Chapter 14: A woman of a certain IQ
Among other duties as assigned — of which liquor-board members always found plenty for me — I was sent to represent them on a committee appointed by the director of traffic safety, comprised of alcohol therapists, government lobbyists, highway cops, even a judge.
Drunk driving was making national headlines, blamed for fifty percent of fatal collisions. With Disraeli’s distrust of lies, damned lies and statistics I doubted it was that simple, but did not share my doubt with the committee.
The director, a retired highway-patrol colonel, challenged me: if the committee could devise strategies to stem the carnage, would my agency use its clout to prevent implementation for fear it might depress liquor sales? I said he misunderstood the purpose of my agency, created by people who distrusted Repeal: liquor was dangerous, hence a control board.
Yeah, yeah the old dog said — but everybody knows how much money state stores make. And I been to dozens of political functions the board supplied free hooch for. I saw the cases of liquor stacked in the governor’s mansion. Never saw the board try to help us stop the bleeding.
I could answer that too. “Nobody ever asked us. But I’m here now.”
Many things flowed from that first meeting. Our agency moved so prominently into the war on drunk-driving that the auditor who had charged board members with corruption changed his tune. He said now the agency was fulfilling its statutory duty. Alcohol professionals spoke well of me. Even the federal government singled us out for praise. Board members gave me the credit.
It was success of a kind. But it only deepened my persistent depression. It affirmed that I was living the wrong life, adapting to being a bureaucrat. I would probably never be a writer again.
At a Seattle convention about alcohol problems I met a remarkable woman. Tall, elegant, sophisticated in form-flattering black dress and pearls, she stood out among solemn (sober) conventioneers as if she strayed in from Manhattan or Beverley Hills — an authentic wicked big-city lady. Participants swirled obsequiously around her. In another venue she might have been a major financial donor.
She was in fact an official with the California alcohol-beverage agency, at the conference to describe a program she developed to train liquor servers to avoid over-service as a positive way to interdict drunk drivers.
Speech made, accolades graciously accepted, she had a tourist’s yen for a drink in the Space Needle’s revolving restaurant — which seemed to shock her determinedly sober admirers. I volunteered to take her.
With Seattle rotating far below, I ordered a banana split while she imbibed. She asked if I had an alcohol problem. I said no, a sweet tooth. She was surprised into happy laughter.
I admired her dedication to what she called stopping to smell the roses to keep work in perspective, and enjoyed her company. Her program impressed me. I recommended our traffic-safety committee fund her to train our liquor agents, who then could train servers. It was rare for the liquor board to offer licensees help instead of citations. Upon approval, the old colonel said he heard she preferred me for a chauffeur, and designated me her tour guide. And smirked.
When I called her with the two-day agenda she reminded me of her roses remark, said she’d heard our winter wave-watching was fabulous, and asked for a beach motel for the night between. Preferably a room with a fireplace. I made the arrangements, met her plane and took her to the first seminar city, then drove her to the beach.
When we checked her in, she asked why I wasn’t booked there. I said I had a room one town over and would pick her up next morning because, given my evident reputation, she needed to avoid an appearance of impropriety. I was being extra careful after the old colonel’s smirk.
Her curiosity was piqued. At dinner she asked if my reputation was deserved. I don’t know why I chose candor other than I felt drawn to her, and thought to distance myself with honesty. After she heard me out she said I didn’t come across as on the prowl. I said I wasn’t, just weak-willed — lately, it was like women came out of the woodwork.
She laughed and said a nice thing: “Well, I can see why. When you ordered that banana split, I would have hit on you if you weren’t married.” I said I never would have guessed. She said “Bullshit, you knew, all right. But you’d be safe even if you stayed at the same motel.”
When I said who would believe that, she sort of snorted and said I had some ego to say who would believe a woman could resist me if I were just down the hall. Then laughed when I blushed and said I hadn’t meant that at all, and tried to explain I had been thinking about appearances beyond reproach.
Smiling past my discomfort, she said because I had been candid she would be candid too: her time for love affairs with married men was past. “I’m sentimental, and Christmas and other holidays are too hard on you when your lover is home with his family.”
Her words were full of unspoken things, and her gaze was suddenly far away. My overly attuned empathy quivered as if I’d accidentally opened a locked door. I had been talking about trysts. She wasn’t, and I knew she wasn’t. A love affair is a whole different thing. I had a locked door of my own: my fated love affair over ten years ago, held privately in my secret heart. Not a topic for this strange conversation with an intelligent, attractive woman in a nearly empty restaurant in a winter-battered beach town.
We found safer topics to lighten the mood, and she remarked that she was a close student of men’s egos. Men seeking her company always tried to impress her with their IQ. She had no idea what her IQ was, so just added ten points to whatever they said. “Their egos have a hard time with that.”
Back in her room with coffee, she discovered the fireplace had those fake logs of compressed wood chips and asked how to light them. I could not resist: “Surely a woman with 170 IQ can figure it out.”
She broke out laughing. “You are such a bullshitter! Too bad you’re married. Light the damn fire!” From her, good as a kiss. After coffee I retreated to my motel, read a while, and slept. Next morning I took her to breakfast, and on to the next seminar town. When she was done I drove her to SeaTac.
Our conversation drifted back to sex when she asked if my admitted infidelities resulted from sexual incompatibility at home. I said absolutely not. My trysts were merely my antidote for depression. Surprised again, she said I didn’t act depressed, and asked the source.
“I wanted to be an author,” I said. “Or at least a newspaperman. And I’m not. I’m stuck in the wrong life. My wife’s passion always matched mine. But she is perfectly fine with the life we have now. And I’m not.”
I described the differing biorhythms, endless commute, constant press of in-law obligations and Chloe’s metamorphosis to penny-pinching marital administrator.
Sad smile. “Have you given up trying to bring back that mutual passion?”
“I don’t need to bring it back. It’s still there when I can pry her away from all that crap. But those occasions are few and far between.”
“So you look elsewhere for relief,” she said. “Risky business. I know how weak men’s’ egos are. You could fall in love somewhere else out screwing around, having flings. And really mess your life up. ”
Again with the ego thing. And the deep sadness. I realized she was applying the painful template of her own life to mine. But I still would not share my secret heart and say I fell in love long before these years of screwing around. And messed up my life by refusing my wife’s offer to call my love a fling.
If I were honest with myself, these trysts to fend off depression would probably hurt the woman I loved and left as much as the woman I loved and stayed with. Maybe my sad companion deserved that honesty. But it felt too complicated — and painful — to try to explain.
