Chapter 446

Arthur Drummond

And then he said, with his eyes closed and the sun reaching his skin with that quality of late afternoon sun that had just passed over the peak:

"I hate Cleopatra."

The words arrived with that firmness of statements that exist before any elaboration, that are the starting point and not the conclusion, and there was in the hatred a quality that was real, that existed with the solidity of feelings that were produced by concrete reasons and that therefore do not need to be defended or explained in order to exist.

But.

"But I liked it."

The word "but" arrived with that quality of conjunctions that invert the direction of what was being constructed, that exist as articulations between two things that should be incompatible but that the speaker is confirming coexist within him, and there was in that "but" all the complexity of admissions that are difficult precisely because they contradict what had been said before them.

"Eating that honey."

Trevor stared at him. There was a quality in Trevor's gaze that was different from the analytical quality that had been present throughout everything that had been said before; a quality that had shifted from the register of someone who is simply cataloging to the register of someone who has heard something that requires a second reading, a verification, a confirmation that they had correctly arrived at what they had arrived at.

"Did you like it?"

The question was unadorned—it needed no elaboration—possessing that brevity found in questions that are sufficient in their simplest form.

Arthur opened his eyes.

In that opening of his eyes, there was the quality of someone who had spoken and now stood on the other side of the act—having moved past the moment of speaking and existing now in a state different from the one before he spoke; and in those open eyes lay a confirmation of the admission his closed eyes had accompanied.

"Yeah." The word arrived with that brevity of confirmations that don't try to be anything more than confirmations, existing in the register of "yes" without the elaboration that would make the "yes" less than it was by attempting to soften it. "I liked it."

A pause that held the quality of those silences occurring when what follows is destined to be weightier than what came before.

"And I ate a lot." His eyes returned to the pool with that kind of gaze that needs a fixed point other than another person when what's being said has the weight that it did. "All night long. And yesterday, too. And today."

Trevor remained absolutely motionless.

It was Trevor's specific stillness when he had received something that was being processed before any movement, that had arrived at a point where the processing needed an instant before anything else could happen, and there was in that stillness the quality of someone who had heard more than he had expected to hear, but whose main surprise was not the content but the candor with which the content had arrived.

And then Arthur said:

"But damn, I love my wife." The phrase arrived with that quality of statements that exist as attempts to resolve contradictions that cannot be resolved by the statement itself, but which the statement tries to resolve anyway. This is what people do when they are dealing with something that is too complex to be simplified, yet they still need a simpler version to continue functioning within that complexity.

Trevor looked at him.

With that quality of Trevor's gaze that exists when he's approaching an evaluation that's about to be said aloud, having traveled the path between what he'd heard and what was to be said, and now standing on the side of what needed to be said with the preparation of someone who doesn't speak without having fully grasped the meaning.

"I’m disgusted."

The words came across with that quality of Trevor's statements that have humor beneath the seriousness without the seriousness being diminished by the humor, that exist in his specific register of saying truthful things in ways that have that .the lightness of someone who arrived at the truth via a path that never lost its sense of the absurd along the way.

"She kidnapped you. Your wife is a goddess, beautiful, and you." A pause with the kind of pauses that exist so that what comes next arrives with the impact it deserves. "You worm. You loved her, she abducted you, and she had beautiful children with you."

There was a collection of truths in it that came together with that quality of when Trevor packed several things into a sequence that had the structure of absurdity but was completely precise in substance; there was the entire story of Arthur and Ariel compressed into three sentences that didn't soften anything but weren't cruel either, because cruelty would require intent to hurt, and what was there was only the precision of someone who sees things as they are.

Arthur sat with that.

And then he spoke, with the tone of someone being honest about the specific difficulty of honesty that contradicts what one wishes were true:

"I love Ariel."

A pause.

"But I can't pretend it was bad with Cleopatra."

The silence that followed had the texture of silences that exist after admissions that have reached a point of no return, that have been said and that now exist outside of the one who said them, with all the permanence of things that have gone and that do not return simply because someone wished them to.

Trevor sat with that for a moment.

And then, with that Trevor-like quality of asking questions that are superficially simple but underneath have the structure of something much bigger, questions that arrive with the appearance of curiosity but exist like mirrors that reflect back to the interlocutor an image of what had been said from an angle that the interlocutor hadn't fully considered:

"What if Ariel tells you that she enjoyed being with N'zar?" The question hung in the air between them with that quality of certain questions that arrive and alter the space they enter—existing as a "before" and an "after," marking a state prior to the question being asked and a state following it, two states that are not the same.

Not immediately, not with the promptness of answers that are available because they were considered before being requested, and in not responding immediately there was the clearest information that any answer could have given, which was the information that the question had arrived in a place that had not been prepared to receive it, that it had found something there that was not organized and therefore had no organized answer to offer.

The lounge chair surrounded him with the indifference of surfaces that do not know what they are supporting beyond the weight they can measure.

The pool remained, its surface reflecting the sky.

And Arthur remained within that silence, Trevor's question lingering within the silence, with that permanence of questions that don't need a verbal answer to be answered, that find their answer in the state of the one who received them before any word is spoken.

The answer lay in that restlessness.

The answer lay in the way the body had responded before the mind could arrive with any instructions.

The answer lay in the silence that remained unbroken.

Trevor observed all of this.

And then he spoke, with the brevity of someone saying just enough because "enough" is all there is to say, and anything more would be excess:

"That’s what I thought."

The words had that quality of conclusions that come after a journey, that are not the starting point but the end point of something that had been traversed, and there was, in what I thought, confirmation of something that Trevor had predicted before asking the question, and that the question had confirmed with the precision that predictions have when they are based on sufficient knowledge of what is being predicted.

The sun kept beating down.

The pool kept reflecting. And Arthur remained in the deck chair, burdened by the weight of that afternoon and by Trevor's question that had hung in the air after the words had ceased, a question that continued to exist with that persistence of questions that have been asked and have nowhere to go but within the person who received them, remaining there, doing the work that questions do when they reach the right place.

Gnawing at him.

With that specific discomfort of truths that arrive in ways that cannot be completely ignored, that exist with that presence of things that have been named and that the naming has made more real than they were before being named.

All at once. Always all at once.