They had a second drink.
When Millie brought that second drink she sat next to him on the sofa. “I’m not used to this,” she said, “to the drinking early in the day. I’m getting light-headed.”
“Feel good?” Bill asked.
“Not complaining,” Millie said. “Not complaining about anything.”
“I do have to get up to the kitchen, you know.”
“I know,” Millie said, “and I know we’ve already spent some of your time.”
“I’d say your time too.”
“Our time,” Millie said. “I’m hoping we’ll have lots of our time over time. If you want that, of course.”
Bill thought a moment. The thought was if he had what he wanted he wouldn’t be here in the first place. The thought was that if he knew what he wanted he might have it. But it was so much more than that.
It is much more than that, Bill thought. Bill knew it went all the way back to his father who taught him that love was fulfilling the other person, that it was selfish to go after what you yourself wanted.
At other times, in another place, at this particular spot in that thought Bill would ask himself what he wanted. Not now. Not here. Not sitting on the sofa next to Millie who was waiting for him to do something. In effect, he thought, his not doing something was doing something.
Much, much later in his life Bill would discover something he would consider a major discovery. It wasn’t that women and the sex were just another drug, which they were. He would discover that much sooner.
He would discover that Robert’s saying “what’s good to you is good for you” wasn’t as simple as it seemed. How could you know what was good for you? What was good to you? What seemed good to you one day sometimes ended up being crappy in the end, crappy overall. It was hard to figure. Then, what about what felt good? Was what felt good good for you? Good to you? Sex felt good at the time. But then… Drugs felt good, but then…
Helping that kid at that demonstration felt good – at the moment. It felt right, was, regardless of the consequences, right. It felt good right up to the moment he got grabbed by the undercover FBI agents who happily knocked him out from behind and handed him over to the Columbus police.
And now here he was. Millie in purple was sitting next to him. Skinny Marie-like-except-in-cinnamon-skin Millie, prepared and willing to do anything he wanted, anything he said, sat next to him on the sofa, her bony, sexy self with magnificent hands and feet all just for him. In her barely closed housedress under which was more purple, bra and panties, she was positively delectable. And she was light-headed too.
But he was thinking about his father. He was thinking about what his father impressed upon him, specifically about not taking what you wanted, about fulfilling others, about love being putting the other person before yourself and caring for them more than for yourself.
What bullshit, he would come to learn.
That big, major discovery that would come some maybe forty years later was that so much of what his father taught him/impressed upon him was survivor mentality. How simple. Survivor mentality. Survivor stuff.
He would be teaching a book called Maus. The father, a survivor, was exercising. He asked his son to get him his medicine, which the son did. When the father opened the bottle of pills he spilled them all over. “Look what you did,” the father screams at the son and he goes on to berate him, to beat him up mentally.
“Let’s have another drink,” Bill said.
“I was hoping for something else,” Millie said.
“I know,” said Bill. “That too.”
“You owe me,” Millie said. “And you’re building up a big debt.”
Millie, clearly showing disappointment in her demeanor, stood. She took Bill’s glass and hers and got them another drink.
“This will make me drunk,” she said.
