Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

  “I think it’s hard for anyone to find true love,” she said. “My cousin Donna always says real love sneaks up on you when you least expect it. And Donna knows what she’s talking about. She owns her own beauty shop in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn—Salon Louis—named after her husband. She met him when she least expected it, and they’re very happily married now, so that must prove something.” Loretta didn’t bother searching the seats for Donna; given the set-up of the lights, she couldn’t distinguish the faces of most of the people in the audience, and she didn’t want to squint. She was content, though, to know that Donna would be thrilled to pieces by the plug.

  An earnest young woman with stringy brown hair rose and said, “I just want to say that I’ve been on several blind dates, and they were the worst experiences of my life. They were really awful.” Her eyes glistened with tears, caused—Loretta hoped—by the glaring lights and not by her agonizing memories of her blind dates.

  “Can you tell us about them?” Becky inquired in a hushed tone, her impersonation of tender concern.

  “They were really awful.” The woman’s voice quivered. “One guy took me to this very fancy French restaurant and told me to order whatever I wanted. And then, when we were finishing off our cognac and fromage, he announced that he was broke and I had to pay for the meal, or else we’d go to jail. I would never have ordered a cognac if I’d known he was going to do that.”

  “I bet you wouldn’t have ordered the fromage, either,” Becky said sympathetically. Then she brightened. “Well, we’ve got to take a break here, but stick around. When we come back, Loretta is going to meet her blind date!”

  Music filled the studio, and Wally bounded out from the wings, his scalp shining like a polished apple beneath the bright lights. “You’re doing great, honey,” he whispered to Loretta before turning to the audience. “What a fabulous audience! Becky, is this the best audience we’ve ever had here? I think so!” He fluttered his hands and the audience applauded for itself. “Okay, folks—what do you get when you cross Rhett Butler with HBO? Clark Cable!” The audience roared with laughter. “What do you get when you cross Independence Day with Star Wars? May the Fourth be with you!”

  Please, Loretta prayed, fire him, not me.

  Becky tripped lightly down the aisle stairs and rejoined Loretta on the set. “This is great,” she cooed. “It’s not as gripping as the show we did on cannibalism last year, but it’s really charming, don’t you think?”

  “I’m having a blast,” Loretta muttered. Her hands had warmed up enough for her to unfurl them. One of her fingernails was smudged, she noticed. She must have touched it against something before the polish had dried completely.

  “Are you ready to meet your blind date?”

  “As ready as I’ll ever be.” Loretta reminded herself to look surprised when Josh Kaplan made his entrance.

  The music cued up, the lighting adjusted itself and Wally retreated to one side of the set, out of camera range. One of the cameramen counted Becky down, and she beamed from the center of the set, as bright as spring sunshine in her adorable yellow dress. “Hi, everyone, we’re back with Loretta, a member of the production staff here at the Becky Blake Show. Loretta is twenty-nine and single, and we’re going to set her up with a blind date, right here on the show. After Loretta meets her blind date, they’re going to spend an evening on the town, courtesy of the Becky Blake Show. Are you all as excited about this as I am?”

  From his post at the edge of the set, Wally flapped his arms like a rabid pigeon. The audience reacted, shouting, “Yeah!” and “Aww-right!” and “Go for it, Loretta, baby!” That last exhortation seemed to come from the general vicinity of the tattooed man in the tank top.

  “Well, then, let’s meet Loretta’s blind date!” Becky gazed at the camera, where her script scrolled in a frame above the lens. “He’s a lawyer, he lives right here in Manhattan, and I bet he pays for his own cognac and fromage.” Another ad-lib, and a good one at that. “Ladies and gentlemen, join me in welcoming Loretta’s blind date, Josh!”

  Loretta peered off to the left with Becky, and Josh materialized at the edge of the set. He wore a pale gray suit—the same color as Loretta’s slacks, she thought with a smile—over a black polo shirt. The lights brought out the streaks of blond in his tawny hair, and his eyes were alive with glints of silver. He crossed the stage in an easy, long-legged gait and she rose instinctively, her hand outstretched and her smile feeling natural for the first time since Donna had finished painting her face. His smile looked natural, too—a little surprised, a little hesitant but not at all phony.

  “Loretta, I’d like you to meet Josh. Josh, Loretta,” Becky said, back to reading her scripted lines.

  “Nice to meet you,” Josh said, shaking Loretta’s hand.

  “Nice to meet you, too,” she said. She had to suppress the urge to giggle. This was so goofy—and he was being such a good sport about it.

  Becky arranged them in chairs on either side of the table, so the vase of fake roses effectively blocked Loretta’s view of Josh, and planted herself in the chair between them. “Tell us about yourself, Josh. You’re a lawyer, right?”

  “That’s right,” he said, then shot Loretta a quick look. Would that read the wrong way to the audience? Had it been a knowing look, or a curious one?

  “What kind of law do you practice?” Becky asked.

  “Tenants’ rights,” he said. Becky waited, as if expecting him to say more, but he only shot Loretta another look through the hedge of red rosebuds.

  “And are you a New York native?” Becky asked.

  “From the New York area, yes.”

  Laconic answers generally fell flat on a talk show, but Loretta was glad Josh wasn’t running at the mouth. It was so much fun to watch Becky struggle to keep a conversation going. “Tell us, Josh, do you date much?” she asked, her effervescence taking on a slightly frantic edge.

  He shrugged. “I think I date just the right amount,” he said. “And you know what else? I hate cell phones.”

  That stumped Becky. Loretta swallowed a laugh and rescued her floundering boss. “Why do you hate them, Josh?” she asked.

  “Most people use them for no good reason. They babble about nothing and irritate everyone within earshot. If you need to talk to someone, that’s one thing. But to call somebody in the middle of—oh, say, a train trip, just so you can tell the person on the other end which station you just left and which one you’re approaching… I find that kind of thing really annoying.”

  “So do I,” Loretta said.

  “Well, it looks like a match made in heaven!” Becky sang out. “They both hate cell phones! Let’s go out into the audience and take questions.”

  *

  Josh found the questions, on the whole, inane. One woman asked if Josh had had his heart broken in the past, one man asked how he’d gotten roped into this—“It was a favor for a friend,” he’d answered vaguely, figuring that if Loretta’s superiors cared, he could explain that his friend was her colleague Bob—and one woman in a skin-tight shirt, with the sort of body that would be better served by a baggy sweater, asked if he was so hard-up for female companionship that he visited prostitutes.

  “No,” he replied.

  So it was inane. That had been the point, though, hadn’t it? He’d decided to do something silly as a favor for a friend.

  And the friend—not Bob but his new “old friend,” Loretta D’Angelo—looked fantastic. She was wearing a lot of make-up, but she didn’t appear garish or tarty. Her eyes looked deep and mysterious, her cheekbones seemed sculpted and her dark, muted lipstick set off her brilliantly white teeth. Her outfit emphasized her slender height.

  As he’d left his apartment that morning, he’d entertained second thoughts about the whole thing. Fifth or sixth thoughts, actually. He’d been wondering about the sanity of doing this show ever since he’d gotten off the phone with Melanie last night. But here he was, and damn it, he was enj
oying himself.

  Becky Blake reminded him of Tinkerbell, tiny and sparkly and impossible to view as a genuine human being. The audience could have been assembled from the parking lot of a discount department store, a police lock-up or a casting call for extras in a post-apocalyptic comedy starring Adam Sandler. The backstage folks had treated him compassionately, fetching him coffee, adjusting his jacket collar, smoothing his hair with a comb and loading him down with pens and a notepad embossed with the words “The Becky Blake Show” in gold.

  But Loretta… Loretta amazed him. Her smile was wry, her gaze unexpectedly sensuous, and he found himself wishing they could flee the show and go on their blind date. He knew it was just a game, make-believe, but still…

  No, he didn’t need TV shows to solicit female companionship for him—and he didn’t need prostitutes either, thank you. He didn’t need Loretta.

  But the thought that she was his friend pleased him way out of proportion.

  Chapter Eleven

  Solly’s West End Avenue apartment was a residential manifestation of Solly: tidy, comfortable, displaying evidence that money had been spent, but spent wisely. His furniture appeared old, not worn but well aged and settled, as if the pre-war building had been built around it. The walls were covered with framed high quality art prints. The kitchen equipment was dated; no high-end gadgets, no coffee bean grinder or carrot juicer. Just the basics—coffee maker, toaster-oven, microwave. A corner table in the living room held a chess set, meticulously dusted. The slightly filmy windows overlooked a street lined with shabbily genteel apartment buildings and brownstones and clogged with four double-parked cars.

  “This is a terrific apartment,” Josh said once he’d taken a look around. They’d ended their tour in the kitchen, where Solly donned an unfortunately frilly apron and busied himself tearing romaine lettuce into a salad bowl.

  “Rent-controlled,” he boasted. “If they ever do away with rent control, I’ll have to shoot up the state legislature. I’m counting on you to defend me, too, boychik. You said you liked chicken, right?”

  “Chicken’s great.”

  “Some people, they’ve got their vegetarianism, or vegan, whatever the hell that is. Or they’re kosher, or they’re low salt, or they’re low-cholesterol, or they’re gluten-free, or they’re allergic to this and that. My wife Edith, may she rest, had a friend who was allergic to garlic. Can you imagine such a thing? I’d kill myself if I couldn’t eat garlic.”

  “Either that, or the vampires would kill you,” Josh joked.

  “Garlic was God’s party favor to Adam and Eve as he was kicking them out of the Garden of Eden. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘but take this with you. It can only help.’ You ever eat a turkey that’s made without garlic? Edith invited this friend of hers to join us for Thanksgiving one year, and then she made a turkey without garlic. ‘Never again,’ I said. ‘You want Muriel to visit us, fine, but not on Thanksgiving.’ A turkey without garlic is like a book without adjectives. It’s a tragic thing. And now they’re saying garlic prevents heart attacks. Or maybe it was Alzheimer’s. One of those diseases.”

  “I take it there’s garlic in the chicken?”

  Solly gave him a guilty grin. “I don’t know. Dora Lee made it. I’m just heating it up.”

  “That was nice of her.” Josh tugged off his tie and tucked it in the pocket of his jacket. He’d come to Solly’s apartment directly from work, accepting the dinner invitation to make up for the chess game he’d cancelled on Monday. In all the months he and Solly had been facing off on opposite sides of the board, he had never been to Solly’s home before.

  Perhaps Solly represented some kind of father figure for him, now that his own father was dead. But Josh didn’t think that was the basis of their friendship. He didn’t relate to Solly the way he’d related to his father. He’d never felt like his father’s equal, but he and Solly were peers. Advice and respect flowed in both directions. One of the things he loved about New York City was that anyone could be friends with anyone, even if forty years separated them.

  Solly handed him an old-fashioned corkscrew, the kind with wing-like levers that rose as the screw was twisted into the cork. Josh went to work on the bottle of chardonnay he’d brought. “Does Dora Lee cook for you often?” he asked.

  “She likes to make home cooked meals,” Solly allowed. “She worries I should eat right.”

  “Does she visit you here a lot?”

  “She comes and brings me food. Beyond that, none of your business.” Solly’s smile indicated he wasn’t offended by Josh’s probing. He turned off the oven, then carried the salad bowl to the alcove off the living room that served as a dining area. “Don’t forget, Josh,” he called over his shoulder, “I could ask you some questions, too.”

  “What questions?” Josh pressed down on the levers and pried the cork from the bottle.

  “For instance…” Solly returned to the kitchen, grabbed a pair of potholders and slid a Pyrex dish of chicken from the oven. “What’s going on with you and Melanie?”

  “She never makes me any home cooked meals,” Josh said.

  “How could she, a million miles away in Florida? Come and bring the wine. Glasses are on the table.”

  Josh followed Solly out of the kitchen to the dining alcove and filled the goblets with the pale wine. Solly brought out a basket of rolls and gestured for Josh to sit. “Dora Lee made these, too,” he said, gesturing toward the basket. “Cheese rolls, she said. I don’t see any cheese in them. Maybe it’s baked into the dough.”

  “They look delicious. Everything does.” A lot better than the prepared meals Josh wound up zapping in the microwave after work most evenings.

  “So,” Solly said, nudging the platter of chicken toward Josh, “Melanie doesn’t cook meals for you. But this new lady, this blind date lady you met on the television show, is she going to cook for you?”

  Josh laughed. “Cooking is not on the agenda.”

  “This Becky Blake Show, Josh…” Solly shook his head and clicked his tongue. “I watched it a couple of mornings to see what it was like. Oy, what tsuris! People screaming at each other, calling each other terrible names. Everyone with a gripe, a bone to pick. Emotions boiling over. Resentments. Accusations. One show I saw, it was about women who’d lost their jobs for dressing inappropriately. And let me tell you, they were dressed inappropriately. Little skirts that came up to their pupiks, shirts with half their chests hanging out—and these ladies had office jobs. It wasn’t like they were showgirls in Vegas. They were accountants, travel agents, teachers—if they bent over, you could see all the way to China. And the audience shouted and booed and called them terrible names.”

  “The show I appeared on wasn’t like that at all,” Josh assured him. “No one called anyone a terrible name.”

  “This I’d like to see. When is it going to be broadcast?”

  “I don’t know. In a couple of weeks, maybe. They told me they’d give me the date once they scheduled it.”

  “So, it wasn’t tsuris on your show?”

  “Not at all. They brought me out in front of the camera, and I met Loretta, my blind date, and the audience asked us a few questions, and then they outlined what our date would entail.”

  “And it’s going to entail what?”

  Josh tasted the chicken. A hint of garlic, along with other, less easily identifiable herbs. “This is delicious.”

  “Thank Dora Lee. All I did was heat it up. So, the date entails what?”

  “Tomorrow night, Loretta and I are supposed to meet at six o’clock at a restaurant in the Times Square area. I’ve never heard of it, but I’ve got the name written down at home. A cameraman from the show is going to take some film of us at the restaurant. After dinner, we’re going to a play. I don’t know which one, but the show is providing the tickets.”

  “Don’t look a gift horse.”

  “Exactly. After the show, we’re on our own. If Loretta wants, I’ll see her
home.”

  “Why wouldn’t she want you to see her home?”

  Josh shrugged and cut another forkful of chicken. “Paranoia. Maybe she wouldn’t want me to know where she lives.”

  “You’re a good boy. I’ll vouch for you.”

  Josh grinned. “Anyway, there was some talk about whether we should go back on the show to report on how our date went, but that hasn’t been decided yet.”

  “So, you get a free dinner and a free Broadway show out of these people, and you spend an evening with a lady, and that’s that?”

  “Basically.”

  “Well, for a good meal and a good play—”

  “No guarantees on either, Solly. I have no idea what show the tickets are for. It might not even be a Broadway production.”

  “You’re in Times Square for dinner, what else would it be?” Solly tore open a roll and took a bite. “Yeah, there’s cheese in these. You can taste it. Cheddar. Try one, Josh.”

  Josh obeyed. “Definitely cheddar,” he said after swallowing.

  “Now tell me. Melanie. How does she feel about all this?”

  Josh sighed and took a swig of wine. The subject seemed to warrant alcoholic fortification. He could copy Solly and say, “None of your business,” but if he did, Solly would read much more into the situation than actually existed. Another slug of wine, and he admitted, “Melanie isn’t crazy about it.”

  “She’s upset?”

  “No. Just not thrilled.” He lifted his glass, then lowered it and peered at his friend. “Solly, you’re juggling Dora Lee and Phyllis. How do you manage it?”

  “It’s more than Dora Lee and Phyllis,” Solly informed him. “I’ve got other lady friends from outside the Senior Center, too. You’ve never met Olga, have you? A former ballet dancer. Her posture is something to behold, Josh. I’ve never known a woman with such a straight back.”