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'That's not exactly what I said, Trumper.'
'I mean,' he said, 'you seemed sort of aloof, kind of independent - like you didn't want me too close.'
'Which is how you want it, isn't it?'
'Well, no, it's nothing to do with how I want you to be.'
'But how do you want me?' Tulpen said.
'Well ...' he said, fumbling, a bubble too heavy to rise. 'Well, just like you want to be, Tulpen.'
But she turned away from him. 'You want things cool, right?' she said. 'Sort of detached, not committed, free ...'
'Goddamn!' he said. 'Do you really want a baby?'
'You first,' she said. 'I'm not putting out something for nothing. I could put out, Trumper. I can get involved,' she said, looking up at him. 'But can you?'
Trumper got up and walked around the aquariums, looking through the tanks at her. A fish darted down her cleavage, algae moved in her lap.
'You're not doing anything,' Tulpen said to him. 'You've got no direction, there's not a plan in your life. There's no plot to it, even.'
'Well, I'd make a bad movie then, wouldn't I?' he said. He was looking for the turquoise eel and couldn't find him.
'Trumper, I'm not at all interested in what kind of movie you'd make. I don't care about the damn movie, Trumper.' Looking at him staring at her through a fish tank, she snatched the sheet around herself angrily. 'Stop looking at my crotch when I'm trying to talk to you!' she screamed.
He bobbed up above the tank, peering down at her. He was genuinely surprised: he'd just been looking for the eel. 'I wasn't looking at your crotch,' he said, and she fell back on the bed as if she were finally exhausted from sitting up.
'You haven't wanted to go away for a weekend,' she said. 'People just don't live in New York without at least wanting to go somewhere.'
'You know that little see-through eel?' he said, poking around in one of the tanks. 'The turquoise one, the very small one?' She popped up from under the sheet and stared at him. 'Well, I can't find him,' he said to her. 'I think he was talking ... I wanted to show you ...' But her stare cut him off. 'He talked in bubbles,' Trumper told her.
Tulpen just shook her head. 'Jesus,' she whispered. He went over to the bed and sat down beside her. 'You know what Ralph says about you, Trumper?' she asked him.
'No,' he said, angry. 'Tell me what fucking old Ralph says.'
'He says you don't come across, Trumper.'
'Come across?'
'No one knows you, Trumper! You don't convey anything. You don't do much, either. Things just sort of hap
pen to you, and they don't even add up to anything. You don't make anything of what happens to you. Ralph says you must be very complicated, Trumper. He thinks you must have a mysterious core under the surface.'
Trumper stared into the fish tank. Where is the talking eel?
'And what do you think, Tulpen?' he asked her. 'What do you think's under the surface?'
'Another surface,' she said, and he stared at her. 'Or maybe just that one surface,' she said, 'with nothing under it.' He was angry, then, but he stood up lightly and shook his head and laughed. She kept watching him, though.
'Well, you know what I think?' he said, and he peered into the tank, wondering what he really did think. 'I think,' he said, 'that the tiny turquoise eel is gone.' He grinned at Tulpen, then, but she was not amused and turned away.
'Then that's the second one I've lost,' she said coldly.
'Lost?' he said.
'Well, I put the first one in another tank and he disappeared.'
'Disappeared?' Trumper said; he looked around at the other tanks.
