Starting Over

by Dan Wakefield

  Potter waited.

  “The thing of it is,” Gafferty said, “I’d like to use your apartment sometime.”

  “My apartment?”

  “Sometime, that is, when you wouldn’t ordinarily be there. I mean, I don’t want you to have to go out and sit in some bar just on my account, but if there’s some particular time, an hour or so, when you wouldn’t be being there anyway and it wouldn’t be inconveniencing anything for me to—uh, have the use of it, at such a time.”

  “Hell, man, you can use my apartment any time you want. You know, it isn’t any luxury pad or anything, it’s just an ordinary apartment. It’s a mess most of the time, but Christ, yes, of course you can use it.”

  “No luxury?” Gafferty laughed. “Ah, man, it’ll be luxury indeed compared to the little office I have at Gilpen, with the door locked but people passing by it down the hall and occasionally someone pounding and pressing their face against the frosted glass, trying to squint through it. Luxury? Ah, I presume you’ve some kind of bed, and even a pallet on the floor is luxury compared with the cold steel desk.”

  “Desk?” Potter asked, not getting the picture, “you sleep on your desk?”

  He imagined poor Gafferty, exhausted from staying up till all hours doing battle with his thesis, maybe from waking in the night to the bawling of little kids, rising at dawn to drive in to Boston, teaching his classes, counselling his students, preparing lectures, grading tests, and finally, sapped of all strength and lightheaded from lack of sleep, sprawling over the hard, unyielding surface of his long grey desk, dozing off fitfully, only to be jolted awake by the pounding fists of impatient students.

  “Not sleep, exactly,” Gafferty said. “Ah, Phil, you see, the matter is—damnit, man, I’ve a girl.”

  Potter sat for a moment with his mouth dumbly open, and then started laughing, not at Gafferty or the news that he had a girlfriend, but at his own obtuseness. A grown man asks to use his apartment and he thinks the poor bastard wants to take a nap.

  “Sure, I know, it’s a comical thing, a man in my circumstances, mind you I don’t want to change my circumstances, but—”

  “No, no, I’m not laughing at you. It’s me. I’m a fool.”

  “Nothing of it, you only assumed that I was happy with my wife and family, and mind you, that is a correct assumption, I love them all, wife and kids, but after a time—”

  “Jesus, man. You don’t have to explain. Or least of all, apologize. Listen, you can use my place whenever you want.”

  “Oh, it’s a hell of a thing to ask, I know, but I can’t afford the price of a proper hotel room, and my girl—well, she lives with her parents. More’s the shame. A student, of course. The old, old story. Me the dirty old man, you know, the leering professor, and a young girl—”

  “Cut it out,” said Potter. “If you want to confess, see a Priest. Jesus. You’re only human.”

  “There’s those that would think otherwise,” Gafferty said, scratching madly at his head in a kind of anguish.

  “Fuck them. Listen. You can use my place whenever you want. Just let me know in advance. Sometimes I spend the night at Marilyn’s, and you could stay all night at my place. Or even—hey!”

  “What?”

  “Marilyn’s going away for the weekend. She’ll probably leave me the key, and I can stay at her place. You could have my apartment for the weekend.”

  “Weekend,” Gafferty whispered. “My God, man, that’s an eternity.”

  Potter smiled, happy to have the power to grant such a miracle to a friend. “It’s yours,” he said.

  Marilyn told her boss that her mother was ill in Florida and got a four-day weekend from her office so she could fly to the Virgin Islands for the tryst with her new married man shrink-lover. Potter went shopping with her and picked out a new bikini that Marilyn thought was outrageous but which he assured her was just the ticket. He also advised that she get a pair of tiny-heeled black mules with dainty puffs of feather on the toes.

  “Why do I have to have them?” she asked.

  “Because,” said Potter, “you can’t go slinking around the bedroom in your old red sweatsocks.”

  “OK, if you say so.”

  “I say so.”

  Potter took her to the airport, and they arrived early enough to have a drink before boarding time.

  Marilyn ordered an extra dry martini straight up, and some of the mercury-colored liquid drooled out over the rim of the long-stemmed glass as she brought it, trembling, to her lips.

  “Relax,” Potter said. “Be cool.”

  “I’m a nervous wreck.”

  “Well, then you’ll wreck the whole thing. Try to see it as a wild time, leading to nothing else. A thing in itself. Then it will possibly lead to more. If you go down thinking about Future Plans, you’ll blow the whole thing.”

  “OK. I know.”

  “And you’ve got to stop shaking.”

  “I know—oh, shit!” she grabbed for her purse, and started thrashing frantically through its contents.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot your pills.”

  “Not those pills, damnit. My Valium.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Suddenly she plucked a small bottle out, clutching it gratefully. “Thank God,” she said.

  Potter smiled. “Now you’ll be tranquil.”

  She unscrewed the top of the bottle, slipped a small yellow tablet onto her tongue, and swallowed.

  “Don’t worry,” said Potter. “You’ll knock ’im dead.”

  “Well,” said Marilyn, “I don’t want that. Let’s just say—delirious.”

  “Atta way, babe. Now you’re getting it.”

  “You think?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Under the table, he crossed his fingers for her.

  Potter got up early the next morning, put out the garbage, washed the dishes, straightened up the worst of the debris, and put clean sheets on the bed. He hadn’t spent as much time tidying up the apartment since the Sunday he had Marilyn over for the omelettes. He felt almost as much anticipatory pleasure in the thought of Gafferty’s illicit weekend there as if it were an affair of his own.

  He had packed a small valise to take to Marilyn’s apartment for the weekend, where he had no plans more passionate than grading the final tests of his two Communications classes. He had no dates or invitations to dinners or parties, and decided it would be a good time to get the grading out of the way. He also promised himself he would do a better job on the finals than he did on midterms, which he graded far into the evening while drinking, later realizing that scores and comments grew higher in proportion to the higher he became himself. This time he vowed every paper would be graded under the same harsh and equal stimulus of hot black coffee.

  He drove into Gilpen to pick up the blue books he had stacked on the desk in his office, and, while retrieving them, he suddenly laughed out loud, thinking of Gafferty and the girl humping away on one of those desks. He started stuffing the blue books into his valise, giggling to himself, imagining the face of Dean Guy M. Hardy, Jr., if he were to ever walk in on such a scene, when suddenly, in mid-giggle, Potter stopped, frozen. A new and horrendous thought flared in his mind.

  What if on just such a desk as this the dastardly cad Gafferty had been humping away on one of Potter’s own favorite students, one of those special girls for whom he felt a mixture of nobly subdued lust and virtuous protectiveness? Gafferty had only said the girl was a student, he hadn’t said what student.

  What if Gafferty was fucking Miss Korsky? The innocent Rosemary Korsky! Or maybe Miss Linnett, Amanda Linnett, the wispy, ethereal, fragile, long-haired blonde who made his second Communications section a joy to instruct on the scattered occasions when she chose to attend? What if, even now, that dirty old man Gafferty was mounting one of those angels of Potter’s imagination, on the clean sheets of Potter’s own bed? He felt his cheeks burning, and his heart knocked against his chest like a Nazi pounding on a victim’s door.

&
nbsp; Potter slumped down in his chair, pulled open the bottom desk drawer and grabbed the pint of Scotch, put it to his mouth with trembling hands and gulped a fiery swig. He breathed out, belched, and slammed the bottle on the top of the desk.

  Gafferty, you sonofabitch.

  At school Monday, Gafferty looked wan but glowing, like a man who has come back tired but happy from a strenuous vacation. Potter had gone back to his apartment late Sunday night and found the key under the mat, as prearranged. There were no traces of Gafferty’s frolic with his student lover, except for a certain scent to the sheets, a musky kind of perfume. After Potter’s first Communications section Miss Korsky had come up to ask him a question and he found himself leaning close to her and inhaling deeply, seeing if possibly the scent of the sheets matched her own, but he couldn’t really tell. In his second section, he looked for Miss Linnett with more eagerness than usual, but she didn’t appear. He wondered if perhaps she had been so exhausted from a weekend of sexual cavorting with Gafferty that she couldn’t drag herself to class. But her absence probably meant nothing, she cut classes so often.

  Potter had hoped to have a drink alone with Gafferty and perhaps pick up some clue to the identity of his girlfriend, but just as they were debating where to go Ed Shell trapped them again, and it was impossible this time to slough him off without permanently injuring his feelings.

  Gafferty drove them into Cambridge and at Shell’s suggestion they went to Cronin’s, an old-style collegiate bar-restaurant, the type with fading pennants on the wall. Potter found it depressing, but kept his mouth shut. Shell related a complex story about one of his scripts that might get financial backing from a group of young bankers in Tallahassee, Florida, who wanted to get into movie production, but Potter just nodded, all the time catching glimpses of Gafferty’s face, trying to read something in it. Finally, Shell excused himself to go take a piss, and Potter asked quickly, “How was the weekend?”

  “Glorious,” Gafferty said, rolling the word around as if tasting it. “Glorious.”

  “The place was OK? You find everything you needed?”

  Gafferty joined the thumb and forefinger of his right hand into the “OK” sign, and twisted his face into a gigantic wink.

  You lecherous bastard, Potter thought.

  “Terrific,” he said. “Listen, anytime you and—uh—your girl—”

  He let that hang for a moment, in the slim hope that Gafferty would fill in her name, but the red-faced old fucker just kept staring at Potter with his shit-eating grin, so Potter continued, pretending he hadn’t intended at all to worm out the girl’s identity: “Anytime you and she want to use the place, just give me a little notice.”

  “You’re a friend in need, for sure, man.”

  Potter was tempted to just blurt out the question—who the hell is it, what’s the name of this student you’ve been fucking on your office desk and in my own bed—but part of his personal code of honor dictated that you didn’t ask people such things, whether they were men or women, you didn’t pry into matters that were not your business unless the other person volunteered the information. If he came right out and asked he’d be as bad as Marva Bertelsen.

  Shell returned, and asked if Potter and Gafferty would like to come with him to a meeting of what he implied was a small, elite, highly intellectual group of film buffs who met at one of the Harvard houses on Monday nights and watched a private screening of a movie that they then discussed. Gafferty said he had to be home for dinner or there’d be a big commotion, and he gave a secret, knowing look to Potter. Potter gave a quick wink back, as if in chummy collaborative approval.

  Marilyn wouldn’t be getting in till the next day, and since he had nothing on for the evening Potter said he’d go with Shell to the film buff meeting. Potter asked if it was all right to stop in Harvard Square so he could pick up a bottle of Scotch to take along, if the buffs wouldn’t mind that.

  “Sure, anything you like. It’s all very casual.”

  The more that Shell stressed the casual nature of the thing, the more Potter realized what a big deal it was for him. Just getting together with some of the gang over at Harvard. What ho. Jolly good. Nothing to it.

  Potter bought a fifth of Black and White, which he’d contribute to the group. He didn’t like seeing any kind of movie without being able to have a drink in his hand, and alcohol became all the more imperative if he was to sit through one of those arty jobs, probably foreign with subtitles or foreign and dubbed and all out of synch.

  Much to his surprise, the movie being shown was an American comedy of the 1930s with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn. He and Shell arrived just after it had started, and sat down on the floor near the door. There were about a dozen people in the room, some on chairs or a couch, a few others cross-legged on the floor. Potter slipped into the kitchen, which fortunately was lighted, and made his necessary drink.

  The plot of the movie revolved around a leopard, called Baby. It was quite funny, and the intellectual audience guffawed and snickered and giggled just like a regular Saturday Matinee crowd at the Bijou. When the lights went on there was even a bowl of popcorn passed around, and beers were flipped open.

  Potter soon learned, however, that this seeming light comedy bore historical and artistic implications far beyond its humor and entertainment value. It was Bringing Up Baby, directed by Howard Hawks, who had been rediscovered as one of the foremost directors. Hawks was heavy now, and his films thus merited the kind of dissection and analysis that literary critics lavished on the Duino Elegies. Lighting was discussed, and camera angles, editing, sound effects, dialogue. There was even a heated debate over whether the two leopards in the movie were played by the same leopard, or by different leopards. The leopard or leopards came in for praise, and someone realized that it was probably the trainer who deserved the credit for the leopard performance.

  “I wonder,” someone asked, “when the first animal trainer came to Hollywood.”

  “That would be a fascinating line of research,” said the host, a guy named Chip Strider, who was Senior Tutor of this particular Harvard house.

  Potter could envision it: a whole Ph.D. thesis on the first animal trainer who came to Hollywood, and his influence on the art of the film. Potter had consumed three good Scotches, and he could not resist raising his hand.

  “Actually,” he said, “the first animal trainer who came to Hollywood was Joseph R. Scrotz, a Russian émigré.”

  All heads turned toward him, in respectful attention. He couldn’t just say “Hey, fellas, I was only kidding.” He had to carry it on.

  “Scrotz,” he said, “had worked throughout Europe with the old Budapest Circus, but came to this country for political reasons after the 1917 Revolution, and signed with Ringling Brothers. He was retained by Von Stroheim to work on a silent version of Kipling’s Mowgli, which was never released, but his value was obvious and he stayed on with the old Mecca studio.”

  Ed Shell was surprised, and the others were impressed by Potter’s apparent familiarity with arcane film history. Chip Strider said he must come to dinner at the House sometime.

  When Marilyn returned from her Virgin Island idyll, she was nicely tanned, and perceptibly radiant—more so than Potter had ever seen her. She gave him a hug, and a bottle of Appleton Brothers Rum. “Herb said this was the best,” she explained.

  “It must be then. Here—let’s break it open. From the way you look, we can celebrate.”

  They settled down on her couch with the rum Herb said was the best, and Marilyn purred her account of the wonderful beach house where they stayed in St. Thomas, the gourmet meals in town, the moonlight walks at the edge of the surf, frozen daiquiris for breakfast, fucking that matched the mood and the scenery, hand-in-hand rapport, sharing the same kind of humor and pleasures, swimming in the waves, peaceful silences, watching the great liners dock on their winter cruises.

  “But that wasn’t the best thing,” she said.

  “Oh?”

  Mar
ilyn grinned, poked a finger in her drink, and rolled her tongue on it, licking at the rum. “He mentioned it,” she said. “I never brought it up. He did.”

  “It?”

  “Marriage.”

  “He asked you to marry him?”

  “I didn’t say that. I said he brought it up. Marriage.”

  “How do you mean, ‘brought it up’? In general? A discourse on the future of the institution?”

  “He said he’d give anything to be able to marry me.”

  “He might have to, when he’s finished with alimony and child support.”

  “He’s aware of all that. It will be difficult, naturally. It will take some doing. And, of course, some time.”

  “Of course. Did he say how much?”

  “You said I shouldn’t press him. I just let him talk.”

  “OK, fine. When do you see him again?”

  “Next weekend.”

  “How? Where?”

  “He wants me to come down to New York. He’ll get me a hotel room, and be there with me as often as he can get away, without anything looking suspicious.”

  “Mmmm. He’s footing the bill, of course.”

  Marilyn stretched, smiled, and said, “Of course.”

  “Mmmm,” Potter said. “So far, so good.”

  “No,” she said. “So marvelous.”

  “I stand corrected.”

  “Phil?”

  “Yes?”

  “What do you think my chances are? Realistically?”

  “Goddamn it, I’m not Jimmy the Greek and I’m not making odds on people’s lives!”

  His anger was not so much because of the question as because of his fear that the odds on Marilyn’s dream would not be reassuringly high.

  3

  “The odds are,” Gafferty said, “that the first party is for the losers, guys like me who don’t have their Ph.D.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Potter said, “Ed and I are invited to the second party and neither of us have our Ph.D.”