Book Doctor. Esther Cohen

had recently ended a ten-year relationship with a Frenchwoman named Emilie. Emilie was also In Film. She wrote scripts, which Jake sometimes called post-Godardian. Emilie made a film once too, a film that Jake admired. She called it Breath. Jake had three copies. He referred to her film as a discourse.

      Arlette knew he took his terms very seriously. In fact, Jake took everything seriously, more or less. He only wore black clothes. His hair was carefully short. He smoked black Gauloises, and whenever he wasn’t watching a movie, he was reading a book about movies. What was funny was that Arlette loved him. It was not a very rational love. It was just there between them, unwieldy and difficult and, occasionally, painfully sweet.

      Sometimes though she felt love was not for her. She could read about it, and often did. She listened for hours to the details of friends’ lovers. But she rarely talked to anyone about herself and Jake. She’d had many lovers, and a few had been large and overwhelming, messy and difficult and so consuming it was hard to do much else. Those relationships had taken over all her life. They’d been almost like religion. And that’s not what she wanted.

      With Jake, her life was intact. Jake had his own apartment. They each liked that. Neither one of them had to compromise. Arlette liked white towels. Jake liked black. Arlette liked mornings. Jake stayed up all night. On the nights they spent together, they took turns at where to sleep. They were together, but not so much that it got in anyone’s way. They were both 35. Each of them felt they knew, although admitting this was another matter, that their lives were more or less fixed. Arlette, for all her ideas and her notes, knew she’d probably never write her novel. She found this sentence impossible to say, so never did, even to Jake.

      Jake often talked about his movie. He’d been writing a screenplay for years, and although he never gave it to her to read, Arlette knew he had something there, something more than beauty-parlor names and vague ideas about Jerusalem and love. This could have been why they stayed together, why their relationship persisted. Arlette, although she said often that she would like to travel again, something she’d done for years, knew how much she wanted to stay in one place. To sit still. To plant a flower garden, to raise a dog, to slowly read books of poems. To join a peace group, Fellowship of Reconciliation or Amnesty or Friends, and write letters to prisoners. To sit still and watch, after years of whirling around.

      Her life, or so she imagined, was very different once. Then, she saw the world as possible, as interesting and large, a full, round circle, water and sunsets and warm, open people eating Greek meals and singing. She had wandered from place to place, working odd jobs and falling in love, all for what seemed like minutes at a time, only minutes. Now though, for reasons that weren’t all that easy to describe, she felt like a small dot in a very large blackness, babbling on. She couldn’t pinpoint this change, or the moment when things started to look different. She knew though that her days seemed incomplete, and she knew too that this feeling was not about to change. She could easily turn into one of those people she disdained. Someone had sent her a book proposal about this once, called The If Only Syndrome. If Only there was money, or time, or a place to work. She hadn’t worked on the book, but she’d sent a note back. If Only I Could, Then I Would. The author had replied to her rejection. This had happened only once before. But You Can, he’d said.

      Ms. Rosen,

      I have a high-concept idea that I’m sure is worth money, and what I need is some help fleshing it out. I’m sure you won’t need more explanation than the title: Firm: A Lawyer’s Exercise Guide. A lawyer myself, I know how much we sit. No other choice is available to us. And I know first hand how dangerous the consequences are, from the perspective of flesh. Even in court, it’s rare that we are actually standing. And there especially, we can’t move around very much. I propose developing a series of exercises created especially for lawyers. If this idea is as successful as I would imagine, then we can continue with specialized guides for virtually every profession. Lawyers buy books. I know that for a fact. And I can easily imagine FIRM on every shelf. Would you like to participate in this project, as a partner?

      Yours,

      John Thurow

      Dear John Thurow,

      What a commercial idea. I wish I could help you. I don’t know much about exercise, or law. I ought to though. Maybe your books will help me when they’re published. All Best

      AR

       3

       meetings

      Harbinger Singh met Arlette Rosen at three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. It was early July, too warm for his dark brown wool suit, but he liked the suit, liked the fact that the color nearly matched his skin. He liked it enough to wear as often as he could. He thought of himself as brownish, but in fact, he was more a deep golden yellow, the yellow of Indian sun. He called it full sun himself, preferring it to full moon. He thought of himself as powered by sun, though profoundly influenced by the moon. Usually, he thought very little about color, his or other peoples. It wasn’t the kind of detail that occupied Harbinger Singh.

      He was a man of methods and goals. He made lists, then crossed out the tasks he’d accomplished. He would move undone jobs from one list to another, and sooner or later, the neat equidistant lines indicating completion would cover all his pages. Harbinger saved these pages in a desk in a drawer, numbered by date, and although the entries were barely discernible, and he couldn’t quite remember just what he had done, still the several hundred pages he kept in three black folders gave him deep satisfaction.

      On occasion he had an affair, but they never amounted to much. He told himself that these affairs, though even the word was too big, these quick forays into sex, maybe, were a natural part of his marriage to Carla, who wasn’t very interested in sex. While they were still married, he became lightly involved, only twice, with women he’d met through work. Though he’d never thought, even for a minute, that either relationship was love. He loved Carla absolutely. She had work to do, and her work, which put them both into a top tax bracket, took priority over everything else, even pleasure. On occasion, she had something that could possibly be described as an urge, but her urges were not memorable, and her thoughts barely wavered from her job, even then. After sex, she’d often bring up office problems, seeking Harbinger’s advice.

      After he and Carla got divorced, he took a few women to dinner, but he found, on those slow and painful evenings, that they had less to say to one another than he and Carla had. Though his relationship with Carla had been more or less flat, and he didn’t know why he should love her, still he did. This love burned through him. He was always there. He thought about Carla day and night, although there was no reason to be so obsessed with a woman so careful, so clean. So rational. She even wore pajamas.

      On their last night together, before she moved out, into a big clean building with a doorman and a gigantic parking lot, they had what turned out to be the first of their weekly dinners.

      Harbinger asked why she supposed they’d married. Carla, who often spoke as though she were addressing her senior high school class with her valedictory speech, something she had done nearly twenty years before, on the subject of social policy and moral responsibility, replied in a softer tone. “No one knows why they marry. If they say they do, they’re pretending. I suppose we married because we respected one another and our work is somewhat compatible. We were not unhappy,” she added, which was, for Carla, a gentle remark. She would not say more.

      “I suppose you’re right,” Harbinger replied. “But what about,” and here he paused, wondering whether the word was appropriate for this particular occasion. Then he just went ahead. “What about love?” he asked. “What about love?” Carla did not seem thrown, or even upset. “A major subject,” she replied. “We don’t know much about it, I guess. No one does. Certainly not us.” She smiled vaguely.

      Harbinger imagined he would write this scene very differently. He imagined Carla crying, desperate to be together again. Not cool, but rather enraged. On the edge of her seat with anxiousness. Silently and not so silently pleading Please Take Me Back Harbinger Singh.

      “But