Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

  “Is it reasonable?” the other murmured back.

  “You pushed me,” Dora Lee maintained.

  “Please!” Solly positioned himself between the wheelchair and Phyllis. “No arguing! It won’t solve anything!” To Josh, he added, “Get her into Francine’s office.”

  “You know,” Josh said, and everyone turned to gaze at him. Was it because he was a lawyer or because he was younger than the others by at least thirty years? He didn’t care; they were listening. “You have a situation here where two women have created a feud where none needs to exist. Solly likes you both. At this point, he isn’t looking for an exclusive relationship with either of you. Whether or not you fight isn’t going to change that. Now, in the law, we have what we call settlements. We try to iron out differences and negotiate a compromise without dragging the courts into it. Whether or not Dora Lee and Phyllis learn to get along, Solly is going to stay friends with you both—and he’s not in any rush to marry either of you. So you two ladies are going to have to figure out a way to live in peace.”

  The silence that ensued lasted long enough for Josh to wonder whether anyone had even understood what he’d said. He was pretty sure he’d been speaking English, so they should have grasped the gist of it. He wanted them to comprehend that whether Phyllis and Dora Lee hated each other, tolerated each other or loved each other had nothing to do with Solly. It was a choice they had to make themselves, without involving him.

  Melanie and Loretta had managed to become friends, hadn’t they? Josh had adored them both, he’d slept with them both—and damn it, they seemed to be getting along just swell. Why couldn’t Phyllis and Dora Lee accomplish that? There was so much less at stake for them—because in Solly’s case, marriage was out of the question.

  God, what was he thinking?

  He was thinking of Loretta. And marriage. Loretta for the rest of his life. Loretta making him laugh, making him think, making him horny. Loretta talking him into doing all sorts of things he didn’t want to do—and then making him glad he’d done them.

  Phyllis and Dora Lee continued to glower at each other. Dora Lee repeatedly ran her tongue over her front teeth, creating a strange bulge under her upper lip. Phyllis stared down at her imperiously, evidently pleased that for once she stood taller than her rival. Solly planted his hands on his hips and eyed Josh questioningly. “Will you talk to Francine?” he asked. “Phyllis has a petition.”

  “She’s going to hurt me,” Dora Lee warned.

  “I’m not going to hurt you. If you weren’t such a kultz, we wouldn’t be here now. Do you know how much tsuris you’ve caused me?”

  “She’s not going to hurt you, Dora Lee,” a man from the dining room said. He had a spot of gravy on his polo shirt, and his eyeglasses were so thick he seemed to be peering out from behind two small, clear bowls of water. “How could such a thing happen, with all of us watching?”

  “You could try mentioning to her,” a short, plump, whiny-voiced woman commented to Phyllis, “that you’re sorry she hurt her leg. She was in the hospital, you know. A little sympathy, it wouldn’t kill you.”

  “If Solly ever remarries,” a woman whose incongruously auburn hair framed a face of prunish wrinkles, “it’ll be to me, so the two of you should just give up.”

  Who was that? Did Solly have yet another girlfriend? Josh glanced at Solly, who shrugged but looked distinctly intrigued, gazing above the heads of the people crowded around Dora Lee and Phyllis to see who his admirer might be.

  “Okay, so we’ve established there aren’t going to be any assaults, any violence, any nonsense, right?”

  “I’ve got a petition,” Phyllis added.

  “Then let me talk to Francine and see what I can do.”

  “My tooth feels funny,” Dora Lee piped up.

  “We’ll deal with your tooth later. Loretta D’Angelo will take care of that.” If she ever sobers up and comes home, Josh almost added.

  “Okay,” Dora Lee grunted.

  “Okay,” Phyllis muttered, thrusting her petition into Josh’s hand. “If Solly isn’t going to marry either of us, what’s the point?”

  “You cook for a man and what does he care?” Dora Lee added.

  “He likes us both,” Phyllis grumbled, “but so what? He won’t put his money where his mouth is.”

  “I made him so many cookies,” Dora Lee lamented. “And for what?”

  Josh realized that one way to end a dispute was to get the warring factions to unite against a common enemy. Solly, standing between them like a barricade, had suddenly become their common enemy.

  Was that what Melanie and Loretta were up to? Had they formed an alliance against him?

  He couldn’t bear to think about it. So he concentrated on pleading Phyllis’s case before Francine. He’d never met Francine, he had no idea what she was like, but if necessary, he’d toss around terms like “heretofore” and “nolo contendre,” just as Solly had suggested. By the time he was done, Phyllis would be pushing Dora Lee’s wheelchair, and Dora Lee would be baking Phyllis cookies.

  Patting Solly on the shoulder, he knocked on the office door. “Set up the chess board,” he ordered Solly. “I’ll be out as soon as I can.” They’d need that chess game, too—two men plagued by romantic disasters. Two men who could figure out a way to checkmate a lot more easily than they could figure out a strategy for pleasing the women in their lives.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Loretta could understand why Melanie had accepted the job offer in Opa-Locka. Unlike the senior center on the Upper West Side, here she was working in a huge residential complex, complete with condos, assisted-care apartments, art studios, rec rooms, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and an entire community of golden-age New Yorkers who’d happily retired to warmer climates. Melanie had a staff of three and an office with wall-to-wall carpeting, a desk as big as a ping-pong table and a window overlooking a courtyard filled with viney, jungle-looking plants.

  She’d brought Loretta with her to work Monday morning. Loretta had found a seat on a late afternoon flight out of Miami, and given the choice of hanging out at Melanie’s apartment, hanging out at the airport or hanging out at the complex where Melanie worked, Loretta had voted for the third option. If she’d brought a swimsuit she could have gotten a work-out in the pool, but even without swimming laps, she had plenty to keep her occupied while Melanie attended to her job. The library was stocked with old paperbacks—Agatha Christie and Nora Roberts seemed to be favorites—and one of the rec rooms had a billiards table. Nicky had taught Loretta how to play pool when she’d been twelve. She was probably a bit rusty, but she doubted anyone at the center could beat her.

  She parked her duffel in Melanie’s spacious office and wandered the grounds. The heavy air didn’t do much to clear the hangover fog from her brain, but the people she stopped to chat with were friendly and sounded like home, their noo-yawk accents thick and comforting. She played a cut-throat round of shuffleboard with a bald, portly man who had liver spots on his arms, smoked an overripe cigar and called her “sweet-haht.” She observed an aerobics class populated by a lot of compact, intense, silver-haired women who reminded her of Phyllis Yellin. She caught a catnap in a lounge chair in the shade of a royal palm and woke up sweating from the heat.

  At noon, she returned to Melanie’s office so they could have lunch together. Melanie looked less fatigued than Loretta felt. “I’m used to staying up late,” she told Loretta.

  “You must be used to rum, too.”

  “I guess,” Melanie said, divvying up the containers of yogurt and snack packs of crackers, the Diet Pepsis and the bananas she’d brought for their lunch. “We could eat outside, but it’s too freaking hot,” she said. “That’s the one thing I really hate about being here. The heat.”

  “You don’t hate losing Josh?” Loretta asked. A lot had been said last night, but much of it had vanished in the rum-scented miasma that was Loretta’s memory of yesterday. A lot had b
een said about Josh, and about men in general. But Loretta couldn’t recollect what Melanie had specifically said about her break-up with Josh.

  “You know something?” Melanie swirled her plastic spoon through her yogurt, stirring it until it turned pink from the strawberries at the bottom of the cup. “If Josh had ever told me he loved me, even once, I probably would have stayed in New York. But he never said it. He was a great guy, and we had a great relationship, but he never used the word love. I knew him for nearly three years. We’d met each other’s families. By the end we were practically living together—and he never even hinted at making it legal. And I realized, he’s one of those commitment-phobic types. He just can’t take it to the next level. So what was I going to stick around for?”

  “Did you want to marry him?” Loretta couldn’t recall Melanie saying anything that revealing last night—but again, she couldn’t recall much of anything from last night.

  “It’s not like I wanted to get married,” Melanie emphasized. “But if I’m going to be with a guy for as long as I was with Josh… It had reached the point of shit or get off the pot, you know? He was clearly constipated.”

  Loretta tried not to choke on the bite of banana in her mouth.

  “How about you?” Melanie asked. “Are you looking for marriage? If you are, consider yourself forewarned. Josh is a great guy, but if that’s what you’re looking for, you’re not going to find it with him.”

  “Good,” Loretta said, wishing she sounded a little more positive.

  “You don’t want to marry him?”

  “I don’t want to marry anyone,” Loretta insisted. “My family keeps pushing me to get married. I’m twenty-nine, and they think that if I don’t have a wedding at least in the planning stages by the time I’m thirty, I might as well cut my throat, because my life won’t be worth living.”

  Melanie nodded sympathetically. “My parents wanted me to stick around and force a proposal out of Josh. But it just wasn’t going to happen. I don’t know—he’s very responsible, very decent, but he couldn’t even bring himself to think about it. I finally realized that was the way he was, and the proposal wasn’t going to happen. I’m fine with it,” she added. “My mother’s still in mourning, but I’m fine.”

  I’ll be fine, too, Loretta told herself. She wasn’t looking for a proposal from Josh. All she wanted was his love. If she’d been eager to get married, she would have placed her fate in her family’s hands. She would have gone out with Nicky’s friend Marty Calabrese. She would have twisted Gary’s arm last Valentine’s Day, when he’d told her he didn’t love her. “Who needs love?” she would have argued. “We get along okay. We could make our families happy. And let’s face it, we don’t want to lose the deposit at the Roslyn Harbor Inn, do we?” Gary might have ultimately come to see things her way, and she would have been Mrs. Gary Mancuso for a whole month by now.

  No, she didn’t need a commitment from Josh. She didn’t need promises he wasn’t prepared to make. If she managed to create a relationship with him and it lasted three years—well, she’d be thirty-two then, way over the hill, and her mother would be saying novenas and lighting candles for her, and Nicky would probably corral Al into kidnapping Josh and taking him to a cabin in the Poconos and feeding him nothing but raw calamari until he agreed to make an honest woman of their sister.

  “I should phone my brother,” she said abruptly. “Just to let him know I’m going home today.” She’d actually be able to pay him back his fifty dollars the next time she saw him, too. Because Melanie had insisted on her spending the night at her apartment, instead of at a motel, this trip had wound up costing Loretta less than she’d anticipated. “I’ll let you get back to work,” she told Melanie. “Thanks for lunch.”

  “It wasn’t much,” Melanie said, gathering the empty soda cans and yogurt cups.

  Loretta left Melanie’s office and found a quiet corner in a hallway where she could make her call while still enjoying the building’s air conditioning. Nicky would be at work now, but probably on a break. In fact, right about now—she checked her watch—he’d be brushing and flossing his teeth to remove any residue from the meatball sandwich Kathy would have packed him for lunch. Loretta punched in the office number, waited for the receptionist to pick up and asked to speak to Nicky. “Who may I say is calling?” the receptionist asked prissily.

  You may say anyone you damned well want, Loretta thought, but she only gave her name. Nicky wouldn’t stop flossing for just anyone, but he’d stop flossing for her.

  After a few seconds on hold, she heard a click and then her brother’s voice: “Loretta? Did you nail the son of a bitch?”

  “No. I didn’t even see him. He’s back in New York,” Loretta answered, then hurried ahead so Nicky wouldn’t have a chance to ask her how she’d managed to botch things so magnificently, missing Josh in Florida by mere hours. “I just wanted to let you know I’ll be home tonight, too. And it turns out I didn’t need your money, so I’ll pay you back the next time I see you.”

  “You’re getting home tonight?” Nicky mulled that over. “In other words, you’re going to wind up spending less time in Florida than in airplanes.”

  “Not quite. I’m glad I came. It wasn’t a wasted trip.”

  “Even though you didn’t see the son of a bitch?”

  “He’s not a son of a bitch.” Loretta didn’t consider this an appropriate time to explain that Josh had broken up with Melanie—and that Loretta and Melanie had become friends.

  “So what time are you getting in?” Nicky asked.

  “Around quarter to eleven.”

  “That’s too late. You can’t come into LaGuardia that late.”

  “Delta Air Lines seems to think I can. They found me a seat on a plane that gets in then. I’ll be all right, Nicky.”

  “I’ll come pick you up.”

  “No,” she said quickly. This trip had been weird enough. She needed time alone, beyond the reach of her family, to digest the experience, to assess what she’d learned about Josh and his commitment-phobia and his love of sex. “Ten forty-five isn’t that late.” It sounded a lot earlier than quarter to eleven.

  “You can’t take a cab that late, Loretta.”

  “I won’t.” She thought fast. “Josh is going to pick me up.”

  “He is?”

  “Yes. See? He’s not a son of a bitch.” There. She’d killed two birds with one lie. She’d redeemed Josh’s reputation and fended off her brother’s concern about her arrival time at LaGuardia.

  “Okay, then.” Nicky thought for a minute. “Is he going to marry you?”

  “Give it a break, Nicky. He’s going to pick me up at the airport. That’s romantic enough for me.” She almost believed that—and she almost believed Josh was picking her up at the airport. But he wasn’t, of course. He had no idea she was returning home tonight. She hadn’t secured her seat on the five-twenty-five out of Miami until that morning. And anyway, he’d sounded so pissed last night, when Melanie had finally gotten his phone message and called him back, that Loretta wouldn’t have dared to ask such a favor of him.

  She hadn’t done herself much good with this trip. True, she’d made a new friend, she’d discovered a new mixed drink, she’d played hooky from work for a day—which might just be enough to lift her to the top of Becky’s lay-off list, although if Becky could fire her after she’d created such a fabulous show with Solly and his rival lovers, the Becky Blake Show didn’t deserve her. She’d learned some important things about Josh. She’d learned that he’d ended his relationship with Melanie, and that he wasn’t in the market for marriage—which was really what she wanted, since she wasn’t in the market for marriage, either.

  Yet that knowledge loomed above her like her own personal cloud, blocking out a patch of light in her soul. She wasn’t in the market for marriage, but Josh… She loved him. She loved him enough to wish he was the sort who would pick her up at the airport late at night, and get down
on his knees, and…

  Damn. What was wrong with her? Her family wanted that for her, but she didn’t want it for herself. Right?

  With a sigh, she abandoned her corner, strolled out of the building, and felt the heat of the sun slam against her skin. But still there was that patch of gray hovering over her heart. No, she didn’t want to get married. She wanted to stay single forever, or at least until she’d reached her thirtieth birthday, if only to prove that she didn’t buy into her family’s bullshit about unmarried women of a certain age. She wanted to make love with Josh and share ice cream with him and misbehave at the Lincoln Center fountain with him, and listen to him describe his cases to her, and bounce her ideas for the show off him. She wanted to expose him to amaretto cannolis, and fresh pasta with fresh pesto. And she wanted to make love with him every night, for as long as he’d have her.

  And if he never made a commitment? She could handle it. Sure she could. It was what she wanted.

  Just like she wanted that little blot of shadow stealing the light out of her life.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “There’s a call for you,” Ruth intoned in her chronically sullen voice. “Line two.”

  “Who is it?” Josh prayed it wasn’t Solly—or Phyllis, or Dora Lee, or Francine, the new social worker at the West Side Senior Center. He’d worked out a truce among the warring parties, but a glance at the international news pages of the New York Times on any given day was all it took to remind him of how fragile most truces were.

  “A new client, maybe?” Ruth guessed. “He said his name was Nicholas D’Angelo. Actually, he said Doctor Nicholas D’Angelo, so he’s probably too rich to become a client of ours.”

  Josh’s heart lurched. Loretta’s brother Nicky? Why would he call, unless something was terribly wrong? “Thanks,” he said, then hit the button for line two and said, “Josh Kaplan,” in the calmest voice he could muster when his mind was conjuring up images of Loretta sick, Loretta hurt, Loretta lost.