Alcock’s Autobiography 2.3
8 May 2011
I ran into L___ last February on a run to Missoula for a periodontist appointment. I had stopped at the Good Food Store to pick up some groceries, mouth still anesthetized and swollen. It was late February, the weather had been clear, the roads fortuitously bare, but it would be dark soon and snow was predicted. The temperature was in the low 20s, and would drop into the single digits after sundown. The glare of on-coming headlights would momentarily blind me and the scintillating snow in the light from my own beams would bring visibility to near zero at times. I was already exhausted from the two-hour drive in, the two hour gig in the chair, and a trip to a hardware store. Ibuprofen had dulled my arthritic pain earlier, but it was wearing off and I hated to take more for fear of damaging my liver. The thought of my return trip, part of which would be after dark even if I left right then, had triggered ‘survival mode’— a glum mood of patient acceptance and persistence focused on a single goal: to get home in one piece. Nothing in town interested me. For years I either disliked or regarded with indifference anything in urban life. I would just run in and go down my short-list as quickly as possible. Then head back.
L___ seemed to recognize me right way, but it took a second or two for my brain to work.
“Peter,” she said under her breath. She was directly alongside me in front of the brussels sprouts. I pivoted, alarmed. No one knew me in Missoula anymore. I had changed beyond recognition and for my part, I didn’t look around.
“Ah! L___,” I said.
“Peter, this is my husband Ralph.” Ralph said Hi and extended his hand, looking down from what seemed to be an enormous height, a trim, clean-shaven, Caucasian, and maybe ten years younger than L___.
“Pleased to met you,” I said.
“Me, too,” Ralph said. He seemed harmless and unlike me I could detect no animosity, no edge. I relaxed.
L___ and I went through the “How many years has it been?” bit and I determined it had been nearly twenty, thinking I was exaggerating; it had probably been only ten.
“Twenty-eight,” she said smiling.
“Ah, fuck,” I said.
“Let’s get a table and sit down.” I agreed and we went to area where they served lunch.
We began to gingerly broach the subject of what each of us had been doing over the past twenty-eight years. To his credit, Ralph had the good sense to excuse himself, to set off on errand that had to do with whatever project they were engaged in before our chance encounter. L__ said he should take the car and that, if it was okay with me, I would take her home, a five minute drive. I had the impression he was well-trained. Like a good Confucian, she accepted full responsibility for him in exchange for fundamental loyalty to her. It appeared to be a long-established, well-oiled, mutually satisfactory relationship.
I decided to stay in town overnight, itself a marginally better option than two hours of misery on a snowy night road. But the additional incentive of talking with L__ made it a no-brainer.
After Ralph left, I told her I was going to book a room at the Sheraton and drive home in daylight the next day. She said I could stay at their house, but I had no interest in it. For one thing, I snored like a mother-fucker.
“I’ll just book a room tonight,” I said. “I was thinking about it anyway ‘cause of the snow and my bad eyes. Also, Perio-gal wore me out.”
“Perio-gal?” And I was about to go into details about one more health problem, one more rotting body part. Ah, to be young! When the body appears as a gift not a burden.
“My dentist,” I said.
“Oh, a periodontist. I see.”
“Yeah. The anesthetic hasn’t worn off and my jaw won’t move right.”
There was pause, and determined not to go further into the subject of physical health, I abruptly changed the subject. I hadn’t really wanted to bring it up, but…
“Do you remember our agreement. We still have one left, right?”
L__ turned her head to the side with a laugh. “I remember it.”
“Well, I can’t make good on it. Even if you, we, want to.”
“You’re married?”
“Yeah, I was. But that’s not the problem.” Shit, here I was again, ready to be gobbled up by the subject of health, medicine, doctors, clinics, bodily ills, the perennial conversation topic of the nouveau old.
She waited.
“Oh, forget it. The point is I can’t do it. Now, ever, with anybody.” I adjusted my ass on the chair and took a drink from my water glass.
I called the hotel and booked a room.
“Would you like to accompany me to dinner?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’ll have to go home first and take care of Ralph’s meal and tell him I’m going eat with you. What time?”
“Let’s eat at the Perl, across from the hotel, at 6:30?”
“Yes. Okay.”
“I’ll drop you off at your place now then,” I said. “I’ll get stuff here tomorrow before I leave. Let’s go.”
That evening, after dinner and two glasses of wine, we went to my room to chat. I brewed some lychee black tea that I kept in the car for “emergencies”, along with my kit: a change of underwear, medium weight wool socks, a pair of light-weight wool pajamas, an ultra-soft toothbrush and prescription toothpaste from Perio-gal, my ‘computer’ glasses, my reading glasses, and a cheap laptop running Linux— an old man’s effects. I also dragged in a ratty cashmere scarf and a novel in Japanese by Takagi Nobuko.
At dinner we had caught up on each others lovers, kids, and business pursuits, but had skirted the subject of our time together. Old lovers were fun, but it was hard to keep mine straight, let alone hers. And kids.. I sketched out a perfunctory list of their above-average accomplishments against a half-imaginary timeline, and L__ explained how she had successfully handled certain problems with hers. I found I was paying more attention to her face, her expressions, her lips, etc., than her words. And business… Of course I was running the company at the time we were together and she wanted to know how that had worked out. I told her I’d sold it and mentioned a few of the subsequent business problems, including the lawsuit. I summed up my eight years with Kumiko, the woman who had drawn me away from L__, and how at the end of the day we had not married. When she wanted to, I didn’t. When I wanted to, she didn’t, having found a “pure boy” from Hokkaido, implying correctly that I was neither pure nor young. I told L__ that I ended up living in Tokyo, with a woman from Hiroshima, and that after seven years together she quit her job and came here to Missoula, where she got an MBA and we got married. And then we lived on the ranch. And how after Aiko died of stomach cancer in 2002, I continued to live there, alone, with occasional long-term visits from my nephew, Richard Alcock.
I stood up and looked out the third floor window at the snow swirling in the street lamp, glad I wasn’t out on the road. There had been a comfortable lull in the conversation as we sipped our tea. I thought she was about to bring up something more intimate, but I was not prepared when she said in a soft voice, ”Take off your clothes.”
I turned and looked her in the eye. She had on a pleasant expression, but she was serious.
“God, L___. No. No. No. No. I can’t. No.” I also shook my head No.
“I know you look like a sack of potatoes. Take off your clothes.”
I shook my head No.
“Can I tell you what happened to me?” I asked, pleading.
She nodded. “I want you to.”
