Rapture

"I wasn't planning to come just because I thought you needed help or sympathetic company."

"I know, I know. You're very sweet, but-"

"I love you, Georgianne." Fuck sweet!

"I love you too, Jeff."

She means friendship, he thought bitterly. A black thundercloud was swallowing his mind.

"No, really, I mean-"

"I know," Georgianne interrupted. "It's just that I don't want you to come all this way for ... oh, I wish I knew what to say."

Jeff recognized this as the vacant, pseudo-innocent tone of voice a woman uses when she wants you to figure out what she can't bring herself to tell you. He was no longer aware of his whiskey, his cigarette, his room, or even the telephone in his hand. He was floating in darkness, high above the earth, and a voice was broadcasting a message to his brain: Stay there, don't come back.

'Say it's okay,' he begged.

"It's okay, of course. But it's not necessary, Jeff. You don't have to. Really, I mean it. I wish you'd just ... understand that...."

He did. That was the trouble. When he hung up the telephone a few moments later, he kicked the coffee table over in a rage, spilling whiskey and scattering ashes. Then he buried his face in the couch and pounded his head with the heels of his hands. It took more than an hour for the fury and trembling to subside, and then, still in a daze, he noticed that he had bitten clean through one of the seat cushions.

On the following Friday, he called Georgianne at the usual time. No answer. She hadn't told him beforehand that she wouldn't be there, and this single disruption of the routine, the only one to occur in four months, dealt their relationship another mortal blow. He waited grimly until the next Tuesday. Georgianne was there, but the conversation was brief and trivial. She seemed distracted, as if she wouldn't mind getting off the phone because she was busy with something else. He tried to raise serious matters, but it was impossible. Georgianne seemed to have erected an invisible barrier that he couldn't penetrate. Anything he said was either deflected or ignored. Her only news was that she felt fine and was going to Boston the next weekend to see Bonnie. He got the message: she wouldn't be there to take a Friday call.

Jeff knew it was all over before he hung up the phone. His grand scenario had been washed away like a sand castle at high tide. He could hardly believe it, but no other conclusion was possible. Ten months had elapsed since he had re-established contact with Georgianne. He had zeroed in on her, pierced the heart of her life, isolated her, consoled her, pursued her, and opened himself to her. But now, astonishingly, he had apparently passed right through and come out on the other side, as insignificant and transitory as a stray atomic particle. He was back in the vacuum.

After that second Tuesday in February, Jeff abandoned his ritual. He wouldn't call her again. The next time, she would come to him. And there would be a next time-of that he had no doubt.

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PART IV

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Rendezvous

with an Echo

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Au Bon Pain.

He knew Bon: Bon was good, as in Bon Ami household cleaner, or as in Bonjour, one of the three or four French words he did know. Bonjour, monsieur, merci, oui. He'd been a student of German, not French. Bon was good.

Bonnie, as they say in Scotland.

Au was a mystery. Pain was a mystery.

But were they so difficult? Let Au be Oh. Let Pain be Pain. Oh Good Pain! It sounded like something out of Shakespeare, or a toast by the Marquis de Sade. He smiled. The line went perfectly with the jingle on a television beer commercial. "Here's to good pain, tonight is kind of special ..." With good pain. Through good pain. By good pain. Toward the good pain. Pain a la mode. Pie, that was it. Pain had to mean pie. For Good Pie. Disappointing, but then, the solution of a mystery often is. For Good Pain. He liked that much more. For Good Pain, stop here. It sounded punk, and he was feeling punk.

At the next table a small crowd had gathered around two young men locked in a five-minute game of lightning chess. Fingers flew, pieces banged about the board, and the clock was hammered continuously. The challenger lost his dollar. The winner looked philosophical. He was mediocre, a club-strength player, but he could keep his cool for five minutes, which was more than many others could do in the face of a reckless, unsound attack. If you say A, you must ...

It was a mistake to be sitting there, he knew. He could be seen first, at any time, and that was the opposite of what he wanted. The coffee at the bottom of his cup was too little and too cold to bother finishing. He crushed his cigarette in the plastic ashtray, stood up, and left the outdoor terrace of the Cafe Au Bon Pain.