The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  "Let me analyze you," Paul Landis said, stirring the Martini briskly. "Now, none of this is from Kippie, I'm getting it from looking at you. You went to either Radcliffe or Wellesley."

  "Radcliffe," said Caroline. "And there's a great difference."

  "All you Radcliffe girls say that. You live on the East Side between Fiftieth and Eightieth."

  "A safe guess," Caroline said.

  "Am I right?"

  "Yes, but I happen to live far enough east so it's no longer chic. Only inexpensive."

  "You have a roommate."

  Somehow it annoyed her that he was categorizing her so neatly, even though he happened to be correct. It's as if he's not really looking at me, Caroline thought, but just at what he wants me to look like. "Right again," she said. "Gregg Adams."

  "Gregg?" He lifted his eyebrows, not really because he thought Gregg was a man's name—he wouldn't believe that in a million years—but because he couldn't let the chance for the feeble joke pass untaken.

  "Gregg with two G's," Caroline said. "She's an actress."

  "You get along together very well because she's hardly ever there," he went on.

  "Also because we like each other."

  "I assumed tliat."

  "You're cross-examining me," Caroline said. "I can tell youre a lawyer."

  "Does it bother you?"

  "Not particularly. But I'd like another Martini."

  "A girl after my own heart! I'll have one with you." He bent over the Martini pitcher, measuring out the gin and vermouth, and Caroline looked around the room. There was Kippie's husband Don, round, bouncing, cheerfully putting his arm around his friends' necks. Everyone in Port Blair thought he was a genius, they said what a great future he would have. Perhaps so, Caroline thought, and I'll bet he has an endearing bedside manner. For the patients, that is. I can't imagine him and Kippie sleeping together, even though they obviously have. He looks to me like a shaved Teddy bear.

  "What do you like to do?" asked Paul, handing her the drink. "Go to the theater? The ballet? Watch out, that glass is dripping." He quickly handed her a cocktail napkin, took the glass from her

  hand and wiped oflF the bottom of it with another napkin, and handed it gingerly back. "Be careful. I miscalculated."

  "It's all right now."

  "I hope you didn't get any on your dress."

  "No, it's fine."

  "That's a beautiful dress, by the way," Paul said. "I like girls who wear black. To me, there isn't any other color."

  There wouldn't be, Caroline couldn't help thinking. But he was nice, he cared about her welfare, and he noticed things. If her ideas and feelings couldn't be pigeonholed quite so neatly as he expected them to, perhaps it wasn't his fault, perhaps it was hers.

  "I guess every winter dress I own is either black or gray," she said.

  "That's good fabric, too. I notice fabrics because my dad is in the textile business. I couldn't help picking up little bits of information."

  "Well, I'm glad to know an authority approves," Caroline said, smiling.

  "Oh, I'm not an authority. He wanted me to go into business with him when I was graduated from Columbia, but I put my foot down. I went on to law school instead."

  "Are you going to do courtroom work?"

  "No. Contracts and corporations. There's a lot of money in that."

  "Somehow I always thought of the lawyer being clever in a courtroom as a very romantic figure," Caroline said. "Too many movies, I guess. But I'm a little disappointed you aren't one of those. I've always wanted to meet one."

  "I've been lucky enough to get into one of the best firms," Paul said. "There's a future in it, and I love the work. If you're interested in books, you should be interested in hearing about some of our cases. They'd make a novel, or at least a short story."

  "I'd like to hear one," Caroline said, hoping he wouldn't tell it. For some reason she was tired, very tired. It had been a rough day today: Miss Farrow breathing down her neck, Mr. Shalimar deciding that the yen he'd had for her all these months was too beautiful to be denied and trying to kiss her behind his filing cabinet, the manuscript clerk losing one of their most important manuscripts and general hysteria throughout the oflBce until it had been found again.

  "How about dinner later?" Paul asked. "I feel like having a steak. How about you?"

  "That's very nice of you. But I'm so tired I thought I'd just go right home to bed."

  "You have to have dinner! You're not going to go to bed without dinner? The bad Httle child sent to bed without any supper?"

  Caroline held her hands out in a gesture of helplessness. "I'm just not up to going out and being entertaining. I'd only make you feel sleepy too. Those things are contagious, you know."

  "You don't have to talk to me. I'll talk to you. I'll feed you a steak and another Martini and then I'll take you right home."

  He was nice, what could she say to him? To tell the truth, she was hungry, and she hadn't had steak since she couldn't remember when. He liked to talk, and she could listen to him, which would make him happy evidently. Perhaps he had no one to keep him company, perhaps he was lonely. Perhaps despite her coldness toward him he really thought he liked her. Perhaps she had been unfair to him, and if she got to know him better she would be glad she'd taken the time.

  "Well, I'd love to, if you really mean it about taking me home early."

  1 hat s a promise.

  She smiled at him. "I'm ready to go whenever you are."

  He downed his Martini and they went together to say goodbye to their host and hostess. Paul put his arm around Kippie and kissed her soundly on the cheek. "My girl friend," he said. Kippie grinned.

  "You're going out to dinner, you two?" she asked.

  "We're going to the Steak Bit," Paul said. He put his arm around Caroline.

  "Oh ... I love the Steak Bit!" Kippie sighed. "Don and I used to go there before we were married. Remember, honey?"

  "If you're going to kiss my wife goodbye, then I want to kiss Caroline goodbye," Don said. He advanced upon Caroline, his Teddy-bear arms outstretched. Caroline turned her head but not quickly enough; unexpectedly Don was kissing her on the mouth. She could feel his teeth behind his lips, then his tongue was trying to probe further. She pulled away from him and smiled in a friendly way for Kippie's benefit.

  "Thank you for the lovely party," Caroline said.

  "Thank you for coming," said Kippie. "Have a good time with my

  boy friend." She put her arm around her husband's waist and beamed at Paul and Caroline.

  "Come back soon," Don said.

  "Yes," said Kippie. "The four of us can play bridge together some night. Wouldn't that be fun? I'll call you soon, Carohne." She nodded significantly.

  "Good night."

  "Good night."

  In the cool air of the street Caroline felt more awake. She moved away from Paul's encircling arm and transferred her purse to the hand that was nearer him so he could not hold her hand. She could see into the lighted rooms of some of the apartments on lower floors across the street, and in one of them she saw people moving about as if they too were at a cocktail party. She wondered whether there was a girl there being introduced to a boy she might marry, or a husband who was clandestinely kissing his wife's school friend in a meaningless moment of extracurricular yearning. She felt lonely and, for some unknown reason, rather sad.

  The restaurant where Paul took her was one of those substantial, plain-looking places where the high price is always a surprise. The steaks were served charcoal black on the outside, red inside, and must have weighed two pounds apiece. The Martini before the food had made Caroline feel pleasantly fuzzy. She knew that the depression which had hit her in the street was waiting somewhere outside this temporary euphoria, but if she concentrated she could manage to keep it away, at least for a while. She smiled at him when she leaned forward for him to light her cigarette.

  "You don't eat much," he said. "No wonder you're so thin. I like girls who have
a little more . . . um . . ."

  "Shape?"

  "No, you have a good shape. I just think you could use a little more of it."

  "You sound like an old-fashioned man."

  "Maybe I am," Paul said. "I like gracious living, three-hour dinners, a home that always has fresh flowers in it, and a girl with comfortable curves. I guess I should have been bom at the turn of the century."

  "So that you couid eat fourteen-course meals and have a wife who weighs two hundred pounds."

  "Ugh," he said. "Not a fourteen-course meal. Just a leisurely one, with brandy afterward and lots of time to talk. Speaking of brandy, what kind would you prefer?"

  "I'm ashamed to say I don't know the difference." But she wasn't ashamed, she really didn't care.

  He ordered two ponies of brandy for them and leaned back, lighting his cigarette. "I asked you and you didn't answer me; do you like the theater?"

  "I love it."

  "I'll get tickets for next Saturday night if you'll go with me."

  Did she want to go? Why not? He was kind to her and she liked the theater, so she would be a fool not to accept—and yet, something warned her. She didn't have the faintest idea what it was, it was simply a premonition, and she quickly pushed it out of her mind.

  "I think that would be fun," Caroline said.

  "Good. Supper afterward instead of before, we won't have to rush that way."

  How planned everything was with him, how efficient! He was Gracious Living with capital letters. She remembered how the official watchword at Radcliffe had been Gracious Living, and how most of the girls had turned it into a kind of joke. Gracious Living meant you had to wear a dress to dinner instead of slacks, it meant demitasse in the living room afterward, and to Caroline and her friends it had seemed like a silly struggle to retain the superficial when the deeper things were collapsing all around them. Demi-tasse and forced conversation when you were failing in three subjects, demitasse and conversation when the boy you loved hadn't phoned for ten days, demitasse and conversation when your period was late and you were starting to feel mysteriously sick in the mornings? Here she was with Paul Landis in an expensive restaurant, drinking the best brandy, talking of ways to make life pleasant, and she wanted to cry out to him. Reach me! Say something that means something to me, anything, I don't even know what myself. Look into my face the way Mike used to do, the way Eddie used to do, and say something to show you're here with me, Caroline Bender, not just a thin girl in a chic black dress who also likes the theater.

  It was too much to ask on a first date, and yet her instinct told her

  that he would never look deeper. I'll have a good time, she thought; he's a perfect escort. He's kind. What am I looking for, a neurotic like Mike, like Eddie? Here's a nice solid young man who evidently likes me. Period.

  "Would you like to take a walk for a few blocks?" Paul asked.

  "Yes. I need to recover from that huge dinner."

  "I'm going to send you a box of candy tomorrow. And you eat it. You need it."

  She laughed.

  While he was recovering his hat from the checkroom Caroline looked at him critically. It was typical of him that he should wear a hat, but it had a small brim and a jaunty look to it, so it was not, at least, the kind her father would wear. His large nose was a little shiny from the heat in the restaurant, but he had a clear, ruddy complexion with health radiating from it. She was sure he went to bed before twelve on week nights and never drank too much. The fit of his suit was impeccable. There was nothing effeminate about him, and yet he had the kind of build that made his body seem simply not to exist. He was an expensive suit reaching from a pair of the proper-size shoulders down to a pair of English shoes. He was tall, he weighed perhaps a hundred and seventy-five pounds, but these were statistics she had to bring to mind consciously. It was like trying to categorize something in order to make it exist. Perhaps that's how he feels about me, Caroline thought, he has to categorize me to make me exist for him.

  In the street again she was acutely conscious of the sounds and colors around her: the neon hghts above the other restaurants, the traflBc noises, the laughter and conversation of people who passed by in an instant, never to be seen again, or if they should be seen, never to be recognized. The world was suddenly very interesting to her, and she clung to every facet of it, everything she could see and smell and hear. She hardly noticed that Paul had finally launched on a lengthy account of one of his legal cases "that would make a good story."

  "You must be fascinated with your work," Caroline said. "That's wonderful."

  "I am. The same way I guess you are. Although, I can't understand why you waste your time with trash. You seem to be an intelli-

  gent girl, with a good educational background. Couldn't you have found something better?"

  "Not at the time. The employment agency offered me this job and it seemed like a good thing. I just wanted to be busy, I didn't care at what. There was something I was trying hard to forget."

  "You don't seem like a girl who has anything she doesn't want to remember."

  "Every girl has," Caroline said. "Life isn't that perfect. Haven't you?"

  He thought for a moment. "No . . . offhand I can't think of anything. I've been lucky. I've always had enough money, I got into the schools of my choice, I like all my friends. I get along with my family, I've never had any illnesses other than measles and chicken pox, and I'm enthusiastic about my work. I broke both my legs once when I was learning to ski, but it wasn't so bad after all because I had a chance to lie in bed and read things I'd never have had time to otherwise."

  "What a wonderful, even life you've had," Caroline said, sighing. "No ups and downs, just straight all along."

  "What are you talking about?" Paul said. "So have you. Don't tell me anything has happened to you that a year from now you will be able to look back at and honestly say was a crisis."

  "How smug you are! I might have been in reform school, I might be an orphan. How do you know? Just because I have good manners and live in a certain thirty-block area?"

  "I don't know," Paul said seriously. "Maybe you have been in reform school, since you mention it. But if you have, I don't want to know about it. I like you the way you are, to me, tonight."

  "But if it happened to me," Caroline said, "then it's part of me. It is me. And the things I think—they're what made all the things that did or didn't happen to me important."

  "Well, have you been in reform school?" he asked, his eyes twinkling.

  "Of course not."

  "I didn't think so."

  "You don't understand," Caroline said. *Tou don't understand at all."

  Paul hailed a taxi and helped her into it. "You see?" he said. Tm getting you home early, just as I promised."

  'Td forgotten all about that."

  "Good," he said. He put his arm around the back of the seat, his fingers just touching her shoulder. He took ofiF his hat and placed it on the seat between him and the window. '1 like the way you argue, Caroline."

  "Thank you."

  His hand was holding her shoulder now, lightly, and he moved closer to her. He took her hand from her lap and held it in his gloved hand. She could feel his breath on her cheek as he spoke. "It's a pleasure to meet a girl who thinks," he said.

  But you don't know how I think, she wanted to say. She smiled at him a little nervously. She knew he was preparing to kiss her, and she didn't want to offend him, but she didn't want to kiss him either. Suddenly the image of Mike's face came up between them, looking knowing and a little mournful. If Paul Landis knew about me and Mike, Caroline thought, he would die. It seemed a little like a weapon in her hand; Mike, her affair with Mike, her communication with Mike and his understanding of her which this confident, content, ordinary boy would never be able to grasp.

  "You're very nice," Caroline said. "You're a nice person." She turned away and rolled down the window, half leaning out of it. "Look how pretty the park is at night. It's a shame people can
't walk in the park without being hit on the head. I wish I could go to the zoo sometime at night; it would be sort of crazy, don't you think? All the animals would be asleep and it would be too dark to see anything anyway." She was aware that she was talking gibberish.

  "Come here," he said.

  He took her face in one hand and drew her to him with the other. He had removed his gloves and his palm was slightly moist. He's as nervous as I am, she thought, and closed her eyes, submitting. He kissed her once, a long kiss, but only one. Then he kissed her lightly on the cheek and released her. Caroline could barely suppress a sigh of relief. Paul settled his arm more comfortably around her shoulders and leaned his head against the back of the taxi seat, closing his eyes.

  "I'll take you to the zoo sometime at night," he murmured. "If you really want to go."

  When he delivered her to her front door Paul held her hand for a moment but did not ask if he might come in. "Thank you for a wonderful evening," he said.

  "Thank you."

  He made a fist and tapped her playfully on the chin. "Next Saturday—remember. I'll speak to you before that."

  He was gone then, and Caroline shut the door and locked it. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked prettier than she had looked in a long time, hair curly from the damp of an autumn night, mouth rather voluptuous-looking from her smeared hpstick, eyes large and very blue in her tanned face. Why was it always like this, that one looked so much prettier when one was out with a boy who meant nothing? It was unfair, somehow. But no wonder he had liked her; she did look nice. She looked— appealing. Hiat was it. Or did she feel appealing because Paul so obviously admired her? It was pleasant to be liked by someone who was not a complete cluck, you had to admit that. He made her feel contented. But she also felt contented because she had locked the door of her own apartment and Paul Landis was somewhere on the outside of it while she was safe inside. It was as if she had completed a tiring mission and now could rest and recover alone.