This Is All a Lie Page 5

  “Who are you?”

  “I am called Amitiel, but how is this relevant?” She lifts her right arm, sniffs at her armpit, and frowns. “Seriously. How is my name relevant?”

  “It’s not,” he says. “I just thought…” He thought her name would help him remember if he’d met her before. He didn’t quite catch her name. He thought he heard ‘animal.’ “Okay, lady. Have we met before? I would remember meeting someone like you but…”

  Amitiel smiles and shakes her head. “…Oh my dear Lord. You want me don’t you? Look at you. You’re drooling. You have no clue about your own heart – you don’t know who, or what, you love. You have no idea about your own capacity to love and still you manage to want me. Remarkable.” She pulls at her scarf, adjusts it. “I would ruin you. You have no idea who I am, or what I am.”

  Ray is stunned. He looks at the flowery tattoos on her arm – the twisting vines and a melded garden – soft blues, orange and green. They’re moving. They seem to be moving. He starts to feel lightheaded. “What? No,” he says. “I don’t know you. I…Who are you?” He’s thinking – what the hell is this? Yes, of course. What man wouldn’t want her? He wonders if this is some sort of prank. There must be a camera somewhere.

  “That’s it, Ray. Stay in character. Stay true to form. Lie to yourself and everyone in your life. Don’t change.”

  He did not tell her his name. “I didn’t tell you my name,” he says. “Who are you, really? Did someone put you up to this? What’s going on?” He thinks about Nancy but she didn’t have time to set this up, and besides, Ray doubts she knows what’s going on yet.

  Ray looks at the buttons on the elevator panel. He leans over and presses “G” again, to make sure this is where they’re going – to be certain there is a destination, and against logic, to speed the descent.

  “My, aren’t you full of questions. At least your questions are honest. So, let me get this straight,” she says. “You just left a woman and now you are standing in an elevator with a strange woman, and you want to fuck her? I bet you would turn around and follow me back up to my apartment. I bet you would make love with me right now, here, against this wall. You know nothing about me, and yet you’re excited by the prospect of having sex with me. Morality, right and wrong, truth, honour…none of these high-minded concepts crosses your mind?”

  “Lady, you don’t know anything about me,” he says.

  The doors slide open at the main floor. Ray takes a half-step into the lobby, holds his hand over the edge and waits for the woman to move past him and good riddance to her. But the woman in the black dress does not step off the elevator and when he turns to let her know he’s holding the door for her, she is not there. The elevator is empty except for a lingering scent. Maybe the scent was the only thing that was ever there. He looks around the corner and into the lobby, and then back into the empty elevator. He steps into the lobby, lets the doors slide shut. He leans against the wall between elevators and breathes, slowly, through his mouth. He isn’t exactly focusing on his breathing. He’s attempting to understand what just happened. He’s weighing reality and finding it suspect. He wonders if he’s hyperventilating. Maybe he’s having an anxiety attack. There was a cousin who had these attacks all the time – what was her name? But then she wouldn’t be related by blood anyway. Jesus, it was complicated being adopted. But still, what was her name? The elevator dings, the door slides open and Ray holds his breath.

  An elderly woman with a dog, a black Labrador on a leash, gets off. They head toward the door. The woman does not notice him. The dog looks him over quickly and then turns away. Perhaps, he is unconscious, passed out in the hallway of the thirty-ninth floor – only dreaming about a tattooed woman in a black dress who knows his name and has no qualms about sniffing her own armpits. If the dog saw him, he must be on the ground. He is tentative about the reality he sees but at the same time, he knows he must keep moving forward – he wants to keep moving toward his car, and then across town, and finally, far away from here. He wants to make space between this place and his life.

  On the way to his car, he checks his pockets for his car keys. It would be a disastrous thing to have forgotten his keys in Nancy’s apartment. In his jacket pocket, he finds tickets for tonight’s hockey game. He forgot he had them – a gift from a co-worker. He’d also forgotten to invite someone. The Rangers are in town, but he’s pretty sure he won’t be going – he wants a glass of wine, a dinner with his family. Across from his car, at the curb, he pauses. He met Nancy at a hockey game. She’d leaned over and asked him about the blue line.

  “Why do they keep stopping the play at the blue line?” Her voice didn’t match his expectation – it was low and husky, and shaded with a Slavic or eastern European accent.

  “Seriously?” he said. He’d had two drinks already, in the club lounge, between periods. He thought this woman was goofing around, or making a statement about the pace of the game. He could not help but notice the wedding ring and its accompanying diamond, which was ostentatious and played against her simple cotton sweater and blue jeans.

  “I was given these seats,” she said. “I am just learning about hockey.”

  Nancy’s seats were actually part of a divorce settlement. A Porsche, and a condo were also part of the deal. She sold the Porsche and bought a Mitsubishi. By the end of the game, two things had happened: Nancy made Ray believe he’d helped her understand the game of hockey, and she’d given him her phone number. He was also a little smitten with her. He told himself this feeling was nothing. He fell in love with expensive suits, and Swiss watches, restaurants, and random waitresses, every day. This was just one more flirtation in a long line. He’d probably never see her again.

  Nancy also had his phone number. She had his business card, and she called the next day. She did not say ‘hello’ or ‘hi, this is Nancy from the hockey game.’ She assumed he’d remember her voice and got to the point. “I’m not married,” she said.

  “Who is this?”

  “Nancy. We met last night. At the hockey game.”

  “Oh, yes. Hello,” he said. “So you’re not married. Good to know.”

  “Yes. I just wanted to clear that up. In case you wanted to call me, that is if you’re not married. God. Maybe you’re married. Are you married?”

  She sounded horrified by this thought and Ray was tempted to tell her he was not married.

  “I am married,” he said. “Married with two daughters.”

  “Oh. Now I feel stupid. I should not have called. How embarrassing.”

  “No. Please. Don’t feel stupid. It was really nice watching the game with you. It was practically innocent.”

  There was a long pause and Ray wondered if perhaps she’d disconnected.

  “Practically innocent. Yes,” she said. “Listen, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “How’s it going?”

  “How’s what going?” Ray leaned back in his chair, swivelled, and looked out the window.

  “Your marriage – how’s it going?”

  He stopped swivelling and focused on her question, which was blunt but also compelling. It was none of her business but he wanted to give her an answer. “It’s fine,” he said.

  “My marriage was fine, too,” she said. “That’s why it ended. Listen, call me sometime if you’d like to have a drink.”

  “Sure,” he said.

  “To be clear. I don’t want to sleep with you. I just want to know more about you. You were a good teacher. Okay. Ciao.”

  She disconnected.

  “Bye,” he said into the silence. In that moment he wanted to sleep with this woman – a year of not being touched and all his ridiculous feelings of aloneness piled up and pushed decency out of the picture.

  Ray thought about his fine marriage. Surely, it was better than fine. He tried to recall the last time he had shared anythi
ng close to intimacy with Tulah. Of course he would love to have the wild exploration of a new body, a new woman who knew nothing about him – a woman with whom he shared no history. A woman who had not hurt him. A woman he hadn’t hurt. She would be a clean slate. A tabula rasa.

  Some sexy whisper of a voice in him said ‘why not?’ and he listened. Even though there was a chorus of voices singing in unison about how this was not the way to fix a marriage, he listened to the small, salacious, sexy voice instead.

  * * *

  Tulah does not sit down. She does not giggle or backtrack. She stands there and Ray calls her bluff. He places five twenties in front of her on the table. He would have liked to have folded them before placing them on the table but the new twenty-dollar bills were all plastic and security holograms and they do not fold well. Tulah takes the money and slips it into a side pocket of her purse. Ray lifts his wine glass and empties it – gulps it down. He does not wait for the waiter to pour more. He picks up the bottle, sloshes another half-glass, and takes a gulp.

  “Oh, you should know – I have not washed for a week,” she says. “Just like your Vikings.”

  Ray has been quietly obsessed – not so quiet around Tulah – with Vikings over the past few months. It began after reading a story in The Guardian about the remains of a Viking woman who was wearing a silver ring inscribed with the Arabic script, “for Allah.” It was a mystery with no clear answers. But the speculation was delicious. The Vikings travelled as far as the Middle East and northern Africa. And there was something in the article about an emissary of the Abbasid Caliph commenting on Vikings and how they were the filthiest of all Allah’s creatures because they did not wash themselves after coitus. He’d observed them as they stood up after sex and just carried on. It was a detail Ray found to be both erotic and fascinating. He’s not sure why he found it to be erotic. He’s not about to see a therapist about it. He’d rather simply accept it as a little quirky peccadillo and move forward. But why would Tulah do this for him? Why would she become a Viking? Ray had shared the story with her and he’d thought at the time she was not paying attention. Ray was moved by her uncleanliness.

  It was likely not true about the Vikings. They were probably as clean as any other quasi-civilization in the tenth or eleventh century. In fact, some academics say, because of the close proximity of hot springs, they bathed once a week, which is far more often than most people of Medieval Europe. Ray secretly prefers the idea of filthy Vikings.

  “Wait five minutes before joining me,” she says, picking up her purse. He watches as she walks across the restaurant and disappears around a corner. The washrooms are downstairs. The stairs turn halfway down and at the bottom there’s an atrium with a mirror and a narrow table – there are always fresh flowers on the table.

  He sips his wine. He’s anxious, excited, and intrigued. He’s trying hard to act normal but this is not normal. It’s as if the same old daily path of his life is there but now there are apparitions, and twists and dark corners. Control your breathing, he tells himself. If you can calm your breathing, you’ll be fine.

  He focuses on an inhalation. He focuses on an exhalation. He focuses on his next inhalation… “Okay,” he says, standing and placing his napkin on the table.

  There is a bouquet of yellow tulips on the table at the bottom of the stairs. Ray places his hand on door to the women’s bathroom, inhales and pushes it open.

  “Tulah,” he hisses, before he sees her. She is leaning against the wall, which is all white subway tile, and next to her is the paper-towel dispenser. She’s smiling as Ray comes in. He feels like he’s in an erotic dream – a dream in which he has no control over what he’s doing. She seems more than a little amused. Her smile is confident and playful. She is not second-guessing.

  Yes, Ray’s thinking. This is what men want. They want their lovers, their wives, their partners, to actually want to be in the room with them – a room in which, perhaps anything can happen. To engage in some sort of shared pleasure. Perfect bodies do not matter. The limited mechanics of making love do not matter. It’s the simply wanting to be there with your lover.

  Ray loves his wife for doing this – for pushing his understanding of desire, and for being so playful and serious at the same time.

  “Okay,” she says. “You paid your money.” She wiggles out of her panties and pushes them into her purse. She pauses, smells her hand and smiles. She steps into the cubicle and turns around. Ray follows her in and she reaches around, pulls the door shut and locks it.

  * * *

  He’d found a parking spot on the street, right across from her building. Ray is dizzy as he gets to his car. It’s as if he just stepped off a ship and his land-legs are wobbly. He places his hand on the hood of the car and takes a couple big breaths. Nancy calls him as he is about to open the car door, and even though he is not fond of confrontation, he picks up. She’s only a voice now, and discretion is still required. Discretion needs to continue. Nancy could make a mess of his life.

  “What are you doing?” she says. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

  “About what? What do you mean?” He pulls his car door open.

  “Really? Did you, or did you not, just break up with me?”

  “I…”

  “…because nobody breaks up with me. I break up with people. I break it off. I break...”

  He wants to tell her that adults don’t ‘break up’ – only junior high school students ‘break up.’ Adults stop seeing each other. They drift apart. They move on. They ‘don’t work’ anymore. They end things. They agree that it’s over. But Ray can sense this is not the time to try and teach Nancy about the appropriate language around the ending of an affair.

  “Nancy,” he says.

  “No. You don’t get to do this.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says.

  “No,” she says. “You can’t be sorry either. This does not happen to me.”

  He takes a conscious breath. “Look, do you want to break up with me? Do you want me to come back up and let you break it off?”

  “No. What is wrong with you?” She pauses – as if the thought crosses her mind that this may not be such a bad idea. As if she’s imagining a scenario in which Ray is starting to touch her – standing behind her – his hand on her back, then her lower back, then her buttocks, and then between her legs. She will pull away, turn around and glare at him. She will ask him, why? Why is he doing what he’s doing? Her wetness will be on his fingers, her scent, and she will say: what’s the point? Of course, he will not have an answer. He might try to say, pleasure. Or bliss. Or desire. But he will know these words are not enough. He will shy away from the word ‘love,’ even if that’s exactly what he feels. He will feel torn. Everything in him will say he cannot love two women at the same time – not like this. And yet he does. He will understand her question, but he will wish he didn’t. He will understand there is no point. They are in stasis. He is at the limit of meaning. The pain in his eyes at this moment will give her pleasure.

  “I thought…” he says into the phone. “I just thought…”

  “…I wanted us to be more real and this makes you run away like a three-year-old? I wanted more, and you have a pouty tantrum. Is wanting more such a bad thing?”

  “No,” he says. “You absolutely deserve more. You deserve everything.”

  “Good. On this, we agree.”

  “Look,” Ray says. “You had to know it would come to this eventually…”

  “…I was just a distraction for you. A throw-away. And when I wanted something normal... you leave.”

  Yes, he wants to say. A thousand-million times yes. Because there was never any room for normal between them. This is the entire point of having an affair. Affairs are not normal – they’re extraordinary, and dangerous, and secret. All these things make affairs exhilarating. Of course, Nancy distracted him from his pockets of unha
ppiness, from thinking about death, from knowing he was getting older by the second. She distracted him from acknowledging the idea that all of this running around and seeking peace, making money, loving, hating, empathizing and driving in automobiles was utterly meaningless. Nancy caused him to feel. His feelings for her were intense and fast. She placed him firmly in the spectrum of pleasure and desire. Sometimes, when he was in bed with Nancy he actually started to believe there could be such a thing as God, that divinity and holiness might be real. With one soft kiss, she could jolt him out of his hamster wheel of reality.

  Ray never told Nancy about his dad leaving when he was five years old but it was an important part of why she didn’t stand a chance. He doesn’t actually know the reasons his father left but he will not do that to his kids. No matter how lovely Nancy is, he will not leave his daughters. But it’s his wife too. She’s growing. She’s been smiling at things differently in the past few months – as if the world had become more interesting – as if there were suddenly eighteen new colours and she could see all of them. He found himself falling in love with his wife again. He wanted to focus on her, and this was not possible when he was ripped in two.

  “Hello? Are you there?”

  “I’d like to think that what we had was real,” he says. “It just wasn’t tenable.”

  “Tenable? Tenable? Why would you use this word?”

  Because it’s the right word, he thinks. “I don’t know,” he says.

  “It’s a lawyer’s word, Ray. It’s an asshole word. That word is a fucking asshole. God. I can’t believe this. I’ve been so stupid.”

  “So was I,” he says, his voice is lifeless and dull.