You Don't Love Me Yet by Jonathan Lethem Read Free Book Online

open. And she’d laugh afterward. She’d just look at me and laugh madly, and I’d laugh too. It was like I was escorting her on some long passage from where her reserve and her beauty had exiled her, only the voyage could never be finished for her. She’d come and laugh and then it would be time for me to go. Nothing was ever discussed. After a few times I began to push a little. I told her I wanted to tie her up, tie her to the bed or a chair, take away her control. I promised I wouldn’t do anything she didn’t want me to do, wouldn’t do more than I’d done, if that was what she wanted. I only wanted to bind up her limbs and stop her from laughing, maybe, restore the trepidation she’d felt that first time. When I brought it up she’d only laugh and turn on the television. Then we’d drown ourselves in dialogue from foreign films and the little sounds she’d make and the flickers on the wall and the colors projected on her stomach and her filthy yellow chair. She always tried not to make any sounds until she had to. Then she’d explode and start laughing and send me out to my car. It was a perfect relationship, so I had to wreck it.”
    “How?”
    “I kept pushing, trying to get her to allow me to tie her up. And one day she let me. I had no idea what to do, I’d spent all my energy just persuading her, never imagining it would come true. So, I brought over all my neckties and cinched her to the bed. I covered her eyes, too. And turned on the overhead light, which I’d never done. And then it was suddenly over. I had her there, I was able to stare as long as I liked. I could see her breathe and wait, her stomach trembling. But there wasn’t anything left to do. I didn’t say anything. I just went into the kitchen and ate some of her food. She began mewing, this sound that was practically like a kitten or a bat—meanwhile I was raiding the fridge. Then I found a pair of scissors, and I went in and silently cut the tie that held her right wrist to the bedpost, then placed the scissors on the table beside her, where she’d be able to find them. Then I left.”
    “That’s it?”
    “We never spoke again.”
    In the silence Lucinda studied the electronic surf of tone on the line, a sound like distant galaxies collapsing. Falmouth’s gallery might have been a kind of capsule whirling in vast blank space. Then human sounds trickled in from the street—a slammed car door, a bubble of argument—and repainted the world.
    “For a while I was thinking that was kind of a sexy story but it gets really depressing at the end.”
    “I should have warned you.”
    “When you left her there, was that your way of taking revenge? Because she didn’t care about pleasing you?”
    “I never thought of it that way.”
    “You never wished she’d touched you?”
    “I suggested the arrangement in the first place.”
    “I still think it might have been revenge.”
    “It might be true.”
    “You don’t know?”
    “It’s a secret, I guess.”
    “So you do know.”
    “No. I meant the other kind of secret. It’s possible there’s a reason I left her lying there, but I don’t know it. Even before I left the room, all I could think about was what she might have to eat in the refrigerator. I could make up a reason but then I’d be lying to you. If it exists it’s a secret from myself.”
    “She’d say it was revenge.”
    “I’m open to the suggestion. All I remember is her gawky limbs and that crazy laugh, the flicker of Swedish films across the arms of that filthy yellow chair, the color and texture of her pubic hair when I finally got to examine it in bright light. It’s not some fable about revenge.”
    “I guess the best secrets from yourself are the ones that even if someone else tells them to you, you still don’t know them.”
    “Sure.”
    “I can’t decide if your story is funny or depressing.”
    “Maybe it’s both. Haven’t you ever noticed that whenever anybody wants to convince you that