Just This Once

by Judith Arnold

  “Long Island,” he supplied.

  “Exactly.” Their eyes met and they both laughed. “Are you parents divorced?” she asked. He’d said he’d been in Huntington to visit his mother.

  He shook his head. “My father died last year. My mother still needs a lot of hand-holding.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shook his head, dismissing her concern. “It’s all right.”

  “Are you the only hand-holder, or do you have brothers and sisters?”

  “I’m it.” He drank some beer and reflected. “I don’t think she really needs hand-holding. What she needs is someone to mow her lawn and take care of all the chores she thinks a man should do. I change light bulbs for her, tighten the screws on the handrail for the basement stairs, check the oil in her car, that kind of thing.”

  “She’s a real feminist, isn’t she,” Loretta muttered sympathetically.

  “She thinks she is. She thinks feminism means women can do anything men can do, but men still have to mow the lawn and check the oil. So, you have brothers?”

  If she didn’t know better, she’d think they were on a blind date. The conversation certainly fit. But it also fit two old friends who hardly knew each other and were trying to change that. “Two, both older,” she answered. “Dentists.”

  “Dentists?”

  “Both of them. My father, too. The D’Angelo trade is dentistry.”

  “You’re not a dentist.”

  “I’m the black sheep.”

  “Well, working for the Becky Blake Show—compared to that, dentistry is a holy mission.”

  She would have taken offense if she hadn’t noticed his teasing smile. “You think the Becky Blake Show is unholy?”

  “Look where it’s gotten us. On a fake date in a cheap restaurant.”

  “There’s a Broadway hit show in our future,” she reminded him.

  “A Broadway hit. Right. And this is Le Cirque 2000.”

  The old friendship was looking more and more viable. Josh not only had those sexy eyes—which she appreciated only in a detached way—but he also possessed a sense of humor, which she appreciated in a far from detached way. She was a real sucker for guys with a sense of humor, even more than guys with sexy eyes.

  “So,” she said, deciding a reality check was in order, “tell me about your girlfriend.”

  The waitress materialized with their food, and he fell silent while she slapped down their plates and a plastic bottle of ketchup and then disappeared. He stared long and hard at his hamburger. Loretta didn’t see anything all that riveting about it, but he studied it as if it were a rare artifact. “Her name is Melanie Gruber, and she’s in Florida right now,” he said. It took Loretta a moment to realize he wasn’t talking about the burger.

  “Did she clear out of town when she found out you were going to be on the Becky Blake Show?”

  “No. She’s been gone a few months. She’s got a job down there,” he said, his voice clipped and the laughter gone from his eyes. He gazed at his burger a minute longer, and something inside him seemed to soften. “Do you know what a thrill it is for me to eat a bacon cheeseburger?”

  Clearly, he didn’t want to talk about his girlfriend. Okay. Talking about food could be more interesting than talking about romance. “What kind of thrill is it?”

  “I grew up kosher. Well, not exactly kosher—kosher-style. My mother kept kosher in our house, but we went to restaurants and ate at other people’s houses. She wasn’t fanatical about it. But we never had cheeseburgers when I was growing up. Or bacon. I still get this wicked thrill whenever I have a bacon cheeseburger. It’s breaking two laws at once. It’s not just speeding but speeding in a stolen car.”

  Loretta made a big show of glancing past him and checking behind her. “I don’t see any police cars. I think you’re going to get away with it.”

  He grinned, his humor apparently restored. “I’m not kosher.”

  “Obviously.” Loretta waved at his burger.

  “But it still feels wicked.”

  “Sin away. I won’t tell.”

  He took a bite, swallowed and let out a contented sigh. “Not great, but it’ll do.” He lowered his burger and nodded toward hers. “How is that?”

  “Not particularly sinful.” Actually, it was pretty bad. The meat had a flannel texture and the mushrooms were drenched in a gloppy gravy. “In my family, the real sinful food is Gummy Worms. When I was a kid, I loved them, but my dad said they destroyed children’s teeth. I used to have to sneak them when he wasn’t looking.”

  “Those sticky jelly-candies? They’re gross.”

  “Yeah. But they were forbidden, so I loved them. Like bacon for you.”

  “Your father must have done something right. You have great teeth.”

  She tried not to bask in his compliment. She knew she had great teeth, but it wasn’t the sort of thing most people paid attention to. That Josh had noticed was oddly flattering.

  While they ate, they lapsed back into blind-date talk. He told her about his work, about how often tenants got ripped off by their landlords. She didn’t doubt it; the partnership that owned her building was about as compassionate as Caligula but lacked his charm. He told her about his colleagues and about how hard they worked for the clients they represented, even the idiots who deserved to be evicted because they threw their trash out the window instead of into the compactor chute, or because they thought playing rap music at maximum volume at three a.m. was their God-given right. She told him about the Becky Blake Show, about how it had traditionally wallowed in sleaze but the staff was currently under orders to elevate it to a more civilized level, and she and Josh were pioneers in that effort.

  She wanted to ask him more about his girlfriend, but she didn’t dare.

  They were just finishing up their food when Loretta spotted Glenn entering the restaurant. He parked himself next to the pink-haired hostess—judging by their body language, Loretta suspected he was flirting with the woman. She made a note to propose Glenn for the next blind-date show Becky orchestrated. Assuming Glenn was single, of course. He could be married and still flirting.

  “We’ve got to go,” she told Josh, who was polishing off the last of his sin-burger. She’d given up on hers halfway through, when the bulk of it settled in her stomach like a lump of granite. As they stood, their waitress hurried over—for the first time since she’d delivered their food. “I know, I know, your TV show is paying your bill,” she said, “but I don’t think they’re covering the tip.”

  “They are,” Loretta assured her, refusing to let a waitress who’d spent the last hour ignoring them con tip money out of them. “If they don’t, have your boss get in touch with the Becky Blake Show directly.” Josh nodded as if he’d been about to say the same thing, and he touched the small of Loretta’s back lightly as he ushered her through the tavern to the door. Glenn had his camera aimed at them. Josh must have spotted the camera and put his hand on her back so they’d look as if they were falling in love.

  “How was dinner?” Glenn asked enthusiastically as the three of them exited the restaurant.

  “The food sucked,” Loretta said.

  “Great,” Josh answered simultaneously.

  “Well, I hope you enjoy the show.” He led them away from Broadway toward Eighth Avenue. They passed the marquees of a Tony Award-winning musical and a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, both with eager throngs swarming around their doors—and then drew to a halt at an abandoned-looking theater with a sign in front of it reading “Three Dead Corpses.”

  “Is this the play we’re seeing?” Loretta asked dubiously.

  “Harold says it’s terrific,” Glenn insisted, handing Josh the envelope that held the tickets. “These are excellent seats, too.”

  Loretta gazed around at the absence of any other theatergoers. She suspected they’d have their choice of any seat they wanted once they went inside.

  “Is there such a thing as a
live corpse?” Josh asked.

  “It’s a comedy,” Glenn explained. “Let me film you going in.”

  Josh and Loretta exchanged a look. He wasn’t smiling, but his eyes were bright with laughter. She couldn’t control herself. She started to giggle. “Three Dead Corpses,” she mouthed.

  “A comedy,” he whispered back. “I can hardly wait.” With that, he tucked her hand around the bend in his elbow and ushered her into the pathetically empty theater.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Josh rarely attended the theater. If “Three Dead Corpses” represented the current Broadway crop, he wasn’t missing much.

  About thirty audience members occupied seats scattered discreetly throughout the orchestra section. The actors performed valiantly, but given the material—a musical comedy about cadavers—their efforts were in vain. When one of the actors climbed out of his body bag and belted out a showstopper about how dying cured his migraines, Josh started feeling a little suicidal himself.

  The highlight of the show was the intermission, and not only because during those fifteen precious minutes the stage was empty and silent. When the house lights came up and he and Loretta stood to stretch, her Playbill slid from her lap to the floor. She and Josh both bent over to pick it up, and when she leaned down her blouse gaped at the neckline. He glimpsed wine-red lace beneath her blouse, and the sight sent a bolt of electricity sizzling through him.

  He told himself this was not a big deal. So she was wearing something sexy under all that black. Why shouldn’t she? She was an attractive woman. What she wore against her skin was none of his business.

  But throughout the second act, as the dead rose to sing and dance and crack jokes about weight loss and never having to file income taxes again, Josh couldn’t stop thinking about Loretta’s underwear, trying to picture it, trying to picture her in it and nothing else. While a petite female corpse stood center stage and sang a syncopated ditty about how “being dead meant no more sex, no more studs with flexing pecs,” Josh contemplated the fact that he wasn’t dead, and his having not had sex since Melanie’s move to Opa-Locka was not a healthy situation.

  His morality reared back and shouted down those thoughts. He might not be a corpse, but he wasn’t a sex addict, either. Surely it wasn’t unhealthy for a man to remain chastely loyal to his far-away girlfriend.

  His far-away girlfriend who had collected a whole new circle of friends in her far-away home. Who might, for all Josh knew, be seeing other men. And wearing lacy wine-colored underthings while she was with them. And removing those lacy wine-colored underthings while she was with them.

  So why the hell was he being such a good boy? Guilt might be one of the mainstays of Jewish culture, but celibacy wasn’t.

  Yet he didn’t want to think of Loretta in sexual terms, not only because of Melanie and loyalty and guilt and morality and all those other weighty concerns, but because of Loretta herself. He liked her. He liked talking to her, having a beer and a burger with her, getting to know her. And she’d told him she wasn’t interested in a romance. If thinking about her in terms of lingerie was going to screw up their budding friendship, he’d better stop.

  After what felt like ten hours but was only a little more than two, the play ended and the cast took its bows to the accompaniment of sparse, forlorn applause. The lights came up and Josh’s mind once again filled with thoughts of friendship and lace. “How about a cup of coffee?” he suggested as he and Loretta edged down the row of seats to the aisle. “Or do we have to film more stuff for the show?”

  “I think Glenn’s done taping us. He’s probably home by now.”

  “So… Coffee?”

  “The Becky Blake Show won’t pay for it,” Loretta said. “All they included was dinner and this.” She pointed toward the stage.

  Josh grinned. “Call me a big spender. I’ll pay for the coffee.”

  She eyed him curiously, as if searching for ulterior motives. “Okay,” she said after mulling over the invitation far longer than it deserved.

  “Do you know any cafés around here?”

  “I don’t know Times Square too well. I know of some places up near where I live, but that’s out of your way.”

  “Up near where you live is fine,” he said. If they traveled to her neighborhood, he could see her safely home after they were done with their coffee. Solly would approve.

  Outside the theater, he flagged down a cab and helped her in. “Ninety-sixth and Third Avenue,” she told the cabbie, then settled back against the cracked upholstery and sent Josh another curious look.

  Was she waiting for him to make a move? Some women expected men to take charge, to ignore whatever rules and limits they’d established and force the issue. Other women considered men who did that Neanderthals. One of the nice things about being in a long-term relationship was that you didn’t have to worry about expectations. You didn’t have to figure out whether aggression was called for, whether a woman secretly wanted you to come on to her or whether she’d slap your face or knee your groin if you made a pass. After two years with Melanie, Josh knew when she wanted him to take the lead and when she wanted him to back off.

  With Loretta he knew nothing, except that romance wasn’t supposed to be a part of this evening. So where did burgundy lace fit into the picture?

  “Was that the worst play you’ve ever seen?” she asked once the cab had battled through the crosstown traffic to Park Avenue.

  “Possibly.” He thought. “I once had to sit through an excruciating amateur production of ‘Annie’ because a friend of mine owned the dog playing Sandy.”

  “Did it have a kick line of corpses in it?”

  “You’re right. This was the worst.”

  Park Avenue slid by his window in a blur of apartments, potted flowers and pedestrians ambling along the sidewalks. Even on a weeknight the city was busy and buzzing, people congregating at every corner, young men on bicycles delivering take-out to the posh addresses of the Upper East Side. Was Loretta rich? Did the show pay her enough to live in this ritzy neighborhood?

  The driver hung a right at 96th, drove two long blocks east and deposited them on the corner of Third. Josh paid the fare while Loretta climbed out of the cab.

  “There’s a place right across the street,” she said once he’d emerged from the cab and stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. “It’s got some outdoor tables, but the service stinks if you sit outside.”

  “Then let’s sit inside.” He wasn’t crazy about sidewalk cafés. Their primary purpose seemed to be public display, making pedestrians envious of the lucky patrons getting waited on and having a grand time in full view of the world. Outdoor tables were more likely to be dirty, pigeons prowled underfoot in search of crumbs, and people had to shout over the noise of passing cars and buses and idiots on cell phones.

  The café she led him to might require shouting inside, too. As they entered, they were swamped by music being pumped out of hidden speakers, an overwrought tenor half sobbing, half singing the famous aria from I, Pagliacci. Josh wasn’t an opera fan, but his mother had schooled him in classical music because she’d felt it was important for his cultural development. She used to borrow opera records from the library, play them for him and narrate the story to him. All the stories seemed to end in death and/or despair. He used to sit glumly in the living room, listening to her describe Mimi’s death from consumption, or Carmen’s death at her lover’s hands, or Aida’s death in a sealed vault, and he’d wish he were in the den with his father, watching football on TV.

  Other than the music, though, the café was nicely atmospheric, with brick walls, small, round tables and muted lighting. He and Loretta took a table in a cozy corner. Settling into her chair, she crossed one leg over the other and Josh’s spirits rose considerably.

  A waiter came over, a young, thin man with a goatee. Loretta asked for an espresso. “And you, sir?” the waiter asked.

  “Do you have decaffeinated espresso?�
�

  “Decaffeinated?” Loretta snorted.

  “I don’t want to be awake all night.”

  “Wuss,” she muttered.

  He accepted her teasing with a smile. “Would you like something to eat?” he asked. “A pastry?” She’d eaten only half her burger at dinner, and he’d noticed some interesting looking desserts in a glass showcase near the front door.

  She mulled over the question. “Want to split a cannoli with me?”

  “What’s a cannoli?”

  She looked stricken. Clicking her tongue and shaking her head, she peered up at the waiter. “We’ll have two cannolis to share. One plain, one chocolate. Lots of sugar.”

  “Okay.” He swept away from their table, his posture elegant enough to make Josh think he might be a dancer, like Solly’s sweetheart Olga.

  “You’ve never had a cannoli?” Loretta asked him.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “What kind of life have you been living? A deprived life,” she answered her own question. “You don’t know calamari, and now you say you’ve never have had a cannoli. You’re, what, thirty years old?”

  “Thirty two.”

  “Thirty-two years old, and you’ve never had a cannoli. God.” She shook her head again, as stunned as if he’d told her he’d never read a book.

  He felt the need to defend himself. “Have you ever had kasha varnishkes?”

  “Kasha varnish—what?”

  “See?” He sat straighter, prouder. “You haven’t lived either. How old are you?”

  “Twenty-nine, and what’s kasha…whatever?”

  “Kasha varnishkes. Kasha—it’s buckwheat groats, steamed into a kind of porridge, mixed with noodles. Bowties were best. My mother would serve it with pot roast and pour the meat drippings on the kasha.”

  “Yuck.” Loretta grimaced. “Where I come from, we know how to make noodles—and we don’t make them with buckwheat. And meat drippings? Eeuw.”