Shining Through

by Susan Isaacs

  “Another?” the waiter asked.

  I still had three quarters of my sloe gin fizz. I’d ordered it because what the heck, it was June, and I couldn’t think of any other summery drink, but it was so sweet, like a lime rickey, that it coated your whole mouth and made you want to run out screaming for a toothbrush. “No, thanks. I’ll wait for my friend to get here.” He gave me a look, as if he had a mile-long line of parched boozers begging for my table, even though over half the tables were empty, but I didn’t give in, so he walked away.

  It was twenty after six, and it looked like Gladys was a lost cause. After lunch she’d said, Remember Pat Keyes with the club-foot, who used to work for Mr. VanderGraff, Jr.? I just found out her sister Marie is a keypunch operator at Dahlmaier Brothers. I’ll give her a call and see what else I can learn about Mr. Quentin. Meet me for a drink after work, okay? Gladys’s eyebrows had gone up and down. I think she was trying to look sophisticated, but she looked more like Groucho Marx.

  But when I went to pick her up, Gladys was sitting at her desk, tapping her foot, waiting for Mr. Avenel to reword a clause. She said, He’s still on the phone with Madame, so if I’m not at the Elephant by six, don’t hang around.

  I gave up and paid the bill. Whatever goods Gladys had gotten on Quentin would have to wait for tomorrow, because she didn’t have a phone in the room she rented, and the owners of the house she lived in wouldn’t take calls for her.

  Still, I could be patient. If the information I’d pried out of Marian Mulligan that morning was right, Nan had left Reno and was probably with Mr. Quentin Dahlmaier—three days into their honeymoon. I tried to picture old Quentin, but all I could come up with was the standard rich guy: gray at the temples, tan from Palm Beach and Southampton, thin—like Basil Rathbone—with a smoking jacket. He and Nan would be taking glasses of champagne from a silver tray the butler was holding. It was like a hundred movies—all second features—I’d seen. Sublime honeymoon, Nan, darling. And we’ll have the entire summer together too. Gad, how we shall frolic!

  I passed the bar. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed one of the men swing around and get up. I felt, more than I saw, that he was heading toward me, and not too steady, either. No big deal, I figured: This one’s so pie-eyed he’ll probably be using his nose for a pillow by the time I’m out the door. So I just kept going.

  Not fast enough. Just as I reached the door, a hand tightened around my arm. Before I could say anything, the man pushed me against the wall of the tiny vestibule. His Scotch breath was humid on my face as he said, “Hello.” Not letting me go. But what could happen to me in a public place? Still my heart started pounding as if it was trying to bang its way out of my chest. The man wouldn’t loosen his grip, and it was tight. I pulled, trying to free my arm and get away. But he moved in closer, using his entire body to pin me to the wall.

  “Listen, you creep…” I began, and real loud too. Nothing happened for a second, but then he backed off, tripping a little over his own feet, and mine. But he still held on to my arm. I tried to tear it out of his grasp. “Let go.” I put a you-watch-it-Buster glint in my eye. It faded fast.

  “I just wanted to say hello,” John Berringer said softly. “I’m all alone. I have no one to talk to.” Even in the near dark, I could see his eyes mist over. “Do you know what happened to me?” Even though his voice was soft, his question was for the whole world.

  He was drunk. Not falling-down, but his words were a sad slur: Know wha’ ’appena me? “I’m sorry,” I said, and eased my arm out of his grasp. That very second, my heart started up again. Boom! He’d actually been touching me!

  Then he started to sway so slowly that only someone who’d lived with a drunk would realize that any second he’d be crashing onto the floor.

  “Hey,” I said, grabbing his shoulders, bracing him.

  We were so close then. In the red light from the exit sign over the doorway, his face was flushed, steamy. Strands of hair lay wet on his forehead. “Are you okay, Mr. Berringer?” He didn’t answer. “Mr. Berringer?” Oh, this was going to be great the next morning, when I had to look him straight in the eye. “Would you like me to get you a cab?” I asked him.

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I started to slip past him. But then he moved fast, for a drunk. He blocked my path and gave me the beginnings of a smile—as if he wasn’t quite in control of his gorgeousness and wasn’t sure what effect the smile would have. I tried to smile back. But there wasn’t time. Suddenly, he slammed me against the wall.

  “Please, Mr. Berringer.”

  He pressed himself so hard against me I could feel something I never thought I’d feel in my whole life. “I’m all alone,” he whispered, and started rubbing against me. “Don’t push me away.”

  This has to stop, I thought, but when I opened my mouth I didn’t say it. All I could think of was the feel of him, of his legs touching mine. If anyone walked by…I wanted to warn him, but there were no words. I tried. I looked up.

  His mouth came down and right away I was kissing him back. And suddenly that kiss became all there was in the world. It went on and on.

  We couldn’t stop; we could go on forever. Both of us began to let out noises that weren’t even words. And I lost all awareness of time, of reason, certainly of common sense. All I wanted was more of John.

  I swear to God I would have done it right there, in that public vestibule, standing up. He grabbed my hair, yanked my head back so it hurt, and kissed me even harder. He was so drunk. He pushed against me so hard I could hardly breathe anymore. That’s when I started to fight him, just to get some air.

  “Don’t leave me,” he said. But then he backed off a fraction of an inch. “Come on, you want it as much as I do.”

  Oh, I did. “Yes.” I put my arms around him and drew his face near. I rubbed my cheek up and down against his, then slowly brought my mouth back to his again.

  But this time his kiss was gentle, brushing, barely touching—teasing. I tried to pull him back into the embrace we’d been in before, but he wouldn’t be pulled. I thrust out my bottom to get his attention again, but he stepped back. “All right,” he said. Still drunk, but I knew him enough to know his mind had started working again. Dear God, I thought, don’t end it yet. Just a little more. He reached behind him, unfastened my arms from around his neck and placed them at my sides.

  “I ought to be getting home,” I whispered. It was hard to talk. My mouth was raw from kissing. But also, I did not want to cry.

  “No,” he said. “You’ll come with me.” Then he got behind me and pushed me out the door.

  The electric chair probably hurts a lot, and so must being flogged, but for plain, ordinary agony, you can’t beat embarrassed silence.

  In the taxi, John gave the driver his address, then settled back into the seat like he was alone, with a lot to think about. His head tilted back, his eyes were half closed. It was a perfect profile, and each time we drove past a streetlight, his hair shone.

  He didn’t touch me. By the second red light, I wanted to jump out; I didn’t want to see the expression of horror—Oh, no!—on his face when he sobered up and realized what he’d done.

  I did try to relax, sit back. At least I could enjoy the ride. I’d only been in a cab once: to go to the hospital to identify what was left of my father. People from Ridgewood who took taxis sat in the driver’s seat. I tried very hard; I looked out the window as we drove up Fifth Avenue, attempting to look rich and bored with being in a cab, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept turning around to get another look at John. I couldn’t get enough of him.

  A couple of times I almost spoke up: It sure is muggy out, and then, It’s getting late and you look tired, so why don’t I…You know how they say words get stuck in your throat? Mine never got that far. I was mesmerized by John’s up-stretched neck, still glossy with sweat, the fullness of his mouth. There was nothing I could say. Silence filled the cab like smoke.

  The driver must have sniffed something, because
he kept sneaking looks in his rearview mirror. At the same time, I could see his bald head and his reflected pale eyes. At one point, he seemed about to turn around and open his mouth—maybe with a breezy: Hey, by any chance you Dodger fans?—but he must have sensed something, because he quickly shifted gears and sped on.

  “Do you know about my wife?” John boomed out so suddenly the driver and I both almost jumped out of our skins. “Do you know she’s gone? Do you?”

  I nodded.

  “Do you know why she left?” His voice wasn’t just loud, it was out of control, almost shouting. “I asked you a question. Do you know why she left?” I shook my head. “She said she needed something more.” He looked at me suddenly, straight in the eye. I couldn’t meet his glance. I turned away. The cabdriver was watching everything in the rearview mirror. A great show, and the tickets were free.

  “Shhh,” I said to John. I didn’t say it as much as breathe it: to soothe him without angering him. He didn’t hear me.

  “What she meant was, she needed someone more.”

  “The driver,” I mumbled.

  “What?”

  “The driver,” I repeated, this time in German.

  Drunk, but not that drunk. He switched languages. “She found a man who could give her more. Whatever more is. Do you know what more is?”

  “No.”

  The driver was so beside himself he hardly had his eyes on the street anymore. “I don’t know what it is, either,” John went on. I met the driver’s eyes in the mirror. He turned his away fast, but still, the suspicion was there; here was a guy who probably watched as many British movies as I did. Nazi swine! his eyes said. Secret agents! In his cab! “All I know,” John continued, his voice softer in his educated German, “is that three days ago my wife got married. That’s illogical, isn’t it? If she’s my wife, how could she have gotten married? Therefore, either she is not married or not my wife.” His eyes filled up, and he wiped them with the back of his hand. “My wife,” he whispered.

  At a light, the driver turned around and very slowly, as if he wanted to make himself understood to foreigners (and foreigners up to no good), asked, “Sev-en-ty-fifth be-tween what and what?”

  John was about to continue; I really don’t think he heard. “Um,” I said, “the driver. He wants to know what streets you live between.”

  “Park and Lex,” he said, back in English.

  The driver gave us one last once-over before he turned back. I knew what he was thinking. I could hear the lines from the movie of his life story, The Isidore Pincus Story, playing in his head: “Their English was exceptionally good, Mr. President, and that aroused my suspicions as much as…”

  Silence filled the cab again, but this time John’s eyes were open. On me. Not looking into my face for understanding. Looking south.

  “That’s a nice dress,” he said softly.

  “Thank you.”

  He lifted the hem and rubbed the material between his thumb and index finger. “Very nice.” A rayon dress for $6.95 isn’t very nice.

  But by the time I got out another thank you, his hand had slipped beneath the dress. I watched it slide up under the fabric, snaking along my leg. The driver stretched his neck. I lifted my hand to push John’s away, but he spoke again in German. “Kiss me.” I kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Not like that.” I kissed him on the mouth. When I glanced over, the cabdriver was watching the Nazi spies pretending to be lovers. Then I turned away and forgot him as I kissed John again.

  His hand inched higher. His fingers slipped under the top of my stocking and started massaging the inside of my thigh. How did he know how good that felt? His other hand circled me and pulled me close. “Don’t stop kissing me,” he murmured. “Please.” I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  The taxi screeched to a standstill. My head banged against the window. And as we started to straighten up, we heard the driver. In a voice even louder than John’s had been, he announced: “Achtung! Ve haff arrived!”

  John hurried me through the apartment, so even though he flipped on a couple of lights, the only room I really saw was the bedroom. He was going so fast I got scared. I tried to calm myself by saying, Okay, you’re thirty-one years old, and even though you’re no Jezebel, you’re no tender flower of innocence, either. What did you expect, a guided tour? On your right, Miss Voss, is an ultramodern couch. And over here on the piano is my wedding picture. Please, come into the kitchen so I can show you where I keep the can opener.

  He pulled off his jacket and tossed it onto a chair. I waited for him to hang it up; he was so neat in the office he never even left a fingerprint. But no, he pulled off his tie. By the time it landed on top of the jacket, he was already unbuttoning his shirt. Oh, God, I thought, he’s going to take off all his clothes!

  I looked around the room. Nan’s work. A double bed that looked like a mattress floating on air. A couple of expensive boxes—night tables—and a chair made of the same shiny wood as his desk in the office. A big, ugly painting above the bed, modern art—thick green smears, like someone had gone nuts with a can of peas. Not a dresser in sight, but a wall of doors, so maybe they kept their underwear and hankies and…Out of the corner of my eye, I saw his shirt drifting down onto the pile of clothes on the chair.

  I started to study my shoes, but a second later, I knew his undershirt was off. I was about to look up, but that second I heard the sound of a zipper. I turned around and faced the door.

  What was I going to do? Run into the closet? My heart raced.

  “Aren’t you going to turn around?” he asked me.

  I shook my head. The hall outside the bedroom was a dark rectangle framed by the door. He came up behind me, put his arms around me and drew me against him. I could feel his nakedness along my whole back. For a minute I stiffened, but then my eyes started to close. I leaned back against him, almost drowsy. Then I opened my eyes and looked down. His arms were bare, strong, beautiful. The veins in his hands ran up his forearms. One arm hooked around my waist. The other held my shoulder, and his thumb moved back and forth in a slow massage. I took his hand from my waist and cupped it over my breast.

  He didn’t need much more, and neither did I. He spun me around, and the instant before he kissed me, I saw him. I whispered, “Oh, my.” It was as if he’d been carved instead of born.

  “Do you like me?” he asked, and he wasn’t asking if I thought he was a nice guy.

  “Yes.”

  “Let me see you, then.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Come on, Linda.”

  I almost fainted, him calling me Linda for the first time ever, and so handsome he was beyond handsome; he was beautiful. And while I was concentrating on not getting the shakes, he put his arms around me.

  I raised my head for another kiss, and he gave me one, but his real business was unbuttoning the back of my dress. I kept kissing him, though, concentrating on him, on his smell of Scotch and sweat, the manliest smell, letting myself get so intoxicated from it that I hardly felt my dress dropping to the floor, my slip being pulled over my head. Suddenly it seemed the most natural thing, getting rid of all those tight clothes.

  He took off my brassiere and touched me till I was dizzy. Then he dropped to his knees and unhooked my garters. My fingers played with his hair. He put his arms around me, pressing his cheek to my midriff before he stood up again and kissed me.

  “Take off the rest,” he ordered.

  I pulled off my girdle, my underpants, my stockings. He watched. When I was as naked as he was, he pulled me to him again. I was thirty-one years old, and this was the first time I was alive.

  Then he led me to the bed. He yanked away the covers and pushed me down.

  “Do you know how beautiful you are?” he asked as he lay down beside me. Tell me how beautiful, I thought.

  Then I remembered something I’d heard: When men were drunk, something happened to them in the bedroom. But I was too shaky to remember. It took longer? Shorter? They couldn’t do it at
all? They could, and better?

  John could. Better. He ran his fingers from my neck down to my stomach, and below. Then he kissed me, his lips following the same path as his hand. “So beautiful.” He wasn’t talking about my face. He worked his way up again, “Linda.” I was so beside myself that when we started to kiss again I had tears in my eyes. “I always thought you must be something,” he said, “but not like this.”

  He’d thought of me before! I wanted to think about that, savor it, but when two bodies are that close and that hot, brains stop. There were no more words.

  Magic. That’s what happened between John and me. From his first kiss I knew all my imaginings were right. And I knew he’d brought me home because, in that ugly little bar, drunk, lonely, tired, his defenses down, he’d somehow understood there was magic too.

  But neither of us realized how powerful the magic was until it happened. It was as if everything else we had done in our lives wasn’t worth a thing. This was what each of us had been created for, to be half of something greater than any other two people in the world.

  In that messed-up, sweaty bed, John Berringer and Linda Voss became a miracle.

  7

  They never touched this one in business etiquette. Not one teacher at Grover Cleveland ever told us: After you do everything in the book with your employer, including some things you’d heard about but didn’t believe people really did, the correct behavior is to—how best to put it, girls?—get up, put on your girdle and say, Will that be all, sir?

  So I was at a loss, and it’s terrible to be at a loss and naked. Just minutes before, the two of us had been the perfect pair. And now, the perfect mistake. Lying beside John, no longer touching, but still close enough to feel the heat rising from his skin, I agonized, trying to think of something to say that wouldn’t make him groan to himself, How the hell am I going to get out of this nightmare?