“Who is it, please?” I said, and the answer was garbled in more static—you could never get the super to fix anything around here. I wasn’t expecting anybody. It was ten o’clock in the morning and I was in my bathrobe, typing up my column, sharing wisdom with a Wisconsin reader about childproofing electrical outlets.
There had been two robberies in our building the week before, and a tenants’ movement against admitting strangers had been organized. “Who is it?” I said again, and again I couldn’t understand the answer. My mailbox and doorbell both listed me as P. Flax. I decided that Paulie couldn’t possibly be some stranger’s lucky guess at my first name, so I pushed the buzzer that released the lock on the lobby door. After several minutes, I heard the sluggish elevator whine to my floor. I looked through the peephole, which gave me a convex view of the hallway, and I saw a distorted, diminished Frank Peters approaching rapidly. What was he doing here? Had something happened to Howard? To La Rae? My hands shook as I unbolted the door and then he was there, restored to life-size, and grinning.
I’d forgotten, in that moment of fear, that Frank had called me a week or two before. Just to say hello, he’d said at first, to find out how I was doing. He told me he’d seen Howard a few times, and that he seemed to be all right, too, although I hadn’t asked. There was an awkward pause in the conversation then, the sort of pause I usually feel obliged to fill with nervous chatter. That time I kept quiet, and finally Frank said, “Paulie, I was wondering if you’d like to have lunch with me today.”
“Why?” I blurted.
He laughed, a mirthless heh-heh. “Oh, for the usual reasons people have lunch,” he said. “Because they’re hungry. Because they want to get to know each other better.”
“I know you about as well as I want to,” I said, feeling sick-hearted and furious. “And I’ve just lost my appetite.”
“Hey, Paulie, relax,” he said. “It was only a friendly gesture.”
“La Rae is my friend, Frank, remember?”
“All right,” he said. “I’m sorry you took this the wrong way, Paulie. Take care of yourself now.” And he hung up.
He had only come on to me once before, and that was in the long-ago past. It happened at a New Year’s Eve party given by a couple named Shirley and Ed Benson, who lived near us in Port Washington and have since divorced and moved away. It was nearly midnight, and we’d all been drinking a heavily laced rum punch for about three hours. I remember that most of us were pretty high, and there was a great deal of hilarity and noise. The television set was on in the den and the hosts’ two young children were stationed in front of it in their pajamas, blowing noisemakers in each other’s faces. They were supposed to let us know the moment the ball began falling on Times Square to mark the stroke of midnight. I had to use the bathroom, and the one downstairs was occupied. I raced upstairs to the other one, so I’d be back in time to see the New Year in with Howard. No one answered when I knocked on the closed door. I turned the knob, just as Frank pulled the door open from the inside, and I literally fell into his arms. I tried to back away from him, but he held on to me and shoved me against one of the tile walls. “Hey!” I said, and Frank laughed and began kissing me in a wet, sloppy way and squeezing my breasts. He smelled strongly of liquor and a sweetish aftershave. “Hey!” I said again. “Stop it!” I beat on his chest and tried to knee his groin, and he fell backward, rattling against one of the glass shower doors.
That was all that happened. I got out of there while he was still off-balance and I went back downstairs just as the ball on Times Square hit bottom. Everybody was kissing and calling “Happy New Year!” I could hear Guy Lombardo’s band playing “Auld Lang Syne,” and the discordant bleating of the children’s horns. I felt forlorn and frightened, not because I thought Frank was chasing me, but because I’d drunk too much and was suddenly alone in the midst of all that revelry. Howard came out of the kitchen then and put his arms around me.
I’d never told him or anyone else about what happened upstairs. Neither Frank nor I acknowledged it when we saw each other again, a week later, at another party. Maybe he’d been too drunk to remember, and I pretended that I’d been, too. Every New Year’s Eve since then, no matter where I was, the sensation of loneliness I’d had at the foot of the Bensons’ stairs came back to me on the stroke of midnight. And whenever I saw Frank after that night, I felt uncomfortable, as if something more serious had happened between us.
Now here he was at my door, smiling broadly and saying, “Well, aren’t you going to invite me in?” He was clearly sober this time, and not a messenger of bad news. Frank sold restaurant supplies, and he had that brash expression I’d seen on the faces of other salesmen, when they’re certain you need their product. He looked handsome, in a slick, overgroomed way—the words “dapper” and “suave” came to mind. And he rocked on the balls of his feet as if he were trying to make himself taller. As we stood there, the woman who lived across the hall came out of her apartment. She pressed the elevator button and leaned against the wall, gazing at us with leisurely, open curiosity.
I beckoned Frank in and closed the door. “What do you want?” I said.
“Uh-oh,” he said. “This can’t be the hospitality suite.”
“Frank, I’m working.”
He went right past me into the living room, and sat down on the love seat. I had a whiff of that same after-shave as he went by. “In that getup?” he said.
I tightened the belt of my plaid bathrobe and folded my arms across my chest, thinking that I probably looked like Sherlock Holmes’s landlady. But why should I care what I looked like? “I wasn’t expecting company,” I said coldly.
“I tried calling you earlier,” Frank said, “but your line was busy. I knew I’d be in your neighborhood today—on business—and I wondered if you’d like to have that lunch with me.”
“I’m busy,” I said.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “Maybe another time. So, how have you been doing here, all by your lonesome?”
“I’m doing fine,” I said.
“Howard seems to be making it on his own, too.”
“So I hear. And how is La Rae?” I asked pointedly.
He looked amused. “La Rae’s fine, thank you,” he said. “Haven’t you spoken to her lately?”
I had—that very morning, in fact—probably when Frank was trying to call me. I felt myself blushing, as if I’d betrayed her in some unaccountable way. “Yes, of course I have. Frank, you’d better go now. I really want to get back to work.”
“All work and no play …” he said, wagging his finger, making no move to leave.
“Don’t make me call the super,” I said, thinking how impossible it was to ever find him.
“Ah, just as I remembered—you’re even more attractive when you’re angry.”
It was a line right out of a stupid B movie, but I knew he was referring, for the first time, to what had happened in the Ben-sons’ bathroom. He was given to confessing his past transgressions to La Rae; those confessions, and her forgiveness, were part of their peculiar arrangement. Had he ever said anything to her about that incident, altering the details to implicate me? “I’d hoped you were simply drunk that night, Frank,” I said. “It was the only excuse I could find for your behavior, and I’ve never mentioned it to La Rae, or to Howard.”
“Oh, I was smashed, all right, and you were just the wrong girl in the right place.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean you were supposed to be Shirley Benson. We had a date in that bathroom. It was all arranged.”
Arranged by whom? Did he mean Ed was in on it, too? That was about the time that key swapping began in the suburbs, and I was shocked and even a little thrilled then by the rumors—a spectator on the sidelines of the sexual revolution. Now I tried to remember how Shirley Benson looked that particular night, what she wore, and if she had an aura I might have recognized. But all I could think of were those pajamaed kids tooting in the New Year,
and myself standing alone at the foot of the stairs. “I don’t want to hear any more about it, Frank,” I said, in a voice I’d never used before. “And I want you out of here this minute.” He sat there staring up at me, as if he was trying to gauge my true intentions. And I stared back with icy concentration until he had to glance away.
“Going, going, gone,” he said, lifting himself from the love seat.
I marched to the door and opened it wide. My nosy neighbor stepped out of the elevator at the same moment and waved.
Frank reached into his pocket and took out a business card. “Call me sometime, if you change your mind,” he said, trying to hand it to me. “If you need something for your kitchen … or your bathroom …”
I let the card flutter down between us to the floor, and I shut the door in his face. I opened a window and lit a few matches to get rid of his cloying smell. Then I went back to my typewriter and angrily banged out advice.
22
I REMEMBERED BASIC TRAINING as being easier in some ways than the stress test; at least you didn’t think you’d die during it. I joked with Croyden’s nurse while she shaved patches of my chest and attached the electrodes. It was what I always did when I was scared out of my wits. “I hope you’re keeping the line to the governor open,” I said. I guessed she’d heard it all before, because she shook her head and gave me a long-suffering smile. Croyden came in with one of his partners, and assured me they’d done this hundreds of times and had never lost a patient. “Well, don’t let me spoil your record,” I said. I told myself that they wouldn’t put me through anything I couldn’t handle, or that they’d stop it as soon as it looked as if I couldn’t handle it. And if worse came to worse, I had two board-certified cardiologists right there to beat on my chest, the way they did to that guy on Ben Casey. Still, I believed I was going into the valley of the shadow.
The entire test was going to take place on a treadmill. Croyden instructed me to walk naturally, as if I was actually heading somewhere. He said that when they increased the speed of the belt, I’d have to increase my speed, too, or I’d be pitched backward into the wall. “Eventually,” he said, “you’ll be going very fast, almost running. We want to see if the blood supply to your heart is adequate when you’re really accelerating. Hold on to the bar for balance, if you have to.”
“Miss Green will say ‘Now!’ when we’re about to shut the machine off,” his partner said. “As soon as it stops, get off and go to the cot and lie still.”
This was the time to confess all my sins of diet and smoking, so that they’d postpone the test until I had another chance to get in shape for it. I could have told them I’d lost weight from grief and erratic eating, not from sensible living. That I’d chewed gum on the way there to kill my cigarette breath, that there was a whole carton of Merit Menthols in the glove compartment of my car right now. But I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even wisecrack about hanging a marathon number on my chest, or about having to run for my life. Nothing struck me very funny at that last, scary moment. Gil had gone through this the week before, and he’d had difficulties—they had to take him off it in the middle. He’d called me up afterward. “It was like blowing up a balloon,” he said, “knowing it was going to burst if you didn’t stop.” His doctors wanted to put him back in the hospital and do a catheterization—Jesus, that wire from your groin to your heart! They’d even discussed the possibility of surgery. For once, Gil stopped being the trusting, obedient patient. He told them, “Hell, no, I won’t go.”
I climbed onto the treadmill and looked down. My belly had gotten trimmer, but not hard. I patted it and watched it ripple. I was wearing my old, worn-out Adidas and a pair of running shorts. Except for the electrodes, I could have been any middle-aged Sunday jogger.
“We’re going to begin now, Mr. Flax,” Dr. Croyden said, and the belt started moving under my feet. I moved with it.
I’d psyched myself up for this for days, and now I tried to remember what I’d planned to do to help me through it. For one thing, I let some music into my head—a nice slow version of “Walking My Baby Back Home.” And I pictured myself heading toward something, as Croyden had suggested. I saw a long stretch of country road with a tiny figure in the distance. As the speed of the belt gradually increased, I strode more quickly toward the figure, making it seem closer and closer. I switched to livelier music—an old show tune called “I Know That You Know” that builds in energy and tempo. The figure was Paulie, of course, and now I was walking faster and faster to get to her. I know that you know that I know that you know … The crazy thing was that she started walking faster, too, away from me. I wanted to yell, Hey, wait! My heart was the drumbeat of the music, loud and pounding in my chest and ears. I started running then and I had to grab the bar for balance. I was sweating bullets and panting—were they paying attention? You could drop dead on this thing, no matter what they said, and Paulie was nowhere in sight.
“Now!” the nurse said, and the belt slowed and then came to a stop. My feet moved a few more paces on their own, the soles tingling as if I’d just taken off a pair of roller skates.
“Get off!” Croyden commanded. “Hurry up and lie down!” I just stood there clutching the bar, my breath heaving, until the nurse grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the cot. I staggered like a drunk, the first bars of “I Know That You Know” still repeating in my brain.
“You can rest now,” Croyden said. “Miss Green will check your pulse, and I’ll speak to you when she’s finished.” He and his partner went out of the room.
Miss Green sat next to me for five or ten minutes, holding my wrist and looking at her watch. When I could speak again, I said, “Maybe your watch stopped,” earning another sour little smile.
Back in Croyden’s consultation room, I braced myself for the worst, but he shuffled some papers and said, “The test results are average for a man your age who’s had a coronary. You seem able to handle exertion pretty well, but I’d like to get your resting heart rate lowered. Maybe some additional moderate exercise will do it. Do you walk much?” I admitted that I didn’t. “I’d recommend brisk walking,” he said. “Start with half a mile each day and work your way up to two miles.”
At first, I felt exhilarated. I’d passed, I was going to live! I started driving home—it was about four-thirty—and the traffic on the Expressway was murder. It took me fifteen minutes to get to the next exit. I decided to get off and go somewhere local for a drink until it eased up. There was a place on Roslyn Road I remembered passing, an Italian restaurant and bar.
It was much darker inside, as if night had suddenly fallen. There were a few other people at the bar, mostly men, watching a rerun of an old fight on television. I sat down and ordered an Amstel Light. I was still feeling pretty good about the test, and the atmosphere in the place was nice and relaxed. There was a low buzz of conversation around me, broken by ripples of laughter, and the TV flickered and hummed overhead. Maybe I’d stay here for supper, have some pasta or a hero. I could call Frank or Gil or somebody to meet me. Later we could go to Sonny’s in Seaford, where some good sidemen were playing. I took my beer and went to the pay phone in the back. Nobody answered at Frank’s, and Gil’s line was busy. I went back to the bar and ordered a Scotch and soda. I noticed it had gotten a little noisier—more people had come in and someone had turned up the volume on the TV. One word from my consultation with Croyden that afternoon came into my head: “average.” I couldn’t remember the exact context, but he’d said something about my heart being average. Who the hell wanted to be average? Or to have to think about your heart at all? I was only fooling myself, anyway, with the cigarettes, with everything. My good mood was fading fast, the old doom and gloom descending. I was getting ready to split when the woman on the next bar stool leaned over and asked me for a light. I got a hit of a musky fragrance while I fumbled for matches, and when I managed to light one, her face was illuminated in the brief flare. She was young—in her late twenties, maybe—and she was dark-haired
and very pretty. The smoke from her cigarette drifted toward me like a friendly signal.
“God, that smells good,” I said, before she could turn away. She offered the pack, and I said, “No, thanks, I’ve given them up. Cold turkey, in fact.”
“Oh? How long has it been?” she asked.
I looked at my watch. “About fifteen minutes,” I said, and she laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” I told her. “It’s been hell.” She started to slide off her stool and I touched her wrist lightly and said, “Please don’t go away. I need some moral support, and I can always inhale what you exhale.”
We had supper together in the back room. She had a great appetite, almost purring as she chewed, and taking bits of food from my plate with her fingers. I thought of Tom Jones, of that orgy of eating, and I was pretty sure how this would end. Her name was Amy Kline and she worked as a computer programmer for an electronics firm. She said that she and a couple of her co-workers usually came here to celebrate the onset of the weekend. She’d whispered something to another woman at the bar after agreeing to have supper with me.
I told her I was divorced, when she asked, and that I was a jazz musician. These were only partial lies: one truth lay in the future, the other in the past. What difference did it make, anyway? This was going to be a casual encounter, and we only needed some social foreplay before we could begin.
“Are you a good musician?” Amy asked.
“About average,” I said, and she laughed again, as if I’d said something witty. Maybe I had.
We went to her garden apartment in Little Neck. Her roommate—the woman she’d whispered to at the bar?—wasn’t around. I’d had several moments of doubt before we’d gotten this far. Driving behind her toward Little Neck, I’d thought about her age and mine, that I might make a fool of myself, and even if I didn’t, it was still sort of incestuous. Then I worried that it might be too much exertion for me in one day. What would Dr. Croyden say about it? As we were parking outside her place, I wondered if she could possibly be a pro, if this was something I was supposed to understand without actually being told.
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