Perfect People

11

Naomi’s Diary

We sailed from Cuba tonight. John likes the occasional cigar and was miffed he wasn’t allowed ashore to buy any. Dr Dettore, who I’m convinced would have made a great politician, invited us to dine with him tonight in his private dining room. Got the impression this is an honour all ‘patients’ get once. Serious schmoozing. John was impressed with the food and he doesn’t impress easily.

Today, Dr Dettore asked John and I how we met. Actually, more than that, he asked how I felt about John when we first met. It was at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I told him although I loved skiing, I had always been scared of heights, but, strangely, I hadn’t been scared with John. We met in a ski-lift queue and shared a chair together. We just got on really well. Then the bloody chair stopped at the steepest point; halfway up a rock face with a two-thousand-foot sheer drop below us, and swaying crazily. If I had been on my own I would have been scared witless. But John made me laugh. He made me feel I could fly, that I could do anything.

I told Dr Dettore that. But I didn’t tell him the rest.

I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t until Halley died that I realized for the first time that John had limitations, the same as all of us. That for a while I hated him. He’d made me believe he was a god, but when the chips were down he didn’t have any miracle, just tears like you and me. Just the same damned helplessness we all have in common. Now I still love him, but in a different way. I still find him enormously attractive. I feel safe with him. I trust him. But he no longer makes me feel I can fly.

I wonder if all relationships that endure eventually reach this same point. A place where you are comfortable with each other. Where your dreams turn to reality, where you realize the secret of life is to know when it is good.

And that you are bloody lucky.

I have the feeling Dr Dettore is reaching for something more. That beneath all his charm there is a restlessness, a dissatisfaction. I’m normally very good at getting through to people, but although he is really affable, I find it hard to connect to him. Sometimes I have the sense he is contemptuous of ordinary human emotions. That he feels we should be above these and on some higher plane.

That he has some kind of hidden agenda.