A Week as Andrea Benstock

by Lawrence Block

  Then one Wednesday afternoon the telephone rang and her mother told her it was for her.

  She took the phone assuming it was someone from out of town. It did not occur to her that anyone in Buffalo would be likely to call her.

  A voice said, “Hello, Andrea? This is Mark Benstock, and I’m sure that means nothing at all to you.”

  “Well…”

  “This is pretty complicated. My aunt Rhoda seems to be a good friend of your Aunt Claire, and it seems that—you do have an Aunt Claire, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Well, it seems that my aunt and your aunt were having a hot game of mah jongg or canasta or something, and the word eventually reached me that the most beautiful girl in Buffalo is only a phone call away from me. Uh. So I thought, uh, that perhaps we could have dinner some night.”

  “Oh.”

  “I’m a lawyer, I’m not married, and I’m kind to animals. Small children generally like me. What else? I’ve never been arrested. I did get a parking ticket last week, but that’s about the only blot on my escutcheon. And I’m sure this is the first time I’ve ever spoken the word escutcheon aloud.”

  “I used to know a Linda Benstock.”

  “My sister. I’m sure she’d supply a character reference if you’d like.”

  She laughed.

  “Friday night? Or Saturday better?”

  “Saturday would be better, actually.”

  “Around seven o’clock? I’ll pick you up.”

  “Let me give you my address. Do you have a pencil?”

  “I have the address, as a matter of fact.”

  He was tall. He had wiry dark brown hair and a broad forehead creased with three deep horizontal folds. His cheeks and chin were lightly pitted with old acne scars. His eyes were a warm brown. His mouth was generous and his teeth were good and immaculately white. She was apt to take rather more notice of teeth than the average person, and supposed it was the inevitable consequence of being a dentist’s daughter. For many years she had thought it would be impossible for her to be strongly attracted to anyone with bad teeth. In New York she had learned that this was not entirely the case, but even then she had found herself more than a little put off by teeth that were out of line or badly cared for.

  That Saturday he took her to a restaurant in Williamsville. The building that housed it had been an inn around the time the Erie Canal was dug, and so the waiters now wore Revolutionary costumes and the menu used f’s for s’s. They established that they had both gone to Bennett High School, that their families belonged to the same temple, and that they had a certain number of acquaintances in common.

  He was twenty-eight. He had graduated from Cornell where he was a member of Alpha Epsilon Pi. He’d been accepted at Cornell Law, his second choice after Yale, but decided that four years in Ithaca were enough. And, since he intended to practice law in his home town, there were certain advantages in U. B. Law School. He’d naturally lived at home; his parents’ house in Eggertsville was as close to the University of Buffalo campus as any apartment he was likely to find.

  After he’d earned his law degree he went into the Army for six months of active duty. He spent two months in basic training at Fort Dix and the rest of the time as a clerk-typist at Fort Polk in Louisiana. He had to go to reserve meetings every Monday night, but that would be over and done with in a couple of more years. And every summer he went to a camp in Watertown for two weeks. It was an idiotic waste of time, but it was better than giving up two years of your life in one chunk.

  He still lived at home. He had taken the bar exam as soon as his active duty ended, and surprised himself by passing it the first time. Ever since then he had been with Gordon, Weissbart, and Gordon. The firm’s offices were downtown in the Liberty Bank Building, and on several occasions he had looked around for an apartment closer to his office, but he did get on well with his parents and hated the idea of having to cook for himself. He supposed he would move out sooner or later.

  He loved being a lawyer. At Cornell he had considered several other careers. Medicine appealed, but the endless ordeal you had to go through had discouraged him; he knew he was not sufficiently dedicated to cope with it. And he had liked history enough to contemplate making it his life’s work, but being a historian meant being a teacher, and he couldn’t see himself doing fundamentally dull work for low pay for the rest of his life.

  Law absorbed him. He had the right sort of mind for it. His firm had a broad general practice, and there was enough change in his work from day to day so that it could never become boring. He wasn’t setting the world on fire, but then he had not had the desire to set the world on fire. He was gradually building up a reputation and getting ahead, and he was doing what he wanted to do, and that was the most important thing.

  He collected original cast albums of Broadway shows. Now and then he went to a concert at Kleinhans Music Hall but he wasn’t really crazy about it. He didn’t have the time to play golf as often as he would have liked. He had bowled in a Sunday morning league when he was in high school and had been fairly good, but he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone bowling. It was pretty dull, when all was said and done, because you just did the same thing over and over again.

  They spent a long time at the restaurant. They both had several cups of coffee, then nursed small snifters of brandy. He was easy to be with, and he evidently found her easy to talk to. She did little talking herself but enjoyed listening to him. He was a man who knew just what he wanted to do; moreover, he was doing it. He had a sense of self, a sense of his place in his community, which was a quality quite outside of her experience in men. It was a quality she was now prepared to find extremely attractive.

  He returned her to her house well before midnight. She wondered if she had done something wrong, but decided that she hadn’t; she was certain he had had a good time. And he said as much as he walked her to her door.

  “I can’t remember enjoying myself this much, Andrea. I must have talked your ear off.”

  “I enjoyed myself.”

  “I hope you did. I know I did. Can I see you Friday? Maybe we’ll catch a movie or something, and I’ll give your ears a rest.”

  “I’d like that. Seeing you, I mean. Not—”

  “I know. Friday, then. I’ll call you.”

  In the weeks before her wedding there were times when she looked back at that first date and thought that she had known then that she would ultimately marry Mark Benstock. But this was not strictly true. It was remarkable enough that, as she lay in her bed that night, she found herself speculating as to what her life would be like if she did marry Mark, or someone quite like him. She sensed even then that it would be a very comfortable life, and by this she meant emotional rather than financial security.

  He was a sound person, a stable person, and she found his stability far more attractive than would have been the case a year or two earlier. It was the disquieting lack of stability in her own life and the lives of everyone she knew that was at the root of her return to Buffalo. Of course there were other more specific factors, but they seemed to be metaphors for the insecurity and isolation of her life in New York.

  Yes, she could be married to someone like Mark Benstock. In fact it seemed unlikely that she could be successfully married to anyone who was not similar to him in most respects. But she did not seriously think that she might marry him, not then.

  By Thanksgiving she knew they would one day be married.

  She had not gone out with anyone in Buffalo before Mark called her, and she did not date anyone but him in the weeks that followed. There were a couple of phone calls from other men. A boy she had dated in high school called her one evening; he was recently divorced, had heard she was back in town, and wondered if she would like to get together for a drink. She would probably have gone, but the night he suggested was one on which she had a date with Mark, and he never called her a second time. Another man asked her out early in November; he too was divorced,
and like Mark had heard of her through the aunt’s grapevine. By that time she was seeing Mark twice a week and had no desire to see anyone else. Besides, this man had a nasal voice and sounded like a creep. She told him she was seeing someone on a regular basis, and he sounded disappointed, but not terribly disappointed.

  Their dates were always enjoyable for her. While they didn’t go anywhere spectacular, he frequently found something interesting for them to do. They had dinner at a few good restaurants, several mediocre ones, and one remarkably poor Chinese place. They saw half a dozen movies and one play, a reasonably good amateur production of Juno and the Paycock. The imperfect Irish brogues made her think of some of the men she had known who did their drinking at the White Horse and the Lion’s Head, but she did not think of them very intently, or for very long.

  One night they drove to Niagara Falls and had dinner on the Canadian side. They had a window table with a good view of the Falls. She quoted Oscar Wilde’s line, expressing his assurance that Niagara Falls was the American bride’s second greatest disappointment. He had never heard the line before and he loved it.

  On the long drive home he said, “I couldn’t even guess how long it’s been since I’ve seen the Falls. We had this tradition in my high school fraternity. God, high school fraternities and sororities! They were stupid enough in college, but in high school!”

  “What was the tradition?”

  “After our closing affair in the spring we would all drop off our dates and drive to Niagara Falls, and then we would all solemnly pee over the Falls. Well, into the river, and then it would go over the Falls.”

  “At least you dropped your dates off first. Although I guess it might have been fun to watch. What fraternity?”

  “Pal. Pi Alpha Lambda. And you were Phi Ep?”

  “Uh-huh. I don’t think I ever dated a Pal boy. Yes, I did, come to think of it. Gerry Leibow.”

  “Familiar name, but I don’t remember him.”

  She sang:

  I loved a Pal boy, I always will,

  Because a Pal boy gave me my first thrill.

  When I was younger, and but a child,

  A sexy Pal boy drove me wi-i-ild.

  But now I’m older, and more mature,

  And now I am an Ulps boy’s girl.

  “I remember that song. But the last word wasn’t girl. It was whore.”

  “Hoor, you mean. To rhyme with mature, but we could only sing it that way when no one was around. And when we were in a particularly daring mood. ’And now I am an Ulps boy’s hoor.’”

  “Upsilon Lambda Phi. ’If you laugh too hard, ULP.’ My father wanted me to pledge Ulps. He claimed it had more status. Fortunately I wasn’t sophisticated enough to know what he was talking about, so I joined the fraternity all my friends were joining. What nonsense it all was.”

  He took her to a basketball doubleheader at Memorial Auditorium. He showed her his office. One Saturday afternoon he took her for a drive in the country. There was an orchard where you could pick your own apples for a dollar a bushel.

  Beyond kissing her good night, he never made a pass at her. At the very beginning she interpreted this as strategy on his part; he would keep things very platonic, then move in swiftly for the kill. But as time passed she realized that he was not going to attempt to take her to bed, and on reflection she found that this did not really surprise her at all. In New York she had taken it for granted that any man she went out with would try to get her to bed at the earliest opportunity. But she was not in New York now. She was in Buffalo, going with a steady stable man who thought in long-range terms.

  He gave her a diamond solitaire for Christmas. “We always exchanged gifts at Chanukah,” he said, “but I think kids should get something for Christmas, too. I’d even be inclined to have a tree for the kids’ sake. Of course I’d have to take it down whenever my parents came over.”

  “Or hang a picture in front of it.”

  “Even better. I hope I’m not presuming too much. I gather it’s considered proper to let the girl pick out the ring, but I wanted to surprise you. You can exchange it if it’s not what you want.”

  “It’s just exactly what I want.”

  “What I want is for us to be married. I’ve never proposed to a girl before. There was never anyone I wanted to marry. There were two or three I thought about marrying but it wasn’t what I wanted and it never went that far. I was beginning to think I would never meet anyone. And then your Aunt Claire and my Aunt Rhoda sat down over a card table, and here I am with the only girl in the world. I’m not dreaming, am I?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  “I love you, Andrea.”

  They were invited to a New Year’s party at the home of a Polish couple in Orchard Park. “I suppose we ought to go,” he said. “I knew Cass in law school and we’ve been doing some business with his firm lately. They don’t touch negligence and they’ve been giving us some referrals. I don’t suppose it’ll be much fun, so if you can’t stand the idea just say so.”

  “I don’t mind. I always hate New Year’s Eve anyway, so if we go someplace where we don’t expect much, at least we won’t be disappointed.”

  The party was about what she’d expected. She didn’t know anyone there and Mark knew only the host. Everybody was married and half the women were pregnant. The men gathered in one room and discussed cars and told Kennedy jokes. The women sat around in another room and talked about toilet training. There was a pile of funny hats on the table next to the bottles of Schenley’s, and she told him she was damned if she was going to put one on.

  “You won’t have to,” he said. “Wait right here.” She waited, drink in hand, and after a few minutes he returned with their coats. “I told Casimir we’d absolutely promised to be at a family party by the stroke of twelve. Not that he’ll remember anything. It’s a quarter after eleven, and at the rate he’s going he’ll be under the sofa by midnight.”

  Outside, a light snow was falling. “We won’t ever be like that,” she said. “Tell me we won’t.”

  “Like Cass and Ellie?”

  “Like all those people. The women were worse than the men. I want to have babies, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life talking about their diapers. Let’s try not to be boring, Mark.”

  “It’s a deal.” They reached his car and he held the door for her, then walked around and got behind the wheel. “Well, we put in an appearance,” he said. “But I couldn’t see starting 1963 with a dose of terminal boredom. Anyway, I’ve got a wonderful idea. I’ll show you my office.”

  “I’ve seen your office, silly.”

  “Humor me.”

  On the big table in the conference room was an ice hamper with two bottles of Mumm’s Cordon Rouge. They sat on the long leather couch and drank one of the bottles and necked. She had not had champagne in ages and it was delicious. She had not necked in ages, either, and his mouth and hands turned out to be an ideal accompaniment for champagne. He made gentle, leisurely love to her, and she felt so very much at ease that she began to grow passionate without exactly realizing what was happening to her.

  After a long time he sat up and looked at his watch. It was twelve-thirty. “Well, what do you know about that,” he said, marveling. “Here I was hoping to steal a kiss at the stroke of midnight, and now I’ll have to wait a full year for the privilege. Privilege.”

  “I think you’re a little bit drunk.”

  “Well, maybe a bit.”

  “And you don’t have to steal anything, you know. You do know that, don’t you?”

  He undressed her slowly, his large hands very gentle and capable. Someone had told her once that the size of a man’s hands was a good indication of the size of his penis. She had dismissed this as absurd folk wisdom at the time, but lately she had noticed his hands and remembered the old myth and wondered if there was anything to it. She was delighted now to find that, in his case at least, it was quite true. He was large, and she liked that. For all that she
had heard and read to the effect that penis size was not important, she felt it was important to her.

  It had been such a long time. There had been, since her return to Buffalo, no sexual frustration, no nights of longing, until she began to wonder if that final week in New York had permanently affected her capacity for sexual desire. Sex had become so slight a factor in her life that this thought itself was less a cause for worry than dispassionate speculation.

  Her head was wonderfully light from the champagne, her body deliriously in tune after their love play. Now she inhaled the intermingled scents of his cologne and the leather couch, and she felt his weight upon her and his bulk within her, and oh my, oh yes, what a lovely way to start the year.

  “Oh, Mark.”

  “My girl, my baby girl.”

  “Oh my God.”

  She had had a diaphram in New York. For all she knew it was still there, zipped in its pink plastic carrying case and tucked away in the second drawer of the bird’s-eye maple dresser on Jane Street. Two days after he first made love to her she went to a gynecologist at Linwood and Utica and asked to be fitted. He asked her if there was any particular reason why she didn’t want to take contraceptive pills. She decided there wasn’t. He took her blood pressure and listened to her heart and gave her a prescription for Enovid, with instructions to begin taking them five days after the start of her next period.

  She left his office praying she would get a next period to begin with. Neither she nor Mark had taken any precautions, and he insisted he would be just as pleased if she were pregnant; it would give him an excuse to move up the wedding date. But her period came on schedule, and after that she took her pills faithfully. Invariably their nights together concluded at his office, with her bare bottom sticking to the brown leather of the conference room couch.