Duet

by gay walley

  The last was from a guy whom Duet had never met but Paula had annoyingly fixed her up with. He lived in Princeton, and Duet wondered if he was one of Paula’s match rejects. She’s going to have to tell Paula not to do that.

  “Go out with all of them,” Paula said, the next morning. “Open up.”

  “ I don’t know.”

  “Practice,” Paula said. “Practice dating. That’s how I look at it. You can’t be alone forever.”

  Oh yes I can.

  Duet sighed and that afternoon, bored with the monotony at work, she decided to set up the three dates. She might as well see what would happen. And she’d had a good time last night just going out. Paula was right, she couldn’t be alone forever. If she wanted to meet someone who wouldn’t hurt her, she was the one who was going to have to change her fate. No one else would.

  Five:

  She hadn’t expected this. The level of intensity of her dates turned out to be akin to entering a gladiator ring. Over the phone she had learned that Bob Bentley, the real estate salesman she had met in the elevator, was from Baltimore, loved steaks, sports and, distressingly, loved talking endlessly on the telephone. He had wanted to know what underwear she wore. Describe it exactly, he said. He must be a jerk.

  When she had walked into PJ Clarke’s to meet him, he seemed ecstatic that she had actually shown up. She was wearing a simple blue and black dress and high heels. He kept smiling and trying to get her to order a drink. Suddenly, he said, “I knew it. I knew it in the elevator. You’re the one.”

  “Was it the way I hardly said anything?” she asked, smiling.

  He laughed, “Yes, that’s very attractive in a woman, but no, it was your face.”

  She studied him in his pink shirt, which went well with his shaved head and dark eyes. She had to admit the sureness and enthusiasm of his salesman’s voice was enlivening. And there was something masculine about his volubility and high energy. She must be trying to like him, she realized. They joked a bit and he told her he had been on match and jdate for two years, which made her practically gag, how heartbreaking. He’d met thousands of women, but no one excited him.

  “My friend just went on match,” she said.

  “Oh I’ll look her up.”

  “You won’t miss her picture. She’s very beautiful. I don’t know what her headline is.”

  “Well, I am going to focus on you anyway,” he said. “I don’t need to interview someone else.”

  His intensity made her a bit nervous. She already knew they had nothing in common.

  “I should get back a little early,” she said, putting down her coffee cup. She could see people outside the windows starting to amble home for dinner. Suddenly she was overwhelmed with a desire to get out of there.

  “Well why not stay for dinner and then go?” he asked.

  “No I’ve got to –got to – practice the piano.”

  He looked at her as if she was crazy. “That’s why you can’t have dinner?”

  She nodded. “I’m very disciplined.”

  “I guess so,” he said. “How about tomorrow night? Somewhere special like the Palm,” although he added he couldn’t stand the way women expect men to pay. “ So we’ll share, Okay?”

  He really knows how to make a woman feel like she’s the one, she thought. Anyway she found the Palm boring. A tourist place. Maybe it wasn’t. She’d only been there once. He said his picture was up on the wall. At the time, he’d had lots of hair like Frank Zappa. Then he went onto telling her he was in the middle of a messy, expensive divorce.

  “I need a woman with lots of money,” he said, smiling, as if that was witty.

  She fiddled with her cup, thinking he’d soon ask to see her tax return. Why was she here?

  “I’ll make an exception this time,” he corrected himself. “Anyway you probably have some stashed somewhere.”

  What is he talking about? She left and then he began calling her the entire next afternoon.

  He started to get a little testy when she explained she couldn’t talk, she was busy. No she could not break her plans tonight. No she was not free this weekend. No, she did not want to drive to Jones Beach. She was beginning to see what the two years of women had been running from.

  The next date was in Pangea, next to her apartment, where she had seen the tall, dark haired, rather handsome psychoanalyst reading his book. This time he was wearing a camel hair blazer, and stood up when she came toward him.

  He was from Pittsburgh originally, he said, and was raising his two daughters himself. The mother was a beautiful narcissist, he made sure to mention, and only had the girls on weekends. Duet wondered about who was the beautiful narcissist as he cocked his head seductively.

  They immediately began talking about the psychology behind the relationship between the sexes. He claimed women wanted the power of being desired. They didn’t really want the man. They just wanted to be sought after. He said it was an untenable situation. The truth was, he said, that women liked to flirt, get the man’s attention and then dismiss him. Castrate him, in other words.

  Yes, she said, some women did that. But she wouldn’t say all women did.

  He laughed, “Oh yes honey all women do.”

  We do? she wondered. They talked about the sexual dance between men and women with a ferocity that might only be sexual desire, she thought. Or hurt. But he was attractive and she could keep up with his mind and that did have a certain allure for both of them. Was she attracted to him? She wasn’t sure.

  He said to her, once he finished his soup, “You’re sensual, with nice clothes, long hair, pretty face. But you don’t seem very erotic.”

  She said, “Why should I be erotic over a coffee?” But she knew he had a point. She did dampen that part of herself. Boy, he could have a field day analyzing her if he knew the truth about her. Probably write a whole new article for the New York Psychoanalytic Chapter.

  “Well give me an example of what you mean by erotic,” she said, fingering her tea.

  “I’ve been seeing this young Russian girl, I mean, she’s completely crazy, I could never trust her to be there for me, but we have that pull, have had it for years –“

  “What do you mean be there for you?” she asked.

  “If I needed something,” he said.

  Duet couldn’t understand this. What was he trying to say? If he got ill? or did he mean he just wanted someone steady to have breakfast and lunch with and talk to and share with. That was good, she thought, if it was true, but she immediately disqualified him as a possible romance. He’s in an obsession with his Russian girl, and trying to distract himself. It won’t work. Obsessions only run out when you get bored with them.

  “I have to go soon,” she said. It was hard for her to be with a man where there was nothing going on.

  “Why don’t we have dinner?” he asked. “Anywhere you like.”

  But why did he tell her about the Russian in the first place?

  “Well, email me,” she said, “and we can figure something out.”

  “Why are you called Duet?” he asked, smiling.

  “ My parents think of themselves as a duet. They love music.”

  “It’s a nice name,” he said.

  For some reason, as he walked her to her door, out of nowhere she said, “I can’t get over how handsome you are.”

  “Thanks,” he said, lighting up. But she knew he’d been told that all his life. Thousands of women.

  Maybe she was giving him a peace offering for knowing that she could never fall for him.

  She unlocked her apartment door and thought, We’ll make good friends.

  The third one was Paula’s fix up, a professor from Princeton. In computers, she thought he said. He was unusually short but kinetic and intelligent. He had picked a health food restaurant which was not really Duet’s style. She was healthy in what she ate, but she didn’t like the sanctimoniousness that came with the little brown wooden block tables, the affected hushness. Everyone here
must be, god forbid, sensitive.

  Her date, Michael, knew a lot about music, like she did, and so the conversation was lively. “Oh you like Vaughn Williams, too? Zemlinsky? I didn’t know anyone else knew his work. He never got enough acclaim.” And so on. Michael reacted to everything she said with, “That’s so interesting,” or “Wow.” This enthusiasm had the effect of making him seem like a child. As if she was showing him the night sky for the first time. Maybe it was a way to make sure he didn’t get attacked.

  He also had an ex wife. Over organic coffee (which is torture), he told her he was in some legal battle with his sister over their mother’s estate.

  Ah, she thought, here it is. The Jungian shadow. Wondrous like a child and grasping like a harridan. She couldn’t imagine litigating against a sibling.

  She dropped him off, on her way home, at the bus station so he could return to Princeton and he tried to kiss her in the back of the taxi. She moved away as soon as was gently possible and he said, “Wow that was terrific.” The two of them were bathed in the turning off and on of the Times Square lights.

  What was terrific? she wondered. “Bye,” she said, remembering a shoot out that she had read about right behind the bus station. Maybe these kind of hurried good bye scenes lead the imagination to create shoot out drive bys at bus stations.

  That was enough for one week. God knows.

  “How are your dates going?” Duet asked Paula at work. “I tried two dates, plus that one idiot you fixed me up with…”

  “Keep an open mind,” Paula said. “You have to kiss a lot of frogs first…”

  “ What frogs are you kissing?”

  “My first three were a bust too. But tonight, I have a date that my psychic says is important.”

  Duet looked over at Paula and thought , Well, whoever he is, he’s going to go into shock when she walks into the restaurant. She is so beautiful with her tall body, long red hair, high cheekbones.

  “What is he like?” Duet asked.

  “He’s originally from Denmark. He manufactures video games for kids.”

  “Wow,” Duet said, “he must be successful.” Just then Liliana, the secretary, walked into Duet’s cubicle. “Hola” she said. “I brought you half my bagel.” Liliana was always trying to feed Duet. Duet didn’t know why. Liliana seemed to worry about her.

  “Thanks,” Duet said. Actually, she liked being fed.

  “We’re meeting at the Time Warner building,” Paula said.

  “Let’ s see his picture.”

  And Paula’s handsome Dane did look debonair. He wore a blue suit, light blue shirt, had a moustache which was kind of sexy, and wore John Lennon glasses. He looked right into the camera. “Pretty attractive,” Duet said.

  “He’s lived in Europe most of his life.”

  “Oh I get it,” Duet said, laughing. “You keep the best ones for yourself.”

  “No,” Paula said. “I do not.”

  “Anyway I don’t really care,” Duet explained softly.” It was just an experiment, those three dates. I am not into it. I am not the dating type. Not in the cards.“

  “Oh Duet, just wait. Life is full of surprises.”

  A week later, Duet felt she just couldn’t eat alone one more night. So she decided to go to Almond’s on 22nd street and be around people. It was a modern restaurant, rather atmosphere-less, with hardwood floors and wood tables, and not a place with attitude. She could just take a book and read, uninterrupted, or occasionally watch people. She wore a quiet black dress and was reading a book on Alma Mahler. Duet knew a lot about Mahler’s music and loved it but Alma, the composer’s wife, fascinated her, as Alma fascinated most people. Mahler’s wife had attracted geniuses like models attract rock stars. Klimt, Kokoshka, Mahler, Werfel who won the Nobel Prize for writing—all of them were Alma’s lovers. Were there just more geniuses running around Vienna at that time in the 20s, Duet wondered, or was it something about Alma?

  Duet had Viennese blood in her so in some ways this was a world that her own relatives must have lived in. Duet was intensely studying the photographs while waiting for the server to take her order when a dark haired man, holding himself very straight, in a coat and hat, with a strong face and a manner of being that said he was used to being in charge, poked his head over her shoulder.

  “Is that a Kokoshka painting?”

  “Yes,” Duet said, surprised. Few people knew about Kokoshka, one of Alma’s lovers.

  Then he said, “Have you seen the doll that he made of Alma?”

  Duet was even more surprised. “This book is about Alma,” she said smiling, holding the book’s cover up for him. How fantastic. Someone who knows something. “Let me look,” and she flipped through but there were no pictures of a doll.

  “I love that story,” he said, now standing in front of her. She had to admit whoever this guy is, he’s pretty unusual. The strength of his mind sort of took over the room. “May I?” he said, motioning to the other chair,”or are you waiting for your better half?”

  “No,” she laughed, “I have no better half.”

  “Undoubtedly,” he said.

  He put his hat down and took off his coat. He had a very colorful shirt on and also his pants were almost a light blue.

  “Are you a painter?” she asked.

  “No, but I am visual. That is why I sat down here. The book and…” he pointed at her.

  She smiled.

  “What is your name?” he asked. “Alma?”

  “Duet.”

  “Duet?” he asked, sarcastically. “Real-ly?”

  “Yes,” she smiled. There was something witty about him.

  “Oh waiter,” he said, teasingly, then looked at her. “What would you like?” He ordered a Dewars like her father would and didn’t fall over when she said an old fashioned. The Computer Professor would have seen untold cause for awe in it.

  “Duet,” he said, “sounds like the name of an exotic dancer. Not sure, come to think of it, what it sounds like,” he added.” Do you play the cello?”

  “No.”

  “Are you half of a twin?”

  “No,” she smiled.

  “You’re just duet, by yourself.” He was staring at her, trying to figure out who this woman was. Actually, he was trying to figure out if he found her attractive. She wasn’t flashy, she seemed to have depth. He preferred flashy.

  She watched him studying her and it amused her. She could tell she wasn’t his usual type but he liked the book she was reading. Finally, finally something in common. She also noticed he didn’t seem to want to merge with her instantaneously, just seemed to want to have a good time. She suddenly felt happy and she knew why. He might be able to handle it. He was not fragile.

  “I’m Duet by myself. But there are parts of me that are duetish.”

  “Oh,” he raised his eyebrows. “You mean your breasts.”

  Quick. The guy was quick.

  “Yes, like that.”

  He leaned toward her, “LIKE that?”

  She smiled. “Let’s talk about you. What do you do?”

  He proceeded to explain some incomprehensible stock market language to her which explained his seeming a bit powerful. He must not scrounge, she thought. Then she asked him the standard twenty questions about his life which he fielded well. “Yes, I’ve been married,” he said, “but the trouble with marriage is the same as the trouble with socialism. Eventually you run out of someone else’s money to spend.”

  She didn’t quite get it but she let it go.

  Yes, he has a son. Probably a thousand girlfriends, she decided. He was not introverted like she was.

  “You don’t seem shy about meeting people,” she said.

  “Why should I be shy? The more people I meet,” he said, “the more odds in my favor.”

  Odds. If only he knew how she defied so many odds. She smiled to herself. Well.. I wonder if these odds are in his favor. She smiled at him for no reason he could ascertain.

  He did what all people
do when a bit confused, he ordered food. A cheese plate for them to share. She told him about working with Mahler’s music. He told her that she reminded him a bit of Alma, in her looks. She told him that Kokoshka had thrown the doll he made of Alma (when he was angry that she had ended their affair) out the window one day and it broke into pieces.

  “But he took it everywhere. To the theatre, opera. I love it,” her dinner date said.

  “By the way,” she said. “What is your name?”

  “Well Alma,” he said, “My name is Oskar.”

  “Oh how funny,” she said.

  “Not really.”

  At the end of the evening, the bill came and she reached into her handbag to give him some money.

  “No, it’s okay,” he said.

  And she smiled, thinking of Bob Bentley and her being the one.

  “Ah I passed that test,” he said. “Thought I was going to trip up, didn’t you?” He had probably said that line to countless women but she still laughed. It was his joy in delivering it.

  “And I am not going to let you kiss me good night either. It’s not right at this stage,” he said. “ No matter how much you want to, I am not letting you.”

  He was fun. Someone was fun. “Fine,” she said, delighted to forget herself for a bit.

  “But,” he said, ”be at my apartment tomorrow night at 7 sharp for champagne by my fireplace. We’ll go out to dinner after.”

  Most uncharacteristically, she didn’t hesitate a minute before saying, Yes.