She was wearing black pants and a white tube top with a black sweater slung over her shoulders, the arms tied in a delicate way across the bronze skin of her upper chest.
Paul who? John died how? Just kidding. A little gallows humor. I was drunk on aesthetic joy.
“Hello.”
That last one was me. I acknowledge that it scores low in the creativity department, but it was the best I could do for the moment, feeling as I did.
After concluding proper introductions, she sat down with an enormous smile and said, “So you write about politics, right?”
She had obviously rehearsed her opening line on the way over. Good for Lindsey.
“I do,” I said, “sometimes, but that’s not all.”
That seemed to throw her for a moment. Then the waiter taking her drink order seemed to throw her for a moment as well, but that’s okay.
“Well, I have a question for you,” Lindsey said when the waiter went off to get her something cool, besides me.
She looked at me for a moment and I looked at her, ever so slightly nervous about what was to come.
She asked, “I’ve always wondered, do congressmen live inside the House of Representatives?”
Her words quickly brought to mind Putnam’s previously opaque warning: “Better to engage her optically and physically than any other way.” I was beginning to realize how sage that counsel really was.
“Well, um, no, most of them have apartments where they live. They work out of government offices right near the House of Representatives, in, for example, the Cannon House Office Building, and they go to the floor of the House to debate issues and to cast their votes.”
“Then why do they call it a house?” she asked, proud of herself for catching such a historical incongruity. Then she added, “It doesn’t really even look like a house.”
She had, I’ll point out, something of a little-girl’s voice to her, not that that’s a bad thing or anything like that. I state it in neutral tones, purely for descriptive purposes.
“That’s a good catch,” I replied.
I wasn’t quite sure where to take this. I allowed my eyes to follow the flow of her hair for a moment, just to try to make myself believe that this whole thing might be worthwhile. Even when I got to where her perfect strands fanned out on her bare, bronze shoulders, I wasn’t sure if it was.
Here goes. “Let’s see, a house isn’t just a place where people live. It’s also a place where business is done, or where a legislative body meets, like the House of Commons in London.” I paused, realizing I didn’t want to make her feel bad, and added, “It’s one of those funny little words with multiple meanings. Trips up a lot of people.”
She seemed perfectly pleased with all this. In point of fact, she was looking down at her nails and abruptly announced to me, “My manicurist went back to Vietnam for an entire month. It doesn’t really seem fair.”
I’m not very good at this dating thing in general. I’m specifically not good on a date with an intellectually challenged but stunningly beautiful blonde on the night of my publisher’s burial, just a little over forty-eight hours after I was shot at myself.
“No, it doesn’t.” At this point, I was looking around for the waiter, wondering if we might speed up the meal.
“And I’ve never understood why one of those political parties chose a donkey as its mascot. I mean, a donkey, that’s like a jackass, right?”
I looked back at her just in time to catch her twirling a few strands of blonde hair in her fingers. Okay, so I wasn’t altogether ready to give up quite yet. Intellectual stimulation can sometimes be so overrated.
“Great point.”
She beamed. She was warming up to the conversation, which I can’t say was necessarily good.
“Do you get a free prescription to the paper?” That was Lindsey again.
“Um, well, no, but I tend to read the paper in the newsroom every morning, where it’s free anyway, and on the weekends, I’m out and about, so I just go and buy it from a guy at the corner.”
As I was looking around for our waiter, I started getting agitated that I didn’t get free home delivery. For chrissakes, I’ve worked there umpteen number of years, and I’m still shelling out $2 bucks every Sunday?
I wondered what Elizabeth would think if she happened by this conversation. She’d raise those perfect eyebrows and purse her plump lips into a smile of curious amusement. I could see it now. I mean, I could really see it now, because here’s what happened next:
The busboy came over and refilled our water glasses in a gush of liquid and a cascade of ice.
As he walked away, behind him, in the doorway, at the host’s station, I saw standing there a tall, elegant woman as familiar to me as my own image in the mirror, only much more appealing, hard as that is to believe.
At first, she was looking around the room, then her eyes fell on mine and she squinted as if to make sure she was seeing what she thought she saw. A smile spread slowly across her beautiful features, beginning at her lips and moving along her cheeks and into those eyes. She gave one of those little waves with her hand in front of her that a Miss America contestant might call “washing the window.”
My breath caught. My heart was in my throat. I’m trying to think of some other such clichés, because every one was true, too true.
“That’s so incredible that you’re a writer because I’ve always wanted to write a children’s book about a poodle from outer space.”
I nodded. “Great idea. Does his doghouse fly?”
Elizabeth’s eyes slowly shifted away from me and I followed her line of sight—across the host’s stand, past a waiter who was hustling through the room, until I saw the man standing near her, also a familiar figure, though not as familiar as Elizabeth.
My first emotion, strangely enough, was relief—relief that she wasn’t still with Luke Travers. Don’t ask me to explain it. It’s just how I felt.
My second emotion was one of embarrassment. I felt silly, superfluous, almost impotent, watching a woman I once—once?—loved standing in this restaurant with yet another man. It seemed to matter not that I was sitting with a drop-dead beautiful woman because I was obviously, increasingly irrelevant in the life of Elizabeth Riggs.
I bore in on him, watching him reach out and touch my ex-girlfriend’s wrist. I saw her give him a half-smile, though whether it was sincere or polite, from this distance I didn’t know.
But who the hell was he?
I remembered seeing him interviewed on the news in some capacity. He was tall and much as it pains me to say, handsome in a rugged kind of way, tanned, which I thought strange for April—with hair so thick he all but needed a John Deere tractor to brush it.
He wasn’t in politics, or I’d more than likely know him. He wasn’t a movie star, or he wouldn’t likely be in Boston with any regularity.
Then it struck me—an athlete. A baseball player. The veteran second baseman that the Red Sox had acquired before the start of the season in a celebrated trade with the Minnesota Twins. His name, his name, his name—yes, Fielder. Jay Fielder. I made a mental note to put him on that list with Josh Lyer. I knew I was right when I realized that the team, beginning a nine-game homestand, had a night off.
The waiter placed our entrees on the table with his standard, “Enjoy.” Lindsey kept talking about a poodle that could communicate with kids through a magical Etch-a-Sketch. The host began walking toward the opposite side of the room. Elizabeth flashed me a quick, emotionless look, then all I saw was her back until they settled at a table that was partly concealed by a wall, which was just as well. From there on, it wasn’t that my food didn’t taste good, it’s just that it had no taste at all.
My ex-girlfriend with a professional athlete, a Major League baseball player. She didn’t even like sports, at least not when I knew her, and I knew her for a long, long time. I did a quick inventory of my memory for any knowledge I had of the guy. He had been, best that I knew, a career infielder for
the Twins, an occasional all-star who was well past his prime, picked up by the Sox this year because our regular second baseman had hurt himself surfing in the off-season.
A decent guy, I think I’d read, a workhorse who didn’t get too caught up in all the press.
Prick.
A while later, when the waiter came back around, Lindsey gladly accepted the proffered dessert menu and ordered a double cappuccino, which only extended my awkward agony. Unfortunately for me, I was losing sight of her physical attributes, which drained the meal of any real purpose. By now, I saw diners stopping by Elizabeth’s table and reaching out their hand, I assume to shake Fielder’s, though I couldn’t see him because the wall blocked my view. I saw a pair of busboys go up with what appeared to be a menu for him to sign, looking like they had just won the lottery as they walked away. I heard an attractive woman at a nearby table say to her friend, “Oh my God, he’s even better looking in person. What would you give to get him into bed?”
That just about did it. Lindsey ordered an apple tart and I made my way off to the men’s room to throw some cold water on my newly feverish face. Fortunately the restrooms were on my side of the restaurant, meaning I didn’t have to pass their table, which by now seemed like some sort of Mecca. As I stood, I saw Fielder smiling warmly at another fan who approached with pen and paper in hand.
In the sanctuary of the men’s room, I thought about how I’d pitched a no-hitter in Little League, and how slightly pathetic that seemed now. I wondered why women were so impressed by athletes. Was it about their celebrity, being with someone who others wanted? Was it about their bodies, meaning sex? Was it about the gargantuan amounts of money that they invariably made? I always thought Elizabeth operated at a higher level. Now I was learning things about her I really didn’t need or want to know.
And what’s the flip side? That Fielder was a wonderful and smart guy who perfectly well understood that playing second base for a Major League baseball team was nothing so noble as researching a vaccine for AIDS or teaching English at an inner-city high school? Did I really want them over there debatingThe New Yorker ’s review of Philip Roth’s latest novel?
I dried my face with some of those upscale paper towels that almost feel like they’re made out of cloth, and stared at myself in the mirror as if I was some sort of beautiful starlet, minus the beauty and star power. Even in the flattering light of a well-designed restroom, I had black circles etched under my bloodshot eyes. My face looked gaunt. My hair even looked tired, split at the ends. Mind you, I’m not necessarily prone to self-criticism, but a handsome athlete I was not.
I walked out, craving an exit.
“That’s one gorgeous woman.”
“That’s one extraordinarily handsome guy.”
That was Elizabeth, followed by me. She was standing on the other side of the bathroom door, smiling such that I saw all those familiar crinkles around her huge blue eyes, half of which I’m quite sure I caused from a pretty long run of pretty good jokes.
She was also wearing black pants, the kind that don’t go all the way down—I think they’re called capris. Whatever, her body was as beautiful as ever. Her hair flowed every which way and I had a quick and unpleasant mental image of her carefully blow-drying and styling it for the man she was with now. Her skin was stunning, complete with all the little grooves and marks I knew so well—the aforementioned laugh lines, a little mole on the lower side of her left cheek, a small depression beneath her right eye that she loathed but I loved.
“He’s killing me,” she said, flat, as if she was talking to a girlfriend. We were both standing at the far end of the bar, out of sight of anyone in the dining room. “I’m supposed to be impressed by all this stuff, right?”
My heart immediately lightened some, the knots in my stomach loosening. I think I smiled, but I’m not sure.
“Only if you like that type,” I said.
“I mean, he’s spent the last thirty minutes telling me about the season he won his first batting championship—” ouch—“and he hasn’t asked me a single question about what I do for a living. I’m a writer, a reporter. That’s pretty fucking interesting. And he hasn’t asked me one single thing.”
She was getting more animated as she talked, not to mention louder and, obviously, profane, which is to say, sexy.
I said, “Well, you’re the one who went to dinner with him.”
An older gentleman squeezed by us to get into the bathroom, forcing Elizabeth to crowd into me for a minute, giving me the opportunity to feel her skin against mine, to smell those wonderful smells I once knew so well.
“I don’t know,” she replied. She said it in that resigned kind of way. “Kelly begged me to do it. You remember my friend Kelly? The one with the hair? She does press work for the Red Sox now and told me I’d be doing her a big favor.” Pause. “She owes me huge.”
Silence, but a light silence. My world was coming back together again, even if it wasn’t really my world anymore.
“And who’s the girl?” she asked. “She’s a knockout.”
“She’s some sort of model.” So I lied, but it was well within the realm of the possible. “Harry set us up. I didn’t want to do it, but he really pushed me. She’s over there complaining about her podiatrist or pedicurist or whatever moving back to Hanoi. I don’t think I can take much more of it.”
I peered around the corner into the dining room. Lindsey was staring straight ahead, vacant, perfectly content. Farther away, Fielder was talking to three men in suits who were gathered around his table, all of them laughing and talking at once. I saw one rear back and give him a high five.
Elizabeth said, “Come rescue me?” Her eyes bore into mine. The look on her face was sincere and a little playful. Her tone, though not pleading, was certainly suggestive, more real than flirtatious.
I shook my head slightly, began to walk away and said, “Better that you get me some season tickets.”
Back at the table, Lindsey said, “I almost forgot to tell you something. I wrote for the newspaper at my community college. I used to do a fashion column.”
She beamed.
“Did you really?” I said. A few minutes later, Elizabeth walked by our table on her way back from the bathroom and gave me an exaggerated wink—joking, of course. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this renewed sense of familiarity, but I knew I felt better about it than the alternative, which was her gushing all over some baseball player while I taught my date freshman politics—and that’s high school freshman, not college.
I asked Lindsey, “Do you like baseball?”
“It’s awesome!” she said. “I love putting a hat on and going to the games and eating hot dogs and Cracker Jacks.”
No, I couldn’t. I thought about it, but I couldn’t. She was once my very serious girlfriend, the epicenter of my entire existence for what I assumed would be all of time. But we had given that all away, me and her, willingly, recklessly, defiantly. She was making a play here, yes, but how could I be certain that she was doing it out of any visceral, emotional desire, or only to atone for past sins, to make herself feel better? How was I to know that if we did start a relationship—and I understand I’m getting ahead of myself on this—that every time she said she loved me, every time she nuzzled the back of my neck in that way she used to do, it was only to wash away the past, her time with Travers.
I left her back then because I was furious and because I was betrayed and because I was confused. As important, I left her because of the alternative. Had I stayed, our relationship, and my life, would have become a house of mirrors. I would have forever been asking the question, were things happening for the reasons they should happen, or was everything just a bizarre reflection of the betrayal, and did that betrayal occur because of my own obtuse sense of self, my inability to get over my own tragic past. Well, I knew one thing now: I sure as hell wasn’t going over to her table. Unfortunately, I knew another thing as well: I’d spend another lonely night pining for what I onc
e had, or what I thought I had, what I hoped I’d always have. You can’t win on this carnival ride of life, at least when the other sex is collecting the tickets and pulling the levers.
I gave the check a quick once-over as Lindsey relayed the last plotting details of the alien poodle with the flying doghouse and the mystical gameboard. When I looked up to hand my American Express card—all right, already, so it was my corporate card, so what—to the waiter, I saw that the figure standing at our table wasn’t the waiter at all. It was Elizabeth, who said, “Why hello there, Jack. Long time, no see.”
I gave her something of a vacant stare, or as vacant as I can be with her, because good or bad, there’s always something going on inside.
“It doesn’t seem to have been all that long.”
“I want you to meet Jay Fielder. Jay, this is Jack Flynn.”
We shook hands as I said, “Very nice to meet you, Mr. Fielder. You have an interesting dinner companion this evening.”
He didn’t really respond and I quickly realized why. I saw his eyes drifting toward Lindsey’s legs, which were crossed in front of her in full view of virtually the entire room—and it’s safe to bet that virtually the entire room was taking advantage of the view, or at least the male portion of the room.
“What do you do for a living?” That was me, being an asshole, trying to break Fielder’s trance. To say the least, I didn’t like the fact that not only was he dining with my ex-girlfriend, but he thought it perfectly acceptable to leer at my date as well.
He looked at me like he had forgotten I was there, then said quickly and without betraying any hurt, “I play second base for the Red Sox.”
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