Liars Page 2

  Our talks were just that for a time, though Lidia soon began broaching the subject on her own. She was no less liberal and inviting of nontraditional views, and was intrigued by the idea of exploring love outside the proverbial box. That winter we arranged a getaway and drove north. Lidia wanted to take me skiing. I am not a skier, I prefer the comfort of the fireplace and a large warm toddy, and watching ski bunnies pass by the window with the frosted glint of snow outside. I bundled myself just the same and went with Lidia on rented skies up the hill where we took a lesson.

  The instructor assigned to us was a handsome man in a blue parka vest and the thinnest of leggings despite the cold. He wore a knitted cap pushed back off his ears, high on his head, his chiseled cheeks, as I recall, freshly shaven. We were a small group and Lidia took a liking to our instructor right away. I studied the scene, assessed any encroaching sense of jealousy weighed against potential promise, and found I was okay. On the hillside, in that moment, in the dead of winter, I was excited, and as our instruction ended and Lidia prepared to ski, she made sure to get our teacher’s attention.

  Fresh snow had fallen, and over the soft powder Lidia and our teacher sped down the hill while I duck-stepped sideways and slid over the smallest of safe distances. Lidia was a much more advanced skier, so I spent the day watching my wife wave as she passed me coming and going. Later, she went to a larger hill and I didn’t see her for some time. Back at the lodge, she appeared in our room rosy cheeked and exhilarated from her day and eager to make love. I was accommodating, though in the middle insisted she tell me what she was thinking. Hesitant at first, she finally confided and our sex became feral.

  We parted again the next day as I remained on the smallest slope while Lidia went hunting for further adventure. I retreated to the lodge early, went upstairs, worked for a bit, came back down, and sat by the window with a drink where I soon saw them together. At dinner that night we spoke and it was then I suggested we not be cavalier about our experiences and that she should treat herself to the fullest extent of what she deserves. “This has everything to do with our love,” I said and insisted I was not threatened and understood her desires absolutely.

  She excused herself before dessert, went upstairs, fixed her face, and then departed. I did not see her again until after midnight. We slept closely and skied once more the following day before leaving the mountain. A gray covering had rolled in overnight and the snow that came with it was thick and put ice on our skis and the tracks we covered. I felt bold and tried my hand on a higher hill before we left. The whole trip down, gathering speed without control, I heard the wind through the trees and the creak of frozen branches.

  Chapter Two

  Our market is like most of the others in the city: nouveau-centric, organic, catering to young professionals and folks suddenly conscious about their health. Curious then, for reasons still visceral and not well-thought-out, I followed the couple through the aisles as they stopped for milk and coffee, for bread and wine, for fish and vegetables and meat. Twice she placed her hand on his back. He leaned toward her and whispered something and she laughed. They seemed quite happy, and more than that, haughty in their contentedness, which annoyed me as if their display were meant as a personal attack.

  Determined, I gave chase. At the meat counter I also purchased ground beef and fish. For a moment, I thought I’d lost track of the couple, then found them again near the chips. The woman had her fingers still on the man’s back, the man with his head tipped toward her. When they reached the checkout line, the man squeezed the woman’s hand. She got into a conversation with the cashier about this being the best season for in-state strawberries. “The best,” she said, and her voice was filled with delight.

  He slid down to the end of the counter and bagged their groceries. She was still talking as he took out his wallet and paid. His wallet was brown and slightly worn. The cashier asked to see his ID for the wine, a standard market policy now despite their age. His wife couldn’t resist making a joke and at this, too, he laughed.

  •

  Gloria is in the front room watching TV when I get home. It’s after six and she has on the news. MSNBC Live. I put the groceries down on the kitchen counter and pour myself a drink. Gloria comes into the kitchen and unwraps her fish. Shortly after my divorce from Lidia, Gloria came to Colossal, the recording studio I own, and introduced herself to me. How I came to own a recording studio is one of those odd incidents that happens in life when all of one’s attention is elsewhere.

  I was a few years into my marriage, drinking more than I should, struggling to get my second novel started, when a friend brought me to the Bili Club. A singer-songwriter duo called Group Witness was performing that night. The pair played original tunes; they reminded me of Damien Rice and Dallas Green, though without the depth and intuitive command of their songs. After the show, my friend took me backstage where I told the musicians exactly what I thought of their performance.

  My critique was listened to politely. As I was Eric McCanus, author of Kilwater Speaks, I was indulged and not run from the room. I spoke with a drunkard’s arrogance, claiming to hear in their songs the music that was missing. Although my knowledge of music was limited, my abilities on piano less than marginal then, I knew what I liked and understood the creative process without having to sing or read a note. To their credit, Group Witness gave me a CD of their songs and an invitation to the rehearsal they were having the next day.

  I went home and reviewed their work in progress, and I could hear again the direction I thought their sound should take. I made notes for adding arrangements with keyboard, saxophone, and drums, adjusted their guitars away from a folky strum to more of a pick and echo; all of this evolving from the hum whistle beat in my head. I also changed the chorus on three of their tunes, changed the opening line in their best song, then came and presented my ideas at their rehearsal.

  Already under contract with Front Row Records, Group Witness tested my suggestions at their rehearsal and then again with a full band. A recording was made. Front Row dug the sound. The song “Carried to Shore” was rerecorded, picked up by independent stations, gained momentum, looped into airplay on the bigger broadcasts in over two hundred cities, became a solid hit, and launched Group Witness on a national tour. From this, Front Row called to see if I was interested in working with any more of their upcoming talent.

  The way things happen, right? The first four groups assigned to me wound up with songs on the radio while strong sales put cash in my pocket. Other musicians and record companies began calling; with my reputation in the industry expanding, I decided to formalize my good fortune and bought Colossal. I hired the best people to help me record and manage artists of our own. Ten years later I have a nice gig going, have worked with great artists, and have made serious money; all this while my own career as a writer has circled the drain like a gummy brown turd in a rest stop stall.

  •

  Gloria wears canvas shoes with no arch. Although she is thin, her feet are large and the shoes narrow, causing the weight of her foundation to spill out. I used to like her feet; I would celebrate them along with other features that were new to me once but less so now. The first time Gloria came to Colossal, I was working with a band called Nickity Split. Gloria arrived uninvited and asked to play for me. This sort of impromptu request happened often. Most days I was polite and told folks they could leave a demo, email me a link, or make an appointment to come by and for twenty bucks I would listen. It wasn’t about the money, but if someone really wanted to be heard they’d come up with the cash. I gave Gloria the standard reply, then went about my business.

  Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, her hair cut short, her guitar in a black case with stickers from Modesto and South by Southwest, she appeared to be like most musicians I knew. No one noticed her sitting down and taking out her guitar, but soon the studio was filled with her music. Her voice was rich, a sort of Jonatha Brooke meets Rickie Lee Jones—a fullness in the sound she knew how to
control. Her guitar was an old Martin, her song of choice an original with a hook phrase line, You can’t tell me to go when you already know I’m gone. I turned around and listened. When she finished, I walked over and said, “That’s going to cost you twenty bucks.”

  I couldn’t be sure if she knew I was joking but deadpan she replied, “How about I just blow you and we call it even?” Who couldn’t laugh at that? I invited her to stick around and had her sing backup on a tune we were recording. We went to dinner that night and went back to my place where I told her about Lidia and how I was still coming to terms with our divorce.

  Gloria kissed me and said, “Listen to you.” She drove an old Ford Focus and had a blue duffel bag she didn’t bring inside until the third night. Fred, my dog after Rex, took to Gloria. Fred did not like all the women I introduced him to. Gloria liked Fred but didn’t fawn over him to impress me. When we had sex, I shut Fred in the hall. Gloria told me she was from Kansas, was thirty, and had come east on a caravan tour of small clubs with two other acts. There was a fallout, a best-laid-plans scenario, which left her here looking for work. She slept for a time on the couch of a woman she had met at the Pickle Pub and was renting a room now month to month over on Kettering Street. Three days a week she served the late-breakfast-to-lunch crowd at Danny Karats, a popular downtown diner. She played local gigs, solo mostly, had some contacts and session work, and was, as everyone else, looking for more.

  I sort the groceries on the counter, get out a pan for my burger, and grab a pan for Gloria’s fish, which will take longer to prepare. If I were generous, if I were kind, I would delay the cooking of my burger, would occupy myself in some other way—refilling my drink, setting the table, talking to Gloria while timing things so that our foods finished together. Instead I’m not like this tonight, am distracted and thinking still of what I saw at the market.

  Gloria butters her pan, seasons her fish, and puts it in the oven. I flip my burger and look for cheese. When my food is done, I serve myself, take my drink and plate to the table. Gloria checks her fish, finds the receipt from the market, looks to see how much the meal will cost her.

  •

  Tomorrow I will write:

  In their kitchen, he turned the oven on for her fish while she found a pan for his burger and made him a patty. He set the table, fixed himself a drink, asked if she would like a glass of wine. Their kids come and go, home briefly for the summer, old enough to have lives of their own. They talked together through their meal, their tone with one another familiar and light. After dinner they sat outside with their drinks. He pulled the ottoman in front of her chair and volunteered to massage her feet. She had large feet, thick butternut toes he spread with his fingers, applying the calendula ointment she liked. In their younger days, her legs were nicely curved cinnamon stalks, sinewy and smooth. Age had added to the skin and muscle. He placed his hands palms up so her heel could rest inside, took the beat down spread of her arch, and rubbed with his thumbs, through the skin and deeper.

  •

  After dinner Gloria kisses me and heads out. I don’t ask where she’s going and she doesn’t tell me. Sometimes she tells me, though rarely do I ask. If she has a gig, I go sometimes and listen, and sometimes I don’t. When I go off without her, I sometimes say where I am going even if where I’m going is nowhere Gloria needs to know about. Although we have been living together now for over eight months, I have never told Gloria that I love her. I believe I still love Lidia, though this is unlikely and more an excuse, I think, to not love Gloria. Since coming to stay with me, since living with me and sleeping together most nights, Gloria has not once said she loves me. We have not discussed our relationship, allowing one another to come and go as we will and as we want, as I want and Gloria, too; and through all this we manage to function with an openness Lidia and I aimed for but never really managed to pull off.

  I tell myself Gloria must be going to meet friends, though I suspect she has a date. She has changed her clothes and brushed her hair. Our arrangement does not preclude Gloria from seeing other men. She has gone out before and on occasion not come home. I am fine with this. Other than what risk this poses, STDs and such, I have no concerns and would not complain if Gloria came to me one day and said she had fallen in love. I believe this and also believe she wishes me the same, though we do not talk of it ever.

  Gloria advocates open relationships, and still she is critical when I tell her about Lidia and me; she is not surprised things went south, says a couple can’t party-fuck their way through a marriage. “You have to actually believe in what you’re doing.”

  “We did believe,” I argued and told her again how I thought if Lidia and I were more open in this way our relationship would evolve into something enlightened.

  “Why?”

  “Why did I think that?”

  “No, why would you want that? Who says enlightenment is anything great?” We were in bed when this conversation happened. I remember Gloria naked on the sheet and me sitting up, naked as well and trying to decide if she was serious. I asked how could enlightenment be anything but remarkable, which caused her to look at me as if I was truly naïve and answer, “Enlightenment doesn’t exist, McCanus. Not in any obtainable way. You’re talking about a higher level of awareness, which, for most people, is the difference between distinguishing lime and jade. It doesn’t matter. We’re simple creatures really, with simple needs. How many people do you think can actually handle being enlightened?”

  It was a curious question and not one I was sure I could answer though I said just the same, “Enlightenment may be hard to obtain but it’s still worth pursuing.”

  “Is it? Don’t you think most people have more immediate concerns? Being better to ourselves and others, getting through the day without harm, isn’t that enough without having to worry about being enlightened? This life, McCanus, isn’t complicated unless you make it so. The most important thing we can do in life,” Gloria said, “is learn how to be happy. Whatever sense of enlightenment we achieve comes from this. If we can be happy without hurting anyone else along the way that’s enlightenment. All the rest is garbage.” She went to the window then, still naked, and smoked.

  •

  Later, I am with my lover. My lover is not Gloria. My lover is not Lidia now. My lover is my lover. Driving to see my lover, I think back to what Gloria said before about happiness and consider how I had never thought of happiness in terms of enlightenment, had always somehow believed enlightenment was on a higher plane and not that being happy was a minor achievement, but who after all was ever truly happy? The couple at the market? I seriously doubted. I recalled then the Tolstoy quote in Anna Karenina, how all happy families were said to be happy in the same way while unhappy families were unique in their misery. I disagreed with this, convinced all misery came from the same place, from the failed attempt to love and be loved. Despite what Tolstoy wrote, there was nothing unique about Anna Karenina’s despair. Her mistake was all too common, her belief in love was what ruined her; her refusal to understand that relationships were fragile and ephemeral mostly, untenable over time. Failing to recognize the futility of love and happiness was a fool’s trap for sure and is what caused poor Anna to take a leap grounded in anything but faith.

  My lover likes to fuck until we are completely exhausted. A nearly insatiable bird, afterward we collapse, warm on the blanket, warm in the sheets, warm in the warm spoon cradle I lie, as does she. Prone, yes, I am prone here, prone in every way, turning flatback to her though she wants to cling. If she had been the first to roll away, I would have reached for her. But I manage to be the first to move and with that she tries to find me.

  “It’s time,” I say.

  She dresses before I do, lingers halfway with her shorts slipped on as she searches for her shirt. I like the power of being naked in front of her. Somehow being naked as we speak allows me to feel that all my words are true. What possibly can I hide standing before her bare and bared this way as I say, “The we
ather seems to be changing.” In no hurry to dress now, I watch her find all she needs, scattered there across the floor as if a storm had come not too long before and undressed her.

  We are wordless otherwise, for the moment at least. Groans and grunts prior, if anything of substance was said I don’t recall. I get up and part the blinds. Miles away the horned larks sing. I stand naked in front of the pane and imagine I can hear them.

  •

  In the morning I tried to write, but my effort was worse than usual and for this I blamed the couple at the market. My memory of them had become disruptive and was making a mockery of my current narrative, a story I had struggled to tell since A Full Fog Front crashed and burned, and how was I supposed to write of love as a danger when I couldn’t stop visualizing the two of them floating merrily through the produce aisle like Odysseus and Penelope on MDMA? It occurred to me then, in order to keep writing and to disprove what I thought I witnessed, I had to see them again.

  I drove to the market around noon and again on my way home from Colossal. As it was summer, I wasn’t teaching, so the university was generous with my schedule—over the last few years I had reduced my course load to one class a semester and nothing from June through August. The university was fine with this, their interest only in keeping my name and Kilwater associated with their English department. I went to the market again the following afternoon and that night as well, returned on my way home from Colossal the day after and again the day after that. I went once more that night and then again the next afternoon following a walk with Fred.

  Frustrated, I was beginning to wonder if I had possibly made them up, had exaggerated their relationship and was looking for a reason to not finish my book. Uncertain then what I should do, I wandered back toward the exit where at last I saw them. Near the deli section, pushing their cart, her with her fingers on his back while he had his head turned in order to talk, smiling in that way he did when his eyes alighted on her, they were exactly as before, cloying and nauseatingly engaged. Such a disappointment, such a sad sight, how angry it made me, this canard they were perpetuating, this false display no one wished to see. How was anyone to have faith in the universe if such false prophets were allowed to parade themselves freely through our streets and markets? For the good of everyone, then, I thought for the first time, something must be done.