The First Warm Evening of the Year: A Novel

by Jamie M. Saul

  I was aware that Marian’s laugh was not at all as vibrant as it had been when I’d heard it outside Laura’s house. And that same caution that I’d heard earlier in Eliot’s voice was now in the expression on his face. Even when he made his joke. Had I not known otherwise, I would have thought he and Marian hadn’t known each other very long, or very well.

  Maybe it was just the way the two of them behaved in front of other people, the way a lot of couples behave when they’re with a stranger. There was none of the playfulness and when Marian stroked the top of Eliot’s hand and said, “He’s a very good magician, you know. For the children at the hospital.” She sounded patronizing. It made me uncomfortable to be there. I wanted the Marian I’d been alone with to come back, and for Eliot to go away.

  Later, while we were eating, Marian said, “Laura told us you’d been a child star.”

  “Hardly a star,” I said.

  “But you were an actor.”

  “That’s right.”

  “That’s pretty glamorous stuff,” Eliot said.

  “Not that glamorous.”

  “Not glamorous enough,” Marian said, “if you left it.”

  “Or maybe I’m not about glamorous things.”

  “Is that what you’re not about.”

  If we’d been alone, I would have thought that Marian was flirting with me, or at least being more adventurous than I would have expected, unless I misread what I was hearing. I’m apt to do that.

  “Sometimes it’s just time to quit,” I said. “My voice was starting to change. The theater was certainly changing. Nineteen seventy-six was not a vintage year for child actors, and unless I wanted to go out to Hollywood, which my parents were set against, it was time to get out and get educated.”

  “Didn’t you miss it?” Eliot wanted to know.

  “Not really.”

  “And now?”

  “I still don’t miss it.”

  “I mean, what do you do now?”

  “Voice-overs.”

  “Like commercials?”

  “And cartoons, I mean, animated features, and teasers, you know, lead-ins for television. Sometimes movie trailers.”

  “Have I heard you?”

  “Probably.”

  Eliot asked me to tell him some of the work I’d done, I named some of the accounts. He seemed satisfied with that.

  I wanted to buy them after-dinner drinks, so we got up and went into the pub room.

  The place was crowded, three deep at the bar, the rich hum of voices, people moving about with drinks in their hands from one circle of talk to another. Eliot started looking around for an empty table, but Marian wanted me to meet a couple of Laura’s friends, who were sitting on the opposite side of the room, and Eliot was left there by himself.

  The two of us slipped through the crowd to a table in the corner. Marian introduced me to Jennifer Morrison and Kate Callahan, who thanked me for helping Laura. They must have said more than that, but I never heard it. Marian’s hand was brushing against my wrist, not quite settling on it, more like warm breath than flesh, and that was all I was aware of. Until Jennifer’s voice, or maybe it was Kate’s, broke the spell, talking to Marian about spring gardening, Marian asking me if I’d tell Eliot that she’d only be a minute more, and I was walking across the room without her.

  Eliot was standing near the bar with four other men, laughing at a joke, coming back with one of his own. He seemed calmer than he’d been when Marian was around. His voice was solid, steady, as though he’d finally found his footing. He introduced me, but all I wanted was time to think about what had just happened between Marian and me, if, in fact, anything had happened at all.

  I needed to take inventory of the past few minutes, but Eliot was now walking me to a table by the window, telling me what a great place this was, more like a club than the local bar, really. That it gave people the feeling of belonging.

  “It’s important to feel part of something,” he said. “Don’t you think?”

  I pressed the tips of my fingers against the spot that Marian had touched, as though I were taking my own pulse.

  Yes,” I said—I didn’t know what I was saying—“that’s important.”

  Once we sat down, Eliot lifted his hand for the waiter, and asked me what I wanted to drink. I asked shouldn’t we wait for Marian. Eliot said there was no telling how long she’d be, besides, he knew what she liked, and ordered her a Grand Marnier.

  Maybe that was his way of letting me know who was who in the cast. Anyway, it was enough to stop me from thinking about her.

  The television above the bar was dark. There was music playing, but not so loud that we had to talk above it. Eliot said they had live music here on Saturday nights, jazz usually. He used to hope Laura would come in and play, but she never did.

  Marian was still talking with her friends when the waiter brought our drinks. Eliot left his drink alone, and I didn’t touch mine, either.

  “She didn’t always do this, you know.” He raised his eyes and stared past my shoulder. “Her gardening business. That’s what she’s probably talking to Jennifer and Kate about. She takes care of their gardens. Theirs and a lot of other people’s. She used to do landscaping with her husband.” He took a sip of his brandy, waited for me to take a sip of mine. “But she gave that up. She just does gardening now. It must be what she likes doing or she wouldn’t be doing it, don’t you think?”

  I heard Marian’s voice before I saw her, and I turned around with a bit more eagerness than her appearance required. She was still approaching us, already apologizing for taking so long, offering a thin smile, looking at neither Eliot nor me. She was about to sit down when a woman a few tables away stood and shouted Marian’s name. Marian told us she really did have to talk to her about her spring schedule and was very, very sorry, in a way that made it clear that this was not the first evening that had been interrupted like this, and walked away.

  “She was crying before, wasn’t she?” Eliot asked. “She’s very sad about Laura, and I think Laura’s death brought back the sad memories about her husband.”

  “Did you know him?”

  Eliot turned his head and nodded toward the front window. “Out there is one of the most beautiful town squares you’ll ever see. It was in magazines. Won awards. Buddy designed it. Everyone knew Buddy. He was a hell of a guy.” Eliot didn’t say this with acrimony, nor like a jealous lover, only with a tone of failure.

  On the way out of town the following morning, I realized what it was that I’d been hearing in Eliot’s voice that past evening. It was the voice of a man alone in love.

  Four

  If I kept a list of people who make me feel bad about myself, Simon Welles would be at the top.

  It was the morning after I’d returned from Shady Grove. I was tired from the drive, from carting my inheritance from the parking garage, and when the doorman phoned to tell me that Simon was in the lobby I could have sent him away, but we did share some history, and he was Laura’s brother, so I let him come up.

  He looked about twenty-five. Of course he was much older than that. He had wild, curly blond hair, a subtle suntan, and a quick smile that was not, as I recalled, necessarily a sign of amusement or pleasure. But what was most noticeable were his clothes, his thin cotton shirt, his light khakis. The wrong clothes for the wrong climate.

  I asked him what he wanted and why he came to see me.

  “Why shouldn’t I? Maybe I want to reminisce.”

  He walked into the living room, and I followed him. He started toward one of the chairs, changed his mind, walked over to the window, and stood looking outside. I could see Central Park over his shoulder. Even with the sun shining, the trees and everything around them looked dreary and gray.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a cigarette?” Simon kept his back to me.

  “I don�
�t smoke.”

  “Of course you don’t.” He stayed at the window. “The last time we met, you let me sleep on your couch.”

  “Pass out,” I said. “As I recall.”

  “Do you also recall the occasion?”

  “It was the day your sister got married.”

  “The day after. You were very understanding. You gave me twenty-five dollars. I was broke and you felt sorry for me, coming all the way to New York for Laura’s wedding just to be a day late.”

  “Not so understanding. You asked for fifty.”

  He leaned his hip against the wall, hands in his pockets. I sat on the arm of the chair.

  “My only sister is dead.” He kept his face turned toward the window. “She made you her executor. The last time I spoke with her she said if I had any questions about her will to ask you.” He turned to me now and showed that smile.

  “When was that?”

  “When I saw her. Last year sometime.”

  “You came a long way just to ask me about your sister’s will. You could have phoned.”

  “What makes you think I hadn’t planned on coming to New York anyway?” Then he looked himself over, shrugged, and said, “You wouldn’t have any coffee around, would you?”

  “Not made.”

  “Never mind. By the time you made it, I wouldn’t be in the mood. Has anyone called, asking for me?” His eyes never stopped moving while he spoke, looking at the wall, the floor, at his watch, at me, then out the window again.

  “Why would anyone call me looking for you?”

  “Oh, I gave your number to a few friends,” he said, and still looking out the window he told me, “I want to stay in my sister’s house.”

  “I have nothing to do with that. Talk to her lawyer.”

  “I went to high school with him. He’s a moron.”

  He stared outside a little longer, said, “She was my sister,” walked past me, into the foyer. “If someone named Howie Greenberg calls, if anyone calls, I was never here.”

  He opened the front door. “This apartment is too big for one person. You must get very lonely here,” and Simon let himself out.

  For the past twenty years, I hadn’t given Simon Welles any thought. I used to tell myself that all the blame was his because of what he’d done to Laura during our college days, the way he’d treated her. But I felt no more generous toward him now than I had then, which was why I tried not to give him any more thought after he left my apartment.

  I did think about my girlfriend, Rita, about calling her, but I didn’t want to see her just yet. Most of that day, I thought about Laura and, when I could no longer hold myself back, Marian. It occurred to me that I was having the fantasy life of a teenager.

  Three days later, I still hadn’t called Rita. She’d left me a voice mail the day after I’d come back home, but I was in no mood to see her.

  I was still thinking about Marian. Sometimes, I’d imagine meeting her by chance in a restaurant here in town, she with her friends, me with mine, in one of the places I like to go for cocktails. She’d be seated at a small table. I wouldn’t notice her at first, not until I heard her laugh, and when I looked over, she’d be there. Then I changed the scenario: She was meeting me for drinks. It was our first date. I’d be early and already seated. I’d turn toward the front of the restaurant and Marian would be walking in, and even though she’d never been there before, she looked like she’d been coming there forever, because Marian impressed me as someone who never looked awkward or out of her element; and even though I was as familiar with this place as I was with my own apartment, being with Marian changed all that. It was like I’d never been there before. Not until Marian walked in.

  This was a hell of a thing to imagine, romantic fantasies about a woman whom I hardly knew, who was another man’s girlfriend.

  Not that all I did was moon about Marian. I had a lot to keep me busy those three days: Twelve hours at the recording studio. An evening at the theater with friends. Lunch with a new account. Drinks with some Hollywood people, who were considering me for the voice of a cat. Drinks, this time with friends, and dinner. And an evening with my brother, Alex, who had returned from a spa looking uncharacteristically relaxed, and in formidable good humor.

  I would not say that my brother had an inordinate amount of secrets, and while I was never loath to speak my mind with him, I was also aware that there were limits to just how much he was willing to tell me of his personal life and his relationships. Even a vacation at a desert spa was off-limits, but this night Alex appeared ready to step up to the microphone and take questions. To ask him to cede center stage just to hear about my affaires de coeur would have been not only inconsiderate and insulting, but annihilating in a way that my brother, a psychiatrist, would have understood and resented. Plus, there were few things more enjoyable than listening to Alex when he was in the mood to puncture inflated egos.

  He gave a thorough and piquant rundown of “the small coven of middlebrow narcissists and their idyll among the cacti. Self-absorbed, self-entitled . . . Fortunately, they preferred their own company. Sort of like volunteers for a chain gang.” He put his hand on my shoulder and gave it a firm squeeze. “But really, it was very pleasant, even if I did feel that any minute Virgil was about to appear and point out the more attractive accommodations of this southwest ring of hell.” He looked quite satisfied with himself after he said this.

  We were in a taxi, on our way to supper with our aunt Sukie, our father’s younger sister and our only blood relative still living in the city. We were both quite fond of her, and Alex liked to make sure that we saw her at least every month.

  Traffic was slow that night, but I didn’t feel impatient. I was glad to spend the extra time with my brother.

  “Did you meet anyone?” I wanted to know.

  “The man of my dreams? Afraid not, my friend. Although I did manage to shake five pounds off my ass, and have a pretty good time.” He leaned forward and checked on the lack of progress on the street. “And, by next week, I’ll be my miserable old self again, and it will be as if I’d never gone away.” He turned toward me. “You know what I’d really like? I’d like to come home at the end of the day and someone’s waiting for me. Someone whose company I like, and who likes mine.” He smiled. “Otherwise it’s all just distraction.”

  That wasn’t the first time he’d told me this. I don’t know if I was going to say anything, or what it would have been, but Alex raised a finger to stop me. “You are in no position to talk to anyone about relationships.”

  I knew that tone of voice. It always made me think of tweed rubbing against bare skin, and whatever I’d have said, whatever I might have offered, Alex would have turned to me with a look of antipathy, as though I’d not only exacerbated what he was feeling, but confirmed his lowest opinion of himself, and would I please just disappear. But that passed. Alex was smiling again, saying, “Tell me what happened in Shady Grove.”

  I told him about some of it, and asked him to tell me what he remembered about Laura.

  “I met her your senior year, right?”

  “Was it?”

  “She was really quite stunning. And she spoke impeccable French.”

  “You remember that?”

  “She eloped with a jazz musician, didn’t she?”

  Traffic started moving a little faster, and when we were a few blocks farther along, I told Alex about Marian, and he told me he wasn’t in the least surprised.

  “She falls into your three basic food groups, doesn’t she.”

  “Only two.”

  “Three.” He counted on his fingers: “You’re attracted to a woman who’s got a boyfriend, which, along with your own, shall we say, situation with Rita, poses no threat of your actually having a relationship with her. Two: Since you can’t act on your infatuation—”

  “It goes deeper than infat
uation.”

  “It still makes her and your feelings about her ultimately disposable.”

  I couldn’t argue with him, so all I said was, “I guess I’d just better forget about her.”

  “And forgetting about her is the third.”

  It was after one in the morning when Alex dropped me off. The phone started ringing as soon as I was in my apartment. It was Simon’s Howie Greenberg, wanting to know if Simon was there—but not before apologizing for calling so late. He was in L.A., and the time difference had confused him.

  When I said that Simon wasn’t here, Howie told me, “Well, if you’re smart, you won’t believe a word he says”—his voice wasn’t loud but it was firm—“or you’ll never get rid of him.”

  I was about to hang up.

  “And whatever you do”—his voice was louder now—“don’t sign anything.”

  I told him I’d be sure not to, and again was about to hang up, when I heard him yell for me to wait. “And tell the little fuck I want the two months’ rent he owes me and the seventy dollars he stole from my wallet. Oh yes.” And the line went dead.

  Early the following morning Simon called. He said it was urgent that he see me. I told him I was still in bed.

  “By the way, one of your friends called. Howie Greenberg.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Why the hell do you do these things to yourself? You’re better than that.” I hung up and went back to sleep.

  I’d told Alex that I might as well forget about Marian, but I could not forget about her. Not that I did anything about it, except go on imagining meeting her places, spending the night at my apartment, or a weekend at one of the little boutique hotels in town. Maybe an entire week, showing her the city, hearing her laughter, seeing the same expression on her face that I’d seen the first time; and feeling the agitation of attraction, when her hand might touch my wrist as it did that night; all the nerve-wracking uncertainties of a new romance.