Part 2: Loss and Remembrance

A world dark and asleep. A world for Geoffrey, spread across the night and empty of people. There are always some people up and about, aren't there, even at the end of the evening? Not now and not here. Geoffrey drives along a parkway, watching the streetlights move by smoothly and quietly, one every few seconds, an endless procession of them, dignified and calm. He passes through a few blinking traffic lights. The green of the dashboard dials is so peaceful it makes him think of things far away and untouched, soft luminescence from distant stars or the bottom of the sea. He is playing space music on his car radio, playing it quietly, as background. It fits the otherworldly instrument lights. It fits the majesty of the street lights. The world is almost perfect. Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht. The air smells green and sleepy.

Geoffrey stops at a 24-hour gas station. Someone is moving around inside, but Geoffrey pays by credit card at the pump. There are no other cars. Near home he passes a police car, going the other way fast without the blue lights flashing. On his street one house has a window lit. The rest are completely dark. He finally sees another person, a middle-aged black man riding an unlit bicycle on the other side of the street, peddling smoothly through the night.

The house is stuffy. His and Anne's house, filled with things of hers he never got rid of. Anne's overdone couch. Her Modigliani print.

The perfection of the night drains away.

One of the cats greets him, so he pours her some dry food. He gets out four slices of bread and spreads peanut butter and strawberry preserves on them, and he pours a glass of milk. Then he takes the plate and the glass into the guest bedroom, off the living room, and turns on the computer. While it boots he eats the sandwiches and drinks the milk.

He types the URL of the Web site. He types it in with no hesitations or guesses. When the site comes up, he clicks on the "Subscribe Now" button. He pulls a credit card from his wallet.

Bill had shown him a streaming video file, the one that announced the live show. He decides to go there first. Start at the beginning. Click the fucking button, Geoffy.

I lost her. Shouldn't I let her go? Move on. She isn't for me anymore. She hasn't been for a year. Almost a year. When was it? September twenty-second. The first day of Autumn. My autumn. Oh quit being so melodramatic. It's just that I can't seem to do it yet.

He stares at the keyboard.

Anne and Geoffrey, sitting in a tree, f-u-c-k-i-n-g. They loved each other and lived together, and they were going to be married. It's like a breeze in the summer, something light and ephemeral and fresh, the sort of thing people turn their faces toward and smile. It is always like that until Geoffrey realizes he is going to follow the train of memories to the end. Then it's like waiting for the train wreck one knows is coming. Waiting for disaster.

"You're my Anne of Green Gables," Geoffrey told her their first time together. When he thinks of her it is mainly of their sex. An effect of the Web site? More likely an effect of how and why she left. There were other things, their plans, their work, dinners, friends, but they fade. He remembers calling her his Anne of Green Gables. He remembers a lot about their first time. He was tracing her contours with his hand, across her small breasts and down her tummy and over her mons. He always wanted to touch her after sex. Sometimes it led to round two, but the touching was good whatever.

"I can't be," she laughed. "I've read that book, and he doesn't get her, but you got me almost right away."

"My nature girl. Pure-D luscious."

"I'm not that pure either, you dope. And I like cities. Unless you'll be my Tarzan and carry me away to live in the jungle with you. Our neighbors can be the Swiss Family Robinson." Then she said in a stage whisper, "We could spy on the parents making love at night." She never used the word "fuck." And truth to tell, she wasn't that pure, not in the old sense. He remembers when she bought him an illustrated Kama Sutra for his birthday and insisted they read it together and try some of the more plausible positions. She got to talking about lingams and yonis, much more erotic, she said, than penises and vaginas.

"My yoni is yearning for a long lingam to love," she whispered in his ear as he sat reading the paper one Sunday morning.

"Does that mean we're having pasta?" he teased. She bit his ear and he had to chase her into the bedroom and wrestle her to the mattress for a couple of hours.

Geoffrey remembers that he first seduced her by cooking a meal of eggplant parmesan, angel-hair pasta, garlic bread, a store-bought Caesar salad, and a bottle of cheap sparkling wine. With Anne's help, his cooking improved dramatically. She could use some food now, he thinks. He told her one day he would eat a whole meal off her body. "Promises, promises," she smirked.

Then out of the blue, one night, Anne said, "You can try kinky things with me, you know." He wonders. Did that signal something, something I missed?

"Like what?"

"Well, what would you like to do to me?"

So Geoffrey blindfolded her and caressed and tickled her all over. He said, "You have to lie still, as though you're tied up."

When she was really hot he raised her legs up and pushed them to her chest. Then he spanked her, little stinging spanks he alternated with pushing fingers inside her.

But it wasn't just work and home, and it really wasn't just sex. He tries to think of things besides their sex. On weekends they sometimes drove up into the Smokies. In the summer they rafted or kayaked, once on the French Broad River, the other times with the hoards of weekenders on the Nantahala. Even thinking of those weekends, it's mostly the sex that stays with him. Anne looking for public places where she can stroke Geoffrey's fly and chance getting caught. Or searching out a clearing only yards from where rafters are floating by, and fucking within earshot of them. People are laughing and splashing the whole time, and Geoffrey muffles Anne's cries with his hand. Then they lie together and count how often dragonflies rest on their toes. Somehow Anne gets poison ivy on her leg.

A winter weekend they drove to the Biltmore Mansion, almost empty because of rain, where Anne pulled Geoffrey into an empty room filled with nineteenth century portraits and 1920s-era bric-a- brac. She closed the door and they did it dressed, just their pants pulled down, leaning against the door and listening for docents, though if someone had actually come along they wouldn't have had time to get dressed. Leaning against her afterward, she leaning against the door, Geoff couldn't stop himself from saying, "My favorite play: 'A Winter's Tail.'"

Later that winter they tried sex outside during their one big snowstorm, but Geoffrey almost got frostbite. No, not on his penis. That was kept nice and warm.

She liked his parents; he tolerated her mother. "She's not so bad, Geoffy. You just have to get used to her ways." Surprise of surprises, neither mother minded if they slept together when visiting, but his father wouldn't let them do it. Oh the fun, sneaking into Anne's room right next door to the parents and trying to fuck quietly on those old, squeaky springs. Of course they tried to get time alone in their parents' houses, so they could fuck on parental beds. Doesn't everyone?

Geoffrey wonders if Anne's mother knows how far her daughter has fallen. All the way down into Satan's world. Does she want to be in hell? Is it her desire? Does Anne visit her mother, and does her mother try not to mention how skinny her daughter is, or how odd she looks with all those piercings? Does her mother worry about anorexia?

Geoffrey proposed to Anne in the middle of cooking a six-course Chinese dinner for some of their friends, his shirt covered with stains from sauces and drippings, surrounded by dishes and pans. The kitchen was full of steam. He left the wok unattended to ask her. "Geoffy, you are so romantic!" They announced their engagement to everyone when they served the flan for dessert, and they toasted it with plum wine.

Anne coming home laughing about Satan. It's his first day. It's the end of the good memories. The spiral is quick in retrospect.

"You'd better watch out, Geoffy. He's the most gorgeous man any of us has ever seen."

"Who is?"

"The new exec they've sent down from New York to straighten out the Carolina division. Victor Bruno. They hired him from a firm that saves troubled companies like ours. Jane calls them a 'cut and slash' group because they give out a lot of pink slips. Anyway, you should have seen Maureen moon over him."

"And how much did Anne moon over him?"

"Oh, is my poor Geoffy all bothered?"

"And how safe is your job?"

Later -- how much later? -- she comes home impressed. "He knows these things, Geoff. He knows the problems we're having, and he knows what questions to ask. He's not like those clowns they sent down before." Here's Victor slashing the office workforce by twelve percent and promoting Anne to be his administrative assistant. Anne spending ever more time with him. "I have to work late again, Geoff." She talking about him all the time. Yes. And not just about work. "Victor's been everywhere, Geoff!" Geoffrey remembers her repeating stories about sexual shenanigans among the high mucky mucks in boardrooms and executive offices, in Congress, in embassies. Victor isn't judgmental. "He's even joined in sometimes," Anne says. She almost gushes.

"Pretty cool. Did I ever tell you I was on the grassy knoll?"

One day, "Victor says he's like Lucifer."

"What does that mean?"

"That he rejects... how does he call it?... artificial restraints imposed on his actions. He says he's free to pursue life on his own terms, one of the few really free people."

"So he's really the Devil."

"Don't you dare say that in front of him!"

"Oh I won't. Just remember, though -- God is on my side." After a second he looks over at her and asks, "What does my good Catholic girl think about his philosophy?" Anne ignores the question and continues making the salad.

The acceleration. Another day: "He told me you should tie me up and beat me, Geoffy."

Geoffrey just looks at her.

"He said you were lucky but shouldn't trust your luck. If I were his woman he would tie me naked in the hallway, and when he came home from work my body would be there for him to play with."

"Anne? What the hell is this? You're letting him come on to you?" Is that all I said? I probably wasn't even that strong.

"No! No he wasn't. It sounds strange, but you had to be there. We weren't alone, you silly. There were four of us there, Maureen, Jane, Victor, and me. Our work group. People were joking about relationships and it came up, somehow, about love and trust and things. You know. Anyway, it was funny when he said it. Funny but sexy too. It made me want to have you tie me up."

"I don't think so." Do it, damn it! Do it! Shit.

"You could spank me for being a bad girl and having this naughty conversation with my boss. I'm really awfully horny."

Finally looking Satan up on the Web. It's later in the game than you think. There's a Victor Bruno, all right, and he markets sex films, but there's no connection at all. Satan probably appropriated the name because of the sex tie-in. What's his real name? Does he have a real name? Oh don't be stupid.

Then. No reason to rush through this any further. Geoffrey's gotten to it. He didn't know it at the time, not exactly, and not certainly, but yes. Anne went with Victor to an organizational meeting at the Chicago office. When she came home she wanted to make love in the dark. They'd always used candles, but it was the second week before she'd consent to candles again. She also stopped talking about Victor. Geoff didn't press her on it.

A few weeks later, Anne came home very late from work. It was a Thursday. She had told Geoffrey she'd have to work late, that there was a deadline, but it was two a.m. when she slipped in. He'd called her at ten, just to make sure she was okay, and the phone had rung a long time before she'd picked it up. She'd sounded breathless.

"I had to run down the hall from the copier room, Geoffy," she had said. "It may be the wee hours. The whole work group is staying late."

Two a.m. She bathed and dressed in the bathroom and come to bed in a long gown. Too long for summer, and then she didn't want to snuggle. When she felt up to sex, a few days later, she wanted to make love in the dark again, but Geoffrey grew impatient and turned on a bed lamp and before she had a chance to cover up he saw a long, thin bruise on her left breast.

He can still see the bruise.

"What is that?" It was terribly silent for a moment, then she answered.

"I got banged by a filing cabinet, Geoff. Why? Am I suddenly under suspicion of something? Do you want me to account for my every moment?"