And then I ran into Leslie at Jolito’s.
35
Saving Grace
Now I know this is going to be hard to believe and I hate to be in the position of having to rely on something others have found quite impossible to accept as true, but I went to Jolito’s for a drink by myself that night because it was close to my apartment, and I wanted to be out when Annie got home. I did not go there looking for Leslie. It wasn’t even a Friday and you must remember, she said in her journal that she went there every Friday. You also must remember that Annie and I had had a bit of a spat over her happy hour meeting with Steve and the office gang. Being the fellow left out, sitting home—wondering where your soul might light if you let it free for a second—is not the most pleasant feeling in the world. Perhaps others have experienced it too; for me loneliness is a physical sensation, a simmering nameless thing very much like fear that saps your heart. So I was a little more upset over being left alone that night than perhaps I should have been. Anyway, Annie didn’t come home right away and I sat there waiting for her. I waited a long time; I baked some chicken and potatoes, steamed some broccoli, all the while feeling more and more anxious. Then she called. I didn’t answer the phone, I let our new-fangled answering machine kick on and there she was, a little embarrassed, and clearly a little pierced by a few glasses of wine. She apologized again and said she just stopped for a “drink with the guys.” I could hear the guys in the background laughing and having a high old time. I heard her say to somebody, “I wonder why he didn’t pick up,” laughingly, as if I was always right there at the other end of the line. She was not worried either. So I just decided I was not going to sit at home waiting for her. I left the house determined to stay out later than she did—leaving no call, no message on the machine. I wanted her to get home and sit around wondering where the hell I was for a change.
So I went to Jolito’s. It was pretty crowded for a Wednesday night. Places like that are all the same—a wide, wrap-around bar at the far end of the room, and tables surrounding a small dance floor and stage to the left. On the right was a big juke that could be played pretty loud when there was no band. Tonight, the dance floor and stage were empty. The people at the bar had their eyes fixed on the color TVs high at either end—some sort of news or sports talk show.
I didn’t see her at first. The grids of soiled neon bulbs in the ceiling distributed the light only weakly, and in the shadows it was hard to discern anyone’s face. The room smelled of wet teak-wood, fried shrimp, cigarette smoke, and beer.
I sat down near the end of the bar and when I looked up, eyes acclimated, there she was, Leslie Warren. She was sitting to my right, just where the bar swung around for the other side of the room. Her silky light brown hair framed the side of her face, and in the falling light she looked almost saintly. She seemed not to have noticed me, and at first I considered slinking away from the light, getting the hell out of there. But then I noticed the look on her face.
I would not say it was fright or anything like that. But she was clearly not comfortable. She was smoking a cigarette, looking furtively at two men playing darts on the other side of the bar, directly across from where I was sitting. One of them kept raising his hand and waving at her, but each time he did, she’d look away. He was well-built, if on the short side, his hair closely cropped. Whenever he waved at her he let out a strange sort of howl—barely human—as if he were calling to her across some Paleolithic swamp.
It clearly irritated her. Finally, he strode over and installed himself on her right. He leaned close and stared at the side of her face. I got myself out of the light and moved by slow degrees over to where she was sitting.
“See that shot, babe?”
She nodded, leaning back away from him. She still hadn’t noticed me.
“Come on,” he said. “Come over to the table so you can see better. Helluva game.”
Leslie wouldn’t look at him. “No thanks,” she said, her voice small, rising up from what could only be fear. I couldn’t believe it. This was the young woman who had the entire faculty cowed and on edge?—in thrall to this barely literate bar jockey, this dumb little, loud mouthed, dart-throwing ape?
“Least tell me your name,” he demanded. “’Kay, babe? Least gimme that much.”
She stared at the ashtray in front of her.
“I know you got a name. Right? Mean, nothing this beautiful should go without a name.” He leaned in real close and started whispering in her ear again.
I don’t know what got into me, but I couldn’t stand watching him sully her space like that. So I moved over, sat down next to her. “You ever get in touch with the babysitter, hon?” I said, leaning over the bar just next to her, busy fielding the bartender’s attention.
She looked at me, the shock of recognition barely even registering. “No,” she said, ever the quick study. “I thought you were going to call her.”
I wish you could have seen the look on the dart jockey’s face. He stepped back, and as I put my hands up on the bar, Leslie leaned into me, holding onto my arm. “Fuck, man,” he whined. “I’m, like, sorry.” No threat or anything—fucker could have torn me in half—but, as if he’d accidentally insulted my mother, or bashed my religion: Very, very sorry.
When he was gone, Leslie let go my arm, took a strangely calm drag on her cigarette.
“Sometimes I feel as though I should apologize for all the men in the world,” I said.
She smiled without looking at me. “That was pretty clever,” she said. “What you did there.”
“You sure picked up on it right away.”
She laughed. I liked the sound of it—the small notes of it, like rippling water or a piano in the mid to higher registers, but soft … really soft. She was relaxed now, sitting there next to her English teacher, the English teacher she’d lodged a complaint against.
The bartender came over to me and I ordered a beer. Leslie didn’t want anything. I waited for my beer while she finished her cigarette. I asked her what she was doing there.
“I’m meeting my boyfriend, Randy.”
“Really.”
“He works in the back.”
“Sure you’re allowed to sit at the bar like this?”
“They don’t mind,” she said. “Long as I don’t, you know, order anything.”
She still wasn’t looking at me, but I could see the light refracting through the incredible blue cornea of her eyes, sparkling like some sort of precious stone. “I can’t even drink a Coke at the bar, you know? Or a 7 Up,” she said. “Might have liquor in it.”
The bartender brought my beer, and I took a swig. “Want to move to a table, then? So you can have a Coke?”
“Okay,” she said, rising before I could. “Which table?”
“How about over there.” I pointed to a table in the corner next to the front door. We walked over and sat down. I lit the candle in the middle of the table. “Well,” I said. Then I signaled a waiter who was about to pass by, ordered Leslie a Coke.
“Will your boyfriend—what’s his name? Randy? Will he be able to see you over here?” I asked.
“Oh, sure.”
“What’s he do in the back, anyway?”
“He’s a cook.”
We sat there silently awhile. I wondered if I should bring up the complaint. Now that I had pretty well rescued her a second time, maybe she’d be willing to forget the whole thing. Not that I really wanted to bring it up. I was less than ten years older than this girl. We might have been a couple, I half thought to myself—and just like that, something happened to my resolve. I wasn’t so much interested in the complaint, you see, as I was in Leslie; I wanted to know her better. Not for romantic reasons or anything …
I suppose that tension is always there between men and women, and I can’t say I was unaware of it. Still, I was determined not to do anything that might be construed by anyone—her above all—as, you know, pursuit.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
“Oh, I just came in to get a burrito and a beer. It’s right around the corner from where I live. I was surprised to see you, actually.”
“I come here a lot.”
“Really.” I took a thoughtful pull of my beer. “Maybe you could write about this. You know, your experience with the dart-throwing crowd.”
“Write about it?”
“In your journal.”
“Oh,” she sighed. “That.”
“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about school.”
She smirked. “Yeah, let’s not.”
“Why’d you come back this year? You’re eighteen, right?”
“I had to.” She looked directly at me now. “My father.”
“You know what eighteen means?” I said. “You don’t have to do what your father says anymore.” We sat there, staring at each other. Was it easier for her to look at me here, dim as it was?
“I don’t want to hurt him any more than I already have,” she said, simply.
I hadn’t expected that. For all her usual rebellion, her spikiness, the general wise-guy attitude, Leslie seemed right now governed solely by the mallet of her father’s love.
“That’s so sweet,” I said, stupidly, and the stare she fixed me with could have frozen the torrents playing over Niagara Falls. “Well,” I said, clearing my throat. “I hope you get what you want.”
“I will.”
“Though it won’t be with …” I stopped. You won’t get anywhere with this grievance against me, I’d nearly said, before thinking better of it. I didn’t want to sully my rescue with any notion of recompense or reward.
“Won’t be with what?” she said.
The waiter brought her Coke and I paid him, then finished my beer and settled back to look at Leslie. She sat slightly away from the round table, legs crossed. She wore a blue skirt, and a bright white blouse. Her hair was held back a bit on one side with a barrette that had a very small red ribbon on it. She studied my face, waiting.
“You know what,” I said. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“It won’t be with what?” she repeated, the whine in her voice by now almost friendly in its teasing relentlessness.
“You’re going to have to graduate by doing the work,” I said. “I’m not going to graduate you for any other reason.”
She nodded, the recognition of what I was saying evident in her eyes. “I’ll do the work,” she said.
“Good.”
“Good,” she agreed.
“I’m glad,” I said.
“I bet you are.”
“Leslie, you won’t get lies from me. Ever.”
She looked puzzled.
When I think of her behavior now, I wonder if she might have been waiting for me to say something about it—to beg her maybe; or perhaps she just wanted me to acknowledge that we might make a new start if only she were to drop the damn complaint. It is also possible she was afraid of what I might be up to, possible she was preparing herself to fend off yet another slobbering attempt at seduction. At any rate, she seemed to be waiting for something.
“I think I know what it’s like to look like you,” I said, finally. The awkwardness was immediate.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I’d thought maybe if I could get her to think about the ways she’d been lied to, she might weaken in her resolve, might regret her lie about me. Because it was clear enough: this girl was just too attractive to have heard the truth from anybody. See, people will say anything to remain in the company of that kind of beauty. Everywhere she went she would have been greeted with only bits of the truth, packs of lies clustering around her as people sought primarily to please.
She didn’t like it that I’d brought up her looks. Her face seemed to shrink a little—as if the air had leaked from behind her eyes. “You know,” I started to stammer. “To—to be so—so …” What other way was there to say it? She was waiting there, braced for it, and I had no idea what to do about the red flush that must have been blossoming across my face. “So beautiful,” I said, finally.
She shook her head.
“Don’t get me wrong,” I hastened to say. “I’m not coming on to you.”
“Right.”
“I’m not. It’s just … you obviously understand you’re not … ordinary, you know? I mean, you must know how breathtakingly attractive you are.”
“I don’t …” But she didn’t finish.
I took a sip from the already empty glass in front of me, stalling for time. But we were into it by this point, and I wanted her at least to understand. “Look,” I said. “Can we forget for a minute that I’m a man? Or that you’re … a woman?”
She was suspicious, but waited.
“You are strikingly beautiful, okay? And make no mistake, when people say striking, they really mean that—that your beauty almost strikes them. Stops them. Like, it hurts.”
Still silent, she had relaxed enough to take a drink from her Coke, her eyes never leaving mine. I couldn’t tell if she was merely humoring me. Could anything I was saying be sinking in?
“People who are extraordinary in that way—you know—who are so damn attractive it’s all anyone ever notices about them—well, it’s a burden, I expect, to carry around with you.”
“Tell me about it,” she said, sarcastically. I could see I’d hit a nerve.
“You can’t go anywhere that men aren’t … throwing themselves at you, right?”
She nodded.
“And they’re not very good at it, I know—believe me; most men are awful at it. And the ones who are any good at it, they probably got that way by coming on to way too many women. I mean, they’re probably the ones you should avoid most of all …”
Suddenly she broke into a smile. I can’t express the joy I felt in the light of that smile. I was getting somewhere, I could sense it. “So you have this constant battle,” I said. “Right?”
“Exactly.”
“You get stared at, wherever you go.”
She nodded.
It was like I was hitting jackpots in a guessing game. “I understand,” I went on. “You know? I really do. And who can blame you for not trusting anyone? I wouldn’t either.”
She lifted her Coke, watching me over the edge of it, the smile gone, her face inscrutable, impassive. She put her lips on the straw and began to drink.
“But you can trust me, Leslie. That much I promise.”
We were quiet for a long time after I said that. I took my empty glass and bottle over to the bar, then walked back to the table and sat down. “Looks like your dart-playing friend finally cleared out.”
She looked across the room at the clock on the wall. “Yeah … Randy gets off in, like, half an hour.”
“You won’t need me anymore, then.”
She said nothing. I sat there a moment longer before getting to my feet. She leaned forward, put her arms out in front of her on the table, and looked up at me. Her face was sad, and for the first time, she seemed to me … vulnerable. I wanted to caress her shoulders, wanted to tell her everything would be all right. I’d forgotten her complaint, to be honest. It was just two people, coming to a kind of understanding. “See you tomorrow?” I said.
She didn’t say anything, but smiled again. Only this time it wasn’t so enigmatic. It was a smile of recognition, of affection even—the kind of gift bestowed by a grown woman who understands the world, who knows what it means to trust a person.
36
Many Happy Returns
Things were different with Leslie after that. She worked harder. She was suddenly a part of the class, still speaking out of turn, but now without wanting to shock or disarm, but because she was interested. The next time I collected journals, I read every page of hers. She did not mention Randy, and there were no folded pages, just descriptions of daily activities, and events in her life. In truth, she wrote like almost any normal teenaged girl, except that the events in her life revolved around embassy parties and cordial
dinners at her family’s house with oil executives and foreign dignitaries and other “Washington snobs,” as she put it. Every now and then she would address me directly. She’d say things like, “Don’t you hate it when people act like snobs, Mr. Jameson?” Or, “I know you can understand how I felt.” That kind of thing. It always thrilled me.
The dreaded meeting with her father never materialized. What he did was send a brief note to me that said:
Dear Sir:
As I am sure you have been made aware, Leslie needs to graduate this year. She has promised to work very hard. I am conscious of her impetuous nature, and I know she is also prone to exaggeration when it suits her needs. If in this last scenario you were in any way as crass or obscene as Leslie initially claimed, I would have taken the appropriate action you can be sure. But Mrs. Creighton and her husband have come to your defense, and Leslie has since changed somewhat her initial response to your remarks. For the rest of this year I expect you to comport yourself in such a way, that if Leslie cooperates her goals will be achieved. In your own way, you can therefore take part in her success and provide for her a lasting rescue from her own recklessness and folly.
He signed it, Robert Wilson Warren.
The relief I felt upon reading this letter was almost orgasmic.
The year was going well, but I don’t think I was feeling self-satisfied. I started thinking again about George Meeker. Talking with Leslie was possible because my experience with George had empowered me in a way. I realized how important it can be to simply talk to a person one on one. I didn’t think my little meeting with George’s father had solved anything, but it set wheels in motion. Mrs. Creighton’s letter threatening his business probably did the trick.
At any rate I decided to sit down with George one on one and see how he was doing. Before I could get it arranged I had a fight with Annie about it. We were sitting in our living room, sipping on wine and getting ready to watch a movie, and I mentioned what I was planning. She said, “Why can’t you just do your job, grade their papers, teach them the rules of composition and so on, and then let them go home?”
In the Fall They Come Back Page 26