Three Balconies

by Bruce Jay Friedman

  “But not this time. . . .”

  “I had every opportunity,” said Gillis, not disagreeing with me. “That first day at the pool, she looked over at me on one occasion in a friendly manner. Following her lead, the friend or companion, or whatever he was, even threw a ghastly smile in my direction. There were so few people at the hotel . . . they may have even been mildly curious about me, wondering why I was there alone.... And yet somehow I could not bring myself to approach them. Instead, I spent a miserable night thinking about her, obsessing about her and how much I wanted her. It became worse for me the following day when I encountered them once again at the pool. He was reading The Financial Times, the clod, and she was holding a slim volume of the work of Siegfried Sassoon, one of the few poets I admire and whose work is familiar to me. I could have simply come up to her and recited aloud his haunting line: ‘To mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume.’ My God, how much better an opportunity could a man ask for . . .”

  “And yet . . . ,” I said, as he paused and seemed to berate himself.

  “I let that opportunity slip as well.... That night, I saw them having dinner on the terrace of the hotel dining room. With a fresh tan, set off against her white gown, she was more ravishing than before. We’d been together, so to speak, for several days now in the thinly populated little hotel. By this time, there would have been something odd, or even rude, about my not speaking to them – even if my intentions were less predatory. After fortifying myself with several glasses of Merlot, I polished up a few Sassoon anecdotes . . . and finally approached them. They looked up at me, somewhat expectantly. My ‘adversary’ half rose from his chair to greet me, somewhat less clumsily than I would have imagined. I nodded politely in their direction, hesitated as I came alongside their table, fully intending to speak to them – and then maddeningly found myself walking out of the restaurant or, to put it correctly, it was as if someone was walking me out of the restaurant . . . and into the lobby. . . .”

  “And that was it?”

  “The whole of it.”

  “You never saw either of them again. . . .”

  “Never. . . .”

  “You returned to New York. . . .”

  “The very next day. . . .”

  “Went to Slotkin’s office. . . .”

  “Directly . . . .”

  “And murdered him in the most savage way imaginable.”

  “It was a fair exchange,” said Gillis, fixing his clear blue eyes on me for the first time. “He’d stolen my confidence.”

  Kneesocks

  “Dear Harry,” the letter began. “You probably don’t remember me, but I thought I’d take a chance and write – in the hope that you would. We knew each other in The Long Ago and dated for several months. (My name was Sybil Barnard at the time.) Then we drifted apart. Since that time, I’ve been married, had two sets of twins and have recently gotten divorced. ☺ / I have followed your career with a great deal of interest – and thought it might be fun to get together – and catch up on old times. I’ll be at the Plaza Hotel Nov. 7,8, visiting my sister, and wonder if you would consider meeting me for a drink. I certainly hope so. If not – I wish you continued good luck – and just write this off as the idle fantasy of an (ex) suburban housewife....

  Fondly, Sybil Barnard Michaels

  HARRY REMEMBERED HER, of course. How could he not remember her? He had thought about her for the last twenty-five years, if not every day, then at least once a week for sure. She was The One Who Got Away. Or, more correctly, The One Who Broke His Heart And Got Away. She had been a drama student at the University of Colorado; Harry reviewed the plays she was in for the local newspaper. He had dated her in his senior year. She was tall and blonde and beautiful in a quite regal way, and although Harry was in love with her, they had never slept together, which may have been why she broke off their romance so suddenly, and in Harry’s view, with such brutality. Their dates consisted for the most part of the two of them dancing together, along with other couples, in the parlor room of Harry’s boarding house. At some point in the evening, her skin would become damp and she would start to quiver.

  “Take me home when I feel like this,” she would say.

  And Harry would dutifully and gallantly whip her right back to her sorority house. Whenever they passed the wooded area, where couples slipped off to be together in total privacy, she would say: “Whatever you do, don’t take me in there.” And Harry would assure her that he had no intention of doing so. They continued along this way, taking walks, seeing an occasional movie together and dancing – less and less dreamily as time went by – in Harry’s boarding house parlor. One night, her hand brushed against his erection and she jumped and Harry apologized and told her not to worry, it would never happen again.

  In some section of himself, Harry had the sense that all they were doing was treading water. He liked being with Sybil, liked the idea of her, but he didn’t really know what he was supposed to do next. One night, she asked: “You wouldn’t ever consider meeting me in Denver and taking a hotel room, would you?” Harry said of course he wouldn’t. This time even Harry knew what she was driving at – but he was twenty years old and had never rented a hotel room before. The thought of walking through the lobby with Sybil and dealing with the desk clerk was more than he could handle. Maybe if she had phrased it differently – or if she had arranged for the room.

  One night, Harry returned to the boarding house after a film course in which the class had dissected “The Loves of Gosta Berling.” Waiting for him at the top of the stairs was his roommate Travis, who was smiling broadly.

  “You have a call,” said Travis, who must have known what was in store for Harry and was enjoying the moment immensely. He accompanied Harry to the wall booth, as if he were a maitre d’ and stood by smartly as Harry picked up the receiver. Sybil was at the other end and wasted no time in telling Harry that she didn’t want to see him anymore.

  “I didn’t come all the way out here to date just one person.”

  Harry pleaded with her to give him another chance, but she wouldn’t budge.

  “Maybe after we graduate . . . if you’re ever in Charlotte,” she said. “But not now.”

  Harry was sick to his stomach after he hung up, which did not deter Travis from telling him – again, with enormous pleasure – that Sybil had been dating an agriculture major on the nights when she wasn’t seeing him. Oddly enough, Harry did not hold any of this against Travis. His friend, who was the school’s only male cheerleader, had suffered a series of romantic setbacks of his own, all with girls named Mary, and obviously took comfort in having some company.

  Harry didn’t give up. The next night, he caught up with Sybil, who was on her way to rehearsals for The Wild Duck, and begged her to go out with him one more time.

  “I have something to show you,” he said, suggestively, “that I’ve never shown you before.”

  She reacted to this with a little smile, indicating to Harry that the agriculture major had shown her all she needed to see. He trailed her across the campus, asking her if he could at least have a picture of her for his wallet, but she said she didn’t think it would be a good idea.

  “Not even a picture?” he said, as she disappeared into the rehearsal hall. That seemed awfully cruel to him; spitefully, he made no mention of her in his favorable review of The Wild Duck.

  He didn’t eat or sleep in the weeks that followed. To Travis’s great delight, Harry could not even get fried chicken past his throat – the ultimate test of romantic misery. The other fellows in the boarding house, Travis excepted, gave him lots of room and lowered their voices sympathetically whenever he walked by. One night, Harry ran into Sybil’s roommate, who looked him over quizzically and said: “You’re such a nice man,” which really pissed him off.

  Soon afterward, Harry recovered slightly and took up with another drama student – from Wisconsin – who slapped her hips against his on their first date and led him into the woods. They made love virtua
lly around the clock, in deserted classrooms, in the library, in the woods. One result was that Harry came up with the worst case of poison ivy in the history of the school and had to just lie there in the hospital under a sheet for days at a time. But none of this erased the memory of Sybil.

  Harry saw her only one more time, dancing with the agriculture major at the Senior Prom, her face close to his and her fingers on his neck. Harry was with the Wisconsin drama student, who looked great and was extremely jolly – but it didn’t help, and he spent the evening with his heart in his shoes.

  After he graduated, and in the years that followed, Harry continued to nurse the memory of his loss, like an old football injury. It’s entirely possible that he got married because of Sally’s fairly close resemblance to his first love. Maybe there was more to it, but he didn’t think so. So you could argue that Harry had to endure an entire unnecessary marriage and have a child and then get a divorce – all because of Sybil. And she wanted to know if he remembered her.

  Strangely enough – and call it ego if you will – Harry had always known that he would hear from Sybil. And maybe even get a letter from her, similar to the one he held in his hand. Each time Harry received a credit on a movie, or even a partial, he wondered if she had seen his name on the screen. She was out there somewhere; surely she went to the movies. He didn’t see how she could possibly have missed his name entirely, particularly in the case of his Two Big Pictures.

  When she saw his name up there, Harry wondered if she had ever regretted her decision to dump him unceremoniously without so much as a farewell photograph.

  Now that he had the letter, he could hardly wait for Julie to get back from the construction site so he could tell her about it. The great thing about Julie was that he could tell her about an episode like this with no fear of criticism. And he could count on her to enjoy it along with him. They had been living together at the beach for two years now, a couple of hours’ drive from the city. Julie was working for the Post Office when they met and had made a recent switch over to carpentry, which she enjoyed more than delivering the mail. Each morning, she went off to join her construction crew – a great bunch of guys from Greenport – while Harry stayed behind and worked on the screenplay he was doing for a little Czech company that paid him in cash. He was enormously proud of Julie for going into carpentry. And the look of her in work clothes was a tremendous turn-on. One day, he had run into her accidentally at the deli, reading off sandwich orders for the crew from a twoby-four and he had wanted to pull off her blue jeans right on the spot.

  When Julie got home around five, Harry said he had something to tell her and she said great, but could he hold on for a minute while she settled in. He said fine and did his best to bide his time while she went to the john, checked the mail and popped open an Amstel Light. Then she lit a Nat Sherman cigaretello and plopped down in a living room chair, with one leg slung over the armrest and told him to fire away. She did not like to listen to Harry’s stories on the fly. Or at least his new ones.

  Harry told her about Sybil and the letter and didn’t she think he ought to meet her at the Plaza and play it out. Julie didn’t agree wholeheartedly, but she did agree a little bit and said that if Harry wanted to meet her he should go ahead and do so. Instead of letting it rest, Harry said it would give the experience some closure, a new term he had picked up from the psychiatrist he had been seeing on and off for several years. Julie said she understood the concept and could see that it would be important for him to have some closure.

  “But what if she’s gorgeous?” she asked.

  Harry had never seen anyone with eyes like Julie’s. They could be warm and playful and kind, all at the same time. That, and the work boots and the carpentry. Sometimes it was too much for him.

  “It’s beside the point,” said Harry. “This was twenty-five years ago.”

  “I don’t care,” said Julie. “And what if she sees your shoulders and tush?”

  Harry said she had already seen them and decided he had to have Julie.

  “Now?” she said, in mock panic. “When I haven’t read the Post? And I haven’t come down from my carpentry?”

  “Right now.”

  “Okay,” she said, with a sigh and took off her sweatshirt. “But let’s not get into a whole big thing.”

  Harry was understandably jumpy on the day he was scheduled to meet Sybil. Normally, on his trips to the city, he stayed over at a hotel, since he didn’t relish the idea of driving back and forth in one day. But on this occasion, he made sure not to book a room, probably as a safeguard against things getting out of hand. There was another reason Harry was edgy. He feared that he would see a record of his own aging in Sybil’s face.

  As he walked through the lobby of the hotel, Harry wondered if he would be able to recognize Sybil. He had reserved a table in a dark corner of Trader Vic’s, just in case she had gotten fat. Call him a swine if you like, but he was not anxious to be caught having lunch with a fat, older woman. There were several middle-aged women in the lobby who were clearly not her. After fifteen minutes of looking around, Harry started to get irritated and wondered if she had changed her mind and decided not to show up at all. That would put him in the position of having to think about her for another twenty-five years. With no closure. And then she walked up to him – or marched up to him, more accurately – and Harry literally received the shock of his life. She was all furs and pearls and white skin and fragrance, and she was far more beautiful than Julie – or Harry, for that matter – had feared.

  “Hi,” she said, kissing him on the cheek. “Sorry, I’m late.”

  “That’s perfectly all right,” said Harry, who was every bit as unsettled as he had been the first time he met her at the sorority house and helped her on with her coat. His choice of Trader Vic’s had turned out to be a good one, he felt, but for another reason. He wanted to be alone with her in the dark setting.

  He led her off to the restaurant. After they had settled into the corner booth and ordered Mai Tais, she said he looked exactly the same.

  “Maybe a little less hair,” she said, after another quick study.

  Harry raised one hand to his forehead and felt it was a fair appraisal. Actually, he thought he had gotten off easy.

  “And you look fabulous,” he said, deciding, in his new maturity, not to add that she hadn’t aged a day. It was best, he felt, to leave out age altogether.

  “I couldn’t figure out what to wear,” she said. “I thought maybe kneesocks.”

  “Kneesocks,” he said, reverentially.

  The thought of her long slender legs in kneesocks made him dizzy. He wanted to run right off with her and have her put some on for him.

  He said it again.

  “Kneesocks.”

  She brought him up to date on her life – her marriage to an orthopedist, the divorce, the two sets of twins, and the humdrum suburban life which was obviously no match for what she perceived as Harry’s exciting one. She said the main reason she had come to the city was to see if she could find work in the theatre.

  “I thought possibly you could help me.”

  “What kinds of parts would you play?” he asked.

  Her face fell and Harry saw that she had taken it the wrong way – or maybe the right way – and he wished he could have taken back the question. As it was, he made a limp effort to paper it over.

  “Now that I think about it,” he said, “there are all kinds of roles you could handle.”

  She took a little time to recover, but once they were back on track he quickly worked Julie into the conversation, saying they were great friends and had been living together for two years at the beach.

  “She’s a carpenter,” said Harry.

  The fact that he and Julie were great friends and that she was a carpenter did not seem to make much of an impression on Sybil.

  “I’m so delighted you remembered me,” she said.

  Harry was happy to admit that not only did he remember her but
that she had rarely been out of his thoughts. And then he couldn’t resist reminding her of the sudden and seemingly cruel way in which she had dropped him, without so much as a farewell photograph.

  “I hated my photograph,” she said. “Surely you didn’t expect me to give you a photograph I hated.”

  Then she lowered her eyes.

  “And I was afraid of you then. You were so sophisticated.”

  All of this was news to Harry. The photograph explanation made sense, but the thought of Harry being sophisticated at twenty – and of someone being afraid of him – was laughable. He wasn’t sure how sophisticated he was right that minute.

  “I wasn’t ready for you then,” she added, leaving the impression – unless Harry was way off the mark again – that she just might be ready for him now.

  To shore up his man-of-the-world credentials, Harry stretched back and said he had done just about everything. She matched him in the erotic department by saying she had done just about everything herself. Then she cocked her head and thought for a second, as if to set the record straight.

  “Except for two things.”

  Harry didn’t inquire as to what they were. Why take the risk of having the reunion come to a crashing halt. But he certainly did wonder what the two things were. He guessed that one of them had to do with the backdoor route. As to the second, he didn’t have a clue.