“Just pick out a restaurant,” he told her. “Someplace decent. The client’s paying for it.”
She had named a restaurant and set a time, and the following night she was careful to arrive at the restaurant precisely ten minutes late. He was already at the table, a drink in front of him, and he got lazily to his feet when the headwaiter led her to the table. “You’re looking good,” he said, reaching out both hands to take hold of her hands. She leaned forward and accepted a kiss on the cheek.
The conversation through dinner was deliberately casual. It had undertones, of course, and now and then their eyes would meet accidentally, then shy away from each other.
Over coffee she said, “Does he know you’re seeing me?”
“He asked me to.”
“Oh?”
“I think Mark would have liked to come to New York himself but he felt it wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“It would be a terrible idea.”
“Probably. He suggested in a very offhand way that maybe I could give you a call. He’s a little worried about you.”
“Nobody has to worry about me, Cass.”
He acted as though she had not spoken. “So I said I’d give you a call. I’d been planning on seeing you in any case, as a matter of fact.”
“I wondered what you had in mind.”
“Pardon me?”
“When you called. I still don’t know exactly what you’ve got in mind but I’ll say this to get it out of the way. I don’t want to go to bed with you, Cass.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake.”
“Well, it’s traditional, isn’t it? Right after a woman splits with her husband everybody wants to take a shot at her. Just because you’ve already been there doesn’t necessarily mean you’re not looking for a return engagement.” She glanced up at him and was sorry she’d spoken that bluntly. She said, “I shouldn’t have put it so strongly, Cass. I just wanted to clear the air.”
“We’ve always kept the air pretty clear between us, Andrea.”
“And sometimes there wasn’t much air between us in the first place. I don’t regret that little interlude, incidentally. In case you were wondering.”
“I’m glad.”
“And I hope you don’t regret it either.”
His face relaxed in a smile. “There aren’t all that many things I regret. You’re certainly not one of them. As a matter of fact, most of the things I regret are the things I didn’t do, not the things I did. Not that I haven’t done a few stupid things in my life, but somehow it doesn’t seem awfully productive to regret them. Want a brandy?”
“If you’re having one.”
“I think I’ll have a little scotch, myself.”
“I’ll have a brandy.”
He caught the waiter’s eye, ordered drinks. “You’ve got him in a bind, you know,” he said. “He doesn’t really know what to do.”
“Mark? I’ve been perfectly open with him.”
“He thinks you’ll change your mind.”
“Well, he’s wrong.”
“Maybe. It’s a kind of a double bind. He’s trying to decide whether you’re going to want to come back and at the same time he’s trying to figure out whether or not he wants you back. It’s a confusing situation for him.”
“I just told you—”
“I know what you told me. The kid’s a big element in all of this. Robin. He doesn’t want to use her as a weapon but he’s damned if he’s going to let you bring her up in New York City. He says he’ll fight you on that, Andrea.”
“Oh, the hell with that.” She had already thought of all of this, but she could nonetheless not help reacting. “He can’t keep me from taking her. I’m Robin’s mother.”
She went on, trying to keep herself from getting hysterical, and when she paused he said, “What I’ve been telling Mark is the same thing I’ll tell you. This is all premature speculation. You’ve already said you don’t want to pull her out of school in the middle of the term. That means she’s set until June. He hired a housekeeper, you know.”
“So I understand.”
“Robin gets along with her well enough. She misses you, though. She can’t really understand why you’re not home with her.”
“Watch it, Cass.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake, Andrea.”
“I mean the role of fucking moral authority and wise old family counselor doesn’t sit that well with me.
Does Mark know you were fucking his wife once upon a time?”
“Not unless he learned it from you.”
“From me! Why would I tell him?”
He shrugged. “It’s not exactly unheard of, you know. Husbands and wives can hurl a lot of shit at each other when they fight. In a good knock-down-drag-out battle they don’t care who it lands on, themselves included. I thought you might have said something to him.”
“Why? Has he acted differently?”
“No. But I don’t know that he would. He can be very open, but he’s also good at keeping things to himself.”
“Well, I still don’t know him.”
“Did you ever really try?”
“Oh, please,” she said.
They had two more rounds of drinks before he called for the check and signed it. Outside she said, “You can just put me in a cab, Cass. It’s silly for you to run all the way uptown when your hotel’s three blocks from here.”
“I’ll ride up with you. They tell me this town’s full of muggers and perverts.”
“No passes, though, huh?”
“Oh, hell.”
She clutched his arm. “I’m sorry. But I understand men think they can have any woman they’ve had in the past.”
“You understand that, do you?”
“It’s what I’ve read. Isn’t it true?”
“Probably. Aren’t women the same way?”
“I hadn’t even thought of it that way.”
“No passes, Andrea. Your virtue’s safe with me.”
“I know I’m being silly. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.”
When the cab got to her apartment she felt she had to invite him in. He was hesitant but she repeated the invitation and he paid for the cab and followed her to her door, and into the small apartment. One drink and he could go track down another cab and be on his way, she thought. And what, really, had she ever seen in him? In Buffalo he’d had a certain kind of dash, an irreverence that had been refreshing, but in Manhattan he was just an upstate lawyer gawking at tall buildings. One drink and she’d yawn and talk about having to get up early for work, and he’d take the hint and get out of her apartment, and out of her life.
But when he had his one drink and rose to go without her having to yawn a hint at him, she said, “Oh, it’s early, Cass. You don’t want to go back to your hotel now, do you? Unless you’ve got something more exciting to look forward to than an empty room.”
“No, but don’t you have to get up early?”
“I’ve become a night person. Let me freshen that for you.” She made new drinks for both of them, put on the radio and found the FM jazz station. She sat on the couch with her shoes off and her legs crossed. “Aren’t you warm? The valves in the radiator don’t work and there’s no way to regulate the heat. Take your tie and jacket off if you want.”
“I’m comfortable,” he said.
It seemed to her that he finished his drink rather quickly. He stood up, yawning unconvincingly. “Maybe you’re a night person,” he said, “but I’ve got to be in court tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you stay here.”
“Where did you put my coat? Is this the closet?”
“I said why don’t you stay here.” She came up behind him, leaned her body against his. “Don’t leave me.”
“Andrea—”
“I don’t want to be alone.” Her hand moved to his groin. His fingers took hold of her wrist.
“No,” he said.
“Oh, shit.”
He drew away from her, turne
d to face her. “Come on, now. I guess that last round of drinks wasn’t a very good idea.”
“I want you to come to bed with me.”
“No you don’t. You’re a little tired and a little worn out emotionally, that’s all.”
“Cass.”
“Things are complicated enough, don’t you think?”
She had a little more control over herself now. She was just beginning to shake inside, just beginning to realize that she had done all of this involuntarily. It was an upsetting realization and she didn’t want to dwell on it just yet.
She said, “Cass, what happened to us?”
“What happened to you and me? Nothing tragic. We turned into one of the all-time great brother and sister acts. You always said that’s what would happen to us. Why be surprised that it did?”
“I really wanted you to go to bed with me. I didn’t plan this. I swear to God I didn’t.”
“I believe you.”
“I hope you do. I’m glad you had more sense than I did. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“You’re just so damned vulnerable, that’s all.”
“No! Don’t say that!”
“Andrea, don’t cry.”
“You mustn’t say that,” she said. “It’s not true. It isn’t, it isn’t true at all.”
The hot water was restored when she returned to her apartment, and she was back in plenty of time to shower and wash her hair. By six-thirty she was dressed and waiting for her date. Her history teacher, David Kolodny. He would come by for her at seven, so she had ample time to call Buffalo. She had sort of planned to call. It had been almost a week since she had spoken to Robin.
She never made the conscious decision not to call. Instead she kept finding things to do. She straightened the apartment, wiped out a couple of ashtrays. She started to fix herself a drink, then changed her mind and made a cup of instant coffee instead. By then it was ten minutes to seven and she couldn’t very well place the call because he might arrive while she was talking. She sat down and had a cigarette.
He was on time almost to the minute. She took his coat and showed him to a chair. “There’s scotch and vodka,” she said. “Orange juice and tomato juice to mix with the vodka.”
“Tomato juice, if it’s no trouble.”
How much trouble was tomato juice? She mixed a pair of Bloody Marys and sat down on the couch. She looked him over while he was saying something not terribly memorable about his day at school. He was not unattractive, a loose-limbed bearish man with an abundant moustache that drooped a little more than was absolutely necessary. He had large brown eyes that someone must have told him were soulful and dark brown hair going thin on top. His clothes were West Side casual—an old tweed jacket of no particular color, a plaid flannel shirt, loose-fitting brown slacks, ankle-length western-style boots. His clothing suited the rest of him, and all in all he went well with her apartment.
“Nice apartment,” he said. “You have just the one room?”
“What you see is what you get.”
“Well, that’s enough space, really. I must have about the same square footage but I’ve got two small rooms instead of one large one. At the time I took it I thought I’d want a separate bedroom but now I think I made a mistake. I’m on Ninety-eighth and West End.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Five, six months. You?”
“About two months. The furniture’s what the landlord had in the basement plus some choice pieces from the Salvation Army. I didn’t want to run up the costs because this is only temporary. I’ll need more room when I have my daughter with me.”
“When will that be?”
“After the school year ends. In June, I suppose.”
“You must have told me you had a daughter but it slipped my mind. How old is she?”
So they talked about her daughter and his two sons until they had finished the Bloody Marys. His boys were thirteen and eleven and lived with their mother in Park Slope. “So they’re just a subway ride away,” he said. “It makes things a lot easier.”
“It must.”
“I’d show you pictures of them but I decided to stop carrying them. I felt I was doing too good a job of living up to the divorced-father stereotype.” He put his glass on the coffee table. “Getting hungry? If you like Chinese, there’s a fairly decent Szechuan place a few blocks uptown.”
“That sounds fine.”
It wasn’t terribly hard to meet men. She had wondered about that, speculating on the chances that her age and her lack of contacts might make things difficult for her. Not that she had cared all that much originally. Her fantasies before she left Buffalo had been ones of liberation rather than ones of involvement with someone new and exciting. And even after she had come to New York, she found that she wanted men in her life primarily to avoid being upset over their absence. She wanted to meet men and talk with them and spend time with them and sleep with them not for the pleasure of their company but because such activity was part of a full life.
But God, she did not want to be involved. At the beginning she had even tended to resist Cal’s friendship because it might constitute a demand on her, a limitation of her freedom. That was silly and she quickly realized as much, but it showed her just how great a premium she was inclined to place upon her independence.
On Cal’s first visit to her apartment, she’d indicated the cast-off and mismatched furniture with a wave of her hand. “All garbage, but the price was right. And the place is temporary anyway until I get my kid back from her daddy.”
“But that’s months and months,” he said. “You could replace some of this, and a little paint would eliminate some of the clashing, tie the color scheme together. Just in the interest of making it more livable, you know.”
“I don’t want to bother.”
“It wouldn’t even be that much bother, and God knows the expense wouldn’t be much. You could just—”
“No, you don’t understand. I’d just as soon keep it as tacky and anonymous as a hotel room. Oh, Cal, I thought about getting a kitten. I’ve always liked cats. But I won’t get one and I won’t even get a fucking philodendron because I don’t want anything that has to be fed and watered. I don’t want to be some cat’s mommy.”
“What has that got to do with painting that table? I’m not sure I follow you.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Maybe there’s nothing to follow. Oh—I don’t want to define myself in terms of externals. I’ve always defined myself in terms of other people, her daughter and her mother and his wife. I don’t want that. Right now I’m overreacting and I know it but it suits me for the time being. I have a dull job. Well, that’s fine, because I don’t want to be labeled by what I do. Or by how I live or dress or who I’m with or—does this make any sense?”
He scratched his head, studied her for a moment before replying. “I don’t know if it makes sense,” he said. “I’m a poor judge of what’s sensible and what isn’t. But I think I know what you mean.”
“And?”
“Well, we’re all defined by these things, aren’t we? By ourselves and by the rest of the world, to a greater or lesser extent. You’re probably more inner-directed than I am—”
“I’m not sure of that.”
“—but even so you can hardly help trying to see yourself as others see you, and that all has something to do with how you live and what work you do and everything else.”
“Maybe I just want some time first. And some space.”
“Well, I can understand that.”
“Last time I scared myself to death and left out of fear. This time, whatever I do, I hope it will be because I’ve got a clearer idea who I am. Then maybe I’ll let the rest of the world know.”
“Please let me be one of the first.”
Over hot-sour soup and spicy chicken with peanuts and fried preserved pork with vegetables, over a great many small cups of rather insipid tea, she found out a bit more about David Kolodny
than she cared to.
Not that she learned anything that put her off. He had seemed like a pleasant and basically decent guy on first meeting, and that impression was not contradicted but reinforced. He was in his early forties. He had been in the army in Korea and had married within a year or two after his discharge.
His marriage had broken up almost two years ago. He’d lived at the YMCA for a short time to get his bearings, then shared an apartment with a girl friend until six months ago, when that relationship had dissolved and he’d found his apartment on Ninety-eighth Street. Reading between the lines, she guessed that the relationship with the girl friend had failed because he was still hung up on his wife.
Or perhaps he was more hung up on their house. Several years earlier they had purchased a brownstone in Park Slope, which she knew was somewhere in Brooklyn, and they’d spent all their spare time reconditioning it. Evidently the wife had waited until the house was in fairly good shape before deciding she didn’t want David to live in it any more.
He told her quite a bit about the house. Their conversation was deliberately anecdotal, because they had already established that they didn’t have an enormous amount in common. She knew next to nothing about Brooklyn, where he had lived all his life, or Brooklyn College, where he had gone to school. He knew that Buffalo was near Niagara Falls and they got a hell of a lot of snow there, and he knew that Bryn Mawr was in the general vicinity of Philadelphia. So they got that out of the way and he talked about his house in Park Slope and his classes full of juvenile delinquents in Washington Heights and she talked about her customers at the bookstore and they both talked about shops and restaurants they had discovered in the neighborhood.
After dinner he suggested a movie. There was an Ingmar Bergman double bill at Loew’s 83rd, he said, or they could walk up Broadway and see what was playing at the Riviera, if she’d rather.
“What I’d rather is not go to a movie at all,” she told him. “I don’t think I could sit through one. What I’d like to do is go someplace and have a few drinks and unwind a little.”
A Week as Andrea Benstock Page 25