Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

  “Something like that,” Loretta mumbled.

  “That still doesn’t explain why you’re here.” Melanie sipped her drink and flexed her toes. Her toenails looked like baby peas, all lined up and polished green.

  “Well, this guy—actually, I think you know him. Solly Hirschbaum.”

  “Solly!” Melanie’s smile grew nostalgic. “How is Solly?”

  “He’s got women fighting over him.”

  Melanie chuckled. “He’s something, isn’t he.”

  “I’m not joking. They’re literally fighting over him. Phyllis Yellin may have pushed Dora Lee Finkelstein into traffic. Dora Lee broke her leg. We’re doing a story about it on the Becky Blake Show.”

  “You’re kidding. Shame on those two hussies.” Melanie shook her head. “Violence? No man is worth that.”

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Have you ever met a man worth going to jail for?”

  Loretta thought. Josh, maybe…if the legal situation had something to do with one of his clients—those poor folks at the Whatever Arms, or that Haitian immigrant he was working with now. If a huge principle was at stake, sure, she’d go to jail for Josh. But she couldn’t imagine getting into a shoving match with Melanie over him. Melanie was too nice. And the drink she’d given Loretta was heavenly.

  “So what does Solly have to do with this?” Melanie asked.

  “He figured out that I was—well, there was this attraction,” Loretta hedged, not about to announce to Melanie that she was in love with Josh. “And I knew Josh had gone to Florida to see you. I assumed he’d gone to Florida to revive your relationship, to make sure you and he were still tight. And I thought—well, actually, Solly thought—I should come down here and make my case before you and Josh…I don’t know…did something permanent.”

  “Well, hell. We did do something permanent, I think.” Melanie ran her fingers over her head, leaving her hair in tiny, spiky tufts. “I still love the way that feels,” she said, stroking her head a second time. “I just got scalped a few days ago. I’ve been down here, living in a state of permanent schvitz—”

  Loretta nodded, remembering that word. Josh’s mother had used it.

  “So I finally cut my hair. It feels so good, not having that hair weighing on my neck.”

  “I just cut my hair yesterday,” Loretta commented. “It’s still weighing on my neck.”

  “You could get it off your neck by pinning it up in a ponytail,” Melanie suggested. “It’s long enough for that.”

  Loretta suppressed a laugh. Was this going to turn into a pajama party, with the two of them getting tanked on rum drinks and fixing each other’s hair? “I should have brought some barrettes with me. I didn’t think of it.”

  “Okay, so here’s what I don’t get,” Melanie said, steering them back to the previous subject. “What would you have done if you’d come down here and found Josh and me—I don’t know, fucking our heads off, or pledging eternal devotion to each other? I mean, what was your Plan B?”

  “Plan B? I didn’t even have a Plan A,” Loretta admitted, this time allowing a laugh to slip out. A plaintive, self-derisive laugh. “I would have done something, though. You’ve got to understand, Melanie—I work for the Becky Blake Show. I spend every day coming up with ways to get a group of opponents together on the set, in front of the cameras, and having them interact.”

  “Having them scream at each other,” Melanie said. “I’ve seen the show a few times. My clients down here love it. They loved the show you and Josh were on, but they also love it when the show’s guests try to tear each other’s heads off.”

  “I wasn’t going to tear anyone’s head off,” Loretta assured her. “But I figured, maybe we’d all shout a while, and when the air cleared I’d have a better idea of where I stood. Maybe it would have been—is the word cathartic?”

  “Cathartic is a good word.” Melanie grinned. “You’re in love with Josh, aren’t you.”

  “I—” Damn. She couldn’t lie, not about that. “It looks that way.”

  “He’s quite a guy. A bit self-righteous.”

  “You think so?”

  “And overflowing with guilt. Guilt is his middle name. Have you met his mother?” Melanie settled back in her chair, took a long drink as if it were fuel, and then launched into a monologue about how Josh had taken care of everything for his mother when his father had died—the will, the insurance, the arrangements with the synagogue and the funeral home, the sitting shiva, whatever that was—everything, because his mother insisted she couldn’t do anything. She told Loretta about the time Josh invented an excuse to miss a young cousin’s bar mitzvah and then felt so guilty he spent the entire day moaning about the importance of family and ritual. She explained that she’d gotten him to come to the Senior Center the first time by reminding him that he had his youth and his health and many of the center’s participants didn’t. “He’s the only guy in the world who can feel guilty for being young and healthy,” Melanie said.

  “Maybe he was just being nice.”

  “I’m telling you—you want anything from him, play the guilt card,” Melanie instructed her. “You want a special birthday present? Remind him he didn’t take out the garbage. You want to go out for dinner? Mention some evening when he didn’t help you with the dishes. His guilt gene’ll kick in and he’ll be helpless to resist.”

  “What else can you tell me about him?”

  Plenty, it turned out. As Melanie heated and divided the seafood stew, as she and Loretta ate, as they polished off their drinks and refilled their glasses with more rum and pineapple juice, Melanie told Loretta about Josh’s weakness for butterscotch, his self-righteousness when it came to his clients, and his desire to win at games. “Don’t ever play bridge as his partner,” Melanie warned. “If you make a mistake, he’ll never let you forget it. It’s better if he’s playing chess, because then he’s got only himself to blame if he loses.” She described his loyalty to the New York Yankees, his laundry habits—“he likes to tie his clean socks together, one knotted around the other. He never rolls his socks. It’s like a religion to him”—and his reading tastes. “Mysteries. His grandfather gave him The Complete Sherlock Holmes when he was a kid, and that was that.” She mentioned his vices, which included a frequent indulgence in sarcasm, an impatience with what he considered unnecessary high-tech gadgetry, an unfathomable fondness for Saturday Night Live—“even now, when it’s not funny anymore”—and his apathy toward parties. “I like parties, especially hosting them. He didn’t mind going to them every now and then, although he prefers socializing on a small scale, you know, maybe two couples. I love a crowd, but he never did. One thing he does love is Sam Adams beer.”

  “I know about his thing for Sam Adams,” Loretta said.

  “And sex. He loves sex.”

  “Is that a problem?” Loretta asked cautiously, focusing on the stray grains of rice on her plate so she wouldn’t have to look at Melanie.

  “Well, it’s not like he ever forces a situation. Sometimes I just wasn’t in the mood, though, you know? Like when I had my period. He didn’t care about it. His attitude was that I was a woman and women get their periods, it’s natural, not a problem.”

  “That sounds pretty evolved,” Loretta said.

  “I guess. And…well, he’s very good, so it was never a big deal. His wanting sex, I mean. Even if I wasn’t in the mood, he managed to get me in the mood. He was good at that. Very good.”

  Loretta had little difficulty imagining this. To be sure, she had more difficulty imagining herself not in the mood to have sex with him. Even if she had her period.

  The stew was filling, the black beans and rice even more so. She shoved back her plate and drained her glass. The rum, combined with a long day of travel and the inundation of information from Melanie, left her brain pleasantly fuzzy. “Why did you leave him?” she asked.

  Melanie reached for the rum bottle, which stood on the
table between them. She splashed a little in each of their glasses. “I got a job offer here in Opa-Locka.”

  “You could have turned it down. You must have known that accepting it would cause problems for you and Josh.”

  “I suppose.” Melanie added some pineapple juice to their glasses—the proportion of juice to rum seemed to have decreased over the course of the evening, but Loretta didn’t bother to point this out to Melanie. “It was a great job. It involved more responsibility, a big increase in pay and some new challenges.” She sipped, then shrugged. “I knew leaving New York would cause problems with Josh…but I thought about it and I really wanted the job. That must mean something. As much as I cared for Josh, I wanted the job.”

  More than she’d wanted Josh. Loretta understood. She hadn’t broken them up; she wasn’t some evil Other Woman who’d shredded the healthy bonds of a deeply committed couple. Melanie had wanted the job more than she’d wanted Josh. In a way, she’d broken up with him long before he’d come to Florida to break up with her.

  “This rum and pineapple stuff is really good,” Loretta said.

  “Isn’t it?” Melanie sipped and smiled. “Now, tell me what it’s like working for a TV show. Is Becky Blake really as perky as she seems on TV?”

  Loretta laughed. “Oh boy. Don’t get me started on Becky.”

  “I just did.” Melanie gestured toward the bottle of rum, which was still half full. “Tell me everything. Is she a diva? Is she a tyrant? Is she as cute as a button?”

  “All of the above,” Loretta said, glancing at the bottle and deciding it contained enough rum to keep her and Melanie going well into the night.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  The shrill ringing of Josh’s telephone at a few minutes past midnight jerked him upright. He hadn’t been asleep, but he’d been in bed, brooding. Even if he hadn’t been brooding, though, the blare of a phone at such a late hour rarely boded well.

  He clicked on his bedside lamp and lifted the receiver, bracing himself for news of some catastrophe. “Hello?”

  “Josh? It’s Melanie.”

  Christ. She’d finally gotten around to returning his call now? After midnight? Where the hell had she been all this time?

  More accurately, where had she and Loretta been? What he’d been brooding about was the notion of the two of them together. What had they said to each other? What had they done? Why hadn’t Loretta called him back? Why hadn’t Melanie?

  Well, Melanie had. At an unforgivably late hour. He scraped his hand through his hair and blinked his eyes into focus. “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, sounding not the least bit apologetic.

  No sense complaining to her about the time. He had more important matters on his mind. “Did Loretta D’Angelo visit you?”

  “She certainly did.” Melanie laughed. “As a matter of fact, she’s here right now.”

  “There? With you?”

  “She’s spending the night. I’ve got a guest room. Oh, right—you already know that.”

  “So she’s with you? Now?”

  “Of course she’s with me now. Isn’t that what I just said? Hey, Loretta,” she called away from the phone, “isn’t that what I just said?”

  He heard laughter in the background. It made him very uneasy, for some reason.

  “We’ve been having a great time,” Melanie told him. “We just finished watching Moonstruck. It’s very Italian. Loretta is Italian, did you know?”

  “Yes, I knew.”

  “She wants me to try something—a canoodle or something.”

  “A cannoli!” Loretta’s voice resounded in the background.

  “Whatever. You want to talk to her?”

  “I’d love to,” Josh said grimly.

  He heard the muffled thumps and rustles of the phone changing hands, and then Loretta’s voice. “Josh?”

  “Loretta. What the hell are you doing in Florida?”

  “Drinking rum,” she told him. “Rum and pineapple juice. I feel so tropical.”

  Oh, God. It was worse than he’d thought. She and Melanie had spent the evening watching a chick flick and getting drunk. “Loretta.” He used his sternest voice. “Why are you in Florida?”

  “Well, I thought I wanted to see you. But now I’m not so sure. I’ve been having such a great time with Melanie, I’m thinking maybe I came down to see her.”

  “You can’t change your reason ex post facto.”

  “What’s that? You sound like a lawyer.” She laughed. “She’s been telling me all about you, Josh.”

  Shit. “What did she tell you?”

  “You love sex.”

  He closed his eyes, leaned back into the pillow and took a deep breath. Hell, yes, he loved sex—with the right woman. With Loretta, for sure. But why was she discussing that with Melanie? What was the context? And why did he feel a little sick to his stomach?

  “Listen, Josh, it’s very late and I’m tired. So I’m going to say good night now. Okay?”

  “When are you coming home?”

  “I don’t know. Eventually, I guess. I’m going to say good night now.”

  “Fine,” he snapped. “Say it.”

  “Good night. Oh, Josh? I got a haircut.”

  Hell, shit and damn. Had she gone and scalped herself like Melanie? It would grow back, he consoled himself, but the thought of Melanie without her long, lustrous mane dismayed him. “How short?”

  “I think you’ll like it.”

  “How short?”

  “Donna did it yesterday, while you were down here with Melanie.”

  A revenge haircut? A panic haircut? How bad could it be? Why wouldn’t Loretta tell him?

  “I’m going to say good night now,” she announced, then hung up the phone.

  Josh lowered his phone and recited a juicy string of blasphemies. The thought of a tipsy Loretta and Melanie hanging out together, discussing his sexual appetites, was enough to make him want to swear off women forever. Except that he loved sex. Swearing off women didn’t seem a palatable option.

  Maybe he’d just swear off two women. He’d broken up with one and he loved the other. Maybe, for the sake of his sanity, he should simply forget that either one of them existed.

  ***

  The next day, he decided he’d have to swear off more than two women. Specifically, he wanted to add Dora Lee and Phyllis to his swear-off list.

  Phyllis lay in wait for him outside the Senior Center when he arrived there after spending the morning ascertaining the status of Henri Charnier’s visa, updating a grant application for a foundation that helped support his law firm and sitting next to Anita while she took a deposition from a witness who’d seen a rat while visiting his friend Hubie up in Washington Heights. Hubie was Anita’s client, and according to Hubie’s friend, the rat was happily ensconced on the fire escape outside the kitchen window, “looking like a frigging cat, I’m telling you. This mother was huge.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Mr. O’Neal. I need you to tell the truth here.”

  “I’m tellin’ the truth! That rat was on steroids. That rat coulda fit Hubie’s entire granddaughter in its mouth. We’re talking the Jaws of the rodent world.”

  After a deposition like that, Josh was hardly in the right state of mind to deal with Phyllis, the Jaws of the Senior Center. She spotted him as soon as he turned off Amsterdam Avenue, and started haranguing him before he’d even reached the front door of the center. “Solly is in there with Dora Lee. He promised me he’d get Francine to let me in. I haven’t been convicted of anything, Josh. I’ve got signatures and everything!” She waved a petition in front of his face. “Bubbela, you’ve got to help me!”

  If he closed his eyes he would picture Loretta and Melanie, passing a bottle of rum back and forth like sorority sisters, singing dirty songs and cursing Josh’s soul to hell. Not because he’d done anything worth damnation but because no good could come of a former
girlfriend and a future girlfriend getting drunk together. He willfully kept his vision focused on Phyllis. Her skin seemed tighter across her face, pulled sharp with tension. “All right,” he said wearily. “Let’s go inside.”

  “I can’t. Francine said I can’t.”

  “We’ll work it out. We’ll get you inside and work it out.”

  “But Dora Lee is in there.”

  “I’m not going to ask her to leave. If you want to go in, let’s go.” He opened the door.

  Phyllis hesitated a couple of seconds, then entered the building.

  The foyer was empty, thank God. Fluorescent ceiling lights illuminated the cinderblock walls and the broad bulletin boards, which were tacked with announcements of poetry readings, aerobics classes and duplicate bridge tournaments. Voices and the salty aromas of turkey and gravy flooded the hall from the dining room to the left, and from the right came the staccato crackle of the television.

  If they could get to Francine’s office without running into anyone, Josh would consider it a major victory.

  Instead, he faced a major defeat. He and Phyllis were perhaps three steps from the door to the administrative offices when the hall suddenly filled with curious people, some approaching from the dining room with cornbread crumbs and cranberry sauce clinging to their mouths, others from the TV lounge. Among those from the lounge was Solly—pushing Dora Lee in her wheelchair. Obviously, all the others had come to witness the showdown.

  “What’s she doing here?” Dora Lee asked.

  “Now, Dora Lee,” Solly murmured gently. “Give her a chance.”

  “You’re a klutz,” Phyllis shouted at Dora Lee. “You’re trying to ruin my life because you happen to be a klutz.”

  “I’m not a klutz,” Dora Lee defended herself in her breathy little voice.

  “You fell and I wound up arrested. Tell me—” she seemed to be addressing everyone within earshot “—is this fair? Is it reasonable? A lady falls and I’m accused of pushing her?”

  “Is that fair?” one woman from the lounge murmured to another. Josh recognized them as the needle-pointers who often watched TV while he and Solly played chess.