“How sweet,” she says. Bette Davis to Robert Montgomery. “Do come in.”
A new blazer tonight: dark green. Navy sweater, jeans, loafers.
“Not exactly posh,” he says, looking around her room. “But nicely done. Your elevator isn’t working.”
“I know,” she says with a laugh. “It seldom is.”
He takes off his blazer. His shoulders are rather broad. His aftershave is smooth, pleasant. He leans to look at some of the Folon prints over her couch. “How long have you lived here?”
“Two years,” she says, watching him, wondering why she’s perspiring so. Why he seems so comfortable in her apartment and she suddenly feels like a stranger. She looks at the room. Although she is pleased with it, has copied it almost exactly from an apartment shown in Mademoiselle, it suddenly seems lacking. “I’m looking for a better place now,” she says, wondering what she’s talking about.
He points to the prints. “Are these from a book?”
“Yes,” she says, holding the wine and the flowers in her arms. “I never buy prints separately. I just cut up art books.” She laughs, foolishly. “Can I get you some wine?”
“Certainly,” he says and sits on the couch. “It is nice in here.” The room is his.
She walks into the kitchen, turns on the cold water, runs it over her hands, which are trembling slightly. She wishes she hadn’t invited him. She fills a vase, puts the yellow rosebuds and baby’s-breath into it, carries it, dripping, to the table just outside the kitchen door.
He is sitting on the couch, flipping through an issue of Time.
“They’re pretty,” she says, standing back to look at the flowers. “Thank you.”
She goes back to the kitchen, opens the wine, pours two glasses, brings one glass and the cheese board out to him. He puts the magazine down, says, “Thank you,” watching her. She returns to the kitchen for her own glass and then sits on the opposite end of the couch, sipping the wine before he can make another toast.
“This tastes good,” she says, leaning back. “It’s been a long day.” This is her habit: Whenever she is uncomfortable, she finds an extreme and sticks with it. Extreme boredom, extreme interest, extreme weariness, pleasure, love. Her first month in high school she yawned so often the nuns mentioned it to her mother.
“I enjoyed our lunch,” Tupper Daniels says, sitting back. “Although I’m sorry we didn’t talk much about the book.”
She laughs a little. “I often wonder if anyone gets any business done over a business lunch.” This as if she has them everyday.
“Yes,” he says. “But I wouldn’t have minded it much if I’d learned a little bit more about you. I did all the talking.”
She remembers Ann’s “He was watching you as if you were pure gold.”
“All right,” she says. “What would you like to know?”
“Well,” he says. “Where are you from, for instance?”
“Long Island,” she says.
“And how long have you worked at Vista?”
“Nearly two years.”
“What did you do before that?”
She hesitates, sips the wine (which is a little too sweet). “Spent some time with my mother in Maine, lived in Buffalo for a while, lived in Queens for a while, went to college—outside Rochester—went to high school—back on Long Island—grammar school, kindergarten. How far back do you want me to go?”
He laughs. “That’s far enough. Have you ever been to the South?”
“Just Florida during spring break.”
“Florida’s not the South,” he says. “It’s a colony of New York City. I mean the real South, like Tennessee.”
She shakes her head. “Never.”
“Ever been married?”
She has a strange impulse to say yes, but instead she says, “I came close once but backed out.”
“Why?” He seems truly amazed. His eyes, she thinks, are a lovely blue. Somehow darker in this dim light.
“It just wasn’t right. Isn’t that what they say?”
“And now you’re single? Perfectly single?” He raises his eyebrows. There are women, she is sure, who would consider him handsome.
“Perfectly,” she says, raising her chin, flirting.
He puts his glass on the coffee table in front of him. “That’s really good,” he says. He takes the glass from her hand, puts it beside his own. He is smiling a little and she is looking at him wide-eyed, helpless. She wonders why she must always pretend to have this moment of helplessness before she allows herself to be seduced.
He turns to her, one arm stretched over the top of the couch, the other on his own thigh.
“Listen,” he says, and she makes her eyes wider, listening. Still helpless, nearly cute. She thinks vaguely of her diaphragm—do they deteriorate when not in use?
His hand brushes her hair, slips around her head, onto her neck.
“I want to make love with you,” he whispers. “It has nothing to do with my book. I just find you ungodly attractive.”
“All right,” she says, surprising herself. She pats the couch. “This is my bed. Just pull the coffee table over by the window and throw the pillows on the chair. I’ll only be a minute.”
She gets up quickly and goes to the bathroom, wondering if he’d expected an argument, knowing she’d expected to give him one. When she tells this story to Ann or Joanne, they’ll laugh about what she just said, how she took control, surprised even herself. Ann will say, “God, were you horny.” Joanne will ask if she’s in love. She holds the diaphragm up to the bright light over the sink. It seems fine, a little dry, but fine. She undresses, slips it in, stands before the mirror.
She’d said next time would be for love. No more one-nighters, no more strangers, no more of that disappointment, that feeling of loss each time she thinks how much better it would have been if she’d been in love.
She said never again until it was for love, but she is standing here naked with no intention of walking out there and telling Tupper Daniels that she’s changed her mind, that she was only joking, that he really should put his clothes back on and fold up the bed because she’s waiting to fall in love. She is standing here remembering how men have said that her breasts are lovely, that her hips, her ass, are perfect, that she looks better naked than clothed, that she is a joy to make love to. She is standing here thinking of selfishness and narcissism and all that she has missed this past year.
He is by the bed, his back to her. Narrow waist, broad back. Muscular, compact. No trace of a tan. He turns and smiles, both glasses in his hands. Hands one to her, shakes his head. Adoring. Pure gold. Runs one finger from her throat to her navel, shakes his head again, smiling. “Sit down.”
She sits on the bed. He lifts her ankles, takes her glass, makes her lie down. He goes to the foot of the bed, looks at her. She smiles back at him, beautiful, untouched. Then he kneels.
He begins with the soles of her feet. Then moves up onto the bed, kissing ankles, calves, behind each knee. Up over her.
She closes her eyes and begins the slow, downward movement, the saddest, the loneliest. With Bill, she would sometimes grab at him, sink nails and teeth into him, trying to bring him with her. And sometimes, as she remembers, he would be there.
Hips, stomach, breasts. She turns and is slowly turning down, into herself. Absorbing every sensation, and bringing it down into her, to her burrow, her lair, her nest. Hoarding every sensation until the air seems to stop in her ears and all the sensations are internal, moving from her, down into her, until she is just a small center, receiver, sender; a heart, a depth, a small center without color or sound or light; until she is only reflexes that multiply themselves to a stillness, a numbness, to a point where movement surpasses itself, feeling surpasses itself. Where joining confirms its impossibility. All of it into herself until the closeness becomes only loneliness, selfishness, strikes at that impenetrable core: Me, alone, me.
And here, she knows, if there were love, not merely thi
s stranger above her, here would be the crying out, the reaching up, the sinking of nails and teeth, the cry of outrage against such loneliness: There is more, at the center, the depth, the heart, there is more than I myself alone.
Bill. Again. And still.
Tupper Daniels turns on his side and wipes the tear from her face. He kisses her forehead. This pale stranger, this odd man.
“That was fabulous for me,” he says. “How about you?”
She nods. She hates this checking of notes, this comparison of itineraries. I was in Istanbul while you were in Greenland. How was it? Good. How was it for you? Good too.
“You seemed to enjoy yourself,” he says, pleased. He lies back, crosses his legs. “You remind me of the first girl I ever had intercourse with. I mean, the way you cry.”
Strange voice even, she thinks, the accent suddenly too clear. She crosses her arms over her breasts and hugs herself, sad.
“I was a sophmore in college.” He turns to her. “Which you probably think is ridiculously late to start.”
She shrugs. It seems the older she gets, the more people she meets who were late to “start.” She wonders if it’s just her, or if they’re all finally getting old enough to tell the truth.
“I was terribly shy,” Tupper Daniels is saying, “but probably the horniest little bastard in the state. I had a constant erection, but could never get up—excuse the expression—enough courage to do anything about it.” He laughs a little, his eyes on the ceiling, searching. “Finally, Beau Winston who lived next door to me in the dorm asked if I’d go out with his little sister when she came up to visit the school. Beau was going to Chapel Hill for the weekend so his sister could have his room and get to know Vanderbilt. She was a senior in high school and was supposed to start there in the fall.
“I saw this as my big chance, and as soon as she arrived, Margaret was her name, I think, I started plying her with Boone’s Farm Apple Wine. Of course, she was out cold by nine o’clock Friday night and sick most of the next day, so Saturday night I took her to a bar and told her she should drink vodka and Kahlúa and milk—white Russians. I think I told her something about it supplying her with lots of vitamin B along with the hair of the dog. Anyway, she was pretty sloshed again by the time we got back to my room. But not too sloshed. And was she hot! Jesus, all I kept thinking was what they say about little blond high school cheerleaders must be true. Damn, she had her clothes off and my clothes off before I could even lock the door, and she’s kissing me and feeling me.” He looks at her from the corner of his eye. “I was still a scrawny, ugly little kid then too.” His eyes return to the ceiling.
“Anyway, I thought I was going to blow to pieces right there, so I kind of pushed her onto the bed and went at it. And pretty soon she started moaning and saying, ‘Oh God, Oh God,’ and I just thought I was a natural and kept doing what I was doing.”
He laughs, shaking his head. “When I think of what I must have looked like, my little bare ass pumping up and down. Anyway, she started crying. Now I’d heard about that, how some women cry, so I just thought they were tears of joy and I was so proud of myself, I came like the dickens and collapsed, smiling I’m sure. But she kept on crying. So then I thought maybe I’d hurt her, which in a way also made me feel pretty proud too (I figured I was somehow much bigger than I looked) and I asked her what was wrong. ‘My mother has cancer,’ she said.”
“Oh my God,” Elizabeth says.
He shakes his head. “I guess I said I was sorry to hear that, but she just started crying again. Then she said, ‘I promised God I wouldn’t do this anymore if she would get better. Now she’s going to die!’ ”
She laughs, wondering if she should, if it’s funny that a girl would kill her mother just to screw some scrawny boy. But she fears he thinks her somewhat dull already and is herself annoyed at people who take jokes too seriously. And there is, she must admit, something charming about the way he tells a story. Boyish and self-deprecating. The bashful Southern gentleman. She suspects he knows it too.
“Jesus,” he says, shaking his head. “It was terrible.” He turns to her again, brushes a hair away from her face. “But I still kind of like it when a woman cries.” He touches the corner of her eye. “In fact, tears are one of my leitmotifs, in the book.” He makes his mouth round, as if he were crooning to her. “That spring, the land seemed to draw itself from her eyes and her tears, which were, by then, her most tangible memory of him, seemed to bestow on every peripheral object a certain fragile evanescence.” He smiles. “Tears as a creative force, as a point of view. Remember?”
She smiles, reaching down to change the subject, and they begin to make love again. It’s slower this time and she keeps her eyes open, her mind on what she’s doing, what she might do. No significance, no implications, no tears.
But it’s good. Therapeutic, somehow, like a back rub.
Later, she notices his neck is flushed red. The way it had been that morning in her office, when she was praising his book. As if sex and praise stirred the same blood.
“Are you hungry?” she asks him, sitting up.
“A little,” he says, eyes closed.
She swings her legs over the side of the bed. “There’s this great little place down the block. Why don’t we go?”
“You want to get up already?”
She stands, turns to him. Even this little exchange makes her uncomfortable; it sounds too full of intimacy. Almost more so than the love-making.
“Yes,” she says, the decisive editor. “I’m hungry.” She walks into the bathroom. Her hair is ratty at the back, her mascara is smeared under her eyes. She washes her face, reapplies her make-up, giving him plenty of time.
She knows she will regret this every time he shows up at the office, but right now she feels fine. And she looks so much better, like she’s had a facial and a sauna and a whirlpool and basked briefly in the sun. She wonders why she went so long without it.
When she returns to the living room, he is sitting on the opened bed. He is holding one of his loafers, dangling it between his knees.
“We’re going to have trouble with this,” he says and for a minute she thinks he means the shoe. “You’re the type who likes to get up and get going after making love. I’m the type who likes to linger.”
She smiles. “I’m just hungry,” she says, avoiding any reference to their love-making, trying to recoup some distance.
He puts the shoe on, gets up, goes into the bathroom, kissing her as he passes. She picks up her glass—his glass?—and finishes the warm wine.
When he comes out, his hair is neatly combed (her comb?), making him look surprisingly boyish, fresh out of prep school. He kisses her again (her toothbrush?) and she feels that slight turning at the base of her spine.
Outside, it is the same cool night that she had walked home in earlier, but it seems darker now, or the lights seem brighter. He takes her hand and his feels warm and wide. They smile at each other. They pass an old woman who lives in her building and she smiles, eyeing Tupper. She is a wide, male-faced woman with bow legs and yellow hair. She has never smiled at Elizabeth before.
Another couple passes them and then a group of young men, neatly dressed. One of them looks at her and smiles a little, then glances briefly at Tupper. He and his friends turn into a small bar crowded with young people.
Friday night on the Upper East Side, and the streets are filled with illustrations for every tense of the verb “to fuck.” She tells Tupper this and he laughs, labeling others as they pass. A tall, attractive woman in a gray suit “has fucked,” two women just a little younger than Elizabeth “will fuck,” a plain-looking couple holding hands are simply “fucked.”
She puts aside all thoughts of closeness and distance. This walking together, being silly, holding hands, feeling truly hungry and washed clean, is all part of what she’s missed this near-year of celibacy. She will simply enjoy it and let Monday be as it may.
The restaurant is one of those small, glassed-i
n places on a corner. On the menu, they call it a sidewalk café. It’s all yellow candlelight and green plants and the piano player softly plays show tunes.
“Well, here we are again,” Tupper Daniels says. “Across a candlelit table. Twice in one day.”
She smiles, nothing to say.
“So, maybe while we’re here, I can get you to answer the question you didn’t answer this afternoon.”
“What’s that?” she says softly, playing the lover.
“What are your suggestions for my book? For the ending?”
The piano, she thinks, should have struck a sour note. “Shop talk?” she says.
He shrugs. “Just briefly. So I won’t spend all night trying to second-guess you. Like I did all day.”
She shakes her head, hesitates.
“Do you think I should end it in a trial scene? You know, Bailey’s trial. You looked a little unhappy today when I said I didn’t want to do that.”
She wonders what he’s talking about.
“Or”—he shifts a little in his seat, puts both elbows on the table—“and this occurred to me today, after we had lunch: How about if I end it with a chapter about Bailey himself? You know, maybe even pull a John Fowles, do the self-conscious ending, say there can be no ending because Bailey is still alive. Or do a total point-of-view switch and tell how one of the boys who used to watch him grew up and moved away. And then say I wrote a book about him. The little boy, I mean, not me.”
Despite herself, she says, “Why don’t you make something up?”
He looks at her, taken aback, she thinks. “What do you mean?”
She should say fine, any of those ideas is fine. Why don’t you write them, any one of them, get it finished, sign the contract? “I mean, why do you have to find out what really happened to Bailey or talk about what happened to the little boy? The guy in the book is named Beale, isn’t he? Why don’t you just stick with him, have something happen to him. You know, make something up.”
He rests his cheek on his knuckles, watching her. If she likes anything about him, she decides, she would have to say it’s his eyes. Although his chest is smooth and hard and his arms somewhat appealing, crossed with thick veins. His legs.
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