by Jancee Dunn
“I’ve had weirder, believe me. You can’t believe what some men say on the phone. Followed by no order!” She let out the phlegmy laugh of a moderate smoker.
“How are you doing?” I asked.
“Well, I’ve got some good news, too. I’ve been promoted. I am now a client specialist. We do personal shopping, help coordinate your work wardrobe, preorder limited-edition items…”
I was losing her. She was lapsing into the robotic cadence of a telemarketer.
“…locate hard-to-find specialty items, or petite, tall, or extended sizes.”
“What are extended sizes?”
She stopped and became human again. “You know, I’m not sure, to be perfectly honest. I think it’s a new term for ‘plus size.’ I’m still in training. So now you can always ask for me. Just say I’m your specialist.” She laughed. “So, did you meet your big high school love? His name was Chris, or something.”
I was touched. “Christian. I can’t believe you remembered. It was fantastic. We’ve been together ever since.”
“Well, how about that.” There was an expectant silence.
“Oh. Uh, I would like to order the Italian cashmere sweater.”
“Crewneck? V-neck? Cardigan? Boatneck?”
“The cardigan. Small.”
“How about the color? We have a sale on a couple of the ones that aren’t going too quickly. Yellow Corn, Burnished Olive, Weathered Olive—no, wait, Weathered isn’t on sale, just Burnished, along with Warm Sage…I think that’s it. Oh, also Cool Meadow.”
“What’s Cool Meadow?”
“It’s like a light green. Like a tree frog, sort of. You know those pictures of tree frogs?”
“I think I’ll take Night Sky in small. If I get it by next week, I can wear it when I see Christian next weekend. If he calls, that is.”
“You’re not going to see him this weekend? It’s Friday, right? I lose track of days, sometimes.”
“It is. He hasn’t called, so I guess he has plans.”
“Why don’t you just call him and see?”
I chewed my thumbnail. “I don’t know.”
“Wow, you really did go back to high school. Time is short, don’t you think? Who has time to play games? When I deal with people now, I’m very direct. And if we don’t mesh, then it’s good-bye. Call him up.”
“I don’t know why I’m hesitating. I know it sounds like I’m a teen again.”
“Listen, you want to talk about wasted time? I wish when I was younger I had listened to that voice you hear in your gut.”
I ignored her mixed metaphors.
“That voice is your conscience, and when you’re younger, you make a habit out of ignoring it. So I guess I would say to listen to that voice. I wish I had listened when it told me not to marry my first husband, Randy, who spent half of his paycheck on scratch-off tickets and the other half on going out with his buddies. If you want to see him, call him. But I say, don’t wait around for any man.”
“Thank you, Trish. You’re the best client specialist I’ve ever had.”
“Good luck. And your sweater will arrive in five to seven business days.”
I dialed up Christian before I lost my nerve. He answered on the first ring.
“It’s me, Lillian.”
“Well, hello,” he said in a low voice that made me flush. “What’s up?”
When you’re dating someone, What’s up? can be deadly. It never means Let’s have a nice long chat or Come on over, I’m dying to see you. It means Please state your reason for calling.
“I…I just wanted to invite you to lunch on Sunday with Vi,” I said. “We’re meeting in the city, and I thought you might want to come. She’s a hoot.” I’d never used the word hoot in my life.
He paused. “A hoot, huh?”
“She’s really a character. And she’s a big celebrity among the gray-hairs. Believe me, if you were thirty years older, you’d be very nervous. And she’s dying to meet you.”
He laughed softly. “What does she know about me?”
On safer ground, I became coy. “Just the basics.” I took a deep breath. “Anyway, will you come?”
“Sure. I have to pick up something at the office anyway, so I can go there afterward.”
I gave him the location of the restaurant and the time and hung up, elated.
chapter twenty-nine
I met Vi at Sardi’s, her favorite restaurant in New York. She was waiting for me out front, fifteen minutes early, as usual. Today she had on a turquoise bouclé suit with a skirt—never pants for “luncheon”—matching turquoise shoes with a low square heel (“I’m a city girl and I need to walk”), and a necklace of fake pearls as big as strawberries.
Vi had been coming to Sardi’s for a half-century. “They always make me feel like a visiting head of state here,” she said, pushing open the door.
A manager flew over. “Ms. Barbour!” he cried, kissing her on both cheeks.
“Hi, Max,” she said. “You remember my producer, Lillian.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” he said silkily. He guided us to Vi’s regular table under the picture of her caricature as she received hosannas from the waitstaff and the tuxedoed bartender. “How are you, Lillian? There is another joining you, yes?”
We settled in as Vi waved to a woman at a table in the corner. “She was in The Fantasticks for years and years,” she whispered. “I’m usually good with names, but for the life of me, I can’t remember. What the heck was her name? Well, it’ll come to me.”
“Don’t you worry, Vi,” I said. “I forget everyone’s name.” I looked around happily. I loved coming to Sardi’s, with its maroon walls and menu that featured classic “Sardi’s traditions.”
Vi studied the caricatures. “I get so tickled that I’m right next to Lucille Ball,” she said. “And diagonal to Robert Mitchum. He was so handsome when he was a young guy, but he really hit his stride when he was in his forties and fifties. Most men look better when they get a little seasoning.” She craned her neck to read the name on a new drawing that had recently been hung on the wall. “Tony Danza,” she said. “Who on earth is that?”
“He was in a few popular television shows, like Taxi,” I said.
“Yes, but why is he hanging next to Gregory Peck?” She motioned for the waiter and he hurried over. “This Tony Danza, why is he on the wall?”
“I believe he did The Producers on Broadway, Ms. Barbour.”
She nodded. “Oh. Well, that makes sense.”
“We typically add forty or fifty new portraits every year, so as you can see, we’ve put up Donny Osmond, Jason Biggs—”
“Jason Biggs?” she demanded. “Never heard of him. Oh, I can’t keep up.” She studied the menu. “I know we’re still waiting on Christian, but I love to think about what I’m going to have, don’t you? So many choices!” She leaned in closer. “So—before he gets here—are you serious with this young man?”
I nodded. “I think so.”
“Well, I’m glad that you started to date again. Some women get self-conscious when they’re past the first blush of youth, but I think anything is possible if you have a sense of how special you are. Women who are truly happy with themselves have that sparkle, that glow, that’s irresistible to others! Don’t you think? I had a friend who was as plain as a can of paint, but whenever I saw her at parties, she was surrounded by a crowd of men. It wasn’t the way she looked, it was the way she acted—she just loved life, and people were drawn to her. She was enthusiastic, and gay—oh, I don’t mean gay in the contemporary term, she was just…”
She looked up, and I felt a fluttering in my stomach at the sight of Christian striding toward our table with a smile. He was wearing a charcoal suit with a bright hot-pink striped shirt. I watched Vi’s eyes as she took him in, and I knew she was thinking, Mmm, handsome. Then her penciled eyebrows drew down slightly, and I knew she was thinking, Where’s the tie?
“Well,” Vi trilled, as he gave her a kiss on the chee
k. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes? Lillian, you didn’t tell me how handsome he was. Well, yes, you did.”
He sat down. “I’ve heard a lot about you, too, Vi.” A waiter appeared, and he ordered a martini. “Sorry I’m late,” he said. “I had to drop off a proposal for this new video-game campaign. They want to use graffiti, and I think it’s a bad idea.” He sighed. “I work for a bunch of twenty-two-year-olds. They rule this business.”
Vi put down her menu. “Lillian tells me you’re a branding expert.”
He waved his hand. “Yes. It’s sort of complicated. I shouldn’t talk business at lunch anyway.”
Vi brightened. “Let’s talk food, then. I see here there’s onion soup au gratin and spinach cannelloni au gratin. Guess what? I’m ordering both! I’m getting double au gratin!”
Christian smiled politely.
“Save room for dessert, kids. Lillian, can we have the baked Alaska for two?”
I squeezed her arm. “As usual.”
Vi twinkled at Christian. “They have a really spectacular signature dessert, it’s called Floating Island. It’s floating in the most heavenly vanilla sauce! It was popular years ago. You must try it.”
He shook his head. “I don’t eat dessert.”
“Well, we do,” I said heartily. “Right, Vi?”
She put down her menu. “So you recently lived in London, Christian? I once had a flat there when I was doing theater. It was in the swanky part of town, too—Knightsbridge.”
He smiled. “No kidding.”
The waiter took our orders, and then Vi once again fastened onto Christian. “So I’m probably closer to your parents’ age. What does your father do? Or maybe he’s retired.”
“He is. He used to be an accountant.”
“How is he enjoying retirement?”
“Now he’s doing the taxes of everyone in his extended family, so I don’t even think he knows he’s retired.”
“And your mother?”
“She stayed at home with us, which was really nice when we were growing up. And she does a lot of volunteering.” He caught himself. “Not lately. She’s been sick.”
Vi and I both leaned forward. “The poor dear,” she clucked. “I hope she’s holding up all right.”
“Well, she’s lost a lot of weight, but she’s getting back on track.” Vi’s eyes flicked to mine and read that I had no idea Christian’s mother was sick.
He suddenly stood up. “Will you two excuse me for a moment?” he said. “There’s someone over there I haven’t talked to since I left for London. I’ll just be a minute.” He took his martini with him.
Vi looked at me. “He seems like a nice enough man. A shame about his mother. Is it cancer?”
“You know that I don’t know, Vi.”
“How well do you really know this person? You’ve been together a month, and he’s never mentioned this? Either he’s not close to his mother, or he’s not close to you.”
“Well, maybe he doesn’t want to scare me off. Or maybe it makes him too sad to talk about. I’m sure he planned on telling me.”
Christian didn’t make the impression on Vi that I had hoped he would. When our food arrived, he hurried back to the table, but he had been gone a tad too long. For the rest of the meal, he answered Vi’s questions, made polite small talk, and even had a few bites of our baked Alaska. But one of Vi’s favorite pastimes was talking about herself, and he never asked her a thing. After lunch, he insisted on paying, gave us both a kiss, and went quickly back to his office.
As Vi and I were gathering our things, a waiter appeared, grandly carrying a tray with a Floating Island on it. “The chef made this especially for you, Ms. Barbour,” he said, putting it down with a flourish. “We know that this is your second-favorite dessert. You cannot go quite yet.”
“Well, all right,” she said with mock exasperation, reaching for a spoon. “Now I’ll have to walk an extra turn around the block. Do you know that my daughter wants me to join a health club? I know they’re the big rage now, but strenuous exercise is downright dangerous. It can cause a heart attack! I told her that I prefer to just add a little zing to my daily activities. When I empty the dishwasher, for example, I’ll do a few extra stretches.”
“Doesn’t Mrs. P empty the dishwasher?”
“Not on her day off.”
I waited for her to say something about Christian.
“Lillian,” she began. I smiled. “You didn’t think you’d get away without hearing my opinion, did you? You know that I tell it like it is. I can see why you are besotted. He’s charming; he’s wonderful to look at. He’s certainly not Adam. Adam was too eager to please. But I worry that you’re putting your entire heart into this. More than he is, I gather. You didn’t even know his mother was ill. And you know, he didn’t ask me anything about myself.”
“Which must have driven you bonkers, Vi.”
“Well, yes, but it’s also not very polite. What struck me more is that he didn’t ask me anything about you. I’m a wealth of information about all things Lillian, and you two are just getting to know each other. I had prepared a couple of amusing stories, but he didn’t show any interest. Does he know your feelings about garbagemen, for instance?”
I shook my head. “No,” I admitted. I always maintained that in New York City, firemen received all the adulation—and to a lesser extent, policemen—but our sanitation workers were cruelly ignored. New York’s Strongest, who spent the day enduring the blatting of impatient horns from drivers who were forced to wait half a minute while they haul away our trash. My father claimed that sanitation men “had it easy” because they could collect a full pension after twenty years on the job. Easy? Rat bites, maggots, hypodermic needles? Every time I saw a sanitation worker (not “garbageman,” thank you) I commended the startled man for his good work. My friends thought it was strange that on holidays I sent cards and food baskets to sanitation headquarters, but Vi had enthusiastically taken up the cause, leaving stocked picnics for them in a Styrofoam cooler at the end of her driveway.
“And I was just waiting to tell Christian about your sensitivity to smells,” she added. Like a mole, I had a hypersensitive nose that regularly conveyed more information than I wanted about a person. On one elevator ride, I could discern a smoker who had one cup of coffee followed by an ineffective breath mint who had showered the night before using herbal shampoo after an Italian dinner washed down by two to three glasses of red wine. I took a deep sniff of the air next to her. “Aqua Net. Dove soap. Chanel lipstick, which smells a little like rose,” I diagnosed. “And Youth-Dew, but your suit smells faintly of L’Air du Temps, crossed with”—I sniffed. “Did you wear this suit to an Indian restaurant?”
She thought for a moment. “I did!” she said delightedly. “What a special talent you have.” Only Vi could view an offputting eccentricity as a “special talent.”
She leaned closer and squeezed my arm. “But back to this Christian. I’m just worried because the last time we talked, you were tossing around phrases like ‘the one that got away’ and ‘the real thing.’ You know I’m not one to hold back, and I must tell you, I think you’re throwing yourself into this romance to distract yourself, to hide away from the world.”
I started to protest and she cut me off. “I know it can be frightening to face the future. But let me tell you something: Do you know that the years after Morty died have been the best of my life? And when I went to his funeral, I wanted to leap into the grave with him. But after I grieved, I began to date. I made new friends and started doing a great deal of volunteer work. As you know, I lost him to lung cancer, and so I made special visits to cancer wards. What I treasure most isn’t the awards that I receive—although I won’t lie, I love to get them! But more than that, I love to be of help to people. That’s the key to happiness.”
She dug her spoon into the Floating Island. “I’m at the age now where newspaper reporters ask me if I think about death. I know they’re hoping I’ll say something p
rofound, but the only thing I ever tell them is that I don’t want it to happen! I am positively greedy for more life, and I want you to be, too.” She sighed. “Maybe I’m wrong about this young man, honey. I hope that I am, although at my ripe old age, I have pretty good instincts. He just seems so…so…”—she waved her spoon—“so muted.”
She wasn’t entirely wrong. And next to her Roman candle of a personality, he had seemed particularly withholding.
“Just don’t pin all your hopes on him,” she said. “Can’t you just have fun, and take this as a lark?”
I put my spoon down. “I don’t think so,” I said, struggling to keep my voice even.
The tension was broken by two women in their sixties who were edging toward the table. One held a napkin and a pen. “Oh, Miss Barbour,” the taller one quavered. “We never miss your show. The people you have on, those are the real stars. Not like today.”
The other one elbowed forward. “You look beautiful,” she declared. “I love your hair. Do you do it every day?”
Vi laughed. “Do you know that this is the first question I’m always asked? Even with all my achievements! I get it done by my girl twice a week.” She signed the napkin with a flourish. “And the second question I usually get is, ‘Vi, how do you keep your skin so youthful?’ I’m very candid about the eye-lift I had five years ago. I am in show business, after all.”
The women glowed in the warmth of Vi’s confidential circle. “It looks extremely natural,” the shorter one said loyally.
After the women left, Vi stood with me outside the restaurant as her driver idled on the street. “I’ve said my piece,” she said, hugging me. “Oh, Lillian, are you cross with me?”
And suddenly, as I felt the fragile shoulder blades beneath her turquoise suit, I was not.
chapter thirty
I made a final trip to CVS to get some things for my new apartment. There was a CVS on every corner in the city, but the stores there were cramped and the clerks more beleaguered. I enjoyed the space and the friendliness of your suburban variety of CVS. I needed some hangers and a new laundry bag—Adam had taken custody of ours—and a fresh supply of CVS mustache bleach.