Jake & Mimi

by Frank Baldwin

  • • •

  The bell rings softly behind me as I step out onto Amsterdam again. The cool night air greets me like a friend, and I start for home. A comedy is just letting out at the corner Loews, and I walk for a block through the happy throng, past young couples twined together as they wave for cabs and by college kids shouting the best lines at one another as they head in packs into bars or simply out into the New York night.

  I turn onto Eighty-first Street, away from the din of the avenues, and walk the last quiet block to my building. I should be all done in, but I feel clean and electric, the spatial world around me trim and strong, the edges of buildings pressed close against the sky.

  She was tremendous. The best I’ve had in the year I’ve been doing this. Her sounds alone — Jesus.

  A suit walks by me, his cell phone pressed to his ear, querying some distant party about stock quotes. Stock quotes on a Saturday night.

  I reach my building, climb the stairs, and let myself into my one-bedroom. I pour a half glass of Absolut, strip to my shorts, and step through the window out onto the fire escape again, to end the night as I began it. I sip my drink and lean my arms on the metal railing, letting the night air chill me.

  Everything in our modern world is designed to protect us from true contact. The most we get of it is the jostling on the subway on the rush-hour ride to work. All day at our desks we speak to the business selves of others, saved from honest talk by our suits and our titles and our client relationships. And once home? We can order in our food, get our entertainment from a box, pay our bills by phone, and then, before bed, log on and reinvent ourselves on the Internet, sharing fantasies in chat rooms with people we’ll never see and pretending that’s intimacy, contact. It isn’t.

  True contact is the moment you drive inside her. You are face-to-face, with no escape for either of you. It is the one true moment of each week for me, the one I live for.

  I look out at the lights in the quiet buildings across the street, and above them at the golden moon, which tonight seems to hang over New York alone. Next week’s beauty is somewhere under that moon. Stepping lightly to a swing band maybe, or browsing in a late-night bookstore. She might even be asleep already, her slip riding up her pale leg as her soft lips part in dream. Who is she, I wonder, and how far along the edge will I take her?

  CHAPTER TWO

  The angels’ share.

  That’s the term I was looking for. That precious day in wine country last summer, stepping with Mark out of the hot Napa sun and into the dark, musty champagnerie caves, drawing his arm around me and then stepping forward from under it when my eyes cleared and I saw, filling the room, those rows and rows of oak barrels. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful. There must have been hundreds of them, each working its magic on the juice of the first press, the finest juice from the best grapes in the vineyard. I looked at Mark, and even he, Mr. Beer Man, was struck by it. They were so simple, those barrels, but so solid and made with such care, and our guide explained that each one, while imparting its flavor, also lost some of its wine to evaporation. Yes. A portion of each barrel would pass right through the oak and disappear into the air. The American wineries, he said, simply write this off as “gross loss,” but the French — champagne’s creators — call it the “angels’ share.”

  That’s what I should have told Mrs. Brodeur. Sorry, Madame Brodeur. That you can’t plan a wedding down to the last minute. That at every wedding, every one, there will be time that you can’t account for, time that will… evaporate, I should have said. Like the angels’ share. But I couldn’t think of it, so I kept quiet.

  Madame Brodeur is the wedding consultant — Mom’s idea, of course — and if I let her, the woman will preside over our big day with a stopwatch. And to think she’s from Paris. It hasn’t taken her long to learn our American efficiency and lose all her home country’s grace and sense of occasion.

  She has allotted four minutes to get from the top of the church stairs to the limo. In my wedding dress. She has allotted five minutes for the best man’s toast. Ten minutes, at the reception, from serving the first drinks until we gather at the edge of the lake for photos.

  She’s crazy. Our families, and all our friends, herded from place to place? And just the thought of following a script. We’ve been to three weddings this past year, Mark and I, and the best moments are always the ones you don’t plan. They spring naturally from the magic of the day.

  I might see Grandma in the church foyer after the recessional and stop for a minute to hold my new ring up to her failing eyes. Or maybe at the reception Uncle Ralph will get drunk and want to give a toast of his own. Or Sandy, who cried when I named her a bridesmaid and cried when I showed her her reading and cries, her sister swears, at her neighbors’ First Communions, will cry again when we gather for pictures, and we’ll need to give her a few minutes to fix her makeup. Or something silly, even. The groomsmen will find a football and start choosing sides, and the bartenders will have to be sent out to coax them back. Or one of the UConn grads, probably Reece or Jason, will yell, “Huskie time!” like they do at any get-together, and all the young guys — and there will be twenty from school, at least — will charge onto the grass and build a human pyramid.

  I want all those things to happen. Or others just like them. I want everyone to drink and dance and have more fun than they’ve ever had. I want it to be a day of joy.

  For weeks I’ve been fine. Really. Because it’s all been coming together so beautifully. We have the best band. Mark and I heard their tape and we went to see them, twice, in two different places, and they were wonderful both times. Any band that can get Staten Island boys away from the bar and out onto the dance floor can handle a wedding crowd. They can play anything, from ska to Sinatra. Mark rolls his eyes at Frank, but they will play “That’s Life,” even if I have to sneak it onto the song list in pencil. If Mark wants to hide when they start into it, I’ll just dance with Dad.

  The caterers, too, have been a dream. Judy, the woman in charge, was married herself just two months ago, so she can’t do enough for us. Extras of everything. The flowers? Chosen, and beautiful. White roses for the altar and the steps of the church, pink ones to line the aisle. The bridesmaids — all perfect. Calling or e-mailing every week now. Sandra has lost twelve pounds since November. “I’ll be as thin as you, Mimi” was her e-mail today. She won’t be, but she’s fine — they’re all fine, all six of them. I won’t need slimming colors, or patterns, and I don’t have to worry, as Mark puts it so delicately, about “stiffing one of the groomsmen.” There are six of them, too, and in their tuxes they’ll look sharp — even Lenny. The bridesmaids all want to see pictures and all look forward to flirting, though, okay, flirting wasn’t the word Anne used.

  So everything’s been fine. Five weeks away still, but the day seems to be gathering a momentum all its own. And when I think of it, which is every fifteen minutes or so, it isn’t with panic at all. Until today.

  I was at my desk, putting the last touches on the Cortez return in preparation for Mr. Stein’s signature. Stein is a senior partner, and he was trusting me, twenty-five years old and still a year from my M.S. in tax, to do solo work on a major client. The return had to be perfect, and it was nearly so. We’d taken an “aggressive approach,” a favorite term among our Latin clients, and I had a spreadsheet and the return open, going back and forth, one good deduction away from bringing the total within our target. I’d zeroed in on overseas depreciation allowances. Yes, here was one that could work. It might just do it…. And then the phone rang.

  “Honey, I saw Father Ryan yesterday.”

  “Mom…”

  “I’ll be quick. It’s just this, dear. If you have a change of heart, he’s offering his services. Full Mass and Communion. We would pay, of course, your father and me.”

  The Catholic thing again. As if I might change my mind at this point. Even if I believed, does she think I’d put everyone through a one-hour mass? The groomsmen
would sneak beer into the church.

  “Mom. We’ve been over this. Please.”

  “If you have a change of heart, dear, that’s all. Sorry. I’ll leave you. Bye.”

  I looked up to see Mr. Stein in the doorway, his hand raised to knock, his kind eyes, under the old-fashioned wire rims, trained graciously on a spot just past me. “Hi,” I said, and the phone rang again. Great. He thinks I’m a party girl.

  “Thirty minutes?” he asked quietly, ducking his head as if to be pardoned. “The Cortez return? In my office?”

  “Of course,” I said, then picked up the phone, hoping it was a client whose name I could repeat while Mr. Stein was still within earshot.

  “Mimi Lessing?”

  Madame Brodeur. And before I could remind her, delicately, that home is a better place to call me, she started in on the “schedule.” Each precious element of my wedding day — the recessional, the tossing of the bouquet, the first dance — scripted with martial precision. And before I could tell her about the angels’ share, explain to her that my wedding was not a military maneuver and wouldn’t be planned like one, she was on to her “concerns.” Had I asked the reception hall about a noise ordinance? What if the band is late? Or the caterers? Will there be vegetarians on the guest list? Who will tie the ring to the ring pillow, and with what kind of knot?

  It was ten minutes before I was free of her and staring at the Cortez return again. Just minutes ago it had been as clear as dawn, the last figures set to fall into place, but now all I saw was a mess of numbers. I looked at the clock. I had twenty minutes. Where had I gotten these depreciation figures? They couldn’t possibly be right. That last deduction — what was it again? Noise ordinance? I picked up the phone.

  “Mark, what is a noise ordinance?”

  “A law against making too much noise.”

  “Our wedding band — what if they violate one?”

  “In the Boathouse in Central Park? Who’s going to gripe — the ducks?”

  “What if the caterers are late?”

  “She called you, didn’t she?”

  “What if we have vegetarians, Mark? What will they eat?”

  “Each other. Mimi, relax.”

  “The ring pillow. What if the knot is too tight?”

  “Mimi.”

  “What?”

  “What are the only two ‘don’ts’ at any wedding?”

  “I know, but —”

  “Say them.”

  I took a breath. “Don’t run out of liquor, and don’t run out of music.”

  “We’ve got liquor for an army and tunes for a dance marathon. Stop obsessing. It’s sexy, but it’s hell on your nerves. I’ll see you tonight.”

  I put the phone down, walked to the window, and was all right again. I looked down at midtown Manhattan, at the row of trees that stretch in a pretty line up Park Avenue. Mark was right, of course. It is the day that matters, not the details. And the day will come. It will come and we will stand at the altar and he will ease the ring onto me, lift my veil, and give me my first married kiss. Then we’ll turn and walk, to “Ode to Joy,” through all the people we love, and step from the church doors out into the sunshine. (There’s something Madame Brodeur can arrange, if she really wants to earn her pay.) And then to Central Park, all of us, to party on the grass by the lake, through the late afternoon and into the night, drinking and dancing under the trees and even, if luck is with us, under the stars.

  I sat back over the return, and it was as simple again as a coloring book. Cows, yes, that was the key. On a cattle ranch you can capitalize cows. And they can depreciate. I put in the new numbers and printed it all out. Thirty-one pages in all. A marvel of compression, really, and it hit all our targets. Ten minutes later Mr. Stein smiled over the top of it from behind his large oak desk.

  “A spirited return, Mimi.”

  I could have kissed him.

  “Bold in places —”

  He held up page 13. The cows.

  “— but defensible. All of it. First-rate work.”

  Those are beautiful words from a senior partner. Anytime, but especially a month before your review. I glided through the rest of the afternoon, and then to the gym in the early evening, where I pushed myself through my best workout in weeks. Step aerobics, twenty laps in the pool, light weights, the StairMaster, aerobics again, ten minutes in the sauna for my pores, and then the brisk walk home. “Looking good,” Manuel called out, from the lottery window of the little newsstand on Eighty-second Street. “Feeling good,” I answered with a wave.

  And I am, as I step out of my apartment and into the street again. I should really cab it, as it’s almost eight o’clock, but it’s too beautiful a night not to walk. I’ll miss only the start of the game, and that’s all right. The others went early and will save me a seat along the bar. I’m meeting Mark, his sister Sherry and her husband of three months, Alan, at a sports bar on Sixty-second. Sherry is a UConn grad, too, and Alan an honorary one, so tonight we’ll root on the Huskies in the big annual college basketball tournament. March Madness, they call it. All the best teams from around the country keep playing one another until only the champion is left. It goes on for weeks every year and it’s great fun, an excuse for us young grads to gather in bars and show our school spirit.

  I need a night out. A night when I can forget, for a few hours, about all the wedding madness and about tax season, too. Maybe I can even forget about last Friday.

  I cross the street at the corner of Eightieth and walk past the open kitchen door of Ernesto’s, breathing in the smell of the bread they bake fresh each night. I continue down Second Avenue.

  Last Friday. I can’t believe it’s still on my mind. It was nothing, really. Well, not nothing.

  The firm sent me to an all-day tax conference at the midtown Hilton. At the reception afterward, a young associate from Peat Marwick, Robert — I don’t remember his last name — turned from the bar, saw the face I was making at my red wine, and offered me his untouched glass of Italian white. “Never trust New York accountants to pick California wines,” he said. I laughed and took the glass, and we started talking. The wine was refreshing, and he was, too. Dry is a kind word for most of these conferences, and for the presentations you hear at them, but he’d given a sharp talk on tax shelters. It wasn’t your average accounting paper. He’d titled it “Gimme Shelters,” and it was hip and funny, though dead on point, too.

  He was psyched to hear that I was writing my master’s thesis on offshore shelters, and over another glass of wine he asked some questions and suggested some approaches that I hadn’t heard yet from my NYU adviser. True, he did recommend I title it “The Artful Dodger,” but he was a real help and fun to talk to, even. It was a productive hour, and after he circled on my copy of his paper all the sources that might apply to my thesis, and after he wrote out the numbers of two senior partners I might call in Marwick’s international division, Robert looked at my ring for a long second, then up at my eyes, and asked if I’d had enough tax talk for one day and wouldn’t I like to, and here he leaned in close, “join him somewhere quiet” for a drink?

  I flushed, I know — I could see it in his eyes. I took a sip of wine, smiled, and said that I was “joining” my fiancé but that I was sure we’d have the chance to talk again at the next conference. He was a good sport and very smooth, saying he looked forward to it, shaking my hand in that casually provocative way some men can pull off and drifting back to the bar to join the other young Marwick turks.

  That was it. No big deal. Anne calls me VM, for the Virgin Mary, but I’m not naive. I field looks every day, like we all do, and turn down drinks in bars and deflect, gently if I can, the hard chargers. Robert had caught me off guard, that was all, coming on to me out of nowhere — and at a work function besides. That’s why I flushed. I should have just taken it as a compliment, as I always try to, and forgotten about it. But even as I mingled, introducing myself to the other panelists, meeting senior partners from big firms, passi
ng business cards along to potential clients, I found I always knew where in the room Robert was, and twice I caught myself watching him, first as he talked to a young woman from Grant Thornton and again, minutes later, as he joked with the bartender. Okay. He had come on to me, after all, and he was a standout in that crowd, young and the only one there with his suit jacket in his hand, his sleeves rolled up and, it seemed, some appetite for life. Naturally I’d keep an eye out for him.

  Still. What shook me was the feeling I had inside. The… stirring.

  It was the same stirring I had felt for the first time six years ago, when I stood with Mark at my dorm-room door after our second date. He kissed me once, then harder, then ran his fingers across my cheek, down my neck, and to the open top of my blouse. “Can I come inside?” he asked, and I felt the tightness in my belly and I felt my legs go light and I knew, all at once, that I would have him in and that we would make love and that Mark was the one for me.

  I’ve felt it many times since. Always with Mark, of course, and always it leads to sex. We’ve been a couple for so long that I feel it less often now, but still it comes. Walking home from a movie on a warm night, say, when we’ve been a week without, and I picture, just minutes away, his strong arms holding me still. Or stepping from the shower on a Sunday afternoon, seeing his trail of clothes to the bed and tying my bathrobe tightly even as I follow it, for the pleasure the air will give me when he throws it wide. It is only now and then, but I do feel it still, this stirring. It is the stirring of sex, and it has only ever been a private stirring for Mark alone.

  But there it was, at the reception. I felt it when Robert made his play and when he shook my hand so… carefully, and later, even after he’d walked off, when I’d spot him across the room. The tightness in my belly. My legs going light.

  I tried to pass it off to the wine. I’d drunk two glasses very quickly, after all. But it wasn’t the wine. And the thing is, it wasn’t even Robert. Today I can barely remember what he looked like. It was simply… well… the possibility of sex with another.