The Best of Everything

by Rona Jaffe

  On a Tuesday afternoon in late July the telephone on Barbara Lemont's desk rang. She answered it automatically without the shghtest pounding of the heart. She had put Sidney Carter out of her mind, forcibly, months before.

  "Hello?"

  "Barbara?"

  "Who is this?" But she knew, she recognized the voice, and the surprise of hearing it occupied her for a moment so that she did not have time to feel any emotion.

  "It's Sidney Carter. Do you remember me?"

  "Yes . . . yes." And suddenly everything came back and she could hardly catch her breath.

  "How are you?"

  "I'm all right." She gave a nervous little laugh. "You forgot to send me that perfume, do you know that?"

  "I didn't forget. I thought about it several times but I was afraid it would seem as if I were chasing you."

  "Oh." It might have, too, she thought. She remembered how many mornings she had waited nervously for the mailroom boy to bring down her mail, hoping against all her better instincts that the perfume would be there so that she could call Sidney and thank him. TIow have you been?" she asked.

  "All right." He didn't sound happy, he sounded tired. It suddenly occurred to her that perhaps he was not calling her because he wanted to speak to her at all; perhaps it was on some matter of business. Already disappointment was draining her of hope.

  "I . . . I'm writing a little column now," Barbara said. 'It's a beauty column. Do you ever read it?"

  "Yes," he said. "I read it all the time."

  "It's kind of routine. But it's a break for me. I get my name in the magazine and of course more money."

  "How's your Little girl?"

  "Fine," Barbara said. "Just fine. How's . . . your son?"

  "Wonderful. He's at Nantucket. We've rented a little cottage out there, on the beach."

  "Oh. I was thinking of going there for my vacation this summer with two of the girls from the oflBce. It's supposed to be a great place to meet boys, if you're interested in that sort of thing. Isn't that funny—you and I might have met on the beach by accident."

  "We're not where all you kids are," Sidney said. "We're over on the other side of the island with the old settled folk."

  "That's good. I was intending not to go at all for a moment." Why was she trying to be nasty to him, when that wasn't what she meant to be at all? But she resented him and she wanted him and she was

  frightened of him, all together, and she hardly knew what she was going to say next.

  "You said, 'If you're interested in that sort of thing,'" he said casually, ignoring her last remark, "Does that mean you are, or you aren't?"

  "Interested in meeting boys?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm always interested," she said lightly. "Do you know anybody for me?"

  "No. I'll look."

  "Do." And at the moment she was saying it she felt like biting her tongue because it wasn't what she wanted to say to him at all. Oh, Sidney, she thought, please don't pay any attention. There was a pause that seemed to Barbara to be five minutes long.

  "I was wondering if you'd like to have a drink with me after work," he said finally. He didn't add, "I'll tell you about Nantucket," he didn't add anything, he just waited.

  Am I strong enough? she thought. Can I bear it? She had put him out of her mind, but now his remembered voice brought it all back, his face, his smile, his understanding. She wanted to run out of her office that instant to wherever he was. "I think that would be nice," she said casually.

  "I'll pick you up outside your office at five o'clock."

  "All right."

  "I'll be looking forward to it."

  Her tone was very polite. "So will I."

  When she replaced the receiver she reaUzed that her hand was shaking so hard she could scarcely light her cigarette.

  It was only an hour until five o'clock but it seemed endless. Barbara went into the ladies' room and washed her face and put on fresh make-up. That took only ten minutes. She went back into her office and tried to read back issues of the magazine but she couldn't. She knew she would be able to do no more work that day. She picked up the receiver and telephoned her mother.

  "I'm going out for a drink after work. I don't know if I'll be back for dinner so you'd better eat without me. And would you feed Hillary, please?"

  "Oh?" her mother said. "Do you have a date?"

  "Not really. It's just business."

  "Oh," her mother said cheerfully, "too bad. Well, have fun if you can. I'll hold the fort,"

  What's wrong with me? Barbara thought. How can I do this? She felt as if she was putting her mother to a great deal of unnecessary trouble, but she knew that was only because she felt guilty. Her mother would give Hillary com flakes and it wouldn't be any trouble at all. The trouble, she knew, would be what she would have if she let the one cocktail turn into an evening with Sidney. I'll just have one drink and go home, she thought. But she was watching the clock and her hands were cold.

  When she came out of her oflBce building at one minute after five Sidney was already waiting for her. She saw him standing near the edge of the building entrance looking a little self-conscious. His self-consciousness transmitted itself to her and she wanted to turn and run away. It was the first time she had seen him not in complete possession of himself and the situation.

  "Hi," he said, smiling, holding up his hand. He had a tan and with his gray hair and young face it made him look like some kind of a diplomat or international playboy. He was wearing a black raw silk suit and he looked thinner. He walked over to her and took hold of her arm very lightly.

  "How nice you look!" he said. He led her over to a taxi at the curb.

  "Thank you."

  When they were in the taxi and he had given the driver the address of a bar Barbara felt better. Sidney was sitting M'ay over on his side of the seat, leaning against the window and looking at her in a friendly way. "I've never seen you in the daytime," he said.

  "No." We've hardly seen each other at all, she was thinking, we hardly know each other. All these months I was in love with a fantasy. But all the same, she hardly noticed anything outside the taxi windows and she couldn't take her eyes off Sidney's face.

  "I'm glad you called," she said finally.

  "I was afraid you'd hang up."

  "No."

  "I used to think about you sometimes: whenever I heard the Hawaiians, whenever I saw a young girl with brown hair pushing a baby carriage, whenever I picked up a copy of America's Woman-I guess that means practically all the time."

  "Really?" she said, more sharply than she had intended. "Is that true?"

  "I wanted to call you to find out how you were, if you were any happier, if things were going well for you. But I couldn't trust myself not to ask you to see me again, and so I didn't call."

  "Until your wife went away for the summer," Barbara said. She didn't dare even smile to pretend it was a joke because it was too important to her, but she was afraid to look at him.

  He didn't answer because the taxi had pulled up to the curb, and he leaned forward and paid the driver and opened the door for Barbara. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and Sidney followed her and waited until the taxi had pulled away.

  "Look," he said evenly. "I didn't want to talk this way in front of the cab driver, but if you like I'll get another taxi and take you home right now. I know you think I'm the lowest form of roue, and you're right to think so because I probably am. I don't know what I'm going to do an hour from now and neither do you. But all I can say is I called you because I missed you. The fact that my family is away has nothing to do with it. The only reason I go up to Nantucket at all on weekends is to see my son. If he had gone to camp as my wife and I thought he should, I doubt that she and I would have seen each other at all, except for parties where we're invited together. As you may have guessed, we see very Httle of each other. I'm not saying this to lead you on or to imply that we're legally separated, because we're not. I'm not taking you out to seduce you
because if I wanted to seduce somebody I'd do it to someone who intended it that way as much as I did. I called you because I like you. I like you. That's all."

  "I said that to you once," Barbara said sof tiy.

  "I remember."

  She stood there on the sidewalk in the bright July late-afternoon simlight, biting her lip. "I guess we might as well go in and have a drink."

  Inside, the bar was very dark and cool. They sat at a little square table with a black glass top. She ordered gin and tonic and poured the whole bottle of tonic into her glass because she wanted to stay sober. But she had the strange feeling that she wanted to be drunk, not to be responsible, to be able to do all the dreadful irresponsible things she really wanted to do and never feel ashamed of herself

  afterward. She wanted to reach out and lay her cheek on his cool hand and tell him all the crazy things she had said to him in her daydreams all these months. And at the same time she wanted to say everything new and listen to what he would say and wait to see where the moment would take them. She hardly recognized herself.

  "I went to Haiti for a while in February," Sidney said. "It's beautiful there. Have you ever been there?"

  "No."

  "I didn't do much—just hid and rested in the sun. I was exhausted."

  "I hate February," Barbara said. "I think whoever made the calendar was smart to make it the shortest month. Every February I always think: if I can only get through February everything will be all right."

  "What did you do this February?"

  She shrugged and stirred her drink, trying to remember. Thought about you. "Nothing much. Went out with a few boys whose names I can't recall any more, saw some movies and a play or two."

  "That doesn't sound bad."

  "No," she said, "it was fun."

  He smiled at her. "You say that as if you were going to cry."

  "I love the way you smile."

  He didn't answer. Barbara picked up her drink and drank it all down'Without stopping. It did nothing to her but she felt better just for having drunk it. She was sorry she'd said that about his smile, it was too personal. She would have to be more careful.

  "Would you like another drink?"

  She was going to have one cocktail with him and leave. But she had finished her one drink in five minutes and now what could she do? "Yes," she said. A line from a song ran through her head—Cocktails and laughter, and what comes after nobody knows.

  "You know," he said, "I haven't seen Art Bossart since that night we met, would you believe it?"

  "I thought you two were good friends."

  "No. We're drinking friends. We both have two or three dozen of them, for what that's worth."

  "I see him in the elevator sometimes," Barbara said. "He says hello, like this—" She imitated him, cold, aloof, as if he hardly remembered her. "Hello. It seems so funny to go out for a drink with

  someone after a party and the next day have him act as if he doesn't remember your first name."

  "That's the law of the Great American Christmas Party, isn't it?" Sidney said, looking amused. "Think of the girls who go to bed with some executive and then have to go through that hello routine in the elevator the next day."

  "It curdles my blood." He's talking about bed, she thought unhappily; right at the start he's talking about bed to grease the skids. They're all the same. But despite her mistiust she couldn't quite be-Heve it about Sidney, not yet. He was looking at her closely.

  "I said something, didn't I," he said. "What was it?"

  "What?"

  "Your face closed up like that—click. Is it something about someone at the oflBce and I should have minded my own business?"

  "No, of course not."

  He looked relieved. "It's something though."

  "It's nothing." This time she poured only half the bottle of tonic into her gin and she had finished the whole drink before she noticed what she was doing. Or was it a command from her subconscious? She felt better though, more at ease. "It scares me a little the way you notice everything. I'll have to be careful." She laughed Ughtly.

  "It's no great art. It's just experience. You'll notice everything too when you're my age,"

  "How old is that?"

  "Forty."

  "I think I like older men. At least then if you want them to notice something they will. My husband never had the faintest idea what I was thinking. I shouldn't blame him though. I didn't understand him very well either."

  "That was so long ago," Sidney said.

  "Two years and five thousand hours of hand-to-hand combat away."

  He laughed. "That's the last word on the gentle art of dating."

  "If they only knew."

  "I'm trying to think back to when I was about ts'enty-five," Sidney said. "I can't remember ever forcing myself on a girl."

  "And you were probably more successful than these strong-arm men."

  "I guess I was."

  Now I'm talking about it, Barbara thought, and I brought it up myself. Sex, sex, why can't I think of some small talk instead of this? Is it because it's what we're both thinking about, even I, without really wanting to? I hate it. But she kept on talking, like someone talking in his sleep, in a pleasant, emotionless voice that was meant to be the sort of voice one uses for small talk but which concealed so much more. "I'll tell you about the date I had last Saturday night, if you can bear it."

  "Tell me."

  "Well, I'd seen him around at parties but he'd never said more than hello to me. And then one night he called me and asked me out, so I went on Saturday. The first thing we did was go to his apartment for cocktails, and he played some dirty songs on his lii-fi set."

  "On a hi-fi set!"

  "With three speakers, so you would be sure not to miss a word, God forbid. Then we went out to dinner at a terribly expensive place, and he turned out to be suave and intelligent and I was really starting to like him despite the dirty records. I figured that was probably his sense of humor and I shouldn't be a prude. Everything was fine until we got to my house and he asked if he could come in and have a drink. I didn't want to seem mean, after all, the dinner had been so expensive and it was only eleven-thirty. My mother knew I had a date and she always scuttles into her bedroom when she hears my key in the lock because she knows how diflBcult it is for me to have to live with her and entertain my friends at the same time she's in the living room. So there we were, he and I, and I gave him a drink and he didn't even touch it. He leaped on me. I swear, he was just one generation away from growling."

  Sidney smiled. "Then . . . ?"

  What was making her tell this dreadful story, she was embarrassed already. It was too late, he was waiting. Why didn't I keep my mouth shut, she thought, why did I have that second drink? What's the matter with me? "Well . . . nowadays when you snap a girl's garter you're pretty far up. I kept trying to struggle away from those clutching hands and I'm sure it was perfectly obvious to him that I hated every minute of it. I didn't dare make any noise because I didn't want my mother to hear—it made me feel silly. And

  I was afraid to wake the baby. It was kind of a silent death struggle, and then do you know what he had the nerve to say to me? He said, as if that made everything perfectly all right, 'Don't worry, I won't lay you, I just want to neck with you.'"

  "If I were a girl I would have taken ofiF my shoe and hit him with it," Sidney said. "That raises quite a welt."

  "With the heel or the sole?"

  "The heel."

  "I wish I had."

  "What did you do?"

  "I got away from him and he was angry, of coiu"se. I never heard from him again and I never will, unless it's second hand about what a drip he thinks I am."

  Sidney shook his head. 'It sounds incredible," he said sympathetically. "Where do you find these oafs?"

  "I'm lucky, I guess."

  "When my son grows up, I hope he won't be like that."

  "How could he be?" Barbara said.

  They looked at each other for an
instant and Barbara felt the meeting of their mutual glance with almost a physical impact. She forgot entirely what she was going to say next and simply looked into Sidney's face, helplessly. He looked away first. "Do you want another drink?"

  "No, thank you."

  He beckoned to the waiter and held up one finger.

  "What's that song," Barbara said, floundering, "or is it a comedy routine . . . Tm going to put sand in that baby's spinach because he might grow up and marry my daughter'?"

  "Grow up and date my daughter sounds more likely," Sidney said. He reached over and took hold of her wrist very lightly with two fingers. "Look ... I have to meet some people for dinner. WiU you come with me?"

  Other people; what could be safer? She was relieved, and yet, in a way, she was disappointed. She was beginning to feel warm and cozy inside, she didn't want to talk to anyone but Sidney. But this way was obviously more sensible. "Yes," she said, "I'd like that very much."

  She was astonished, first of all, to find that he did not take her to a married-man's restaurant counterpart of the married-man's bar

  where they had met. He took her to a well-known, luxurious, brightly lighted place where people went who could afford the prices and liked gourmet food, a place that attracted both successful people and the oglers who follow them. Tliey met another couple who were already waiting for them at the bar. The wife was a former movie actress who had now settled down to being a mother; Barbara had never seen her in a movie theater but she had seen her once on television in a rerun of an old motion picture. Her husband was a press agent. They seemed neither surprised nor shocked that Sidney was there with a girl, nor did they act as if they had met him dozens of times with other girls. Barbara felt at ease in a moment, even though they were much older than she was, and halfway through the meal she found herself talking to the other woman about make-up and clothes and the problems of bringing up young children. Sidney had made no excuses for Barbara when he introduced them, he had not said that she was an old friend or a business contact, and yet no one showed by extra solicitude that they considered her an oddity. It was a strange situation to her; somehow she had expected everything to be different. And that's how provincial I am, she thought.