Chapter 38
On the drive up to Beluga Point, he tells me about taking Russian in high school and how he spent six weeks there after he graduated.
The Kremlin was, as he expected, just an underwhelming tourist trap.
But he did love the borscht. He goes on a rant about how refining your artistic taste is the second most important thing to finding your artistic voice, then tells me about authors I should read—Chekhov and Tolstoy and George Saunders and David Foster Wallace—and filmmakers I should know—Bergman and Kubrick and Kurosawa, Lonergan and Linklater and Solondz.
I’m used to the person I’m dating, or sleeping with, or whatever it is, telling me all the things I ought to know instead of getting to know me. It’s how men, or boys, or both, communicate. They quote and they riff and they rant and they explain and they explain and they explain.
But with the others, it’s been cringey—Randy Julep quoting Joe Rogan or Paul Bornstein ranting about Michael Bay’s cinematic prowess.
Korgy’s a different breed: a learned man with good taste and well-honed perspective and hard-earned life philosophies.
There’s a wisdom to him. And a sadness I find hard not to trust.
“Where should I start?” I ask him.
“Saunders,” he says, beaming. “Start with Saunders.”
We arrive at the lookout. He parks facing away from the sunset.
He lifts the trunk and splays out a blanket and a picnic basket packed with finger sandwiches and fruit and four types of cheese and salami and a tin of skinless almonds with rosemary and a bar of dark chocolate and a jar of olives marinated with tangerine slices and a bottle of wine for him and a bottle of sparkling cider for me.
I want the wine. He’s hesitant but relents when I tell him Mom lets me have it.
We each have a glass and we laugh and we talk and he kisses me as the sun sets, cupping my heavy breasts and sucking my neck, and for this moment, we feel like a real, regular couple.
“This is the best birthday I’ve had,” I tell him, and he laughs and says that my other birthdays must have been terrible. I assure him that, for the most part, they were, particularly my thirteenth, a surprise party that Frannie’s parents threw me at the bowling alley.
“It was a very nice gesture, but I find bowling shoes disturbing and the only people there were Mormons from their church ward.”
He tells me that he used to be in a bowling league, and I tell him that’s embarrassing.
“I don’t disagree,” he says.
“Anyway, thanks. This means a lot,” I say. And he smiles and says he’s glad but there’s the faintest fleck of ache in his eyes.
“What?” I ask.
“I just wish I could do so much more.”
We don’t say much on the drive back. We don’t need to.
We hold hands the entire time, even when they get sweaty and gross.
He drops me off at my apartment. I ask if he needs to come in for a shower, to wash any scent of me away.
He says that’s thoughtful of me but that he’ll have time to do it at home before Gwen gets back.