“You’re juggling three women?”
“Why limit myself? I’m in demand.” Solly spoke this as the simple truth, without a whiff of boasting.
“And the women don’t mind?”
“Why should they mind? There’s plenty of me to go around.”
“They don’t get jealous?”
Solly chewed thoughtfully while he mulled over the question. “Who knows? If they get jealous, they hide it from me. Olga, no, I don’t think she’s a jealous type. Sixty-three years old, she doesn’t look a day over forty. You should see this lady, Josh. So straight, her chin always raised, her shoulders back…” He drew himself straighter in his chair as he described Olga. Josh sat straighter, too. “Olga has other men she sees, younger men. And she also sees me. We go to the ballet together. A lot of men won’t go to the ballet, they think it’s a faygela thing to do. Not me. I know who I am. I want to go to the ballet, I go. It’s something Olga likes about me.”
“I’m sure.”
“As for Phyllis and Dora Lee… Jealous? I don’t think so. A little playful rivalry, maybe, but what’s the point of being jealous? It’s not like I’m nicer to one than the other. I treat them both nicely, because I like them both. What’s to be jealous about?”
“Some would say it’s human nature. A woman might want you all to herself.”
“That’s her problem, then. I’m not jealous of Olga, even though I know she’s seeing other men. She gets something different from them than she gets from me, right? So let her see them. What’s the big deal? None of us is married.”
And Josh wasn’t married to Melanie. She was more than a thousand miles away, hosting parties and dinners for her new friends. Like Solly, he had no reason to feel guilty.
Who ever said you had to have a reason to feel guilty?
And damn it, he did have a reason: Loretta. Her large, dark eyes, her sleek legs, her untamed hair and the little oval indentation at the base of her throat… Oh, yeah, he had a reason to feel guilty.
Nothing was going to happen between them. She’d been clear about that. She wasn’t interested. If she had been interested, he never would have gone through with the show and the date. That was the deal they’d made: nothing was going to happen.
Yet he’d been thinking about her, the way she’d looked on the show in that pretty green blazer and the lacy top she’d had on under it—not exactly a shirt, not exactly lingerie but something in between. He’d been thinking about that not-exactly-whatever and the way it exposed the smooth skin of her upper chest, her collarbones and the delicate hollow between them. At inappropriate times—like in the middle of a deposition with the Branford Arms’ super, or at night in bed—Loretta had invaded his imagination, and he’d thought, Fuck Melanie, fuck the deal Loretta and I made. I want her.
He couldn’t mention any of this to Solly, who had been a huge fan of Melanie’s long before he’d ever even met Josh. Maybe Solly could juggle all his ladies—spunky Phyllis, domestic Dora Lee, and Olga of the magnificent posture—without undue guilt because he was older and the thoughts he entertained about his women friends were less erotic.
But what did Josh know? Solly could be a regular sex machine, satisfying those three and countless other women, souped up on vitamins and the occasional Viagra. Maybe he didn’t feel guilty because he honestly believed his own words: What’s the big deal? None of us is married.
Josh realized Solly was watching him, measuring the lengthening silence inch by inch. “It’s not important,” he finally said. “I mean, this date with Loretta. It’s just this once. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“You’re just friends, as the movie stars used to say.”
“We’re going to appear for a few minutes on a morning TV talk show. We hardly qualify as movie stars.”
“So it doesn’t mean anything.” Solly eyed Josh over the rim of his glass as he sipped. “You’ll have fun, you’ll go out with this lady one time, and no one should get jealous about it.”
Or feel guilty, Josh added silently, hoping he’d be able to convince himself.
Chapter Twelve
The teddy was absurd, but Loretta was running late and didn’t have time to change. She blamed Becky and the production team for that. They’d demanded that she put in a full day at work even though they knew she had to get home, freshen up, change her clothes and race back downtown to Times Square by six for her stupid blind date. At four-thirty, while Kate and Bob were engaged in a ridiculous argument over whether it would be ethical to invite some Rockettes onto the show and call them exotic dancers, Loretta had told them that no one who wore a little red Santa’s Elf costume and formed a kick line with live reindeer at Radio City Music Hall could be considered exotic, and left for home.
Two minutes in the shower. Five minutes to blow-dry her hair—Donna would have a cow at how disheveled it came out. Ten minutes to don the teddy, a black silk blouse and a black Armani skirt that she’d bought on a whim during a post-holiday sale at Barney’s last January because she’d thought Gary would like it, but he’d broken off with her before she’d ever had a chance to wear it with him. Three minutes to remove the polish Donna had painted onto her nails, because a few of the nails had gotten chipped. Two minutes for make-up—a touch of eyeliner, powder and lipstick. Twenty seconds to pull her wallet and keys from her bag and stuff them into an evening purse. Two seconds to adjust the straps on the teddy, which were slack and drooping down over her shoulders. One second to consider and reject the idea of switching the teddy for a regular bra and panties. A minute to resent everyone who’d pressured her into this ridiculous charade, and a lifetime to resent herself for having let them pressure her.
If the Becky Blake Show had any class, a stretch limo would have been idling downstairs at the curb, ready to cruise her downtown to the Charter Beef House in Times Square. She’d never heard of the restaurant before, but she figured that with a name like that, it would have to serve steak, a safe meal for a blind date. Not that this was a real blind date, but she would never risk eating a boiled lobster or anything involving onions in the company of a man she hardly knew. Onions caused bad breath, and lobster took an hour to eat, plus you had to wear a little plastic bib. It was also wise not to order anything with spinach in the company of anyone other than immediate family. Getting a shred of spinach caught in your teeth was on a par with losing your bikini top at a public beach, at least if you were raised among dentists, where oral hygiene was next to godliness.
No limousine awaited her as she emerged from her building into the late June heat. She would have treated herself to a cab, except that the rush-hour traffic was doing the exact opposite of rushing. The subway would get her downtown faster.
She walked the few blocks to the 96th Street station, descended the stairs carefully, since she had strapped on sandals with two-inch heels, and tried not to gag on the subterranean air, which was flavored with assorted fumes—metallic scents from the trains and ripe organic aromas from some of the people sharing the platform with her. Three uptown trains stopped before a downtown train squealed into the station.
Loretta wedged herself into a car already packed with passengers. She grabbed hold of one of the vertical poles. Two other people sharing the pole with her were yakking into their cell phones. “We’re just leaving 96th Street,” a man in a New York Giants jersey and a nose ring shouted into his phone. “The IRT, you asshole! East Side!”
I know just the woman for you, Loretta thought, remembering the ditzy blonde from the Long Island Railroad, the lady Josh Kaplan had silenced.
Josh Kaplan. Holy shit. She was going on a date with Josh. Why? Why was she doing this? Why was she doing it in that damned teddy Donna had given her?
The train shimmied and wobbled. The wheels screeched. The air conditioning couldn’t compete with all the body heat steaming up the car. She could feel her hair tightening into springy strands of frizz. Her sister-in-law Kathy always complained that the city humidity
was murder on a woman’s hair. Loretta usually dealt with the problem by not caring how her hair looked. The rest of her was okay, and that ought to be enough.
This wasn’t a real date, anyway, she reminded herself. Just an attempt to bolster her job security. It was a weeknight and Josh had a girlfriend. This didn’t count.
She reached Grand Central Station at five minutes to six and grabbed the cross-town shuttle, which was even more crowded than the last train had been. It was so jammed no one could use a cell phone, because to use one would require arm movements and the passengers were packed too tightly to budge. Loretta couldn’t reach a pole, but it didn’t matter. Even if the train came to a sudden halt, she was wedged in too snugly to fall. The bodies surrounding her provided protective cushioning. She only hoped no one was sweating onto her silk blouse.
The train reached Times Square, and she was swept along with the mob evacuating the car and ascending the stairs. Emerging into the pink twilight of early evening, she sucked balmy outdoor air into her lungs and pulled from her purse the scrap of paper on which she’d jotted down the address of the Charter Beef House. West 43rd off Broadway.
Cars jammed Broadway and West 42nd, drivers pressing on their horns because they couldn’t press on their gas pedals. The air vibrated with summer and energy and dozens of clashing sounds. Pedestrians wove through the stagnant traffic, dressed in business suits, in tank-tops and shorts, in athletic Lycra, in floral-print sundresses and hospital scrubs and, in one case, a Superman leotard and cape. People in Plainview never left home dressed like Superman. This was why Loretta lived in Manhattan.
From the corner of Broadway and 43rd, she spotted Josh and Glenn Santos, a cameraman from the show, lurking outside what appeared to be a seedy tavern. Josh looked fresher than she felt, clad in khakis and a greenish-gray shirt about three shades darker than his eyes. Above the door, which was festooned with beer stickers, hung a small sign reading Charter Beef House.
A shudder passed through her. But Josh was smiling, and that helped to soothe her bristling nerves. She had nothing against seedy taverns, after all. Some of her most forgettable nights had been spent in them.
“Hey, Loretta,” Glenn greeted her as she crossed Broadway and joined them. “You’re late.”
“It’s—” she checked her watch “—six-oh-two. Becky made me work late today.” She sent Josh an apologetic smile. “Hi.”
“Hi.”
She eyed the restaurant and shuddered again. “It looks like the show robbed a bank to pay for this elegant dinner.”
Before Josh could offer an opinion, Glenn said, “Let me get a shot of you two, okay?”
“You might want to pose us in front of a classier joint,” she suggested. Becky’s audience probably would expect them to dine somewhere glamorous. Of course, it was possible that Becky’s audience would view the Charter Beef House as more glamorous than the eateries they usually patronized.
“No, no, this is fine,” Glenn assured her. “Just stand like this…” He arranged them so they blocked most of the beer-label signs. “Look like you’re happy. Look like you’re falling in love.”
“Oh, so now we’ve got to act, too?” Loretta sent Josh a wry look.
“We can fake happy, don’t you think?” Josh teased, then slung an arm around her shoulders. He didn’t hug her close, just held his arm loose and light. She smiled and realized she wasn’t really faking it.
Glenn filmed them in that pose, then urged them to enter the restaurant while the tape continued to roll. Josh held the door open for Loretta and she stepped inside.
The place was only moderately seedy, she reassured herself. It was too dark, and the bar that occupied the front half of the room was lined with beefy men in denim work clothes accessorized by leather tool belts and orange hardhats, enjoying an after-work beer and heckling the baseball players on the television screen roosting above a row of whisky bottles. The air was infused with a hot-oil fragrance that implied the fried dishes would be swimming in grease. Loretta would avoid the French fries, along with fried or any other onions and spinach. She doubted lobster would be an issue at a dive like this.
Glenn followed them inside. “They’ve got Guinness on tap here,” he said, as if that would make her think more highly of the place. The hostess, a bony pink-haired woman chomping on a large wad of gum, acknowledged their arrival with a bored nod, and Glenn explained that Loretta and Josh were the blind-date couple from the Becky Blake Show. Her face lit up. Maybe she was a fan of the show.
“So, I’ll meet you two outside at 7:15,” Glenn instructed them. “I’ll have the tickets for you, and we’ll get some shots of you heading into the theater.”
“Any idea what show we’ll be seeing?” Josh asked Loretta as they followed the hostess through the gloom to a wood-sided booth against one wall.
“None whatsoever.” She smiled her thanks to the hostess, who handed her a menu, and then turned back to Josh and smiled again. No, she didn’t have to fake happy. Her smile was real.
“I don’t suppose it’s one of those hits that’s been sold out for months,” he guessed, his gaze circling the dining room, lingering for a moment on the TV as the batter fanned out and then on the wall’s array of autographed photos of second-string athletes and performers she’d never heard of.
She laughed. “Who knows? Maybe this restaurant is actually Le Cirque 2000 and we’re just having a simultaneous hallucination.”
“You think?”
He had a nice smile. Not too pushy, not too cocky. It was a smile that said, We’re in this together, and we’ll make the best of it. She smiled back, then opened her menu and lost her smile. They were definitely not in Le Cirque 2000. The entrees included fried chicken, fried sole, fried pork chops and seven different kinds of hamburger. “These prices aren’t even that cheap,” she complained. “I know some fantastic Italian restaurants that don’t cost any more than this.”
“Maybe we could sneak out to one of those places,” Josh whispered.
“There’s a place around the corner and down a few blocks on Eighth Avenue. My Nona’s cousin Carlotta once had an affair with the owner. It was a big scandal in both families. I still remember going there when I was a little girl and we made a trip to the city. I was supposed to call the owner Uncle Vinnie. Best calamari I ever ate.”
“Calamari is one of those disgusting dishes, right?” Josh asked hesitantly.
“It’s squid. What’s disgusting about that? Cooked right, it’s…” Closing her eyes, she reminisced about Uncle Vinnie’s calamari, so tender inside its delicate breading, with spicy marinara drizzled over it. “It’s wonderful,” she finally said, aware the word didn’t do her memory justice. “One day, when I was about seven, Uncle Vinnie’s wife chased Cousin Carlotta around the kitchen with a boning knife and Cousin Carlotta left Uncle Vinnie and went back to her husband Alfredo. I don’t really remember him, but Nona always said he had the brains of a fico—a fig. Anyway, we weren’t allowed to eat Uncle Vinnie’s calamari after that.”
Josh grinned. “My family’s nowhere near as interesting as yours.”
“My family’s boring,” Loretta assured him. “At least my generation is.”
“You aren’t.”
She chalked his comment up to good manners, not a genuine compliment. “My brothers make up for me,” she told him.
The waitress approached, armed with a sharp pencil and a pad. Loretta ordered a mushroom burger and a Guinness, since it was on tap. Josh opted for a bacon cheeseburger and a Sam Adams beer. The waitress took their menus and left.
Neither of them said anything for a minute. Loretta wondered whether he thought she talked too much—as if she cared. She wasn’t under any obligation here. The plan wasn’t for her to make a marvelous impression on him. He already had a girlfriend, she reminded herself as she observed the strong line of his jaw and the appealing blend of color in his eyes. Realizing that she was staring, she turned to study the photo o
n the wall above their booth, which featured someone in an unfamiliar hockey uniform whose autograph was nearly indecipherable. Below the scribble his name was printed: Sven Blute.
“So,” Josh said.
This was why she hated blind dates. They were so awkward. No one ever knew what to say, other than “So.” It was either “So” or a long-winded saga about her grandmother’s cousin’s adultery. Blind dates made everything stilted and weird. “I hate blind dates,” she said.
“Do you go on them a lot?”
“No. I hate them.”
“Why don’t we pretend we’re not on a date?” he suggested. “Let’s pretend we’re just old friends who haven’t seen each other in a while.”
She grinned. “Okay. Say, Josh, it’s great to see you. You’ve lost some weight, huh?”
He seemed momentarily taken aback, then realized she was joking. “About eighty pounds,” he played along.
“So…the evening we met on the train, what were you doing on Long Island?” Since that Sunday marked the start of their old friendship, she figured they might as well begin there.
“I was visiting my mother in Huntington. How about you?”
“Visiting my family in Plainview.”
The waitress arrived with their beers, and he waited until she was gone before saying, “You’re from Plainview? I think we played you in football.”
If Josh was a rah-rah hometown boy, madly in love with the suburbs, this old friendship probably wasn’t going to last very long. “I didn’t go to football games when I was in high school,” she said before taking a sip of her beer. She wondered why Glenn had been so enthusiastic about it. It tasted just like any other beer.
Josh shrugged. “Neither did I.”
He wasn’t rah-rah. The friendship could be saved. “Actually, I’m not a big fan of Plainview,” she elaborated. “I mean, it’s a very nice town and all, but…my parents live there. It’s so…”
Just This Once Page 13
