The other day, as she and Sylvia sat on the edge of Sylvia’s small bed, feeding each other ripe figs, Sylvia licked her lips and said, “I like to think of all the terrible things they can call us. Wanton, depraved. I’m learning to accept my depravity, if that’s what they want to call it. Who says there’s only one way to be a woman, to be a human being?” Was she talking about more than just sex? Inez still isn’t sure. The sex has been wonderful. Sex with a woman. If that’s depravity, Inez can imagine a lifetime of it.
Now she watches her faux reporter stroll across the restaurant in her milkmaid outfit and thinks of Sylvia’s girlish body with the small breasts, the nipples standing up like ripe berries. It’s true, she wants Sylvia. And yet there’s something else she wants—to be a good girl, to be her father’s good girl, even if that was never part of his wish. Are her desires mutually exclusive? I’m happy, she’d tell her father, if she could. I have a new happiness in my life. He wouldn’t ask for an explanation. He wouldn’t call her depraved. She only wishes she could sit a moment longer with him at the kitchen table. She’d love nothing more than to have the light of his modest smile shine on her as she savored her single idea.
Sylvia is back at her table again. “Hungry, eh?”
Inez looks down at her plate, which is almost empty. “I’m being a pig.”
“Hardly; you should see some of the people who come in here. Why don’t you go back for another plate?”
“Are you trying to fatten me up?”
“Yes, I want you fat.” Sylvia watches as Inez nibbles on a last shrimp. “I can get off early tonight since it’s slow. Would you like to come up to my place?”
“Can’t tonight.”
“You sure?”
Inez nods, even though she’d love to be with Sylvia in her dark apartment. She imagines the candlelight. The two of them naked. The clang of the cable cars outside. And yet, Inez enjoys a certain satisfaction in controlling the pace of the affair.
Sylvia whispers, “But I want you,” before carrying away Inez’s dirty plate.
“I know,” Inez says and is left at the table with her own ache.
the news
ON Tuesday morning Sylvia gets a call from Hy Myerson. When the phone rings, she’s sitting by the window sipping Tang from her favorite embossed jelly jar, pleased not to have to join the morning parade of office workers.
“Hy, here. So what do you think, is the sky falling?”
“Huh?” In a flurry of syncopated clangs, a cable car brakes across the intersection. Sylvia watches a woman in a gray-and-white suit run half a block before leaping onto the car. It’s a beautiful leap. What wonders take place outside her window every morning. She wishes she could share them with someone. Will she ever have the pleasure of waking up with Inez Roseman beside her?
“What, you haven’t had your coffee yet?” Hyman says. “Take a look at the sky, is it falling, or do you see anything peculiar whizzing through it?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Myerson.”
“Don’t mister me, this is Hyman speaking. So, what’s the deal, are you jumping out of your skin with fear like everybody else?” Hy falls into a miserable cough and takes a long moment to recover.
“You’re leaving me in the dark, Hy.”
“What? You don’t get the news in your part of the world? We’re half a sneeze away from World War III. Castro and the Russians have missiles aimed at us. President Kennedy addressed the nation last night. He’s playing chicken with the Russkies. It’s straight out of the superhero comics. One guy shooting missiles at the other. Everybody’s smoking cigars. What did I tell you? The whole world’s gone phallic. If you ask me, it’s nothing but smoke. But they’re talking about grave danger, the gravest danger we’ve faced in years. What’s the matter with you, Sylvia, don’t you watch TV?”
“I don’t have a TV.”
“And this makes you a superior person?”
“That and other factors.”
“Touché, darling. You know I agree with you. I’m your biggest fan, Sylvia. Always.”
She thinks of Inez hearing the grave news, the way it must have registered in her lovely face, a hushed surprise, deepening the crinkles under her eyes. Did she get the news from her husband or the television? She imagines Inez sitting on the edge of her bed, unclasping her garter, the TV blaring, rolling down one of her nylons, and then, absentmindedly, remembering the other. Who did Inez think of first when she found out? Her children, of course.
“So are we in real danger, Hy?”
“My question to you. Is it a ruse, or the genuine article? I’ll tell you this, if they haven’t started already, people will be jumping off the bridges momentarily. You have plenty of sensationalists walking around out there—a city filled with second-rate thespians just looking for a reason to play dead forever. Myself, I don’t subscribe to the party line. I take a jollier view. Come what may. Got the world in a jug . . . you know the drill. That’s my position. What the hell are we going do about it anyway? So, with that noble sentiment in mind, I’m calling to ask for your company. You free for dinner tonight?”
Sylvia wonders about the chances of seeing Inez and realizes they aren’t good. “Dinner?”
“Yes, dinner, supper, that meal that, at least in my country, generally comes after lunch.” Hy dives into another wheezing cough. He is a geezer, but he’s also her friend. She glances toward a few people on the street. Hyman’s news has fractured the morning. Five minutes ago everybody on the street looked ordinary, now they’ve gained gravity, become stoic, the woman in the gray-and-white suit taking a leap of faith, each of them carrying on with their little bundle of fear.
“Look, I’m in the mood for something Italian,” Hy says, recovering his voice. “How about you? What say we run over to North Beach, go to the Green Valley or the New Pisa? One of those joints that serve family style. We can be a family of two.”
c rations
AT ten in the morning, Jake gets a call from Christine at work. “Are you frightened?” she asks.
“Not especially. You?”
“Me neither. I think we’re supposed to be. There must be something the matter with us. Ice in our veins. Stone hearts. Derek has already started to make preparations.”
“What’s the point?”
“The worse thing is to remain idle. Or so the dictum goes. I happen to think that idleness is the most wonderful thing ever invented, but it takes all kinds, Jake. Anyway, I’m calling to say you needn’t bring food.”
“Aren’t we eating?”
“You sound horrified at the prospect of missing a meal.”
“It’s a ritual I’m attached to.”
“There’s food already here. If you have a Swiss Army knife handy, you might bring that.”
“What’s going on? Are we butchering a rabbit?”
“There will be no blood, Jake, if I can help it.”
“Tell me what’s going on?”
“You’ll have to wait and see.”
“You’re a tease, Christine.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“So, there’s nothing I can bring?”
“Oh, what the hell, you might pick up a loaf of bread.”
“All I have is a little penknife, Christine.”
“We’ll make do.”
JAKE hands over his sack as soon as he’s in the kitchen. “Here’s the bread, and I also picked up a hunk of gooey cheese.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I couldn’t resist.”
One of the virtues of their affair, Jake realizes as Christine leads him down through the massive basement, past the laundry room and the booming furnace, is how it seems to start fresh each time they see each other. There is a history, of course, but they rarely refer to it. The odd times, like the last visit, with Jake in shock after his run-in with the Studebaker Silver Hawk, recede, and all that remains of their history is a memory of pleasure.
“Where are you taking me?” Jake
asks.
“You’ll see.”
Their affair always exists in the present tense. There’s a lot to be said for that. It’s like traveling, with little baggage, to one of those Scandinavian countries in the middle of the summer. With the sun shining twenty-odd hours a day you can live by your wits and not have to worry about tomorrow.
“Hope you like mazes,” Christine says. “They’re one of Derek’s pet projects.”
Jake looks up to see a course of fake juniper hedges that must stand seven feet tall. While Jake muses about what the rich will think of next, he loses sight of Christine, who’s passed through the first series of arch-ways. Soon, he’s breathless and needs to tell himself not to panic, that he won’t be lost forever in the artificial hedges of a Republican basement in Pacific Heights. What if the maze isn’t actually Derek’s creation, Jake wonders, but Christine’s? Clearly, the woman has a richer imagination than Jake does. Her ability to keep him off balance is part of her fascination, part of what makes her such a good lay.
Finally, he emerges into a clearing. Christine gives him a quick smooch, and he’s flabbergasted to find himself standing on the edge of a miniature golf course, painstakingly contoured as a model of the Bay Area, with hills, bays, and bridges, as well as a number of city landmarks.
Jake admires the model. The damn thing has a surface of felt that he’s tempted to touch. His eyes scan east from The Cliff House, past the Palace of Fine Arts and Coit Tower to the Ferry Building. “Does Derek come down here to putt?”
“No, he’s really not much of a golfer. He had it built for the boys when they were young. God, how they loved it. They’d be down here for hours. Sometimes I could hear them through one of the vents, pretending to broadcast their tournaments. They’d take turns being Ben Hogan and Arnold Palmer.”
Jake notes a crackle of emotion in Christine’s voice. She mentions her sons so rarely he’s decided they must be stepchildren. Why else would you farm them out to eastern prep schools during the year and to camps for most of the summer? But they are her children. Was it Derek’s choice to send them away? The poor woman must have a hole in her heart. He thinks of his own children—weeks go by and he hardly sees them, what with his long days in the office and the demands of community work.
Christine takes his hand again. “You ready to go down?”
“I thought we were down.”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet, kiddo.”
She leads him along a corridor to a steel door. After she opens it, they descend a dozen steps to a matching door that opens onto a wide passageway of poured concrete, painted the color of beach sand. Along the walls are shelves with linens and blankets and batteries, racks of wine, and an astonishing array of canned goods. As he walks through the corridor, Jake reads the stenciled labeling on some of the cans: PEAR QUARTERS, BEANS AND WIENERS, CHEESE SPREAD, SPICED BEEF, TURKEY LOAF, APPLESAUCE.
Jake gasps when they reach a large, open room.
“Welcome to Derek’s foxhole,” Christine says, fanning out an open arm graciously.
Jake tiptoes around the room in awe. “When did he have this built?”
“A few years back.”
Jake takes a gas mask from a hanging hook and swings it from its black strap.
“That’s only here for decoration,” Christine says. “In the event of an atomic bomb, this shelter’s supposed to reduce gamma ray exposure by a factor of one thousand. I don’t exactly know what that means, but it seems to make Derek very happy. Apparently, there’s a very sophisticated ventilation system. State of the art for bomb shelters.”
“That must be a comfort,” Jake says, still swinging the mask.
“Oh, absolutely. We’d be perfectly safe, you understand. Only hitch, we might have to stay down here for weeks, maybe months.”
“But think of all the pear quarters and spiced beef you could enjoy.”
“Exactly.”
Jake cranes his neck around the vast shelter. “And where does Derek keep his collection of shrunken heads? Doesn’t he have the heads of a few Communist schoolteachers?”
“Oh, no,” Christine says, “Derek collects the heads of liberal attorneys. By the way, you’re next.”
“Cute.”
Christine unfolds a pair of canvas camp chairs and pulls them up to an oak dining table that’s already covered with a checkered yellow cloth and set with plastic picnic plates and cups. Christine places the bread and cheese down on one plate and then lights a squat candle inside a hurricane lamp. “Derek tells me that when we finally come out from the shelter, we might be the only people alive.”
“Well, that would simplify things,” says Jake, loosening the strap of the gas mask and pulling the massive snout over his own.
“You look fetching, Jake.”
“Like a cockroach,” Jake says, his voice muffled.
“A charming one.”
Jake comes up behind Christine and pokes at her neck with the snout of his gas mask.
“Ooooh, that’s weird,” Christine says and pushes Jake away.
After some effort, Jake takes off the mask and kisses Christine sweetly on the ear. “I thought we could eat down here today,” she says, “and make love like it’s the last day of our lives.”
“I didn’t think you believed in this stuff, Christine.”
“I don’t, but I’m never one to miss an opportunity.” She takes his hand and leads him to the table.
“And what exactly are we going to eat?”
They sit down across from each other. “Along with the French bread and gooey cheese? We have C rations.”
“You think I’m going to eat canned ham and lima beans?”
“You can’t be a snob, Jake. This is survival.”
In a moment they are sipping Côte du Rhone from plastic tumblers and poking holes in ration cans with folding can openers. Jake would like to dig into the bread and cheese but realizes a sporting effort is required of him.
Christine has a certain fire in her eye as she jabs at her can of spiced beef. “According to Derek, these can openers are called P-38s, because it takes approximately thirty-eight pokes to get a ration can open.”
Jake is the first to break through and gallantly offers Christine a taste of C-ration turkey loaf.
THEY make love slowly on a double cot. This is first time Christine has let them make love off the floor. It seems fitting that they needed to descend to the deepest underground for the pleasure.
“Tell me,” she says, opening her eyes, “what if it were us two?”
Jake lifts a few strands of hair from her eyes. “Us two?”
“Who survived down here. The only two people left alive.”
Jake props himself up on an elbow. “We could have some rough-and-tumble food fights. How would you like to get hit with a faceful of spiced beef?”
“Seriously, Jake.”
“How can you be serious about this?”
“Would you miss your family terribly?”
“I suppose.”
Christine grabs ahold of Jake’s face and stares right into his eyes. “You suppose. Is that all?”
“Come on, Christine. Don’t you think it’s a little hard to imagine how you’d feel about anything if you were living inside a science-fiction movie?”
“Don’t you miss your family right now?” says Christine.
“Right now?” Jake is not quite sure that he knows what she means. He looks away from Christine. He has a strange taste in his mouth that comes from something other than the C-ration meal.
“I miss my family now,” Christine says and covers her mouth with a hand.
“But your boys are always gone, Christine.”
“I miss them more than ever now.”
Jake takes hold of his lover’s hand and whispers, “What’s happened to all the Zen detachment?”
“We’re talking about the end of the world, Jake.”
“We’re playing a game, Christine.”
“Yes, and you’re not
playing very well.”
Jake gets up to find a cigarette. “How would you like me to play?”
“What would you say at the end of the world?”
“I love you.”
Christine sits up on the cot and folds her hands around her knees. “You don’t love me, Jake, and I don’t want you to. You love your wife, you fool. You should figure that out, you know, before the end of the world. That woman should divorce you. I would if I were her.”
Jake finds his pack of Pall Malls and lights a cigarette. He flicks an ash into the empty turkey tin.
“This is not a game, Jake. Tell me what you’re worried about at the end of the world.”
Jake sits beside her on the cot. He feels his breath shorten and a bit of panic set in. He concentrates on his cigarette for a moment, inhales sharply, and blows out a long stream of smoke. “There’s something strange going on with Inez that I can’t figure out. She seems more content than I’ve seen her in a long time, but I don’t trust it. She seems happier, but I know that I don’t have anything to do with that happiness. It’s as if she’s discovered some purpose. She has a glow about her.”
Christine reaches out a hand for Jake’s cigarette. Takes a couple of puffs. Hands it back to Jake. “Do you think she’s pregnant?”
“Oh, God, I hope not. Anyway, that’s the last thing in the world that she’d want.”
“Maybe she’s seeing someone.”
Jake laughs a moment at the idea. “I can’t imagine that. Inez? Who would she be seeing?”
“Hard to say. Who are you seeing?” Christine takes his cigarette again.
“Nobody besides you.”
“And who am I to Inez? Does she even have a clue about me?” Christine hands back the lit butt of Jake’s cigarette and he shakes another from his pack, lights it off the stub, and hands it to Christine. “It doesn’t sound viable to me,” he says. “I don’t think it’s so much the morality of the thing, I just don’t think Inez would want to bother with the trouble.”
Beautiful Inez Page 18