SWF Seeks Same

by John Lutz

  “Lisa.”

  “Last name?”

  “You tell me.”

  Nothing but silence from the darkness on Sam’s side of the bed. A jetliner roared overhead like a lion in a distant jungle. The echo of traffic rushed like flowing black water in the night.

  She watched him in silhouette. “She’ll call back, Sam.”

  Lying on his stomach, he raised himself up so that his upper body was propped on his elbows, head hanging to stare at his pillow. It was a posture of despair. His hair had fallen down over his forehead and was in his eyes. “Yeah, I guess she will.”

  Allie said in the calm voice of a stranger, “Who is she, Sam?”

  He flopped over to lie on his back. The mattress swayed beneath his shifting bulk; springs squealed. The back of his hand brushed her bare thigh and quickly withdrew, as if he’d touched something forbidden.

  “Sam?”

  “Yeah.” Resigned.

  “Who is she?”

  “A girl, is all.”

  Allie was thrown by the simple evasiveness of his answer. He was speaking to her as if she were twelve years old. She didn’t like what was welling up in her but she couldn’t stop it. She couldn’t even put a name to it. “Christ, is that what she is, a girl is all? Is that what you’ve got to say, like some goddamned adolescent caught two-timing his steady?”

  “I’m sorry. God, I’m sorry. But really, that’s all she is to me.”

  “Sam, that’s so shabby. So fucking banal.”

  “So maybe I’m banal. I’m sorry about that too.”

  He was working up anger now, preferring it to guilt. The hell with him. He wasn’t fooling her.

  “How long you two been being banal together?” she asked.

  “This isn’t an ongoing relationship,” he said. “Something happened one time. Only one. Damn it, Allie, I wish it hadn’t happened. I sure didn’t plan it. Neither did she.”

  “God’s plan, huh?” she said bitterly.

  “More like the devil’s,” Sam said. “A moment of weakness on my part, and it led to something. I thought that kinda thing only happened to the clowns on soap operas, but I was wrong.”

  She said, “I don’t believe things like that just happen, Sam.”

  “But they do. Then the people involved regret it but can’t change the past. Please, Allie, try to understand this. Try not to be—”

  “Try not to be what?” she interrupted.

  “I dunno. Naive, I guess.”

  She sat up, and switched on the lamp by the bed. Sam twisted his head away from the light, shielding his eyes, as if he might decompose under the glare like Dracula caught in the sun. Allie knew it was the truth that was making him come apart.

  “You have to do that?” he asked. “Turn on that damned light?”

  “What do you mean by naive? That I trusted you?”

  Now he did roll onto his side to face her, his head resting on his upper arm so that his cheek was scrunched up. His eyes were still narrowed to the light. “No. But I don’t want you to think an accidental affair with another woman means anything important.” He scooted toward her, touched her hip gently with his fingertips, making her suddenly aware and ashamed of her nakedness. She pulled away violently, startling him. “Allie, please!”

  Allie kept her distance. “She said on the phone she thinks you’re married. Talks as if you lied to her, led her to believe she was the only one in your life. The way you’ve been lying to me.”

  “The point is, it doesn’t matter a gnat’s ass to me what she thinks.”

  “Sure, I can believe that.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Allie. You’re mad right now, not thinking straight. Not putting this in perspective. And I don’t blame you. But it was a one-time affair of the glands, not the heart. And it’s over, I swear it! It meant no more than a shared dance that can never happen again.”

  “Lisa would disagree with you, I bet.”

  “Maybe. But so what? I only care what you think, Allie. That’s all that’s important to me in this crazy world. Honestly. You believe me, don’t you?”

  “No.”

  He made a sound almost like a moan. “I don’t know what I can do about that. I only wish I could do something to make you see the facts. The Lisa thing just sort of happened and then ran its course and no longer matters. Please, Allie, accept that as the truth, because it is.”

  “You’re not denying it, only repeating that it doesn’t matter.”

  “I don’t like lying to you. Never did. I admitted I slept with Lisa Calhoun. If you need to hear it again, I’ll admit it again. I can’t see why you don’t realize the rest of what I’m saying’s true.”

  “I don’t need to hear it, Sam. Not anymore.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess not. Allie?”

  She knew his wheedling, little-boy voice. Right now it sickened her. Sam was about to ask her forgiveness. She couldn’t handle that. She reached out an arm and hurriedly switched off the lamp.

  “That’s better, Allie.” He’d assumed she wanted to go back to sleep, that their discussion was over at least until morning.

  She said, “Get out, Sam.”

  “What?”

  “Out. Now.”

  “Hey, I know it’s your place, but it’s midnight.” He switched on the lamp on his side of the bed, then glared at her so she could see he was furious. He hadn’t expected this, his look said. Didn’t deserve it. She was being damned unreasonable, and all because of some insignificant one-night stand that had come to light. “Where do you expect me to go at this hour?”

  “Find a hotel. Come back tomorrow for your things. Or the next day. Or don’t come back at all. I don’t care, Sam, not anymore.”

  He appeared puzzled for a while. Injured. Then he tried a smile. It was male mastery time. But he was acting out of desperation and she knew it. “I don’t believe you,” he said, like a line from a movie, as if the script was on his side and their destiny was in the last reel.

  She wasn’t sure if she believed herself, but she looked away from him. “Get out.”

  Sam clutched her arm and she slapped his hand away. She was startled by how loud a sound it made.

  He stood up, naked, his maleness wilted between his legs. He located his jockey shorts and danced into them, yanking them tight. You’ll hurt yourself that way, Sam. He found his pants.

  She turned away from him, watching his madly writhing shadow on the wall as he stormed around, wrestling angrily into his clothes. A button clattered on the floor, bouncing and rolling.

  Then the shadow was still. He’d worn himself out; she could hear his deep and rapid breathing, like right after sex.

  Calmly, he said, “All right, Allie. I’ll send for the rest of my stuff.”

  Allie felt something pointed and sharp swell in her throat; she was afraid if she tried to answer him she might sob. She lay very still, listening to the night sounds of the city, to Sam’s ragged breathing.

  She heard him leave the bedroom. Heard the thump of his rubber heels as he crossed the apartment to the door. The metallic snick and rattle of the locks being worked on the door to the hall.

  The door slammed.

  Allie lost it. She pressed her face deep into her pillow and sobbed.

  At four-thirty A.M. she gave up on trying to sleep and climbed out of bed. She switched on the lamp and put on her white terry-cloth robe.

  She padded barefoot into the living room and to the alcove where she had her desk and IBM-clone computer. It felt good, settling down before the computer; this was a world she knew, a dance whose steps were no mystery. She flipped the computer switch and booted the system.

  At first she’d considered working on the Fortune Fashions job, but she realized this wasn’t the time for that. In the green glare of the monitor screen, she sat idly toying with the keyboard, trying to relax her whirling mind. Computers and Allie were compatible. Right now, she envied them. Computers thought, in their basic way, but they didn’t feel. Allie didn’t want
to feel. She wanted to see herself from a distance, so she could analyze and convert emotion to cold fact. An IBM clone—that’s what she wanted to be.

  She keyed in her household budget program and looked over the figures. Made a few calculations and studied the results on the screen.

  The computer played fair with her and gave her the hard truth. Without Sam, if she wanted to stay in the Cody Arms and pay her bills, she’d need help, even with the Fortune Fashions account.

  There was a way to obtain the right kind of roommate, she knew. She’d considered it before Sam had moved in with her.

  Allie keyed in the word-processor program. She typed “Wanted, roommate to share apt. W.70s,” then her phone number.

  Tomorrow she’d look at the classified pages of some newspapers and decide where she might place the ad. She wanted to do this right; didn’t want to attract the wrong kind of people. She’d read the ads in some of the underground papers. Desperate singles, divorcées, shutins, and gays. People looking for sex partners who shared their particular perversions. There was a loneliness there, a sadness she didn’t want to touch her.

  She spent the next half-hour composing and printing out rental application forms.

  She couldn’t leave the computer; it was like a friend she could rely on, one that wouldn’t deceive, or switch allegiance. There was comfort in predictability.

  When the windows were beginning to brighten with the dawn, she switched off the computer, went back to bed, and finally slept.

  Chapter 7

  ALLIE slept until almost noon, then awoke to the sinking realization of what had happened. Lisa. A woman named Lisa. She felt a hollowness when she thought about Sam, and beyond that a deep resentment and anger. Love could do a quick turn to hate, sudden as a tango step, and she didn’t want that. She chose not to have that kind of corrosiveness inside her. The task would be to exorcise him from her mind, a necessary knack if she wanted to continue her life.

  For a few minutes she lay in bed, getting used to the new Allison Jones in her state of existence without Sam. Then she rolled her tongue around her mouth, making a face at the bad taste, and struggled out of bed.

  Slightly stiff from sleeping so late, she staggered into the bathroom and brushed her teeth with the final surrender of the Crest tube. She picked up Sam’s toothbrush from the porcelain holder and dropped it, along with the distorted corpse of the toothpaste tube, into the wastebasket. Then she turned on the shower and adjusted the water temperature. She stood for a long time beneath the hot needles of water, waking up all the way and working up courage to face what was left of her Saturday. Of her life.

  After toweling dry, she put on black slacks and a baggy white T-shirt with SIMON AND GARFUNKLE CENTRAL PARK CONCERT lettered across the front; she’d bought it the day after she’d attended the concert several years ago, and the letters were faded. Simon, who was still hard at it, probably had a song about that. He was doing fine without Garfunkle; she could make it without Sam.

  She stepped into the comfortable soft leather moccasins she wore on weekends and wandered as if lost through the apartment, pausing here and there and running her fingertips over the furniture, as if to reassure herself it was real.

  Jesus, she thought, how maudlin. She walked over to the office-alcove, ripped the fan-fold paper from the computer printer, and read the classified ad she’d composed before dawn. It was simple and to the point. Effective. She’d been thinking clearly enough when she considered advertising for a roommate to share expenses.

  It occurred to Allie that she might have a problem, telling potential roommates they’d have to live surreptitiously in the apartment, be coconspirators in an arrangement that fooled neighbors and management company. On the other hand, apartments in Manhattan were so expensive and difficult to obtain that most renters would find the required discretion only a minor inconvenience. It might even appeal to the more adventuresome. Beating the system was a New York way of life, a point of pride as well as a means of survival in the cruelest of cities.

  She got her purse from the bedroom, folded the computer printout in quarters, and poked it in behind her wallet. Then she thought for a moment, pulled the wallet out, and counted her money. Twenty-six dollars. She thought about how much she had in the bank. Depressing. Even with the Fortune Fashions retainer, within a month she’d really be feeling the pinch. Something had to be done, and soon; if the wolf wasn’t at the door, it was prowling the corridors.

  Allie had slept through breakfast; she realized she was starving. Considering the scarcity of edible food in the refrigerator, she could treat herself to eating lunch out despite having to watch the flow of pennies.

  She locked the apartment behind her carefully. Woman alone now. Then she disdained the elevator and took the stairs down to the lobby too fast, as if to assert her physical capability and spirit.

  Breathing hard, she trudged outside and walked until she found a newsstand, where she bought three likely papers in which to place her classified ad. An obese man beside her bought a magazine with a cover illustration of a nude woman seated on a yellow bulldozer. He followed Allie half a block before falling behind her rapid pace and giving up. She glanced back and saw him standing near a wire trash basket, leafing through his magazine. Possibly he meant no harm, but New York had more weirdos per square yard than any other city.

  She tucked the newspapers more firmly beneath her arm and returned to West 74th. It was a little past one when she entered Goya’s.

  The restaurant did a good lunch business of neighborhood regulars and tourists. She had to wait for a table, and then was ushered to a tiny booth wedged in a corner. On the table were a napkin holder, salt and pepper shakers, a Bakelite ashtray, a half-full Heinz catsup bottle, and a two-dollar tip from the last diner. Allie found herself staring at the creased bills, thinking that theft, on a larger scale than this, was a way out of her financial difficulties.

  She shook that thought from her mind when the waiter arrived and stood by the booth. Stealing was stealing, a risk and a moral compromise she was unwilling to explore.

  The waiter said, “Something to drink?”

  She looked up. It was the same guy who’d taken her order when she was here the day before, the one with the intense, familiar face, the black hair and satellite-dish ears. Homely in the way of Abe Lincoln, or dogs you wanted to take home and feed. There was something clumsy and rough-hewn about him; a long way from Sam’s smoothness and grace. He laid a closed menu before her with ceremony. Like a good book he was recommending.

  “I’ll order now, drink and all,” she said, and looked at the grease-spotted menu. It was a computer printout, she noticed. The microchip was everywhere.

  The waiter said, “You’re Allison Jones.”

  She looked away from the menu, up into the homely face. Dark, earnest eyes gazed back at her, amiable despite their intensity, not devious or threatening.

  He smiled and said, “I live in the apartment above yours over at the Cody Arms. I’ve seen you around. Got your name from the mailbox.” He extended a hand and she shook it without thinking. “I’m Graham Knox.”

  The guy seemed friendly enough, not putting moves on her. “Glad to meet you, Graham.”

  He said, “The double burger and the house salad are good.”

  “I’ll have them, then, with fries and a large Diet Pepsi. I’m hungry today.”

  He scribbled her order in his note pad and scooped up the tip from the table in the almost unnoticeable manner of waiters everywhere. He smiled his lopsided smile and said, “Back soon.”

  And he was. Goya’s kitchen must have cooks falling all over themselves.

  He placed her food on the table and straightened up, dangling the empty tray in his right hand. “We’re neighbors, Allie, so anything you need, you let me know.”

  Oh-oh, where was this going? She gave him her passionless, appraising stare. The same one she’d given the obese man with the sex magazine when their gazes met. Turn it off, buddy,
whatever you’re thinking.

  “Not that kind of anything,” he assured her, smiling. He had long, skinny fingers that played nervously with the edge of the round tray. His nails were gnawed to the quick. “Don’t get me wrong.”

  Okay, so he wasn’t interested in her that way. Now she wondered, was he gay? She mentally jabbed herself for being so egotistical and unfair. Any man who wasn’t interested in going to bed with her on first meeting wasn’t necessarily gay. And there was something about this man she instinctively liked, but in the same platonic fashion in which he seemed to see her. “Okay, Graham, thanks for the offer. And if you ever need a thumbtack, knock on my door.”

  “Not many people at the Cody would say that. Most of us don’t even know each other and don’t want to meet.”

  “New York,” Allie said, dousing her French fries with catsup. New York, like a disease.

  “Most big cities, I’m afraid.”

  “Maybe, but it’s special here.”

  “Could be it is. Well, I better get moving—orders are piling up. Come in sometime when we’re not busy and we’ll talk.”

  She nodded, holding the catsup bottle still, and watched him smile and back away, moving among the tables toward the serving counter.

  Did he want something? Or was he simply as he’d presented himself? Was she being cynical? Everyone didn’t have an act, an ulterior motive and an angle, even in New York. She had her choice now: she could stop coming into Goya’s, or she could become a friend, or at least an acquaintance, of Graham Knox.

  She sampled the salad with the house dressing, and bit into the double burger. Graham was right, they were both delicious. And among the cheaper items on the menu. She decided what the hell, she could use a casual friend who didn’t clutter up her life with complications. Allie sensed that was all Graham wanted to be to her, someone she could talk to, and someone who’d listen if he felt compelled to talk. She almost laughed out loud at herself, thinking she could trust her instincts about people. She and Lisa.

  Allie wolfed down the rest of the salad and hamburger, then ate what was left of her fries more slowly.