The keystone of my admiration of Vernon was his understanding that to some, if the stakes are high enough, a tiny imperfection is intolerable.
I met him at a racket club I joined after getting back from Germany, and we liked each other right away. We had a lot in common. A couple of retired dilettantes, we had done our share of carousing. We each had spent some years abroad, and we shared a weakness for luxury cars, the nicest clothes—watches and shoes and things that distinguish a man and, we hoped, attracted women. We still wore the designer watches and expensive loafers, but we had no need to attract women anymore. We were settled, “like a fox in a pen,” Vernon used to say. But happy. Or happy enough. We kept fit, lived clean, spent money wisely, were prudent in our friendships, efficient with those energies that dwindle with age.
Vernon came from Pakistan, a middle-class family from Karachi. He’d come to the United States to study computer science at George Washington University in St. Louis. After college, he’d taken a job in Minneapolis, my hometown—a highly technical job that he’d been in ten years at the time I met him. He programmed machines that viewed surfaces at the atomic level. The type of firmware that’s in any digital appliance—Vernon wrote this code. Only the machine he programmed was the size of an automobile, cost millions, and the code was a labyrinth of commands hundreds of thousands of lines deep. When one of these machines was sold, it was put on a tanker ship using a crane and carried to some place like Rotterdam. With this machine you could view a single proton sticking to the surface of a microchip. An errant proton like that could cause problems, so Vernon told me, and quality checks of this sort were increasingly necessary for microchip manufacturers, which there are more and more of now that mobiles are becoming the most ubiquitous devices on the planet.
The slightest imperfection.
As for me and my professional life, I wanted to believe that my work was as principled as Vernon’s, though—I don’t know—maybe I hadn’t yet worked out what those principles were. Nevertheless, Vernon took an interest in my career and treated me with respect. After Marquette, I had started as a staff reporter with a news wire in D.C. covering congressional affairs, then was stationed at a bureau in Berlin. I found German culture excruciatingly rigid, though, and six years was more than enough—I’d paid my dues. I came back to the States. Taking a condo in Minneapolis, I wrote news features for local outlets, and began to try my hand at penning a political thriller—working to capture, instead of bare facts, something of the gestalt of the times. It was a test of ego, asking myself what really was the scope of my understanding?
To counteract inert hours of desk time, I joined a local tennis club and was paired with Vernon in a doubles match one day. Afterwards, we chatted in the locker room and then went for a cocktail. Immediately, he demonstrated an ability to move between worlds. Is a writer’s work similar or dissimilar to Vernon’s microscopy? Not in the general case, but my motive in plotting a novel revealed itself to be fault-finding of the corrupt and powerful. Perhaps there’s a similarity there. Vernon read novels for enjoyment and appreciated the challenge of my undertaking. His work depended on precision, and he followed politics and kept an eye on the verities, and he understood that what I was trying to execute was a work of some exactitude. A warm rapport formed between us.
We played together often.
Tennis players must band together to get the most out of their sport. You don’t want to rely on the club’s tournament brackets for play, because you end up playing absolute novices or some former D1 college guy who blew a knee, recovered, and now dominates rec players to succor his wound. Much better to cull your own list of contacts and find match-ups that push you while still giving you a sporting chance.
Vernon and I were very closely levelled, and we began playing almost exclusively against one another, dropping our rec leagues and the mixed doubles with other couples.
From the start, our matches were uniquely pleasurable—because though the sport has genteel origins, it is a sport in which hapless amateurs like myself can exercise their sadistic desire to win. Club players, or “weekend warriors” as they are called, can be famously ruthless: lacking the skills of a pro, they resort to anything to get the upper hand. It’s called, euphemistically, gamesmanship, and it’s the hallmark of some club player’s games. Too unskilled to out-hit, too unfit to outrun, too mild to out-compete his opponent, the club player employs subterfuge. Hooking you on line calls; stalling to break your momentum; misremembering the score in their favor. They call foot-faults on you and claim your grunt was a hindrance—there’s no end to these tactics.
Most effective is changeover chit-chat that gets in your mind. “You’re getting more pop with those strings,” they say, suggesting that your gear is compensating for technical inadequacies. “I’m ahead, but it feels like I should be down,” is an underhanded jab that says, “You’re donating errors. Keep trying too hard.” Things like this are said to an opponent to undermine focus. I’d always been especially susceptible, coming to an internal boil not because of the comments themselves, but because of the character of the player saying them.
Vernon and I rose above all this. Our matches were silent but for the pock of the ball, squeaking sneakers, and the thud of winners against the canvas backdrop. The only time we spoke was to say “Nice,” confirming the deftness of a winner, and “Serve,” an ace-commending utterance like “Mornin’,” where the “good” is elided. The cruelest utterance we made was a disbelieving groan when a mishit careened onto the line.
Vernon and I were done with gamesmanship. At our age and stage, the appeal was in managing the bare components of our capabilities. We wanted to see the truth of ourselves, and enjoy the creative side of the game, free of the fanfare, showboating and slippery tricks. In a world wracked with conflict and strife, wasn’t there enough unneeded B.S.? Obama was in office; it was a post-racial society, they said. The least we could do was to let civility reign in our 2,000-square-foot kingdom.
Vernon and I began spending time together off court as well. We ate at a Tibetan place often—goat and yak curries loaded with cardamom. At his condo near the old dam, we ate sushi he rolled himself, and sank back for low-pressure bullshit sessions, neither one of us out to impress the other. Vernon was infallibly civil, with his British-taught English accent, and indeterminate head nods—half up and down, half side to side. After Germany, I liked all this. Vernon had the blithe cheer of a grateful immigrant, and he balanced me. I was up and down, on the roller coaster of my creative work—manic jags of writing followed by depressed weeks awaiting word from editors, agents.
Politically we were eye to eye, more or less. Where we differed was in our wives.
My Sylvia, Vernon’s Pasha. Both were beautiful, intelligent, capable, and accomplished. Women of the world, we didn’t mind saying. Sylvia was a writer, like me. I had learned that I couldn’t be with a woman who wasn’t a writer. She did it all—poetry, personal essays, academic reviews, travel stories. It all came quite easily to her, which I admit sometimes angered me, being in possession of narrower talents. Her family had lived in Spain as a girl, and she was completely nonchalant about her bilingualism. In fact, she was humble, telling everyone her Spanish was poor, even though in a pinch she translated rapid-fire dialogue on Telemundo or something flavored in local dialect overheard in a resort restaurant.
As for Pasha, despite the Russian name, her parents were Filipino and Malaysian, and she was brown-skinned like Vernon. She was an executive in a big conglomerate headquartered in Minneapolis. Twenty-five managers reported to her, she sat on boards, led foundations, and wore tailored suits to make presentations at industry conferences. In the corporate culture of the time, diversity was a newly minted imperative. A company’s image of racial inclusion was everything, and Pasha’s company could not have asked for a more appealing figurehead: beautiful, poised, shrewd, articulate, and refined, with British-sounding English like Vernon’s. Complexly, her executive status seemed to refute the endemic poverty in the region of her homeland and the imbalance of power between her company and the sweatshops that produced many of its goods. Pasha had come to the States on a Rhodes scholarship, but she never discussed this herself, and whenever Vernon brought it up in company, her wide brown lovely eyes told him to shut up.
I’d never allowed myself to be enchanted by ethnic exoticism in women. But Pasha was an exception, her black hair and long neck, the shimmering satin blouses, her devious eyes. It was something more than beauty. I saw her as connected to those mythological sirens and ancient women of history. Over dinner, she’d issue stern arguments for her strategic decisions in light of financial markets; then, when she wanted something from Vernon, some household favor, she stood on her toes and called Vernon their pet name, “Poppet,” tipping her chin down like a shy, supplicant girl!
Ah, but then there was her wicked streak. Woe betide the poor soul she found fault with. She’d never forget your slip, the one that happened the autumn day you went apple picking. The rest of your life, at the sight of an apple, she’d remind you of your blunder, how you’d hurt her feelings, been so careless with something so precious. Just mention a Granny Smith, and you’d be made to feel low again, as base as an animal. It never left her—and, yes, there was an incident with Vernon at an apple orchard, the poor fellow. It had happened before I’d met them, and I didn’t even like to image what had transpired, Pasha’s remaining enmity was so fierce and unpredictably awakened.
Anyway, the days when I might have made a play were behind me, and I never would have betrayed Vernon, so what does it matter? Oh, and of course, above it all was the fact that I loved Sylvia very much. Though what we had was free of the madness of younger years, it was better—deep, smooth, stable, like a slab of marble.
The four of us would go out, have dinner, talk, go somewhere for a drink afterwards. Or we would stay in, make a curry, gossip, serve a pot of coffee and eat too many sweets from the bakery by the university. There was always much laughter and good cheer. We went to bed stuffed but aglow with the warmth of friendship, our cheeks sore from smiling. Twice we travelled together to resorts abroad.
What made Pasha unique was a total absence of sexual ambition. She was domestically content, a homebody, simmering curries on weekends, watching movies with no greater desire than to be at Vernon’s side. She took yoga classes, and went out for these, but Vernon had nothing to suspect, fear or be jealous of. Pasha abhorred late nights, noisy crowds, unruly parties (though she did like ceremony), and eschewed lavish gifts (though she required a bit of pampering). One didn’t expect any sensual shows from her, and that’s exactly what you got. Pasha never referenced the bedroom nor former boyfriends; there was never a story, among her many stories of office politics, personality clashes, and leadership battles, of a lewd manager, leering coworker, or even dalliances among interns. She had the manners of a courtesan, and this was an increasingly rare discretion, I thought, admirable, though her deference was so wide-ranging that sometimes she seemed impersonal and dry.
It was a warm night in spring, and we’d eaten out downtown. We were dressed lightly for the first time of the year, Sylvia in a short dress and open-toed shoes. After dinner, we drove to a bistro in St. Paul for dessert. Though the place was packed, we found a table upstairs, where we shared cake and truffles. Sylvia and I had cappuccino, Vernon had a mango lassi—for him a sentimental drink. Pasha drank chamomile. We had an engaging talk about films, books, philanthropy. Pasha was reading Emerson, and right on cue, true to her temperament, as soon as it got a little late, she said it was time to call it a night. In leaving our table and crossing the full room, I led the pack, Vernon just behind me. We descended the stairs, reached the exit, and I held the door. Vernon came out, but Sylvia and Pasha lagged behind. They were stopped in a conspiratorial huddle, just clear of the dining area, by the host’s stand—something had arrested them. Sylvia gestured with indignation. Pasha looked about as if searching for a thief who had gotten away.
I continued to hold the door, though the women were oblivious to me.
“What’s going on?” Vernon said.
“Who knows,” I answered. “They’re women.” If this was impolitic, I couldn’t help myself; it was something I could utter to Vernon alone.
Vernon stuffed his hands in the pockets of his linen pants and shuffled around the sidewalk on his sandals. After half a minute, he said, “I’ll fetch the car.”
Finally, Sylvia and Pasha came through the doors, still whispering.
“Well?” I said, once the last door had slammed shut with a clean chock sound—the seal of fine engineering. The interior smelled richly of leather.
“This very brazen woman,” Sylvia said, “just gave me the most blatant look—the down-and-up!”
“What’s the down-and-up?” Vernon said.
“You know, that look someone gives you when they’re checking you out,” Sylvia said. “Their eyes go down the length of your body, and back up.”
“Ah, yes,” Vernon said, starting the car, pulling on his seat belt. I saw him seek out Sylvia, who sat in the back with Pasha, in the rearview mirror. He gave her a confirming nod. In a driver’s seat Vernon was especially un-American. He could never be hurried. He drove like he had a week to get where he was going, no matter how much others raced around him. I always struggled with impatience riding in a car with Vernon.
“See, your husband knows what I mean,” Sylvia said to Pasha.
“You know what this is, Poppet?” Pasha said. “This down-and-up?”
“Sure, sure,” Vernon said. He finally inched the car out of the spot and into the road.
Sylvia said, “Pasha says she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.”
“It’s true. I don’t know this down-and-up,” Pasha said. “I’ve not seen this.” Gentility in the extreme! The charade was on!
Vernon chuckled knowingly, watching the road.
I turned to face the back of the car. “Who did this?” I said to my wife. “Who sized you up?”
“A woman right at the bottom of the stairs. She was sitting by the window with a couple of other women. Red hair, funky glasses.”
“I didn’t notice,” I said.
“Did you see her, Vernon?” Sylvia said.
“Didn’t notice.”
I liked how Vernon repeated my words.
“I saw the woman.” Pasha declared.
“Yeah, Pasha saw her.” Sylvia said.
“But I didn’t see any down-and-up,” Pasha said. Her intonation was severe. Her saying she didn’t see it meant she absolutely did not see it. You’d sooner question the greenness of grass, the romance of moonlight.
“I can do it for you now,” Sylvia said. “I didn’t want to make a scene.”
Sylvia demonstrated. She had not put her seat belt on, so was able to sit upright, her back straight, and turn to Pasha. She said, “Like this.” She combed her eyes over Pasha, from head to foot, with a catty, assessing look. A look of disapproval. It took only an instant, and was summary, unequivocal.
“That’s it?” Pasha said. “That’s the down-and-up?”
“That’s it. It’s fast.” Sylvia did it again, her eyes scaling, assessing, her chin touching her chest a moment. “Just boom, boom.”
Vernon and I laughed.
“Physically,” Sylvia continued, “it’s a very slight thing. It’s all attitude.”
Pasha sat like a subject immune to hypnotism, barely blinking. Her doe eyes were those of an innocent bystander being interrogated.
I was careful to face the front again when making a breathy disbelieving exhalation.
“What am I missing?” Vernon said. He was slowing towards a green light at Dale Street, confusing the hell out of pedestrians.
“Right here,” I said. “Watch.” I gave Vernon a sassy, surveying glance, full of competitive assessment. I could easily mimic the gesture; it was part of a parlance that transcends nationality and cultures. By no means an exclusively American thing. You see it all your life—in public, on TV; I’m sure there are even old versions in something like Jane Eyre. The sentiment is timeless. As long as we have looked for mates, we have made this response to the competition—men and women alike.
“Ah, yes,” Vernon said.
“Really, Poppet? You know this?” Pasha cried.
“Uh-oh,” I let slip out, for Pasha didn’t sound happy. Suddenly she was more concerned with Vernon’s knowing the down-and-up than with her own not-knowing.
“How do you know this?” she demanded.
“Everybody knows the down-and-up,” Sylvia cut in.
I was glad Sylvia took Vernon’s side, defending him. Though mostly she was defending the human condition. Sylvia and I had the kind of relationship where her taking another man’s side changed nothing between us. It was the kind of relationship I’d been wanting a long time to have. All my life—waiting and waiting. Now I had it. It was that kind of moment for me, amid this talk about the down-and-up. It was an expansive moment, and as if in consort with my feelings, we arrived at the intersection of Summit Avenue, St. Paul’s most elegant avenue, where everyone could feel a part of the finest in life. The mansions of 19th century lumber barons, an avenue built when space was abundant and America unfailing. Vernon stopped the car at a red light.
Sylvia turned to Pasha. “How can you not know it, Pasha? Really, who are you kidding here?”
“Well, I don’t know it!” Pasha proclaimed with a kind of magisterial opprobrium.
I pitied Pasha’s need to pretend. And pity undercuts beauty.
“Syl,” I said, “She probably doesn’t know it by that name. You’re talking like ‘the down-and-up’ is a recognized term, when you’ve just coined it, more or less.” I could always appeal to Sylvia writer to writer, linguistically. “Pasha,” I said, turning all the way around to look at her. “You know what it is to give something the once-over?”
“It’s more than that,” Sylvia said, ignoring me. “The down-and-up is a look women give other women.” She was adamant now. “Women who are better-looking than them. You know, they’re in jeans, you’re in a skirt. They’re fat, you’re skinny. They’re old, you’re young.”
Still Pasha sat dumbly, unflinching. We were rolling down Summit Avenue now, passing its floodlit sandstone facades, the porticoes and towering steeples backed by carriage houses. The governor’s residence bordered by a spiked iron fence.
Suggesting only the merest sliver of comprehension, Pasha hummed doubtfully. “So they are saying, ‘I am better than you’?” Girlishly, she tucked her hair behind her ear.
Sylvia clarified. “Well, no, they’re saying, ‘You think you’re better than me?’”
“Yes, that’s it,” Vernon said, while keeping his eyes on the road, eight knuckles atop the wheel.
“This is a look—and it’s the look this woman gave me just now—unmistakably—she didn’t attempt to hide it at all.” Sylvia was getting a little breathless. I knew she was in a way glad to be on the receiving end of this look, tactless though it was. It meant her figure was still enviable, which I never questioned (as a girl, she’d been a ballerina, as a teenager, a figure skater; her legs were as long and slender as ever). But she had her doubts, as any woman will, about how I saw her as the years wore on. “You know, some women will do it sidelong, like this. But this is a look that is both critical and envious. You see? It says, ‘I like what you’ve got, I wish I had what you’ve got, but since I don’t, damn you.’”
“Yes, critical and envious,” I echoed. “Well said.” I liked these writerly flourishes in my spouse. They were part of, as I said before, what I could not do without. They had a Gomez Addams effect on me. Remember how, on the TV show, he clutched Morticia’s arm, peppering it with frenzied kisses?
Pasha slumped back in the rear seat, her countenance neutral, describing neither ignorance nor savvy. It looked to me like a tactic honed in board rooms, where one never shows weakness. You bow out of the argument, conceding nothing. Yet, it was impossible that Pasha didn’t comprehend; she was far too intelligent. Sylvia’s description was apt and utterly clear. If Pasha didn’t comprehend, only her own ignorance could be to blame. She was cornering herself.
Pasha asked to see it again, and Sylvia obliged.
“Left here,” I reminded Vernon, sensing that he was unsure of the last blocks leading to our place. I was turning from front to rear, watching the road, then the back seat drama—it was like a two-person play on a mobile stage.
“Come on!” Sylvia implored, seeing how Pasha continued to show no recognition—as if surely it was just a mental block and Pasha would recognize this look any moment, the down-and-up. It would come to her like a forgotten word, a place visited. Like we sometimes blanked out talking about places we’d been. What city was it where we ate that amazing calamari? What was the name of that splendid hotel on the beach?
“Let me try!” Pasha said, at last switching her confusion to playful excitement. She sat up, and now Sylvia abjured the throne, reclining, letting Pasha perform. Sylvia looked as curious as I was—stifling a skeptical smile. But one couldn’t help being charmed by Pasha, this foreign beauty and her innocent quest. “So, you are walking towards me,” Pasha said. She then looked down Sylvia’s long legs and back up. Her gesture was strictly mechanical, with no spirit of cattiness, no sexual jealousy.
“Did she do it?” Vernon was eager to know.
“Yes, I did it, Poppet!” she proudly cried. Her brown eyes were suns—suns that blazed not helium and hydrogen, but the innocent hope for praise.
“No, I’m sorry, dear!” Sylvia declared. “Not even close!”
We all laughed—all but Pasha.
We arrived at our place, and Vernon gingerly took us up the short, steep driveway. Coming to a stop, he slowly engaged the handbrake. Click, click, click, click, click, click. The gesture epitomized his measured caution—it made me want to pull my hair out, but also giggle.
“I did!” Pasha protested. “Sylvia, how can you say I didn’t do it? Poppet, watch!”
Vernon turned around in his seat, but was constrained by his safety belt.
“I can’t see. We have to get out of the car. Anyhow, you can’t do a proper down-and-up to someone seated.” He winked at me.
We got out and stood on the lawn under the security lights. Pasha buttoned her long sweater and arranged her hair as if prepping in a stage’s wings.
Vernon said to me, yet without hiding his comment from anyone, “She’s very keen. However, I don’t think she’ll manage.”
Sylvia laughed with relish, fell onto Vernon’s shoulder, gripping him for support as if slayed. “Oh, Vernon! I love this man!”
“All right! Look, look!” Pasha said. “Everyone!”
I watched Pasha. Her professional comportment vanished now. At last she had managed to abolish that. Neither could I see any traces of the quizzical mind that had picked my brain on themes in books and film; Emerson’s credos on Individualism were far out of her mind. This was about something else. She arranged herself as if approaching Sylvia, who, for the part and with no effort at all, assumed the sexy stance of one who would—who could—evoke jealousy. Pasha stepped to Sylvia as one does a ticket booth, squared up, and again dropped her eyes, made them move from Sylvia’s head-height, to a low place, and back. She showed all the cunning of a Cabbage Patch doll on a shelf. Then she turned triumphantly to Vernon: “Well, what do you think?”
“I’m afraid it needs work, Poppet.”
It was the perfect answer: because Pasha had indeed missed the mark, but it was precisely what Pasha wanted out of him. Pasha had calculated the response she’d get, knowing her husband wouldn’t lie, would admit she stank at something if it was indisputable—which she made certain of. That was her intent, her great misguided effort, to be inept at the down-and-up. Vernon confirming this allowed Pasha to continue, with false disappointment, “Ah, well, I just don’t have it, this down-and-up.” Thus she had won by losing. Her big brown eyes moved from Sylvia to Vernon to me, so we could all commiserate.
“I guess you don’t,” Sylvia conceded.
“Yeah, you know, a person can’t be good at everything,” Vernon said.
I made a consoling face and that cheek-clucking sound that says, Gosh, too bad.
It was late. We were tired, and even better, Pasha had gotten what she wanted. When a woman like her gets what she wants and is content, you say goodnight.
Sylvia came and stood beside me now and locked her arm in mine. As the four of us chatted some more, she began to shiver and yawn, and she clung tighter and tighter to me, which warmed my heart.
“If you’d dressed more warmly, Sylvia,” Vernon said, “we wouldn’t have had this down-and-up problem.”
“Oh, it wasn’t a problem. It’s just the way things are.”
“It’s a problem for me!” Pasha reminded us.
Yes, yes, we all assured her. We knew. Then we hugged our friends, waved at their departing car, and Sylvia and I went inside our house, where we have lived ever since, without, I am sad to say, continuing to see Vernon and Pasha.
I don’t know how it happened exactly. It came on slowly. Vernon and I went on playing tennis another few months, then things gradually died out, a strange fissure having formed between us, as if that bridge that had so easily been built had crumbled somehow. We stopped calling, and I played more with my other tennis friends—Russian Ivan and Chinese Liu and a French Canadian I’d met called Guy (ghee). I missed Vernon, seeing across the net his shining curly hair, his black stubble, his lanky gait, his easeful strokes sending the fuzzy yellow token of our friendship towards me so generously, as if he wished me to make a splendid shot. On changeovers, I could see him up close: his small chin, hairy ears, gentle eyes, dark and narrow as if half-slitted in sleep. I remembered the placid look on his face as he sipped water, and a silver necklace he wore with a single small stone in it, and his cologne that smelled of the seaside and some rare herb, like nothing any white American Midwesterner wears. He was not overweight, but his neck had creases in it, horizontal ones, like a pudgy person has, which conveyed, accurately, a softness of temperament.
It seems that it might be this temperament that I came to find insufferable. For my own temperament grew more volatile as time went on, through the struggle of my writing, trying to perfect and publish my work while supporting Sylvia in hers, and bearing the pressure of her judgment always telling me I should write like her, just let it flow, don’t hold back, quit trying too hard, be yourself on the page, none of which seemed to work. I had a plot much like the ones I found in paperbacks on bookstore shelves. It had an arc, a villain, a protagonist, a moral, etc. But no publisher wanted it, and I was forced to devote more of my time to routine reports to be gobbled up by syndicates, in-depth features trimmed to mere sketches, digestible by today’s online readers, paying pittances.
I think perhaps what I began to find unbearable was the effortless way Vernon had won a woman of Pasha’s beauty, and how he endured her unforgiving nature, her long grudge over the apple orchard incident, how he lived without anxiety in a world where her pain could reignite at any moment, yet knowing he could endure, and how he accepted Pasha’s blasphemous wish to appear as an angel walking on this earth, ignorant of all vice. And finally, what went on behind closed doors? I always wondered. Here you had a beauty who never spoke of temptations, desires, who was blind to the wars among and between the sexes. That was inconceivable to me, and Vernon seemed to have mastered her affection in some mysterious way without employing a touch of aggression—much like his craftiest forehands. Meanwhile Sylvia, fluent in so many languages, had in a sense stopped speaking to me, and that made it too hard to play with Vernon as I once had, in peaceful camaraderie. Despite my best efforts, more and more, on the court, I just wanted to crush my former friend, but was never able to.
