by Warren Adler
"Am I so threatening?" Grace asked, instantly sorry. She did not want to put such a thought in his head.
"Down, girl," Sam shouted, displaying a hand signal. Marilyn calmed, then, obeying Sam's command, lay down on the floor on her paws.
"I hope she didn't frighten you."
"Not really," Grace lied.
"Good."
She started to pick up the clothes from the floor, and he bent down beside her to help. He had never been this close to her and she smelled the salt tang of his skin. She wondered if he could smell her perfume.
"Please, Sam, I can handle it," Grace said.
He stood up and nodded.
"Considering the circumstances, Marilyn's reaction is perfectly understandable," Grace said.
"For this annoyance you deserve lunch. I eat early," he said, smiling. Was it a flirtatious smile, she wondered, or merely a manifestation of politeness? "What do you say?"
Grace hesitated, then nodded her consent.
"Good."
He went out of the bedroom and called down to Carmen.
"Yes, mister," Carmen responded from the stairwell. "Two for lunch." He turned to Grace. "Tuna fish okay?" Grace nodded. "Two tuna fish sandwiches." He turned to Grace again. "Coffee?"
"Sounds fine to me."
Grace tried to look busy as she arranged the clothes on the bed. The telephone rang. Sam answered it, and she could hear him talking on the phone next to his bed. She left the room and passed down the stairs with her arms full of clothes.
Outside, she opened the trunk of the car and placed the clothes inside. Then she discovered that Carmen had thrown her load helter-skelter in the backseat. It confirmed what she had already suspected: Carmen viewed her as the enemy. It took Grace some time to rearrange the clothes.
As she came back into the house and passed by the kitchen, she felt Carmen observing her. Looking up, she caught her sneer. Grace hadn't expected this kind of opposition. She shrugged it off. There was no point in setting up a reason to be paranoid.
She reviewed various options of behavior. Above all, she must act nonchalant, interested but standoffish. She rejected voicing any criticism of Carmen's attitude.
On another level, she observed that she liked this man. He was gracious, self-effacing, polite and pleasant. He was quite good-looking, too. His maturity was an asset, and he carried himself with confidence, despite his grieving. She hoped that she had engaged his interest. It seemed so, but she was afraid to trust her own instincts. Perhaps he was simply lonely, looking for human contact, and she was merely there.
Carmen had set the table in a room off the kitchen.
"This is the breakfast room, but it's okay for us to have lunch here."
It wasn't much of a joke, but she chuckled anyway.
Carmen came in and put a carafe of coffee on the table. Her manner was surly and the way she set down the carafe seemed a provocation. If Sam noticed, he ignored it.
"I hate to eat alone," Sam said. "Normally I would lunch at the club after a few sets of tennis, but I haven't been feeling like going back to it just yet. Do you like tennis?"
She was tempted to say yes, but the lie would have little chance of sustaining itself. She had never played tennis.
"Never touched a racket," she said, feeling good about her honesty.
"You'd like it," Sam said, biting into his sandwich. "Anne was a great tennis player. Used to beat me at singles. She was very focused. More so than me. I play at it." He put down his sandwich and studied her.
"I suppose you're a golfer."
"No, I'm not."
"Bridge player, right?"
"Sorry."
"Me, too. I'm not much for games."
She wondered if her honesty was making her less and less interesting. But if she told blatant lies that could be confirmed by action, sooner or later they would be found out and her motive would become obvious, as obvious as it was to Carmen. She didn't want to set any traps for herself.
"So what interests you ... I mean, aside from your charity work?" Sam asked.
"There's my daughter, of course. She'll be seventeen in a few months," Grace said, searching her mind for answers that would enhance, not diminish her chances. She knew what that meant: lies.
"Tough age," Sam said. "Parenting doesn't come with a handbook. Gets worse as they get older."
"That's not very encouraging."
"Unfortunately, it's a fact."
"My Jackie's a wonderful girl," Grace said. His taking on the frustrating obligation of helping to raise a teenage girl, especially one with Jackie's propensities, was a consideration she had not thought about. Quickly, she erased the idea from her mind. It was blind, stupid optimism, reminding her suddenly of Jason and his foolish dreams.
"One more year and she'll be off to college," Grace said, unable to quite banish the idea, as if she were hoping to minimize Jackie's involvement as an issue between them, another stupidly hopeful premise.
"What college are you thinking of?"
She grew thoughtful for a moment, watching his face as he waited for an answer. In too deep now, she decided, searching her imagination for more fictional signposts. Was this reinventing of herself a form of madness?
"She's at the top of her class. Ivy League definitely. Princeton is her first choice. That's where Brooke Shields went. You know how teenagers like to emulate," Grace said, moaning in her soul.
"Really ... that's where Bruce ... my son ... went as an undergraduate. Maybe I can be of some help."
"I don't think she'll have any trouble getting in," Grace said, panicked now, conscious of her clumsiness, feeling like a criminal bungling a burglary. Plunging ahead, she knew she was painting herself into a corner. "She's a very dedicated student. Her marks are excellent. Quite a young lady."
"What is she considering studying?"
"Medicine, probably. She has expressed an interest in being a doctor."
In her mind's eye she crossed herself and heard the words whispered in her own voice, "Forgive me, Father, I know not what I am doing."
"Wonderful," Sam's voice intruded.
"Yes. I'm quite proud of her," she said without missing a beat.
"I went to Brooklyn College," he told her. "Damned fine school. But my real education was out in the jungle. I became a businessman." He took a bite of sandwich and washed it down with coffee. "And you, Grace, where did you go?"
"Johns Hopkins," she said after a moment's hesitation.
It was a reflex reaction. But it was a logical lie. After all, she was, like Johns Hopkins, from a place called Baltimore. She was well aware that she was puffing herself up beyond all possible validation. Please, she begged herself, put on the brakes. She needed to bring her background down a peg. It was totally unsustainable at this level. She felt lost in a labyrinth, not quite Alice in Wonderland, more like Gretel, who with Hansel, was thrown into an oven by the wicked witch.
"We lived in Baltimore, you see. My parents didn't want to send me out of town. I'm an only child. They were very protective."
"What did your father do?"
"An engineer," Grace replied. It had been the first thing that popped into her mind. She knew she was beyond saving now. "Mom was a piano teacher."
"Too bad they're both gone."
"That's life." She giggled nervously.
Forgive me, Pop, she told herself, feeling the quicksand crowd in around her.
"A great school, Hopkins. What did you study there?"
Oh, Jesus, she thought. This man is relentless. Damned if she does, damned if she doesn't. Her mind was reeling with the effort of invention. Of course, she had to answer his question.
"Political science," she replied.
"Did you work in politics after graduation?"
"I did. I worked in Washington for awhile."
"I was an economics major, with a minor in English," he said.
Actually, she remembered, she hadn't been a bad student, but there was never a chance that her paren
ts could find the money to send her to a good college, and she wasn't scholarship material. Average and ordinary, she sighed.
"Where did Anne go?" she asked, hoping to change the focus from herself.
"Wellesley," Sam said. "She started out as a biologist. Phi Beta Kappa. She was on to her doctorate at Columbia when we married. She never did finish."
Grace's heart jumped into her throat. With barely a year at Baltimore Junior College, the comparison was embarrassingly awful. How could she possibly fill Anne's shoes? Despite her misgivings, she smiled at the reference, remembering suddenly the rows upon rows of shoes on rotating display in the woman's closet. The humor somehow relieved the sudden pain, but it totally excised her appetite.
"We met on a blind date. Friends fixed us up. The moment we were introduced we knew." He sighed and shook his head. "It was a great forty-year run."
"And she had no regrets? I mean ... not finishing her doctorate?"
"Who knows?"
His mind appeared to wander, and he sucked in a deep breath. It seemed an odd response. He was silent for a long time and his eyes glazed over. She left him to his silence, sipping her coffee, which had become lukewarm. She wondered if he was tiring of her presence.
"And your husband? What did he do?"
"Lawyer," she said, again without thinking but hoping she showed no hesitancy.
"Poor woman. We have too many lawyers as it is. What was his specialty?"
He was like a finger persisting in worrying a scab, and she was growing agitated.
"No specialty. General law," she said, groping to keep the explanation logical.
"Too bad it didn't work out."
"I have no regrets," she said. It was the first really honest remark of their exchange.
"Here I am, prying into your personal life. Forgive me."
"It's all right," Grace lied. She wished he had been less curious, so she'd had more time to think things out. They were silent for a while, and at what seemed to be a proper interval she spoke.
"I think I'd better get going."
"I expect I've been taking up too much of your time. I hope you haven't been bored," he said.
His comment seemed incongruous, and she wondered if she was approaching this correctly.
"Not at all," she said.
"At least I'm not crying as much as I was. One of my doctor friends diagnosed it as a manifestation of senile depression brought on by the loss of one's spouse. He had a Latin name for it, but I told him to spare me."
"You seem to be holding up very well," she said.
"Compared to what?"
"To yesterday."
"God. I was a mess, wasn't I?"
She felt him looking at her.
"You helped, Grace."
"I did?"
"Suddenly there you were. A breath of fresh air, and I was forced to crack open the shell."
"I had nothing to do with it," she said, feigning modesty. The panic of the earlier course of the conversation had receded. She knew it was a temporary respite.
"I like the idea of your fulfilling Anne's wishes about the clothes. I'm sort of hung up on things like keeping one's word. It's a caveat of the way I do business. I believe in the concept of the handshake. It underlines the bond of honesty."
"You're saying you're a man of your word."
"Bottom line," he said. "It may sound corny, but I have found in business that honesty and integrity always wins. It has stood me in good stead. I'm not saying that I don't believe in contracts that outline conditions, but essentially, with me, it is that sense of trust when I look the person in the eye. I think the secret of my success in business is the ability to quickly size up what a person really is. Sometimes it happens almost instantly in the first few seconds of contact."
She felt heartburn begin in her chest. Here she had fed this man a pack of lies and he was going on about the virtues of honesty and being able to tell what a person really was instantly. She felt diminished, as if his words were some kind of a warning. Had he sized her up? Was this business between them a cat-and-mouse game, merely a diversion from his tragedy?
"Would you like more coffee?" he asked. "Look, you've hardly touched your sandwich."
"I'm fine," she said. "I ... I really have to get going."
"Carmen," he called. "Pour me some more coffee."
Carmen came in with the carafe and poured some coffee in his cup. She seemed to deliberately ignore Grace's presence, but he didn't notice and she didn't care.
"Where do you live, Grace?" Sam asked suddenly.
"Oh..." His question caught her by surprise. "Over in West Palm Beach."
"One of those beautiful new high-rises?"
Grace nodded, thankful for the much-needed help.
"Great views, I understand."
"Glorious."
"Used to be the place where wealthy Palm Beach residents housed their servants."
"Did they?"
"Was lily white here in Palm Beach, meaning no Jews. It still has its boundaries, but its not half as bad as it was. Meshugana goyem."
The last words seemed to be in Yiddish, which she didn't understand. Nevertheless, she nodded as if she did.
"They weren't so hot on Catholics either. Blacks weren't even a factor. The joke is that we Jews think we've won the battle. Wrong. They captured us. We've become like them. White bread and mayonnaise. Joke's on us."
She was confused by his explanation, having never heard the term "white bread and mayonnaise" used in this context.
"Anne used to hate it when I said things like that. She was very political, a real knee-jerk liberal. It caused some lively discussions, I can tell you. I loved it. The give-and-take. Anne was very passionate in her views. You must know that, of course. As a political science major, you must be very interested in politics."
He was leading her to more shaky ground. She was vaguely interested in politics, but she wished she were better informed. Also, she hadn't quite expected their conversation to take such a sudden turn in that direction. She reviewed in her mind the names of the state's important politicians. She knew the name of the governor and only one senator and searched her mind in vain for the name of the other senator and the congressman who represented her district.
"Yes," she said, not embellishing the point, fearful of both retreating from the subject and being exposed as ignorant.
"She hated the idea that I became a Republican twenty years ago. I guess it's because I understand business, and government is running a lousy business. But don't get me wrong, I'm not exactly a fanatic." He looked at her. "And you, Grace?"
"I'm an independent," she said quickly, satisfied that she had responded well to his query. "I vote the man ... or woman, not the party."
"I kind of expected your answer, Grace. You strike me as someone who is her own woman, not doctrinaire."
She wondered what that meant, but he came to her rescue, as if he knew she didn't know.
"You know what I mean, somebody too damned rigid. You strike me as someone who would rather keep an open mind. Go with the flow. Am I right?"
"More or less," she replied. The fact was, the flow she always went with moved downward. She silently contradicted his view of her as having an open mind. If she really did, he would see how empty it really was. At that moment she felt very self-deprecating.
He looked at her, and for a brief moment she had the sensation that their eyes had locked.
"Have we ever met before, Grace? At the club? A charity ball maybe? Some party somewhere?"
"I don't think so," Grace said.
He was probably confused, having seen her briefly at the funeral parlor the night before the funeral. They had exchanged glances. But her mind explored other possibilities. Perhaps he had seen her behind the counter at Saks. It was a possibility she dreaded. For her part, she had no memory of him or his wife. How could she? They had lived on different planets.
"Do I know any of your beaus?"
"I don't go out that m
uch. Remember, I have a teenage daughter to keep an eye on."
"No significant other on the horizon?"
"I date. But no, nothing serious. Which is fine with me."
"You're a very attractive woman. I'm sure someone will sweep you up and carry you off on his white steed."
"I'm not holding my breath."
"I'll bet your standards are quite high."
"So I've been told."
"Why compromise? You're an independent woman, obviously financially secure. Why settle?"
"I agree."
He studied her again, shrugged, smiled and was silent for a while as he sipped his coffee.
"Anne was a passionate feminist," Sam said suddenly, apropos of nothing. Perhaps the fact that he was having a discussion with a woman had triggered the idea. "We had some knock-down-drag-outs over that one. I consider myself a supporter of women's rights, but some of those ladies seem to be going too far. Am I out of line, Grace? What do you think?"
"I have mixed feelings," she said. Better to be noncommittal and avoid a discussion in which she would reveal the shallowness of her knowledge.
The fact was that she had thought about that subject, but from her perspective the woman's movement hadn't done much for her. They were always shouting about the expansion of opportunities for women and how great it was that women's voices were being heard. She wondered where all the opportunities were for women like her, and it didn't seem much like her voice was being heard or ever had been.
Oh, it did make her feel some pride in seeing women break into all those places once forbidden to them, and she was genuinely inspired when she saw women rise to the top in fiercely competitive corporate America and in the military. But what of her class, the underachievers, the bottom-of-the-barrel broads, the down-on-their-luck ladies? Wasn't only glass ceilings. There were also glass walls and she was trapped, boxed in by them on all sides, closed in on top and bottom.
Was she trying to justify her motives in going after a guy with big bucks to solve her problems? Damned straight she was. In spades. Okay, she was a throwback. Her activist sisters out there would see her as a Neanderthal female, a kind of prostitute, a lying, designing bitch, a male-dependent sell-out, a cynical gold digger on a campaign to snare a wealthy man at his most vulnerable moment.