Passion and Affect

by Laurie Colwin

  Misty Berkowitz was twenty-five. She wore an elderly suede jacket and revealed to Vincent that she spoke German, French, and Xhosa.

  “Xhosa?”

  “I learned it in linguistics class. When I get enough money to get out of this dump, I’m going to go where they speak it and speak it.”

  “Where do they speak it?”

  “I don’t know. Africa or someplace. I never asked.”

  “Is Misty your real name, or is it short for something?” Vincent asked.

  “It’s real,” she snarled.

  “How did you get a name like that?”

  “Because my mother is a jerk.”

  The waiter brought two plates of Fettuccine Alfredo. Misty ate daintily, as if her food were under a microscope. Vincent ate quickly, waiting for Misty to say something, but she was too involved in her pasta to speak. When the plates were finally taken away, she looked deeply and silently into her coffee cup.

  “Are you a secretary or what?” he asked. “I mean, what do you do at your job?”

  “What is this, Twenty Questions? I just sit around.”

  “Well, who do you work for?”

  Misty tapped on her coffee cup with a spoon. “Some guy named George something. The guy with the pink glasses. You know the one. He has those hokey patches on his elbows. I never found out what his last name is. He comes around when he needs me and gives me stuff to analyze and edit. The rest of the time I sit around and read.”

  “How long have you been working here?”

  “About six months, but I used to be on another floor. What do you do, anyway?”

  “Garbage.”

  “That’s clever. Garbage what?”

  “I do studies of how much garbage is produced and how you can get rid of it. Right now I’m working on a method of compressing it into tubes that turn it into mulch.”

  “How inspiring,” said Misty. “I think people should hate their jobs, because work is degrading.”

  Vincent tipped his chair back. He wondered if he could provide Guido with Misty Berkowitz to replace Betty Helen Carnhoops. That way, Guido would have an interesting and appealing secretary and Vincent could develop his connection with Misty. If she worked in Guido’s office, Vincent could demonstrate to her what a fine, competent, and gentle person he was. Guido’s office brought out the best in him, he felt. It occurred to him that he was going to fall in love with Misty Berkowitz, but he thought she found him affected.

  “Rich people make me sick,” she said.

  Guido was brooding. Yesterday Vincent had been brooding. “We are on the verge of our lives,” he had said despondently to Guido.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “We’re prime. We’re in the prime of life. We should be doing concrete, long-lasting adult things. It’s terrible, but I still feel like a child. Every adult is the headmaster and I’m just about to be suspended. Why do I do these useless things, like hang my heart around Misty Berkowitz’s neck? It’s just like high school and here I am, walking around in an adult skin.”

  From time to time Guido was mentioned by his acquaintances as being “recently eligible,” which caused him considerable distress. He had now been separated from his wife, the former Holly Stergis, for four months. She called from the country once a week and they met for lunch every two weeks, but Holly refused to have dinner with him. “It’s too explosive,” she said.

  “I’m not going to be undone by you, or anyone like you,” said Guido to himself. He was having a conversation in the mirror and his reflection was the former Holly Stergis. On good days, he made plans for their mutual future together, and on bad days he felt himself permanently severed from all human warmth.

  Betty Helen Carnhoops appeared at the door. “Your friends are here,” she said, in a tone that would have been appropriate to an announcement of botulism or the plague.

  Vincent walked in, leading Misty Berkowitz by the elbow. He introduced her to Guido. His face was shining and hopeful. “Isn’t this a nice office?” he said eagerly.

  “Nice enough,” mumbled Misty. “You do something literary, don’t you?” Guido handed her a back issue of Runnymede. She shuffled the pages like a deck of cards.

  “Would you like some Seltzer?” asked Guido.

  “I’d like to put my feet up, or would it tarnish these gleaming surfaces?” said Misty. Guido provided her with a wicker basket and she put her feet up on it. She wore small, expensive green shoes.

  “Would you like some Seltzer?” Guido asked again.

  “I don’t suppose you have anything as banal as coffee,” said Misty.

  “I’ll ask my secretary to make some,” said Guido.

  “That awful girl outside? Jesus Christ, harlequin glasses. Will they never learn?”

  “She’s actually very pleasant,” said Guido.

  “I’d like some coffee, but not if I have to deal with her,” Misty said.

  “I’ll get it,” said Vincent, leaping out of his chair. “There’s a delicatessen downstairs.” He raced out of the office.

  “You,” said Guido to Misty, “are you and Vincent friends because you’re both so negative?”

  “Who’s negative?” said Misty. “Besides, Vincent’s not my friend. I don’t even know him. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

  “That’s three negatives in a row,” Guido said.

  Vincent came in with the coffee, which was leaking through its paper bag. He handed it to Misty. He was positively wiped out by love.

  Betty Helen Carnhoops was like a reef of calm in a bad storm. She functioned as smoothly as a hospital kitchen. Vincent said she was a vacuum cleaner made flesh. Her telephone voice was brisk and astringent. Her letters were little miracles: she justified each line like a veritype machine. She never spoke to Guido except in the line of work and her few conversational attempts were confined to such soothing and uninteresting subjects as the weather, or what time the window washer was coming in. However, she announced anyone who came to the office by buzzing Guido and telling him his friends had arrived. She announced in this way the window washer, authors, trustees of the Magna Carta Foundation, messengers, telephone repairmen, and delivery boys from the delicatessen. Guido had not noticed this. It was pointed out to him by Vincent.

  “Betty Helen is so level. It’s a pleasure,” Guido said.

  “That woman is lobotomized,” said Vincent. “She’s just waiting to strike. She’s a menace. Why does she announce these Western Union messengers as your friends?”

  The office hummed efficiently. For Guido it was like living in a quiet tunnel, safe and comfortable. The telephone and typewriter purred. Holly called to tell Guido that she was going to France with her mother for a few weeks and to cancel their lunch date. She called while Betty Helen was out to lunch, and after hanging up Guido put his head on his desk and fell into a short, miserable sleep.

  That afternoon, Vincent proposed to Guido that he fire Betty Helen and hire Misty Berkowitz.

  “She’s very smart and she hates her job,” Vincent said. “I think she would really like to work here, and she’d be around, see.”

  “For God’s sake,” snapped Guido, looking haggard. “Leave me with my Betty Helen Carnhoops. I can’t take it any more.”

  “Take what any more?”

  “I want to have some ordinary, stable person around and that’s what I have. I am sincerely tired of having these beautiful flash girls running around being illiterate and ruining my life.”

  “Misty isn’t illiterate, and she isn’t beautiful.”

  “She’s interesting-looking,” said Guido. “And that’s a bad sign.”

  “Anyway, she’s not ruining your life. She’s ruining mine,” Vincent said.

  “Don’t be so melodramatic. If what you wanted was some nice, stable girl, that’s what you’d have. You obviously don’t want that or you wouldn’t be hanging around with her.”

  “Don’t moralize at me. She hates me. I’m sure she does. She told
me that people like me were irrelevant. She says I don’t do anything that doesn’t feed the system. She says if there’s a revolution I’ll be useless. God, it makes me sad.”

  “If there’s a revolution, that girl will have to give up her expensive green shoes. Besides, if you’re so irrelevant, what’s she doing with you?”

  “I don’t know. She gave me dinner the other night. It was pot roast. God, it’s sad.”

  “Don’t be so adolescent,” said Guido. He was thinking of Holly.

  “If you would only hire her, my life would be one solid round of bliss.”

  “And my life would be one solid round of hell. It’s out of the question.”

  “She really hates me,” said Vincent. “I’m sure of it.”

  One afternoon Vincent called Guido to ask if he and Misty Berkowitz could meet at Guido’s office. Misty arrived first, wearing her green shoes and suede jacket. She put her feet up on the wicker basket and drank a bottle of soda.

  “I don’t mean to pry,” Guido said to her, “but why are you giving Vincent such a hard time?”

  “You guys,” snickered Misty, “I haven’t seen anything like you since junior high school. You’re like thirteen-year-old girls.”

  “You have to admit you’re not very nice to him.”

  “Why should I be? He has an easy life. Part of my function is to give him a hard time. It makes him feel alive.” She twirled her shoe around on the tip of her toes. “He gets what he deserves, and he gets what he wants. We all do.”

  “People your age seem to have a very tough attitude.”

  “Tough Schmough. Don’t be so patronizing.”

  “He says you hate him and string him along and won’t go to bed with him.”

  “I might, if it’s any of your business.”

  “Might what?”

  “Go to bed with him.”

  “Then you do like him.”

  “I might go to bed with him if I get bored not going to bed with him.” She yawned, showing small white teeth. The bottom row was slightly crooked.

  “I think you have very rigid values, Misty. Life is very short and God knows it’s difficult enough. If you like Vincent, you shouldn’t be so awful to him. It’s easier to be kind to people than is commonly believed.”

  “How Rabbinical,” said Misty. “It’s not all that easy. Even if I did like Vincent, I’d never let him know. People shouldn’t know I like them. It gives them the upper hand.”

  “What a difficult girl you are,” said Guido. He looked mystified and pained.

  “Could be,” said Misty, looking at her shoe. “Listen,” she said. “Vincent thinks that he can be nice to me the way he’s nice to everyone else. But he can’t be, see, because I’m not everyone else, and I’m waiting for him to find that out.”

  “That’s the first humane thing I’ve heard you say.”

  “The trouble with you rich people is you’re polite all the time.”

  They sat silently for a while, listening to the dulled clicking of Betty Helen at the typewriter.

  “What are you going to do about her?” Misty asked.

  “You mean Betty Helen.”

  “Is that her name? Are you going to sack her?”

  “Certainly not. Why should I?”

  “Because she’s obviously the most disgusting person in New York. Vincent says it says a lot about you that you hired her. He says she’s a reaction against Holly Whatever and that hiring her is your attempt to regain some warped notion of stability.”

  Betty Helen buzzed on the intercom. “Your friend is here.”

  “I’m a little tired of that girl being made into a symbol of my being,” said Guido.

  Vincent walked to the door of the office. He looked shy and boyish and tripped on the door ledge.

  It was eleven o’clock and Vincent was very sad. He had not been to his office at the Board of City Planning and was loitering around Guido’s office eating shrimp bisque out of a can.

  “I don’t believe I’ve ever felt this awful,” he said.

  “What’s your problem?” said Guido.

  “Misty and I had a fight. I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Last night she threw a magazine at me and said I treat her like a stranger on the subway. I just don’t understand. Then she said she didn’t like anyone.”

  “She always says that,” said Guido, who was going over a set of galleys with a blue pencil.

  “This time she meant me. What did I do? I don’t think I treat her like a stranger on the subway. I’m in love with her.”

  “Why don’t you find some nice pleasant girl, for a change?” mumbled Guido over his pencil.

  “I find some nice pleasant girl for a change. You go find some nice pleasant girls and look what you turn up! Holly Stergis and that thing outside. Nice pleasant people for Christ’s sake.”

  “You shut up about Holly,” said Guido. “You shut up about Betty Helen. At least I don’t go panting off after some little kid who mistreats me.”

  “As far as I can see, neither of those two treat you at all. As far as I can see, you’re the stranger on the subway.”

  Guido sighed and went back to his galleys. The former Holly Stergis was a source of constant unhappiness to him. Late at night, he spoke to her in his mirror. She was staying with her mother at the George Cinq in Paris and he had written her several letters. In return she had written him one postcard, which said: “I’m thinking all the time. I got your letters. Don’t expect me to write because I’d rather talk. H.” This postcard had filled him with nervous joy and expectation. Did it mean she was thinking about him? About them? Or did it mean that she wouldn’t write because she was coming back to ask for a divorce? It seemed to Guido that he would not rest or calm or ease until he saw her, but she had neglected to say when she was coming back.

  Betty Helen appeared at the door. “Your friend is here,” she said. The friend turned out to be a delivery boy carrying three bottles of Seltzer. Vincent and Guido drank a glass each. They were both restless and edgy.

  “Why don’t you write another garbage study?” Guido asked.

  “I’m in the middle of one but I can’t keep to it. I sit in that bloody misshapen coat closet over at the Board and all I do is think about Misty. She says I’m putting myself through my own hoops, whatever that means. She actually threw a magazine at me. It was one of those thick ones.”

  “Be glad she didn’t hit you with the telephone book,” said Guido. The sky darkened and it began to rain. Vincent read The Wall Street Journal and Guido read the Times. He told Betty Helen that he was out, if anyone should call.

  Vincent and Guido sat in Guido’s office. A member of the board had been visiting with a cigar and the window was open to clear the air. It was noon and they were eating pastrami sandwiches.

  “Holly called this morning,” said Guido. “She’s back from Paris and she says we should see each other.”

  “What prompted it?”

  “Nothing. She did it all herself.” He flicked his finger against a glass bowl, which gave off a little ping.

  “Are you going to see her?”

  “I’m going to take her for dinner at the Lalique, which is where we always used to go, and sit at our old favorite table and I’m going to order smoked salmon and Châteaubriand and peaches in wine because that’s what she likes and then I’m going to give her a bag of those lemon candies she likes from that place on Liberty Street because she’s probably too lazy to go there herself.”

  “And why are you making these grandiose gestures?”

  “Because it’s time for me to straighten things out. I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of being estranged and separated. I want it all back again.”

  “Supposing she doesn’t?”

  “She has to,” said Guido grimly. “I really can’t go on.”

  “I’m off to my garbage,” said Vincent sadly. “Give Holly my love, will you. I’d love to see you back together.”

  “How’s Misty coming along?�
��

  “I’m going to see if she’ll condescend to have lunch with me today. God, my life is shabby. Sometimes I think it’s love and sometimes I think it’s sickness. Life really is as complicated as she says it is. Except for people like Betty Helen, of course.” Vincent and Guido looked at each other. For an instant they were twins, slightly exhausted by hope.

  Betty Helen’s eyeglasses glittered in the light as Vincent walked out. He mumbled goodbye to her.

  Vincent was walking toward Misty Berkowitz’s apartment. They had gone to lunch together and she had delivered a tirade at him, telling him that he was lacking in feeling, that he had no emotional life, that he was a typical polite rich person, and that if all it took to make him happy was for her to be polite back to him, he was a hopeless moron. He felt as if twenty magazines were hurled at him. Then he said: “I’m sorry, Misty. I am the only way I know how to be. It’s senseless for me to tell you how fond I am of you because you don’t believe me.” He was about to slink off like a hurt dog, but she tugged on his sleeve.

  She actually grinned at him. “Will you come over tonight and let me cook supper for you?”

  “Would it make any difference?” he asked, miserably. She gave him a large, open, bright smile.

  “That remains to be seen,” she said, and kicked him gently on the ankle with her shoe.

  Walking down the street he thought he heard a violin. It was followed by an oboe and a flute. Two more steps and he heard a bassoon and a cello. For a moment he thought he was hallucinating. As he walked farther the music got closer. He passed a brownstone with large open windows. A girl with a violin in her hand looked out onto the street. Behind her were a group of men and women holding oboes and flutes and bassoons and clarinets and violas, walking around tuning up. The notes scraped against one another. A plaque on the brownstone read: The Horton Little Symphony Society. Someone played a piano trill. The girl in the window looked at Vincent, smiled, picked up her violin, and began to play the opening bars of the Kreutzer Sonata. He smiled back and rushed down the street. He felt moved and foolish to find that there were tears in his eyes.