“Yes.”
“Then how come you didn’t know how to pronounce it?”
“I do know how. I’ve even read the book.” He smiled. “I was trying to lighten the mood.” Down to one-quarter of the roll. Maybe she should just forget trying to stretch it out and gobble the rest so she could get out of here. “Did I?”
“Did you what?” And it was hard to make decisions while he kept looking at her.
“Lighten the mood?” He waited a moment, then, “Because it didn’t seem that way.” She chewed another piece. “It doesn’t seem that way now. I don’t know, I suppose I was expecting something else.”
She swallowed. “Like what?”
He wasn’t smiling anymore. “Like thank you.”
“Thank you.” She stuffed three pieces in her mouth at once.
“That was heartfelt.” Not only was he not smiling, this was pretty much a glare. “See here. You’re making it rather obvious you don’t like me. Did I or did I not save your job?”
She shrugged. “Probably.”
“Then please, tell me. How did I manage to offend you? You don’t like the looks of me? You wanted to get fired and I ruined everything?”
The roll was gone and the words boiled up and out of her: “You bought my earrings.”
He was lost. “You sold us your own earrings?”
“I mean I was going to buy them. I had them on hold. For myself. And that morning that c—cow I work for put them back in the case. And now they’re with your girlfriend. In Modena,” she added, with emphasis, to show she still knew how to pronounce it. And they didn’t even look good on her, she thought.
“I’m sorry.” He did look sorry. Good. “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You saw my boss. Would you cross her?” You could smoke at Smelly, thank god. Ceinwen grabbed the metal ashtray and pulled out her cigarettes.
“No,” he said, “I don’t suppose I would.” She lit up and blew the smoke away from him. “Can’t you get another pair?”
“They’re one-of-a-kind. That’s this designer’s whole thing. Never the same design twice.” She took another long, slow drag.
“You know, you shouldn’t smoke while people are still eating.”
Granana had always told her the same thing. She stubbed it out. “Sorry, I just do that automatically when I’m done.”
“Why don’t you eat something with me, then.” He put a sandwich half on the paper in front of her. “Here. I can’t possibly finish this.”
“I’m not hungry.”
For the first time, she was holding eye contact. His eyes were blue, and little lines fanned out from the corners. “That’s odd,” he said. “Because you’ve been staring at the sandwich ever since I sat down.”
She looked down; it was roast beef. She took a bite so big she knew she’d left lipstick on her chin, covered her mouth with her hand and spoke behind it. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“For the record,” she said, finally swallowing, “I don’t think there really is a health regulation about pierced earrings. That’s just Lily’s thing.” God this sandwich was good. Maybe he wasn’t as irritating as all that, even now that he was trying not to laugh. “My friend Jim runs a little jewelry store uptown. They let everybody try on everything.”
“Germ freak. She seems the type.”
“I think she’s paranoid about AIDS.”
That killed the talk for a moment. It always did.
“So,” he said, “did you read history?”
He asked the strangest questions, and he never looked away. “Like when, last night?”
“Sorry, I meant your major. History?”
“I didn’t go to college.” Ugh, a pickle. She drew it out of the sandwich and looked for others. “I work at Vintage Visions full time.” He was feeding her, and trying to be friendly, but if he followed up by asking her what she really wanted to do, she was leaving and taking the sandwich with her.
“But you read history books, on your own.”
“Sure. I like them better than novels. Well, I do read novels sometimes. Old ones.” Three more pickles. Did anybody want that many? Had he asked for them?
“So you sell jewelry and you read history and old novels.” He’d pulled his straw out of his Coke and was chewing on the end. “And hats. You sell hats.”
Put like that, it sounded skimpy even to Ceinwen. “I also go to the movies a lot.” She realized she was sucking the mayo off the side of a finger. Granana wouldn’t have liked any part of her table manners today.
“Mm. Popular movies?”
What? “I don’t try to pick the ones that people hate.”
Everything she said was funny to this man. “As opposed,” he said slowly, “to art-house stuff.”
“Old,” she said. “I watch old movies. Revival houses. That’s what I like.”
His eyes dropped to her suit. It was 1940s, padded shoulders, and she’d pulled her hair back to go with it. “Well then. You should talk to my co-author. He loves old movies too. Quite the buff. And he’s almost seventy now. He met some of those people.”
She leaned in. “Really? like who?”
“Don’t know, not my sort of thing. I go to popular movies.” Cute. “But Harry’s famous, if you’re a mathematician, and he’s traveled. He told me he knew one director, did a movie with Cary Grant.”
Ceinwen was almost bouncing in her seat. “Howard Hawks?”
“No, him I’ve heard of. This was a comedy. Married people.”
Gee thanks, that narrowed it down. She remembered her watch. Six minutes left, just when things got interesting. “I have to get back to work,” she said, and took her last bite.
He pulled a napkin out of the dispenser. “You should wipe your chin. Lipstick’s a bit smudged.” She didn’t have a mirror with her, she’d have to check when she got back to the store. She swabbed at her chin. “That reminds me,” he added. “Did you fix that dress?”
She looked at the red smear on her napkin. “Yes, it’s fixed. You could have said something. I didn’t see the rip until I got home.”
“You seemed to have enough troubles.” She got up and put on her coat. “Are we all right?”
“We’re fine, why not?”
“You were scowling at me again.” He grabbed his jacket.
“I just don’t want to be late.”
“Yes, I imagine that’s a catastrophe.” He was holding the door for her; the rain had slowed to a drizzle. “I go this way.”
“Happy mathematics.”
“Why, thank you.”
She had made it to the corner when a name zoomed into focus. She turned to see if she could still see him on Broadway. Nothing. She ran down the wet sidewalk, trying not to slip in her heels, and saw him turning from Fourth Street onto Mercer.
“Hey!” He was still walking. “Matthew!” she bellowed. He stopped across the street from the brown glass and even browner brick of Courant. She waved her purse at him and ran across the street, earning a horn blast from a taxi trying to roll through the stop sign.
“Forget something?”
“No,” she panted, “I remembered. Leo McCarey.”
“Do I know him?”
“The professor, he knows him. Leo McCarey, was that the name of the director?”
“Um. Maybe.”
“Could you ask him? The Awful Truth.” No reaction. “Comedy. Cary Grant. Married people. Leo McCarey directed it. Didn’t you see it?”
“No, Harry just told me about it.” The rain was starting again. “I take it you like this movie.”
“It’s a great movie.” She was late, really late, but she had to make sure he didn’t forget, because if she could talk to someone who knew Leo McCarey, that would be even better than Miriam knowing about Jean Harlow’s underwear. “You’ll ask the professor, won’t you? What’s his name?”
“Harold J. Engelman.”
“Great. I have to run now.”
She was alrea
dy halfway down the block when he called, “Once I find out, what do I do?”
“Bring him by the store,” she yelled. “I’ll sell you some hats.”
3.
SHE’D PLANNED TO LEAVE THE APARTMENT EARLY THURSDAY, BUT SHE stayed up late to watch The Ox-Bow Incident—by herself; Talmadge and Jim had gone dancing at the Pyramid—and she overslept. Now she would have to beg Lily to send her to lunch in time to cash the paycheck. Otherwise she’d be sponging off Jim again. She was barreling into the store when Roxanne the cashier stopped her. “There’s a guy waiting for you over at the counter.”
“Did he give a name?”
“Nope. Cute accent, though.”
Good grief. What now? She started to walk away, then went back. “Where’s Lily?”
“No worries. She’s downstairs arranging some stuff for a shoot. Should be good for a half-hour.”
She clocked in and went over. He had his back to her and was showing keen interest in the bangles.
“Hey,” she said. She wondered if she should warn him about the bangles, even though Anna deserved them. “Those things are hideous.” Honesty had won again. It always did.
“They are, at that.” He held up a stack. “But I see them all over the students. Makes quite the racket in class.”
“You could go for the rubber ones. We just got in orange.”
“Those are worse.” He might not know which earrings looked good on which women, but at least he had some sort of taste. She planted herself in front of him and waited.
“My colleague Harry wants you to come to dinner. So you can discuss Leo McCarey.”
He was waiting for a reply, but she was trying to picture what led to this extraordinary invitation. He went back to his office and said, Guess what, professor. I’ve met a girl who’s just as strange as you are. And she eats rolls for lunch. How’s about we feed her?
“You asked him.” She didn’t mean to sound quite so pleased, but she was.
“Yes, and you wouldn’t believe how excited he got. No, I suppose you would. I couldn’t believe it. He says he has a hard time finding people who care about this sort of thing. And he loves having people for dinner. So he’s insisting you come over so he can talk to you about this director and about a half-dozen movies. All of which he is now angry with me for not seeing, I might add.”
Was she being set up with an elderly math professor? “Just me and him?”
He forced the corners of his mouth down for a second, then said, “No. You, me, Harry, and his wife. I think Donna is making garlic. There’s some chicken as well. Usually.”
A foursome. Was this in any way a good idea? She couldn’t know whether Harry was as weird as she’d always assumed most mathematicians to be, but asking strange salesgirls to dinner suggested he might be an unusual sort of person. And the man in front of her who was running out of hats to contemplate on the back wall was basically a complete stranger, was years older than she was, had an uncommonly bitchy girlfriend, and she didn’t know what he was up to, although she was beginning to get an idea.
“What night does he want to do this?”
“Up to you,” he shrugged.
Maybe Harry lived on Washington Square. She’d heard NYU stashed some of its bigwigs in the houses on the park, and she’d always wanted to see inside one of those places. She needed more time to decide than she was probably going to get. “Do you want to see a hat?”
“No. Does anyone wear those things?”
“I do, sometimes, behind the counter. To get people to try them on.”
“Do they?”
“All the time. And then they don’t buy them.”
“Harry talks a lot, but he’s interesting.” Matthew was hard to distract. She’d need more than hats. There was a great scene in The Awful Truth, where Cary Grant put on a hat and looked in the mirror, and it slid almost to his eyes, because the hat belonged to Alexander D’Arcy. The problem with the shot was that she wasn’t sure she believed Alexander D’Arcy had a bigger head than Cary Grant. “Still deciding?”
“I was thinking about The Awful Truth.”
“Of course you were,” he said gravely. “I’m sorry I haven’t seen it.”
“No, you’re not.”
“No, I’m not, and yet I’ve spent the greater part of twenty-four hours hearing about it. For heaven’s sake, come talk to Harry so I don’t have to anymore.”
Their eyes locked, and this time he went ahead and smiled. She told herself she hadn’t turned down a free meal since arriving in New York. “I’m off work Mondays and Tuesdays.”
“Tuesday then? Harry likes to eat around 8:30.” He grabbed a card off the register and wrote down the address.
4.
IT TOOK HER AN HOUR AND A HALF TO GET READY TUESDAY NIGHT.
They all had their clothes on rolling racks that Ceinwen was reasonably certain Talmadge had boosted one by one from some downtown store dumb enough to keep leaving them on the sidewalk. Jim had wedged wood under the wheels to keep them stable, but if you yanked too hard, the wood came loose. She must have shoved the wood back a half-dozen times as she pulled out dresses and threw them onto the bed. She rejected velvet, strapless, halter, taffeta—well, taffeta was almost always a mistake. She could go casual, or even modern.
She refused to consider pants. The address wasn’t on the park, and it had an apartment number, so it probably wasn’t a townhouse, but still, a good neighborhood deserved a good dress.
Usually Jim had plenty of clothing advice, and he’d been helpful at first, but then she mentioned Matthew had a girlfriend. She added that she had no interest, that this was about Leo McCarey, and The Awful Truth, and maybe Ruggles of Red Gap. Jim said of course he believed her and disapproved from that moment onward. As she dashed out of the bedroom in one dress after another, Jim’s disapproval followed one short step behind. It crawled down her zippers and curled around her shoe buckles. It was practically sagging her stockings.
Talmadge, on the other hand, was strongly in favor of dinner with a just-met spoken-for mathematician from Whoknowswhere, England, and his eccentric, movie-mad mentor.
“That’s it!” he proclaimed when she came out in the last selection.
Jim was smoking furiously and sitting on the floor, which he did only when he was so fidgety he’d jostle the couch. “Way too fancy,” he said.
“What are you talking about? It’s gorgeous. I love it. Look at that skirt. Her waist looks tiny.”
The dress was black, but there was nothing little about it. It was sleeveless, with a full skirt and a bateau neck, and it rustled. “I like it,” said Ceinwen.
“What matters, sweetie,” said Talmadge, “is that you feel good in it,” which was what he always said to customers.
“She won’t feel good,” said Jim, ashing so hard he almost missed the tray, “when she gets there and everybody’s in jeans.”
“I like being a little overdressed,” she said. “You know that.”
“Then you’re all set,” said Jim.
Talmadge gave him a look. “Will you calm down? It’s just a dinner. Ceinwen wants to make a good impression like the nice Southern girl that she is.”
“She always makes an impression,” said Jim. “In fact, I think she already has.”
“You,” said Talmadge, “are an old lady, you know that Jim?”
“Jewelry!” said Ceinwen. Jim went into his bedroom and shut the door. Talmadge helped her sort through her earrings and insisted on rhinestones, although they weren’t exactly going to dress things down. At eight o’clock she rustled down the stairs, giving herself plenty of time to walk all the way west without working up a sweat.
She always thought life would be perfect in Greenwich Village, beyond the bars and restaurants, on a quiet street in one of the townhouses, big drapes parted. If you lived in a neighborhood this wealthy, she believed, you needed to be public-minded and let everyone have a peek. She wandered past a house on Grove, which had a grand piano, another on Blee
cker with a chandelier that sparkled like something out of a Minnelli movie, and best of all, on Sullivan, the living room lined with bookshelves so tall there was a sliding ladder attached.
Window-shopping was her unalterable habit past Christopher. So was getting lost. She turned one way, turned another, decided she needed to loop back around, tried another side street, hit West Fourth Street at West Eleventh, and could have sworn she met herself coming back in the other direction. Finally she asked a woman walking her dog, got an answer she could use, and fetched up at Charles Street with disappointment; a drab apartment building with a narrow nonlobby that smelled faintly of something cooking. “Is that Ceinwen?” chirped a woman’s voice on the buzzer. “Come on up.”
The smells got stronger as the elevator climbed and she made her way down the hall. Before she could knock, the door swung open, and as the odor of roasting garlic almost blew her hair back, she faced an apple-shaped man who was sounding out in a stage-ready voice, “So this is the Leo McCarey fan!”
“That’s me,” she said. “How do you do?” All she could see were his eyebrows. They were the size of staplers, a mix of gray, white, and black, and every last hair stuck up or out. “Wait!” He had his hand out like a cop. “You can’t come in yet. First you have to answer the question of the evening. It’s very important.” His face was square, the top of his skull was round, and his clothes looked as though they’d been thrown at him in a fit of anger. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his cardigan and said, slowly and dramatically, “Love Affair or An Affair to Remember?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Love Affair.”
The eyebrows lowered. She was going to be staring at those things all night. His voice dropped an octave and he drew the word out: “Why?”
“Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne. They’re more romantic.” Would he send her home if she didn’t go for Cary Grant? Just in case, she added, “I love black and white.”
“That,” he announced, shaking her hand, “is the correct answer. Dinner will be ready soon.” He stood aside and she walked in. “Donna is in the kitchen, and Matthew is sampling the scotch. I’ll take your coat.”
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