The City of Your Final Destination Page 4

  “I shall write him at once and say no,” said Arden.

  “Yes,” said Caroline.

  They turned into the drive and saw Portia, walking home from school, a ways ahead of them. She was trailing her cardigan in the dusty road and hopping along, singing. Some of her piping notes were carried back to the two women.

  Arden called out her name.

  Portia stopped hopping and singing and turned around. The two women caught her up. Arden leaned down and kissed her.

  “Where have you been?” asked Portia.

  “Having lunch with Uncle Adam and Pete,” said Arden. “How was school? Pick up your sweater, darling. Don’t drag it. Here, give it to me.”

  “What were you singing?” asked Caroline.

  “Did you hear me?” asked Portia.

  “Yes,” said Caroline. “It sounded lovely.”

  “It was just a song,” said Portia. “Well, not a song, really. I was making it up. Oh, before I forget. I’ve got to bring some yarn to school tomorrow. Sister Domina is teaching us knitting.”

  “Knitting?”

  “Yes. It’s either knitting or decoupage. But Sister Julian’s doing the decoupage, so everyone chose knitting. So then we had to count off because there weren’t enough needles and I was an even, and evens are knitting. Ana Luz and Paloma are knitting too. Marta is decoupage, but she’s going to pretend the varnish makes her sick and get switched. Ana Luz showed her how to be sick.”

  “You must teach me to knit,” said Caroline. “I would like to knit a nice, warm gray sweater to wear when it rains.” She drew her arms around herself as if she were chilly. “I used to have the loveliest gray sweater. It was my sister’s. I wore it when I painted, which was stupid of course, but I felt good in it. It must have been full of turpentine because one day I dropped my cigarette on it and it went up in flames. Luckily I got it off before it burned me. That’s when I stopped smoking. Although it’s really drinking I should have stopped. I only dropped the cigarette because I was drunk, you see. But there is only so much we can give up.”

  “We’re knitting scarves, I think,” said Portia. “Not sweaters.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The dog was standing on top of the picnic table, which meant it was time for dinner. The dog communicated in odd ways. When she wanted to go outside she tipped over a wastebasket. The dog was looking toward the kitchen, as if she knew Omar was at the window. I should bring her inside and feed her, Omar thought, but first I must call Deirdre. I must call Deirdre. It was the thing he had been avoiding doing all afternoon. He must call Deirdre before he fed the dog. He picked up the telephone that hung on the wall and dialed her number. She answered in her usual slightly breathless way.

  “It’s me,” said Omar. “Listen, I’ve got to talk to you.”

  “I hate that expression: talk to you. Why can’t it be with? Why can’t you talk with me? Am I to say nothing?”

  “I want to talk with you,” said Omar. “It’s important. I want to see you. Can we get together?”

  “When?”

  “Now. Soon.”

  “I was going to go to Lucy Greene-Kessler’s lecture about the simian aspects of Mrs. Dalloway.”

  “The what aspects?”

  “Simian, I think. But I could be wrong.”

  “There are no simian aspects in Mrs. Dalloway,” said Omar.

  “Of course there are. You can find aspects of anything in Virginia Woolf. Or Lucy Greene-Kessler can. I could meet you at eight-thirty. But what is this about? What’s happened? You sound like something is wrong.”

  “Something is wrong,” said Omar. The dog jumped down from the picnic table and then immediately jumped back up. This meant feed me now.

  “You haven’t burned anything down, have you?”

  “No,” said Omar.

  “Then what?”

  “I’ll tell you when I see you. I have to explain it. It’s complicated.”

  “Wrong and complicated. That doesn’t sound good. Are you okay? Can this wait until eight-thirty?”

  “Yes,” said Omar. “It will take me a while to get downtown. Assuming the car will start.”

  “You should get a new car.”

  “The car is presently the least of my problems.”

  “Oh, my. Is the complicated wrong thing something medical?”

  “No,” said Omar.

  “You’re not going to die or anything, are you?”

  “No. Well, eventually. But no sooner than I thought. I think.”

  “Good. Where do you want to meet? How about Kiplings?”

  “All right. Fine. Although I haven’t got any money.”

  “I do. I’ll see you there at eight-thirty. A little before, maybe. I’ll try to sneak out. Once Lucy gets going she never looks up.”

  Omar parked behind the bank, in the lot reserved for customers. Although it was empty, as it was evening and the bank was closed, the sign that threatened that the cars of noncustomers would be towed at their expense made him nervous. In most public matters he was by nature literally and pridefully obedient. Two girls were playing hopscotch on hastily chalked squares in the far corner of the empty lot. Omar got out of the car. The girls knelt down and watched him cautiously as he crossed the parking lot, as if he might do them some harm. He smiled and waved at them but they just crouched and stared. When had children stopped trusting him? Why?

  He walked up the alley to the street. He stopped outside the bookstore to cruise the free-books box but he couldn’t deal with it: it always depressed him, these books out on the streets, begging to be taken home, like dogs at the pound, books that had filtered down through the economic system and arrived, irrevocably, at the bottom, in a box on the sidewalk. He walked past the shoe store that mysteriously stayed in business even though the shoes in the window never changed. An old couple ran the store and one of them was always sitting inside, smoking. Tonight it was the wife. Omar looked at the shoes behind the transparent yellow shade that was kept perpetually lowered, so the shoes were observed through a sort of jaundiced screen. They were mostly the kind of shoes old ladies wore when their feet got arthritic and gnarled, but most of the old ladies Omar saw in the grocery store now wore sneakers.

  Just past the obsolete shoe store was Kiplings. Kiplings was an Indian restaurant for people who were leery of foreign food. It was Indian cooking filtered through British imperialism and modified for Americans. It was a fairly dismal, awful place but some of the curries were decent and the beer was cheap, and if you drank enough of it the place seemed less awful and dismal. Deirdre was sitting at the bar drinking a Bass Ale with lime, a combination she liked that always slightly revolted Omar. Just the thought of it made the inside of his mouth blanch. He sat down beside her. She kissed his cheek and laid her hand on his shoulder. “How are you?” she asked.

  “Okay,” he said. “How are you?”

  “Awful. I passed by the bookstore and found out they ordered the wrong translation of Turgenev for my 201 next semester. They claimed the one I wanted wasn’t available so they went ahead and ordered the Constance Garnett translation. I can’t stand Constance Garnett, she’s so Victorian and British, she makes everything sound like Dickens. I can’t teach it. I’m furious. And they’re such dopes down there. They don’t understand that all translations are not alike.”

  “That’s too bad,” said Omar.

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s no big deal, but it makes me furious. Constance Garnett! Oh, and before I forget: it was influences of the Crimea in Mrs. Dalloway. I hate it when people put books in a historical context.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s unfair to people like me who know no history. A text should exist outside history. I mean, really, the Crimea! And why is it always the Crimea? Explain that to me.”

  “I think it’s like the Balkans,” said Omar.

  “Well, that makes sense,” said Deirdre. “That makes perfect sense: the Balkans. Because there are several Balkans, there are many Balk
ans. But there is only one Crimea. I think.”

  Omar said nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” said Deirdre. “It just infuriates me. I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “So what’s with you? What’s wrong? Tell me.”

  “Should we get a table?” asked Omar.

  “Are you hungry? Do you want to eat here?”

  “Yes,” said Omar. “Let’s sit down.”

  They sat in a booth and ordered what they always ordered: a chicken madras, a vegetable curry, and a pitcher of beer. “So what’s wrong?” Deirdre asked. “Tell me.”

  “It’s about the fellowship,” said Omar.

  “What about it?”

  “There’s a hitch,” said Omar.

  “How can there be a hitch? You already got it.”

  “I know,” said Omar. “But something’s happened. Or rather, something’s not happened.”

  “What? Tell me.”

  “I didn’t get authorization.”

  Their beer arrived and Deirdre carefully filled two glasses, waiting several times for the foam to settle before she poured more. When she was angry with Omar she tried to take a “time out.” It was a technique she had read about in a women’s magazine she did not admit to reading. You were supposed to allow your anger to settle so that it would not stain your discourse. And so their conversations were often interrupted by these momentary silences while Deirdre became inordinately preoccupied with some meaningless task. Like carefully pouring the beer.

  When the two glasses of beer were finally and equally full she said, “What?”

  “I got a letter from the executors today. They’re not granting me authorization.”

  “I thought you got authorization a long time ago. I thought you couldn’t apply for the fellowship unless you had the authorization and cooperation of the estate.” She sipped her beer.

  “You couldn’t. So on the application I said I had authorization. I didn’t realize you had to have it, I thought you just had to have applied for it. And I got the dates mixed up and apparently mail to Uruguay takes longer than I thought. And I was sure they would say yes. I mean, why wouldn’t they say yes? I have perfectly decent credentials and it’s not like everyone in the world is working on a biography of Jules Gund. I’m sure people aren’t racing to Uruguay beating down their doors. That’s why I picked Gund. Nobody’s ever heard of him.”

  “Omar, don’t be stupid. Of course people have heard of him. He won the Americas Prize. He wandered into the jungle and shot himself in the head.”

  “I don’t think it was the jungle.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I don’t think there’s a jungle in Uruguay. I think it’s more of a savanna. Or a veldt. Or a pampas, maybe.”

  “Whatever. People have heard of him. And the people who have heard of him are exactly the kind of people who write biographies. And race down to Uruguay. What did they say?”

  “Who?”

  “The executors! Have they given authorization to someone else?”

  “No,” said Omar.

  “Well, that’s good. So you could still get it. What did they say? Exactly.”

  “That they don’t see the need for a biography at this time, nor at any time in the future.”

  “You keep saying they. Who are they?”

  “There are three executors. I think that’s part of the problem. Gund’s wife, his brother, and this American woman he lived with at the end. She’s the one who wrote me.”

  “And they’re all down there in Uruguay?”

  “Yes.”

  “That must be cozy.”

  “It’s all very tortured and incestuous, I’m sure. It would make a wonderful book. And now it looks as if I’ll never write it because I’ll have to give back the fellowship because I lied on the application.”

  “But you’re sure there’s not another authorized biography?”

  “Yes. At least that’s what the letter said.”

  “So there is a chance that you could get authorization?”

  “Yes, I suppose: theoretically there is a chance. Although this letter sounded very definite.”

  “Well, it’s your only chance. Otherwise you’ll have to give the fellowship back, and that means—Well, you know what that means.”

  “What?”

  “It means you don’t write the book, you don’t get the book published, your contract isn’t renewed, you lose your job, and you won’t be able to get another job, at least not teaching. And what else can you do?”

  “Nothing,” said Omar.

  “Exactly. So you’ve got to make this happen. Otherwise you’ll end up selling shoes in a mall. And in a way, you haven’t really lied on your application.”

  “How do you figure that?”

  “Well, like you said, if you got the dates confused and if you really thought in good faith that you would get authorization, I’m sure you can get around it. And if you get them to change their minds and grant you authorization, then you won’t have lied. I mean, you will have lied, but only temporarily, and they’ll never need to know. The executors didn’t cc the fellowship committee or anything evil like that, did they?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “Well, it’s really your only chance. If they see no need for a biography now you have to show them that there is a need. Make them think there is a need.”

  “Is there a need? I don’t think the world is really crying out for a biography of Jules Gund.”

  “Fuck the world! The need is yours. Do you want to keep this fellowship, Omar? Do you want to write this biography?”

  “Yes. Of course I do.”

  “Because sometimes it seems as if perhaps you don’t. Sometimes it seems as though …”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t understand how you can fuck up like this. I mean, how could you get the dates wrong? And of course it takes forever for a letter to get to Uruguay! That’s what Federal Express is for.”

  “Federal Express goes to Uruguay?”

  “Federal Express will go wherever you pay them to go. If you want something to happen, Omar, you have to make it happen. Do you want this to happen?”

  “Yes,” said Omar. “I told you: yes.”

  “Then you have to make it happen,” said Deirdre.

  Although Deirdre lived only a couple of blocks from Kiplings, Omar drove her home.

  “Do you want to stay over?” asked Deirdre.

  “No,” said Omar. “I’ve got to go home. I forgot to feed Mitzie.”

  “That stupid dog,” said Deirdre.

  “She’s not stupid,” said Omar.

  “Yes she is. She’s the stupidest dog I’ve ever known.”

  “I’m not going to argue with you about the intelligence of Mitzie,” said Omar.

  “I’m sorry,” said Deirdre. “I know I’m being cranky. I’m sorry. It’s just that …”

  “What?” asked Omar.

  Deirdre ran her finger through the mist that had collected inside the car window. She did not want to be mean. Just wait, she thought. Wait until you don’t feel mean. Don’t say anything while you’re angry. She rolled down the window and erased her traces. “It’s just that, well, this seems awfully symbolic to me in some way.”

  “What?”

  “This business with your fellowship.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She turned away from the window and looked at him. She put her hand on his leg. “I mean, it scares me a little. I think if you want things, you make them happen. Or at least you try to make them happen. And sometimes I think you don’t want things enough. You just let things go wrong, you don’t try, and I think, Well, maybe he doesn’t really want it, what does he want, what does he really want?”

  “What are you talking about? Are you talking about the fellowship?”

  “Yes, but it’s not only the fellowship. It’s—well, it’s practically everything you do.”

  “That’s not true,” said Omar.<
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  “What about the car?” asked Deirdre. “And your apartment? What if Yvonne hadn’t let you use her house? What would have happened then?”

  “I would have found another apartment.”

  “Yes, and probably burned that one down too!”

  “It didn’t burn down,” said Omar. “Besides, it was an accident.”

  “I guess what I mean is that I don’t really believe in accidents,” said Deirdre. “Accidents happen because someone is not paying attention or is making mistakes. I mean the fire occurred for a reason. It wasn’t spontaneous combustion. And you did throw water on it.”

  “It was a fire, okay? I panicked. And I didn’t know you’re not supposed to throw water on a grease fire.”

  “But Omar, you should know! There are just these things you should know. Things you need to know to cope in the adult world. Sometimes I wonder if it’s because you were brought up in Canada. That the social welfare net stopped you from becoming a responsible, autonomous adult.”

  “So you think I’m to blame for the fire?”

  “This isn’t about the fire! Let go of the fire.”