“Take a seat, Brie-like-the-cheese,” he says. “It’s time you paid for what you did.”
PART 4
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
BRADLEY
“Money’s on the table.”
Glenda—or whatever her real name is—zips up her dress, takes the money, and pads out of the room, heels in hand. With her costume back on, she looks like a professional again. All the desire I felt for her melts away.
Isn’t it strange how that can happen? How can you feel so intensely for a woman and then, one day, not care at all if she lives or dies? It’s not just about sex, though I know that’s what women think. I’m not just an old goat, rutting anything that moves.
No, it isn’t sex that moves me.
More the mutability of our souls, the transformation of our deepest selves.
The first time I hired afille de joiewas a week ago. I’ve had four different women since then. I don’t mean to brag, but I’ve never had to resort to money. Working in a university, I had access to an endless supply of young women. I’m not a predator, and they’re not prey, but there has still been the pursuit, the dance of seduction.
Brie called me a bird of paradise. Maybe that’s all I am. A preening bird that has perfected its routine. It doesn’t make me a liar, though. I have feelings. I’m not a sociopath.
But when those feelings fade, they fade entirely to indifference.
And over time, indifference turns to hate.
I’ve had to be careful over the years. These young women can grow attached—especially when you’re competing with the barely verbal incels that populate college campuses these days. It’s important not to make promises, even when they need to believe a fantasy for me to close the deal.
Like Brie. She needed to believe in our shared future, so I let her believe. But she was different from the others. She was my sacrificial lamb, my offering to the gods.
It worked; the gods have been kind. I walk to the window and look down at the marina in the distance. In the moonlight, I can make out my boat.The Ancient Mariner. A corny, ironic name for someone like me. I have twelve million dollars in my account. I could stay here in this resort for the rest of my life. A new woman every night, if that’s what I want.
I was never indifferent to Brie. Sometimes I'm shocked by my own sincerity. It reminded me of the early years with Grace, before she found out about my liaisons and everything soured, soured, soured, until the end.
She put Brie through the wringer, all for her books. It drove her mad to know she had this creative potential in her body, this genius she could never express. She sacrificed everything for her books, even people. Even our relationship. Even me.
Did I love Brie? What a question. I need to slice these thoughts from my mind like a surgeon. She’s done. I check the newspapers every morning for news of her arrest, but the incompetent police officers are taking their time to discover the evidence I planted. But it will come soon enough.
Still, the sadness remains. The memory of love—what can be more painful? As Dante says, there is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.
But I’ll escape it. As soon as Brie is convicted, I’ll get on my boat and leave this cursed country forever.
I takethe boat out the next morning, as I do every morning. It’ll be Fall soon, and the weather will turn, especially here; but for now, the sea is relatively calm, the wind relatively light. It’s not Fiji or Hawaii, but it will do.
I’m soon out at the islands. After daily private lessons, I’ve become a passable sailor. I know my shrouds and halyards, my sheets and stays. I know how to read a weather report and how to avoid trouble, more or less.
I anchor in a cove within the marine reserve. Brie had told me to come to these islands because of the birds, but all I can make out are noisy gulls. Real life is underwater. I change into my wetsuit and snorkel, and dive.
The further down I go, the more the sea feels like an alien planet. I can leave myself behind, as if my life were a book I can return to the shelf and forget. There are fish the size of dinner plates, copper-orange, with prominent eyes. Fish the size of small dogs, with broad, flat heads, tiny eyes, and green and grey coloring.
I want to go where it’s dark, where the sun has faded, where there’s no sign of human life, but I’ll need to get a scuba tank. I remind myself to book lessons.
I snorkel for hours until my hunger arrives, sudden and forceful. I sail back to the marina feeling pleasantly exhausted, looking forward to the day ahead. A full lunch, an hour with abook, a cocktail. Then, after dinner, a woman. A new woman; always a new woman.
Who would call this life meaningless, or shallow, or empty? If all those men punishing themselves in the suburbs are living deep lives, with their kids and wives and offices, then give me shallow. Every day of the week, every day of my life.
Here’s Whitman.I celebrate myself, and sing myself. I believe in you, my soul.
I slow down and guideThe Ancient Marinerinto its mooring. It’s getting easier—every day, it’s getting easier. I toss my stuff onto the jetty and step across.
