The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg Page A

don’t think I disapprove of it.”
    “I’m glad to hear that,” I said. “In any case, I feel I’ve done my turn for society. I feel that now it’s time for me to become involved in something for myself. I want to get somewhere—to use my abilities to…to… build , in some way. Don’t you think that’s important?”
    “Well,” Rafe said. “It seems to me that what’s important is how you feel about your work while you’re doing it.”
    “What?” I said. “I feel fine about my work while I’m doing it, whatever that means. And while I’m not doing it.”
    “That’s good,” Rafe said, without conviction.
    “I feel just fine about my work,” I said. “I really don’t know what we’re talking about.”
    “I’m not sure myself,” he said. “But there’s something about the way Heather…I mean, I’ve noticed, watching Heather, that, well, what she does doesn’t make her feel important.”
    “I should think not,” I said.
    “No, but I mean, it doesn’t make her feel un important either. I mean, I’ve noticed, watching Heather, that because she distinguishes between herself and her work, in some way, that—”
    “Really?” I said. I really couldn’t take one more instant of this. “Do tell me. How interesting. Let’s see. You’ve noticed, you’ve noticed—that it’s better to be on a soap opera than to subsidize art. No—you’ve noticed that it doesn’t matter whether you’re Eva Braun or Florence Nightingale as long as you feel good about it. ”
    “You will be astonished to learn,” Rafe said, “that that is not what I mean. I don’t really mean that you’re important, at all, in your work. I mean that it’s the work itself that—oh, obviously, of course…I don’t know. I’ve just been watching how, if it’s really your work that’s important to you, rather than some idea of yourself doing the work—that is, if your approach to your work is one of genuine interest in the work rather than yourself—then it will necessarily follow that the work will itself respond somehow, with a genuine—”
    “Genuine!” I said. “Genuine! That’s a pretty loaded word you’re tossing around there! Look, Rafael, everything is genuine, if you’re going to start giving me this kind of stuff! I’ve already told you that my work is important to me. I don’t know why you insist on thinking it isn’t. See, that’s genuine Glenlivet you’re drinking out of genuine Baccarat. You’re sitting in a genuine Eames genuine chair. I don’t know what you’re talking about! Do you think I should go out and get myself killed in some war to prove I’m serious? Do you think I should get a job on a soap opera? What do you think? The Spanish Civil War is over! The entire Abraham Lincoln Brigade is dead! I really don’t know what we’re talking about! That’s a genuine TV set over there on which a genuine simulacrum of a genuine version of your girlfriend is genuinely conjured up—and furthermore, my genuine body has the same damn genuine molecular structure as her body’s damn genuine molecular structure!”
    Heavens! What had gotten into me? What had the Abraham Lincoln Brigade or Heather’s molecular structure to do with publishing? It was just that Rafe’s murky attitudinizing really had gotten to me. It really had. He had really changed since he’d started seeing that girl.
    “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m very sorry to say these things to you, but, really, Rafe, you used to be so charming.”
    “It seems so long ago, now, doesn’t it?” he said sadly, swirling the ice cubes around in his drink.
     
     
    It was a long, long time before I saw Rafe again. Several months, probably, elapsed before, one afternoon, he called.
    “Can I take you to dinner?” he said.
    “What, tonight?”
    “Well, are you free?”
    I was delighted he had called, actually. I was sorry I’d jumped on him that evening when he’d obviously just been confused and troubled; and when we met,