The Cost of Lunch, Etc.: Short Stories

by Marge Piercy

  I left New York for several months. When I returned, the beard was gone and he had a new girlfriend who was not Jewish. She was the blond perky suburban daughter of a successful real estate entrepreneur. They got engaged quickly and her father brought him into his business. For several months, all he could talk about was flipping houses and developing malls. I found him a total bore and avoided him, didn’t return his calls. His interest in real estate and his engagement ended abruptly. A period of heavy drinking and drug use followed. He was often incoherent. He wept on my sofa and fell asleep face down.

  He went back to school, having talked his parents into funding a graduate degree in psychology so he could become a therapist. He freely analyzed my problems over an Indian restaurant meal. He said he was coming to understand that I had been a replacement for his unhealthy love for his mother. Now all was clear to him. Mental health was the most important thing in the world. If we could all face our inner conflicts, there would be no war, no racism, no misery. My problem was that I felt unloved and replaced true commitment with promiscuity. He wondered if he shouldn’t take a medical degree instead and then study psychoanalysis. He had a wonderful new psychiatrist. He was, he said, no longer self-medicating. His doctor had him on a new antidepressant that was working wonders for him. I hoped so. His period of heavy drugging had scared me. In all Simon’s transformations, he was inherently lovable—something sweet and at the same time desperate in all his attempts.

  I can sound flippant and above it all with his changes, but in truth I still cared about him and I hoped he would settle into something that made him happier or at least more engaged for the long run. I still felt guilty about having let him try a sexual relationship as a means of quieting his jealousy so he’d stop making scenes. I had offered myself to him as a sort of sop to make him behave in public. I wondered if only I hadn’t done so, would we still be working together—a time he had felt fulfilled. I had not yet learned I could not be a sort of sexual mustard plaster to the sad and repressed.

  I left New York in the early ’70s when many politicos and hippies were moving to the country, including me. I still had many friends and attachments in the city, so I went back and forth every couple of months. The next time I saw him, he had shaved his head and wore loose saffron robes. He told me he was meditating daily, up to two hours at a time. He was fasting once a week. His mind was clear at last. He was now a vegan, so as not to injure any living thing. He was moving, too—to Sedona to be with his new guru. “I’ve been too materialistic. I want to enrich my soul, to live purely. I’m seeking my spiritual center. I need to be in a community that supports my evolving consciousness.”

  After that I lost touch with him for over a decade. I thought of him sometimes. I had a photo I had taken of him at a be-in in Central Park where he was lounging on the grass like a big overgrown puppy, smiling, relaxed, momentarily at peace. I could remember that day vividly, like a Medieval Fair come alive, the colors, the wild clothes, the music, the dancing, all spontaneous—and the smoke from maryjane. It was from the time we worked together, a time when he smiled often and was able to enjoy his life at least sometimes. A friend who’d been underground and gone to prison ran into him after she was free. He was still seeking fulfillment, as if seven years had not passed since they met. She shook her head in disbelief. He was making freeform artistic videos.

  As I was about to go to bed one evening, already in my bathrobe with my hair braided, the phone rang. It was a friend I had stayed in touch with from my New York era. “Do you remember Simon?”

  “Sure, though I haven’t seen him in ten years. What’s he into now?”

  A silence. “He killed himself two days ago.”

  “Where?” A stupid question that filled in for “Why” and so much else.

  “Madison. He was back in school in computer science but he couldn’t seem to get into his thesis—some kind of computer language he was creating. The woman he was living with said he had been very depressed. He kept writing letters to old friends and tearing them up. She didn’t think he’d mailed any.”

  “How did he do it?” Why do we always ask that about a death?

  “He hung himself in his bedroom.”

  There would be a memorial in Madison but it was at a time I was already booked on a flight to London for a women’s conference, so I could not attend. This is my memorial for a friend I lost, who lost himself though he tried again and again and again to fill an emptiness that tormented him. Memory is all that I have of him now.

  Ring around the Kleinbottle

  The matter began simply enough, when Cam and Vicki lost their roommate Janice. Janice moved out when she broke off her engagement to Allen Miner, a clever fellow who works in market research. Janice took an extended vacation and then set up in a studio by herself. I knew Janice from our mutual gym and a couple of coffees together, but I’d never met her roommates. Winning back my freedom in court recently had cost me so much I answered their ad and was glad to move into the spacious apartment in a 1920s-era brick apartment house. The living room was light, with a worn parquet floor and we each had our room. Vicki paid a little less than Cam and I since she had the ex-maid’s room off the kitchen. Being three years older than Cam and seven years older than Vicki, I was determined not to play mama to them. Not my style.

  A few weeks after I moved in, I saw Cam climbing out of Allen’s Miata out front. So the next evening as we puttered around the kitchen, I said, “Guess it’s lucky Janice moved out. Might be a bit awkward otherwise.”

  “What do you mean?” Cam is naturally defensive. She dresses to underplay her figure. Her face is gentle and sprinkled with freckles, her hair a natural light redhead—almost orange. Naturally soft-spoken, she has a stiff protective manner.

  “With you seeing Allen. He got over Janice fast.”

  “You’re misinterpreting.” Her voice was husky with rebuke. “He’s upset and he needs to talk with someone. He wants to patch things up with her, but Janice won’t take his calls.”

  “So you’re consoling him.”

  “Eve, I’m listening, that’s all. While he was seeing Janice, I barely knew him, but I’m learning he’s one of the good ones. Janice really hurt him.”

  Cam works for a pharmaceutical company torturing rats and bunnies. She’d be much happier as a social worker or a counselor. We lunched together last week—I’m the personnel director in a computer hosting and repair company with offices not that far from where Cam works. When I went to fetch her, she was all white-coated with her face bolted shut pretending to be a scientist. She’s an oversensitive type who likes to act detached, even stolid, but I’m not fooled. In her veins runs butterscotch syrup. So I wasn’t surprised when consoling Allen settled in to a full-time job. She told me she’d been engaged to a specialist in the army but when his deployment in Afghanistan ended, he broke things off with her almost without explanation. She said he had changed completely. She was convinced she had somehow failed him. Yet she seemed to be the wounded one.

  Finally readjusting Allen needed all night. Vicki came bursting into my room Sunday morning—Vicki always explodes through doors. She’s long-legged and thin only because she jumps around too much for the fat to settle, because she eats more than Cam and I put together. She’s a year out of community college, working as a secretary. I can imagine her mixing up the files one day because she feels sorry for the poor neglected ones in the back. “Cam’s not back!”

  “Good. Been waiting for that.”

  “But with Allen? How could she?

  “Why, is he a known eunuch?”

  “He’s still in love with Janice.”

  “That doesn’t mean birdseed at one in the morning.”

  “I just don’t want her to get hurt.”

  When Cam walked in, Vicki was waiting like an underage mommy. “Where were you?”

  Cam yawned broadly. “At Allen’s, of course.”

  “About time you two made it,” I said.

  “T
ake it easy, Eve. We talked till Allen was too tired to drive me home, so I stayed.”

  “And you’re telling me you slept like two babes in the woods?”

  Cam shook her head. “Like two friends on a mattress.”

  Next weekend, Cam announced she was off to Springfield where she grew up, to take part in her cousin’s wedding as a bridesmaid in a hideous fuchsia gown. “Must you go?” Vicki whined.

  “Must. What’s wrong, pet?”

  “It’s my twenty-first birthday Friday night. Guess I’ll go down to the liquor store on the corner, flash my ID and buy a bottle of cheap wine.”

  The upshot was that Cam spoke to Allen, he took Vicki out and then there were two of them ministering to his sorrows. He was always on the stairs picking up one in his little sports car or bringing the other back. What with visiting his married friends, accompanying him to parties and movies and concerts and plays, bird-watching with him on weekends (you’d be surprised how quickly two bright women can learn to identify birds they had never noticed or heard the names of a month before), their lives seemed complete. Neither of them had dated anyone else since Allen had begun to occupy them. He paid for all this entertainment, since he earned quite handsomely. While they were comforting Allen, I must have gone through about five guys I met online.

  I kept hearing lectures on Allen’s character and habits. Over takeout Thai, Vicki foamed, “Even if he is older, he isn’t boring and stuck. He believes like me the important thing is being as alive as you can be, not burying your feelings under a lot of dead words.”

  “He’s a big believer in honesty, so I’m told.”

  “He’s tremendously spontaneous. We do the wildest things on the spur of the moment, like inventing cocktails with all the stuff in his liquor cabinet, like taking off our clothes and jumping into the fountain by the library. We stole a parking meter last week but we couldn’t get it open. Don’t tell Cam! It’s in his closet.”

  I noticed that Cam had begun to cook for him. Still, she addressed Vicki Monday at supper when Allen had his regular meeting at work. “I’m worried we’re becoming too dependent on him.”

  “In what way?

  In every way, I wanted to say, but kept my silence. “Someday Allen is going to resume his life. He’s a wonderful person but we shouldn’t let him become too important to us.”

  “I think you can never really hurt yourself by giving to someone.” Vicki was straddling a chair, all earnest with her hungry kitten face.

  “I envy you for believing that,” Cam said, sighing heavily.

  That Saturday, I was glad I moved in and that Cam was sitting out that evening while Allen took Vicki to the concert of a rock band she adored. My final papers had arrived Friday. I was glad to sit and drink with another woman, nothing at issue except the booze and whatever you felt like getting off your chest.

  “I’m afraid I’m becoming fond of Allen. He’s really a good person—serious, responsible, not like the usual men I meet. He’s a true adult—you know how rare that is?”

  “Do I!” I was thinking of my ex with his video games and secret online porn. “American men don’t grow up till fifty, and by then, who wants them?”

  “Allen isn’t like that. He’s been through a lot, but it hasn’t made him bitter. He listens when I talk—god, how long as it been since a man actually listened to me instead of counting seconds till they try to score.”

  “Sounds … fine.” I was lying on the floor with my head on a couch pillow. Her voice seems to rise and sink.

  “I think he’s fond of me too.” She paused, staring at her hands. “He’s been … affectionate lately. He wants a deep and lasting relationship with a woman. But neither of us is about to rush into anything without being sure … I’m babbling and you’re falling asleep.” She sat up, holding herself across her breasts. “I don’t feel jealous of Vicki—she’s so young. She makes him laugh. He’d never take advantage of her.”

  I woke late Sunday a bit hung over. It’s a long time since I let somebody drink me under the table. Cam can sure hold it. Vicki came prancing into my room. “Last night was so real! I don’t want to make Cam jealous though she’ll have to get wise to it sometime. We drove to the lakeshore. I dared him and we went wading. The water was so cold, it hurt but it felt great too! He told me I looked like a water nymph, whatever that is, and then he kissed me.” Vicki didn’t just speak, she vibrated.

  I groaned. “Could you speak a little more softly?”

  “Cam’s in the basement doing laundry. She won’t hear. This is just our secret … He let me drive the Miata back to his place. Then … we made it … I don’t mean to fuss, but he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t mean … So we’re lovers now. But I won’t interfere with his friendship with Cam. It’s just so different.”

  The next week was jolly. Each was telling me how nicely she thought her relationship with Allen was progressing, and I was beginning to wonder about him.

  He was a friendly little guy with bright squirrel eyes, a thin mobile face and slightly receded hairline. The situation was hard to size up, for while I was getting a blow by blow from Vicky, Cam was her usual tightlipped self.

  “Do you think I’m too defensive?” she asked me. “That I’m too closed off with people I care about?”

  “Not particularly. Why?”

  “I suppose I’m afraid of getting hurt again.”

  “Who’s been handing you a line about your defenses?”

  “It’s that just Allen and I were talking. He says I don’t let anyone really close.” She gave me a half ashamed smile.

  Presumably Cam was still worrying about her defenses when Vicki decided to spill about how she and Allen were lovers now and it was just great.

  “Really?” Cam managed to sound only curious, but her fists were clenched. “Well, he must be over Janice at last.”

  “This doesn’t mean it’ll interfere with your friendship. Really!”

  “I suppose he’ll tell me about it tomorrow. Should I act surprised?”

  “Your call.” Vicki hopped up and paced as if she could not contain herself. “I’ve never really been in love before. I thought so, but this shows me that was just infatuation. I want to keep him warm at night and take care of him and remind him of things he’s forgotten.”

  If we thought things were settled, we were dreaming. Allen didn’t call Vicki Sunday or Monday, and by Tuesday, she was frantic. We suggested she call him, but she refused, huddling on the couch with her arms broken out in a nervous rash, angular as a ball of spikes. Cam was puzzled. Allen had said nothing about Vicki, she confided, but had given her another lecture on her defenses. After work on Wednesday, Vicki stuffed a few clothes into a duffle bag and went to stay with a friend from work. She said she was sick of waiting for him to call and shut off her cell.

  I was doing my nails when the phone started ringing. “Hello, can I speak with Cam?”

  “She’s out. An emergency at work—sick bunny or something.”

  “How about Vicki?”

  “She’s not in either.” He didn’t ask where she was; I kept quiet.

  “Allen here. And this is the third roommate, Eve, right? I couldn’t mistake your voice. Black velvet.”

  “More like burlap, I’ve been told. Vicki’s visiting a girlfriend.”

  “Oh, she must be out at a club. She isn’t answering her cell. I was going to ask her to a movie. Why don’t you come if you’re not doing anything exciting.”

  I should have pressed the point about Vicki, but I was too curious. I wanted a close look at this intrepid, cautious, honest, thoughtful, spontaneous, mature, boyish figure of a man. He came roaring up in his Miata and off we went. We’d chatted a couple of times when he was waiting for one of my roommates, but he surprised me with how well he remembered, asking just the right questions. His driving was alarmingly fast but with an unerring efficiency that made my alarm feel silly. Besides he talked so steadily I forgot to notice his speed after a while.

  �
��You do keep a harem, don’t you?”

  “What? It’s convenient. You just call and there’s bound to be someone.”

  “Aren’t you afraid they’ll get together and compare notes?”

  He was parking but paused, turning to stare at me. “Do they talk about me?”

  “Not with me,” I said demurely.

  After the movie, his place. Besides the famous mattress-couch with a fanciful Swedish light suspended over it, he had nice prints, an elaborate home theater system, two leather chairs and a coffee table made of driftwood and glass, a fancy little kitchen where I’ll bet it had been a long since he’d had to make himself anything more taxing than coffee. He fixed martinis and we sat on the couch to the accompaniment of good jazz, soft, discrete. But instead of Allen the Hewer of Honest Intentions or the Boy with the Bounce in his Feet, I was treated to hip Allen, Allen the cold eye, viewing with quiet distaste this bleak crummy world in which we manipulate each other.

  His voice grew lower, he leaned on his elbow, his lean eager face fashioned into a mask of cool world-weariness. Something hauntingly familiar. Then I located it. His voice had gradually picked up the rhythms of my speech; he had learned my language already. He was a smart boyo, I’ll give him that. All the while his bright squirrel eyes were asking me, how about it? Do I please? I felt a sharp anger at him, the clever perfect student picking up clues to the professor’s quirks. At the same time the flattery was potent, all that intelligence and charm bearing down, that this was the real Allen. I went there curious, kept my distance.