project/stunt-story

“Victoire,” he said to the moon. “She’s a beauty.”

“There are lots of beauties out there,” I said.

“Right. Aren’t you above it all.”

“Yes, she’s beautiful,” I agreed. I stopped at the middle of the bridge and looked down at the Seine.

“Don’t do it,” Richard said.

“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.” I looked at him. “So, my friend, am I crazy?”

“No, but you’re a carrier.”

“Am I?”

“Yep.”

“This can’t lead to anything,” I said.

“Nope.”

“I’ve got a beautiful family.”

“Yep.”

“Is this pretty much how this discussion’s going to go?”

“Yep.”

“I actually have feelings for this woman.”

“I’m sure you do,” Richard said. “I don’t even know her and I have feelings for her. And for her mother.” He laughed softly. “Don’t listen to me. I know you’ve done the math, but here it is again. She’s nearly twenty-five years younger than you. When she’s thirty-five, you will be fifty-nine. Not quite old, but you see where this is going. Your daughter will be nineteen and will hate your guts. Your son will be fifteen and he’ll excuse himself from the dinner table so he can go to his room and jack off to internet images of Catherine Deneuve.”

“I preferred the monosyllabic routine.”

[...] those two years of graduate school, of writing workshops and literature classes, had been the happiest of his life. He’d hauled boxes for a moving company, read two books a week, and begun the novel that Athena and some others, too, had liked. Alone by choice on Saturday nights, writing by an open window in his studio apartment, Gregory had experienced a kind of euphoria: a swelling, bursting, yearning hunger that had something in common with lust but included everyone, from the revelers outside his window to the carousers down the hall. He was where he wanted to be, and needed nothing else.

David Clark was neither strong nor handsome, but the bewildered look that had blighted his boyhood was long submerged now in a face that suggested intelligence and humor. For years he had made it a point of honor not to mess around with the girls in the classes he taught. “There isn’t any sport in it,” he would explain to other teachers. “It’s taking unfair advantage. It’s shooting fish in a barrel.” It was shyness too, and a terrible fear of rejection, though he didn’t usually mention those aspects of the matter.

But the whole of that argument had vanished some months ago when he found he could get through a lecture only by letting his gaze go back time and again, like that of a man seeking nourishment, to Miss Andrews in the front row.

‘Older than Hana. Could you fall in love with her if she wasn’t smarter than you? I mean, she may not be smarter than you. But isn’t it important for you to think she is smarter than you in order to fall in love? Think now. She can be obsessed by the Englishman because he knows more. We’re in a huge field when we talk to that guy. We don’t even know if he’s English. He’s probably not. You see, I think it is easier to fall in love with him than with you. Why is that? Because we want to know things, how the pieces fit. Talkers seduce, words direct us into corners. We want more than anything to grow and change. Brave new world.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Hana.

‘Neither do I. Let me tell you about people my age. The worst thing is others assume you have developed your character by now. The trouble with middle age is they think you are fully formed. Here.’

There’s the door, she tells me, and points. Why don’t you just walk out?

I don’t move. I can walk out the door, but then I’d have to stand in the hall and wait.

What about that gate? She’s pointing out the window now. The gate is lit up at night: razor wire coiled along the top, the tower with a sharpshooter in it. Or what about your cell doors? she asks. Or block gates? Or shower doors? Or the mess hall doors, or the doors to the visitor entrance? How often do you gentlemen touch a doorknob? That’s what I’m asking.

I knew the minute I saw Holly that she’d never taught in a prison before. It wasn’t her looks—she’s not a kid, and you can see she hasn’t had it easy. But people who teach in prisons have a hard layer around them that’s missing on Holly. I can hear how nervous she is, like she planned every word of that speech about the doors. But the crazy thing is, she’s right. The last time I got out, I’d stand in front of doors and wait for them to open up. You forget what it’s like to do it yourself.

She says, My job is to show you a door you can open. And she taps the top of her head. It leads wherever you want it to go, she says. That’s what I’m here to do, and if that doesn’t interest you then please spare us all, because this grant only funds ten students, and we only meet once a week, and I’m not going to waste everyone’s time on bullshit power struggles.

She comes right to my desk and looks down. I look back up. I want to say, I’ve heard some cheesy motivational speeches in my time, but that one’s a doozy. A door in our heads, come on. But while she was talking I felt something pop in my chest.

‘A large crowd of us went to see Anna Alekseyevna off. She had already said goodbye to her husband and children, and the train was about to leave at any moment. I rushed to her compartment to put a basket that she’d almost forgotten onto the luggage-rack. Now it was time to say farewell. When our eyes met we could hold ourselves back no longer. I embraced her and she pressed her face to my chest and the tears just flowed. As I kissed her face, shoulders and hands that were wet with tears – oh, how miserable we both were! – I declared my love and realized, with a searing pain in my heart, how unnecessary, trivial and illusory everything that had stood in the way of our love had been. I understood that with love, if you start theorizing about it, you must have a nobler, more meaningful starting-point than mere happiness or unhappiness, sin or virtue, as they are commonly understood. Otherwise it’s best not to theorize at all.

‘I kissed her for the last time, pressed her hand and we parted for ever. The train was already moving. I took a seat in the next compartment, which was empty, and cried until the first stop, where I got out and walked back to Sofino.’