by Toby Devens
Apropos of boinking, Simon visited three times. Quick visits, in and out. Literally, figuratively, sexually. But sheet-scorchingly good. And then finally, I found a weekend free to make my long postponed visit to him on his home turf.
He owned a two-bedroom co-op in a pre-war building on the Upper East Side which must have cost him a bundle. But unless you knew how inflated Manhattan apartment prices are and the cachet cost of the best neighborhoods, you would think he lived much below his salary. Which had to be way, way up there.
The Westwood was virtually indistinguishable from two other Woody Allenesque drab-chic apartment buildings on a block that also housed a newsstand, a jewelry shop, and a Vietnamese greengrocer. Across the street a row of brownstones gave way to a deli, a florist shop, a tapas bar, and an antique store specializing in czarist treasures, which was probably a front for the Russian mafia. Maybe that’s why the neighborhood was so quiet on a Friday afternoon. And why The Westwood didn’t need a doorman.
I nodded maternally at a young man flashing his electronic resident’s pass and he flourished me into the handsomely refurbished art deco lobby. The elevator took its sweet time getting to the sixth floor.
“Yes, yes,” Simon called through the door in that impatient British manner that made me hot when Jeremy Irons laid it on. A few seconds passed during which I assumed he was checking me out through the peephole and then he opened the door with the security chain latched in case some six-foot-five 280-pound miscreant was posing as “Gwyneth, it’s me, Gwyneth.”
He unhooked the chain, popped me a kiss, and said, “Hello, my beautiful houseguest.” After he hung up my coat, he took me into his arms. “I’ve missed you terribly. I’m so delighted you’re here. Moment,” he said, as the phone rang. He checked the caller ID. “London. I’m doing a phone consult. They were supposed to call this morning. Sorry. This is a must take.”
He said into the phone, “Martin. Where have you been? Ah. Well, I’ll need to make this short. Hold on.” Turning to me, he said. “Ten minutes. No more. Promise. Meanwhile settle in. Place is a bit cluttered, I’m afraid. But there’s plenty to read and tea’s on the boil.”
So I made myself a cup and looked around. As for clutter, he wasn’t one of the Collyer Brothers, the two old coots who, back in the 1940s, had piled up newspapers and magazines and a hundred tons of junk around them in their Fifth Avenue apartment until the cops found their moldering bodies under heaps of garbage. Not that bad.
Someone had made the beds, cleaned the bathrooms, and swabbed down the kitchen. On its counter sat a spice carousel, a sign or memory of a woman’s touch. The contemporary teak dining table shone clutter free, but skyscrapers of magazines rose from the carpet beneath it—Science, Popular Science, Theoretical Science, Esoteric Science, Incomprehensible Science. Simon’s study must have been designed as a maid’s room. Now it was crammed with a computer, file cabinets, academic publications, papers in wild disarray, even half a blueberry muffin that looked like it had been baked around the time McArthur invaded Korea. There were reading glasses scattered in every room. Sticky reminder squares attached to every flat surface. Simon, it seemed, was your classic absentminded scientist, but sexy.
A half hour after he left me, he found me reading the New York Times. “A very productive ten minutes,” he said. “Now with that behind us, I can think of a wonderful way to spend the next, say, forty-five.” He was nuzzling my neck. “Unless you’d rather an early dinner?”
“Hungry for something else,” I said, wondering at the deep vein of sensuality this man had unearthed in me. My quickie with Ari Ben-Jacob had given me a shot of confidence, a reminder that I was still attractive to men in spite of my ex-husband’s preference. But I hadn’t been inclined to hop a plane to Tel Aviv for more. Simon was different. Just the thought of him stirred desire. And no shame at that. Amazing. Fifty-four and hot at last!
“Not here. Bedroom,” I murmured. He had to relocate books and papers from the comforter to the floor to make a place for us on his bed. But we had more than enough room and finally enough time as he undressed me, talking to me all the while, telling me what he was doing as he was doing it, that Mayfair accent making every lusty syllable sound like Shakespeare. Very steamy Falstaff. Then no more talking as he worked his wicked tongue brilliantly in other ways. And I was pretty brilliant, too, much better than I’d been at nineteen when all I had in my repertoire was a single repetitive tongue-flick. Susie Lemberg back in college had us practice on popsicles. No wonder I’d left my dates cold.
When Simon groaned he couldn’t take it anymore, I climbed atop so I could look down on that gorgeous face, look into those gorgeous eyes as they turned to molten steel which, once again, tripped me over the edge.
Sated, I collapsed against his chest. He caressed my hair. “Simon,” was all I could whisper. I wanted to be nowhere else, wanted the moment to last forever.
As if reading my mind, he pressed my hand over his heart and said, “This is ridiculous. We’ve seen each other only six or seven times so it’s much too early to feel let alone say, but I think I’m falling in love with you.”
Still bleary with pleasure, what I heard was the “think.” He only thinks he’s falling in love with me. Then the sentiment hit full force.
Fleur, when I recounted this next part, was ready to have me consigned to a psychiatric institution, eager to sign the admission papers herself. Because instead of letting him stew, wait, bite his nails, yearn, ache, climb mountains, and ford rivers to win me, I replied breathlessly, “I’ve been thinking along the same lines.”
“Have you, my darling?” he said, sliding me up so he could look at me. “Tell me.”
I said, grinning at the craziness of it, “I don’t know where this is coming from. I’m a rational person. More intellectual than emotional, I’ve always thought. Not impulsive. God knows, I’m not a teenager. And yet…”
“Yes,” he said, “And yet for me too.”
After a long, gentle kiss that seemed to seal the sentiment, he leapt to his feet, energized. “Now I really am starved. You too? Would Thai takeaway do the trick?”
On our way to the Bangkok Delight Carry Out, we met up with someone from another part of his life. From the slight drape of skin around the jawline, I estimated her at mid-forties. A little too much eye makeup for workout clothes, but attractive.
She was Dr. Claire Something who was doing some amazing science in his lab and I was Dr. Unintelligible, colleague and friend, from Baltimore. After the introduction, we stood awkwardly sizing each other up. The rest of the conversation, about the impending first snow of the season, raced towards its end.
After Claire had vanished around the corner, I said, “So I’m your colleague and friend, am I?” miffed at the way I got shoved into a sexless corner.
He got a kick out of my annoyance. “What would you have me say?” he laughed. “Girlfriend? Lover?” Then, sobering, “Seriously, Gwyneth, I’m very careful about my public persona. Reputation is a fragile thing. I try to keep my private and professional lives entirely separate.” Simon tucked my hand into his pocket as we walked. “I assume you do as well. Claire works in my lab. I want her to concentrate on her science, not be speculating about what I do in my off hours.”
“Did you ever date her?” I said. Call it instinct.
Call it a guess. Simon appeared genuinely appalled. “Good grief. Now that would be asking for trouble. Never a wise idea to mix business with pleasure. Except in our case, of course, and we don’t really work together.” He gave my hand a squeeze.
On the walk back, with the bags of food cooling, Simon made a detour to the local music store where he purchased CDs of classical composers I’d never even heard of and I bought Itzhak Perlman playing Paginini and Ella singing Gershwin. We emerged into the night and just as we arrived on his street it began to snow starry twinkles that lit up the dark. The
n something strange happened. Simon halted in front of Friedman’s Deli. He cased the block to make sure, I guess, that none of his colleagues from Brubaker out for a nosh would catch his show. Because what he did next had to be out of character for the eminent, the proper Simon York of the impeccable public persona. In the snow-freckled light from the deli, with the aroma of sauerkraut and garlic wafting around us and “Lara’s Theme” seeping out of a nearby apartment—or maybe I spun the tune in my brain as I orchestrated the moment—in a scene that was drop-dead Dr. Zhivago romantic, he leaned down and kissed me. Hard. With passion pumping behind it. Right out there in full view.
When he released me, I saw his eyes sparkling with maybe astonishment at himself and love for me. That’s what love does, propels you into a grand jeté over your own boundaries. With the risk of landing in a bruised and battered heap where your feet used to be instead of in the wonderful wild blue yonder. But worth it, I thought. From the look on his face, Simon did too.
After dinner, I slipped Ella into the CD player and tugged him to his feet.
“No, no, no, no, no. I don’t dance,” he protested.
But he allowed himself to be dragged into a fox-trot and, wonder of wonders, after the initial crashing awkwardness and after he lost some of his self-consciousness and concentrated on the music, he wasn’t half bad. I told him so.
“You’re just being kind. I’m a congenital oaf. I know my strengths and weaknesses.”
“No, really.” I meant it.
“Then I have you to thank.” He appeared genuinely delighted at this new trick and with me.
“The way you wear your hat. The way you sip your tea,” Ella crooned, the scent of lemongrass filled the air and the moment hung velvet. Simon, moving with newfound grace, whispered huskily, “I guess this makes us a couple. Do you want that, Gwyneth?”
Declarations of love in the afternoon, a couple by evening. I could hear Fleur warning, “So fast?” Still, it wasn’t as if I were seventeen with the luxury of unlimited time. My heart, which had bucked into arrhythmia at his question, told me “The hell with it, why not?” I was smitten with this man. He with me. Why not attempt a little boundary leaping of my own?
I nodded, which I hoped he could see in the half-light.
“Then that settles it. We’re a couple,” he laughed softly.
And whatever happens, I sang to myself, they can’t take that away from me.
But they tried, whoever they were, because right in the middle of this perfection, my cell phone went off in my handbag across the room. Sylvie. My father had taken a spill. He’d been unsteady on his feet lately, spending more and more time in the brown recliner, and I’d told Sylvie to keep a close watch on him because I’d picked up a foot drop on the left side a few days before and I didn’t trust his balance.
Panic shifted Sylvie’s Jamaican accent into high gear. “The t’ing is, I never took my eyes off him. I had my eyes on him all the time. But there was no warning is the t’ing. He just tripped over his feet and went to the floor. He hurt his shoulder. He’s holding his shoulder.”
I heard my father mewling in the background. “Put him on, please.”
“Daddy, are you all right?” I didn’t expect an answer. I just wanted him to hear my voice. “Can you move your shoulder? Lift your arm.”
Sylvie took back the phone. “He can’t lift his arm.”
“Sylvie, listen, his shoulder probably isn’t broken,” that’s a rare event, “but he might have dislocated it. Call Dr. Rosetti. See if he wants Mr. Harald to go to the emergency room. And please call me back after you’ve spoken to him. Don’t forget to call me, Sylvie.”
“What was that all about?” Simon asked. After I gave him a brief, bowdlerized summary, he said, “Hmm, sounds like you might want to consider a higher level of care for your papa.”
No, I might not want to consider a higher level of care, which is another way of saying nursing home. Not tonight. “I don’t think he’s ready. And not to be rude, but can we change the subject? Please.”
As if anyone paid attention to me. I heard almost the same words two hours later when Dan Rosetti, not Sylvie, called from the hospital. That dear man met Sylvie at the ER and reviewed the x-rays that showed my father fell smack on his shoulder, causing a separation.
“We’ve got it covered. The orthopedic guy is slinging him now,” Dan reported.
“Is he very scared? Should I come back?”
“No, you enjoy your weekend. We gave him some Percocet and he’s enjoying the nurses fussing over him,” Dan continued. “Honestly, I don’t see a need for you to come back early. Sylvie can handle this. We’ll give her instructions about pain meds and ice. And if it will put your mind at ease, I’ll stop by tomorrow to see how he’s doing.”
“A house call? Dan, I really appreciate this. I can’t tell you how much.”
“No sweat. Harald’s a favorite of mine. So just have a good time in the big city. You drive up?”
“Train.”
He hesitated, then said gently, “Well, I don’t want put a damper on your time up there, but maybe on the way back you can give some thought to next steps. We’re about at the end of the line in terms of Sylvie providing adequate care. She’ll do for now, but soon...” He left the unmentionable unsaid.
***
In spite of phoning Sylvie nine times to check on my father, it was a memorable weekend. We roamed the snow-dusted streets of the Village, caught a Bulgarian film festival in SoHo, visited a Klee exhibit at the Guggenheim, made passionate love twice again. Simon managed to squeeze in a few hours at the hospital between dusk and dark on Saturday, which soothed him, and then we cooked together—chicken with saffron and olives from a Moroccan cookbook he’d picked up in Rabat. Over the sauté pan, he said, “It’s jolly to play house with you. We do very well together, don’t we?”
Yet, when I said, after Sunday brunch, “I think I’ll head back early. I’m worried about my father,” he said, “Yes, we’ll get you on your way. And I’ve got to get moving, too. Time to pack,” heading for the bedroom.
I followed. “Pack for what? Where are you going?”
“Uh, didn’t I tell you? I’m leaving for Budapest first thing tomorrow. For the SACO meeting. Giving a paper. Be back in a week.” He pulled a suitcase from the closet.
I bit my lip, calculating. A week in Hungary and after that he was off to Florida for Thanksgiving. It would be three weeks before I’d see him again.
“Why the long face?” He gave my cheek a quick stroke, then snatched a handful of ties from his closet and tossed them into his carry-on.
When I didn’t answer, he dropped the last tie and looked up. “Come here.” He folded me into his arms, murmuring, “This is my life, Gwyneth. My schedule is packed. Surely you of all people understand what that’s like. But what we have, you and I, is so important to me that I want to grab at whatever time we have together. Even if it isn’t enough, it’s something, no?” He kissed the back of my neck above my collar.
Wooed and won, I leaned back into his embrace. “It’s more than something.”
But not everything, I had to remind myself when he failed to phone for the next five days.
Chapter 29
Who gives a rodent’s rear about your Moroccan chicken? And snow drifting down between the skyscrapers while that syrupy ‘Lara’s Theme’ plays in the background? Life is not a gaggy romance novel. Now sex is another story. Are you people still setting fire to the sheets?” Fleur asked when she and Kat finally pinned me down for a debriefing Friday night.
Kat said wearily, “Is nothing sacred?” and waved away the mashed potatoes. During the last few days, the effects of the radiation had caught up with her. Too exhausted to crunch a carrot, for once she hadn’t turned up her nose at her nemesis, fast food. Fleur and I had loaded up at KFC before heading out to
Columbia to set up supper in her kitchen.
“Sex is not the focus of every relationship, Fleur.” I gnawed on a chicken wing.
“Dream on.” Fleur shoveled coleslaw. “So when is the next big date?”
“He’s spending the holiday in Key West with old friends. Making it into a long weekend. It’s been on his calendar for nearly a year. Which works out because Drew’s here for Thanksgiving. So no Simon until early December. I’ve bought concert tickets for that Saturday night. Unless he’s changed his mind about coming. I haven’t heard from all week. That’s not like him.”
“Ah, the dance-away lover. Two steps forward, one step back. Trust me, he scared himself with that couple business and now he’s into the seventy-two-hour cooling off period. Soon he’ll invoke the kick-out clause. I knew it. Don’t say I didn’t warn—”
“Oh, for godssakes,” Kat interjected. “Pay no attention to her, Gwyn. Simon sounds wonderful. I Googled him the other day, just as a lark. There was a photo. He’s stunning. No wonder you fell for him on the spot. His CV was a mile long. And he’s on some kind of honor’s list made up by the queen back in England.” News to me.
“Well, la-di-da,” Fleur said.
Kat ignored her. “Five days without a call is nothing. Even if he usually calls a lot, because didn’t you say he was giving a paper? He’s probably swamped. And the man told you he loves you and you’re a couple. You call him. It’s way past time to dump those bourgeois conventions society shoved down our throats forty years ago. We’re in the twenty-first century here. Could anything be more irrelevant?”
She pushed her plate away impatiently. She’d lost some weight over the last weeks and looked less earthbound, more like a pale, luminous flower on a slimmer stem. Her cheekbones had emerged and her beautiful violet eyes seemed more prominent.