PLATO’S ODYSSEY
Plato Tsukalis made his preparations carefully during the final two weeks he remained in San Francisco. Closing up the details of a long residency was clearly not something that could be accomplished responsibly without lead times, notice periods, the other obeisances to a civilized life.
It was necessary, of course, to call Sheila and tell her it was over. At fifty-two and never married, Plato was inured to this process, knew intimately its stages, progression and end point. Indeed, he made the breakup an early item on his March 15 to-do list, the first time he could remember making a bullet point of something so emotionally intimate; but the distractions which would ensue after he told her needed time to resolve so the more pressing items could be attended to with a focussed attention. This proved to be a wise course of action. He was, frankly, unprepared for the furor of her response. In the previous twelve breakups over the preceding decade, he had encountered all manner of reaction, from outrage to weepy collapse. But the vitriol, importuning, blackmail, threats and aggression which Sheila brought to the process was altogether something new.
Plato, always logical, considered the distinctions between this breakup and the prior episodes, and chalked up the difference to chronology. It was always the first place to look, when you think about it. The chief difference between our reactions to predictable events at any point in our lives relates to the passage of time, which is only to say that inevitably anything that happens now occurs at a later point in life than something which happened then. Thus, we bring to our analysis the life lessons acquired in the interim between events, and also our increasing suspicion that things of this kind don’t matter much because eventually we’ll reach the point where nothing can happen anymore. This, at least, was Plato’s sense of the inevitable.
He essayed this explanation to Sheila in the small kitchen of her two bedroom Russian Hill apartment. He was leaning against her Corian® counter top, his left palm resting on the attractively beveled edge, while he sipped a Bourbon and soda. The drink was a good idea but the condescension was disastrous.
“You think you can fucking leave me now, after more than a year! You fucking bastard! I’m forty-seven years old! You think you can just throw me off and walk out of here so you can continue your ‘life adventure,’ you fucking creep! Why didn’t I see this about you? You can’t stick to anything, you fucking jerk! You asshole, you motherfucking asshole!”
She took her own drink and threw it violently against the cabinet door just behind Plato. The cabinet door, unfortunately, was also made of glass, and shards fell loudly onto the virtually indestructible Corian® surface, leaving it unmarked but Plato shaken, as he jumped away from the counter to avoid laceration. He set his drink down and headed for the front door. Sheila slumped, head in hands and sobbing, against the Corian® on her side of the galley kitchen, the key components of which were arranged in the classic triangle pattern, the range to the right of the shattered glass cabinets, the refrigerator on Sheila’s side, and the sink to the left of the spot just vacated by Plato. He thought with a moment’s regret that he would miss this ordered habitat as he gripped the door handle for perhaps the last time.
He was very wrong about its being the last time, however, as he needed the entire two weeks of the latter part of March for negotiations, damage control, feigned capitulation and other extrication devices in order to make the separation stick. This complicated, of course, the other more quotidian processes of terminating the lease on his own Telegraph Hill apartment, quitting his job at City Hall, placing his furniture in storage, and informing those few people who needed to know that he would be gone for “an extended period.” He wanted to delay disconnecting his telephone, of course, until the very last since it was essential to accomplishing many of the items on his to-do list, but leaving the line intact entailed a serious jeopardy. The same day he walked out of Sheila’s apartment for what was not the ultimate, nor the penultimate, nor even very far down the list of last times, she began calling, frequently, at any hour, in many moods, on different tacks and at wildly varying volumes. It made Plato rethink the wisdom of relying so heavily on the Internet for introductions.
She could be cajoling: “Plato,” she might murmur into the phone at three am, as if operating on heavy doses of unprescribed prescription drugs, acquired from a spam-dealer with access to high quality shit, “I know you’re confused right now. It’s a confusing time of life for both of us, we’re afraid because we’ve been hurt before and we don’t know who to trust. We can’t walk away from every challenge, Plato.”
She could be threatening: “Plato,” she would start, more often in the business-like hours of late morning, “I don’t know if you know what ‘living hell’ actually means, but I can make your life one. You know that? You give me this bullshit about a fucking ‘extended period of absence,’ like I don’t know we both know you’re talking about a woman, a much younger woman of course, you fucking creep, and like I’m not going to find out who she is, you fucking moron, like you could actually get away with this. Give me a fucking break, Plato. Who the fuck you think you’re dealing with?”
Plato was increasingly unsure about the answer to that last one. From the language, maybe a former long-haul truck driver or steel plant foreman. She called him at work many times during those two weeks. The City Hall operator would put the call through to his department in Legal Filing, where Plato had worked for seven years. He was a valued employee in the Civil Division as the only clerk whose first language was English. Any question from a fast-talking lawyer was handed off to him by the stoic Mandarin- or Spanish-speaking junior clerks, who had particular trouble following the rapid fire cadence of transplanted Manhattanites who impatiently demanded answers about filing fees, numbers of copies, format, et cetera.
“Lemme gi’ you Misser Tsukalis,” Plato would hear Mae Wan Huang say. With averted eyes, Mae Wan would murmur that Plato had a call on line one. Plato and Mae had dated desultorily for awhile about six years ago, before Plato gave up on co-employees and focussed on dating services, the immediate precursor to the Internet.
“Who?!” Plato would hear through Mae’s phone just before Mae hung up.
“Choo-kalis,” Plato would say calmly, picking up the phone, informing the caller that clerks could not give legal advice, then answering the question in elaborate legal detail. He adopted a collegial tone when answering questions from lawyers about format, copies, even legal strategy. Plato had two years of night law school behind him and he understood the basic concepts of contract and tort law, had read thousands of legal briefs, complaints, petitions and the rest of the Dickensian costly nonsense of the lawyer’s trade, all during the many slow hours in a filing clerk’s life. The rushes were in the early morning, when the doors first opened, and around four fifteen, just before closing, when the procrastinating legal profession scrambled to avoid missing deadlines and malpractice suits. Over the course of seven years, Plato had acquired a considerable fund of practical understanding, based as it was on a vantage point from which he could follow the natural history of lawsuits from thundering advocacy in the early filings to meek, quiet, disinterested settlement at the bitter end.
“A Miz Adams on line four,” the City Hall operator would say disapprovingly, and Plato would take a deep breath, check to see if Mae Wan was, uncharacteristically, distracted with work, take a deep breath, and pick up the phone.
Before he could say anything:
“No extended absence yet, huh Plato? Still on the job, still slinking around behind my back, still lying and cheating with someone new, huh? What happens when she finds out you got a few loose ends you haven’t cleaned up yet, huh Plate-brain? What then?”
Plato had taken the precaution of placing the receiver on the ear farthest from Mae Wan, who sat about six feet away behind her gray metal desk, but the only effect of this was to involve his head as an amplifying gourd for the Volume Ten recriminations coming through loud and clear. Mae Wan looked up and gave just the slightest inscrutable smile.
“For a filing like that, I’d recommend coming in by four, I could be there to meet you. Here, to meet you. Or closer to five-thirty.”
“You fucking be here then or tomorrow it’s all day long, sucker, you read me?”
“Sure, Mr. Slamgold, that’s when it will be.”
Mae Wan smiled a little more obviously as she said, “How can anyone file anything at five-thirty, Plato? We close at four-thirty, you know.”
“It’s uh, it’s uh…what the fuck difference does it make what it is,” Plato mumbled.
Plato stopped by a Powell Street florist on his way to Sheila’s apartment and picked up a nosegay of iris and daffodil. He took the elevator up to her eighth floor apartment on Taylor Street and knocked on the heavy paneled door about five forty-five. It was a classy building. Sheila’s apartment was the residuum of a twelve-year marriage to a prominent San Francisco gynecologist, socialite, piano-and-photography amateur whom she had met while he was on the job, in 1988. Eventually, or so Dr. Mellerman said, the constant close-quarters inspection and manipulation of female anatomy dulled his sexual passion to the point where he could not bear to be around a woman in his off-hours. This pronouncement followed suspiciously close on the heels of a photography expedition to Thailand, Sheila noticed, so she wasn’t altogether surprised when Pad Nuan took up her conspicuous place in Dr. Mellerman’s life. She was young, lithe, black-haired and schooled in arts which allowed the man as much sexual satisfaction as he could possibly handle without coming anywhere near the female anatomy.
Sheila opened the door slightly and smiled coquettishly at Plato, then opened it widely to reveal the gleaming expanse of dark hardwood which led to the living room overlooking the Bay. It also revealed her short red dress, black high heels and tasty expanse of late-forties legs encased in subtle fishnet. If a higher duty had not been calling Plato so insistently, this would have been very hard to leave behind.
The view over the Bay took in the Bay Bridge and the Embarcadero skyline. Plato wondered again about the ability of women to take interior space and transform it into something so amazingly livable, so gleaming, balanced, efficient. He wondered at the subtleties of art, flowers, sideboards, sofa cushions, carpets, built-ins. Such a rich look, so far beyond the bricks-and-boards, Toulouse Lautrec poster motif he could not rise above. If only women were worth it, it would be so nice to live like this.
“A drink?” Sheila asked.
“Yes, Scotch, in a glass, a lot of it, no ice.”
She walked to the sideboard and poured a hefty slug into a Waterford tumbler, brought it to him.
“Sheila, you have to stop calling me at work.”
“You have to come to your senses, Plato. I have no intention of going quietly into that good night. And anyway, I don’t think this is really in your best interests either. What do you hope to accomplish?”
“I’m on the verge of taking you into my confidence, Sheila, if that’s what’s necessary. Something has come up that requires me to leave, for an extended period, as I’ve said. I need you to trust me. It does not really involve leaving you, per se. If you see what I’m trying to get at.”
She smiled noncommitally at him, sat in an upholstered armchair and crossed those long legs, revealing another six inches of voluminous thigh, more of the black lattice-work of the stockings, presumably going all the way up there, Plato realized.
“I wonder if you have any idea what you’re trying to get at.”
“I’m willing to return here after my mission is accomplished and to resume with you. I’m not averse to that.”
“You’re such a romantic fool, Plato. To think you’re not averse to resuming with me.”
He was a little thrown by the controlled intensity of her approach today, so unlike the glass-smashing encounter a week ago. He supposed this was the way it was with hysterics; you never saw the same spin two pitches in a row.
“I simply can’t go any further right now with an explanation. That has to be final, for your sake and mine. I recognize, however, that flitting from woman to woman may be no better an approach than remaining with one woman and working things through, more satisfying in some ways, and the strength of your feeling encourages me to think we could have the kind of commitment necessary to endure. Plus, ever since reading your profile on the Net, I’ve thought we might have that ‘soul mate’ quality that can be so elusive, so once-in-a-lifetime, if you know what I mean.”
She looked away, and the light of the equinoctial sunset burnished her well-formed profile. A handsome woman, Plato thought. He probably did underestimate her.
“I wonder if you mean that.”
“Just this once, indulge yourself in a little trust.”
“All right, Plato, I’ll do that. But for the health of your soul, you better not be bullshitting me.”
He rose and extended his hand to her, pulled her to her feet. He caught a glimpse of a crimson pressure oval beneath the fishnet of her right thigh as she uncrossed her legs. He loved details like that, the responsiveness of flesh to touch, how alive it all was. He took her in his arms, spoke softly in her ear.
“This is vital to me. Believe me, I knew nothing of this six months ago, and I’ve never misled you.”
“Don’t you want to stay?” she whispered. “Don’t you wonder where I might be going later, all dressed up like this?”
“I do, Sheila, but I’ve got to face there will be many nights like that in the coming months, and I’ve got to steel myself, beginning now. Please wait for me. I hope to be worth it.”
