When they neared the end of those, Marilyn said they might as well have some more, since Herb was paying. She hadn’t checked out yet, and he would pick up the bill.
“Fuck it then,” Potter said. “Let’s celebrate.”
“Celebrate what?” she asked.
“Don’t ask what, ask how.”
“All right. How?”
“We’ll figure it out as we go along.”
Because it was to be a celebration, they started with champagne and caviar. Since Herb was paying.
The notion that Herb was paying served as an incentive.
Since they had such a hard time deciding what to have, Marilyn hit on the idea of simply ordering the most expensive item offered in each category of the menu, from appetizer to dessert.
And more champagne.
After the feast, with a fine bottle of brandy, they decided it was silly to go out into the night and fight their way to a cab and on to the next shuttle flight. Marilyn said in the past couple months she had learned there was nothing so depressing as catching a Sunday night shuttle flight back home. They decided to take an early one next morning. What the hell. Potter had already checked out of his hotel, but Marilyn had already stayed past check-out time and had told the desk she wasn’t sure when she was leaving, so the room in effect was paid for the night anyway. There was a double bed, with plenty of room for Potter.
But they didn’t need the extra space. For the first time since they had stopped being lovers they fucked, in a kind of spontaneous frenzy of anger and lust, mean and low-down and totally abandoned, hurting and liking it, saying no words, only making sudden squeals or grunts or moans or shouts, tearing and clawing and pumping and thrashing. It was like a “grudge fuck” only the grudge was not against the partner involved but against Herb, against all betrayal and loss and frustration, against the whole damn rest of the world.
On the plane going back the next morning, they were silent, and exhausted. They never spoke again of what happened that night. They were friends.
2
The faint hint of spring in the air at the end of February was only a temporary tease, and the day after Potter and Marilyn returned from New York, Boston was hit by a full-scale blizzard. Potter woke to an arctic scene outside his window. The cars parked up and down the block bumper-to-bumper, including his Mustang, were one solid chain of frozen silver humps. He didn’t even attempt to scrape and shovel his own car out, but literally bundled himself to the teeth, wrapping a woolen scarf around his mouth and nose, and set out in full winter regalia to go for supplies. He tromped back home from Mass Avenue with a half-gallon of Cutty Sark, a dozen eggs, a dozen knockwurst, a Sara Lee cheesecake, a jar of Maxim freeze-dried instant coffee, and a carton of Pall Malls. He felt secure and self-reliant, a plastic era pioneer.
Potter welcomed this early March regression to winter. It constituted a kind of postponement of a spring he was not looking forward to. It would bring, among other things, his thirty-fifth birthday. It would also bring decisions about his “future,” the very thought of which depressed him. He no longer saw “the future” as he once had in his mind’s eye as a vast road widening purposefully before him toward the horizon, but rather as a rocky, downhill path that dwindled darkly below, a not-very-smooth slide toward oblivion.
The blizzard allowed him to hibernate, which suited his mood. Classes were cancelled, traffic was stalled, and for several days Potter was able to burrow into his apartment, into himself, without feeling irresponsible, having the legitimate excuse of being a common victim of the elements just like his fellow citizens and neighbors. He read Shakespeare, took long hot baths, watched television, and felt himself recuperating from the ordeal he partly shared with Marilyn. If the whole thing had left him feeling beaten and bruised from what was mainly vicarious participation, he figured it must have laid Marilyn out flat, and he didn’t think he should even call her until she too had time to recuperate.
On the first day of warm sunshine and melting slush, Potter slogged his way to the subway and in to school, and arranged to stop by Marilyn’s for a drink when she got off work. Her own office had carried on with business much as usual during the storm, and Potter expected to find her bleary-eyed and distraught, depressed and down at the mouth.
Instead, he found her humming.
It surprised and even annoyed him a little. He hadn’t expected any sign of cheeriness and wondered if it wasn’t even … improper, somehow, her recovering so quickly from what was supposed to have been a major crisis. After dragging Potter down to New York and her dire dilemma with Herb, did she now consider the whole thing had only been a lark?
Humming indeed.
“What’s that?” he asked irritably.
“What’s what?” she said, her eyes large and fresh and blinking.
“What you’re humming.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yes, that.”
“Probably something from the new Cat Stevens album.”
“Cat who?”
“Cat Stevens.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“A singer. Singer-composer. You know—like your Judys and Jonis—except—”
She grinned gleefully, and said, “He’s a guy instead of a girl.”
“That’s swell.”
Potter got up to make himself a drink, since the usual pitcher of martinis was noticeably absent. “You want me to mix the martinis?” he asked.
“Oh, no. Not for me, anyway. I’m just fine.”
Potter made himself a Scotch and sat down, eyeing Marilyn suspiciously. “What’s up?” he asked.
“Hmmm? Why, nothing.”
She was rummaging around in her purse.
“Looking for a cigarette?” Potter asked.
He reached in his pocket and held a pack of Pall Malls toward her.
Marilyn giggled. “Not that kind,” she said.
Proudly, she pulled from her purse a rather bulkily-rolled joint.
“Oh, for godsake,” Potter said.
“I know you don’t think you like grass, but this is something special.”
“Oh, Jesus. I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s Acapulco Gold.”
“Not at all,” she said smugly. “Vermont Green.”
She lit the twisted end and it flared, almost singeing her eyelashes.
“For Christsake, be careful!” Potter shouted.
Marilyn coughed, patted herself on the chest, and opened her eyes, cautiously.
They were watering. She held out the joint to Potter.
Resigned, he took the damn thing and did his best to inhale. They passed it back and forth until it was too small for either of them to hold, and when Marilyn tried to stub it out she burned a finger and the roach dropped to the carpet, under the couch. Potter went after it, as if the goddamn thing were a live animal, which in fact it might as well have been. When he mashed it out he sat back up and had a long sip of his Scotch. Marilyn was sitting back smiling, her eyes closed, looking like St Teresa just prior to lift-off.
“You want a drink now?” Potter asked.
“I’m fine,” she said. Not opening her eyes.
Potter freshened his Scotch.
“Try to go with it,” Marilyn whispered, her eyes still closed, her voice unbearably mystic.
Potter lit a Pall Mall, deciding to wait out Marilyn’s trance.
When she finally stood up, opened her eyes, and got herself a drink, Potter felt he could talk to her again. Rationally.
“Where’d you get that goddamn stuff?” he asked.
“A friend,” she said coyly.
“Come off it. What’s going on?”
It turned out that Marilyn had seduced a cute hippie dropout boy who worked in the mailroom at her office, and he had given her the grass.
“What’s he like?” Potter asked.
“Beautiful,” Marilyn sighed, “and only nineteen.”
Potter felt a flush of anger rising, and then it just as suddenly subside
d as he saw that she was doing what he had so often done. She had simply gotten herself a young pretty one of the opposite sex to forget things with, no doubt providing an instructional and enlightening experience for him, too, in the process; hopefully a matter of mutual profit.
“Hey,” he said, “that sounds terrific. Your boyfriend.”
“It is,” she said. “Just what I need now. Mindless fucking.”
“Terrific. But now that you’re all set, what about me? Alone in the world.”
He expected friendly mockery, but instead Marilyn smiled, and gazed mysteriously at her glass.
“I’ve been thinking about that,” she said.
“You have? Tell me!”
Marilyn lit a cigarette, slowly, and took a long, dramatic drag, blowing a line of smoke at the ceiling. “What do you think of Southern girls?” she asked.
“As a rule, they smell good,” Potter said. “Also as a rule, they are not very bright, or they go to great lengths to pretend they’re not very bright. But they make up for that by this delicious odor they have. Per capita, they probably bathe more often than your average Northern or Western girl. Why do you ask?”
“There’s the Southernest girl you ever saw in my office. In accounting. She and her roommates are having a Sunday Brunch, and you know what they need for it, honey-chile? The lacking ingredient?”
“Let’s see—a sack of grits?”
“No. They have plenty of that.”
“What do they need, then?”
Marilyn smiled. “Men.”
“Aha.”
“Do you volunteer?”
“It’s the least I can do.”
“OK, but try to behave. These are delicate flowers.”
“Of course. I’ll do anything you want.”
Marilyn smiled. “Try not to let your nostrils flare,” she said.
Potter had thought that Marilyn would take him to the Southern Girls’ Sunday Brunch, but she said she preferred to stay home and smoke grass and fuck her new hippie dropout boyfriend, so Potter had a bracing Bloody Mary for breakfast and set out all by himself.
The Southern Girls’ Sunday Brunch was at a large, sunny apartment on Mt. Vernon Street. The “good side” of Beacon Hill. It must have been expensive as hell. The place was beautifully furnished, and there were lots of plush pillows and cushions all over the place. The apartment had two bedrooms, and was shared by four girls.
Amelia, Lilly, Samantha, and Pru.
It sounded like a garden. Potter wondered which flower to pick.
The four roommates were all from Georgia. There were also girls at the party from Virginia, Alabama, and North Carolina. They seemed to have banded together in the cold, foreign clime of Boston according to their states of origin, rather like the Puerto Ricans who settled in New York with people who hailed from the same hometown on the island.
Only one man at the party was an identifiable Southerner, an insurance man from Savannah. None seemed to be native Bostonians. They were the usual male Singles crowd that is almost interchangeable in any large city, former fraternity types grown into accountants and bankers, realtors and lawyers, ad men and department store buyers, not really rooted anywhere, looking for the action, saving their money for orange Porsches and mirrored bedrooms, subscribers to Playboy who ski and scuba-dive according to season, have their own home wine-making kits and hang their college diplomas in the room they refer to as The John. Many of them belonged to churches, few had abandoned their faith in God, and most believed secretly that if they lived a reasonably honest and hard-working life they would go to Swinging London when they died.
The brunch featured marvelous homemade biscuits laden with hot butter and thick preserves. There was also scrambled eggs, ham, and fried apples. There were weak Bloody Marys and strong coffee. Potter snuck into the kitchen hoping to perk up his coffee with a secret shot of whiskey, but finding none, resorted to sousing it with cooking sherry.
One of the Georgia Peaches caught him. The tall one, with thick brown hair the color of molasses. Large chocolate-y eyes. Cherry red lips, moist and sweet-looking, as if they might be sugar-coated. She smelled of marmalade and honeysuckle.
“Mistah Potter!”
“Oh, I was just—”
“Heah,” she said, extracting the coffee cup from his hand and pouring it down the sink.
Oh, God, he thought, I have sinned and been seen. I will be given a lecture and asked to leave. All of Boston’s Southern society will scorn me. Magnolias will close when I pass. Honey will harden at my touch, and biscuits will burn in outrage.
But the sweet peach only smiled, her perfect teeth gleaming in friendly glory, and said, “That stuff’ll curdle a man’s stomach.”
“Well, I just—”
“You just thought you wanted a good, stiff drink, and if that’s what you want you should have one. Now heah.”
She stretched to reach a high cabinet, and pulled down a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label.
“You just pour some of this over a little ice, and enjoy yuh-seff.”
She whispered it, conspiratorially, as if such pleasure and privilege were reserved for him alone.
“Hey, thanks. That’s great. No kidding.”
Her head tilted, her lips made a pout, and she said, gently cooing, “Honey, a man should have what he wants.”
A tingling sensation swept over the surface of Potter’s whole body.
That night, he dreamed of molasses.
“So you liked Amelia?” Marilyn asked.
That was the one who had caught him in the kitchen. Amelia.
She was the one he had picked, of the four roommates.
Pru was too much like her name; tight-lipped and careful.
Samantha seemed prone to eating too many biscuits; she wasn’t quite yet an out-and-out fatty, but a couple of extra pralines would do the trick.
Lilly was quiet, fragile, and her eyes were sad.
He might well have gone for Lilly, though, or the dark, husky-voiced Alabama girl, or the bouncy little lollipop from North Carolina, but it was Amelia’s act of mercy in the kitchen that he couldn’t forget, and the way her big brown eyes fixed on him when she said, “Honey, a man should have what he wants.”
A world of honeyed comfort seemed promised in the phrase.
Marilyn, pouring a second martini, asked that most unanswerable of questions. “What do you see in her?”
“Molasses,” Potter said.
“Molasses?”
“Don’t you think her hair is like that? Brown and rich and thick?”
“Oh, fuck,” said Marilyn.
Amelia would never say that, Potter thought warmly. She is a lady.
He smiled. “You asked what I see in her,” he said. “I guess I see—everything I’d like to imagine.”
Marilyn sighed, shook her head, and took a drink.
“Do you understand what I mean?” Potter asked.
“Molasses,” said Marilyn.
Potter splurged.
On his first date with Amelia, he took her to Locke Obers. Just because it was supposed to be the best, the most chic, expensive, grandest place in all of Boston. He knew that with many girls that might blow the whole thing, make them suspicious or contemptuous of his showing off, or coolly reserved in knowing they already had the upper hand because he was going all out.
But Amelia loved it, exclaimed over each choice on the menu, spoke of food and of Living Well. Her molasses hair was clean and shimmering.
When he took her home, she apologized for not being able to ask him in, and allowed him a swift, sweet kiss good night.
The next day he sent her yellow roses.
3
Potter sent Amelia more roses, which she absolutely adored, and took her to lunch at Joseph’s, which she praised for its elegance. They held hands, and pressed their cheeks together in public. When Potter came to call, Amelia’s roommates grew giggly and pink-faced, like sisters in some turn-of-the-century family who realized the new
gentleman caller was a serious beau.
Potter’s feeling of enchantment and generosity toward Amelia overflowed into other areas of his life, and he made a private declaration of amnesty to all those people he was or had been mad at. He called Marva Bertelsen, mentioning nothing of their past unpleasantness, and said he had a marvelous new girlfriend he was anxious for her and Max to meet. He knew Marva wouldn’t be able to resist a close-up look at the new woman in his life, and, as he expected, she invited them to dinner. Potter was pleased, for in addition to his altruistic feelings of forgiveness, he secretly suspected that Amelia would be most impressed with his fancy friends the Bertelsens and their classy town-house on Louisburg Square.
He was right. Amelia thought the place a palace, raved about Marva’s impeccable taste, went unerringly to the most precious antique pieces with knowledgeable appreciation, and praised Max’s study as being as warm and charming as Max was himself. Potter sat back basking in her glow. He realized that one of the factors enabling him to resume friendly relations with the Bertelsens was having a new girlfriend he knew they would approve, and who made him feel safe in this or any other potentially ticklish social situation not only because she was gracious and diplomatic but because she gave Potter the sense that she was with him, would be on his side in any argument or attack, would support his own cause and protect his best interests. Potter found these qualities especially comforting since his old rival as the Bertelsens’ most available bachelor, Hartley Stanhope, was also at the dinner, with a rather mousy and colorless lady who worked as a researcher in Stanhope’s firm. Stanhope asked Potter about his teaching at “that little college of yours, I can never remember the name,” and when Amelia spoke up brightly about how fascinatin’ she thought Potter’s courses sounded, Stanhope attempted to Southern-bait her with some heavy-handed questions about Nixon administration policy on school de-segregation. Amelia parried politely by expressing pride in “how much has been done down home, even though so much more remains to be done—just as it does up heah, I understand. Though I understand your Mrs. Hicks feels things have gone too far already?”
“She’s not my Mrs. Hicks,” Stanhope grumbled.
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