was not part of the picture. My mother was always telling me, while I was still in school, that I was living the best years of my life and when these years were over I’d know what she meant. Naturally, I didn’t believe her. But when I got out of school and began working—and especially when I began going to Corinne’s where there were all those tired guys lined up—then I understood what she meant. And she hadn’t been talking about me alone. She’d been talking about everyone else, too, everyone I spent time with, my bunch. When we were in school, our obligations and worries were so small. We acted as if we had the world by the balls—and we did, we really did, but we didn’t realize it until we were out in the world and the world had somehow squirmed out of our grip. I didn’t realize it until I saw the looks on the guys I met at that bar. Boys just a few years older than I was were already starting to look like their fathers, and I was sure it wasn’t going to be long before I started looking like my mother. Greg, though—he had a different look. He looked like somebody unto himself, like somebody full of beans. He looked like fun. He spotted me right away, down at the end of the bar, and he smiled at me. That’s not as flattering as it sounds. I would have been flattered if there had been any competition, but believe me, there wasn’t. He kept his eyes on me as he made his way the length of the bar to where I was standing—or sitting—depending on whose memory you want to trust. He came right up to me, as if he knew me, as if he’d been looking for me, and it turned out that he had.
“ ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Greg Tschudin.’ That’s all, just straight out, no line, just his name.
“ ‘Ariane Lodkochnikov,’ I said, just the same way.
“ ‘I’m going to offer you a rare opportunity, Ariane,’ he said. I was pretty certain I knew what kind of opportunity he intended to offer me, and if I was right it wasn’t so rare. I twisted my mouth up in a sarcastic kind of grin to let him know I’d passed up a lot of better opportunities. ‘A rare opportunity,’ he said again.
“ ‘I’ll just bet it is,’ I said, because of course I knew he was expecting me to ask him what kind of rare opportunity it might be, and I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction.
“ ‘It is. It is,’ he said. ‘And it’s not what you think.’ He had a winning smile. It’s a famous smile now, of course. You’ve seen that smile in all the magazines. You’ve seen it on TV. It was an attractive smile, even then. I found it an attractive smile. And I was disposed to listen to what he had to say.
“He said, ‘How would you like to shed the life you’re living and try another one?’
“Well, that wasn’t what I’d been expecting him to say, and it did qualify as a rare opportunity, but I said nothing.
“ ‘How would you like to slough off this self you’re wearing the way a snake sheds its skin, and slip into a different one to see how it fits, see how it looks on you?’
“I said to myself, ‘Hmm, this is interesting.’
“ ‘How would you like to elevate yourself from just plain Ariane Lodkoch—I’m sorry—’
“ ‘Lodkochnikov,’ I said.
“ ‘From just plain Ariane Lodkochnikov to the Ariane Lodkochnikov? How would you like to be a cynosure?’
[to be continued]
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