Just Friends

by Robyn Sisman

  “Even . . . Wagner?”

  “Especially Wagner.”

  He gave a great sigh, as if a weight had slid from his shoulders. “That’s good. Because it just so happens that I have an extra ticket for the Ring Cycle.”

  CHAPTER 17

  Jack:

  Called Cat today, but she was in a meeting and couldn’t talk. Says she’ll ring me back. Please explain the situation if she calls when I’m out.

  Messages:

  1. Ella wants you to call her a.s.a.p.

  2. Voila says you’re late with your review of Dumb Beasts.

  3. The newspaper guy wants you to pay your bill.

  For the second time this week I’ve come home to find a plate of melted butter on the kitchen table. After breakfast PLEASE remember to put it back in the fridge. (That’s the big white thing in the kitchen.)—F

  Freya:

  So that’s the fridge. No wonder my laundry never comes out clean.

  Trust you’re using “home” in the purely temporary sense of the word.

  No word from Cat. The meter’s running . . . —J

  Jack:

  Spoke to Cat at last. She’s dying to have me stay with her, but there’s a problem. She’s catsitting and her neighbor’s cat puked on her fold-down bed. She’s having the mattress cleaned. So I can either stay here until Wednesday, when I’d be leaving anyway, or move into a hotel. Let me know which.

  Ella called again. She wants to set up a meeting. PLEASE ring her back.

  Message on the machine from that creep Leo Brannigan, too. What’s going on?

  By the way, Michael is NOT suing me about his trousers. Cat ran into him at some law thing and asked him straight out. So screw you. —F

  PS. Did anyone call?

  Freya:

  So Cat’s cat opened the bed all by himself! Smart pussy—or the least convincing excuse I’ve ever heard.

  Since you ask so prettily, okay: next Wednesday LATEST. And you can pay the newspaper bill.

  No, anyone did not call. Actors are busy fellows: all those yodeling classes and hair workshops.

  Is it you who bought that indigestible white stuff in the cellophane wrapper? Found it in the fridge and tried some in my sandwich today. Not a success, even with Hellman’s and dill pickle. Must be some English delicacy—tripe??? —J

  Jack:

  Ha ha. Lots of women chill their underwear when the weather’s hot. Leave it ALONE.

  Your father rang—what a charmer! I understand genes often skip a generation. He wants you to go over to his hotel for cocktails at 6:00 on Sunday—call his “usual suite” to confirm. He invited me too—said I sounded “a delightful young lady.” Can’t wait to meet him. —F

  PS. See giant cockroach (trapped under glass). I knew this would happen.

  Freya:

  Don’t get excited: Dad will flirt with a baked potato if there’s nothing better around. Besides, you’re way too old for him. But thanks for passing on the invitation, which Candace and I will be delighted to accept.

  Garbled message on machine from Tash—about bridesmaids, I think. Laughed so hard trying to picture you in pink satin I missed most of it. Is there something you feel you should tell me?

  Took the cockroach back to JBJ Discount. The assistant confirmed it was a Madagascan Hissing Roach, not indigenous to Manhattan, bought yesterday by a “tall blond lady.” I explained that my wife had mental trouble and we’d decided on a dachshund instead. Good joke, though!

  Oh—almost forgot. Your young gentleman caller called. B-R-E-T-T (though I understand the final t is silent). He wonders what you’re doing Saturday night. I said you’d probably be washing your hair, but I’d put in a good word for him. Here are a few favorites: discobolus, crapulent, prestidigitation, sesquipedalian, hippogryph, polyanthus.

  Or was it Bernard?

  No, Brett, I’m almost sure.

  Anyway, it began with B. —J

  Jack:

  Here’s my rent money. Thanks for another wonderful week. —F

  PS. Steven Spielberg called—wants to buy movie rights in Big Sky. He left a number, but I didn’t have any paper so I wrote it on my hand. Then I washed your dirty dishes . . . Silly me!

  PPS. It was Brett.

  CHAPTER 18

  Strawberries? . . . Or raspberries?

  Freya barely hesitated before adding both to the mounting pile in her shopping cart. She gave a happy sigh. It was Saturday morning. Seven hours from now Brett would be picking her up at the apartment for a night out—their first real date. Hubba hubba! as they said in America.

  She had woken early, wound tight with anticipation. By eleven she had worked out at the gym, eaten breakfast, spied a fabulous dress in the window of a Village boutique and bought it, and returned to find the apartment silent and Jack apparently asleep. Still brimming with energy, she had decided on a trip to the food stores, to stock the apartment with goodies. It was not, after all, impossible that Brett could still be around tomorrow, or for some days (and nights) to come. A healthy young man like that needed feeding. Jack could have the leftovers for his sandwiches.

  Freya pushed her cart over to the pastry section, wondering if Brett liked croissants for breakfast. Or would he prefer muffins? Or pancakes? Or eggs? Maybe he ate that superhealthy cereal stuff that looked like gravel chippings. Freya decided to buy the lot, and threw in some organic goat’s yoghurt for good measure. She was tasting salamis at the deli counter when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

  “Hello, Candace,” she said, surprised. “How are you?”

  Candace stuck out her tongue.

  Freya flinched. “Yeuch! What’s that?”

  “A tongue stud.” Candace looked smug. “It’s a surprise for Jack.”

  “Yes . . . I imagine it might be.”

  “He wouldn’t let me see him all week because of the teacher/student thing. So I thought, why not seize the opportunity? It takes a few days for the swelling to go down.”

  “Wasn’t it horribly painful?” The silvery chip was embedded like a gob of fat in Candace’s purplish tongue. Freya decided to forgo the salami.

  “Jack’s worth it. Actually, I came in here to buy him coffee and stuff for breakfast. You guys never have anything to eat in your apartment.”

  “We do now.” Freya gestured at the cart. “In fact, I’m very glad you turned up, Candace. After I’ve bought some cheese, you can help me carry everything home.”

  Candace responded to this request with surprising enthusiasm. She was a good-natured girl, Freya realized, even if her elevator did not quite reach the top floor.

  “How’s Jack?” asked Candace, while Freya fretted over the ripeness of the Torta di San Gardenzio. “I didn’t want to call him because my tongue made me talk funny.”

  Freya frowned. “We’re not on speaking terms.”

  “That’s too bad. I thought you were such good friends. Jack’s told me all about you—how you came to New York without any money and put yourself through art school, and did all those awful jobs, and how you discovered that famous artist, and how you two lived in the same rooming house and always went to the movies together.”

  “My goodness, Candace, are you planning to write my biography?” Freya didn’t know whether to be annoyed or flattered by the extent of Jack’s revelations.

  “I was jealous,” Candace confessed. “Crazy, isn’t it? But I kept pestering him, until he explained why he could never feel about you that way.”

  “Ditto,” agreed Freya crisply.

  “You two should make up. Everyone needs friends in this world.”

  “Fine with me.”

  “Let me talk to him. He could at least be grateful that you’re buying all this stuff for the apartment.”

  “Well, it’s not exactly—”

  But Candace had spied the magazine rack and darted away. She rejoined Freya at the checkout and even tossed in twenty dollars toward the bill. They walked back together, arms wrapped around big brown bags, sunglasse
s slipping in the heat.

  “They say it could get up to ninety today,” said Candace. “I’m, like, totally smothered in sunblock.”

  “Gorgeous, isn’t it?” said Freya, daydreaming about Brett and tonight. Her new dress was short and strappy, in a shade of aquamarine she knew suited her, made of a strange, stretchy fabric that glistened like fish scales. She wondered if she should buy some of that fake-tanning stuff to warm up her pale skin. Should she put it on all over, or only on the bits that showed? What if she turned orange? She sneaked a glance at Candace’s skin for comparison, lavishly exposed by a scarlet minidress with bows tied at the shoulders, and a generous impulse slipped past her guard.

  “I think I should warn you: Jack’s father is in town, and he’s invited you and Jack for drinks tomorrow evening. At the St. Regis.”

  “The St. Regis!” squeaked Candace. “The one with all the marble and a little brass house for the doorman?”

  “Jack’s father has a special suite.”

  Freya watched the implications sink in. After a pause Candace asked, “Are the Madisons—I mean, are they an old family?”

  “God, no! Arrivistes of the 1930s, I should think, but stinking rich. You’re an American, you know how these things work: Madison Street, the Madison Foundation, Madison Civic Center, the Madison playground for disadvantaged children—all that crap. Mind you, Jack’s dad must be slashing his way through the family fortune with all his alimony payments; he gets divorced on a regular basis. With luck, Jack won’t inherit a penny.”

  Candace was silent—probably nervous, poor thing.

  “Don’t worry.” Freya gave Candace an encouraging smile. “I’ve spoken to Mr. Madison on the phone, and he sounds delightful.”

  “I think I’ll wear my black.”

  “Perfect. I’m sure he’ll love you.”

  Back in the apartment they deposited their groceries on the kitchen floor with grunts of relief. There was no sign of Jack; his bedroom door was still shut.

  “I told him I’d be here by noon.” There was an edge of exasperation in Candace’s voice.

  “No doubt you can find a way to wake him up,” said Freya, thinking of the tongue stud.

  But Candace had other ideas. She went into the living room and reappeared shortly with a music tape in her hand, which she held up for Freya’s inspection.

  “How about this?”

  Freya grinned. “Yep, that should do it.”

  Within five minutes Jack appeared in the doorway, sketchily dressed in jeans and T-shirt, aghast to find the apartment rocking with music, the kitchen floor strewn with bulging shopping bags, and Candace and Freya reading aloud to each other from a women’s magazine.

  “What’s going on?” he growled.

  “Hello, Jack.” Candace flashed him a smile, then turned back to Freya. “Okay, next question. ‘You’re at a club with your date, when a gorgeous hunk cuts in and asks you to accompany him to Paris for a weekend of passion. Do you (a) tell him to get lost; (b) collect your passport and go; or (c) say, “Great! Let’s make it a threesome”?’ ”

  “Definitely c,” answered Freya, in high spirits. “It’s a quiz,” she told Jack. “ ‘How sexy are you?’ I think I’m winning.”

  “Dumb-belles of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your brains.” Jack exuded masculine scorn. “How can anyone be expected to write the Great American Novel when they’re swamped by trivia?”

  “Were you writing? We thought you were asleep.” Candace caught Freya’s eye and giggled at her own boldness. “Still, now that you’re here, you can help us put away all these wonderful groceries Freya’s bought for you.”

  “What?”

  Candace stood up from the table, pulled something at random from one of the bags—a package of rice—and dumped it into Jack’s arms. “Food,” she explained. “For you. All you have to do is put it away.”

  “But I don’t even know where—”

  “In here,” said Freya, who had stationed herself by a cupboard on the far side of the kitchen. “Come on, chuck it over.”

  “And I’ll stash the cold things,” Candace volunteered. She pulled open the fridge door and stood beside it, hand on hip, smiling expectantly at Jack.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said, still holding the rice as gingerly as if it were a newborn baby.

  But at that moment the track of Saturday Night Fever pounded out of the stereo, and a sudden madness overtook them all. Candace started it by waggling her hips to the music and beckoning to Jack like a siren. Infected by the beat, Freya copied her. She’d scored forty-six out of fifty in the quiz, which put her in the “red-hot” category. Thinking of Brett and tonight and how she’d look in the aquamarine dress, she laughed into Jack’s outraged eyes and undulated her long body.

  With a sudden God-help-me grin, Jack capitulated. In a flash he had tossed Freya the rice, bent to one of the grocery bags, armed himself with a banana and a cucumber, and was stabbing the air, northeast and southwest, John Travolta–style. Candace whooped with delight. Encouraged, he spun around and treated them to the sight of his thrusting backside as he stabbed again, this time northwest and southeast. After that, there was no holding him. He did a kind of limbo dance with a strawberry before snapping it in two with his teeth. He shook packets of dry pasta like maracas. He clashed tins, juggled grapefruit, spun frozen pizza on one finger, and tangoed with Aunt Jemima’s Pancake Mix. Candace laughed so hard she dropped the eggs. Jack stubbed his bare toe on a table leg. Freya lobbed things higgledy-piggledy into the cupboard with a huge grin on her face. She’d almost forgotten that Jack could be like this. And he did have a great bum.

  When the track finished they collapsed at the table, laughing and out of breath. Two eggs were cracked, several apples bruised, and the pita bread that Jack had frisbeed across the kitchen had failed to survive the trip, but everyone was in a good mood. Candace put coffee on the stove, Jack squeezed fresh orange juice, Freya sacrificed Brett’s putative muffins to the general good, and the three of them breakfasted together, talking companionably of nothing in particular.

  “So what are we doing tonight?” Candace asked Jack.

  “Whatever you want. See a movie. Grab something to eat. Why, do you have something special in mind?”

  “Yes, I do.” Candace straightened in her chair, important as a pouter pigeon. “I think it would be a lovely idea if we invited Freya to join us.”

  “What?” Jack and Freya pounced as one.

  “Look how friendly you two can be if you only make an effort. Socializing improves relationships: it’s a known fact.”

  “Thanks, but I have plans,” Freya said coolly.

  “Why, what are you doing?”

  Freya gritted her teeth. “I am going out, Candace. With a man.”

  “Oh, yes, so you are!” said Jack, with that hearty bonhomie Freya had learned to distrust. “Freya has a new boyfriend,” he stage-whispered to Candace.

  Freya felt herself start to blush, and gabbled on to hide her embarrassment. “We’re taking the train out to Coney Island, as a matter of fact. Very tacky, Candace. Not your scene at all.”

  “But I adore Coney Island!” Jack protested. “I haven’t been there for—well, probably not since I went with you, Freya. Was that the time Larry lost his hot dog on the Wonder Wheel?”

  “I’ve always wanted to go to Coney Island,” Candace announced, clasping her little hamster hands. “It sounds like so much fun.”

  “No,” said Freya, feeling trapped.

  “A double date!” Jack enthused. “Very retro. Very Travolta. Heck, where’d I put my white suit?”

  “No,” she repeated.

  “I think it could be a really, like, bonding experience.”

  “I said no! And that’s final.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “... He was a left-hander, of course—tall guy, graceful as an acrobat—and he hit that ball clear over the lights in right field. You should have seen it, Brett.”

 
; “Sounds like a cool game, Jack. There’s something about left-handers that gives them that extra edge. Do you remember when the Tigers? ...”

  The two men moseyed on down the boardwalk, beer cans in hand, shirtsleeves flapping in the offshore breeze—oblivious of the last shreds of purple twilight and brightening stars, blind to the gaudy fun-fair delights around them, and totally ignoring the two women who trailed at their heels—like a couple of housewives from the ‘burbs, Freya thought savagely. She had told Jack to “be nice” to Brett, not to turn the evening into a symposium on bloody baseball.