The Pursuit of Happiness (2001)

by Douglas Kennedy

  ‘Yes. But it’s also just a story.’

  ‘A brilliantly written story.’

  ‘You don’t have to say that.’

  ‘I wouldn’t if it wasn’t true. So where’s the next one?’

  ‘That is my entire literary output to date.’

  ‘I’d like to read more by you.’

  ‘You can - every week in Saturday Night/Sunday Morning!

  ‘You know what I’m saying here.’

  I reached up with my wet soapy hand and rested it on his thigh.

  ‘I really don’t mind being trivial, minor, lightweight.’

  ‘You’re better than that.’

  ‘That’s your opinion - and I’m touched by it. But I also know my limitations.’

  ‘You’re a great writer.’

  ‘Hardly. Anyway, I’m not remotely interested in being “great”. I like what I write. I do it pretty well. Sure, it’s inconsequential, left-handed stuff. But it pays the bills and lets me go to movies in the afternoon. What more could a girl ask for?’

  ‘Literary fame, I guess,’ he said.

  ‘“Fame is a bee. It has a song. It has a sting. Ah too, it has a wing.”’

  ‘Emily Dickinson?’

  I looked at him and smiled. ‘You really know your stuff, Mr Malone.’

  The day drifted by. Around five that afternoon, I pulled him back into bed. At six, he turned to me and said,

  ‘I suppose I’d better be going.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose you must.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘And I don’t want you to either. But there we are.’

  ‘Yep. There we are.’

  He showered. He dressed.

  ‘Now I’m going to leave,’ he said. ‘Before I start kissing you again.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said quietly. ‘Leave.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Could I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Of course. Absolutely. But … will you have the time?’

  ‘I’ll find the time. Around five, if that’s okay.’

  ‘I’ll be here.’

  ‘Good.’

  He leaned towards me. I put my hand against his chest, stopping him from coming closer.

  ‘Tomorrow, Mr Malone.’

  ‘Just one last kiss.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we’ll end up back in bed.’

  ‘Point taken.’

  I helped him on with his coat.

  ‘I shouldn’t be leaving,’ he said.

  ‘But you are.’

  I opened the door.

  ‘Sara, I …’

  I put a finger to his lips. ‘Say nothing.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘Tomorrow, my love. Tomorrow.’

  He gripped my hand. He stared directly into my eyes. He smiled.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘tomorrow.’

  Four

  BY FIVE TWENTY the next afternoon, I was convinced he wouldn’t be coming. I’d been pacing the floor since four fifty - certain that he’d had a change of heart, or had been found out by Dorothy, or had suddenly succumbed to guilt. But then the doorbell rang. I went dashing out of my apartment. And there he was - with a bottle of French fizz in one hand and a bouquet of lilies in the other.

  ‘Sorry, darling,’ he said. ‘Stuck in a meet …’

  I cut him off.

  ‘You’re here,’ I said, grabbing him by the lapels and pulling him towards me. ‘That’s all that counts.’

  An hour or so later, he turned to me in bed and asked, ‘What happened to the champagne?’

  I scoured the floor - covered with our discarded clothes. The champagne was lying on its side, atop Jack’s overcoat. The flowers were strewn next to it.

  ‘That’s where it landed,’ I said.

  He jumped out of bed, picked up the bottle, ripped off the foil, and popped the cork. A geyser of foam baptised us both.

  ‘Nice one,’ I said, as champagne streamed down my face.

  ‘Oops,’ he said.

  ‘You’re lucky I love you,’ I said.

  He handed me the bottle. ‘Bottoms up,’ he said.

  ‘I do have glasses in this house.’

  ‘By ze neck, dahling,’ he said. ‘It’s ze Muscovite vey.’

  ‘Okay, comrade,’ I said taking the bottle and tipping it back. ‘And by the way, this champagne is from France, and far too expensive to be spraying around my bedroom. What is it, six or seven dollars a bottle?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘If you’ve got a family to support … then, yes, six dollars does matter.’

  ‘God, you are deeply responsible.’

  ‘Shut up,’ I said, running my hand through his hair.

  ‘With pleasure,’ he said, and lowered me back down on the bed.

  Afterwards, he lay against me, his arms curled around my chest. We fell into a silent reverie for a few moments. Then he said, ‘Ever since I walked out of here last night, all I could think about was walking back in here again.’

  ‘I was ticking off the hours too.’

  ‘Around three last night, I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Join the club.’

  ‘If I’d only known … because I was so tempted to call you.’

  ‘You must never call me from your house.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘If this is going to work, we must be completely discreet. No phone calls from your house or your office. Use a pay phone when you want to call me. There can never be any correspondence between us. If I give you a gift, you keep it here. And no one can ever know about us. No one,’

  ‘Why the great worry about secrecy?’

  ‘Do you really think I want to be cast in the role of the Happy Homewrecker? Or the kept woman? La maitresse? No way, soldier. I’ll be your lover. I won’t be your femme fatale. I want you … but I don’t want the incumbent grief that comes with loving a married man. That’s what I decided at three this morning. You’ll have your life. I’ll have my life. And you and I will have a life together … which no one else will know about.’

  ‘Believe me, Dorothy doesn’t suspect anything … though she was intrigued by the new aftershave I was wearing.’

  ‘But I wasn’t wearing any perfume yesterday.’

  ‘Yeah - but I stopped in a pharmacy on the way home and bought two bottles of Mennen Skin Bracer, and splashed some on before walking in the door … just in case you were still lingering on my face.’

  ‘Why two bottles?’

  He reached down for his overcoat, and pulled out a little bag from a local pharmacy.

  ‘A bottle for home, a bottle for here. I also bought the same soap and deodorant and toothpaste I keep in my apartment.’

  I looked at him warily. ‘You’re a quick worker, aren’t you? Or maybe you’d done this sort of thing before.’

  ‘I have never, ever done this sort of thing before.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear that.’

  ‘I just don’t want to hurt Dorothy.’

  ‘If you really don’t want to hurt Dorothy, get dressed now and leave. Because this is definitely going to hurt Dorothy.’

  ‘Not if she doesn’t find out.’

  ‘She will find out.’

  ‘Only if I let her find out. I won’t let her find out.’

  ‘Are you that clever?’

  ‘It’s not a matter of cleverness … it’s a matter of protecting her.’

  ‘As in: what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her?’

  ‘No … as in: I won’t leave her … but I won’t give you up either. Of course, you might not like this arrangement.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s what this is: an arrangement? Cinq-a-sept, as they say in jolly old Paree? You know your French literature, Jack. Who am I going to be? Emma Bovary?’

  ‘Wasn’t she married?’

  Touche.’

  ‘Sara …’

  ‘And how silly of me to think of myself as an a
dulterous woman, when I’m actually … what? … a courtesan … isn’t that the right term? Yes, a courtesan whose aristocratic lover leaves a bottle of Mennen aftershave in her toilette.’

  Long silence. Jack tried to put his arms around me. I placed my hand against his chest and gently pushed him away.

  ‘I’m not going to let myself get mangled again,’ I said.

  ‘I won’t hurt you.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘You should head home to your wife.’

  He left a few minutes later. ‘I’m out of town on Monday and Tuesday, due back in New York midday on Wednesday,’ he said, putting on his coat.

  ‘Fine,’ I said.

  ‘But if I work it right, I should be able to rearrange my final meetings in Philadelphia, and get back here around eight in the evening on Tuesday … if you’d like a guest for the night.’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m really going to have to think this through, Jack.’

  ‘Sara …’

  ‘And don’t forget to take your aftershave and toothbrush with you. I don’t want them in the house.’

  ‘I’ll call you,’ he said, kissing me on the forehead as he left the apartment.

  But he didn’t call over the weekend. Nor did he call on Monday. Idiot, idiot, I kept telling myself. You’ve pushed him away. By eight on Tuesday night, I was bracing myself for the worst. If you really don’t want to hurt Dorothy, get dressed now and leave. Because this is definitely going to hurt Dorothy. Why the hell had I said that? It had obviously sunk in. Why had I made such a big deal over the aftershave? Because I had to be Miss Sense and Sensibility, didn’t I? You should head home to your wife. He’d taken me at my word. He’d gone home. Permanently.

  Then, at eight ten, the doorbell rang. I stormed to the front door, and opened it angrily. Jack was dressed in his dark brown overcoat, and the sort of snap-brimmed brown felt hat favored by newspapermen. He had a suitcase in one hand, a bouquet in the other.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ I asked.

  ‘Philadelphia,’ he said, sounding taken aback by my anger. ‘But you knew that.’

  ‘And on Saturday and Sunday?’

  ‘At home with my family, as you instructed me …’

  ‘I know what I told you. That doesn’t mean you have to follow my damn advice.’

  He tried to suppress a smile. ‘Come here, you kook,’ he said.

  Within seconds of falling backwards into my apartment, we had pulled off each other’s clothes. We didn’t get further than the carpet in my living room. When I felt myself on the verge of disturbing the neighbors, I engulfed his mouth with mine. Afterwards, we said nothing for a very long time.

  ‘Hello,’ he finally said.

  ‘Hello,’ I laughed.

  ‘Four days was …’

  ‘Too damn long,’ I said. ‘I can’t tell you how much I missed you.’

  ‘I would never have guessed.’

  ‘Don’t get cocky, soldier.’

  I got up and disappeared into my bedroom. I put on a bathrobe. I reached inside my closet and brought out a shopping bag. When I returned to the living room, Jack was sitting on the sofa, pulling on his underwear.

  ‘No need to get dressed,’ I said.

  ‘But I might freeze. You keep things on the chilly side here.’

  ‘This might keep you warm,’ I said, reaching into the bag and tossing him a large rectangular package, gift-wrapped in stern blue Brooks Brothers paper.

  ‘A present?’ he said.

  ‘My, my - you are clever.’

  He tore off the paper. He smiled - and immediately put on the blue linen bathrobe I’d bought him yesterday.

  ‘You’ve got style, Miss Smythe,’ he said.

  ‘You like?’

  ‘I love it. Brooks Brothers. Total class. I feel like I went to Princeton.’

  ‘It suits you.’

  He walked into the little entrance foyer off the living room, and sized himself up in the mirror. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It really does.’

  I reached into the shopping bag and handed him another wrapped package.

  ‘Are you nuts?’ he said.

  ‘No. Just generous.’

  ‘Too generous,’ he said, kissing me on the lips.

  ‘See if you like it first,’ I said.

  He opened the paper. He laughed. Inside were two bottles of Caswell and Massey’s Bay Rum Aftershave.

  ‘Two bottles?’ he said, twisting off the top of one bottle.

  ‘One for here, one for home.’

  He gave me an amused smile, then took a long sniff of the scent. ‘That’s nice stuff,’ he said. ‘Are you trying to tell me something?’

  ‘Yes. Mennen makes you smell like a bad locker room.’

  ‘Oh, you snob. Brooks Brothers robes, now Caswell and Massey aftershave. Next thing it will be elocution lessons.’

  ‘Is there anything wrong with me buying you nice things?’

  He stroked my hair. ‘Absolutely not. I approve. I’m just wondering how I’ll explain the new aftershave to my wife.’

  ‘You could always say you bought it yourself.’

  ‘But I’m someone who never drops more than a buck on a bottle of aftershave.’

  ‘Well, Brooklyn boy - here’s a thought. Drop by Caswell and Massey tomorrow - they’re on Lexington and Forty-Sixth Street - and buy your wife a bottle of their eau de toilette. Then you can tell her that, while buying her this gift, you sampled their Bay Rum aftershave and decided you needed to graduate from Mennen. She’ll approve, believe me.’

  He splashed some of the aftershave into his hand, and on to his face.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked.

  I put my face close to his, then began to kiss his neck.