Looking for Mr. Goodbar

by Judith Rossner

  “All right,” she said, hearing the thickness, the eagerness in her own voice. “I’ll try. But if I can’t reach him—”

  “Yeah, right,” he said. “I’ll call you back in ten minutes.”

  “Make it half an hour.”

  “I can’t. I’ll be getting too busy by then.” He hung up before she could respond.

  James picked up the phone on the first ring. Only as she heard his voice did she realize, with a flash of panic, that she hadn’t prepared what she would say to him.

  “James . . . I . . . it’s me. Theresa.” She had never called him before.

  He sounded pleasantly surprised to hear from her. It hadn’t occurred to him yet why she must be calling.

  “James . . . I have to—I can’t see you tonight.”

  “Oh. Is anything wrong?”

  “No.” Idiot. “I mean yes, but nothing serious. I don’t . . . I just don’t feel like going anyplace. I’m . . .”

  “Would you like me to pick up something like pizza and bring it to your place?”

  “No,” she said, “you’re sweet, but . . . I’m tired and grumpy . . .” . . . and horny . . . “and I just feel like being by myself for a while.”

  “I understand,” he said. “Can I call you later?”

  “No.” But the effect on Tony had always been good. “I mean, if you want to. Later. I’m going to sleep for a few hours now, then wake up and try to do some work. I don’t think—I still won’t want to go out.”

  “I’ll call you just to talk.”

  “All set?” Tony asked when he called back.

  “All set.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “It’s none of your business.”

  “Cunt.”

  “When are you going to be here?”

  “When I get there.”

  He hung up and she had a brief moment of regret at having told James not to come. What if Tony didn’t show up now? If he didn’t, she decided, she definitely wouldn’t go to his mother’s goddamn birthday party tomorrow. Not that she wanted to, anyway, but it was apparently important to him.

  James called at ten to eleven and they talked for more than an hour. He’d gone to see a movie by himself since he hadn’t particularly been in the mood for company, other than hers. Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. He had been very much affected by it and would like to see it again some time, with her.

  “Theresa? Are you there?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes. Except I have a headache.”

  “If you’d like to take some aspirin or something, I’ll hold on.”

  She laughed without knowing why.

  He was silent for a moment. Then, “Or maybe you’d rather I just hung up.”

  “No,” she said. Contrite. “I really feel like talking.”

  “Good,” he said. “Talk to me.”

  She laughed. “I meant,” she said, “like listening.”

  He talked about the movie and then about other Bergman movies. He talked about his mother and his sister and how in some way the movie had reminded him of them. She looked at the clock and asked him questions about his sister. Patricia. Patricia had three children. Patricia’s husband was what you would call a regular guy. Right wing but very decent on a personal basis. Like so many of the people he’d grown up with. Not nearly as bright as Patricia, but it didn’t seem to matter because Patricia had never chosen to develop that part of herself anyway. One of the points in the movie that had touched him deeply was the idea of two women, nurse and invalid, exchanging personalities, not personalities, exactly, persona, and that—

  Theresa interrupted him to say that he was making her feel spooky.

  He laughed. “I’m sorry. Can I come down and comfort you?”

  “It’s too late,” she said.

  “I don’t mind,” he told her.

  “No,” she said, although for a moment she’d been thinking maybe . . . maybe Tony wasn’t going to show up and maybe she should just give James a try. “Call me later in the week, okay?”

  He said that he would.

  A short while later Tony was at the door, drumming on it impatiently until she opened it for him, bopping into the room, nearly bristling with electricity, looking around as though he half believed she had someone hidden there. He was wearing a black leather jacket although it was the end of April and the nights were warm. He eyed her critically. She was wearing the usual sweater and jeans.

  “I hope you don’t think you’re wearin’ that stuff tomorrow.”

  She laughed. “If you don’t like what I wear I promise not to go.”

  “Ha ha.” He turned on the radio, then took off his jacket. Then he began dancing around the room, doing his “buh buh buh buh” sounds, moving his arms and shoulders widely, bending at the waist sometimes but barely moving his hips and taking tiny steps with his feet. Ignoring her the whole time.

  She had a bottle of California Burgundy she’d opened earlier in the evening. She got it from the kitchen with a second glass for him, left his glass on the desk, filled it, then her own, and stretched out on her side on the bed, watching him. When the song ended and the commercial began he stood in the position he’d been in, waiting for the next one, which he began dancing to when it came on. She sipped her wine and kept watching him, at once anxious and lazy. He stopped to drink his wine at one gulp and pour another, then go back to his dancing.

  “Too hot in here.”

  He took off his shirt.

  He was sweating from the dancing, but it was also true that he used any opportunity to display his torso, which she had often admired.

  “Aren’t your pants too warm?” she teased. He took them off and folded them neatly over a chair back. They were army pants; he never wore jeans, which he associated with the hippies he despised. (He’d once told her in all seriousness that dope should be kept from the hippies because it was too good for them.) He wore old-fashioned boxer shorts, which always seemed strange. His legs were hairy and very muscular. She was getting more and more excited as she watched him but she was afraid to let him know because he was always most turned on when she was least interested in him. She put down the glass of wine and closed her eyes. At first he didn’t seem to notice; he just kept dancing. She peeked at him through almost closed lids; he had an erection. His dancing had excited him as much as it had her. She closed her eyes again, trying to look relaxed although her heart was pounding. After a while he came over and stood next to the bed. He put one foot up on the bed—on the far side of her body, so that when he nuzzled her with his foot and she opened her eyes she was looking at his erect penis.

  “Mmmmm,” she murmured, closing her eyes again. “I’m sooo sleepy.”

  He jostled her with his foot again so that she opened her eyes again.

  “What the hell you been doin’ that you’re so tired?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing,” she said. “Just the wine.”

  “Has he been here?”

  “Sure. He’s still here. Under the bed.”

  This time he kicked her and she grabbed his foot and then they were tussling and he was down on her, she fighting hard because she knew it only turned him on.

  They made love and it was the way it had been at the beginning, the music and the “buh buh buh buh” and the changing position slightly until he touched some spot that made her moan and then whispering with a kind of vengeful satisfaction, “You like that, huh?”

  It was getting light out when he went home. He’d never come but she was exhausted and didn’t mind his stopping. She asked why he didn’t stay and they could go directly to his mother’s. He asked if she was crazy, thinking he could go there like this, without changing into decent clothes.

  “I thought you looked pretty decent,” she said. Smiling. She felt very loving toward him but knew she must be careful about showing it.

  “Not for a party.” He was Emily Post and she’d written a particularly dumb lett
er to the paper. “Maybe you better show me what you’re gonna wear.”

  “Don’t worry,” she promised. “I’ll look respectable.”

  But when he left she lay awake worrying, for the first time, about what she would wear. Was she supposed to try to look respectable? Pretty? Sexy? She’d assumed she would wear one of her regular dresses, the dresses she wore to school, or when she went out with James. Maybe the bright green one, if she were feeling gay. It wasn’t just a question of what to wear, she realized, it was who she was supposed to be! She hadn’t thought about the party—as much, she saw now, out of the fear that if she thought about it too much she would chicken out of going, as for any other reason. Tony would never forgive her if she didn’t go, which just added another dimension to her anxiety. If she didn’t go he would disappear—and maybe beat her up first. Nights of good sex like this made it harder to think of not seeing him.

  So. She was going because she had to. She would wear the green dress. But it was very tailored, not really dressy at all. All her clothing was tailored. They were Italians; when her mother’s side of the family had parties they got dressed up like flocked wallpaper. The men wore suits and the women wore crepe and taffeta and velvet as well as enough necklaces and earrings to stock a medium-sized jewelry store. She didn’t even have jewelry to make the green dress fancier! She had never owned a piece of jewelry. Maybe she would get up early in the morning and hunt around in some of the little neighborhood stores that were open on Sundays for some jewelry. That was what she would do. Except they weren’t open early on Sundays. Oh, well, it was too late to be up really early, anyway. Late morning would do it.

  She ended up buying a strand of turquoise beads and some gold earrings. Then, at one o’clock in the afternoon as she began her dash back to shower and change because Tony had told her to be ready at two, she popped breathlessly into a wild little boutique on Eighth Street that had clothes she admired but had never even considered buying, and bought, without trying it on, a slinky-silky black dress with a low, ruffled neckline and long sleeves. It was totally unlike anything she’d ever worn and cost eighty dollars (she had never spent more than twenty-five dollars for a dress). At home she spread the dress and jewelry out on the bed, showered, tried on the dress and looked at herself in the mirror. It fit her as if it had been made to order but she found herself frightened because she looked not like herself but some strange, slutty female she would make it a point not to know. She hung up the dress and put on the green one. Tony arrived at two thirty, took one look at her and said, “That’s what you wear to a party?”

  “My dressy dresses are at the cleaner,” she said.

  “Boy, that’s great,” he said. “You’re a genius.”

  He went to the closet, threw open the door and almost immediately found the black dress.

  “What’s this?”

  Wearily she took it from him, took off the green dress, put it on. Let him zip up the back. Stood back while he scrutinized her.

  “Pull up the neckline a little,” he said. “You look like a whore.” Her face burning, she obeyed. “And change your shoes.”

  They were plain black pumps. Not the height of fashion, maybe, but the only thing that would be remotely okay with the dress.

  “I don’t have any others.” She waited for him to check the closet again but he seemed to believe her this time; maybe she’d said it differently. He looked over her makeup and they left.

  Tony’s mother was a small, pretty woman with bleached-blond hair and a flirtatious manner. Her boyfriend was a big, handsome truck driver with a booming voice, who looked like the most jovial easygoing person in the world until he laid eyes on Tony, at which point a remarkable change came over him. His eyes narrowed, his cheek muscles tensed and his whole body stiffened into a boxing stance. He said hello, they both did, with a wariness that suggested each was prepared for absolutely anything. Joe relaxed slightly when nothing happened. He was very charming to Theresa.

  The people were mostly friends of Joe and Angela—Angie, as everyone called Tony’s mother. Tony kept muttering about the fact that it was more Joe’s friends than the family, but when Terry asked who was missing from the family, he could only think of two people and he finally admitted, grudgingly, that they were a very small family for Italians.

  He drank a great deal of Scotch. She’d never seen him drink hard liquor before, maybe because she never had it in the house. Everyone danced, mostly foxtrots and old-style dances, but once in a while some rock and roll. The room was crowded enough so that she didn’t feel self-conscious about her dancing, and she was loose from three drinks, anyway. She danced with Tony, with some of Joe’s friends, with Joe (while Tony danced with his mother). She had begun to feel quite good about dancing and about Tony’s being so agreeable, when she found herself standing in a corner of the living room next to Angie, facing Joe and Tony.

  A foxtrot had just ended. Tony had danced with Angie and Theresa with Joe. Tony had grabbed another drink—gin or vodka—from the long table that was the only piece of furniture they hadn’t cleared out of the room. Tony finished off the drink in one gulp, put his arm around Joe, who was a head taller than he, wiped his mouth, gestured at the two women and said fondly, “Look at them, the two biggest cunts in the world.”

  Whereupon Joe wheeled around and slapped his face with such force that he staggered back against the wall. Quickly Joe was on him again, getting a grip on both of Tony’s hands (behind Tony’s back) and steering him past the guests and out of the apartment.

  It was so fast that Theresa didn’t have time to react beyond her initial numb shock at Tony’s words. Many of the people in the apartment seemed unaware of what had happened but a few pressed around Angie in sympathy. There were tears in Angie’s eyes.

  “Again, huh?” someone said.

  Joe came back, white-faced and tight-lipped. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s it for good.”

  Angie nodded.

  “I mean it this time. Don’t tell me in a month he’s your only kid and he’s gotta have another chance.” He turned to Theresa. “You okay, honey?”

  Theresa nodded numbly.

  “Poor kid.” Angie put her arm around Theresa. “How’d you get mixed up with Anthony?”

  “I—I met him at a party.” Her mouth was dry. She wasn’t sure what to do. She couldn’t just stay here without him but she was afraid to leave if he was out there and mad.

  Suddenly Tony began banging on the outside door so furiously that all conversation in the apartment stopped except for the low music on the record player. The banging continued.

  Joe went to the door and called, “Can you hear me, punk? Bang once more and I get the cops! And your mother won’t stop me!”

  The banging began again, and then Tony’s voice.

  “He wants you out there,” Joe called across to Theresa. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to. We can get you home later.”

  But there was no point to that. She’d have to face him sooner or later. Still dazed, she moved across the floor. Everyone was watching her. She opened the door and he was facing her, a few inches away, flushed, drunk, enraged. He moved back just far enough so she could come through, although he’d obviously not expected her to do it so readily.

  “Call us if you need help, honey,” Joe’s voice said behind her. Tony made a lunge past her toward Joe, who quickly slammed the door in his face. Tony stood facing the door as though trying to decide whether to break it down. Theresa said, her voice so small and choked as to make her realize for the first time how frightened she was, “Let’s go home.” And before the words were out of her mouth he had turned on her and slapped her, sending her back against the hallway wall as not five minutes before Joe had sent him back against the living-room wall. Except that she let herself sink down against the wall until she was sitting on the hallway floor in her beautiful sexy black dress. Crying.

  The fight went out of him. She could feel it without looking at him as he s
quatted down close to her. The door opened and someone’s voice, Joe’s, probably, asked if she was sure she was all right. She nodded without looking up. After a moment the door closed again and she could hear the bolt being drawn.

  “C’m’on,” he said tenderly, helping her to her feet. “Let’s get outa here.” They were friends again. Them against the others.

  They didn’t speak again until they reached Theresa’s apartment. She was profoundly depressed without being ready to examine the reasons. It certainly wasn’t just a matter of Tony’s acting crazy—he’d done that often enough before. Or even of his having hit her; if he hadn’t done that he’d come close enough so she’d known the possibility was there. And being hit wasn’t the end of the world, either.

  Then why this depression? She wasn’t angry and she wasn’t scared, she was numb and depressed. She flopped down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. It was cracked and in a couple of places shards of painted plaster had fallen to reveal a layer of ugly yellow paint. That was depressing, too. The whole apartment was depressing. She should either fix it up, once and for all, or move.

  Tony turned on the radio, low, got a beer, and then turned on the TV, loud. Vietnam, plane hijackings, the Mississippi flooding. He turned off the TV and turned up the radio.

  “You mad at me?”

  She shook her head. She wasn’t mad at him. She just wished . . . what? She wished she had never known him. Or he were someone else. Someone she could talk to. Like James. Just thinking of them in the same sentence was so funny she had to smile.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You’re sure you’re not mad at me?”

  “I’m sure.”

  She wished James were there right now. She would love to talk to him. Or just sit and hold his hand. She wouldn’t even mind if he talked about the office. Very often what he talked about was interesting, actually. It was just some rotten crazy quirk in her that wouldn’t allow her to listen and be interested. She really wished James were here right now. Tony could just go away—not forever, necessarily, but for a while. Until she could shake this awful feeling and be interested in sex again. After a while he lay down beside her, kissing her, running his hand over the silky fabric of the dress. At first she was barely aware of him, but then she felt her body responding. Mildly. She didn’t feel like doing anything; if he wanted to kiss her, play with her, that was all right, as long as she didn’t have to move. Do anything. He told her to turn over so he could unzip her dress but she murmured no, she was too lazy. He took off her shoes and gently pulled down her panty hose, then her pants. For a while he just rubbed her gently, played with her, rested his head lightly on her stomach in a way that at some time would have affected her. Now she was relieved not to be responding more strongly.