“Nor is the recent governor of Georgia her Lester Maddox,” Potter said firmly.
Though Stanhope seemed eager to carry this on, Max deftly moved the conversation to the subject of inflation, which everyone was against but no one seemed to know how to stop. Potter and Amelia exchanged a glance of loving camaraderie across the table, and Potter recalled approvingly a friend’s definition of a successful marriage as “a conspiracy of two people against the outside world.”
Marriage?
He was surprised, and a little bit scared, to have thought of it. But it was an exciting kind of fright.
When they left, Marva pulled him aside to say how wonderful Amelia was, and how “right” she seemed for Potter. He agreed.
Amelia didn’t want to get home too late because she had to go to Church in the morning with her roommates. They all went to church together every Sunday. They were Methodists.
Potter didn’t go so far as to offer to join Amelia and her roommates for Sunday services, but he did propose something that was almost as much out of character for him. He offered to take Amelia to a concert she had mentioned Sunday afternoon at the Gardner Museum. She said she’d adore it.
The concert was some kind of quartet playing works of a minor contemporary of Bach. Potter, in a warm sort of daze, let the sound slip through his head, like distant water running. Tootly-tweetly-toot-ta-tee-toot …
My God, he thought, what am I doing?
But just then Amelia’s hand closed softly over his own, and her fingers intertwined with his, making a slight pressure, a comforting hold, and Potter let doubt slide from his mind, let himself be lulled by the music.
Tootly-tweetly-toot-ta-tee-teet …
Potter moved with cheery absent-mindedness through his class preparations, his classes, his office hours, his daily life, all of which seemed only interludes between the times with Amelia; pleasant enough interludes, but pale and one-dimensional compared to the bright, full feeling that came when he was in her company.
After one Communications class, Miss Linnett asked Potter if he was high on something.
He only laughed.
“Wow,” she said with envy. “I wish I had some.”
“You will,” he assured her with a wink, and waltzed away down the hall.
In much the same spirit that had made him want to make up with Marva and Max Bertelsen, he wanted to resume his friendship with Gafferty in the old, trusting way it had been before Potter started getting his fantasy hang-ups about what student the guy was fucking. There had been no open split between him and Gafferty, but it was obvious that Potter had cooled toward him, and Gafferty had not again asked for the use of his apartment. Potter didn’t care now who the guy was fucking there. In the glow of his feeling for Amelia he didn’t even mind if Gafferty was making it with Miss Korsky or Miss Linnett. He would still give them A’s.
He found Gafferty in his office, reading papers, and invited himself in. He apologized for having forgotten about letting him use the apartment, but hoped he would do so again whenever he wanted to, most any afternoon that week would be all right. Gafferty, surprised, said that was asking a lot of a man, maybe he should never have done it, but Potter insisted it was fine, what were friends for, why didn’t they go over to Jake Wirth’s and have a couple beers. Gafferty said he just had to finish reading one paper, it would only take a few minutes, why didn’t Potter just make himself at home.
“Terrific,” Potter said. “Take your time.”
He picked up a copy of the Globe, and read about an interview President Nixon had given on the Today show. The president had said that the “fundamental cause” of unrest among American youth was not due to war, poverty, or prejudice, but “a sense of insecurity that comes from the old values being torn away.…”
The old values. It reminded him of Amelia. Everything reminded him of her. Maybe the president was right. Maybe if there were more women like Amelia.…
His musings were interrupted by a hesitant tap at the door, and he looked up to see a shy, studious-looking girl whom he recognized as one of the students who worked part-time in the Administration office. She was one of those pleasant-seeming but unobtrusive people, neither fat nor thin, tall nor short, ugly nor beautiful, the sort of person of whom it is said that they blend into the woodwork.
Gafferty looked up, reddened, and said, “Ah—Miss Griffin. Do you know Mr. Potter? Miss Linda Griffin.”
“Sure, I’ve seen you in the office,” Potter said.
Miss Griffin said, “Oh, yes,” looked nervously at Gafferty, and said, “I’m sorry Mr. Gafferty, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Oh, no, not at all—”
“I can wait outside,” Potter offered. “I was just waiting, anyway.”
“Oh, no,” Miss Griffin said.
“No, no, it’s all right,” Gafferty said, leaving Potter wondering what was all right for whom and what all the fidgety business was about.
“I’ll stop by tomorrow,” the girl said, and scurried away before anyone could say anything else.
“Sorry,” said Gafferty.
“Huh? What for?”
“No, nothing. I’ll just be a minute.”
He turned back to his paper, coughed, riffled through it, and stood up, saying why didn’t they go for the beer.
Over the second one he said, “Miss Griffin. That’s the girl. The one I see.”
Potter, at first astonished, then amused, not at Gafferty or the girl but his long needless torturous suspicions, started laughing, then tried to apologize, explain without explaining, tying himself in more complex knots, finally saying, “Brother, forgive me. I’m a little bit light-headed these days.”
“Ah,” said Gafferty, “anything serious?”
“Yes,” Potter said with a huge smile, “I’m afraid it is.”
Potter had neglected Marilyn since his courtship of Amelia had moved into high gear, and he felt guilty about it. Hoping to make amends, he invited her to meet him at Trader Vic’s for dinner, but once there, it seemed all wrong. She had quickly become bored with the pot-smoking mailroom boy, and fallen into the depression over Herb that what she called her “hippie thing” had only briefly forestalled. Marilyn refused to join Potter in one of the exotic drinks that he thought might cheer her, explaining she was not in a festive mood. She wanted a serious drink, and ordered an extra dry martini straight up with a twist. Potter, still hoping to jolly her around, ordered some damn thing that came in a huge bowl with a flower and a purple parasol floating in it.
“Jesus,” Marilyn said with disgust when the gaudy business was set in front of him, “that thing looks like a chorus girl’s dream.”
“Look,” he said, “I know you’re pissed off, and I’m really sorry I haven’t called, but—well, I’ve been seeing Amelia all the time, and—you know, it’s just been one of those things.”
“I assumed,” Marilyn said coolly, “that things were going well with you and Miss Molasses.”
“Oh—hey, has she said anything? About me? At the office?”
“She doesn’t have to.”
“What? What do you mean? She doesn’t even say anything about our dates?”
“Not directly.”
“What do you mean not directly? Either she says something or she doesn’t.”
“It’s not her style—to say anything.” Marilyn made a mock smile and her voice raised an octave: “She just oozes—sweetness.”
“But—about what? How do you know it’s about me?”
“Oh, she says something like, “Ah saw Phee-ul lass night.’ Then she oozes.”
“Does she?” Potter asked anxiously.
“Ooze?”
“No—mention me.”
Marilyn sighed. “Yes, yes, of course. Jesus. This whole thing is getting sickening. Can’t we talk about something else?”
Somehow Marilyn’s obvious dislike of Amelia’s manner excited Potter even more. “Really,” he said, “she has something—different. I don’t
know how to explain it.”
Marilyn lit a cigarette, and looked at Potter with a not very friendly grin. “I bet I can explain it,” she said.
“You can? Really? What is it? How do you figure it?”
“How many times have you seen her now?”
“Five. Five times. Tomorrow night will be our sixth date. Counting lunch and the concert yesterday. Why? Are you going to tell me I hardly know her, I haven’t had time to know what she’s really like?”
“No. I wasn’t going to tell you that.”
“Well? What were you going to tell me?”
“I wasn’t going to tell you anything. I was going to ask you something.”
“OK, what?”
Marilyn dragged on her cigarette, her mouth pursed and she blew a large, perfect smoke-ring at Potter. “How is she in bed?”
“In bed?”
Potter was shocked.
“You haven’t fucked her yet, have you?”
“Why do you have to use that word?”
Marilyn began to giggle.
“What the hell’s funny?” Potter demanded.
Marilyn’s giggling got louder, more hysterical. She doubled over, coughing, wiped at her eyes, and sipped some water, then broke out laughing again while Potter, annoyed and impatient, waited for the fit to pass.
“Ohhhh,” said Marilyn, partially recovering. “Ohhhhh—you poor sap.”
4
It was not until after their seventh date that Potter took Amelia back to his own apartment. He had feared that the mere suggestion of it might have seemed … lewd. That she might be offended by the very idea. Going alone to a gentleman’s private apartment!
The afternoon of their Saturday date, he had tried to straighten it up. He took out the trash, piled his ungraded papers into neat stacks, washed a two-week accumulation of grimy dishes, and even cleaned the grey ring out of the bathtub. He hid his dirty laundry in the closet, and—just in case—he put clean sheets on the bed. This was a real problem because the only “clean” sheets he had still bore stains on them from someone or other he had fucked during their menstrual period. Ordinarily, he would have just put them on, stains and all, but the idea of Amelia touching such sheets was a prospect too shameful to even consider. He jumped in his Mustang, sped to the Sears on Mass Avenue, and bought a set of lime green sheets and pillowcases.
It crossed his mind that buying the new sheets might be bad luck, might make Fate or God think he was counting on getting Amelia to bed, and so jinx the whole thing. But on the other hand, if he didn’t put on clean sheets, and it turned out she wanted to go to bed, he would be too embarrassed to take her there. And she certainly wasn’t the sort of girl you fucked on the couch or the kitchen floor.
After dinner at Stella’s, which was noisy and crowded, Potter suggested they go to his place to have a brandy.
He had bought a bottle of Remy Martin. And he had two fine snifters that were part of his share of the spoils from the wedding presents of his marriage.
At the suggestion Amelia lowered her eyelids, smiled sweetly, and said, “Aw right, Phil.”
Amelia declared what a charmin’ apartment Potter had, and he said, “That’s very kind of you, but I know it isn’t nearly what it could be. It’s the kind of place everyone says what a lot could be done with it, but I don’t know how to do it.”
“But ah do,” Amelia said with a quiet smile.
“Well, of course, I’m sure you do, but I can’t ask you—I mean it’s my own place and I ought to be—uh. You know. It’s my own responsibility.”
“But darlin’, if you don’t have the touch—you can’t help it.”
“Well, I certainly lack the touch, all right.”
“Of course, everyone has different taste. You might not like what I’d do at all—”
“Oh no, I’m sure I would—”
“You mean you’d let me?”
“You mean you’d do it?”
“Darlin’, ah’d adore to do it. I just love fixin’ things up, and organizin’ things.”
“Jesus. That’s what I can’t do at all. I’m the most disorganized person in the world.”
“Well then,” she smiled, “ah guess a person like you needs a person like me.”
“God,” he said, “you’re wonderful.”
He clutched her, held on to her, buried his face in the sweet richness of her honeysuckle-smelling hair, while she rubbed her hands softly over his shoulders, down his back, cooing “Darlin’ darlin’” as if comforting a homeless child. He felt safe, sheltered. And the comfort Amelia gave him was not only soothing, but stimulating. He drew back, staring at her face, gently running the tips of his fingers over it like a blind man trying to memorize it, as she smiled and closed her eyes, offering herself like a cat to be stroked, and making a sound that was the closest human equivalent of a purr.
“Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm …”
When he kissed her then, long and hard, her mouth for the first time opened to him and she pressed her body against him.
It was not until, prone, on the couch, when Potter reached back for the zipper at the neck of her dress that Amelia stiffened, drew away, sat up. Cigarette time; but Amelia didn’t smoke. Potter did. Neither of them said anything. It was obvious that negotiations were necessary before further intimacy was achieved.
Amelia took his hand. “Phil, darlin’.”
“Yes?”
“Ah guess I’m real old-fashioned.”
“Yes?”
“Ah just don’t—go around—doin’ these things.”
“Of course not. I know you don’t.”
“Matter a fact, ah guess you could say—ah’m practically a virgin.”
“Practically?”
“Well, there was only this one man. And we were engaged. We were plannin’ to get married acourse, but it didn’t work out. Ya see, I know it’s not popular now, but I was raised to b’lieve that a woman should—save herself—for the one man, she would marry. And give him—everything.”
Potter swallowed hard, the everything reverberating in his imagination. His mind tried then to absorb the fact of an attractive, twenty-six-year-old woman being “practically a virgin.” The phrase itself was an old joke, and he wondered if she was putting him on. Then, looking into the wide and misty sincerity of her eyes, he was ashamed of himself for doubting her.
“All I know,” he said helplessly, “is I love you.”
“I know, darlin’,” she said sympathetically. “And I love you, too; that’s what makes it so difficult. Ah love you, and ah’d love to be able to—give myself to you.”
“Oh, God,” he said.
“There, there,” she soothed, stroking his forehead.
Later, they necked some more.
Later still, back home alone in bed, Potter masturbated, imagining “everything.”
That Saturday morning Amelia came over in bluejeans and a man’s white shirt tied at the waist, and began the redecoration of Potter’s apartment. Part of the redecoration included cleaning up the accumulated debris, the dirt and grime that he had allowed to grow, like some kind of experimental bacteria, throughout his living quarters. After taking a moldy piece of cheesecake out of the refrigerator and tossing it into a trash can, Amelia sighed, kissed Potter on the tip of the nose, and said, “You know, darlin’, you met me just in time.”
By five in the afternoon they were able to sit down for a drink in the sunny, glistening living room with bright yellow curtains fluttering at the windows, books neatly arranged in orange-crate shelves that Amelia planned to paint bright green the next weekend.
Amelia had brought supplies for dinner, and while Potter sipped a second drink she prepared a feast of boneless chicken breasts, brown rice, asparagus with hollandaise, a chilled Pouilly Fouissé and ambrosia for dessert. Ambrosia, food of the gods. Amelia made everything seem ambrosial, and Potter indeed felt like a god.
As well as bringing groceries, Amelia had brought two of the lush cushions from her own
apartment so that she and Potter could dine at the living room coffee table in a simulation of oriental comfort. She had also brought a change of clothes, so that she wouldn’t have to sit down to dinner in the blue jeans and shirt she had worn for working around the house all day. For dinner she wore a long gingham dress with lace at the cuffs and collar, and an old-fashioned brooch. She looked like one of those wonderful young ladies in Degas, the kind who were taken for rides in canoes, holding a parasol and letting one hand gently drape itself into the water.
“You look wonderful,” Potter said.
“It must be because I feel wonderful.”
Potter, on hands and knees, crept from his pillow over to hers, and put his arms around her. “You are wonderful,” he said.
“Oh, Phil. Darlin’.”
They rocked into one another, clutched, kissed, stroked, licked, bit, nibbled, rubbed, gasped, gurgled, grew hard, and groaned hot declarations of love, until Potter, dizzy and breathless, broke away, sat up straight, slightly shaking, holding one of Amelia’s hands with both of his. “Listen,” he said, “will you marry me?”
Her eyes, large and moist and intent, searched his face. “Oh, Phil. Darlin’. Are you sure?”
“Yes. I think I am. But I want to be even more sure. I don’t want to make a mistake again. I want us to wait a while. To take our time.”
“Of course, darlin’.”
“Think of everything. Plan.”
“Oh, yes.”
“And Amelia. I don’t want to tell anyone yet, I mean like having a formal announcement or any of that. Not till we’ve decided everything, have everything worked out.”
“Of course, darlin’. It’ll be our secret.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Mind? Oh, darlin’. I think it’s wonderful. It’s exciting—a secret engagement!”
Potter hadn’t wanted to use that word. “Engagement.” It sounded too—certain. Irrevocable. But if Amelia wanted to think of it that way, he didn’t want to object. What the hell. It was only a word.
It turned out to be a magic word. The engagement, even though secret, was enough to satisfy Amelia’s scruples about further intimacy, and she allowed an escalation that led to removal of all her garments except for panties, a final barrier that couldn’t fall until Amelia was able to arrange for what she called “precautions.”
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