The Names

Ann and Lindsay came down the steps of the British Council, carrying sacks of apples and books. I hailed them from a parkside table in the square. We ordered coffee and watched stooped-over people call their destinations into the windows of passing cabs.Lindsay carried fiction, Ann biography. I lifted an apple from one of the bags and took a lusty bite. It made them smile and I wondered if they interpreted the act as I'd instinctively meant it, meant it in a totally unformed way. To be back again among familiar things and people, alive to the levels of friendship a man enjoys with married women of a certain kind, the wives he is half in love with. Somewhere in the theft and biting of an apple there are elements of innocent erotic wishfulness and other things hard to name."There's a new wall slogan I've been seeing," Lindsay said. "With a date attached?”"Greece is risen," Ann said. "And the date is the date the colonels took power. Sometime in sixty-seven.”"Four twenty-one. Or twenty-one four, as they do it here.”"Then there's the other side of the argument. Was it three weeks ago? Someone killed the head of the riot police.”"I must have missed that," I said."They killed his driver too. Another date. Charles said the assassins left a calling card. November seventeen. Students against the dictatorship. That was seventy-three, I think.”"David's in Turkey again.”This distracted remark, a remark that seemed to drift away from us, so softly spoken and bare, a remark that Lindsay made as an automatic response to talk of violence, prompted us to change the subject. I told them about a letter I'd received from Tap. He liked the sound the water made in the shower when it hit the plastic lining of the shower curtain. That was the letter.Lindsay said David's kids sent videotapes. She also said she had a class to teach and hurried off after the first cup of coffee.We knew what we wanted to discuss but waited a long moment, allowing Lindsay's departure to become complete. A crouched man jogged alongside a taxi, answering the driver's hand-twisting gesture with the name of some district to the north."I saw him yesterday," Ann said. "He called and we had a drink.”"I knew he'd get in touch.”"He's been away. Tried to call me apparently. He was in London.”"See? Business. That's all.”"Yes. They're moving there. The whole region apparently.”"I thought it might be that.”"So I suppose that will be the end of that. A relief actually. Doubly so.”"Also a reversal.”"Yes, I'm the one who's supposed to be dragged off to yet another distant posting. Torn from the arms of love. I'm almost overwhelmed by relief. Go to London, go to Sydney. What a surprise it is, to feel this way. Why is it I have to discover these things as I go along? As events wheel about me like buzzards? Why don't I know, in advance, just once, how I'll feel about a certain thing? I hate surprises. I'm too old. I want to wear a housecoat for the rest of my life.”"It'll take more than that.”"Shut up.”"You'll need to thicken your ankles and wear slippers without backs or sides. You'll need to be blowzy. Thirty pounds heavier. A little bloated, a little unkempt.”"My inner nature," she said. "Wearing flip-flops. It's perfect.”"Standing around ruddy-faced, all your weight on one leg, your hip jutting out.”"Don't look at my hands. I have old fingers.”"It was all conversation. That's all. He's a decent man. His flaws are part of a moral seriousness. Even when he was being completely unreasonable, I had to admire him for it and like him for it. Maybe he had some private suspicions he wanted cleared up. That's all. Talk. His true mission in life.”"Did you tell Charles about us?”"Yes.”"I thought you might have.”"It wasn't an easy position I was in. It never has been. I wanted to shock him a little. Make it real to him, dispel the fog he was disappearing into. I didn't like knowing something he didn't know about his own wife.”"Anyway, that's that.”"We need Lindsay to help us understand all this. She wouldn't have to comment. Only sit and gaze.”"Already I begin to see what an odd match we were.”"Happens all the time.”" 'What do they see in each other?' “"But isn't there something rich and living in all these entanglements, the way we've mingled our lives, all of us, chaotically or not?”"Thank God for books," she said.Biography. It was time I was getting to the office. We said goodbye at the corner, taking each other's hands in the way people do who want to press gladness into the flesh at the end of an uncertain time. Then I crossed the street and headed west.Silent. The rotor wash. The rippling trees. Dust spinning around them. Their hair and clothes blowing. The frenzy.