A Working Theory of Love Read online

  The girls are lightly dressed, as if we’re hitting the clubs in Miami: short skirts with Ugg boots, tube tops skintight and grimacing. They shiver. The blonde, Rachel—the more handsome but less cute of the two—reddens and speckles from the gusting cold.

  “What a view,” I say. It’s their first time in San Francisco.

  “It’s awesome,” Rachel says.

  “I can’t believe this is fucking California,” Lexie says, rubbing her arms. She’s round and powdered and young, but she has the deep, raspy voice of an emphysema patient. “So where’s the party around here?”

  “Can’t we just look at the scenery for three seconds?” Rachel says.

  “This is our last city.” Lexie casts a meaningful look my way. I recognize it: she wants rid of me. I must beam gloominess.

  “And you want to do the same thing in this city you do in every city,” her friend says.

  “It’s worked so far, right?” Lexie barks. “We’ve had fun, right?”

  Rachel shakes her head, looking disgusted.

  “I’m surprised you’re traveling all by yourself,” Lexie says.

  All by yourself. I test the words with my tongue, like an extracted tooth. “There are pleasures to solitude,” I say.

  “Sounds like something a loser with no friends would say.”

  Good point. “A loser with no friends can still be right,” I say.

  “Are you one of these married guys?” Lexie asks. “That sneaks around looking for sex?”

  “I’m not married.”

  “You got a walk like a married person,” she says. She locks her arms in her shoulder sockets and hops robotically down the sidewalk, like a wind-up toy.

  “I think you may be confused,” I say, “between married and disabled.”

  “She’s confused about a lot of things,” Rachel says.

  “She’s confused about a lot of things,” Lexie says in a baby voice—a baby with black lung—screwing up her mouth.

  The wind picks up, blowing mist from the crab stands, steaming our faces. I remind myself that I’m supposed to be having fun. This is supposed to be a lark, an exultation of liberty. My boss, Henry Livorno, often insists that there’s no empirical difference between seeming and being. It’s the concept (operationalism) that our project is based on, but it’s also solid wisdom for tonight. If I can make things seem fun, then maybe they’ll be fun.

  “How does a single person walk?” I ask.

  The girls ignore me. Lexie looks off into the distance as if far away she might catch sight of the people she seeks. Rachel’s attention is on a nearby seafood stand. She watches the portly attendant adjust his toque and then remove a series of steaming white crabs from the boiling pot.

  “Those things are huge,” she says.

  “They’re Dungeness crabs,” I say. She has a willowy dancer’s figure and wears no makeup, but her clubbing clothes don’t flatter her. They fit awkwardly, like a disguise. “You want to try one?”

  “Rachel’s kosher,” Lexie says. She gives me a nasty grin.

  “You shouldn’t push me tonight,” Rachel says, hugging her elbows. “I’m cold, and I’m about ready to go back.”

  “Mark Twain once said . . .” I begin.

  “It is fucking cold,” Lexie says, serious now. “You want to change?”

  “Yeah, probably,” Rachel says.

  This would not be the first time an evening slipped away from me. I’m not one of these men blessed with pure desires, who to the game of life bring the virtue of single-mindedness. But I think of Fred and I rally. I invite the girls under the awning of the closest T-shirt shop—OLDE TIME SOURDOUGH SOUVENIRS—and offer to buy them matching sweatshirts with funny names. This will keep them warm. And out.

  “I’m trying to not, like, acquire,” Rachel says, apologetic. “Simplify, simplify.”

  “You’re reading Thoreau?” I ask, and I get a new look from her—one of surprise, maybe gratitude.

  • • •

  AT A DIM BAR in the Marina, we glow vaguely in our baby blue sweatshirts. Lexie is David. Rachel is José. I’m Gina. The black carpet smells of beer, of which I’ve had a few. I’m feeling better. The air is hazy with something—maybe there’s a smoke machine hidden somewhere. Rachel and I sit on stools. Lexie holds on to the tabletop, which is almost chin-level for her. She has a goofy French manicure, nails pearly as plastic, square as chisels. There’s some sort of hump-hump music playing, and she gyrates reluctantly, as if someone talked her into it. She wouldn’t charm Herod out of the Baptist’s head, but she demonstrates four or five basic hip motions used in intercourse. Who is this girl? She must be a type of some sort, a type I’m not familiar with. She’s clearly a conformist—an attitude that gets a worse rap than it ought to; what’s more egalitarian than conformism?—but I don’t know what she’s conforming to. There’s probably a TV show that I, alone in this bar, have not seen. A hit TV show. Something that plugs into the dreams of this crowd—she’s getting plenty of attention from men at tables, men at the bar, men in the shadows by the jukebox. Marina types—taller than average, who hit the gym often, who wear pointy shoes. A more rarefied breed of conformist.

  Lexie turns to me, mid-gyration. “Are you going to buy us more drinks?” she shouts.

  “You don’t sound like you’re from Tel Aviv.”

  “Because I speak English? What are you, an anti-Semite?”

  Rachel reaches into her travel neck pouch, which she wears as a purse, and directs a twenty toward Lexie. “Go yourself.”

  “This isn’t enough,” Lexie says. “I want a Sambuca shot.”

  I hold out another twenty. “Get whatever you like,” I say.

  “You’re fishy,” Lexie says. “I think he’s like a rufie rapist.”

  “Look,” Rachel says. She holds her palm flat on the top of her beer bottle, miming its undruggableness.

  “You know me and her are girlfriends,” Lexie says. “And I don’t mean friends that are girls.” To demonstrate her point, she makes a remarkably crude gesture with two fingers and her tongue. Rachel has a fit of coughing. I think she’s horrified. “So I don’t know where you think this is going, but it’s not going there.”

  I indicate the bar. “Don’t forget to tip.”

  Lexie pats Rachel’s hand over the beer bottle. “Until I’m here again,” she says, walking backwards into the crowd. She points at her own eyes, then points at me. I’m watching you.

  “She knows to tip.” Rachel watches her friend, frowning. Outside, Rachel’s eyes were crystalline green and bright, but here they’re dark and dull, the color of old limes. Her skin is waxy white; a broad brush of young blood runs from cheek to jaw. Blood, as my father once said, is both vital and mortal. He was a physician, after all. “We’re not from Israel—we’re from New Jersey. And we’re not girlfriends. I don’t know why she needs to say that shit.”

  I understand. “It’s fun to shed ourselves once in a while.”

  “I thought the goal was to find yourself.” She thrums her fingers on the table, pushes her sprung hair back. “I don’t mean to mess with your mojo. I know she’s hot.”

  I’m surprised. Have I betrayed an attraction to her friend? Am I attracted to her friend? I watch Lexie waving her arms at the bartender, her skirt pulled up high over her slightly wide thighs. She does have the argument of simplicity.

  “What makes you think I’m interested in her?” I ask.

  Rachel drinks from her beer. “She has really great boobs. They’re so round. And they’re real.”

  “Better question: what makes you think she’s interested in me?”

  “You’d be about middle of the pack for her.”

  Middle of the pack. I don’t know if I’ve ever been describe
d more accurately. This probably means bad things for Rachel’s own attitude toward me. She’s been nice, but maybe too nice. She seems the type to have a boyfriend. I watch Lexie coming back with three bottles clutched in one hand and three shots balanced on the other, all conveyed with the care of an offering.

  “Americans yell so much.” She flips back her hair. “And just stand around.”

  “People don’t stand in Tel Aviv?” I ask.

  She gives me a glimmer of a smile, the first of the evening. It’s almost flirtatious. “They dance, dummy. We have the best clubs. Dome. Vox.”

  “Will you put me up if I visit?”

  She shrugs and looks out into the crowd, resuming her hip motions. If she’s interested in me, she’s not very interested. Or I’ve pressed my case too forcefully. Or she’s just trying to make me jealous. In the darkness, she scans other applicants, not exactly observing them, but observing them observing her. The men’s faces are bland and hostile. They look at Lexie, at Rachel, at the other women, with a free-floating menace, as if they could easily slit their throats. It’s all playacting, a script borrowed from a vampire romance, the savage tamed by a woman’s wiles. And yet there’s a sweetness to the convention. It feels like safer ground than the hipsters and the humanists—my people—who booze and jaw to establish a plausible case: we could care deeply about this person, we just happen not to. Here, there are rules to the game, as clear as if posted next to the dartboard, and the whole enterprise is aided by an honest offering of the wares. Clothes cling to breasts, to delts, to glutes, to abs. They know we’re all real estate, and while they probably hold the eventual hope of making love’s Ultimate Purchase, they’re clearly open to renting. It’s all disconcertingly logical, this straight-arrow wisdom of the meat marketplace.

  “You can stay with me,” Rachel says. “We’ll party at the Dome and the Box.”

  “Is that one place or two?”

  “You’ll have to ask the mayor here.”

  “I didn’t know you were the mayor,” I shout at Lexie.

  “What?” She looks insulted. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  What am I talking about? I don’t know. I think again about that TV show that I, alone in this bar, have not seen. What’s it about? Two crazy girls traveling across the country in tube tops? What do the male characters look like? Not me, I’m sure. I’m miscast. But maybe like these guys—like this young professional by the bathroom—in his pointy shoes, his distressed wide-legged jeans, his hair pushed together in a point, as if someone has been sitting on his head bare-assed. Who is he supposed to be?

  I push myself off the stool. “Bathroom,” I shout to the girls.

  Up close, the young professional is tall, with a gym-rat buffness and a tattoo across his very bare (shaved?) chest that seems to match the embroidery on his shirt. Hopefully, I’ve got that backwards. He smells of a cologne I can’t place, oddly floral. His arms are crossed, beer bottle held like a club. He has the unsmiling poker face of a psychopath.

  I turn to look at the girls. They’re staring in opposite directions, not speaking to each other. The trip has taken its toll.

  “What’s your feeling about brunettes?” I say.

  The young professional eyes me up and down, as if looking for some slice of me to respect. Or maybe it’s a tranche—isn’t that a term these people like?

  “You bring your sisters to the bar, dude,” he says, “they might get eaten up.”

  “I love the word ‘dude,’” I say. Tranche. Dude. These people are on to something. “They’re not my sisters.”

  “Your name Gina?” he asks.

  “Ha!” I say. “Gina! No, I’m talking about the brunette. Why don’t you go, you know, work your magic on her?”

  “The little one?” His face opens up, as if he recognizes me, an old friend he’s always known. He hits me on the arm, hard. He’s smiling, I’m smiling. We’re bros before hos. “I love the little ones,” he says.

  “Awesome,” I say. And in the bathroom, I think, “This is awesome.” It seems awesome, and it is awesome. It’s Thursday night. Thursday! And here I am in my own town, a wayfaring stranger, with two girls from New Jersey via Tel Aviv. And I’ve got this strange guy, who looks like someone famous probably—from a TV show I alone have never seen!—swooping in to wingman this situation. Or maybe he’s piloting. Of course he is. In his mind. It’s all a question of perspective! I shake my head in the bathroom mirror, scrubbing my hands. So much of life—a question of perspective!

  Back in the bar, I find Rachel sitting alone. I point at my ears to indicate how deafening it is. She nods, points at her ears too.

  “Where is Lexie?” I ask.

  “Motorcycle,” she shouts.

  “That was quick.” I look out the purple-tinted window but see nothing.

  “You should have seen her in Phoenix,” Rachel says. “It’s pathetic.” She slurs it: it’s spathetic.

  “Phoenix?”

  “Tucson. Austin. Santa Fe.”

  “Okay,” I say. Tucson, Austin, Santa Fe—like a railroad jingle. I try to feel cheered.

  “This is what we do,” she says. “Girls where we’re from.”

  “I’ve known plenty of girls from New Jersey. It didn’t seem that bad.”

  She puts her elbows on the table. “But were they free?”

  “They seemed pretty liberated.”

  “I don’t mean liberated.”

  I look again to the window. “Lexie seems free.”

  “You’re confused, my friend. Between free and easy.”

  • • •

  THE HOSTEL IS AN old military barracks, cold, drafty, and sonorous. I can hear the occasional voice in the common area, the lone footsteps of a late night trip to the bathroom. Rachel sits on the bed in my tiny room and tugs at her boots like an exhausted farmhand. “Talking computers,” she says, swaying under the exposed bulb. I tried to explain my work (minus its location) on the freezing walk over. She said she wanted to know, but she hasn’t absorbed much. She’s so drunk she looks deboned.

  “You want some water?” I say. I hold her calf in my hand and pull the boot free. Then the other. Free and easy. I’m about to say we don’t have to do this, but why wouldn’t we? What else would two people, similarly situated, do? I put my hand under the heavy band of her sweatshirt and help her take it off, feeling the ridges of her ribs. A clavichord, a scallop shell. Her deodorant smells warmly of cloves. “One more,” she says, and I roll her top up like an inner tube.

  “Are you sad she’s gone?” she asks.

  “Who?”

  “Good answer.”

  I stand up and flick off the light switch. In the sudden, blue darkness, the weak glow of Sausalito comes into focus, bobbing in the tree branches. I approach the window, lean my forehead against the cool glass. It’s just a little town across the bay, but right now it looks like a holy city in the distance, a mirage.

  “Your computer,” Rachel says. “Does it have a weird robot voice?”

  “He doesn’t actually talk. He text chats.”

  “Do you tell him everything? Are you going to tell him about your trip?”

  “I don’t know.” The wind whips reedlike through the trees, a thousand knives on a thousand whetstones. Sausalito is erased. I turn to look at her. “What’s there to tell?”

  “You could tell him you met a really cool girl,” she says. “Moving to California to start a new life.”

  “You’re moving to SF.”

  “Bolinas. I’m going to live with my aunt and uncle in Bolinas. I’m going to finish high school.”

  The wind stops, turned off like a spigot. The noises of the hostel clarify—the mumble of the television, the clinking of bottles.

  �
��Jesus. How old are you?”

  “Twenty. Don’t ask me why I haven’t finished already.”

  “Twenty,” I say.

  She collapses back on the mattress with a thump. The springs wheeze. “Promise me you’ll tell him that. A really cool girl moving to California. New start on life.”

  “New start on life.”

  “You got it.” She pushes herself up, reaches a hand out for me, signaling for me to come over. “I need to tell you something.”

  “I hope I can share it with my computer.” I push off the window. She’s a warm dark form on the white bed, and this close I can smell her, touch her wavy hair. She looks up at me, serious, as if we’re about to make a pact.

  “First, you have to tell me your fantasy.” She speaks quietly but firmly—not ashamed, not abashed. In the dark, her body is a monochrome ivory, clearly visible. Her small breasts, the slight chubbiness at her waist, her long legs, the dull maroon flash of her underwear. But I can’t discern her face. Above the neck, she’s all shadows.

  “You can tell me anything you want,” I say. I’ll carry her secret—it’s something strangers can do for each other.

  “Your fantasy. Tell me yours.”

  I lean in close. There’s no blush of blood in her cheeks; her eyes are not green. Her face is white, black, grey—a mask. A fantasy, I think. Any old fantasy. Just one thing I dream about in bed alone, one way I want to be touched. Where I want her hands, where I want her mouth, what I want her to say. Something. I just have to come up with something.

  2

  LYING IN BED MONDAY MORNING, the idea of work—work, with its immense banality—strikes me as so absurd I wonder how the economy lurches on. Does anyone, anywhere, perform daily tasks of value? Even doctors treat boredom and loneliness as much as any real physical complaint. What do the rest of us do? Make useless shit to sell to each other so we can buy more useless shit. I buy a venti latte so the Starbucks employee can buy Billy Blank’s Boot Camp workout so Billy Blank can buy a new Volt so a GM exec—my brother, for instance—can rent a Yo Gabba Gabba bounce house for the kids’ party. And so on. Where along this line is anything necessary, anything of true human benefit, accomplished?