The Last Chance

by Rona Jaffe

  She thought of herself as a reporter, not a personality. She did her own hair, even though expenses for a hairdresser were tax-deductible. She had it professionally cut every three months. Her clothes were simple, and while she was careful not to wear the same thing twice during the same week, because that too brought angry letters, she also repeated her wardrobe in order not to antagonize the have-nots who wrote in asking for her old clothes, money, and her head on a platter. She thought how ironic it was that while she was not really famous she was visible enough so that some strangers felt she should also be accessible.

  Her life centered around Kerry. Her schedule was erratic and difficult, but so was his. This worried her. She had to be on call for her job, but when he didn’t come home he was wherever he was by choice. During the past few weeks his hours had become more unpredictable. She always told him where she would be that day, and he told her he didn’t know where he would be. She had to accept that. He liked to wander around the city, see friends, do things on impulse. She was afraid to phone him at his apartment during the hours she thought he might be writing. But when he knew she had prepared dinner and was waiting for him, and he did not arrive, then she did call, and when he wasn’t in his apartment she felt a chill go through her. Whenever he showed up he always had the same innocent excuse, he had met a friend, he’d forgotten what time it was. He didn’t even bother to make up something melodramatic, so Margot had to accept what he said as truth. She was less important to him than his moment-to-moment life. She hated that, but she had to take it. She wished she had been the kind of person who had a life like his, who met friends in the street and wandered off with them for hours of talk, who didn’t plan, who forgot meals. The only thing Kerry planned for was their fall vacation in the Greek islands. That, at least, still existed, and she held on to it whenever she became nervous or frightened. She wished she could think of a way to make herself more important to him now.

  She brought the folder of crank letters home. She showed them to him. She wasn’t sure what reaction she expected them to evoke, probably his wish to protect her. She was totally unprepared for the reaction they did evoke.

  “These are fantastic!” Kerry said, delighted. He was sitting on the floor, her hate mail spread all around him. “These are the most incredible social document! The neurosis of our time … they’re a book. Did you ever think of making a book out of them, love?”

  “You’re joking, I hope,” Margot said.

  He looked at her with eyes that were clear, innocent, and enthusiastic. “No, I’m not kidding. It could have photographs of nice, ordinary people, mowing their lawns, having supper, walking their dogs, kids doing homework, housewives ironing, people in front of TV sets in sleazy hotel rooms and nice apartments with crocheted things on the arms of chairs—you know, those old things my grandmother used to have.”

  “Antimacassars,” Margot said coldly. She did not like being put in the memory bank with his grandmother.

  “Right. And then you’d have the letters. You’d have a little girl on the swing in the park, having a great time, and then you’d have the letter that says you’re a cunt and a whore.”

  “Those were written to me,” Margot said. “Me! Don’t you realize that? They’re not for your entertainment. Some real people out there somewhere wrote those letters to me.”

  “Then they belong to you,” Kerry said. “They’re not signed. You can publish them as a human document and make some money.”

  She scrambled around the rug, furiously gathering up her hate mail. “I’d just get more.”

  “Those people don’t read books,” Kerry said pleasantly.

  “I’m glad I never wrote you any love letters,” Margot said. “You’d probably publish them if you thought they had any com mercial possibilities.”

  He smiled. “You’re angry.”

  “No, I’m hurt.”

  “Why are you hurt?”

  “I guess I thought you might be concerned.”

  “I guess I’m different from you,” Kerry said.

  “Not where it matters,” Margot said quickly.

  She took the letters back to her office that evening and locked them away in her file. Had she made a fool of herself? No, Kerry thought she’d brought the letters home to amuse him. She hoped he didn’t know she had been trying to get him to pay more attention to her. He would accuse her of crying wolf. She knew you couldn’t make someone love you by making him sorry for you. When she’d been young and in love with married men, they had always said they were sorry for their wives, sorry for their children, but she had finally realized they were only saying that. Their wives and children were their protection from young girls like her who wanted to marry them. Their families did deserve sympathy, but those men were the last ones in the world to realize it. Pity was a burden. She would never again try to make Kerry feel sorry for her. She was glad she was old enough to know some tricks of her own—the most difficult of which, and the most successful, was self-control.

  Ellen Rennie, for the first time in her life, was getting a lesson in self-control. Every day in her office she jumped whenever the phone rang, hoping it would be Kerry, and it never was. She got to work promptly at nine and stayed until six, hoping he would call, but finally she realized it was useless. He wouldn’t call, ever. She had been a moment of gratification to him, nothing more. Maybe even less—maybe he thought he’d done her a favor. That thought panicked her. He had done her a favor, that was what was so humiliating, but instead of being grateful that he had found her, as all her other men were, he probably felt like a boy scout who had helped an old lady to cross the street. She would never, never go to bed with a young boy again. Sex was too easy for them. She needed a man who would find her important, valuable. A man who was well married, who seldom cheated, who would find himself overwhelmed by passion and guilt, but not so overwhelmed that he wanted to stop. She wanted to be someone’s great love. She needed it. No matter how often Ellen had choreographed her great romance in her mind, it always happened as something fresh and new.

  She looked around the company for the first time, seeing the editors and authors in a new light. There wasn’t much to her taste. The man she was looking for had to send a particular kind of tingle through her. He didn’t have to be of any particular type, but he had to have the chemistry. Ellen was so angry at Kerry that he no longer seemed sexy to her at all. She wanted someone totally different, starting with Considerate and Kind.

  When she walked into Reuben Weinberg’s office Ellen knew he was the one. She wasn’t really sure whether it was the way his thick, dark hair curled over his neck or his wife’s picture on his desk in a Kulicke frame. She had put it there, not he, and it was an old picture. Ellen had once seen his wife. It had been a long time since this man had cared about looking at his wife’s picture on his desk, but he obviously felt he had to keep it there. Ellen looked at Reuben Weinberg with new interest. He was the executive editor and a vice-president. Some of the women in the office had crushes on him, but he had never been involved with any of them. He had power in the company, he was sweet, he was four years older than she was, and he was Jewish. He had just the right amount of guilt.

  “I came to ask you,” Ellen said, “if that Russian of yours is taking his interpreter on tour with him.”

  “He always takes her,” Reuben said. He smiled, because the interpreter was a pretty young thing and the Russian author spoke quite good English.

  “Should I get them a suite or are we being proper?”

  “I’m sure he’d be thrilled to have a suite. With or without her.”

  “I’ll book them a suite,” Ellen said. “It makes him look successful for the interviewers. It doesn’t cost any more than two rooms.” She sat comfortably on the edge of his desk and gave him a long calm look. Slightly crooked teeth—that meant his parents couldn’t afford to have them fixed. A hint of acne scars on his cheeks, not enough to be unattractive, but it meant that he’d probably had an inferiority c
omplex as a teen-ager. Pimples, no money, and bookish, just when he had been at his horniest. Married young, probably for sex. Just at the age now when he realized all he’d missed. Nice body, what she could see of it. Not too tan—that meant he wasn’t a tennis or a golf freak. A man shouldn’t have too many outside interests, they siphoned off his interest in cheating. He blushed slightly under her gaze. She looked into his eyes and smiled, and then she looked at his mouth. When she knew she had made him uncomfortable enough she eased off his desk and walked casually to the door. When she got back to her office her phone rang.

  “Maybe you should get two rooms,” Reuben said. “Alexi’s married.”

  “Who isn’t?” Ellen said.

  “Of course, his wife’s in Maine and speaks no English.”

  “She sounds perfect,” Ellen said.

  “You’re frisky today.”

  “No more than usual.”

  “I had a lunch date canceled on me,” Reuben said. “If you want I’ll buy you a sandwich.”

  “Terrific.” She replaced the receiver gently and ran her hands over her breasts and down her slim waist. She would go slowly with him. He was going to be easy. She felt better already. It was going to be a marvelous summer.

  June 1975

  For the first time in her life, this summer Nikki Gellhorn felt like one of her own daughters. They were setting off on their own adventures, she on hers. College over for the summer, Lynn and her boyfriend flew to London, the first leg of their European summer. Lynn had her knapsack, her passport, her traveler’s checks, her map of the London subway system, her map of the French wine country, her list of youth hostels, her birth-control pills, her blue jeans, her paperbacks, and (under protest) was wearing her silver Medic Alert bracelet that said she was allergic to penicillin. She and her boyfriend had not even bothered to buy wedding rings in the five-and-ten, a suggestion Nikki had tentatively offered, which was met with hoots of laughter.

  Dorothy was working at the suburban mental hospital. She loved it. “They’re not violent, Mom,” she assured Nikki. “The violent ones get locked in another wing. I get the spoiled teenagers whose parents want to get them off pills and dope at a hundred dollars a day—the hospital, not the habit.” She had her uniforms, her name tag, and her tennis racket. She played with the patients and the other aides. She’d already met a medical student there she liked. Nikki doubted if Dorothy would ever favor her parents with a weekend visit, even with the medical student. A house in the country wasn’t that interesting. Nikki didn’t enjoy the weekends there any more herself. She and Robert were pleasant enough to each other, and they went to barbecues and picnics and gave a brunch, but she was always glad when Monday morning came and she could go back to New York. Going back Monday morning instead of Sunday night was her concession to Robert’s ego, although she found it very inconvenient.

  At her office they were working on books for next year. The summer was a more relaxed time, though, because people took their vacations, and that seemed to demoralize the ones who were left. The building never seemed to give them enough air conditioning. On Monday mornings they compared tans. The summer bachelors whose wives were in the Hamptons or on Fire Island had set up housekeeping with their girl friends. One afternoon the whole office went off to a screening of one of the Heller & Strauss books that had been made into a movie. Ellen Rennie sat with Reuben Weinberg and when the screening was over they went off together. Nikki didn’t give it much thought.

  The next day Ellen came into her office. “Busy?”

  “The usual,” Nikki said, putting down a manuscript she had been reading.

  “I had to tell you,” Ellen said. “Can you keep a secret?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m in love.”

  “No kidding. Who are you in love with?”

  “Reuben,” Ellen said.

  Nikki knew something of Ellen’s past from Margot, but she had always imagined the men as irresistible somehow, not like Reuben. She couldn’t picture a woman jeopardizing her marriage for Reuben.

  “I had to tell somebody,” Ellen said. “I’ve never been in love like this before. You never know who it’s going to be, do you?”

  “No, you don’t,” Nikki said.

  “I fought it,” Ellen said. “After all, I have to keep my home together. It’s not easy. And Reuben’s married, so that’s trouble too. But I just couldn’t resist finally. He’s so incredible. But you know him, of course.”

  “Not the way you do,” Nikki said with a smile.

  Ellen sat on the edge of Nikki’s desk and stared off into space with a faraway gleam in her eye. “Such incredible sex …” she said.

  “Haven’t you told Margot?”

  “Of course,” Ellen said. “I tell Margot everything. We’re life-long friends.”

  “Well, I don’t think you should tell anybody else in this office besides me,” Nikki said. “There’s a lot of gossip around here.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it. I only told you, Nikki, because you’re my best friend here and I know I can trust you.”

  “You can.” She wondered how many other people Ellen had told already. Ellen seemed too eager to confide, she seemed almost disappointed that Nikki wasn’t pressing her for details. Is it the idea of the affair she likes, Nikki wondered, or the affair itself?

  “It’s not easy to be in the same office together,” Ellen said. “Luckily his wife and kids are on Fire Island for the summer, and he goes there only weekends. We use his apartment during the week.”

  “Don’t you have to go home?”

  “Oh, I mean lunchtimes and after work—you know.”

  “I don’t know,” Nikki said. “I’m very boring, I never had an affair.”

  “Never?”

  “I never had time.”

  “You must have a very happy marriage,” Ellen said wistfully. “Mine is a nightmare. However, one does what one can to survive. Stolen moments.”

  “That sounds like the title of a silent movie. D. W. Griffith.”

  “No wonder you’re an editor,” Ellen said.

  I’m just like Robert, Nikki thought in horror. I do that thing with words he does. Maybe if you live with someone long enough you become identical twins.

  “Believe me, Nikki,” Ellen was saying, “if you had a bad marriage you’d have time to have an affair. Men are always after married women. It’s too easy for us.”

  Nikki thought back. There must have been at least a dozen men in her life who’d made serious offers. She’d put them all into her mind as if she were holding a dance card and laughed them off. An advance was as good as a fait accompli, she’d always thought. And a lot safer. And after all her goodness, there was her husband accusing her of playing around. It certainly was ironic. “Does your husband suspect?” she asked Ellen.

  “Hank? Never. Or if he does, he doesn’t want to admit it to himself. People are very self-protective.”

  “I guess so.”

  Ellen went back to her office and her dream world and Nikki went back to her manuscript. She wondered if her daughter Dorothy was doing it with that medical student. Wouldn’t it be funny if both her daughters ended up marrying doctors? Her mother would be so thrilled. God, I’ve got to stop thinking marriage, Nikki thought. Girls don’t get married any more just because they’re sleeping with somebody. Or because they want to. They just play around. And their mothers play around. I’m not that much older than Ellen. She looks older than I do. “Too Old” is a trick our mothers invented to keep us in the seraglio. First we’re Too Young, then we’re Too Old. Not that I want to do anything, but if I ever do I’m not going to let being forty-two scare me away from adventure.

  Her secretary, Elizabeth, rapped on the doorframe. “Nikki, can I borrow ten dollars till payday? I got mugged last night.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “No, really. Ripped off. I was coming home from shopping—the stores were open late last night—and some guy cut my shoulder bag right off m
e with a pair of scissors. Whack, it was gone. I turned around and saw him taking off for the subway entrance, and I wasn’t going to follow him there.”

  Nikki looked at the pretty Chinese girl, twenty years old, long, thick, straight hair, blue jeans, no hips, and thought she was lucky she was only robbed, not raped. “What did you do?”

  “Well, luckily I’d spent most of my money. But what really bugged me was there was this skirt I wanted a lot, and I told myself I was too extravagant and it would be good for my soul if I didn’t give in for once, so I didn’t buy it. And then this junkie takes my money. I was so mad!”

  “Look at it this way,” Nikki said, “you could have bought the skirt and then he could have taken it.”

  Elizabeth laughed. “Can you spare ten? I hate to ask.”

  “Of course.” Nikki dug into her bag and found her wallet.

  “You carry all your credit cards?” Elizabeth said.

  “Sure, why not?”

  “And your money, and your keys? Some guy could rip you off and get to your house before you do.”

  “I doubt that’s going to happen,” Nikki said. She remembered her would-be robber and felt a slight chill. “What happened to your keys last night?”

  “I keep them in my pocket.”