The Last Chance

by Rona Jaffe

  On nights when she didn’t go out to find a man Margot stayed at home drinking vodka and diet tonic and listening to old records that brought memories back even more vividly. She could not concentrate on new music. It irritated her. With the eagerness of a masochist she crawled to the past that had battered her. She should never have trusted anyone. She should have handled all of it differently. In her mind she had angry conversations with these shadow enemies of the past and told them how much she despised them. She brought these scenes up to the present and imagined police coming to her door to tell her that Kerry had been killed violently and that they had to question everyone in his address book even though she herself was not a suspect. “What did you expect?” she would say to these cops. “He had such weird friends I’m just surprised he wasn’t killed ages ago.”

  With characteristic self-absorption, Ellen never noticed that Margot was different. She telephoned with her endless seismographic records of her orgasms with Reuben, her mental turmoil because the affair was getting so serious, her gloating because it was. Now Margot could retaliate. She told Ellen about the best of her pickups, glamorizing the occasion as much as she could; she told Nikki, she told Rachel. They all seemed pleased that she had gotten over Kerry so well and was so popular. The only one who had a discouraging comment was, of course, Ellen. “Why do you want them so young?” Ellen asked. “There’s no future in that.”

  “You’re a fine one to talk about future.”

  “All right. Next time I’ll know better.”

  “Are you planning on a next time?”

  “Maybe …”

  More of Ellen’s bragging that Margot couldn’t take seriously. She would never leave Hank, she was a coward.

  Margot’s fortieth birthday was approaching. Ellen decided that this year instead of taking her to lunch she would give her a surprise evening birthday party at Maxwell’s Plum, inviting just their closest women friends, Nikki and Rachel. It couldn’t really be a surprise though, because if she didn’t tell Margot in advance, Margot might break their date, having met some young man somewhere. Margot was rather pleased about the party. She imagined herself on the deck of the Titanic, drinking gaily as the rest of the world went off in lifeboats. The image quickly turned to herself doomed and hysterical on the Titanic, while her parents, every man she had loved, all her friends, were being saved. Then she saw herself in a lifeboat crowded with strangers, being rowed to safety, and those she loved doomed on the ship above her, pressed to the railing, acting brave. The image made her cry. She didn’t want to have to make the choice of which fantasy she preferred—they were all horrible. Why did she torture herself this way? She seemed to have so little control over her thoughts lately.

  She asked her doctor to give her another prescription for sleeping pills. They were barbiturates and had been reclassified, so you could only have a month’s supply and couldn’t renew them. She took them infrequently, never when a man was there, and saved them. You never knew. Drinking lulled the images, and if it didn’t, at least it gave her the courage to go out and look for male company. Margot doubted if she could pick up a man without first having a few drinks. It was so contrary to everything she had been brought up to believe about aggressiveness. She never drank during the day when she was preparing her spot, and never before the show. She was very careful now. Previously she’d had a glass or two of wine at lunch with a friend; now she was only a night drinker. Alcohol had suddenly begun to bring out the worst in her. She never knew which she would become: the adventure seeker or the recluse.

  On her birthday Margot, Ellen, Nikki, and Rachel met at Maxwell’s Plum at half past eight. It was already crowded. In the center of the restaurant was a huge, raised bar filled with young people who had come to pick up strangers and find love of one kind or another. All had dressed and groomed themselves carefully for the night’s adventures. Around the edges of the room was a sidewalk café, where blue-jeaned couples could linger over a hamburger and watch the action. The whole place was done in extravagant Art Deco, with ceramic and stuffed animals hanging from the ceiling. But the best part was the open back room, raised for a good view of the bar, with a glittering Tiffany glass ceiling of many colors, Art Deco light fixtures, bouquets of flowers on the tables, and a lengthy menu. Ellen had reserved a table in this expensive back room and all of them had dressed up. They were going to show Margot how nice it was to be a sophisticated, financially secure grown-up, so her birthday wouldn’t bother her.

  They had two bottles of wine. It went fast with four people. They ordered a third bottle halfway through the meal. Margot idly thought of putting the whole bill on her credit card so Ellen wouldn’t have to dig up her share, and realized she was high. They were all in good spirits. Nikki and Rachel had chipped in to buy her a Rykiel sweater she had coveted, and Ellen had bought her an Elsa Peretti necklace.

  “It’s worth being forty to get all this loot,” Margot said gratefully, not really meaning it.

  They were jolly, they laughed and shrieked like schoolgirls. “Let me tell you about the graffiti I just saw in the ladies’ room,” Nikki said. “It said, ‘Sex without love is even worse.’” They all shrieked with laughter. “Worse than what?” Nikki said. They laughed harder.

  “I have to go pee anyway, so I’ll write an addition,” Margot said, rising. She had to pass the length of the back room to get to the stairs, and looked down at the crowded bar. There were a few rather passable men standing there hoping to pick up girls. When she came down the stairs she had a better look and saw one who appealed to her. He was tall and tanned, with dark hair and light-looking eyes, a nice body in the inevitable body shirt, with a suede jacket slung over one shoulder. He held what looked like a spritzer. Definitely cruising. She walked over to him and gave him a fey half smile.

  “I know you,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “You’re on television. Margot King! Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Buy you a drink?”

  She nodded in the direction of the table of women. “I’m doing an interview right now. Later?”

  He looked at the table and his glance stopped at Rachel. He almost licked his lips. “Coincidence, I’m in market research myself.”

  “Lesbians,” Margot said. “Very dull. I’ll be through at-” She looked at her watch. “Why don’t you come over to my apartment at eleven.”

  “Will you be there?”

  “Of course.” She wrote her address on his napkin and went back to her table.

  “Who was that?” Ellen asked.

  “A guy I know.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “I haven’t got the faintest idea,” Margot said, and smiled down at the handsome young man who was looking at her now instead of at anyone else in the room. He held up two fingers to her in a sign that was meant to mean eleven. Margot nodded.

  “What did that mean?” Nikki asked.

  “V for victory,” Margot said.

  “Did you pick up that strange man?” Rachel, horrified.

  “Sure,” Margot said. “Didn’t you ever in the dim, evil past?”

  “Lots,” Rachel said.

  “Well, I’m still living my dim, evil past,” Margot said.

  “It’s incredible,” Nikki said. “You walk through the room and they fall at your feet.”

  They all nodded and smiled admiringly, but Margot couldn’t be sure if they meant it or if they thought she was crazy and were just being nice because it was her birthday.

  She was home at a quarter to eleven, put her birthday presents away, brushed her teeth, combed her hair, had a drink, and waited. He appeared at ten past. Too insecure to wait in the street in case I wasn’t home yet, she thought. He saw me leave, but he still wasn’t sure. That means he’ll try harder. Insecure ones always do. It never does them any good; I like the idea more than the act, but I’ll send him away happy.

  Early in the morning he had to leave for his office. He took a carefully folded tie o
ut of his jacket pocket. “Stopped off home to get this last night,” he said, as if he were enormously clever. Margot gave him a new, wrapped toothbrush so he wouldn’t use hers. (She’d bought a dozen of them at the five-and-ten after the first young man she’d picked up had.) She pretended to be too sleepy to offer him breakfast. When he left she was relieved. She threw the razor blade he’d used into the garbage and changed the sheets.

  Rachel had started as a freshman at NYU. She was taking American History, Government, Economics (as a prelude to learning banking), and Psychology. She always got to lectures early so she could get a good seat, fourth row center; she thought of them as house seats. In her shirt and jeans, her books on her lap, she would sit and watch all the other students come into the lecture hall. There were so many of them! She’d never seen that many young people all together at one time in her life. There weren’t so many kids when she was young, even in her high school, which everyone in town considered big. The lines here to register for courses had been endless. The mobs at the local bookstores, the lines at the library, the lines to eat, the lines for everything. The professor used a microphone. These waves of young people, how did they feel? Anonymous, competitive, scared? She was glad she knew what the future held for her and didn’t have to worry about competing with all those other people for a job after graduation. Rachel was so fascinated by the ideas her professors bombarded her with, and so busy with the homework and papers they demanded of her, that she hadn’t bothered to make any friends yet. But she didn’t feel odd or left out because she was older than the other students. They didn’t seem to feel any generation gap. No one seemed to wonder why she was here, and girls and boys smiled at her as they passed in the hall as if she were another one of them.

  One boy always seemed to seek the seat next to hers in Psych I, and he had introduced himself to her as Andy. He was her height and skinny, with long red hair to his shoulders, a moustache and a little beard. His moustache and beard were brown. He had fresh, clear skin like a child’s and guileless brown eyes. She thought that without all that hair he’d grown on his face he would look about sixteen years old. It was funny how young these kids looked to her. Andy was really the only person here who made an appreciable effort to be friends with her, and Rachel was grateful for his efforts. He always talked to her before and after the class, but never bothered her by whispering during the lecture. He took notes seriously, and so did she.

  She realized after a while that he had a crush on her, and the thought was delightful. She told Lawrence about him. Lawrence only said he was surprised more boys didn’t have crushes on her. He had been so supportive of her schoolwork, cutting down their social life, arranging things so she would have time to study. He even discussed his work with her at home, explaining what he did and how the things she learned in her economics course did and didn’t have relevance to what he did every day. Lawrence seemed proud of her, and Rachel was proud of herself. The other students were all just as frightened of failing as she was, and therefore it wasn’t so frightening any more. They were all new together.

  One beautiful fall day after class Andy asked Rachel if she wanted to sit in Washington Square Park in the sun for a while. She had a free hour between classes, and she felt so young today that she decided a few minutes in the dreaded sunshine wouldn’t turn her into an instant prune, so she said sure. On the way he bought a hot dog with sauerkraut from a man with a cart and offered to buy her one, but she declined.

  “My breakfast,” he said. He also bought a Coke.

  She wondered if he had any money or not; you couldn’t tell with these kids, they all looked poor.

  The little park was full of kids from school and older people on their lunch hours or with nothing to do. Two girls were playing violin duets, a straw hat at their feet, and passersby tossed coins into the hat and sometimes even a dollar bill. Old men sat under the trees playing chess. In the playground children ran in the sun, watched by their mothers.

  Rachel and Andy found some space on a bench and sat down. “Where are you from?” she asked.

  “Iowa. Where are you from?”

  “New York.”

  “I mean before that.”

  “Oh,” Rachel said. “Kansas City. Do I still have an accent?”

  “Well, to me those other kids have an accent. I think a New York accent is really weird. They don’t pronounce their r’s.”

  Rachel laughed. “How did you end up here?”

  “That’s quite a story. When I graduated from high school I decided to drive to California. I had this Duster with a special engine I put in and racing tires. It was a couple of years old and had twenty-six thousand miles on it, but I thought I’d get there without any trouble. Well, I got to Los Angeles and then the thing broke down on me and I needed five hundred dollars to get it fixed. There was no way I could get five hundred dollars—I didn’t even have a place to sleep. So, anyhow, I met some other kids and moved in with them, and then one of them had the idea that I should go on a TV game show and try to win a new car. At least some money. Her father knew somebody who knew somebody, so I applied to a lot of shows and I waited around a couple of months, and then I got on this game show, ‘Wheel of Fortune’—did you ever hear of it?”

  Rachel shook her head, no.

  “Anyhow,” Andy said, “you spin a wheel and get money for guessing the letters, and if you guess the puzzle you spend the money on prizes. You don’t get to keep the money, you have to spend it. I kept hoping I’d get the car, right? So what I won was a trip to New York. That’s how I came here. I really liked it here. It was funny, because everybody I knew told me I would hate it. But I think New York is great. So I called my parents and told them I wanted to go to college here. They were delighted because they’d given me up for a bum. My father really wanted me to go to college. He’s a doctor. So they sent me money and I applied to NYU and got accepted, and here I am. That’s why I’m older than the other kids, because I lost a year.”

  “How old are you?” Rachel asked.

  “Nineteen.”

  “No wonder you like me, because we’re both so old,” Rachel said, smiling at him.

  “What made you decide to go to college now?”

  “I wasn’t ready before,” she said.

  “My father would really have given you up,” he said and laughed.

  “Well, in between I got married,” Rachel said.

  “Are you still married?”

  “Sure.”

  “How does your husband feel about this?”

  “He’s very supportive.”

  “Doesn’t feel threatened?”

  “No. Which is quite mature of him. He’s very sure of himself. He doesn’t have to prove himself at my expense.”

  “Yeah,” Andy said thoughtfully. “You know, things aren’t that much different with kids my age. A lot of the guys feel threatened by the girls, even though they won’t admit it. A lot of them are really male chauvinists even if they’re eighteen years old. It’s the way they were brought up. I’m not. But it’s funny, they don’t think of girls as people at all. Their fathers never treated their mothers as people, so they just accepted that as the way things were. A lot of kids are from much more protective environments than they realize—or if they realize it, they won’t admit it.”

  “What do you think you’ll major in?” Rachel asked.

  “Maybe psych. How about you?”

  “Well, I was going to try banking, but psych is really my favorite course. I think I might major in psych.”

  “And then what? Graduate school?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that yet,” Rachel said.

  “But if you don’t go to grad school you’ll never get a decent job,” he said. “Even if you want to be a social worker …”

  We’re sitting here discussing my future as if I was a kid like him, Rachel thought, amused and flattered. He doesn’t think I’m somebody’s mother dabbling in education. He really knows that I care. It never occurred to
him that I could go right on being my husband’s wife and social director.

  “I thought I might take an education course and teach little kids,” Rachel said. “I’d like to make them care more about learning than I did when I was young.”

  “Do you like kids?”

  “I never really thought about it.”

  “Well,” Andy said, “you’d better like them if you’re going to teach them.”

  “You’re right.”

  “Do you have kids?” he asked.

  “No.”

  “Other people’s kids aren’t the same anyway,” he said. “You don’t feel guilty about their problems and you don’t get so mad at them.”

  “I bet I would get mad at them,” Rachel said.

  “That’s normal.”

  “You know, Andy, you’re very smart and mature for your age.”

  “Come on,” he said, annoyed. “I don’t talk about your age, so don’t make fun of mine.”

  “I wasn’t making fun of it. I’d adore to be nineteen.”

  “So you could do it all over again better. My father says that.”

  “Okay,” she said, “you got your revenge.” They both laughed.

  “Listen,” he said, “they’re having a revival of Freaks at the Village Cinema. Did you ever see it?”

  “No.”

  “Neither did I. But it’s something we ought to see if we’re interested in psychology. Do you want to go with me later?”

  “I have two more classes,” Rachel said.

  “I meant after classes.”

  “I have to go home then.”

  “Oh.”

  She realized she had hurt him. He seemed so casual and she felt so totally outside of his world that she had forgotten he really did seem to have a crush on her. “I have a better idea,” she said. “My husband and I are giving a party Friday night at our apartment. Why don’t you come?”

  “Do I have to wear a suit?”

  “No. Just not jeans.”

  “Okay. I’d like to come. Do you want me to bring anything?”

  “A date if you’d like to. Not if you don’t feel like it.”