by Toby Devens
“And then go gentle into that good night,” I said, turning to the door.
Behind me, he expelled a groan of exasperation which slid into a higher key as he sang out, “Ahh, Bethany, come in, come in.”
The newly celebrated Dr. McGowan poked her head around the doorjamb. How long she’d been standing within eavesdropping distance was anybody’s guess. The hazel eyes lit on me for the briefest moment, all blank innocence, then bounced over to Seymour Bernstein where they acquired a smoky light.
“Hope I’m not intruding, Sy,” she said. Her voice was nauseatingly melodic. I backed up to catch the panorama of the exchange.
“Always time for you, Beth,” he began, then added for my benefit, “...any.”
And I got it. Or thought I got it. His delight in seeing her could have been the relief of a drowning man spotting a lifeboat. After all, she’d interrupted a conversation that reduced him to tearing his dyed hair. Then again, she was leaning forward in a peach silk duplicate of the shirt she wore for her TV appearance, lab coat unbuttoned, bezel-set diamond pendant swinging in the shadow of her cleavage, one shapely leg—ending in a very unprofessional three-inch tapered pump—extended. Her lids lowered. His lips moistened. Seymour and Bethany, a couple? Beth and Sy, on the sly? She was thirty. He was fifty-nine. Mentoring? Teaching her the craft? Was I paranoid? Or was I, once again, the last to know?
The following morning at nearly the same time in nearly in the same place, I almost crashed into Kat emerging furtively from Neil Potak’s office.
She could have been in for a routine check, so why, when she saw me, did she look as if the pulse in her forehead was about to strum “Nearer My God to Thee”? Her eyes met mine and she jumped back like a crane readying for flight, arms flapping, string handbag swinging.
“Hi,” I said. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah. Fine.”
I paused. It’s a physician’s trick. Wait a beat and even the shyest patient will feel compelled to fill the silence, sometimes with helpful information.
“I just needed to get something checked out.”
“Good. And everything’s okay,” I made it a statement. We were walking in rhythm now and she followed me into my office.
“It’s just a urinary tract infection. I kept getting up all night to pee. I had a little blood in my urine this morning. So I figured why play around. I called and Marie said Dr. Potak had an opening and could fit me in. He gave me an antibiotic and something that will turn my pee orange. No big deal. Could be from anything, from the air.”
Honeymoon cystitis. Too much intercourse in too short a time irritates the urethra. Common among newlyweds. Evidently, Kat and Lee had quite a weekend, in spite of the sister in the next room.
“All right,” she conceded, as if we were arguing. “I slept with him. God.”
“Well, that’s nice. It’s been a long time for you. I hope it was a good experience.”
My placid tone disarmed her. “Not a great move, huh? Too soon? It just happened so naturally. I think it would have been unnatural to deny ourselves.” Kat recited the litany of the free-for-all seventies.
“Well, you always had good instincts. Obviously, you feel you know Lee. And trust him. And he’s not made any noises like the sex has scared him away, right?”
“Just the opposite. He’s been calling three times a day.” Kat smiled a wicked smile, leaned forward, and morphed before my eyes into my college roommate, the wild-haired, pot-smoking, placard-waving, bead-shaking Kool Kat I loved. “My God, Gwyn, it was like I was in my twenties. I was popping orgasms like bubble wrap. The most I ever had at one time. Oh, and we watched porn.”
“In his sister’s house?”
“No, I was afraid we were too loud, so we went to a hotel the second night. Porn! Me! Maybe I was wrong about porn. About it being another capitalistic tool for the oppression of women. Even though the women were wearing seven-inch heels and going down on two guys at once, they were getting as much as they gave and it was stimulating. Except...”
I held my breath.
“Ethan. I feel I betrayed Ethan. I know it’s illogical and ridiculous. He’s dead and I’m alive and he would have wanted this for me. To be happy...”
Well, yes, I thought, but maybe he wouldn’t have cheered for the multiple orgasms.
“...and our sex life in the last few years before he died was beginning to slow down. He smoked all that weed when he was younger and he thought maybe that had something to do with it. But you get used to the slowing down and I thought, well, I’m into menopause so I wasn’t exactly burning with desire. At least before the estrogen. And now with Lee, I feel reborn. But Summer thinks I’ve lost my mind. She’s absolutely livid.”
Summer was a stiff-necked little prickette who supported the most outrageously right-wing political causes with the money she and her equally tight-assed husband had reaped from the sale of their dot-com. The only explanation for her being Kat and Ethan’s kid was a switch in the hospital nursery.
“Summer knows you slept with Lee?”
“Oh, God, no. Not even went away with. I told her I was spending a few days with you at the beach house. I didn’t think you’d mind the little white lie. She’s crazy enough thinking I’m even dating again. She says her father’s body is still warm and I’m dancing on his grave.”
“Hardly. Ethan’s been dead for a year and a half.”
“You’re right,” she said firmly. “Why do we let our kids lay this emotional blackmail on us? Summer is married. She has a life of her own. Why can’t I have mine?”
“You can and you should, sweetie,” I said.
“You think so? Really, Gwynnie?” Even back in college when she was setting fire to her bra, Kat had looked to me to hold the extinguisher.
“Sure. The experts say when you’re ready to move on you’ll know. Looks like it’s time.”
Kat nodded. “Lee’s a really good person. I’m not saying it’s love. Too soon, right? But we’ve got feelings for each other. I just wish he were ten years older.”
“He will be in ten years. Hang in there.”
She sent me a wry smile. “Move on. Okay. One of these days maybe you could help me tackle Ethan’s closet. I’ve been putting off cleaning it out but I think I can do it now with some moral support and a few extra hands. As long as Summer doesn’t get wind of it.”
“Sure. I’ve had some practice. Before Stan came back for his clothes, I got into his closet. There’s a homeless guy panhandling on Biddle Street wearing a $600 Italian suede jacket.”
“Oh, that’s terrible.” Kat allowed a fluty laugh, her high moral character nonetheless offended. “All right, we’ll do it. Soon. When you call Fleur, see what she has open. And call her today, please. She didn’t want to bother you at the office. Something about Bethany McGowan on TV last night and keeping her distance until you cool off. But she wanted you to know she even found a man online for you. Some shrink in Bethesda who collects English porcelain and nineteenth-century commodes.”
“That would be Stan,” I said, smarting. “I’ll give him Stan’s number, maybe they can hook up.”
She looked at me with soft eyes. “It’s going to happen for you, too.”
I knew she was trying to be kind, but I felt myself icing over. “I’ve probably got a mob of furious patients in the waiting room and Marie has been giving me the evil eye every time she passes the door. So...”
“I’m glad you have your work,” Kat said, as if it were all I had.
Which may have been true but I really did not want to hear it.
Chapter 11
Over the next week, Fleur received more responses to her Lovingmatch.com profile and set up dates with Pokey’s Pal for Friday night and Mitch247 for Saturday.
“Who’s Pokey?” I asked Fleur as she sorted her files on
the sofa in my home office.
“Pokey is his pet. A hedgehog. He actually asked me if I would like to pet his Pokey.”
“He didn’t! Please tell me you’re planning to meet this person in a public place.”
“Of course. And I have a whistle and pepper spray on my key chain, just in case. Accessories for the well-dressed twenty-first-century woman. Dear Lord, is this what we’ve come to?” She shook her head in dismay. “Of course, a hundred years ago I’d be the crazy spinster locked up in an attic room. And modern technology has got me two dates in one weekend. So,” she lifted the glass of iced tea I’d provided, “here’s to the twenty-first century.” She gulped tea, and said on the swallow, “Any plans for the weekend?” Then looked contrite as soon as the words spilled.
“Sure, Paul Newman phoned to say he and Joanne were finally splitting up and would I be his date for the Golden Globes.”
“You could be dating, you know, if you weren’t such a snob about the Internet. If it’s good enough for Connie deCrespi whose grandfather was a count, it should be good enough for you. And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there aren’t hordes of men knocking down your door these days, so unless you want to sit home every weekend, you might think about getting off your ass and doing something about it.”
“I signed on to Ivydate.com,” I said, stung by Fleur’s words into confessing.
“You didn’t.” She banged her glass down on the coaster. “Well, shut my well-bred mouth. I take back everything I just said. When?”
“About two weeks ago.”
“And?”
“And I don’t know. I never checked back.”
“Oh...my...God. Let’s get to that computer, girl.” Before I could stop her, she took over my keyboard “Username?”
“HighIQutie.”
She fired off a give-me-a-break look.
“Password,” she barked. When I hesitated, she growled, “Tell me your fucking password. You can always change it.”
“Twinmom.”
“Here we go.” Her lower lip dropped. “Yikes! Your mailbox is crammed. This cannot be because you’re a HighIQutie. What photograph did you put on there, something from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue? Twenty-three messages. Beginning with LuvinLaw. Oh, Gwyneth Margrit, I think we hit the jackpot here. You can’t leave now,” she moaned as I headed for the door.
“I’ll be back.” I needed a vodka and tonic.
I stood in my kitchen holding my glass under the ice dispenser. The glass was a Waterford highball from a set Stan’s staff at Berke’s Business had presented him on the magazine’s tenth anniversary. The crystal radiated prisms like a flawless diamond and hefted like it weighed three pounds, empty. The fridge was a subzero behemoth designed for a large family or for a couple who gave lavish parties, not for a single woman who lived on Lean Cuisines. The stove, brushed steel, had been purchased at a restaurant supply house. Its size was laughable now. Wherever I looked in my three-thousand-square-foot condo, I saw only the best, the biggest, the most expensive.
I thought of all the women who’d been abandoned with nothing or worse, debts to pay, damaged children to raise, bruises to nurse, and I despised myself for having so much and appreciating it so little.
But truth to tell, I was not entirely ungrateful. I’d slept on a rollaway cot in the living room until I left for college because the second bedroom went to my brother. I had one drawer in my parents’ dresser for my stuff, which my mother prowled through. As a teenager, I showered at a girlfriend’s house every day because someone was always in our postage-stamp-sized bathroom, and no matter what bug spray my father used, we couldn’t get rid of the silverfish that scaled the slopes of our bathtub. So I did know how good it was to have money and space, comfort, cleanliness and, most of all, the options it brought. Still...I would have given it all up for what happened not to have happened, for Stan to have been as straight as I’d thought he was and devoted as he played at being throughout our marriage. Given it all up, lock, stock, and Waterford for that. But I didn’t have that choice.
So I splashed too much vodka on my perfectly sculpted ice cubes, filled the glass with tonic, sniffed back the gratuitous self-pity, and shuffled off in my bedroom slippers to see what the real world and Fleur had in store for me.
She was fanning herself with a sheaf of papers. “I’ve gone through the messages, pulled up the profiles, and triaged them for you.” She cracked a piece of ice between her teeth. “I’ve whittled the field down to five good ones.”
I riffled through the printouts. “Gumbo? I don’t care if he is a periodontist, I will not go out with a man who calls himself Gumbo. This one’s too short. He’d come up to my belly button. And this one looks like an aging Elvis. Didn’t anyone tell him long sideburns went out around 1986?”
“He’s a world-renowned mathematician. He’ll probably win the Nobel Prize one day, but if you’re so shallow as to be put off by something as superficial as appearance, fine. How about TonyTiger? Princeton. Columbia Law. He wants to snuggle down in front of the fire with the right woman.” I scanned the message which began, “Hi, beautiful lady!” crumpled it, and slam-dunked it into the wastebasket.
Fleur withdrew her hand from behind her back. “I knew it would come to this so I’ve saved the best for last.” She flourished a paper. I snapped it out of her hand and peered at the image, slightly fuzzed by my printer. The picture was of a nice-looking guy, squinting into snow-reflected sunlight. He was posed on skis, all geared up. His hair was going, but he had fine, even features and a good smile. Maybe he’d been to Gumbo. “He’s too thin.”
“How can you tell in that ski suit? He could have a beer belly hidden under his jacket. Would that make you happy?”
“I like men with a little flesh on their bones.”
“You are not making soup here, Gwyn. You are auditioning a potential date. What’s with you and thin?”
“Oedipus complex, I guess. You met my dad. He’s a flyweight.”
Fleur snatched the paper from me. “You need more help than Tracy can give you. Listen. ‘Creative, well-read, public-interest exec. PhD. Fifty-eight. Devoted to personal growth and change. Passionate about the outdoors. Seeking educated, affectionate woman for long-term relationship. Love of Mozart and Jeopardy a plus.’ Now that ain’t chopped liver.” Fleur smiled smugly. “And read his email.”
It was coherent and clever. He said my profile intrigued him. He thought I was attractive. He liked my smile under the Jackie-O sunglasses.
“Okay, he sounds interesting,” I grudgingly acknowledged. “What do I do next?”
“You write him. His user name is Enviroman. Don’t look at me that way. Sit. I’m getting myself more tea. Type.”
***
Six emails and two phone conversations later, I made my way across the sunset-splashed concrete lip of the Inner Harbor towards my Sunday lunch date. As soon as I saw him, I knew I was in trouble. Without the kapok and the quilting of the ski jacket, stripped down to a pair of faded green slacks and a green T-shirt reading “Save the Bay,” Zack Butler, aka Enviroman, looked as self-righteously skinny as a celery stalk. Not my type at all.
We wandered among the street performers in silence. Zack had waxed poetic in his electronic messages and turned up my pilot light with his Back Bay Boston accent on the phone. In person, he was about as talkative as Calvin Coolidge. The mime passing the hat had more to say.
At brunch, under the influence of his cranberry juice on the rocks, he droned on nonstop. About himself. Zack was a radical vegetarian and environmentalist. He shared with me his passion for the native Maryland Blue crab. Not to eat of course. He whined endlessly about his ex-wife, with whom he was in a major love-hate relationship. And about his irritable bowel syndrome. This last while I was eating my salad.
Which was topped with strips of sirloin. Now
that really freaked him out. When the check arrived, Zack extracted from his change purse (no wallet; a brown plastic change purse with a prissy metal catch, just like the one my mother used to carry) a coupon for a 10 percent discount on our lunch. “Please, let me know my share,” I said. “I really would like to pay.”
“Fine with me,” he said. Total time expended on this entirely superfluous event: one hour twelve minutes.
Back in the Waterview lobby, I heard a clunk-clunk behind me and turned to see Fleur barrel by, her face the color of meringue with a strawberry spot on each cheek. “You all right?” I called to her. No answer.
I caught up with her at the elevator. She stayed tight-lipped until the doors closed.
“Mitch247?”
“He took one look at me and said, ‘Jeez, you don’t look anything like your picture. Nothing personal, but I don’t date fat women.’ Nothing personal! Could it get more personal? The bastard.”
“And I take it Pokey’s Pal was a washout last night.”
“The Johnstown Flood.”
I followed her into her apartment. She headed toward the kitchen.
“Ben and Jerry,” she said. “Now those are men worthy of a woman’s trust. The rest aren’t worth a bucket of warm spit.”
She pulled out a quart of ice cream and dug each of us two baseball-sized dips. “I’m beginning to think Chubby Hubby is the only hubby I’ll ever have.” She licked the scoop. “Well, I’ve spent fifty-five years without a husband. I can manage another twenty or thirty.” She tucked a couple of Oreos into the dishes.
“Fleur, don’t let one lousy date derail you. There are all kinds of losers out there. You don’t own the patent.” I described my encounter with Enviroman. The wife, the bowels, the discount coupon. “How suave, as we used to say in college.”