Cyber-love Affair (cont'd)
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Marci loves to drive. Like me, she seems to enjoy just feeling the road moving under the tires. Watching the scenery going by and talking are the perfect accompaniments to each other. We wind our way up steep canyon roads populated by the most unlikely clash of architecture imaginable. Here was the true repository of American individuality, not in the monotonous repetition of even the most expensive new homes in the suburbs. The people who live here are rich enough, and smart enough and have enough moxie to build as they pleased, and they build to please themselves. It is both ghastly and brilliant at once: English tutor, warehouse modern, French farmhouse, stucco, tile and wood chalets, Spanish mansions, American Gothic--everything is there, one after another. Someone had gathered all styles of homes, all eras of building, every material imaginable and all manner of construction and stuck them together, like some mad gardener, into these perilously steep hills. It looked as if the first monsoon would wash them all down the cliffs, but, of course, the monsoons never came to California. We drove down into the flatland and there was barely a drizzle now, just the heavy damp of after rain. "How about a movie?" she asks. We decide to see Wings of the Dove, an adaptation of a Henry James story. Marci shows her Writer's Guild card at the cashier's box. All the films are free for a few weeks before the Academy Awards, since the distributors want everyone who can vote to see their movie, she tells me. The show wouldn't start for a while, so we decide to walk around. We hold hands and my leg brushes against her skirt as we walk together. Sometimes I let go and place my hand on her shoulder and draw her close to me. We stop to eat. Her hand feels warm in mine as we speak, her shoulders round; I am proud and happy to be with her, we feel like young, summer lovers. The film is also about young lovers. Set in England a century ago, the woman is in love with a penniless journalist. Since marriage to him is economically unthinkable, she persuades him to woo a rich and dying American visitor, in order to inherit her wealth, ultimately allowing them to marry. A relationship built on love but supported by schemes and lies. It is a beautiful and touching film, but I find myself deeply disturbed.
When we get back from the movie I put some water in the kettle and begin to read, standing up, by the kitchen counter. I make some tea and notice through the open door that Marci has gone to her room and is working on her portable computer, the steady tap-tap of the keys keeping time to the dripping leaves outside. I find a comfortable place by the kitchen table and sit there reading until it grows dark. I finish all the tea and begin to feel restless. Perhaps I am hungry. There is nothing to eat except the cashews and apricots along with some strange packaged vegetable loaf in the freezer. I walk around the kitchen and look out the window. There is a steady mist hanging in the air. I can't remember what I have read. I look through the bedroom door. She is still there, sitting up in bed, tapping on her laptop. I turn around and walk outside. I recoil as the thick, humid air and the fecund jungle smell strike me when I take my first breath. Inside, the air seems thinner, more subdued. Here it is raw, menacing, as if I have stepped into another world, more verdant and lush than I can bear. I hear a distant rumbling I haven't noticed before, like a river of deep rapids or treacherous falls just beyond the houses. It is cold enough so that my breath comes out in short, white puffs. There is no river here, I think. I'm really going nuts. The ceaseless rain, the heaviness of the air, the eerie sound of water that is not there all push me farther and farther into myself. I am alone and I feel alone, as far away from home as I've ever been. I want to be back on my own quiet street under a familiar blue sky. I begin to walk down the narrow flagstone steps to the road and I realize that I must be near to the freeway. It is the endless hum of traffic that I hear, not a phantom stream rushing by. I walk past sleek cars parked for the night like shiny, stupid beasts, glistening in the light of a single street lamp. I finally come to the bottom and there, at the intersection, I am surround by light and noise. Cars roar, neon glares, the freeway thunderes over everything; dark-shaped pedestrians hulk against the weather. All the conveniences of life are here: the all-night liquor store, the Fatburger joint, the cleaners, the sub shop and the midget corner grocery store. I walk inside the grocery and the low roar of the freeway is pushed aside by the blare of a Mexican band on the radio. Several people mingle at the rear. I pick up a candy bar and give my money to a swarthy man behind the counter. A bunch of youths laugh raucously in the corner by the video game. Someone yells out "Fuck you, man!" and they all laugh again. For a second I wonder if I will be able to find my way back. When I return she is still typing. The eerie green glow of her laptop is the only light in the room. I sit down in the same chair I had left before and continue to read. My eyes see every word but I pay no attention. Soon, a weariness comes over me and I go to bed. I lie down next to her. She continues to type for a while and then pushes the arm that holds the computer away from the bed and turns off the machine. The room is submerged in darkness. A faint ember of light comes through the curtainless windows and the rain starts again. Neither of us speak. Then she says, "What happened today? You've just been sitting out there away from me. You haven't touched me all evening. What are you feeling? What is in your heart?" I lie still on the bed, looking up at the old plaster ceiling. The air is so thick and heavy with moisture that I can hardly breathe it in. Outside I can hear the faint river of cars in the distance, the wet branches of the shrubbery brushing against the house. "I feel alone and out of tune," I say. "I feel far from home, like I'm in a foreign country and I don't speak the language. I'm afraid." She sounds angry when she speaks. "Well, you've decided to cut yourself off from me and you've succeeded. You spent the evening apart from me and you've managed to distance yourself farther and farther away. I'm sorry that you came out all this way and are disappointed because you didn't find what you expected." I know she is right. I am disappointed. She has lured me here with a lie. Would I have come if she told the truth? I cannot tell anymore. Everything is too mixed up. There is a terrible sadness in me, a longing for the young woman in the photograph, the vision in my mind. I came wanting to find the person who I had always expected, but never quite believed, I would find. I had thought: this woman's words drill themselves into my heart, wrap themselves around and draw me to her. I had come a thousand miles to see her; I would have come ten thousand. But it wasn't her I had found.
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