Happy All the Time

by Laurie Colwin

  “Is that some sort of militant stand?”

  “No,” said Misty. “I’m just not that sort of girl. I don’t go in for all that adorable socializing. I think it’s stupid and disgusting.”

  “I see,” said Vincent. “You’re not very nice, are you?”

  “No,” said Misty.

  The next day Vincent decided to try again.

  “Will you consider another lunch with me?” he said. “Fifty-fifty, of course.”

  “Okay.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Misty said, “I’m always sure, if I say I’m sure.”

  This lunch was considerably more friendly. During the course of it, Vincent learned that Misty spoke French, Russian, and German and that she read Amharic. She had also studied Portuguese and Xhosa.

  “What’s that?” Vincent asked.

  “I learned it in a linguistics class. When I get enough money to get out of this dump, I’m going to go where they speak it and speak it.”

  “Where do they speak it?”

  “Africa,” said Misty.

  “Well, now,” said Vincent “Is Misty your real name, or is it short for something?” She had given only her initials on her personnel form—A. E. Berkowitz.

  “It’s real,” said Misty.

  “How did you get a name like that?”

  “Because my mother is a jerk,” she snarled.

  “And why do you find your colleagues so disgusting?”

  “Look at them,” said Misty. “They are disgusting. So clean. So gentile. So comfortable. So well fed. Rich people make me sick.”

  At the end of the day, Vincent found himself alone in the elevator with Misty. At this point, he was a little terrified. Was he disgusting, clean, gentile, comfortable, and well fed? Did he make her sick too?

  They walked out of the building together and because it was a snappy autumn day, they kept walking. Vincent wondered if she minded being escorted, but he felt that if he asked, she would tell him to go away. But she did not tell him to go away. She was, in fact, almost sweet. Being sweet meant that she did not attack him outright and it occurred to Vincent that perhaps he and Misty might be friends. He had never had a woman friend before. Of course, their dealings had not been precisely friendly, but then Vincent had never had a lunch partner like Misty, or any other sort of partner like her.

  Misty lived on a tree-lined street near the Museum of Natural History. It was clear she was not going to invite him in. Instead, they stood by the steps continuing their conversation about the realities of statistical data. He walked her to the doorway. She looked straight into his eyes and smiled. It was more on the order of a grin than a smile, but it lit up her face.

  “You know,” she said, “you’re sort of a goop, but you’re awfully smart.”

  Vincent felt some unstoppable impulse snake its way up his spine. He took Misty Berkowitz by the shoulders and kissed her on the lips. Then, horrified by what he had done, he muttered an apology and dashed off down the street.

  That night was one of the Toad’s nights away, and Vincent had committed himself to spending the evening with Winnie. So as not to have to talk to her, he took her to a basketball game, but she insisted on having everything explained to her. Vincent missed precious minutes of brilliant defense explaining to Winnie the loose-ball foul, the twenty-four-second violation, goal tending, and the full court press. This helped him to stop thinking constantly about the feel of Misty Berkowitz’s lips and the clean, sugary scent of her hair. During the crucial last minute of the game, Winnie tapped Vincent on the shoulder.

  “Which team is which?” she said into his ear. Vincent explained.

  “Well, how come each chases after a different fellow?” said Winnie. “I mean, number four was chasing after number nineteen and now four is chasing twenty-one and that fellow seven is chasing nineteen.”

  “That’s called a switch,” said Vincent. “Now please shut up. There are six seconds left in this game.”

  “Well,” said Winnie, “I mean, don’t they get confused or lost?”

  The buzzer went off. The game was over. Vincent took Winnie by the arm and steered her up the bleacher to the escalator. There he was confronted by the sight of Misty Berkowitz arm in arm with a tall, skinny young man. She was laughing. Vincent had never seen her laugh. She looked very beautiful, and he had never seen her look beautiful before. Then she caught his eye. For a brief moment their eyes locked. She gave him a look that combined contempt and scorn. Then she and her companion jumped on the escalator and disappeared into the crowd.

  The next day was Friday, and Vincent was beside himself. He cowered in the office in dread of being shot that look of pure loathing. He hid himself successfully but at lunchtime he felt as if his head was being boiled and he slunk down the hall on his way out to Guido for some consolation. Misty’s office was empty when he passed it.

  Guido was not much in the mood to give comfort. He had problems of his own. These problems concerned the Magna Charta Foundation.

  During his first year at the Foundation, he had worked under his Uncle Giancarlo, who had shown him the ropes. For two years, Guido had been on his own and the Foundation showed every sign of renewed life and vigor. The projects to which the Foundation gave money became worthier and more noble. It had been noted in art journals that Magna Charta was shaping the cultural landscape. Guido assumed this was a reference to his interest in civic beautification although he kept up with the Foundation’s practice of giving money to what Uncle Giancarlo called the lone artist. The Foundation gave money to muralists for work in city buildings and schools, to churches that wished to restore gargoyles, to stonecutters seeking to decorate the facades of town houses, to architects restoring grange halls, to landmark preservation groups, and to sculptors who wanted to put chrome boxes in front of corporate headquarters as well as more traditional artists who cast bronze monumental statuary of local heroes. In addition, money was given to novelists, poets, painters, tapestry weavers, and potters. All of this was under Guido’s care, except for matters of pure money, which were overseen by a board of trustees of which Guido was nominal head. The rest were bankers and investors who knew how to add and subtract. Runnymeade, the Foundation magazine, had begun its life as a glossy booklet for subscribers to the Foundation. Uncle Giancarlo had decided to make it income-producing, but he had failed. Under Guido it flourished. It was sold to students, bookstores, libraries, and museums. It was also sold in the lobbies of fancy hotels and, Guido learned, was favored in the offices of college presidents, expensive dentists, and heart specialists.

  Guido had not only taken over the stewardship of Runnymeade and the Foundation. He had also inherited an English girl of porcelainlike beauty who had been Uncle Giancarlo’s secretary. Her name was Jane Motherwell. How Uncle Giancarlo had put up with her Guido could not imagine. Jane spilled coffee on his letters, had a ten-minute attention span, spent the large amounts of spare time she found for herself filing her nails or out of the office having her hair cut. When she was not out, she was in making innumerable personal telephone calls during which she refused to answer her buzzer. Furthermore, she was surly. Guido took this problem to Uncle Giancarlo, who explained. Jane Motherwell had been hired to replace old Mrs. Trout, who had been Uncle Giancarlo’s right hand for many years. She had retired at sixty-five, and Uncle Giancarlo, who decided he would retire at seventy, had hired Jane. “At my age,” said Uncle Giancarlo, “beauty means far more than mere efficiency.”

  On the day that Vincent turned up full of gloom, Jane had just quit, leaving Guido with a ringing telephone that went unanswered, a stack of unopened letters, and a book filled with correspondence Guido had dictated weeks ago. This was in shorthand, which Guido could not decipher. Guido felt frazzled. He realized that he had gotten used to Jane, in the way you get used to constant shooting pains, and he was puzzled now that relief had set in.

  “I’m in big trouble,” said Vincent.

  “Look, do you think you can f
igure out how this dictating machine works?” said Guido. “What happened? Did the Toad find out about you and Winnie and try to do you in with a squash racket?”

  “It’s not Winnie,” said Vincent, tinkering with the machine. “I’m not going to see her anymore. I told her that last night. She didn’t care. Look, Guido, this machine seems to be backward. You press the button that says replay, then start, then record. No, that’s wrong. Now I’ve erased everything on the tape. Sorry. But if you push start first, that makes it rewind to the beginning. Where did you get this from?”

  “Oh, throw it out. Uncle Giancarlo got it at a discount a million years ago. What’s your problem if it isn’t Winnie?”

  “I’ve been behaving oddly,” said Vincent. “Yesterday I kissed a girl.”

  “You do that all the time,” said Guido. “That isn’t odd. Christ, will you look at this notebook of Jane’s? There are three weeks of untyped letters. You don’t read shorthand, do you?”

  “I didn’t expect to kiss this particular girl. It was the last thing on my mind,” said Vincent. “Now I feel rotten. I took Winnie to the basketball game last night and the girl I kissed was there with some man and she looked at me as if she hated me. Of course, she often looks like that.”

  “Who is this girl?” Guido said.

  “She works at the Board. She’s a linguist and she’s very nasty to me.”

  “That’s a step,” said Guido. “Most of your other girls didn’t seem capable of any human action.”

  “She’s full of human action,” said Vincent. “Her name is Misty Berkowitz and she hates everything.”

  “Misty?”

  “Do you think that’s a bad sign?” Vincent said. “She says it’s her real name and claims that it’s her name because her mother is a jerk, but it isn’t her real name. Her initials are A. E.”

  “I still don’t see what your problem is,” said Guido.

  “I walked her home,” said Vincent. “Then I kissed her. Then I have to run into her with Winnie on my arm. She was with someone. They were laughing. They were probably laughing at me.”

  Guido was about to accuse Vincent of childishness, but he stopped himself. He had never seen Vincent so emotional. He could remember Vincent being troubled by women, or bothered by them, or made to feel guilty on their account, but he had never seen Vincent agitated by a girl. The tail of his shirt hung below his jacket. His loosened tie hung to one side. His hair looked as if he had spent the morning running his hands through it. This made Guido feel very old and wise. He felt that Vincent was about to have his heart broken at last and that he would be a bad friend to stop it. Vincent needed to have his heart broken. A go-round with a mean girl might teach him a thing or two that his experiments in vacuity had never provided. A broken heart, Guido thought, was not the worst thing that can happen to an intelligent man who makes stupid choices in love. And besides, Guido believed that Vincent had never been in love. Now he was displaying all the signs: agitation, odd behavior, unplanned kisses, and gloom.

  “Why don’t you find out?” he said, kindly.

  “Find out what?” Vincent said.

  “If she was laughing at you.”

  “You think I should?” said Vincent. “Maybe I should. What a wonderful idea. That’s what I’ll do. Okay. I’m off.” And he bounced out of the office leaving Guido feeling like a father who has sent his young son out into the world for the first time.

  Vincent sat in his office, feeling worse and worse. He had seen Misty out of the corner of his eye and what had looked like a wonderful idea now seemed complicated and risky. Being a man of reflection looked good to Vincent. Guido, in his shoes, would have sat around and brooded all day but this was not Vincent’s style. Wasn’t he a man of action? He picked up the receiver, then put it down. What was he supposed to say?

  “Misty, I want you to come and have a drink with me,” he said out loud. He cleared his throat and then said it again, looking around sheepishly to see if anyone passing his office had heard.

  He picked up the telephone and dialed Misty’s office number.

  “Misty. This is Vincent. Vincent Cardworthy. I want you to come and have a drink with me, after work, I mean. That is, if you don’t have another engagement.”

  “I don’t drink,” said Misty.

  “Well, come out and have a glass of milk.”

  “I don’t drink milk.”

  “I see,” said Vincent. “Well, do you have other plans?”

  “No,” said Misty.

  “Does that mean you will have a drink with me?” said Vincent.

  “No.”

  Vincent’s head was now leaning heavily on his hand. He had never felt so miserable in his life.

  “Would you consider dinner?” he said.

  “Yes,” said Misty.

  “I don’t understand,” said Vincent. Relief flooded his muscles the way morphine does. “How come you’ll have dinner if you won’t have a drink?”

  “I don’t drink,” said Misty. “And I hate bars.”

  They sat in a restaurant around the corner from Misty’s apartment. Misty was investigating the tablecloth and Vincent was staring at his whisky. Neither of them had spoken except to the waitress, who took their order. Vincent took this silence as a good sign—of what he was not sure. Among the things that Misty said she hated was small talk. This made things somewhat difficult for Vincent, who was used to small talk with women. He decided to make the first move by saying the first thing that came into his head.

  “I’m sorry to have bothered you,” he began.

  “Bothered me?” said Misty.

  “Calling you on the intercom and all.”

  “What all? What bother?”

  Vincent took a deep breath. “It’s just a figure of speech,” he said.

  “I hate figures of speech,” said Misty calmly.

  Vincent took another deep breath and pressed on.

  “What I mean to say is, I’m sorry to have kissed you like that yesterday.”

  Misty lifted her eyes from the tablecloth. The most remote flicker of a smile crossed her lips.

  “Is that really what you mean to say?” she said.

  “I thought it was,” said Vincent.

  “Think again,” said Misty. The flicker had turned into a real smile, a smile that looked almost warm. That, of course, was an excellent sign. “Did you actually drag me out to dinner to tell me that you didn’t mean to kiss me?” She was still smiling.

  “I’m sorry,” said Vincent. “I was just being conversational.”

  “Conversational about kissing?” said Misty. “Very interesting.”

  “What I meant to say is that I wanted to kiss you, but I didn’t mean to.”

  “Well, that certainly clears things up,” said Misty. “You and I seem to have very different ideas about intent and about kissing.”

  “I mean, you can’t just go around kissing people,” said Vincent.

  “You did,” said Misty. She looked at him thoughtfully. “You know what?” she said.

  “And furthermore,” interrupted Vincent, “I want to know if that fellow I saw you with last night … I mean, I was wondering who he was.”

  “You were wondering?” said Misty. “You know what the trouble with you is? You’re smart but in all the wrong ways. First you kiss me. Then you say you didn’t mean to. Then you run into me with some nearsighted woman on your arm and then you want to know who was that fellow you saw me with. I ask you.”

  Relief left Vincent quickly. What a dark mistake his life had been. Misty looked very calm and cool. There was no particular expression on her face. Was it a good sign that she had noticed Winnie’s myopia or was it simply ammunition gathering? Her calmness was extremely forbidding. He decided, since he could not figure out what else to do, to continue being the fool he was.

  “The girl you saw me with last night is a sort of casual friend,” said Vincent. “Or rather she was.”

  “Is ‘casual friend’ a figure of spee
ch too?”

  “I used to sleep with her,” said Vincent. “For no good reason.”

  “I’m not interested in your disgusting social habits,” said Misty.

  “She’s married to a fellow called Toad.”

  A huge smile lit Misty’s face.

  “Toad,” she said. “How adorable. Why is it that you upper-class types always name yourselves after reptiles?”

  “Amphibians,” said Vincent. “Now, who was that man?”

  “I am under no obligation to tell you anything,” said Misty.

  “I told you,” said Vincent. “It isn’t fair.”

  “No?” said Misty. “Well, here’s a revelation for you. You don’t have to be fair in this world.”

  “I’ll pay you to tell me,” said Vincent. He pulled his wallet out of his jacket.

  “My goodness,” said Misty. “You really are far gone. Well, okay. That man was my cousin Stanley, who is nineteen years old.”

  They sat in silence. A waitress brought them each a plate of spaghetti. Vincent had no appetite, but Misty dug in.

  “You ought to eat your dinner before it gets cold,” said Misty.

  “I will,” said Vincent, but he didn’t pick up his fork. All the clichés about confusion had been created for him, he felt. He was all at sea. He was adrift, a man without an anchor.

  Misty ate daintily, twirling her spaghetti neatly around her fork. When she lifted her wineglass, he noticed that her hair was the same amber color as the wine. She had light brown eyes. He noticed that in candlelight she took on the color of an apricot. She had small delicate hands and pale, oval nails. Her only jewelry was a plain gold watch.

  “The trouble with you,” said Misty, “is that you’re so committed to being polite and doing the right thing.”

  Vincent sat staring at his cold spaghetti and said nothing.

  “If you weren’t so polite, you wouldn’t have had to go out of your way to take me to dinner to apologize for your random behavior.”

  Vincent looked up. Misty was smiling.

  “You should be more like me,” she said.