by Robert Bloch
Her hands shook, then stilled. Two years of Sheldon’s not wanting to hurt her were enough. Clever as she was sure he was, she was better off making her own mistakes—and enjoying her own successes—than following the intricate plans he was so proud of devising. Frankly, they always seemed to her like more bother than they were worth.
She had cleared a long lunch hour with her supervisor, and she would break with Sheldon today. At lunch at the Pongsri Thai on Bayard. It was crowded, and they made you eat fast. It would be safe to tell him there.
It would be safer to play in traffic. Her hands shook again.
As she dodged down Mulberry Street, her attention flickered, and the world turned black and white. Just like her dreams. She had always liked Chinatown for its color; had always reveled in color; had always dreamed in it. Recently, though, she had begun to dream in black and white. And now the dreams were finally manifesting themselves in her life. From now on, she would have to move in a colorless world. She glanced back to test it. Sure enough, Hedda’s violet sweater, the padded blue jackets that the most recent immigrants wore, her own tidy, inexpensive suit, even the flowers for sale and the sky and the children’s clothing, had all turned black and white.
Oh, I understand you better than you do yourself. Your problem is that you only see in black and white. She didn’t even need to have Sheldon around for her to hear him coaxing, insinuating, controlling. She dodged a couple with linked arms who looked like they’d walk straight through her. You’re so spineless you let people just crowd you off the sidewalk into the street, Steff? She clapped hands to her ears with such force that they rang.
A little sheepishly—what if Sheldon had been walking down Carmine and saw her acting crazy?—she removed her hands. Then she heard the music.
Four men in shabby uniforms and beaked caps formed a huddle outside one of the Chinese funeral homes that lined the street. They looked like Salvation Army, though their uniforms lacked braid trim, and their faces lacked the ruddy cheer of Army men. Oddly enough, they were Westerners, not Asians. They beat their feet in time as their dented instruments plodded through Chopin’s Funeral March. Ludicrous from a thousand Saturday-morning cartoons, trumpet, baritone, trombone, and tuba honked and blatted, voice to the mourning dragon that wound up the street: car after car, each bearing its little Chinese banner, following a flatbed hearse. The huge coffin was heaped with flowers, surmounted by a picture of the deceased, encircled by more Chinese characters.
And pictures, flowers, hearse, even the musicians themselves, were all black and white, like the 1950s cartoons that turned the Funeral March into gallows humor. Following that cortege, as if dragon followed dragon like circus elephants, came another. Noontime was for funerals in Chinatown.
Stephanie wanted to comment to anyone nearby, but some invisible membrane seemed to block her speech. She could feel air vibrating against it as she opened her mouth. Recently, she’d felt as if she’d swallowed a piece of plastic bag and it had gotten lodged in her throat.
She hurried down Bayard toward the Pongsri Thai. You had to get there by 12:15 or the lines of jurors, court officials, lawyers, and Wall Street Journal staffers intent on a cheap, tasty lunch could stretch round the block. She was lucky. The sweatered owner steered her by the picture of this year’s Miss Thailand and the table of indigestible pistachio sweets and the fierce, winking masks on the walls to an empty side table, neatly ensconced beneath tiny indoor pagodas. Sheldon wasn’t there yet, but they’d have privacy for what she wanted to say.
Stephanie knew that the sweets were bilious green, the walls golden wood, well polished, the masks glaring with every color of rhinestone and sequin, just as she knew that the fraying Leatherette menu cover was maroon. Today, though, all of it was as black and white as Miss Thailand’s photo. Even the yellowed newsprint looked bleached out.
I must tell Sheldon about the funerals. He was big on wanting her to notice things that he thought were downtown and sharp. That he thought. He had enjoyed guiding her taste in the nightmare months right after she’d moved to New York, when her hair was too long, her clothes too fussy, her speech not crisp enough. Now she dressed appropriately—another favorite word—but now she dreamed only in black and white.
Sheldon would say he was entitled to someone who dreamed in color. He was always entitled: to sex when he wanted it, even if that meant waking her; to his choice of movies; to a woman who had a good job and a private-college education, maybe even inherited money (he always told Stephanie the net worth of the women in his office), yet who always agreed with him. Steff was such a disappointment, he let her know; it was a wonder he bothered.
Well, Stephanie was tired of being a traffic jam on the fast track. Now he could go claim one of those superior women, and she wished them both luck. Her watch showed 12:30; the waiter’s face, impatience. Sheldon still hadn’t arrived. The sick feeling, like catching a bad mistake at work, or her supervisor’s notes, come see me, began to chill her stomach. She ordered a Coke and drank it. When it was gone, she placated the waiter with a nervous smile and ordered a beer. Sheldon disapproved of alcohol at lunch. The tables were filling up, and still no Sheldon. She would have to get up soon, or order.
Around her people were sitting, chatting and laughing. Some had been here as long as she; they hadn’t ordered either, but the waiters did not scowl at them. Those were entitled people, just like Sheldon. They had a right to attention and patience. No one watched and judged them every moment. How could people tell which was which? Steff was as well dressed, as well made-up. . .but the waiters knew. Maybe it was because they dressed in, dreamed in color, and she didn’t. She was vulnerable, Sheldon always said. The Big V stands for victim. She could feel a letter, which normal people would see as scarlet, pulsate on her forehead.
Like Hedda. Sheldon must have spotted it right away. Most people could. Steff had learned that in her year of the Bad Bosses, arrayed like wicked Caesars. There’d been the one she privately called Little Caesar, the society matron who spent mornings on the phone with her maid, yet blamed her if the work wasn’t done, the workaholic with a subpoena in his past, the Long Island ad man who went broke and laid her off with a day’s notice. Why’d you pick those jobs? Sheldon had asked. If you cared about your career, you’d learn to choose better. He wouldn’t listen when she told him: when it was between a bad job and no job, you took; you didn’t choose. But now she was tired of trying to convince him. A “relationship” (his term; too sentimental by half, Steff would have called it a love affair) shouldn’t turn into an endurance test.
Well, she had a good job now. And office friends. They’d told her to come here for lunch because it was fast and public, to take what time she needed, not to worry. You listen to them, not me? After all I’ve done for you?
She summoned the hovering waiter and ordered chicken in some sort of cornstarch sauce that would probably reek of garlic, then yielded her menu.
How else could I keep the table? She could hear the placating coward’s whine even in her mental voice. And why should I care if he’s pleased or not?
If she said that, Sheldon would start on the “you shoulds.” You should be more assertive. You should trust me more. You should understand how very busy I am, how I can’t always be there for you when you think you need me. She could hear the finicky precision of his consonants in her head, and she was glad that today would be the last day she’d have to hear them.
Sometimes she wondered if he watched her from outside, watched to see if she behaved appropriately. Sheldon had a whole litany of appropriates—appropriate dinnerparty food, appropriate napkins, appropriate flowers, books by someone named Martha Stewart who boasted of the difference in color between a quiche made with eggs from her own hens and the inferior product, made with paler, commercially bought eggs. Sheldon claimed to enjoy what he called “the fun of working in the kitchennnn,” his voice tuning up for a whine that Stephanie didn’t leap at the chance. “The fun of working in the kitchennnn�
�� usually meant that she cooked and he groped her, apologized for the distraction, then went off to nap while she cleaned up.
When The New York Post published Hedda’s lists of what she must remember about Joel’s hair, Joel’s shoes, Joel’s penthouse-to-be, Sheldon had smirked.
Don’t even think of it, she had warned. That evening he’d made a joke of telling their guests how often he’d had to help her job hunt.
That was it. He’s lucky that I don’t get up and leave. After all, I have to eat, too.
She thought of working on her notes. Like her life, like the life of damned near every overeducated, underemployed person in Manhattan, she Wrote. The capital letter was a talisman to distinguish Writing from unglamorous letters and memos.
Sheldon claimed to Write too when they’d met at a bookstore signing. I’m as good as Cheever, he’d told her, and his confidence had won her. But he’d never let her read a word he wrote.
Had he ever written a word besides ad proposals? Steff thought suddenly. She practiced asking the question in her throat, and the membrane buzzed. He was always working on Something. Even on Sunday mornings, he was so serious about his work that she’d have to get out of bed and go home early, just about the time that other couples were getting dressed for brunch.
He could kiss that shit good-bye.
Her food arrived just as Sheldon did. An apology trembled in her throat, but the membrane kept her from blurting it out. She swallowed hard, hungry despite her wretched nerves. At least, unlike Joel Steinberg, he’d never asked her to freebase. (Surely, he wouldn’t. After all, he was still—at age thirty-eight—talking of heading for medical school on Grenada because American medical schools were too restrictive. Would she quit her job and come, too?) Would she have done drugs if he’d wanted? No, she promised herself. That she would not have done. Could she be sure?
She swallowed and nodded, and the balloon slid down to her belly. Even if she ate, the food would fill the balloon, not her, and she’d starve.
At least, though, the balloon—she thought it was a red one—had saved her from apologizing again. Sheldon hated apologies, though he always made sure she made them.
He glanced at her, his eyes narrowing in the in-trouble-again look. He was a short man, with scant dark hair and a beard that he and a senior stylist from Sassoon tended with fanatical precision. As always, he was painstakingly dressed in a dark jacket—he had three all alike—and a Calvin Klein shirt, maybe the one he had tried to teach her to iron. (She’d felt like burning it, but she’d felt it was a crime to scorch a poor, innocent designer shirt.)
“Dearest,” he said, and leaned over her lunch to kiss her in front of everyone. The perfect lover. His lips were cold against her face. With an upraised finger, he summoned the waiter, made great play of opening the menu, discussing the food, improving his pronunciation of the various dishes, and instructing her that Thai was a tonal language, before, finally, he ordered. The waiter smiled at the charming, civilized man. Look what you’ve forfeited this time, this display of urbanity told her.
Well, blurt it out. Say, “Sheldon, I want out,” pay your tab, and get up and leave. She hated herself, but she sat; one didn’t make a scene.
“You go ahead and eat. You already ordered, so you must be hungry, though it wouldn’t hurt you to lose weight. You could have waited for me. You knew I’d be along. I had some very important phone calls to return.” His soft voice took on the whine that meant he wanted to punish her.
“Calls could have waited,” she murmured. She picked up chopsticks and forced down the cornstarch and limp vegetables. The ginger caught in her throat and burned. The food looked like shredded newsprint on her plate. She swallowed.
“You know I’m doing it all for us,” he said.
She glanced up and found him watching her. She glanced away, too quickly, lest he see what was in her mind: Joel Steinberg, leaning over his shoulder to stare at the woman he had beaten. To instruct, to hint, to control, even from Rikers Island and the defendant’s bench.
Stephanie flinched. That too was irrational. Sheldon prided himself on his sensitivity. He would never hit her. He didn’t even raise his voice. The whole idea was paranoid, lower-class. After all, who else would have loved her during the crazy year of the Four Bosses, or when the Unemployment people jeered at her—college degree and all, and she couldn’t even hold a job. Sheldon had been her strength then. When she’d tried to temp and come home exhausted, he’d taken off her shoes and massaged her feet.
Too stubborn to retreat to the Midwest, too hopeful to give up, she had mastered the tricks of the job-hunting trade, then of the job itself. Gradually, she was growing into a woman she thought she might like, one of these days. . .except when Sheldon told her how far short of expectations she fell.
Stand up to him, her office friends, many flashing diamond solitaires, had told her. He’ll respect you more. Or if you decide you want out, make a clean break. You decide.
Hedda had tried to leave. Once she’d gotten as far as the airport, then called him and asked him to bring her back. As if the effort of getting that far had drained her of all further power. Steff was not Hedda.
The masks on the polished walls grimaced, scolding her in the instant before Sheldon opened his mouth. “You know, if you order before other people at a business lunch, they’ll think you’re badly socialized and you won’t get anywhere,” he advised. “And you shouldn’t drink. It’s so important to you to do well, since you say you’re serious this time about your career. Does your supervisor still think you’re unstable?”
She smiled. This was obvious, shake-your-confidence stuff. Stephanie had stopped beseeching even file clerks for reassurance months ago. And her six-months’ review had been outstanding.
“She’s fine,” Stephanie said. “But Sheldon, I want to tell you what I saw on the way over here. I heard this band playing Chopin’s—”
Though Stephanie had minored in French, Sheldon held up a forefinger and corrected her pronunciation. She plunged on.
“And I saw this Chinese funeral. Christian Chinese. It looked like a mourning dragon. Do you think—”
“I think it’s charming of you to tell me about it. Like the child in the poem about what he saw on Mulberry Street, when he really didn’t see anything.” His meticulous imitation of a child’s sing-song made her flush. “If you really cared about pleasing me, though, you’d have waited to order lunch.” The whine was back.
She shrugged. “Then,” she said, on a deep breath (the balloon in her stomach, half full from the food that she had so inconsiderately ordered, pulsed and began to fill a little more), “I must not care about pleasing you.”
As he began his next reproof, the balloon began to swell, as if the air pressure inside the restaurant had changed. And it was going to get bigger as things got stuffed into it, things like tasty food, and colored dreams, and even the anger that she felt scorching her eyes and throat, as if she’d eaten the tiny, devastating Far Eastern chilies she never dared to order. She imagined that the balloon looked like the threat display of that lizard she’d seen the last time she was in Florida. She had alarmed it, and it had inflated its red throat sac to warn her off.
She had told Sheldon about it, and he had claimed to have studied herpetology or whatever you called it when you studied lizards. She had been in Florida to give a paper; she had asked him to please come, but he had been too busy. Just as he’d been too busy when she’d asked him to be her date at her best friend’s wedding, where she was the bridesmaid. Steff always went to his family things and was “Sheldon’s girl. . .isn’t she sweet?” But Sheldon hated being someone’s sidekick, and he never went with her.
Injustice inflated the balloon further and smothered her hunger. Her plate only half-emptied, she laid down her chopsticks with the elegance of the woman at the next table, whose fiancé smiled at her without a hint of condemnation in his eyes. Oh, she was going to be so glad to get this over with! She’d go home tonight—her
own apartment, not his, even though his was so much nicer—and sleep, maybe even dream in color. . .
What if I don’t? Lately, as she’d started to stay late at the office, to question what he was entitled to, he’d been hinting that she’d lost ground and was losing her grip. “You try too hard to be sane,” he’d whisper to her, just before she fell asleep. “It isn’t normal for you to care so much about your career, about what your office thinks of you. You’re pushing yourself to where you’re burning out.”
Well, maybe she was crazy. Maybe she’d have a breakdown and go on disability. Maybe she could check into that Four Winds place that Hedda was at. She knew she’d get her colors back there. She clenched her fingers before they could shake. The balloon quivered and swelled.
Across the tiny table, Sheldon’s voice droned on. A good thing she wasn’t listening. His eyes flashed suddenly, and he reached out with chopsticks to snatch a bite of chicken from her plate. Usually, he hated to share food.
“Why’d you do that?” she asked.
“To get your attention. Because I’m hungry too and you didn’t offer to share.”
She looked down at her watch. “I have to get back soon.” That was a lie, but suddenly she didn’t want to spend any longer than she had to with him. But she was pinned behind this table.
“You used to want me to pay you attention. You clung to me. But now you’ve got this job. Now you don’t need me. You used me to get this job, and now you’re going to discard me just like all these bitches in my office who think they’re on the fast track. . .Do you think you’ll ever be able to handle a career and a relationship?”
“That’s not fair!” she was stung into replying against her better judgment. “You know how long I waited saying that it was all right for you to introduce me to your headhunter friend. You asked; I didn’t. I didn’t want to use you; you were special to me.”
“Were special?”