Sylvia takes the cigarette and draws on it, holding the smoke good and deep.
“Well, look at you,” Hy says, sliding into a surprisingly good Cary Grant. “You’ve been holding out on me.”
“I have,” she says, taking a quick trail of drags. “I’ve had a checkered past.”
Hy waits for her to explain, but she says nothing. She exhales, then draws deeply on the cigarette again, thinking of the young man at Sacramento State who introduced her to marijuana. He was a trumpet player named Dominic who, like her, spent half his life in the practice rooms. Sylvia had a crush on Dominic, but he was only interested in smoking his “sticks” and getting back to his practice. Once or twice a week she’d follow him into the tunnel between the practice rooms and the performance hall and hope that he’d suddenly want to seduce her. The doors to the tunnel were locked, but somehow Dominic had the key. He’d be chatty at first, talking about his trips down to San Francisco to visit friends in North Beach, and about jazz and how he could see a Dizzy Gillespie solo like a painting when he closed his eyes. He described paintings by de Kooning and Franz Kline. He talked about the beauty of erasures and the articulation of brushstrokes. She had no idea what he was talking about. He also said that the marijuana kept his practice sessions imaginative. It had the opposite effect on her. It distracted her, turned her skittish. Or amorous. A few times after smoking with Dominic, she sat in the practice room, touching herself with her right hand and playing bass lines with her left.
Sylvia feels pleasantly illuminated, riding in Hy’s fancy black Impala with its lush red-and-white upholstery. Her forehead and the bright pulp of her brain glow like a brass globe given a light buffing. They are way out in the Avenues, very close to Inez’s house, but she isn’t going to think about Inez. She can bet that Inez isn’t thinking about her right now either. Sylvia reaches out and gives the foam dice a nudge.
“By the way,” Hy says, his British accent growing richer, “those aren’t dice hanging up there, those happen to be my testicles—my balls, if I might partake of the common parlance—or shall I say they are a fair representation of their size and spotted scope.” They both crack up at this. “But seriously,” says Hy, pulling a large gold clip from his pocket and applying it to the end of his marijuana cigarette, “don’t you ever get a little tired of all the talk about phallic symbols? What this country needs now,” says Hy, shifting to a pinched, academic accent, “is an honorable set of testicular symbols. These young fellas driving around with dice in their hot rods, they don’t even know they’ve hung up their testicles. But a man of my age and relative distinction is fully conscious of the fact and thus can take inspiration from the swinging of the giant dice. What can I tell you? I drive around for five minutes and I have a hard-on.”
“Hy,” Sylvia says.
“Sorry, just something a little off-color. It’s my favorite hue.” Hy flicks the foam dice. They swing back and forth as he drives the curving road through Sea Cliff toward the Legion of Honor. “Actually, I think they’re camp.”
“Like your string tie.”
“Yes, I suppose. I’ve never grown up—that’s my problem.”
“I’m sure you have plenty of others.”
Hy lifts the gold clip to his mouth and inhales, but the cigarette has gone out. “You’re right about that . . . I have a showroom full of problems—grands, baby grands, spinets—instruments of the highest quality that never want to leave me. Sure, I have problems. I have a meshuga son who dropped out of college to become a hairdresser, a trade for which he had no aptitude. Now he’s working at a dog pound. My son, the bowwow man. My daughter, Nina, don’t get me started. The most beautiful girl you ever want to see. Smart. Beat me at chess when she was eight years old. I kid you not. A real nose for the books. Would sit in a room all day and read. Russians, you name it. Spoke French like a native. Her teachers were always taking me aside. This one, they said, is special. Voted most likely to succeed. What can I tell you? Broke my heart. She likes black fellas who are up to no good. And my wife, Toby— you’ve had the pleasure—well, Toby, how shall I say, is a wee bit off her nut . . .”
“She didn’t seem like that to me.”
“What do you know? Her idea of a perfect day is eight hours of soap operas and a two-pound box of See’s chocolates.”
“Maybe you should be taking her for a ride instead of me.”
“She won’t go out. Might miss something on the TV.”
“She seemed to enjoy herself at the symphony.”
“That was an anomaly. A once-in-a-million anomaly. Do you know what that word means?”
“Yes, I do.” Sylvia is tempted to reveal her talent with words. Deviant, aberration, irregularity, and, if that doesn’t work, slay him with etymology—from the Greek omalia, for even, qualified by an, for lacking.
“Are you trying to add yourself to my list of troubles? I don’t have room for you on my list, Sylvia. You, I honor.” Hy coughs wetly, that nasty hack again.
If I was home I’d be sitting in my underwear pining after Inez, Sylvia reminds herself.
“Look, I’m not used to talking like this, Sylvia. I’m not a big talker.”
“You talk all the time, Hy.”
“I never discuss my problems. Ask anybody and they’ll tell you . . . Hy Myerson does not discuss his problems. I live by a simple philosophy: I’ve got the world in a jug and the stopper in my hands.”
Sylvia flips down the sunshade on the passenger side and catches a glimpse of herself in the small mirror. Half-startled and young—that’s how she looks. A thirty-year-old wench, a deviant who happens to be in love with a married woman, but who is driving around with a married man whose testicles are hanging from either side of the rearview mirror. Sylvia narrows her eyes and tries to turn herself into a desperado.
“Like what you see?” Hy asks.
“Not particularly.”
“Well, I do.”
“You would.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Sylvia shrugs.
“You’re a beautiful girl, Sylvia; don’t let anybody tell you differently.”
“Don’t patronize me, Hy.”
“Hey, I wouldn’t know how.”
Hyman turns around the circle across from the Legion and parks his car. He lifts the gold clip to his mouth again, takes out his Zippo, and lights the end. Sylvia declines the offer of the gold clip and watches Hyman take a series of little sucks at it. She turns and looks out over the dark and fog-encased expanse of golf course between her and the bay, then rolls down her window and sticks her head out into the damp air, listening to the mournful blast of the foghorns. Sylvia once took a bus up here on a clear day and decided, despite not having been in any other major city, that she’d discovered the world’s most beautiful urban view—the wide blue bay, the purposeful brown hills jutting up on the other side, the bridge, poised in its balletic majesty, a perfect form, both intimate and grand. Look at it long enough, it seemed to Sylvia, and you might decide to make something of your life. Strange to think that so many people have chosen it as the place to end their lives. This evening with Hy, the damp fog fully obscures the Golden Gate.
“Shall we have a look at The Thinker?” Hy asks.
“I suppose we should.”
Rodin’s enormous sculpture sits at the entrance of the museum. A holy man, of sorts, a Western Buddha.
Once they pay their respects, Hyman says, “Can you imagine the size of the wang on that guy? I mean if it were sculpted to scale.”
“I suppose it would be a wee bit bigger than yours, Hy.”
“Indubitably.”
They sit on the shallow step at the base of The Thinker’s pedestal.
“I come out here to think sometimes,” Hy says. “Perfect spot. This big lug is the ideal company. Thinking man. Trouble is, I never get much of my own thinking in. He does enough thinking for the both of us.”
Sylvia glances over at Hy and notices that his zipper is wi
de open. She can see the pink head of his penis.
“Zip up your fly, Hyman.”
“Ah, Sylvia, I thought you could give me a little help. I don’t get much pleasure.”
“Right now!” Sylvia insists.
“All right, I’m sorry,” Hy says, zipping up. He has an ugly spasm of coughing and pulls out his handkerchief to spit.
Sylvia looks out toward the bay and listens to the moan of the foghorns. Everybody wants something that they can’t have from somebody else. Sylvia watches Hyman straighten his string tie and shove his handkerchief back into his hip pocket. What does she long for? Inez Roseman, of course. Inez, undressed, legs open, as majestic as the hidden bridge. When Sylvia gets home, she’ll be free to think about Inez to her heart’s desire.
betrayal
ON the appointed morning, Sylvia puts on a Horace Silver recording that Hy gave her. The bluesy piano with the good beat propels her to the kitchen nook to poach herself a couple of eggs. But in her distraction, she drops an egg on the floor and enjoys watching it splatter. What is happening to her? In the last week, she’s imagined Inez Roseman’s voice, warm-toned yet glazed with irony, and now, on her knees wiping up the spilled egg, she hears Inez say: I love you, Sylvia. Sylvia, I love you.
A half hour later, Sylvia buzzes Inez in through the outer door and steps out to the landing. She’s too anxious to wait for the knock on her apartment door. She wants to see Inez climbing the steps, rising directly into her apartment, into her heart.
“Hello,” she calls down the stairwell, catching the first sight of the lovely blond head. “How are you?”
“Just fine.”
On the landing, they greet each other with kisses like a couple of French women. Once inside, Inez folds her scarf into a coat pocket and peels off the coat that Sylvia quickly takes. She brushes the hair out of her eyes. Sylvia can do nothing for a moment but admire Inez as she stands straight and tall in a black skirt and white blouse.
Inez takes a place on the love seat. She finds pleasure in Sylvia’s awkwardness, which she hasn’t witnessed in such bloom since the first time Sylvia came to her house for that interview.
Barefoot, Sylvia stumbles over the striped throw rug on her way to the hi-fi, and yet she’s lovely, dressed in a Chinese red skirt and a knit top. The skirt is something special, a rayon that clings to her legs nicely. She wears lipstick today, a red to match the skirt.
Sylvia puts on Satie’s Gnossiennes and fumbles with the arm of the hi-fi. The nasty needle bounces once and again before screeching across the record. “Sorry,” she says.
“It’s all right.” Inez closes her eyes and imagines a dance to go with the single-note pointillism of the Satie. When she opens her eyes, Sylvia is studying her.
“Is this music too simple for you, Inez?”
“No, I love Satie.”
“I thought you might find it too elementary, but those slow notes— he’s just my speed. I can imagine the way they must have rolled out of his brain.”
“That’s more than I can say.” Inez smiles at Sylvia and takes a quick look around the apartment. Everything has been tidied up. A huge bouquet of purple mums stands in a tin vase beside the window.
“Oh, those mums.”
“I tried to find them in the same color as your concert dress, but this was as close as I could get.”
“They’re beautiful.” In the last week, as she’d taken time from the symphony to sit with her father-in-law, the urge to end her life was replaced by a steady longing for Sylvia. Inez woke each morning thinking about Sylvia. With Jake still asleep in the bed beside her, Inez pictured Sylvia rubbing sleep out of her eyes, climbing naked out of her small bed, flinching at the first chill of day. She saw Sylvia, still naked, lighting a pair of candle stubs that rose from drip-covered Chianti bottles. Sylvia, throwing on a man’s broadcloth shirt in a lovely French blue. She saw Sylvia, her shirt unbuttoned, peeking out her front window at the cable-car street. Who are you looking for, sweet girl? Is it me?
And then there was the queer, gnawing twist in her belly that told Inez that she was hungry. Her long-lost appetite had returned. She couldn’t remember waking with this feeling since she was a teenager. Not even when she was pregnant, eating, as they say, for two. In the last week, after she’d fed Jake and the kids their cereal and sent them out into the day, she’d fried up bacon and eggs for herself, and sopped it up with buttered French bread. If that wasn’t enough, she’d make a fruit salad and have it in a tall parfait glass with yogurt.
Just as this extraordinary appetite surfaced, the dreaded heaviness, present nearly every morning since Joey’s birth, had disappeared. Good riddance to the cloying parchment, this insidious curse that had made palpable her inability to feel anything save her separation from the world. She’d tried once to explain the fearsome parchment to her doctor and realized that it was like trying to explain madness or the presence of a ghost in the house. That was a treacherous part of the burden: if nobody could see it, nobody would believe it. Perhaps she had finally shed the extra skin.
“You look happy, Inez.”
“Happy?” It’s a funny idea, and she’s certainly not ready to agree to it.
“I told my psychiatrist about you,” Sylvia says.
“Should I be flattered?”
“Yes, I’d like you to be flattered.” Sylvia swings her head up and strikes a silly pose to deflect the tension. Her eyes pop open, her mouth, which Inez had never realized was so elastic, stretches wide like a mime’s. But before Inez can laugh at her, or laugh with her, or laugh at all, Sylvia lets her face fall back into itself. She holds herself there, without attitude or defense, and becomes, it seems to Inez, the loveliest of creatures, calm and present in a way that you’d not have expected possible of the crumb-cake-eating reporter. Suddenly, there is a gravity to the moment, in which each of them is obliged to meet the other’s presence, without irony. Inez has lived for so long at an unhappy slant, she wonders if she can summon the optimism to stand fearless and straight. She worries that Sylvia expects more of her than she has to offer. Even the new Inez, with appetite and longing, will likely fall short. There’s less here than meets the eye, a phrase Jake uses to describe politicians he doesn’t like. When she first heard the phrase she thought it described her as well as anything. Who was she anyway? A woman with enough looks and talent to dazzle the lay public, but someone whose evolution as an adult has been idled by fear. Beware, Sylvia the reporter, there may be less here than meets the eye.
There’s nothing to do but to bow her head. Sylvia steps toward her and rubs her cheek against Inez’s high cheekbone like a cat, then kisses the corners of Inez’s mouth. None of it matters, whoever she is, whoever Sylvia is. Inez thinks of the reporter’s small bed, and how much she wants to be taken there.
“So what about the psychiatrist? What did you tell him?” Inez asks, trying to regain a sense of balance.
“I told him everything.”
Inez wonders what everything is to Sylvia.
“He asked if you made me happy.”
“He asked that?”
“Yes.” Sylvia traces the line of Inez’s brow with her baby finger. “I told him that happy wasn’t a good enough word for it. I said that we were just getting to know each other and that there probably wasn’t any future in it. He wanted to know why I felt that way. ‘Because she’s a married woman,’ I said, ‘with kids and a nice house and a great career.’ He wondered how that made me feel.”
“How what made you feel?” Inez says and takes hold of Sylvia’s hand.
“The questionable future part. I said, ‘Well, nothing’s certain, is it?’ He liked my saying that. He wondered how I felt about . . . about loving a woman. And you know what I did? I turned the question on him.” Sylvia lets go of Inez’s hand and walks toward the kitchen counter. “I’m going to slice up an orange. I have a sudden craving. Would you like some?”
“No, thank you,” says Inez, dazzled by Sylvia’s energy. Inez sta
nds slowly and leans against the wall. She watches Sylvia take a large navel orange from the fruit basket and cut it into sections. The fragrance is so sweet and sharp it seems as if it’s always been a part of the room.
“Anyway, I said, ‘Dr. Rosconini, how do you feel about me and a woman?’ ”
“You didn’t,” Inez says, a little breathless.
“Sure I did. It made him laugh.” Sylvia strips the peel from a section of orange and puts the fruit in her mouth. “Then he said what you’d expect. ‘It doesn’t matter how I feel about it, Sylvia.’ ‘But how do you feel?’ I said. You know how persistent I can be, Inez. ‘I don’t feel one way or another,’ he said. ‘Liar,’ I said.”
“You called your psychiatrist a liar?”
“Yes, I did. And he wasn’t angry with me.” Sylvia bites into another section of orange. “He wants me to stand up for myself, even if it’s against him.”
“Sounds like you’re lucky to have him.”
“I think so. Now that I’m paying him, he costs me fifteen dollars a week.”
“That’s not so terrible.”
“Well, that’s through my Kaiser plan. I figured it out once—it’s about the same as I spend on a week’s worth of groceries. I go in for a lot of luxuries, you see. European chocolates. French lamb chops. I’m hopeless. I have no savings. Sometimes while I’m sitting in Dr. Rosconini’s office and I have little to say, I think, ‘There goes a cantaloupe. Say good-bye to a wedge of Camembert, a little wheel of Bucheron.’ ”
Inez can’t keep herself from grinning. She wants Sylvia to go on with her story. Any story. She puts a hand over her mouth, a gesture, hopeless perhaps, for restraining her rapture.
“But Dr. Rosconini keeps me from going crazy. You don’t approve, do you?”
“It’s none of my business.”
“At a certain point, everything becomes your business.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I’m your business, right now.”
Beautiful Inez Page 15