bad. That simply is not so, Lisa. You cannot make that terrible, damning judgment upon yourself.' I put my hand over my eyes and turned my face away from him. I felt we had come immediately to the knife edge of it, and I had not thought really that all the talking in the world was going to bring us there. 'Lisa, don't run away from this,' he said. 'Don't question it and don't run from it. Go back to The Club, and tell Elliott exactly what you've been telling me, what he wanted to hear when he told you he loved you.'
'Martin, it's impossible,' I said. It was absolutely essential to stop this disintegration, this horrid sense of breaking down forever. But I was thinking the strangest thing: what if, what if it really was something that could happen? What if Martin was right and Elliott and I could have each other like that? What if it was half that good for only a year, a fourth that good for a decade? Christ, that was worth the death of everything I'd ever been before, wasn't it? But that was the very problem. 'You know what I am,' I said. I pleaded for him to understand. 'You know the paths I've travelled.' 'But don't you see?' he answered. 'So does Elliott. Lisa, this love was born at The Club. It was born in the very fulcrum of your secret life. Do you think it could have happened to you anywhere else? And what about Elliott? Do you think this has happened to him before?' 'I don't know.'
'Well, I know. Elliott loves you, knowing exactly what you are, and you love Elliott, knowing full well what he is. It isn't an either/or situation of normal love versus exotic love. You have the thing all men and women strive for: the lover from whom you do not have to hide anything.' I put up my hands in a little gesture for silence. It was moving too fast for me to catch up. 'Then why can't I go back there!' I asked. 'Why the hell am I terrified of the very sight of the place?' 'Why did you have to get out when you took him on the plane?' 'Because the person I am there couldn't know him the way I knew him here! I couldn't mix the two. God knows other people can. Scott can. Richard can. You can. You can sleep with your lovers and talk to your lovers and snap right back into it ...'
'But the rituals were always protecting you from that very thing.' 'Yes!' We stared at each other for a moment. I had lifted my hand to my lips. What I said astonished me. But there was the overwhelming sense of injustice, that it was nothing so simple, and yet I was struck by the violent simplicity of what I'd just said. 'I can't think,' I said. My voice was breaking and it infuriated me, the crying, the endless crying. 'I can't reason, I can't believe somebody who has done the things I've done can have love!' I heard his reaction though it wasn't in words, the soft murmur of shock. I struggled to get a handkerchief out of my purse, and I hid my face behind my hand for a moment. For the first time all day I wanted to be alone. 'You know, it's as if I made this choice early on, it's as if ...' 'But there was no reason for that choice!' He started to say something more but he stopped. Then he spoke again very softly. 'I never knew you felt so guilty about it all. I never knew you felt so bad.' 'I don't,' I insisted. 'Not when I am doing what I am supposed to do at The Club. I do not feel bad. I believe in what I do. The Club is the veritable externalization of what I believe. It is my vocation, The Club.' Again, I stopped, mildly shocked by what I had heard myself say. And yet these were words I'd used many times over the years, to others, as well as in my own head. The Club was my nunnery. But the rituals were always protecting you from that very thing. I had been staring ahead in the darkness and I turned and looked at him now, a little amazed at the alertness and the calm of the expression on his face. The sheer habitual optimism