Jan. 24, 2011 at 10:18am
What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo  #5 Time is rarely our friend.  Usually she’s a real bitch.  The kind of person who does exactly what she wants, irrespective of the requests of those around her, even when she stands to cause real harm.  She doesn’t heal any wounds.  She only makes you think you’re healed – that is, until you run into your former lover when you’re in the grocer’s on a Sunday morning, hung over and unwashed and disappointed by the previous night’s conquest.  Or worse yet, the same morning, the same state of disrepair, but now you’ve just run into a mutual friend of your former lover, around whom you don’t know how to behave, but who can be counted on to deliver an embellished report detailing your greasy hair and ill-removed mascara to the aforementioned ex. Time has no sympathy for us, or for our weaknesses.  Marguerite was keenly aware of this, having experienced this type of encounter within the first month of her arrival in Washington.  She hadn’t told her ex James, now an assistant professor at GWU, that she was coming to the capital because things had ended so uncomfortably and besides, he hadn’t been generous enough in bed to warrant the kind of telephone call that would warm a cold or boring evening.  So it was much to his surprise and her dread when he discovered her in the middle of the produce section at the Whole Foods on P Street, holding three tomatoes in her right hand and enjoying the artificially moist and cold air from the crisper. “Mags?” Merde. She hated when he called her that. It had started as a joke, that he would tease such a pretty woman with such an ugly nickname.  The contrast had made him feel powerful for some reason.  So he kept at it. “Oh – James – um, hi.” “Mags!  What are you doing in DC?” Lie, lie, lie, she told herself.  “I’m just in town briefly, for a short stint at the Holocaust Museum.”  Fucking hangover, she thought, disappointed in her inability to lie faster. “Oh, wow, that’s, um — that’s really great,” he said, uncomfortably and dishonestly.  She hated how awkward he was and wondered why the hell she’d ever convinced herself she could love him. She looked him over: Ill-fitting mass-produced button-down shirt.  Old fleece sweater.  Pleated pants.  Cheaply cut hair.  Poor social skills.  He was everything she hated about academics in the United States.   “Yeah, thanks.  Well, I’d better be going,” she suddenly said, hoping to forcefully extricate herself from this situation before he invited her for coffee – something they both didn’t want to happen, but as an American he would feel compelled to make the offer.  And before she knew it she was through the checkout line and back on the sidewalk.  She quickly returned to her subleased flat, where she violently sliced the three tomatoes and then spent the next thirty minutes in a steaming shower. Time was definitely not her friend.  And it certainly hadn’t done anything for poor Ethan.  But Marguerite knew this and learned to make the most of it, delighting in the short and intense relationships that could happen during brief trips to foreign cities like this one.  That’s why she never let a good opportunity pass her by.  So the next morning when she discovered Adam standing alone in the Hall of Remembrance she couldn’t help herself.  That strange room was home to an eternal flame (didn’t JFK get one too?) and the names of various concentration camps printed on the walls in a futuristic angry-sad font.  It also had the best light of any place within the museum.  Her heart rate increased because of the excitement of finding him, which gave a nice flush to her cheeks.  This is so much better than being upstairs, she thought. Adam’s head turned as he heard shoes on the marble floor, relinquishing his solitude.  In this light he was almost glowing, and although he was far from handsome, she found his smile infectious.  She returned the expression as she walked over to him. “What are you doing here?”  She hoped he wasn’t thinking romantically sad thoughts of the people who had been memorialized here, or perhaps brooding about something in his own life that had moved or troubled him.  Then again, maybe he would need company. “I am planning a summer seminar course,” he said in his fantastic accent.  “I come here because this room has the best light, and no one ever stays in here for very long… so I find that it is a nice place to come and think – no?”  Marguerite loved his pragmatic appreciation of the space and his use of too many words in English.  At that moment she desperately wanted to go with him back to his office, shut the door and hop onto his desk.  She hadn’t had sex in an office since that one summer in Israel, where it was so fucking hot and the view from the office windows at Hebrew University looked out over the golden Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque.  Here, the best thing she could hope to see from Adam’s office would be the top of the Department of Agriculture building – and that would be if he were one of the lucky few within the Museum staff to actually have a window office.  But she suspected that he was too shy to try something like that, and resigned herself to trying to have him in her bed.  “Are you going to Ethan’s memorial service this evening?” she asked. “Yes, I believe that I should – I will go to it.  And you?”  He smiled again.  “I hope I will see you there.” She blushed deeper, but before she had a chance to confirm her attendance a loud voice crashed into the room and broke their privacy. “Hey – what are you two doing here?  I thought I was the only one who knew about this place!”  It was Thompson, a red-faced, overweight, loud fellow who always wore shirts that were too small and ties that were terribly ugly.  Today he had on a grey and white striped shirt and blue and black pinstriped pants, both of which strained to contain his corpulent frame.  He was laughing as he talked, like he always did.  But she didn’t find him funny.   So she bid Adam adieu and walked back to those damn elevators.   Hours later and the darkness had again descended on the fellows’ study; the black square seemed all the more menacing in the face of Ethan’s untimely death.  Marguerite switched off her Macbook Pro and breathed deeply, readying herself for the memorial.  She wondered how empty the Meyerhoff theatre would be, how many attendees would come only out of politeness, or how many, like her, to pick someone up.  Emilia had planned to go, of course, but Leila was having one of her crises and needed emotional support.  No matter, Marguerite could sit with Adam. Because of him, she was actually looking forward to this ridiculous service so much that she couldn’t concentrate.   Then again, perhaps it was the discomfort of running into James yesterday.  Regardless, it had taken her three hours to get through a single page of Bloodlands. At the other end of the study, Deidre had similarly spent the afternoon staring into the screen of her Sony Vaio, unable to make words come from her fingertips, frustrated and angry with herself.  Normally, when something bothered her she found comfort by throwing herself into her work, but not today.  She could not forget the hours of questioning, the harsh fluorescent lights, and the feeling of genuine fear that she had in the DC police station.  They had kept her all night, but Time, her tormenter, made it feel like a week.  Again Deidre lowered her head down onto her desk, blonde hair spilling past her shoulders, cool wood surface pressing against her cheek.  She let her head slide further down, almost off the side of the desk, and let her eyes fall to where Ethan’s body had lain, making sure it wasn’t still there.  It wasn’t still there.  But she didn’t believe her eyes and kept blinking anxiously, violently, checking and rechecking, feeling all the while like someone was watching her, standing over her shoulder. As she rose to leave, she felt someone touch her shoulder.  But no one was there. My god, she thought, am I going mad?  Tense, she checked under the table one last time. 

What you did matters. Or, The Girl With The Number Tattoo  #5

Time is rarely our friend.  Usually she’s a real bitch.  The kind of person who does exactly what she wants, irrespective of the requests of those around her, even when she stands to cause real harm.  She doesn’t heal any wounds.  She only makes you think you’re healed – that is, until you run into your former lover when you’re in the grocer’s on a Sunday morning, hung over and unwashed and disappointed by the previous night’s conquest.  Or worse yet, the same morning, the same state of disrepair, but now you’ve just run into a mutual friend of your former lover, around whom you don’t know how to behave, but who can be counted on to deliver an embellished report detailing your greasy hair and ill-removed mascara to the aforementioned ex.

Time has no sympathy for us, or for our weaknesses.  Marguerite was keenly aware of this, having experienced this type of encounter within the first month of her arrival in Washington.  She hadn’t told her ex James, now an assistant professor at GWU, that she was coming to the capital because things had ended so uncomfortably and besides, he hadn’t been generous enough in bed to warrant the kind of telephone call that would warm a cold or boring evening.  So it was much to his surprise and her dread when he discovered her in the middle of the produce section at the Whole Foods on P Street, holding three tomatoes in her right hand and enjoying the artificially moist and cold air from the crisper.

“Mags?”

Merde. She hated when he called her that. It had started as a joke, that he would tease such a pretty woman with such an ugly nickname.  The contrast had made him feel powerful for some reason.  So he kept at it.

“Oh – James – um, hi.”

“Mags!  What are you doing in DC?”

Lie, lie, lie, she told herself.  “I’m just in town briefly, for a short stint at the Holocaust Museum.”  Fucking hangover, she thought, disappointed in her inability to lie faster.

“Oh, wow, that’s, um — that’s really great,” he said, uncomfortably and dishonestly.  She hated how awkward he was and wondered why the hell she’d ever convinced herself she could love him. She looked him over: Ill-fitting mass-produced button-down shirt.  Old fleece sweater.  Pleated pants.  Cheaply cut hair.  Poor social skills.  He was everything she hated about academics in the United States.  

“Yeah, thanks.  Well, I’d better be going,” she suddenly said, hoping to forcefully extricate herself from this situation before he invited her for coffee – something they both didn’t want to happen, but as an American he would feel compelled to make the offer.  And before she knew it she was through the checkout line and back on the sidewalk.  She quickly returned to her subleased flat, where she violently sliced the three tomatoes and then spent the next thirty minutes in a steaming shower.

Time was definitely not her friend.  And it certainly hadn’t done anything for poor Ethan.  But Marguerite knew this and learned to make the most of it, delighting in the short and intense relationships that could happen during brief trips to foreign cities like this one.  That’s why she never let a good opportunity pass her by.  So the next morning when she discovered Adam standing alone in the Hall of Remembrance she couldn’t help herself.  That strange room was home to an eternal flame (didn’t JFK get one too?) and the names of various concentration camps printed on the walls in a futuristic angry-sad font.  It also had the best light of any place within the museum.  Her heart rate increased because of the excitement of finding him, which gave a nice flush to her cheeks.  This is so much better than being upstairs, she thought.

Adam’s head turned as he heard shoes on the marble floor, relinquishing his solitude.  In this light he was almost glowing, and although he was far from handsome, she found his smile infectious.  She returned the expression as she walked over to him.

“What are you doing here?”  She hoped he wasn’t thinking romantically sad thoughts of the people who had been memorialized here, or perhaps brooding about something in his own life that had moved or troubled him.  Then again, maybe he would need company.

“I am planning a summer seminar course,” he said in his fantastic accent.  “I come here because this room has the best light, and no one ever stays in here for very long… so I find that it is a nice place to come and think – no?” 

Marguerite loved his pragmatic appreciation of the space and his use of too many words in English.  At that moment she desperately wanted to go with him back to his office, shut the door and hop onto his desk.  She hadn’t had sex in an office since that one summer in Israel, where it was so fucking hot and the view from the office windows at Hebrew University looked out over the golden Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque.  Here, the best thing she could hope to see from Adam’s office would be the top of the Department of Agriculture building – and that would be if he were one of the lucky few within the Museum staff to actually have a window office.  But she suspected that he was too shy to try something like that, and resigned herself to trying to have him in her bed. 

“Are you going to Ethan’s memorial service this evening?” she asked.

“Yes, I believe that I should – I will go to it.  And you?”  He smiled again.  “I hope I will see you there.”

She blushed deeper, but before she had a chance to confirm her attendance a loud voice crashed into the room and broke their privacy.

“Hey – what are you two doing here?  I thought I was the only one who knew about this place!”  It was Thompson, a red-faced, overweight, loud fellow who always wore shirts that were too small and ties that were terribly ugly.  Today he had on a grey and white striped shirt and blue and black pinstriped pants, both of which strained to contain his corpulent frame.  He was laughing as he talked, like he always did.  But she didn’t find him funny.   So she bid Adam adieu and walked back to those damn elevators.

 

Hours later and the darkness had again descended on the fellows’ study; the black square seemed all the more menacing in the face of Ethan’s untimely death. 

Marguerite switched off her Macbook Pro and breathed deeply, readying herself for the memorial.  She wondered how empty the Meyerhoff theatre would be, how many attendees would come only out of politeness, or how many, like her, to pick someone up.  Emilia had planned to go, of course, but Leila was having one of her crises and needed emotional support.  No matter, Marguerite could sit with Adam. Because of him, she was actually looking forward to this ridiculous service so much that she couldn’t concentrate.   Then again, perhaps it was the discomfort of running into James yesterday.  Regardless, it had taken her three hours to get through a single page of Bloodlands.

At the other end of the study, Deidre had similarly spent the afternoon staring into the screen of her Sony Vaio, unable to make words come from her fingertips, frustrated and angry with herself.  Normally, when something bothered her she found comfort by throwing herself into her work, but not today.  She could not forget the hours of questioning, the harsh fluorescent lights, and the feeling of genuine fear that she had in the DC police station.  They had kept her all night, but Time, her tormenter, made it feel like a week.  Again Deidre lowered her head down onto her desk, blonde hair spilling past her shoulders, cool wood surface pressing against her cheek.  She let her head slide further down, almost off the side of the desk, and let her eyes fall to where Ethan’s body had lain, making sure it wasn’t still there. 

It wasn’t still there. 

But she didn’t believe her eyes and kept blinking anxiously, violently, checking and rechecking, feeling all the while like someone was watching her, standing over her shoulder.

As she rose to leave, she felt someone touch her shoulder.  But no one was there. My god, she thought, am I going mad?  Tense, she checked under the table one last time.