The thought of leaping to my feet and running backstage to find her dressing room occurred to me, but I dismissed it. What was the point? Natasha gave me music, heavenly music that lifted me from my grief. I sat empty handed, with nothing to give back.
Meanwhile I glanced around at the audience. Everyone seemed to be in awe, all except the woman next to me. Why Lana was even here was a mystery. Music was not something she seemed to enjoy. I thought I remembered Ryan, my friend, mentioning to me that his girlfriend had tin ears, which at this point she signaled, without shame, by choking one yawn after another.
Reluctant to get up by herself, Lana clasped my arm with a pleading look, so I had no choice but to help her to her feet. Wobbling a bit over her high heels, she took a large, jeweled comb out of her purse and inserted it into her hair, which was extremely blond, to hold it in place, twisted up.
Then, with a little sigh, she told me how glad she was it was finally time for intermission, and she needed a man by her side, not someone who was stationed faraway, and who not only surrounded himself with English girls but also sent her pictures to boast about it, without any consideration for her feelings, and she wasn’t jealous, really, but needed to be held, because what’s a woman to do when she’s lonely, and in particular she needed to be held by me, because right now she was a little tipsy, and would I accompany her as she headed for the bar.
Perhaps she figured I was not paying attention, because she concluded all that with, “Listen, Lenny. I need a drink. Would you buy me one?”
I hesitated. For months I ignored any and all temptations. I longed for my girl, but she was a star, and an illusive one at that. Too much time had elapsed since our one-and-only date, and even though I had just seen her onstage, standing right there in front of me, the distance remained.
She was unreachable.
A little devil awakened in my mind, suggesting that what had turned to ashes could never be rekindled. Natasha had forgotten me and knew nothing of my presence here. Call her a muse, an idea of love, an apparition. Call her anything but real.
Meanwhile, here was Lana, in the flesh. Without a doubt she was in heat, and she wanted me. Why, then, should I continue to deprive myself of pleasure? What was I waiting for?
Lana walked out of the auditorium ahead of me, swaying her hips in the most provocative manner, showing off a shapely leg through the slit in the back of her dress. And as if she could hear that hiss, the insistent hiss of the devil inside me, she cast me a flirtatious look over her shoulder.
By now we arrived at the intermission bar. We waited in line, and she ordered a martini. I paid for it.
Trying to act as if she were dainty, she touched a napkin to her glistening lips. The barmen poured a splash of gin and another splash of dry vermouth, stirred them together with ice, and strained the cocktail into a chilled glass, which he handed her.
“Ah!” said Lana, savoring the taste. “It’s quite stiff!”
“As stiff as can be,” said the barman, with a wink.
She took a greedy sip and offered me one, too. I refused.
Behind us, people started heading back to their seats, as the intermission was about to be over, but Lana was in no hurry to go back, and she told me so.
“The next performer is even worse than the previous one,” she said, with a little hiccup. “I think it’s someone quite old, and he’s playing the violin, or something dreary like that.”
“You don’t like music, do you.”
“I hate it with a passion.”
“The tickets are expensive—”
“Not for me! I got mine as a gift.”
“So did I.”
“Perhaps we were meant to meet.”
“Perhaps,” I said, “we should go back to our seats.”
“I’d rather not,” said Lana. “Let’s do something else.”
“Like what?”
“Like going to my place.”
I said nothing. Even so I knew I was on the verge of becoming reckless. Something naughty in me was listening to her with growing interest.
“Ryan wouldn’t mind,” she said. “After all, you’re friends, right?”
“Yes,” said I. “Friends we are.”
“Kiss me, Lenny.”
I said nothing again, and she knew better than to expect an answer. Without losing a beat Lana leaned over, setting her gloved elbows over my shoulders, combing playfully through my hair with one hand, holding her martini with the other. The aroma was intoxicating.
Then, before I could make up my mind what to do, she pressed her lips to mine, sealing them with yet another hiccup.
❋
A few minutes later we stood outside the lobby of Carnegie Hall, shivering slightly in the cold wind. Snowflakes started swirling in the air. A taxi came around the corner with flashing lights and stopped for us some distance away, at the curb.
I dashed ahead and opened its door for Lana. She was still working her way in high heels, careful not to slip over the snow-covered areas, not to wobble too much. Waiting for her I spotted something: reflected in the top of the cab, between one snowflake and another was the sign of a flower shop. There it was, across the street, still open for business, despite the late hour and the chill.
I said to myself, roses!
Why didn’t I think of it earlier, instead of idling about and complaining to myself about being empty-handed? I should have bought roses, dozens of them, for my girl. Perhaps it wasn’t too late.
Lana uttered a little cry of surprise as I bolted across the street.
I dodged a car going this way and another one or two going the other way and then, breathless, handed the flower girl a few large bills, not even counting them. Bending over the round plastic buckets I swept bunches of roses into my arms.
And then, then—just as I was about to carry them across the street—I saw, over flutter of rosebuds, that the doors of Carnegie Hall were opening. Out marched a short, stocky figure, wrapped up to her ears in fur, with hair that was firmly fixed in place as if it were a hard, impenetrable helmet, thanks to the wonders of hairspray.
Behind her appeared a slender figure in a long wool coat. The hem of her cherry red skirt was barely visible under it. It floated just over the icy surface like a ribbon. I imagined it giving a silky swoosh.
“Wait!” called the girl. “Wait for me, Mamotchka!”
“Waiting, it’s for losers,” said her Mama in an impatient tone, as she crossed rapidly ahead of Lana, determined to catch that taxi.
“Hey stop!” cried Lana. “That cab is mine!”
“Not anymore,” said the old woman, through tightly clenched teeth. “Quick, Natasha, let’s go!”
By the time I cut in front of the cab, at the risk of being overrun by traffic, the girl had dutifully obeyed. Both of them were already seated inside, with the door closed and the engine starting to hum, but the window on Natasha’s side was being rolled down. Perhaps she needed some air.
Without a second to catch my breath I threw myself onto the hood of the cab, dropping the flowers in a heap on top of it. Hoping that the old woman would not recognize me and that Natasha would, there I stood, panting, in an attempt to block the vehicle, somehow, from driving away.
Meanwhile Lana managed to arrive. She stamped her foot angrily and at once found herself plopped in an awkward position on the ice-cold pavement. From there, she glared at the old woman.
“Take the damn cab,” she grumbled. “Who cares!”
And to Natasha, who seemed close to fainting, she said, “The flowers, they’re mine!”
With that Lana rose, somehow, to her feet, ran to the hood, and gathered the roses I had spilled to her heart, looking at Natasha all the while.
“Better keep your hands off of them,” she said. “And stay the hell away from my man, too!”
Natasha said not a word. Her Mama simply shrugged.
“Well? What are we waiting for?” she asked the driver, not expecting an answer. “Come on, hit the
gas!”
With a screech, the taxi started swerving around me, shedding rose petals and frozen leaves as it went. Inside, the old woman clapped her hand to her forehead with a sudden gesture of recognition.
And as they drove off, she pointed at me, then wagged her forefinger, and with great menace, muttered, “You again!”
Until You’re in My Arms
Chapter 15
Even before the taxi drove off, carrying Natasha away from me along with her Mama, I hailed another one. Dashing inside, “Quick!” I told the driver, as I pointed ahead. “Follow that car!”
Then, just before I had a chance to close the door, thump! Lana hopped in. With no apologies she landed in my lap, clutching what remained of the roses. She stuck her nose in one of them and sighed with misplaced gratitude.
“Oh what a lovely gesture!” she said. “Ryan never gave me flowers, not even on our first date, let alone on our anniversary, which happened the day he was drafted, so that to his relief, he had to miss it. He could learn a thing or two from you. My, what a gentleman, what a fine young man you are!”
I had not the heart to tell her that the flowers were not meant for her, exactly. The only thing I could do, as the car jerked into motion, was to ease her off of me.
“Oh, you don’t have to tell me. I know,” she said, with a sudden spark of intuition. “You bought them for that girl, that redhead! Don’t say no.”
I didn’t.
“So cute, is what she is,” said Lana, with a shrug. “So I understand, but I can’t say I’m not jealous.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
Smelling the roses and raising them to my nose, she asked, “What about these? Are they mine, now?”
“Sure,” I said, as gallantly as I could, patting her hand over the broken stems. “You can have them.”
“Oh,” moaned Lana. “I would never have guessed it, looking at those muscles of yours. You have the most buttery touch.”
“I do?”
“I’ll make believe you meant to give me these flowers, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t.”
For some reason she proceeded to tell me the whole story of how she had met Ryan. I could barely concentrate on it, because my mind was elsewhere. I was worrying that Natasha might slip away from me—this time forever—if the driver would fail to catch up to that cab.
Lana crossed one shapely leg over another, as if to pose for me, and went on with her account of things, which was becoming increasingly long-winded.
“A few months ago I went to a party,” she said, in her Russian accent. “I made sure I arrived fashionably late—well, slightly later than that—because what’s a girl to do if she wants to draw attention to herself?”
“Don’t ask me.”
Undeterred, she pressed on. “And as I entered, there he was,” she said, “standing sheepishly next to his boss. At the time he seemed like a shy, inexperienced young fellow, no, not his boss but Ryan himself, which may surprise you, because I can tell—looking at the pictures he has sent me from London—that nowadays he seems to be carrying on, with great confidence as well as vigor, with the ladies.”
“Oh, forget them.”
“Yeah. Drat those English ladies!”
“Amen,” I said, absentmindedly.
“So to make a short story long,” she droned on, “let me tell you about what happened at that party.”
I tried, for her sake, to show some interest. “Can’t wait to hear.”
“His boss, a fatherly, middle-aged man, took me aside to tell me what a fine boy Ryan was, and if I asked him, which I didn’t, we would make such a handsome couple, and perhaps, just perhaps, the most clever way to his heart was for me to show some familiarity with classical music, because Ryan was interested in it and was known to buy tickets, on a regular basis, for some God-awful concerts.”
“How nice.”
I was barely listening to her and must have missed a few sentences. Outside, an invisible hand started painting forests of frost upon the windowpane, through which I could see torrents of snow flowing towards us, lit by the headlights of our cab. I spotted patches of ice here and there and hoped we would not slide over them.
“Don’t you worry,” said the driver, glancing at me through the mirror over his head. “You’re making me nervous, the way you bite your nails. Please, just sit back and relax, will you?”
Peering out of the one clear spot on my window, I told him to mind his own business, and my nails were mine to do with them as I please, and for heaven’s sake not to lose sight of that taxi. It turned the corner, quite sharply, into a street just ahead of us.
I asked him, “Can’t you drive faster?” only to be interrupted by Lana. “Don’t you want me to continue?” she asked, this time with an indignant tone in her voice.
What choice did I have but to say, “Oh so sorry, please do.”
“So by the next time I met Ryan,” she said, “which happened a week or so later, I was much, much better prepared. Having done my homework I astounded him, really, by talking like a regular expert about Tosca and La Boheme, which I did in an incredibly casual manner and without even breaking a blush, as that would betray me. By the time I recited a few notes from Madama Butterfly, he was utterly impressed with me and even a bit enamored, to the point of buying concert tickets for both of us for an entire year, which was unfortunate and dreadfully boring, too.”
“How nice.”
“But he didn’t bother to bring anything for me, not even a little token of attention, like flowers.”
“How nice.”
“I moved in with him shortly afterwards, and in exchange for him taking me to one dreary opera after another I taught him everything I knew, if you know what I mean.”
“I’m sure I don’t.”
“But enough about me,” she said. “Do you like my hair?”
I was tempted to counter with, “Isn’t it part of you?” but instead just looked away.
“Oh,” she sighed and moved on to something else. “Tonight’s performance was no different than all the rest of them, just one yawn following another, but I think that this time I should thank him for it, because it gave me an opportunity to meet you!”
“When I go back to London I’ll convey your gratitude to him.”
With a nervous smile she said, “Oh, please don’t.”
Lana piled up a few more sentences, which I did not care to hear, after which she must have found herself out of breath and even worse, out of something to talk about, so at last there it was, a rare moment of silence, during which I could focus better on where the cab ahead of us was headed. It surprised me.
Up to this point I had expected Natasha and her Mama to be returning to their home in Summit, New Jersey, but after a few evasive maneuvers in a failed attempt to escape from us, their taxi turned around.
Now it drove back to the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 55th Street in midtown Manhatten, not far from where we had originally started. It stopped in front of the skyscraper. And there it was, the glitzy entrance to the Wellington Hotel, renowned for inviting its guests to “explore everything there is to see and do in the Big Apple from our superb location near Broadway, Carnegie Hall, Central Park and Rockefeller Center.” In countless ads, the place offered a guest-centered experience, whatever that meant, with the assurance that you would feel completely at home.
Still I wondered why home would not have been a better choice for them, given that it was familiar and contained everything they adored, all those pieces of gilded furniture which I could not put out of my mind since visiting Natasha, all those carved garlands of flowers and foliage, and those rosettes, shells, and urns. What’s more, even though to me it looked like some palace in a foreign continent, to them it was home. I mean, there was no price tag on spending the night.
Our cab stopped with a screech. I leapt out and handed the fare to the cab driver, adding a few extra bills so he would bring Lana back to her place, wherever that migh
t be. She refused. I insisted. He took the money. Off they went.
Meanwhile I saw Natasha getting out of that taxi and following her Mama into the hotel. Looking back over her shoulder, perhaps searching for someone, she hesitated for a just second before crossing the threshold. Her red hair, dotted with glittering snowflakes, was flapping wildly, unraveled by a gust of wind. Then the doors swung shut, cutting off my view of her.
I ran into the reception area, where a huge, spherical chandelier with myriad lights hung over the center of the space, directly over a round medallion design in the luxurious rug.
And there she was, turning to face me.
❋
I was relieved to see that she was alone, at least for the moment, as her Mama was stomping off to the reception desk, there at the far end of the space, to get them a room for the night. It was an opportunity for us to talk, but we didn’t. We couldn’t.
Noting the most trivial details, such as flecks of snow turning to liquid on her wool coat, I stared at her, taking in the way she clasped one hand tightly with the other, the way her hair came spilling out of the headband. Setting a stark contrast to her pale face, one strand of hair cascaded down to her shoulder, like a river, aflame.
Natasha stared at me as if seeing a ghost.
Meanwhile in the background, a record started spinning, releasing sounds inscribed in its spiral groove into the air. Accented with intricate floral designs, the metallic horn of the gramophone projected toward us, letting out a cry. We knew it, knew the feeling.
I’ll never feel joy again
Until you’re in my arms
So lonely is my lane
Without your love, your charms
I figured I had to soften the tension between us. I had to speak out, and do it fast, in my smartest, most eloquent manner, and come up with something, anything that would make her want me back—but somehow I could not find the words.
My heart started hammering. Standing across from her I found myself, somehow, more isolated than ever. I was beset by anxiety, by rage that had been wrought by waiting, desperately waiting on the other side of the ocean months on end for a letter, a word from her.
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