“Is that a Rolex?” she asked, leaning closer to look. “Can I see?”
Gratified to feel her move closer, Bill raised his left arm for her to see the wristwatch. She pulled his wrist nearer to get a better view.
His head became rather light when she touched him, but he managed to say, “This thing? Nah. This isn’t a Rolex. I got it on the street. Talked the guy down ten dollars. Only had to pay forty.”
She let go of his wrist and sat back in her seat. Rich people can be eccentric, she thought, and they can take pride in wearing cheap clothes, bargain wristbands, and hair disasters. But to her, it seemed less and less likely that Bill was well-off. Yet he did seem rather eccentric, or maybe that was how poverty made him appear. She had to find out whether he was rich or poor. Rich and poor men could act the same, she had seen, but she had to know for sure. Her self-interest was at stake. “You must have lots of investments,” she suggested, encouragingly.
“No. Not really. The ex-wife got most of what I had,” he admitted. “The divorce judge liked her. Thought she was the victim. It didn’t matter what I said. Every time I opened my mouth, the judge just gave her more and more. I learned why people say justice is blind. I learned that very well. It’s blind, deaf, and dumb.” Bill was happy to tell Tanya all the details, because of the interest she was showing in him, which he thought flowed from her swelling affection for him and naïve understanding of how the world operated. He was going to tell the cuddly, little kitten all she wanted to know.
“Do you have a big house?” Tanya asked. Her interest in hearing what he had to say was noticeably waning.
“No, I live in an apartment.”
“Which you own?” she wondered.
“I rent. Nothing to worry about as a renter. The person above me comes in late at night, sometimes wakes me up with his stomping, but that’s the only problem. Maybe if I wrote the person a note, the noise would stop. Now, I throw my shoes at the ceiling, and nothing happens.”
“Is it a two- or three-bedroom?”
“It’s a studio, a big studio. There’s a lot of closet space and a full-size kitchen. It’s nice. Very clean, very tidy. The place feels very spacious. You would like it.” Because Bill was conscious that living in a studio was always viewed as a weak point, he felt compelled to embellish the truth a little. As he well knew, contrary to what he implied, the apartment was rarely in the state that it was at the moment. With time, it would return to its typical dirtiness and disorganization. However, what he said wasn’t a lie, only an embellishment of what he thought would please Tanya and help clinch his courtship of her.
She, however, had become quite disillusioned. In the catalog of his net worth, which she was recording in her mind, there were no assets yet. A clean and tidy studio didn’t even reckon into her accounting, except as a negative outflow. In her native country, such an apartment might be a prized place to live in, but she wasn’t in her native country, and she didn’t want to go back there. She had to find out if he had any income and what that amounted to. What other reason, she asked herself, did she have for talking to him?
Without blinking, she looked directly at him and bluntly asked, “How much do you make?”
Bill was bewildered by this question. He paused. His hands dropped to his lap, and he looked at her, as if he saw her for the first time. He thought he had been leading this beautiful, young woman into the wonderful land of romance, where men and women lose themselves in mists of enjoyment, leaving their petty cares behind. He had already been thinking of what gifts—economical, of course—he might buy her and what nice, semi-expensive restaurants they might go to. He was hoping that she would like to swing dance, because he wanted to go dancing with her. But all his thoughts and hopes were rudely halted by her sudden inquiry. In those five words, he heard echoes of Linda, his ex-wife, and many other women he had dated. How could Tanya, who surpassed them all in youth and beauty, be so crass as to say something so typical? It had never crossed his mind to ask her the same question. In his worldview, first came love and way after that came the financial details.
“Isn’t it a little soon to ask that?” he replied. “We just met.”
An awkwardness ensued, as the stark difference in their point of views and the conviction each had that the other’s position was false made retreating to a neutral subject of conversation difficult. Tanya thought Bill was a ridiculous simpleton, if he imagined she would be interested in any man without a lot of money. He thought her a voracious harpy, if love wasn’t enough to make her content. There were periods of silences and scattered bits of dialogue, before he was able to start their chat flowing steadily again. She never showed as much interest in him or what he had to say, as she had at first. But by the time the train arrived at his station stop—she had further to go—he had the impression that their acquaintance was as strong as ever, and she would be calling him soon. A little doubt nagged at him, telling him she would not call, but his hope and willingness to believe that she would were far greater. He drove home from the station parking lot, making plans for their next happy meeting.
When the train left his station, she, on the other hand, picked up her overnight bag and walked into the next car, looking for a more eligible suitor. She didn’t give Bill another thought. As she moved between the cars, she raised her skirt a little.
Chapter 14
Later that evening, Helen was knocking on Bill’s apartment door. In one hand, she held a bottle of codeine. There was no response to her knocking. After waiting a few moments, she knocked more loudly.
“Bill, I know you’re in there,” she declared, raising her voice. The sound of her words filled the hallway. “Jonathan at the front desk told me that you had come home.”
After a short pause, Bill, who was peeking through the peephole, replied, “What do you want?” He had been daydreaming about Tanya before Helen knocked on his door, and the reality of who was at his doorstep disappointed him.
“Open the door,” she said. “I have something for you.”
He opened the door just enough for her to see his face. “What is it?” he asked brusquely, without any greeting or smile.
“Can you open the door more? You know who I am.”
He complied with her request reluctantly and opened the door all the way, placing one of his feet in front of it to keep it from closing. He was still dressed in his work clothes, a polo shirt and khakis. She also wore a polo shirt, which was of a finer material than his, and Capri pants. The colors of her outfit brought to mind blue sky, soft clouds, and the bright sun of early summer, while his clothing suggested a sale table of merchandise from past seasons, marked with further reductions.
“What is it?” he repeated.
“How are you feeling, Bill? Is your back better? Did you take enough time to recuperate before going back to work? I know you’re a hard worker and like your job, but back injuries are serious. It takes time to heal.”
“I’m fine,” he answered.
“You said that even when you couldn’t move. I hope you’re better.”
“I am. Thank you,” he said, without sounding at all thankful. “Was there some reason for your visit? I have things to do.”
“Yes. I brought another bottle of codeine for you. I told my doctor a little lie, so he would write a prescription. I said I pulled a muscle. I think he knew it was a lie, because I didn’t act hurt enough, but doctors always want you to leave so fast. I think he gave me what I wanted just to get rid of me. Here, you can have it.” She held out the bottle to him.
“Thanks, but I don’t need it. Was there anything else?”
She lowered her hand. “Are you sure? Jonathan at the front desk says you can hardly walk...”
“I’m fine.”
“That’s not what he says. He says you asked if there was a wheelchair...”
“That was days ago. I’m fine now.”
“He said you couldn’t even think of going to the gym your back hurt so much.”
&nb
sp; “Well, the pain’s gone now. I’m fine.”
“Back pain can last a long time and recur almost instantly, without any apparent cause,” she warned.
“OK. I’ll take it,” he agreed at last, having exhausted all of his flimsy, false excuses. His back still hurt, and his discomfort was evident in his posture and face, especially to someone like Helen, who had known him for a long time.
She held out the bottle, and he grabbed it. “Thanks,” he said, receding into his apartment and preparing to let the door close. Before he moved his foot, Helen inserted herself in his doorway, placing one hand against the door to prop it open.
“I made lasagna tonight,” she said, inviting him with a smile. “Would you like to come to my place and have some? I was thinking that you might want a ready-made meal to save yourself the hassle of cooking, although I know now that you’re fine and don’t have any back pain.” The last part of her invitation was ironical, and she delivered it like a comedian.
Despite himself, he was amused by her mockery of him, and his mood lightened. Lasagna sounded like a good dinner to him, much better than all of the rice dishes he ate, when he had gone out with Linda, even the spicy dishes, which he liked. But all he could think of was Tanya, how young and beautiful she was and how lucky, how glad he was to have met her. He was incapable of pushing his heady infatuation of her to the side for a solid, filling meal with Helen, whom he knew from previous occasions, when George was still alive, to be an excellent cook. Bill had set his sights on Tanya. He was like a deranged traveler, dying of thirst in a desert, who believes the distant mirage of a lake to be real. Nothing was going to distract him from his goal, no matter how substantial the alternative might be.
“I...I,” he said, hesitating, while his stomach grumbled loud enough for both of them to hear. “I have some work to do. There’s a project deadline tomorrow that I have to meet. Being out of the office put me behind.” Although both had heard the grumbling of his stomach, Bill stood there pretending as if he hadn’t.
“Tomorrow is Saturday,” she pointed out.
“I mean Monday. The project is due first thing Monday morning. I have to work all weekend to make the deadline. It’s a really big project.”
She looked at him as if his head had sprouted ears and a long nose to complement the multi-colored hairs on top. He was obviously inventing a story, and it wasn’t an interesting one or a believable one. “You have to eat, don’t you?” She said, as if he was four-years-old.
“I’ll probably just throw a frozen dinner in the microwave,” he replied. That didn’t appear to be an appetizing option to him, and Helen knew it.
Since further conversation with him about dinner seemed futile, she decided to forego more back and forth and have her delicious lasagna alone. “Come over another time then,” she encouraged. “I’m still in the habit of making meals for two. I won’t make you clean the dishes either.” She moved out of his doorway back into the hall.
“Thanks for the invitation. I’ll think about it,” Bill answered. Of course, he wasn’t going to do that. There was only one thing he was going to think about at the moment and in the foreseeable future, and that was Tanya. To her his thoughts turned, as he shut his door.
All weekend, he feverishly thought and dreamed of Tanya. He relived the train ride with her over and over in his mind, erasing the awkward moments, and dwelling upon the magical ones: How she had sat next to him, how young she was, how hot she looked in her skimpy clothes, how she laughed at his jokes, how she had grabbed his wrist without shyness or embarrassment, how she had promised to call. He repeated snatches of their dialogue—of course improving and refining what they had said to each other—until the meeting took on the clarity, delicacy, and wonder of a fairy tale. In his fantasy, he became a kind of battered knight, someone worn down to a low physical and emotional state from terrible battles with ogres, giants, and dragons—creatures that bore a strong resemblance to his previous girlfriends—while she was a lost, wandering princess without a defender, fearful of what the future held for her. From each other they grew strong again, able to face any adversity.
Bill was troubled when Tanya did not call on Saturday or Sunday to arrange another meeting. That seemed to suggest a certain lightness in her regard for him, which he found hard to accept. It caused him a great deal of agony. But he excused her when he came to the realization that since she was visiting relatives for the weekend, her time might be fully occupied. As much as she might want to call him—and he was nearly positively sure that she did—she had previous obligations to attend to, which prevented her from reaching out to him.
To his further chagrin, he stumbled upon another idea in his obsessive mental concentration that was thoroughly unpleasant. Not only was she unable to call him on the weekend, he thought her female sensitivity might prevent her from calling him until late next week, for example, on Tuesday. He thought she might do this, so that in her eyes she would not appear to be an easy woman. Bill had encountered this female trait before and detested it. He thought it was part of their craziness. Why couldn’t the women he liked show the same, spontaneous interest in him that he expressed in them? Why did they always make a relationship so difficult? He became peeved at Tanya because she seemed to be acting like a typical woman, but he forgave her every fault when he thought of her youth and beauty. Those overpowered any other consideration. He was certain he was in love, because he couldn’t think of anything else, except her.
He decided that he needed to impress her with the size of his affection by spending a large amount of money on her. Battling hard with his cheapskate character, he began to compile a list of the top-rated restaurants in Manhattan for her to choose from. He would not put any limit upon her choice. He might have to loosen his tie and start taking deep breaths when the check came, but she deserved the very best meal in the city. She would remember and return his generosity as best she could, he was sure. He even went so far as to investigate luxurious hotels in San Francisco. He had once heard that that was the city couples in love went to. He didn’t know why. He had never been there. But he and Tanya were in love, he knew it, even if it was still an early stage. That was where they should go, even if it cost him more than he could bear to think about.
Chapter 15
On Wednesday of the next week, Bill met Stan for lunch. Usually, a month or two would pass before they would get together again, but Bill had something so important to communicate that he couldn’t wait that long. In fact, he was so eager to talk to Stan, he offered to pay for lunch. That wasn’t much of an enticement for Stan, because Bill wanted to go back to the Chinese lunch buffet, where they had eaten the last time. But Stan was glad to see his friend, and there was time in his schedule to meet. Returning to the same cafeteria-style restaurant appealed to Bill, because he was determined to receive the five-dollar lunch special this time. He wouldn’t make the mistake—costly in his mind—that he had made before.
With Stan, Bill thought he would have the most sympathetic audience for what he wanted to say. Bill felt his life was at a turning point, and he wanted to share the good news and hear someone else, anyone else, affirm that what he had persuaded himself to be true was indeed true. He had been at similar turning points before, but this time he was convinced that there would be a romantic revolution in his single state and a union of two in his future. Ever since his Friday commute home, he had been telling people of his surprise encounter on the train and how much impact it was going to have on his life.
The first person he had told was Jonathan at the apartment building. From the train station, Bill had sped home in his car, hurried across the parking lot, and streaked through the lobby. Panting from all of his haste, he broke the news, leaning over the front desk in close proximity to Jonathan’s face. Jonathan hardly looked up from his cell phone game. “That’s nice,” he said, when Bill finished. “She sounds cute.” Jonathan had heard too many of Bill’s amorous hopes before to think that this one had any more substa
nce than the rest.
The apartment building manager and janitor, whom Bill saw on Saturday by chance, reacted in the same way. They barely paused in their work to listen. There were a few residents in the building that Bill was familiar with, whom he thought might congratulate him and wish him well, but the ones he saw responded with polite coldness. They knew enough about him to restrain their belief when he said anything about women. “How interesting,” one of them said, much like the others. “I guess a train ride can take you places you never imagined.”
To Helen, he didn’t say a word about the momentous event that had occurred. Why would he? He avoided communication with her. He had no use for her. She found out about it, however, from Jonathan and another resident. “Bill’s at it again,” they said. “Says he found a real trophy this time.”
“I wonder what his trophy found in him,” she replied. No one could tell her that.
Normally, Bill would not share with his sister Marie any tidings about a woman until he had gone on at least one date, but this time was different. The future was certain in his mind, and he had to spread the happiness around.
Marie was smoking when he called. “You don’t want to come over here and eat again, do you?” she rasped. “There’s nothing here to eat, unless you’re going to pick up something and bring it.”
“No, I’m not coming over,” he said with a surge of joy in his voice, which immediately aroused her suspicion.
“Why not? Something wrong? Wait, don’t tell me. You found another woman.”
“I did, sis. How’d you guess?” Bill shouted in surprise. He was happy, as if he was a child again with a couple of cookies.
“I’m psychic,” she deadpanned. “And don’t call me sis. I hate it.” Bill could not say anything to persuade her that this time would turn out differently.
The lukewarm to frigid reception Bill received from his listeners over the weekend, when he related his life-changing chance meeting, made him hesitate to inform his coworkers. They could be a little insensitive, he knew. But the great, promising nature of what he had experienced made his silence impossible. He had to tell them. Although they could be mean and uncaring, they were like family. In fact, they were more than family to him, because he was single. He could not contain his excitement around them. He had to let them know on Monday morning.
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