Ethan Tombee In Disrepair
by Steven Gillis
Ethan Tombee first met Liddi Ladding in the lobby of the Mackenzee Hotel where he lived during the early weeks of his second divorce. A photograph placed beside the article Ethan wrote for the Kerrytown Review - an irreverent piece entitled “Love in the Mind of the March Hare” - allowed Liddi to recognize him as they approached from opposite sides of the hall. (She had by chance read his work the week before and stopped him then to offer comment.) Hired to produce an expository bit of social raillery, Ethan’s essay explored the recent findings of clinicians who claimed t o have identified the predominant chemical reaction responsible for causing the human heart to swoon. Researchers now predicted they would soon be able to synthesize and inject love into a candidate’s lode center with the ease of inserting a morphine drip.
Ethan wrote from the cynic’s perspective, accepting every thing the scientists said as true. Liddi complimented his sense of humor, but questioned his judgment. “Love injected is a false indicator, the consequence fraudulently induced.”
“But where is the fraud?” Ethan in earnest did not understand. “People on their own come to love for reasons equally suspect and rarely sustained and where is the legitimacy in that? If scientists can perfect a formula which affords couples the chance to endure past the point of tedium and neglect, why shouldn’t we applaud and rush to stand in line?”
“Because there is no romance,” Liddi swept her hair be hind her ears with a quick flick of her head. “A shot in the arm or a potion drunk isn’t love.”
“Who’s to say?” Ethan rocked his large head forward, and with a wink suggesting he had experience in such matters, said “Perhaps we should continue this discussion further,” and invited her for a drink. They spoke at length at the hotel bar, their conversation casual, thou gh it seemed at times to gather steam as if toward revelation. Liddi said she’d lived recently with a sculptor named Jay Boulete, but that the relationship had run its course. “He confused his love of art with his love of me, and as he failed at one he failed at the other.”
Ethan offered stories of his ex-wives. “The great difficulty in marriage,” he said, “is that it seems by its very construct to defy the natural order of things. On the one hand, all relationships require momentum, the consistency of effort and keeping two bodies moving. On the other hand, the laws of physics make it so that two bodies can’t interact without a natural friction being created. This, in turn, leads to breakdowns and dissension.”
Liddi listened to what Ethan had to say, then challenged him with, “The reason friction is essential, is that above all else, it causes heat.”
“This, too, I suppose,” Ethan smiled, intrigued. Had Liddi reached from her chair and touched him once on the hand to make a point, or held his eye a moment longer than need be, he would have had a clearer indication. Without such, he could only roll the dice and dare to ask, “Would you care to finish this conversation upstairs?”
Liddi wagged a finger in mock disappointment, insisting, “I’m only here to talk.”
“But you are clearly having a good time.”
“I’ve enjoyed your company so far.”
“And as a woman who believes in love,” he felt secure enough to press, “don’t you feel you owe it to yourself to see me again?”
“Perhaps,” Liddi said this as a matter of fact. “Bu t maybe I better not.”
Ethan, confusing her confession, smiled broadly and asked, “Are you afraid of falling in love with me?”
At this Liddi laughed, more openly than she intended at first, then told him without the slightest trace of humor, “It isn’t me I’ m worried about.”
“But I’m a big boy.”
“Who’s clumsy with love.”
“I never said that. I simply feel relations between me n and women are inherently difficult.”
“But if a person could be chemically induced.”
“Then we stand a chance,” Ethan exclaimed.
Liddi leaned over the table, her features fine, with cheeks set high and lips a perfect bloom of pink and red, and drawing close enough for Ethan to smell her natural scent, she said “And what if I told you that I would sleep with you but for the fear that you would fall in love with me?”
The challenge seemed absurd. Ethan, taken aback, did not know if she was serious, but more than interested, he answered with confidence, “You needn’t worry about that. As I’ve researched the subject thoroughly now, with two ex-wives and an article under my belt, I can say wit h certainty that if you tell me not to fall in love with you, that we could share the most perfect sex without the slightest risk of complication.”
“Alright then,” she checked her watch. “I have to go now but I’ll be back tomorrow and we’ll see if you’re a man of your word.”
Ethan escorted Liddi to the front door of the hotel, where in an awkward moment he bent to kiss her goodbye. She stepped back, laughed at his effort, and moving forward once again, pressed herself against his cheek. It was all that easy really, the dance and dangle. She waited until midnight before dialing the hotel and having the operator ring through to Ethan’s room. “Did I wake you?” Her voice presented familiarity, suggested the sort of intimacy that immediately caused Ethan to lie. “No, no. I was reading.”
“What?”
“A book,” he thought of the first name that came to mi nd and as he hoped might impress her. “Albert Cohen.”
“Belle du Seigneur. You are naughty,” she gave him a light sigh, then asked “And as you read, were you thinking of me?”
“Of course.”
“Wishing I was there?”
“Would you like to come over?”
“I believe love alone possesses the power to liberate the truly erotic,” she said this as if they were in the middle of yet another debate. Ethan, caught off guard, wet his lips, and thinking of ways to test her theory, replied “But the casualness of the unencumbered is emancipating.”
“Is masturbation,” Liddi countered. “If there is nothing in the heart, what is there to feel?”
“The sex,” Ethan gave his own light laugh, no longer groggy and clearly aroused. “Fucking,” he tested his boundaries, waited to see if Liddi would take offense. But how could she when the challenge she put before him was as vulgar as any proposition he’d ever experienced? “Fucking,” he said again, “is a force of nature. With my first wife,” he told her then, “the absence of convention and novelty of the deed is what kept us together. We shared a healthy curiosity for the carnal and relished the full rapture of our abandon. Nan, that was her name, roared and clung with eyes wide open, introduced tricks and gadgets she thought I’d like, agreed to pose as I bought a Polaroid and asked her to undress in dances and shimmies. She would spread herself out beside me in bed w here I could whisper stories which began with “I want to…” and she’d reply without hesitation, “We can do whatever you like.”
“And the novelty of your indulgence demonstrated the heal th of your relationship?”
“Certainly.”
“Your congress was evidence of what? A keener complexity? A higher level of departure, multiple layers of unity, surrender and exchange?”
“All of that,” Ethan agreed. “Corporeal hijinx confirms the intensity of one’s trust.”
“But if fucking is all that matters, why aren’t you still together?”
Ethan fell silent, could not quite determine when he’d be en tricked, and before he could recover, Liddi said “Because you no longer love her, or she no longer loves you, and the fucking was just that,” and before he could respond, she said “Good night, Ethan,” and hung up.
She called back an hour later. He wasn’t sleeping then, his head full of her, the mystery of what she was doing to him. She started in without introduction, said, “With Jay, the sculptor I lived with, the sex was his way of surrender. I wanted his heart and he screwed me as a form of catharsis, a means of filling a void he didn’t understand and could not otherwise say what was missing. He used to like to tie me up, my h ands over my head and my legs apart in full submission. It was this that aroused him, the implication of scandal, the hint of risk and danger. He didn’t see that he never needed the ropes, that I had already submitted to him, that all he had to do was let me hold him, but he wasn’t strong enough t o believe in that kind of love.”
“Perhaps if you had given him the magic elixir,” Ethan, unsure what else to say, made reference to the article he had written, knowing at once it was the wrong thing, quickly correcting himself as best he could, adding “Some men just can’t manage, I suppose.”
“Love?”
“Yes.”
“And you?”
“Me?” he was afraid to answer, not wishing to say the wrong thing, confused now, for wasn’t he forewarned not to speak of love? Wasn’t it Liddi who challenged him to keep things simple, daring him not to feel anything, or was it that she was trying to prove he couldn’t? What did she want? What was she after? “I can take it or leave it,” he tried this, hoping to get the right reaction, not sure what to think when she said, “We’ll see,” and again hung up the phone.
Liddi wore silk the next evening, a light second skin colored amber, her figure outlined beneath. She let him kiss her hello, a so ft brush of her lips. Ethan in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, wished to look casual, a man who could, indeed, take or leave anything, but his face showed strain. He’d slept little after Liddi’s second call, had spent the day distracted, unable to work or clear his head. It was as if someone had already slipped him the elixir he wrote of for the Kerrytown Review, as if Liddi had administered the potion through the phone. He trembled as she entered, offered her a drink from the wine he’d purchased, but instead, she stood at the end of the bed, and motioning for Ethan to sit down, said ” Tell me about your second wife?”
“But why?” The question caught him by surprise, was no thing he wished to talk about, especially now, and reaching for Liddi, said, “Come here.”
“You’ve been missing me.”
“I only just met you.”
“Even so.”
“No,” he was learning, resisting telling her anything she wished affirmed. “I only want to sleep with you. That was our deal.. Here you are and here I am and that’s all I had to do.”
“That’s right,” she ran her hands down the sides of he r body, the silk settled over her hips and breasts, the straps teasing off her shoulders. It wasn’t fair really. She knew that. If love was hard, men were easy. “Did you love her?”
“Who?”
“Your second wife?”
“Once, yes. Sure.”
“But not now?”
“Not now, no.”
“And that’s why you aren’t sleeping with her anymore.”
“No,” he refused to let her twist him, confuse him as she did last night. “I’d fuck her good if she was here now.”
“But she isn’t,” Liddi stepped closer, bent over him, could see it in his eyes, the effect of a drug, the want clearly, could smell it like a chemical mixed and burning. “Tell me,” she said again, and let his hands roam just a bit if not completely free.
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me that you love me.”
“But…”
“Tell me.”
“I do.”
“What?”
“I love you. I love you!”
Ah, Ethan. “Poor Ethan. And here you were so close.”
* * *