18mm Blues

by Gerald A. Browne

  That night she called again, twice. Got his machine, didn’t leave a message. It occurred to her that perhaps he was there, screening his calls, so the next morning when she phoned and his machine answered she said her name, her number, the day and the time, somewhat expecting he’d pick up, but he didn’t.

  This went on for a week. She’d begun painting and, although she was able to lose herself in that, every so often she’d stop, go over to the phone and dial his number, which by then was as indelible in her memory as a mantra. Sometimes she’d listen to his entire twenty-second recorded message, visualizing him along with it. Twice she awoke at three in the morning with the urge to phone running repetitively across the mental apparatus behind her forehead, like on that building in Times Square. Wouldn’t it be terribly audacious of her to phone at that hour? Supposing he answered, what would she say? Fuck it, her expression countered. So she heard the touch tones, the rings, him recorded, and had an awful time getting back to sleep.

  By the next Saturday morning, Julia stepped back from herself and realized how irrational she was being. Almost as if her life depended on her reaching this person. She’d heard of fixations but never thought she’d include such behavior in her repertoire. Actually, she had only a vague, and probably incorrect, recollection of what this Grady Bowman looked like. He hadn’t been anything special, anyway not a seismic six, she told herself, just somewhat more attractive than average. Anyway, thank heavens she’d come to her senses. If need be, she’d unplug the phone for a day or two.

  She got her soiled laundry from the hamper and took it down to the service area adjacent to the kitchen. Then she started filling the automatic washer with hot, and was separating colors from whites and dainties from tough stuff when the phone rang.

  It was he, saying he’d gotten the message that she’d called.

  She came close to demanding where the hell he’d been.

  He apologized for not having gotten back to her sooner, had been out of town. The genuine way he said it eliminated most of her steam. “Your pearls are ready,” he told her. “Shall I have them delivered to you, or what?”

  “What would or what be?”

  “I could hold them for you until …”

  “Any other alternative?”

  “I suppose that depends on how urgently you need them.”

  “Let’s say quite urgently.”

  “In that case I could bring them to you myself, today. Where are you located?”

  That wasn’t how she wanted it. “I’ll be coming into town. I could meet you somewhere.”

  “When?”

  “Today, at noon. I could meet you at say … the Sheraton Palace in the Garden Court. Would that be inconvenient?”

  “Not at all. See you there,” he promised and clicked off.

  Julia bathed, did her daytime makeup and her hair and spent most of the next two hours determining what she would wear. Not the new Issey Miyake, she figured, anyway, not yet. She finally settled on an effortless-looking two-piece rayon and cotton in what Royce had several times said was by far her most conspiratorial color. Pale, slightly warm green. The blouse was little more than a superior T-shirt, simply effective. The skirt, above the knee short, was cut on the bias and ample, so it had a hint of flounce. Her exceptional legs did it justice. A pair of t-strapped medium-heeled sandals, enormous faux stone ear clips the exact color of her eyes, her better gold wristwatch, a veto of gloves and then a veto of the veto on the basis that she wouldn’t put them on, merely have them in hand as though she’d had them on …

  She arrived at the Sheraton Palace and the Garden Court at twelve-fifteen, just tardy enough to have him there before her. She paused, stood on the landing above the immense place and its sea of widely spaced, white-linened tables, about two-thirds of which were occupied. She surveyed the thirty tables on the right, and the thirty on the left. Didn’t see him, or, she thought, perhaps she didn’t recognize him. She surveyed again before the maître d’ came to her aid and led her over the deep red and gold patterned carpet to Mr. Bowman’s table. Just the table, not him.

  No great matter, she told herself as she was being seated, possibly there’d be other opportunities for this Grady to be smited by a full-length view of her walk. Besides, his impression of her wasn’t important. She’d just get back her pearls, have a brief lunch, and adieu.

  “Did madame wish something to drink?”

  She thought vodka gimlet, said Perrier and fresh lime.

  Eight slow minutes passed.

  She spotted Grady coming down the center aisle, fifty feet away. Diverted her eyes to not have him know she’d been watching him. Acted surprised when he reached the table. He simultaneously sat and apologized.

  “I was held up,” he explained.

  “And evidently you valued your life more than your money,” she said, smiling.

  After a beat he got it. “You’re fast,” he said. He asked what she was drinking and after she told him ordered a Glenfiddich neat.

  “Make that two,” she said.

  He did. “You come here often?”

  “Occasionally.”

  His eyes ran up one of the nearest fat marble columns and across the expanse of glass panes sixty feet above. “Not exactly cozy,” he commented.

  “That’s why I suggested it.”

  A blank nod from him.

  She liked him without the bow tie, approved of his unbuttoned shirt collar. And his softly shouldered double-breasted gray blazer. She wondered if he was wearing suspenders or a belt. She’d bet suspenders. He was, she decided, a great deal more attractive than she recalled from the week before or perhaps she was now seeing him through different more appreciative eyes. That was how it seemed. “You were away?”

  “In Nevada for a week.”

  “Where in Nevada?”

  “Tahoe and Reno.”

  “I take it you like to gamble.”

  “You might say that, I was up there filing for a divorce. My attorney, Tom McGuin, has a place in Tahoe on the Nevada side, a condo. He let me use it to establish residency.”

  “Then you’re divorced.”

  “I go back up in six weeks for the decree.”

  He spoke of it so indifferently it occurred to Julia that he might be one of those compulsive marry-ers with six or seven divorces to his debit. After a brief, assaying look she decided his weren’t the eyes of a man of that sort, much too much sensibility in them. Anyway, his divorce and all was his personal territory and she shouldn’t yet be nosing around in it. She veered the subject abruptly, got on to a film she had seen recently, one that in her opinion didn’t deserve the raves it was getting.

  Grady had seen the film and thought the same of it. On his last selling trip for HH he’d had nights to kill and gone alone to see that one and quite a few others.

  They ordered lunch, made as little as possible of it, just a couple of crab salads. Ate and talked. Julia found it difficult to keep the conversation in neutral. Something in her seemed to be pushing her to get to know him swiftly. They skipped and skimmed along on such diverse topics as the global warming trend, overpriced arugula, the charlatanry of spiritual channeling.

  “These days it seems practically everyone is in touch with some long-departed, talkative soul,” Julia said.

  “Are you?”

  “Hell no. It’s absurd, don’t you think?”

  “Probably.”

  “They used to put away people who heard voices. Now they let them set up shop. I for one suspect there isn’t an other side, as they call it.”

  “There might be something to it.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “Let’s just say I don’t have any reason not to.”

  “Do you believe you’ve lived before?”

  “Once in a while I feel as though I might have. Haven’t you ever experienced that feeling?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think anything as important as that should be based on vague once-in-a-while hints.”
r />   Grady was willing to bet that beneath her pragmatic surface was a wondering, imaginative Julia who perceived mystical meaning in most everything. He himself had never been literal minded or handicapped by deduction. Whenever he considered his outlook he gave a lot of the credit to the flowers of his youth, especially the irises. “You haven’t always lived in San Francisco, have you?”

  “No, I was raised in upstate New York.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “Ever heard of Amenia?”

  “Sure, I used to call it anemia.”

  “Everyone does. You’ve been there?”

  “Around there.” That caused Grady to go once over the memory of a long-ago night in the grass of an apple orchard on the outskirts of Sharon with a girl from there who so craved sensation that she was oblivious to the deep, wet grass and the rot of the windfalls it concealed, which her back crushed to sour and stain her dress.

  Julia noticed the recall in Grady’s eyes. “I just triggered something?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Nothing bad, I hope.”

  “Quite the contrary,” he admitted with an appropriate smile.

  His wife must have been blind and paralyzed from the waist down, Julia thought. “How long have you been married,” she asked, not intending to. It just came out of her, as though the words had their own will.

  Grady didn’t mind telling her. He hadn’t spoken to anyone about it other than his attorney and a bartender in Tahoe. Spilling it to another woman might be therapeutic.

  “You don’t appear to be hurt or bitter,” Julia said.

  “I’m not, just bristling.”

  “Bristling’s only a first-degree reaction. You’ll soon be over it.”

  “You’re an expert, huh?”

  “I’ve never been divorced but I’ve been bristled, any number of times,” she grinned.

  “How many is any number?”

  “I don’t know, really. I don’t count some that I used to count. In fact the grand total is constantly decreasing. What was she like, this wife who’s given up on you?”

  “Complex.”

  That was kind enough of him for him to still be in love with her, Julia thought. She asked if he was and believed his no. “What was her name?”

  “She’s still alive.”

  “I prefer to speak of her in the past tense, do you mind?”

  “I guess not. Her name was Gayle.”

  “Was she pretty?”

  A shrug and then a conceding nod from Grady.

  “Gorgeous?”

  “Gorgeous.”

  “Not just in your eyes?”

  “That’s for sure.” He hoped she didn’t press him for any more. He didn’t want to go into the lying and the fucking around because there wouldn’t be any way for it not to come out sounding as though he felt victimized and sorry for himself. Neither of which was the case. Gayle had been Gayle, the daughter of Harold, and he’d come down an altogether different road with a more fortunate bundle of values. As he saw it, the worst thing about the marriage had been the waste of years. He wondered if he told Julia that would she understand. He sort of thought she might. He watched her catch the waiter and convey without a word that she wanted a refill of coffee. A negligible but giveaway indication of her larger self-sufficiency. It occurred to him that on first impression she was unlike any of the women he’d known, been with.

  She brought her attention around and on him again, like a boat resuming its tack. “Let me ask you something just out of female curiosity. And you don’t have to answer if it purges up something too sordid or messy.” She waited a long beat to allow him to refuse. “What was the one thing that Gayle did that you disliked the most?”

  “Big or little thing?”

  “Let’s stick with little.”

  Grady laughed, a private, self-amused laugh as he ran down that inventory. “It’s a toss-up,” he said, “between buying luggage and posturing.”

  “Buying luggage?”

  “Yeah. She refused to take a trip anywhere, even for just a weekend, unless she had new luggage, brand-new whole sets, from Mark Cross, Fendi, Hermès…”

  “Morabito?”

  “Probably. We had closets and a basement storage area crammed with once-used luggage.”

  “Strange.”

  “It was phobic, I think. She wouldn’t discuss it and I eventually gave up asking her about it.”

  “What about the posturing?”

  “That wasn’t as odd. I’ve seen women do it but not so obviously and to the extent that Gayle did it. We’d be sitting talking, and all of a sudden without a lapse in attention she’d slip herself into a pose, turn a shoulder this way or that, suspend an arm, tilt her chin, look at me over her cheekbones.”

  “She did it when you were out someplace?”

  “Even more when we were home alone.”

  “That griped you?”

  “Christ yes, why couldn’t she just be herself?”

  “Maybe she didn’t think herself was enough.”

  Grady wanted to get off Gayle.

  With perfect timing Julia excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. Grady watched her walk, believed she had legs equal to Doris’s. Some woman, he thought. She was evidently bright, possibly very intelligent. Spunky, perhaps strong willed. Although she wasn’t a raving beauty she was above average attractive and, in her favor, not straining to make too much of her looks. Yes, he liked Julia Elkins. Yes, he’d like to know her better.

  When she returned to the table he sensed she’d prefer silence for a while. She looked around and at him. He looked around and at her. They were eyes-to-eyes for a long moment. Without breaking the look she told him, “I read somewhere that whenever a woman is looking at something she wants her pupils dilate.”

  “At the moment yours appear normal.”

  “Then it’s not true,” she quipped, too late to reach out and recapture the words and have them unsaid. What had gotten into her? Only rarely in her life had she been aggressively vampy and never on such short acquaintance. Now that she thought of it she hadn’t been the same in quite a few ways since her recent death-defying sleep.

  “Regarding your pearls…”

  “Oh … yes, my pearls,” she muttered, a bit embarrassed that what was supposed to have been foremost in her mind was last.

  “I don’t have them for you.”

  “That’s not what you told me.”

  “I know. They were being restrung by a Hungarian woman I’ve used before. Dependable and by far the best stringer around. She was supposed to have them ready by Wednesday. When I stopped by her place this morning she wasn’t there.”

  Thank you, Hungarian pearl stringer, Julia thought, for guaranteeing this wouldn’t be a first and only meeting. Now she could slow down. Her second thought was how delightful it would be if Grady was fabricating the Hungarian woman’s inaccessibility and actually had her pearls in his pocket.

  CHAPTER SIX

  That was the start of Grady and Julia.

  They remained at that table in the Garden Court of the Sheraton Palace long after the other Saturday lunchers were gone, long after Grady thoughtfully settled the check so the waiter wouldn’t have to be attending. The table for four, round and really large enough to accommodate six, turned into a white-covered horizontal barrier, which Grady overcame by moving his chair around next to Julia’s. Not just to facilitate their talk but to also put them in range of touching. They didn’t touch, didn’t even clasp hands, however the possibility was there and the imminence and the anticipation.

  The following day was Sunday, and they spent it together, learning each other as they walked some of San Francisco, climbed steps and had espresso and dipped chocolate biscotti at Caffe Puccini on Columbus Avenue in North Beach. They sat with legs dangling over the sea wall of the Marina to watch windsurfers. Ended up on the grass of Golden State Park sharing the Sunday Chronicle while around them islands of families and lovers sprang up or disappeared.

/>   For Julia the day was like a canvas that she was preparing, layering it with background so that soon it could take detail and color more vibrant.

  For Grady the day was like preparing a garden, enhancing the soil of it with acquaintance, getting it comfortable for planting.

  Julia told him about some of her days in France, didn’t omit Jean Luc but didn’t elaborate on him either. She assumed Grady guessed there’d been involvement. She recalled how, when she’d first arrived in Paris, she’d taken an apartment in Montparnasse, a seventh-floor walk-up hardly more than a closet. Because the concierge had confided that it had once been occupied by Kiki Prin, better known as Kiki of Montparnasse, the celebrated intimate of numerous accomplished artists during the twenties and thirties. Julia related how she’d suffered the climb and cramp in order to imagine the incorporeal visits of Pascin and Dubuffet, Soutine, Foujita, Léger, Man Ray and others. Before too long she found out that nearly all the concierges of the area misled with that Kiki fib, that Kiki had actually lived in more generous quarters at 5 rue Delambre and later at 1 rue Brea.

  She’d told the concierge off.

  No, actually she was obliged to him for having inadvertently supplied so much inspiration.

  What about Cody, Wyoming? Why had she chosen to live in Cody?

  It wasn’t something she’d planned, she’d decided on it after she was all packed and ready to move. Someone had circled it on a map of the western states that she’d bought for a dime at Goodwill, so her eyes had been drawn to it and in that instant she’d made it her destination. At times when she looked back to finding that circle on that map she thought it providential, because Cody had been so right for her, right from the start.

  She’d found an ideal situation on a thousand-acre spread in the valley of the Upper South Fork on the Shoshone River. The people who owned it were from St. Louis and usually only came there during the warm months. They needed someone on the property year-round, just to be there and oversee, not really to caretake. Her place would be the four-room plank-sided structure with all the conveniences situated three hundred yards from the main ranch house. They worried that it would be too isolated for her.