by Alex Witchel
I felt ashamed. I thought back to an afternoon when my mom had come up to visit me at Yale and we had lunch at the restaurant next to the theater. She looked outside and saw Paul and Dennis walking down the street.
“They look so connected, so together,” she marveled. “It’s as if the rest of the world doesn’t exist; only they do.”
“Yeah,” I answered, barely looking. I knew what Paul was up to in his spare time, so none of the rest of it impressed me. His relationship with Dennis was nothing like mine with Bucky. We were the ones who were really together. Maybe it was easier for my mom to appreciate Dennis and Paul because neither one of them was Jewish.
Well, that was a brilliant assessment, I could see now. I had only thought of them in terms of me—my rules, my goals. I had never thought of myself as a selfish person before. It would seem that I was wrong.
“Paul,” I started, but he cut me off.
“It’s over, Sandy, forget it. But the bottom line about Bucky is: People don’t change. Five years from now, or ten years from now, when you’ve got two kids and he does it again, what are you going to do about it?”
“Kill him?” I offered.
He smiled. “Did he ever actually say why he did what he did?”
I shook my head. “Not really, aside from some double-talk he wrote in a letter. And I think it’s because there is no explanation—unless temporary insanity can last for two years.”
Paul lit a cigarette. “Look, Sandy, you’re all of twenty-six. Why don’t you go out with some other people? See who else is out there.”
I looked at him uncomprehendingly. No one else was out there. There was only Bucky. For my whole life, or at least since high school, there had been only Bucky.
I wondered if someone like Dolores Hope would give Bucky another chance. People who want to see stars badly enough to have a removable roof couldn’t possibly classify the world so rigidly. They knew that there was youth, romance, passion, confusion, anger, sadness, and sorrow out there, sometimes all at once. To forgive was divine.
I suddenly noticed that we were among the last people poolside; the Jolie! reader had left along with the sun, which had dropped down behind the palm trees surrrounding us. I felt chilly.
“Romano, I need a drink,” I said. “Let’s go.”
He looked at me quizzically.
“No, I’m not mad at you,” I said. “I appreciate everything you’re saying. I, well, I guess I just don’t want to hear it.”
“Fair enough,” he said easily, and we went back to our own hotel, showered and changed, then drove around town until we found one of those Mexican places with something for everyone—wishing wells, miniature bridges, strawberry daiquiris whirring in the blender. We ordered beers, and Paul stretched out in his chair, throwing back his head and yawning.
“What’s with your teeth?” I asked.
He closed his mouth, immediately self-conscious. “What do you mean?” he managed to say, practically without moving his lips.
“I mean that they look dingy, or something. Not like they usually look.”
He shrugged, resigned. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s the crystal meth.”
“Jeez, whatever happened to just plain booze?”
“It doesn’t keep you up and screwing for twelve hours, for starters.” He had his arms crossed in front of him, his mouth set.
“Romano, no one screws for twelve hours. They stop to talk or eat or sleep and do it again later.”
He laughed without smiling. “These are not people you want to talk to,” he said curtly.
My eye went to his Marlboro pack. There was no gold lighter on it, just the kind of matches that offer a good deal on a muffler.
“Where’s your lighter?” I asked, suddenly feeling afraid.
Another shrug. “Some trick took it,” he said, draining his beer. “No big deal, Sandy. I can always get another one.”
“But it was your grandfather’s!”
He lit a cigarette. “Another reason I haven’t been home lately.” He looked me square in the eye. “Because everyone asks me too many questions.”
“Does that include Sally?”
He turned away, exhaling his cigarette smoke toward the ceiling beams. I turned away, too, and watched a little girl throw a penny into the wishing well. Her father smiled, scooping her up and kissing her on their way out. She wrapped her arms around his neck. Now that I noticed it, every table seemed to be filled with kids, eating chips and dripping sauce on their T-shirts while their mothers drank margaritas and batted eyelashes at husbands who looked suitably surprised by the attention.
But at our table, a cold wall had come up between Paul and me, which I didn’t remember ever happening before. I switched to Scotch.
When our entrées came, I stopped trying to make conversation. My plate was filled with chicken enchiladas covered with guacamole, black beans, sour cream, and a thick layer of melted cheese. I ate almost half of it without putting down my fork.
Paul picked at his dinner and watched me with distaste. “Do you think someone’s going to take it away from you?” he finally asked.
“They’ve taken away everything else,” I said sharply. “Why should this be different?”
He shifted in his seat.
“And while we’re criticizing,” I went on, “why are you eating nothing? At every single meal?”
“I’m not hungry.” He motioned toward the waiter. “Check.”
“Is this a new diet for me?” I asked. “Pay the bill before I’m done eating?”
“I don’t know, Sandy, this place is giving me the creeps.” He half smiled. “All these happy families.”
I half smiled back. “I know what you mean.”
When the waiter returned, Paul reached for his wallet.
“Let me get this,” I said.
“No, it’s mine,” he answered, holding up an American Express card.
“Sorry, señor,” said the waiter, “we no take credit cards. Cash or check only.”
“You take checks? And not credit cards?” Paul looked incredulous. “Well, okay, since I left my cash at the hotel.” He wrote out a check and handed it to the waiter, who smiled and said, “We see identification. Driver’s license or passport.”
Paul blanched. “I don’t have it with me,” he said. “I didn’t realize I was going to a foreign country.”
The waiter kept smiling. “That’s okay, sir, driver’s license.” I could see him eyeing the valet parking ticket on the table. Paul seemed frozen.
“Oh, I drove here,” I said, a shade too loudly. “But I don’t have my checkbook with me.”
The waiter’s smile disappeared. I pulled out my wallet. “I’m going to pay cash,” I told him with an edge in my voice that all but demanded he put the goddamned smile back on his face. Which he did.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Paul after the waiter had left the table.
He looked somber. “Sandy, I was going to get around to telling you this, but, well, I don’t know, I guess I didn’t.” I waited.
“We’re going to have to take a taxi back to the hotel.”
I looked blank. “Why?”
“ ’Cause you can’t drive a stick, right?”
“Right.”
He took a breath. “I’m actually not supposed to be driving.”
I stared. He stared back.
“I’ve been arrested twice for drunk driving,” he said, speaking quietly and directly. “The first time it happened, Sally bailed me out, but the second time, she refused. I had to spend the night in jail.” He sighed. “And if a cop picks me up driving when I’ve been drinking, I’m going back to jail and staying there.”
I could tell how this had been weighing on him, how worried he had been that I would think less of him. But somehow, I felt better. The barrier that had risen so quickly between us was down. This was my fault, I thought. All I’d done all day was talk about Bucky. I hadn’t asked Paul anything about himself at all.
&n
bsp; So I would now. But first we got up and went into the bar, filled with forlorn singles just like us.
Okay, I asked. How? Why? What was going on?
Slowly, he told me. About how the partying was such an unavoidable part of life in L.A., whether it was showbiz life or gay life. About how glad he was that it really hadn’t affected his work, because so many other people in the business partied, too. I asked him three times if he thought he needed help—shrink help, AA help. He assured me he did not. He talked about how Sally was so patient—most of the time, at least—but no, he admitted, he hadn’t really told her what he was up to—about the guys, that is. But she was a grown-up, he insisted, she knew it and loved him anyway, loved him for who he really was. Marie, of course, didn’t know a thing about any of it. She was still a saint, and her shoes were still toeless.
I ordered another round of drinks. “If you can’t drive anyway, you might as well have a good time,” I said, and we both just laughed.
Then he assured me that the partying really was under control. He had also enrolled in traffic school, as required by California law. Only he was going to gay traffic school, he said. Yes, there really was such a thing. And somehow we got onto the topic of stick shifts, and we laughed until the tears were rolling down our cheeks. The other customers looked at us, then away, shaking their heads at our making a scene. I couldn’t have cared less. We were together and talking and we were back on the same side and somehow all of these glitches—Bucky and partying and Sally—would work themselves out and we would be fine. Finally, we staggered out of the bar to call a cab.
“You have to think about moving on now, Sandy,” Paul slurred earnestly, as he pulled open the huge carved door. He threw an arm around my shoulders. “Get married. Help your kids with their homework. Have a normal life. Then you can come back to this restaurant.”
I nodded, which sent me falling into the door frame.
“Give someone else a chance,” he went on. “Don’t only see Bucky wherever you look. No one else will be that fucked up. They don’t have to be perfect, remember. People do stupid things they don’t mean sometimes,” he said, holding me up. “It doesn’t mean they’re bad people. You should be softer about that.”
“Okay, Romano, I will,” I said. “But I have to tell you that I’m still worried about you and I don’t know how to help.” I grabbed his shirtsleeve for balance. “I liked it better when we lived close by and I could see you every day.”
He nodded and we were entwined, leaning against the building, and he smelled from cigarettes and the stuff he put in his hair. I was overcome with feelings of love and frustration in equal parts, wanting to turn back the clock on my entire life, so I could be with Bucky again, and I could be with Paul all the time and be there to break down the door if something went wrong. Too much time had passed. I wanted to see the gold lighter again. I wanted to feel Bucky’s chest against my cheek. I breathed in the night air and thought my heart would break.
“I love you,” Paul said earnestly, then the taxi came and we went back to the hotel, where he stayed in our living room watching TV and I fell into bed.
When the room stopped spinning, or almost stopped spinning, and I was under the covers while holding on to the night table for balance, I called out to him. “Romano! Tell me the name of that day spa. The cheap one we can afford. Because we’re going there, first thing in the morning. I need to lose five pounds fast, or no one is ever going to look at me again.”
He didn’t answer, but I could practically hear him smiling. Next to boys and shopping, Paul liked diets best.
“So, first we’re going to fix me,” I went on, “which means I have to starve to death. But if I lose my weight and promise to do exactly what you told me to with Bucky, that means you’re going to cut out the partying and be a good boy too, right?”
Suddenly he was standing in the doorway. He nodded.
“And next time I’m here, you’ll have your license back, okay?”
He nodded again.
“Good.” And then I felt my throat start to close and I threw off the covers and dashed to the bathroom. Paul stood there and laughed. “That’s a good start, Sandra,” he said. “That’s a few pounds right there.”
6
By the end of July, I still didn’t have my own office. Not that I minded—mostly I appreciated having the company—but at certain times when I was rushing to leave and my slip was stuck, I would have loved not to fish for it under Pascal’s watchful eye.
“Big date?” he asked, amused, one night when I was busy fishing.
“Blind date,” I answered, finally shaking it free. “I don’t suppose it’s the same thing.”
He cringed sympathetically, but Coco perked right up.
“Oooh, that’s great, where did you find him?” she asked. I hesitated. She had just returned from a long weekend with a French novelist she’d met at a Hamptons cocktail party. He had a beard and an earring, and they’d shacked up in someone’s empty house while he read aloud to her in the bath and wrote poems to her while she slept. She’d showed them to us, and even though they weren’t very good, it was poetry all the same.
For a desperate second I thought about inventing a novelist of my own, but I didn’t have the nerve. “I found him through my parents,” I confessed miserably; she and Pascal groaned. “His father and my father go to temple together.” More groaning. Only Pimm was optimistic.
“I think you have to give everyone a chance,” she said staunchly. “Maybe he’ll turn out to be wonderful.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “When he called me, I asked him what kind of doctor he was, and he said a radiologist, and then he asked if I knew what a radiologist does. And when I said no, he said, ‘Well, it’s not about radios!’ ”
Even Pimm groaned.
“Listen, you guys,” I said, “give me a break. As my loving mother has pointed out a million times, I have not been out on a proper date with anyone besides Bucky Ross since I was seventeen. Which is nine years, for those who are counting.” I sighed. “She told me I have to polish my dating skills.”
“She’s right,” Coco said emphatically. “And your dumping skills. If you think he’s thoroughly wretched by the end of the first drink, tell him you’re on deadline and have to run.”
“This issue doesn’t close till next week!” I said.
“So? He doesn’t know that. Just say you’re terribly sorry and get up and go. Then you can come to the Limelight. My friends are giving this really fun party that starts at nine.”
“ ‘Fun party’ is an oxymoron,” I said, checking my reflection in the window and fixing my hair. “What’s it for, anyway?”
“It’s a party, Sandy. It’s to have a good time.”
I blushed. “You know what I mean.”
“It’s a few friends who pooled their birthdays,” she said. “They’re a terrific group, actually. One just opened a restaurant in the Village, one is an architect, and one is an art dealer in SoHo. So if you’re already dressed and made up, don’t waste it by going home. Come meet us. You might even have fun. Pimm is coming, aren’t you?”
Pimm smiled nervously. “I guess so, Coco, if I can bring my sister. I promised her we’d have dinner tonight.” I had only recently discovered that Pimm’s real name was Theresa; she had been conceived in London during her parents’ honeymoon after they’d had Pimm’s cups. Her sister Linda was called Breezy— because when she was born, it was a breezy day on the Vineyard. That’s WASP for you.
Anyway, I was glad Pimm had company. Her boyfriend was in graduate school in California, and she seemed to be alone a lot.
“Of course you should bring her,” Coco said easily. “Everyone’s bringing someone.” Then she turned toward Pascal. “Et toi, mon cher?”
He sighed. “Another dinner party where I face my fate again,” he said dramatically, referring to his incest-impaired paramour.
Looking at his sad-sack face, it occurred to me that some people just love
being miserable, no matter how much they deny it. It’s a hobby, like chess.
“Well, maybe I’ll see you later,” I said halfheartedly. “Unless I fall madly in love, in which case I’ll see you tomorrow.” I left the office, calls of “Good luck” bouncing behind me.
Howard Barad was my first blind date. And if anyone told me I would ever be fixed up by my parents, I would have slit my throat. But Mom was insistent, and not entirely unreasonable. “You have to get used to meeting new people,” she said. “You don’t have to marry them. Just eat with them. Talk to them. Give someone else a chance. It’s one night.”
He was driving in from Long Island, and his car pulled up, right on time. I got in and found a not-terribly-attractive guy about my age, with brown hair, brown eyes, glasses, and a polyester-blend tie from a Christmas clearance sale. He shook my hand with curved, damp fingers, and I smiled enthusiastically when he mentioned the Edwardian Room at the Plaza Hotel. No, I had never been there. And the reason why, I couldn’t help thinking, might be that no one under the age of one hundred ever went there unless they were in from Kansas and didn’t want room service.
“Sounds great,” I said.
“Fasten your seat belt,” he instructed.
“It’s going to be a bumpy night,” I responded automatically, then smiled again. He looked blank. My heart dropped, but I caught myself. Maybe only pretentious drama-school graduates went around quoting from All About Eve. Just because he didn’t get it didn’t mean he was a bad person. Maybe he could quote from Dr. Kildare and I wouldn’t get it either. Meanwhile, he was still sitting there waiting for me to fasten my seat belt. So I did.
Once we were ensconced at a table near the window (the only other diner was a John Gielgud type across the room who I would have sworn was wearing his slippers), I knocked back a white wine in record time. My date presented a floor show à la Pascal, only his stories were about the hospital and its chronically ungrateful patients. I kept on smiling, had a second drink, and never mentioned a deadline, for which I gave myself ten bonus points. I excused myself prettily to go to the ladies’ room, but as I passed the revolving door in the lobby I had to physically restrain myself from leaning into one of its spinning panes and fleeing onto the street. Why was I doing this? Was there a rule somewhere saying that everyone had to get married? Or be in love? Some people actually managed to live happily ever after all by themselves—didn’t they? Someone, somewhere, must. I could always start a trend. We could run it as a cover line: “A Spinster’s Life: The Ultimate Relaxation.”