Doing Lunch

Brenda is sick of all the voices telling her what to do and say. She feels like a figurehead – something they push out in front of them so people will listen to their ideas. She has decided not to tell anybody about her own; she’ll surprise them with it; maybe they’ll see she’s someone to reckon with.

She calls Clyde Waters, and finds him not as anxious to become involved as she had expected. But she’s had to induce many a reluctant student to come along on her mathematics trips. She puts on a bright, casual voice and asks if they can meet for lunch.

Adele had scheduled an appointment for her to have her hair tinted. The very idea was insulting. Brenda thought her few silver hairs looked as good as the streaking some people paid for. At the time, she had sucked it up, as she did everything else, but now she has canceled the appointment in order to meet Clyde. It felt good to be doing something independent.

Clyde suggests that they meet at a diner. Not the big one where she’d been introduced to the cabal, but a small one on the main highway, frequented by truckers.

Clyde is feeling funny on two counts. One, he thinks he was used by the Democrats when they misrepresented that Planned Parenthood rally. Two, emblazoned on his eyeballs is the sight of Jason Shapiro’s arms wrapped around the voluptuous Ms. Dubois.

He knows Jason did not come back to work that day. He sees that they do not speak to each other any more at work. He knows what this means. He doesn’t want to get involved. He doesn’t want to be hiding any secrets or breaking any news.

But the candidate is offering him something important. A bill to make it mandatory that the morning-after pill be included among the rights of man- or rather, woman-kind.

Here comes Brenda. She’s back in her old clothes, not her official ones, and feeling like her old self. The diner is rusty and crumbling, but she comes in happy and smiling and catches a dour-faced Clyde sitting by himself at a back booth.

She plunks herself down across from him, thanks him for being there, and picks up a menu.

“Splurge,” she says. “My treat.”

But Clyde doesn’t splurge on anything. He orders coffee and a blueberry muffin. Brenda is not going to let that stop her. The waiter has never heard of egg-white omelets, but the home-fries are supreme, and she has two portions while they talk.

She is vivacious. She is charming. She is political. Jason was right, she had a knack. The very recalcitrance of the student, or in this case, the man she has to win over, spurs her on. She makes more and better arguments. Finally, she convinces him to sign an open letter demanding “the equal-rights-for-abortion” bill.

Not only do they see nobody they know at this diner, they see nobody they could possibly know. Clyde had not been happy about being caught on camera with the candidate.

Before they leave, they each finish their small pots of coffee. They are full of good trucker food – even the muffin was greasy – and they feel just as good. Animal good. Which could account for, at the last minute before parting, their throwing their arms around each other for a nice, tight celebratory squeeze.

Clyde feels like a rat, as soon as he gets back in his car. He’s a very moral man. Doesn’t have much fun, but doesn’t have a lot of heartache, either. He knows he never would have done that, had he not known that Jason was, perhaps during this very lunch hour, banging the most beautiful broad he’s ever seen.

And yes indeed, Jason is in that lady’s presence now. They’re having a fight. Not really a fight. An argument. It’s not about their love life – no, no, no –that’s coming along just fine. That they’ve added words to their recipe has given it another dimension. When you’re lying in bed naked, with worn-out genitals, what better to do than discuss unwanted children?

She believes “under no circumstances. A life is a life.” He believes it’s up to the woman; it’s her body. He feels sorry for the Dads for Tads, but they don’t have to carry another human being inside them for nine months. It seems to Jason such an unnatural, inhuman, thing to have to submit to, that nobody should be forced to undergo it. He loves his kids, but if he had to be the one, he never would have done it. He stops short of saying he is grateful to his wife, but he is.

Jason doesn’t know what he thinks. He takes whichever side is vacant at the moment; argues with both women. Keeps it fair and balanced.

As they debate, lusciously, Danielle’s fingers roam his pubic hair. He starts to tingle, and loses his train of thought. Her chest rises up above him. A different view from down here. Bulbous. They swing above him, globes of delight. He takes a nipple in his mouth.

“Life is precious,” she says. “I know. I grew up on a farm. I saw a lot of death.”

He takes his lips off the nipple, so he can speak, and rubs his face on it. “Quality of life is precious, too. It’s what makes us who we are.”

She straddles him and pushes his legs apart with one knee. “You’re willing to kill off some people so others can have a better life. Why don’t I kill you off, so there’ll be more stuff for me, and I can have a better life?”

This threat of death is enough to take all the fun out of things, and a promising good time deflates before their eyes.

“Oh, sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean that personally. I was just being logical.”

At home that night, he tries it out on his wife. The question, not the sex. “Why don’t I kill you off, so there’ll be more stuff for me, and I can have a better life?” But he doesn’t put it that way to Brenda. To her, he says, “Why not kill a kid who’s giving you trouble and make another one?”

She laughs at him. “Where do you get that stuff? That child is here. Alive. Somebody.”

Jason can’t help it. He gets into it. “The child is here, alive, and somebody in the womb. Remember how Zeke kicked you around? Remember how Sheba’s tumbling made you nauseous? Alive and kicking; I believe that’s the phrase.”

“It’s better to get them before they’re kicking,” she says, and then hates him for making her say a thing like that.

“What are you trying to do?” she asks. “What’s got into you?”

It’s more what he’s got into, but she doesn’t know that yet. She’s getting warm, though. She says, “You sound like a right-winger. Or a Dad for Tads.”

He freezes. His face goes hard. His stomach tightens. She’s found out about Dads for Tads! What else does she know?

He tries to make his voice sound normal. “Dads for Tads?” he asks. He doesn’t want to deny it, in case she’s gone to his computer and checked where he’s been.

“This horrible website Clyde told me about. A bunch of oppressive men trying to stop women from having abortions. A disgrace in this day and age. Neanderthal thinking. Something ought to be done about it.”

“Like what?” he asks.

“I don’t know; shut them down.”

“You can’t shut down a website.”

“Well, then get them to shut up.”

“What about free speech?”

“This is like yelling ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Yes it is.”

Not very sophisticated arguments, you say. But of course, they’re not fighting about that. They’re fighting about whether Jason is entitled to be leading a double life.

You object. Brenda doesn’t know, you say. Well, not in so many words, but she senses it, because it’s the atmosphere Jason lives in, that shimmies him slightly this way and that. Jason is smiling most of the time these days. He’s lackadaisical about the house, is no longer cranky when he wakes up in the morning to go to work, and obediently brings home whatever she writes on his daily list.

He’s not totally there. Even his arguing sounds tentative, as if he doesn’t quite mean what he says.

Now he can ask her what she was doing with Clyde.

“I had lunch with him,” she said.

Lunch! She could have passed him on his way to Danielle’s. Christ! She was moving in on him.

She continues. “I didn’t tell anybody. I made a private deal with him to tackle the abortion issue together. I’m not going to let them talk me out of it.”

What the hell! His wife has gone to war, and he’s bedding the enemy.