Jake & Mimi

by Frank Baldwin

  There.

  And that’s why, when it didn’t fade, I walked to a pay phone and called Mark and told him to be at my place in thirty minutes. He never stays over during the week, doesn’t even keep clothes here, but he stayed that night, and we made love and I… reached that place and afterward, lying on his chest in the cool dark, I felt okay again. Pure and cleansed. When I woke up the next morning, to the fresh breeze from the open window, the reception and Robert and any worries about anything were a world away.

  And that should have been the end of it. But it hasn’t quite been. I keep thinking of that night. What would Robert have suggested, if I’d gone for that drink? How would he have suggested it?

  I reach Sixty-second Street and see, just ahead of me, the garish awning of Champions. The windows of the bar are crowded with neon beer signs and pennants, and even from here I can see that half the city has hit on the same idea. Excited shouts pour out the open door, and as I search in my purse for my license, I shake my head at myself. Listen to me. If Anne could hear me now, she would laugh, and she’d be right to. A night of fun, and here I am worrying over nothing. Enough. I show my ID to the bouncer, he waves me inside, and I step into the joyous fray.

  The place is a madhouse. Hundreds of people — a thousand, even — all in college wear, all drunk or getting there fast and all clutching tournament pools, those single betting sheets that get passed around every office before the games begin. Along the bar are four big-screen televisions, each showing a different game, and in the middle of the big open floor are bleachers, actual full-size bleachers like you’d find in a real stadium, and they’re packed, too, jammed with fans and bettors, shouting or cursing as they watch the screens, stomping their feet when their teams go on a run. It’s bedlam. I hold my purse tight to my chest and make it through the crowd to the bar.

  “Hey, she made it!”

  Mark waves me down to the far end, where Sherry and Alan give me hugs and Alan pulls his jacket from the barstool he’s been guarding.

  “My car’s not worth what I got offered for this seat,” he says, and I laugh.

  The three of them are all decked out in Huskie caps and sweatshirts. They are drunk already and revved up for the game. “For you,” Mark says, handing me a sweatshirt, which I pull on right over my blouse. Alan waves down a crazy UConn booster, a guy with his head painted blue and white, our school colors, who comes down the bar with a hand stamp and presses the school logo onto our cheeks. The bartender is another alum, and he puts Jell-o shots in front of us, blue and white again, of course, and we four hold them up and say, “To the Huskies!” Mark, Alan, and Sherry toss theirs back. I give mine to Mark, and he tosses it back.

  We’re playing UCLA, and down the bar is a good, rowdy crew of their fans, too, blond Californians all. They start chanting their school cheers at us, and we chant ours back at them, before the game and then during it, as first their boys go ahead and then ours come back to take the lead.

  I sit on the outside, next to Sherry, and when she slips away to the bathroom, I move to her seat for a better view.

  Alan is watching the screen, living and dying with every shot, and then suddenly, after we score a pretty basket, I feel his hand on my leg, squeezing the inside of my thigh so hard that I gasp. And as he does he turns, his eyes shining, his mouth a curl; when he sees I’m not Sherry, he jumps right up off his barstool.

  “Jesus!” he says, and then laughs.

  “She’s in the bathroom, Alan,” I say, and laugh, too.

  Alan laughs again. “Hit me, Mark,” he says. “I just put my hands on your girl.”

  “At halftime,” says Mark, pumping his fist as the Huskies score, and then Alan is watching the game again and Sherry is back, too, and at the first commercial Alan turns to her and says, “I just strayed, baby,” and tells Sherry what happened, and we all laugh again.

  After a minute I walk to the bathroom and into the stall and sit down on the closed seat of the toilet. And I’m shaking. Shaking so hard, I drop my compact. And the spot where he touched me is… there’s no other word for it, it is burning. I almost roll down my stockings to see if there is a mark. “Mimi, Mimi,” I say, but minutes later I’m still shaking, and when I put my hand to my forehead, it is red-hot. What is going on? It was an accident, clearly, and there’s been nothing, ever, between Alan and me, less than nothing, but… his touch was like an electric shock. Finally I gather myself, step from the stall, walk to the sink, and pat down my face with a cool towel, careful not to smudge the UConn logo. It is five minutes before I can join the others again.

  After the game we all leave together. UConn lost in the last seconds, and there was some official’s call that went against us, and Mark and Alan are lost in argument over it as we walk out to the street and up to the corner. Sherry asks me about the wedding, which I can discuss in my sleep now, but I’m only half there as I talk to her. I can still feel it, his tight grip on my thigh. More even than that, though, I can still see the look on his face. His mouth had been hard, his eyes… feral, and in that split second I saw how they do it. How they go into sex. Every couple goes into sex a different way, and I’d seen the look he gives her when they start. And his grip — it had been so rough. Sherry is no bigger than I am. She must like…

  And then we are saying good-bye, and Mark and I are getting into a cab, Mark still shaking his head every few seconds over the game, muttering “damn” and “Christ” and then, looking at me, checking himself and pulling me to him. I smile and lean against him, but when he puts his hand softly on my knee, I almost jump. Outside the window the city flashes by, and I catch glimpses of faces, rough, then soft, and stabs of neon from the bars along the avenues. Mark would never grab the inside of my thigh in a public place. Never. He would never give me a look like that. Has never given me a look like that. Not that I’d want him to. No, not at all. It isn’t that. It’s just…

  We reach Eighty-third Street and the cab pulls hard to the curb in front of my building.

  “Wait till next year, right?” says Mark, smiling.

  I put my hand on his shoulder. “Mark, come up.”

  “Now?”

  I nod.

  “I’ve got a production meeting at seven-thirty. And it’s going to be a bear.”

  “Come up anyway.”

  He looks at me, then leans in and kisses my neck. “Temptress. Tomorrow — and you’d better be ready.”

  I step from the taxi and watch as it pulls away up the empty street. The spring air, so refreshing just hours ago, makes me shiver now. I step into my building and walk the five flights up to my apartment.

  There has been Mark and no one else for six years now, since sophomore year at UConn. No one else because I’ve wanted no one else, and in five weeks I’ll pledge myself to him forever, and no moment in my life will be happier. I’m sure of that. As sure as I breathe. So what is going on?

  In the kitchenette of my one-bedroom I pour out a glass of chardonnay. It is a weeknight, and tax season, and I’ve had a glass of beer already, but I’ll have just the one. A glass of wine, a hot bath, and then to bed. I walk with my glass into the bathroom and start the water in the tub. I pour in bath salts, small blue crystals that scatter and dissolve under the force of the faucet’s stream.

  Robert at the reception was one thing. But tonight. The charge that went through me when Alan grabbed my thigh was stronger than any stirring. And there’s more, too. I have started lately, on the subway or on the street, not to look — that’s too strong a word — but to notice men around me. Attractive men. I know, I know. Like that’s anything. What am I, a maid? I’m twenty-five. But I’ve never been this way.

  I slip out of my sweats and panties and into the bath. The water is as hot as I can stand it, and I slide down into it until only my neck is above the bubbles. Maybe I can soak these thoughts out of me.

  Nerves, Mimi. That’s all it is. The wedding is so close now, and Madame Defarge — excuse me, Brodeur — has me obsessing over
every detail, and Mom is on me about religion again, and all of it’s… taking a toll. Not to mention that it’s the height of tax season and I’m a month from my review.

  And it’s spring. Spring in Manhattan, which means that no one, it seems, can think of anything but sex. Take Anne.

  Anne is my maid of honor and best friend. We grew up together. She has been single since she left Dan at Christmas, and when she has a “good night on the singles scene,” as she calls it, she phones me up with the details. All the details. How many times. The different ways. I always have to stop her. My other friends, too. Five of us meet every other week for drinks, and though none are as… specific as Anne, sex is always topic A. Mark assures me that his buddies are the same. Worse. If it weren’t for professional sports, he says, they’d talk about nothing else, and he promises that if I ever heard a tape of poker night, I wouldn’t let any of them into the apartment again.

  I don’t understand it, this obsession with sex. Will she or won’t she, on their end, and should I or shouldn’t I, on ours. Isn’t there more to life? It’s in the air, I know — the whole culture is mad with it. The movies. The music. The scandals. The billboards. There is no escaping it, and I guess it seeps into everyone. Really, though, I don’t ever think about it. Or didn’t ever.

  If there was a problem between Mark and me, any problem, I could understand it, but no, there is no problem.

  Well.

  It’s not a problem, I would never call it that. It’s not even a complaint, really. But since I’m trying to understand… there is one thing.

  We… only ever go at it the one way. The usual way. It’s wonderful. Safe and easy and natural, and he makes sure I’m… cared for… and three weeks ago I would have said I’m happy. I am happy. I’m a flower to Mark, and I love it. I can do everything with him that I dreamed I’d do with a partner. Suggest a museum on Saturday and he won’t blanch. Talk to him about books and about ideas, even.

  It’s just… there is fire in me, I know it. And there are times I’d like to… give in to that side of me. And there are times I almost do. Mark and I have made love when I’ve gone after him and he’s come back at me hard and it’s been wonderful. But still safe. Always safe. And always, essentially, the same way. Even our way into sex is the same.

  He’ll touch me, then look into my eyes, and if I return his look, we’ll walk to the bed, where I’ll take off his clothes and he’ll take off mine, and then either he will start down from my neck or reach down for me as we kiss. I swear it is this way almost every time. If I start it differently, he steers me back to this… routine. Gently, but he steers me back. If we are on the floor, reading the Sunday paper, and I kiss him and smile back at his look and try to pull him down to me, he will smile but he will tense, and to save the moment I’ll stand and we’ll go to the bed. Or, and this happened just once, two weeks ago, we were in bed, and ready, and I started to, to sit up, but I saw his eyes tense and I stopped myself almost before I started, brought him down to me, and we did it as always.

  I should speak to him, maybe. We’ve never talked about sex. Not once. There are couples, I know, that discuss everything, that get videos and, can I even say it, devices. We could never. Even asking him to take me… another way — impossible. Imagine, the man I marry. But I couldn’t. And I wouldn’t, either, because he’d think I’ve been unhappy all this time, and I haven’t been at all. There has been, from the start, such comfort and safety in our sex. And I’ve prized it. I grew up a good Greenwich girl, eighteen years in the same beautiful stone house, loving parents, private school, and happy, happy with all of it. And when as a girl I thought of love, I thought first of a soul mate, and yes, a protector, and I have that in Mark, absolutely, beyond question.

  So why do I see men now and… it’s less than imagining it, not quite imagining it, because I stop myself, turn my thoughts away because… what was it Daddy used to say… no good could ever come of it.

  But just once, to feel — what?

  Dominated.

  Mimi. See where the mind will go, when you let it loose? When you start it down a way of thinking? It’s not true. It is nerves, as I said before. Nerves and nothing else, and it will pass. Oh, I wish the wedding were tomorrow. I want to stand at that altar and hear the priest say his words. The traditional words. The magic ones. “Do you, Mimi…” and so forth, right through to the end. He will wait on my answer, the beautiful stone church dead quiet, and I will look at Mark and say my two words, the words that change everything, and as I do I won’t remember any of this. What is it I’m obsessing about, anyway? Positions? The angle of our bodies? Stray half thoughts about strangers? What are they, next to love? They are nothing.

  Tomorrow will be six months. Six months since we lay in a rowboat on the pond in Central Park, Mark on his back in the cradle of the boat and me on my back in his arms. We bumped the shore, and Mark pushed us out again. We drifted through sun, into shade, into sun again, my eyes lazily closed as he stroked my arm, up and back down, up and back down, then opening to see, in his hand, the shining ring.

  It still brings a surge to me. A true surge, one of love and happiness. I press my neck against the cool tile of the tub, finish the last of my wine, and rise from the water. I turn the shower on to its strongest setting and rinse off. The ring was so beautiful that day. Its diamond caught the rays of the sun, I remember, and sent them out again, up into Mark’s eyes and off the leaves of the trees. I make the water hotter, then hotter still, and I can feel it pounding the last troubling thoughts right out of me. They disappear into the steam, and when at last I shut it off, step onto the bath mat and reach for my soft, white towel, I am clean and clear again. Minutes later, in my slip, I walk to the bedroom and climb in the bed. Just an hour ago I was tense and worried, and now I feel wonderful. One song before sleep.

  The Pavarotti tape waits in the player by my bed. I switch off the light and hit the PLAY button, and in seconds his voice fills the dark room. “Nessun Dorma.” The singer cannot sleep. Not while his love is away from him. Such beauty. Where does it come from, in a man? I’m a fool. I wish Mark were here. It is the worst of sins, to forget what you have and long for what you don’t. And what I have is precious. The luckiest girl in New York, and I sit at home and worry. No more. Tomorrow morning I’ll step out of the office and make it to the video store while there is still a selection. The Oscars are in ten days, and there are still two contenders we haven’t seen. I’ll get the one Mark wants, the crime one, and I’ll have him over tomorrow. I’ll put out candles and make popcorn, and even before the previews are over, I will come on to him. It will be perfect.

  Pavarotti holds his last, soaring note, and then the room is quiet. My building is all the way east, on the water, and listening hard I can hear in the distance the horn of a boat. It is so peaceful. Plaintive. Sleep, Mimi. Tomorrow will be busy. Mr. Stein is assigning me a new account. Something special, he said. It’s the last thing I need, this far into tax season, but he’s giving me help. I’ll work the returns with a new associate, a young guy who just joined the firm last month.

  Jake Teller, I think his name is.

  Please let him not be difficult. He won’t be, I’m sure. Stop worrying, Mimi. Okay, I’ve stopped.

  To sleep. Dream of veils.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Miss Lessing walks the same route home every day.

  It is longer by nearly a block than if she kept to First Avenue, but instead of squat bars and grim scaffolding, she ends her commute with a vibrant stretch of neighborhood shops. She passes first the produce stand, with its bins of fresh fruit open to the air; next the bustling deli, where they know her by name; and then the newsstand, where she greets the smiling Latino boy who, on her weaker days, will sell her a lottery ticket and then lean out the window to stare after her. At mid-block her eyes often drift up to the delicate stonework of the prewar walkup, then lower again as she passes the tiny art gallery, with the watercolors she likes in the window. Then a friendly
wave to the Asian cleaners who press her suits and finally, just before the corner, the smoked-glass window of Vine. Vine is an elegant wine-tasting room, and Miss Lessing rarely passes it without stopping to read the day’s selections. If one intrigues her, as it did today, she takes a pen from her purse and writes it down.

  Each afternoon I see her first as she turns onto the block, see her from my window spot in La Boheme, the faux Parisian coffeehouse across the street. Today she wore a demure blue suit, offset by white stockings. I watched until she turned the far corner, and then I returned my cup to the counter and stepped out of aromatic La Boheme and into the teeming street. I walked east, then south, through what was once called Germantown. Forty years ago my father would bring me here on Sunday mornings, to browse in the sausage shops. They are bars now, or boutiques.

  I walked down through the Seventies, and through the Sixties. At Fifty-seventh Street the clamor of York gave way to the quiet of Sutton Place, and from there it was but three blocks to the clearing, a small patch of grass and flowers between two gray buildings. The clearing commands an unobstructed view of the river and its walkway but is set back far enough that one can watch from the railing in peace.

  As I do now.

  Three nights a week Miss Lessing works out at her gym, but three others she runs along the river. Any minute now she will step into view. I hold to the railing and watch the river walkway. A young woman runs by in a garish sports bra, and now another in shorts cut to her hip.

  There she is.

  Dressed discreetly, as always, her long T-shirt falling almost to her knees. Tonight her brown hair is pulled into a tight ponytail. Her chin is up, her runner’s legs striding smoothly. Such carriage. And then she is gone. Seven seconds it takes her to pass from sight.

  I watch the spring wind stir the dark surface of the river. When she appears again on her return pass, she will be beautiful in her exhaustion. Her head down, soft beads of perspiration rimming her smooth face. I look at my watch. 6:40. It will take her about twenty minutes.