Summer in the City

by Irene Vartanoff

  The heiress raised one eyebrow at that. It hadn’t been a wholesale condemnation of the liquor industry, but Susan’s low opinion had been communicated anyway. Then Donna Warshevski smiled. “Beer has lubricated many a worthy cause,” she said tactfully.

  Then their few seconds with her were over. After the heiress was out of earshot, Michael asked, “You sounded fierce. Do you want Prohibition back?”

  She came back to herself and was embarrassed. “I despise drunkenness. Her fortune was made at the cost of much human misery.”

  Now it was his turn to raise an eyebrow at her passionate opinion. “We’ll have to talk more about that later.”

  Michael steered her to enjoy more of the party. She subsided gratefully. As they walked around, he discreetly identified a score of local celebrities for her, from columnists to politicians. Even some star athletes she wouldn’t have recognized.

  The artful displays of elaborately concocted food were a silent torment. She had to remind herself that the tower of cupcakes looked better than they probably tasted, despite all the fancy icing and decoration. There were tiny truffles and petits four as well, the kind with pastel frosting that she could remember eating as a child when someone came to dinner and brought a hostess gift. Back then, sweets of some sort, usually a box of candy, had been the norm as a hostess gift. Of course, the children then became crazed to have some before dinner.

  Cake and candy were at the forefront of her mind because she did not want to think about that moment on the steps when she and Michael had locked gazes. Except for the few minutes of seeing Donna Warshevski, it felt as if everything else that evening was done merely to satisfy a civilized ritual. To prove that they had standards, that they weren’t greedy and primitive.

  They felt that way. Somehow, their relationship had leapt past the light, getting-to-know-you moments. They had to drag it back and do them anyway. They hardly knew each other. He didn’t know she was married. Well, not for sure. All she knew about him was that he was divorced, had a son in college, and his career was in the financial industry. Michael had to be younger than her because he had been a classmate of Bev’s. Bev. Oh, fudge. Did Bev have to know about this? Whatever this was? Bev could mess it all up.

  Michael had somehow gotten her hand in his again and tugged it a little, pulling her back from her bleak thoughts. “Have we fully enjoyed basking in the company of the literati of Gotham?”

  She looked up at him, shaken again by how much she wanted to rend the fabric that they had so carefully rebuilt this evening. After a second, she nodded. She didn’t want their evening to end so soon, but she wasn’t ready for it to end in a bed, either. Michael didn’t disappoint her.

  “Let’s find somewhere we can talk, a café where we can order food we don’t want and nurse glasses of wine we won’t drink.”

  “We’ll talk until the waiters are cleaning up and wanting to go home,” she smiled, getting into the spirit of the thing.

  “After they kick us out we’ll walk through Rockefeller Center like tourists.”

  “We can even hail a hansom cab and drive through the park,” she suggested. It was the classic tourist ending to a night on the town.

  He smiled again, a light in his eyes, “We’d better get started.” He put his arm around her and led her toward the exit.

  It happened exactly as they imagined. They spent hours getting to know each other at a little Italian trattoria. She bragged about Nancy, and he claimed his son in college was the next Bill Gates. They touched on distant relatives and ethnic origins, on travel and careers. She explained about drunk driving being the cause of her parents’ death.

  Michael seemed very interested in everything she had to say. Not only was it flattering, but it also boosted her self-confidence. She felt she sparkled conversationally.

  They walked to Rockefeller Center and wandered through the parklike promenade with its tiny white lights decorating the greenery, where they stopped to talk some more.

  Then they did hop into one of the smelly open air horse-drawn vehicles that plied the tourist trade around the southeast corner of Central Park. They laughed a lot during that ride. Later, they took a cab downtown. When it pulled up at her apartment building, she sighed. She never wanted this night to end.

  They both climbed out and went to her steps. Michael put his arm around her, something he had not done during their long cab ride. She pulled out her key. She looked up at him and saw an expression that mirrored her own. They didn’t want to part.

  She started to speak, “There’s so much more to tell you, but I…”

  Michael silenced her goodbye speech, miraculously not a nervous one because by now she felt she knew him well. His fingers fleetingly closed her lips. He kissed her.

  She fell into his arms, which wrapped around her tightly. Her lips responded to his. Minutes passed, or hours, or perhaps only seconds as his firm lips gently caressed hers. The tip of his tongue outlined the seam of her upper and lower lips and then opened them. She let him inside completely as the jolt of adrenaline she had felt on these same steps hours ago descended on her again.

  Finally, one of them breathed again. Which one, she did not know. They pulled slowly apart, staring at each other. Then, somehow, they were smiling.

  “Goodnight.” They both said it at the same moment.

  She turned and went up the steps, not stumbling, not awkward, but a graceful, desired woman under the eyes of a lover who wanted her as she wanted him. At the inner door of the building, she turned back and looked at him once more. Then she turned the key in the lock and walked away down the entrance hall.

  It was late, but she went directly to the garden courtyard. She needed to think. She needed to dream. She needed time to savor every part of this evening and then carefully place it in memory. The rest of her life she wanted to remember how perfect her time with Michael had been. All promise and fun and feelings and a movie kiss at the end. A fairy-tale evening with a fairy-tale ending.

  She, Susan Bailey, a married woman for over a quarter of a century, had just passionately kissed a man who was not her husband. She should feel ashamed. Instead, she felt exhilarated.

  She tried to hold the magic close. She tried to fall asleep in the garden chair with the sound of night insects around her, so she could keep the magic perfect and not have anything encroach on it. Then she thought she heard cicadas, the early heralds of summer’s end.

  She started to weep.

  A minute later, she arose from the chair. No, she refused to grieve about it now. It was too early for cicadas. Better to go upstairs and see Bev sitting like a lump on Susan’s couch. Better to let the magic drain away because of the awful woman imposing on her hospitality than to face the truth that this summer was merely a temporary, fragile moment.

  Still, she unlocked her apartment door as quietly as she could. To her relief, Bev had gone to bed.

  She stripped off her clothes, thinking about the evening. What had developed between her and Michael in one date was not the kind of affair she could have possibly envisioned having this summer. She was fifty-five years old, for gosh sakes. It had been decades since she had believed in fairy tales.

  Nor did this feel like the kind of sex-only relationship her husband had encouraged her to have. Rick. She had to think about the future. What did she want? Where did she go from here? Where did any of them go?

  Chapter 13

  Rona wondered what she was doing, seeing Edward again. She still kept a secret from him. An important secret.

  Her date with Jack had not gone well on Saturday night. She hadn’t been in the mood to explain anything. Even if she had, what would she say? She and Jack had never been exclusive. She was quite aware that when he went to Thailand, he had some kind of local girlfriend. Whether he paid her, or supported her, or even was married to her, Rona neither knew nor cared. She had lied to Susan the day she arrived. She had no intention of living outside the United States. Sure, she loved to travel, and exotic places. S
he loved coming home even more.

  She slowly rifled the pages of a stack of New York Times newspapers. She knew it was folly to keep them. As a subscriber, she had full access to these same pages on the web. Here, she had them organized as she liked them. This was her file. Although Susan was right, and it was too much. She idly wondered if she should recycle some of the newspapers. With Edward perhaps back in her life, would she ever have time to read them?

  She picked up a stack and determinedly took them out of her apartment and down to the building’s recycle room. Putting them on the pile, she felt a sense of accomplishment and freedom. Then the illustration from the top page, which was about bees, caught her eye. She picked it up. This was too good to recycle. She would read it tonight, for sure. She’d take this one back. Maybe one more, in case she couldn’t sleep and could get through both of them.

  She ended up with the entire stack back where they had been. Looking at them, she wondered if she was crazy. Scratch that, she already knew she was. Why had she brought them back? She wanted some of the weight of things out of her life. The bee article was too long, and anyway, bees weren’t important in her urban existence. She put that newspaper section on top of an even bigger stack and made the same pilgrimage to the recycle room again. Then she went back to her living room and took another stack. And another. In half an hour, she had cleared every chair seat in her tiny living room. Then she locked her apartment door and prayed that the recycle would be taken before she changed her mind again.

  ***

  Susan had a secret. She thought she was being so clever and hiding what she was doing. Bev knew. She could always smell a secret. She would discover it. Meanwhile, Bev knew a secret, too. She hugged the knowledge close. When the time was right, she would reveal it.

  She felt better. Sure, she’d heard Louis and Susan whispering about her, but she was no druggie. The Valium had helped when all she could do was bawl at the unfairness of it all. She didn’t need the pills anymore. Now, when she called to yell at Todd, she didn’t break down in tears so much afterward. She didn’t even feel like throwing the phone and breaking some of the trashy tchotchkes Susan so proudly displayed in her tacky apartment. Although it would be a kindness to Susan to break them. The woman had no taste.

  Susan was a real case. A middle-aged suburban matron who was pretending she was in her twenties again, working for a publisher as an intern? What was up with that? Although Susan did look a lot better now that she had lost most of the blubber. She still could lose thirty pounds, though. She was probably a whopping size eight. Bev was a size zero and intended to stay that way.

  She wondered how Megan was doing. At fifteen, her elder daughter was quite a tough customer, demanding and mouthy, and always wanting to be out with her friends, or buying clothes. If Mommy wouldn’t yield to Megan’s entreaties, then the girl went straight to Daddy and charmed and cajoled him into giving her more allowance, or a higher spending limit at Town Center Mall, or whatever. Megan was like her mother, determined to get her way. Bev didn’t mind. It kept Todd off her case about spending too much. Although Samantha had never been as interested in clothes as Megan was. Samantha plodded along in middle school, obediently doing her Hebrew classes in the afternoon. Her big love was animals. She wanted to take care of every hungry dog or cat they met. Bev didn’t like animals. They were dirty and stinky. When she’d tried to forbid a pet, Todd had put his foot down. Samantha had an expensive purebred dog, and she was the one who took care of him, too. Bev didn’t understand where that came from. It wasn’t as if her younger daughter had inherited a love of treating the sick and the lame from Todd. Todd had about as much compassion as a tick. He was a surgeon because it paid better than being a carpenter. He thought of his patients as construction projects, not people. Todd put the inhuman in surgery. He was a cold, cold man.

  Bev didn’t usually care. She and Todd enjoyed each other where it counted, in bed. She had built the home life they felt an eminent surgeon should have. A spectacular house. A well-dressed and well-cared-for wife, two lovely, expensively outfitted children going to the right schools, making the right friends. Megan took pride in being a school fashion leader. She had the other girls in her thrall, desperate to imitate her. Bev had made the right connections from the start, and now was on committee after committee, spreading Todd’s name in association with many good works that she didn’t give a damn about. That was the game, to make them all important, influential, prominent. That was success.

  Where were all her friends now? So carefully chosen for the good they could do Bev and her family, they weren’t the kinds of friends she wanted to confide in. No way.

  Forget her mother. Shirley Gross had never had an unselfish moment in her life. She had no time for Bev’s problems. That left Rona, the only friend Bev had ever made who had no ax to grind, who was not her rival. She thought Rona’s clothes could be a bit spicier, but they were elegant, and so was Rona.

  She had never wanted the academic career Rona had envisioned for her. She wanted to be married, not a glorified teacher. Still, Rona had gotten quite famous in her own field. From time to time, when Rona was on TV as a talking head, Bev was able to brag to friends that she knew her. Not perhaps as impressive as knowing Barbara Walters from The View. Still good.

  That bastard Todd. He had better come through for her. She’d put up with a ton of crap from him over the years, including turning a blind eye to his constant stream of bimbos. One time, she’d accused him of boinking every nurse in Del Ray Hospital. He’d actually stopped and thought before denying it. The rat. Her mother kept saying she ought to divorce him, but it wouldn’t pay. There was a ton more status and power in Boca social circles if she remained married. Even if people knew that Todd screwed around on her.

  He kept promising her that he would change. Sometimes, she believed him. Sometimes, she didn’t. Anyway, it was convenient for both of them to stay married. He probably used being married as his excuse whenever he got tired of his latest girlfriend. The trouble was this time, the girl was pregnant and she said she was having a son.

  Todd had always wanted a son. He liked having a family, too. The lack of a son was his fault, not hers, so he had no incentive to divorce her. Anyway, if he tried, she knew a very good divorce lawyer. Better still, Uncle Sol was a top administrator at the hospital, and a mover and shaker in local medical circles. Sol could make life tough on Todd despite his fancy practice. Sol doted on Megan and Samantha and loved Bev like a daughter. He was her protection against a divorce.

  Why the hell didn’t Todd get his head out of his ass? No, he wanted to give her a hard time even though he’d been trying to give that bridesmaid at Nancy Bailey’s wedding his seven inches of personal hard time. Bev sniggered. She had gotten one up on him that day.

  ***

  Rona was meeting Edward at a café up by the university, and taking a shortcut through the campus to get there. She’d come from one of her low-key faculty meetings, but she was in a suit anyway. Sometimes she felt the need to subtly or not-so-subtly remind her department of rank. The power suit was still the most blatant statement a professional woman in any field could make. Not that the meeting had been acrimonious, the way so many had been years ago. This one was standard. They discussed the next semester’s new students and their hopes for them. Theirs was a very selective university. They expected great things from each student, but they didn’t leave it to chance anymore.

  Once she was in charge, she innovated pairing every new student immediately with a faculty mentor, so they wasted no time floundering. She’d dumped the old faculty adviser system. Hers was more personal, with mandatory accountability on both sides. Even if the student came and sat in the professor’s office and said nothing, it was noted.

  Some of the faculty had declared that this was babysitting. They complained that she wasn’t allowing her students the freedom to fail that they deserved at this level of study. That was a crock. They could still fail, and some had. Meanwhile, her num
bers of successes had multiplied as her faculty had gained more experience in creating the vital two-way street that kept poisonous student stress at bay. When she was still a teaching assistant herself, a boy she’d known had killed himself because of his shame at failing. His isolation had sent him down the path to self-destruction. She determined that she would never allow her students to get in that situation if she could help it. She would always offer her students a lifeline. Most took it. The numbers backed up her policy.

  She finally crossed Amsterdam and arrived at the café, and there Edward was, tall and distinguished, rising to greet her. He looked excellent in a light gray suit. Probably he only owned suits. He had spent thirty years in the Senate wearing suits.

  He embraced her.

  “Hello, darling.” Edward leaned his head down and kissed her lips. She almost shuddered from the brief contact. Why was it like this after all these years? Was it their time apart? Or was it something else? Would it ever go away?

  “Would you like coffee? It’s a little early, but they might have wine.”

  She shook her head., “Coffee’s fine. You’re looking good, Edward.”

  “So are you, and I’m relieved to see it, since it was days and days before you answered my messages,” he said. He ventured a small smile.

  “I guess you’re not used to your calls not being instantly returned, Senator,” she said dryly.

  “True. If you want to punish me, it’s a good way of doing so.”

  “Don’t be naïve, Edward,” she said with asperity. “Of course I want to punish you. It’s been twenty-five freaking years.”

  He winced. The truth of what he had done to her wasn’t something he wanted brought up at every meeting, perhaps. Tough.

  She continued, stabbing the table with her cutlery, “I don’t want to make nice. I don’t want to pretend that loving you didn’t tear me up and leave me a dry hulk for decades. I don’t want to take you back on whatever terms you care to offer,” she said heatedly. On a roll, she continued, “Don’t imagine having sex with you the other day means anything. It was just sex.”