The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating

by Carole Radziwill

“But he just called you.” Sasha sounded baffled, as if Claire had told her olives don’t pair well with gin. “Why does he have to call back?”

  “Call me back later this week, I said.”

  There was a pause, filled by the sound of a vacuum.

  “Lydia. Can you please vacuum someplace else?” Sasha sounded exasperated.

  “Okay. What happens later this week? I don’t understand.” Sasha was speaking to Claire in the same tone she used to speak to her Westie.

  “I’ll know about coffee.” Claire was thumbing through an old Paris Review. Susan Sontag on “The Art of Fiction.” She wondered if she ought to have a bisexual phase.

  “Sweetie, what is there to know about getting coffee?”

  “Never mind. We talked for a few minutes and I told him to call me back, that’s all.”

  “I hope you didn’t bring up anacondas.”

  “I didn’t. And never mind.”

  “Listen, honey. If you want to play you have to be in the game. I know what you’re up to. He’ll call, and you won’t answer, then you’ll call him from a cab or an elevator and get cut off and he’ll call again and you’ll wait a few days more to call him back; then two months will go by and he’ll be too tired to bother with coffee, he won’t even remember your name. And in two months he will have had two serious relationships come and go and be into his third and, by the way, she’s the one he’ll marry. Call him back now. And dinner—or at least a drink. Something grown-up.”

  The truth was, Claire hadn’t liked the sound of Alex’s voice. It was faint and there were gaps in their talk that she’d felt obligated to fill in. She hated that. He had called her, after all. But Claire called him back, and they agreed to have dinner. Claire picked the restaurant; the journalist picked the time. The Waverly Inn on Bank Street was easy to get in and out of.

  * * *

  ALEX THE JOURNALIST was tall, Sasha was right about that. And he was slightly disheveled, though it looked contrived: he seemed to have purposely tousled hair. When Claire walked in, Alex was standing at the bar. He greeted her—and took charge right away. There was a table waiting and he ordered foie gras and salads before they sat down. He dashed quickly through three bourbons—was it four?—before they considered the entrées. Claire nursed the house Chardonnay.

  “Foreign correspondent,” Alex said. Claire was tuning in and out. “Bureau chief, Beijing. Washington Post.” Alex was the sort of foreign correspondent who carried a picture of himself dressed in camouflage holding an M16 rifle. He was also the type of dinner date who liked to take it out and show it. Claire nodded at the picture in approval.

  “Fallujah,” he said.

  Alex was newly divorced. (“But,” Sasha had assured Claire, “I promise he’s not fucked up.”)

  He’d been divorced for three months and said so more than once. Observations and exclamations popped out of him unexpectedly. He was halfway through a bottle of wine by the time their entrées came—quail for him and chicken potpie for Claire. When his fingers snapped—twice, and loudly—for their waiter, Claire jumped and the waiter appeared. “I can’t eat this,” Alex said. He was grimacing. His face was contorted into equal parts disgust and alarm. She glanced carefully toward his bird, afraid of spotting a leggy insect crawling out.

  “It’s bloody,” he said through clenched teeth, “can’t you see that?” Here, with his fork, he held back a small wing to reveal to Claire and the waiter the unacceptable gore. Claire couldn’t see it.

  “Take her plate back, too, please,” said Alex, through a brittle smile. “Keep it warm until you cook mine.” The waiter snatched up both plates. “You don’t mind, do you, Claire?”

  “No,” she said, and took a deep breath. In Charlie, she might have found this scene charming. She was used to Charlie’s domineering. He had earned it. “No, I don’t mind. Of course not.” She smiled.

  “More wine?” Alex asked.

  It was red, and though Claire didn’t care for any, she nodded. The bottle made a gurgling sound as he tipped it into her glass.

  Dinner—partly due to the quail, and partly due to long pauses Alex employed between pronouncements and digressions, and lavish stories about bombs—went on for hours; three and a half, it turned out, and during that time they covered the following: Alex’s book (A Parrot in Berlin: The Colors of War); Alex’s publisher (“No fucking clue how to sell a book. What. So. Ever”); Alex’s piece in Harper’s on Anwar Sadat (“At the risk of coming off as arrogant, Claire, it’s the goddamn closest anyone’s ever got to him”); Alex’s ex-wife (“I just fell out of love”); Alex’s rowing career at Yale (“We won the ’84 regatta against Harvard, the pussies”); Alex’s middle name (Letham, after his great-grandfather); Claire’s middle name (Marie, she wasn’t sure why); and Claire’s marital status.

  “Do you get along with your ex?”

  “Yes, very well, under the circumstances.” Claire picked up her fork.

  “What—”

  “My husband’s dead.”

  “God, I’m a jackass,” Alex said, loudly enough that other patrons looked up from their twenty-dollar starters with indiscreet curiosity. The place was a tabloid staple, Claire had forgotten. Ellen Barkin once threw a vodka in her ex-husband’s face and hours later the splash found print on Page Six. Claire eyed her drink.

  Alex lowered his head and repeated himself, softer this time.

  “I knew, I just—I forgot. Sorry.”

  “It’s fine,” Claire said. Not fucked up? She was for damn sure going to give Sasha some rules before the next date.

  * * *

  “SASHA SAID YOU write,” Alex said. “What are you writing?” That the stream of the lofty journalist’s consciousness had switched to Claire was astonishing. The widow thing, naturally, intrigued him.

  “A book,” Claire answered, trying out the feel of it on her tongue.

  “Fiction? Memoir?”

  “Bio, sort of. It’s about a movie star. I don’t know if that’s technically nonfiction.”

  Alex appeared to be amused and impatient. “Biography? Can you say who?”

  “Jack Huxley.”

  Alex put down his drink. “No shit.”

  “The perfect man.”

  “Ha! Right. Why is that? What makes the perfect man?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Claire said.

  Alex leaned in across the table. “Let’s make it easier, then. What makes the perfect date?”

  “Hmm. I’d say good conversation and coy double entendres and approving glances from strangers, then a balmy walk, something slightly risqué and impulsive, and a long cab ride to anywhere.”

  “Sex?” Alex slurred.

  “Oh, no thanks,” Claire said. “I’m good.”

  Alex smirked, gulped at his brandy. They were long past the wine.

  “Picture this,” Claire began. Sasha had said this was practice, a warm-up, after all. “It’s late at night and a woman enters her home. She’s tired, walks into her bedroom, and begins to undress. She turns on a light and is startled to see a man on her bed. He’s lying on it, comfortably stretched out and fully clothed, and he’s pointing a gun at her. ‘Keep going,’ he says, and he makes a gesture with the gun. She looks scared—not frightened, but startled—and unbuttons her blouse, then her skirt, then steps out of her slip. He gets up and approaches her, still holding the gun, and they stand close, face-to-face, for a minute, saying nothing. The mood is tense. Finally, she breaks the silence. ‘Do you know what I wish?’ she asks. ‘That once you’d get here on time.’”

  Alex the journalist looked blank. “I don’t get it.”

  Claire smiled and sipped.

  “Seriously, I don’t get it, am I missing something? Is that hot? To pull a gun?”

  “It’s the most erotic movie scene ever filmed. Robert Redford and Katharine Ross? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” Alex looked confused. “Nevermind. It’s Cinderella. Every woman has her own version of the prince at the door with the slipper.
”

  “I don’t think fairy tales sell well,” Alex said.

  “Fairy tales are the only stories that sell.”

  It was late and the tables around them had thinned.

  Alex summoned, then signed for the check. He waved off Claire’s fifty-dollar bill, then immediately waved it back. “Sorry. I’m on per diem,” he said.

  They walked outside and Claire signaled for a cab.

  “Well, good luck with your book,” Alex said behind her as she climbed in the car. Claire blew him a kiss and shut her door.

  It was the end, for Claire, of journalists.

  15

  The next morning Claire woke feeling unsettled and in the slow fog of waking she forgot—even five months later—that Charlie wasn’t there and wondered briefly, alone in the bed, if he’d made coffee.

  There was a message on her phone. Sasha, of course. She wanted a recap of the date.

  Claire texted: Good test. But not sure he worked.

  I just fell out of love, Alex had said.

  She felt like Charlie was calling audibles from stage left.

  The Opposite of Sex—his famous theory. He’d explained it at every dinner party, in every well-appointed apartment above Fifty-Seventh Street. Most New Yorkers in a certain circle could quote him by heart, could even do a fair impression of him leaned back in a chair, hands locked behind his head, eyes on the chandelier.

  The opposite of sex, he used to say, is love. Then he’d smile, pause, grin like the Grinch. “Sex and love are the crudest sort of magnets,” he’d say. “One north, one south, violently repelling one another, which is why the natural state is to have one or the other but not both.” And as Charlie famously wrote in his first book, “Love does not coexist naturally with sex, it is its opposite. We use the metaphor of fireworks. When forced together, the two of them, the result is a tempest—unsustainable, unendurable beyond short lengths of time. We simply cannot manage the battle.”

  Claire had the feeling that Charlie would have liked Alex.

  After Charlie and Claire married and the unsustainable tempest dulled, Claire mostly thought Charlie was full of shit. Their lack of storm was certainly not the result of too much love. Charlie neglected to account for the couplings where stormlessness was the product of a dull routine, and different bedtimes.

  * * *

  SASHA’S PLAN B was a billionaire. She made lunch reservations at the Four Seasons where the ceilings were tall and dramatic, and the maître d’ was, too. Sasha, in sequins and already tipsy, was like a fish back in water. She had a notepad, and white wine on ice. Unlike journalists, apparently, billionaires required a primer.

  “Sweetheart!” Sasha said and stood up to kiss.

  “Hi.” Claire kissed Sasha once on each cheek. She was trying out the double kiss.

  “If you want a billionaire,” Sasha whispered, “it’s important to show up where they lunch. It’s like the Serengeti.” Then even more softly, she added, “Don’t look, but speaking of, Bloomberg is two tables left.” Then louder: “So Alex is not your speed. He can be a bit self-involved. I’ve got other options for you.”

  The waiter filled Claire’s wineglass and she took an inelegantly large swallow.

  “Stephen seems the most likely candidate to me—he’s the one I told you about, an old family friend. You met him at our wedding. You might not remember. I don’t expect you to, but he does remember meeting you.” Sasha and Thom had married at the Colony Club. Claire did not remember any Stephens but she did remember Olive, Thom’s namesake and delightfully quirky mother. She’d been named after Olive Thomas Pickford, a Ziegfeld showgirl who accidentally poisoned herself with her husband’s syphilis treatment. A topical medicine she’d mistaken for whiskey.

  Sasha’s in-laws had old family money and lots of it, the kind that gave them the freedom to be eccentric. Mrs. Wyse was the sort of woman, Claire thought, who’d be found nude when she died, swathed in feathers, with bowls of cat food spilling onto the marble floors of her cavernous town house.

  “I don’t remember,” Claire said.

  “Well, no pressure. There are others,” Sasha said.

  Sasha pulled out a pocket-size album of pictures along with a typed bio for each one. There was Jorge the sugar baron—three divorces, grown kids, homes in Spain and Morocco besides the standard places in Miami and New York. Harold—venture capitalist, one marriage, ranches in New Mexico and Wyoming. Luis—old money, ties to royals. Luis, Sasha admitted, was not exactly a billionaire but close enough. She’d rounded up.

  Stephen’s father, Claire learned, reading his bio, had patented the automated car wash, and like Walter White of the Giacometti, Stephen owned a sports team. They were golfing pals.

  She studied the pictures. Charlie had been much older than Claire, but he didn’t have the fortune these men had. He’d had to rely on other means of attraction—physical appeal, sexuality, charm. Before her were sagging chins, a pallid countenance, a general sense of disrepair. “Billionaires, honey,” Sasha said, sensing Claire’s concern.

  Claire gave Sasha a brave smile. “Fine. I’ll take the sports guy.”

  The day after Sasha gave Stephen Claire’s number, his secretary called to arrange a date. Then she called back. Three times. Each time she left the same message: “Hello, this is Vivian in Stephen Mack’s office. Please return the call at your earliest convenience. Thank you.” Each message, though, was left with slightly more edge to the tone than the last. Vivian was a bully. What did this say about her boss? The next day Stephen himself called. He was brusque and official.

  “This is Stephen Mack calling for Claire Byrne by way of Sasha Wyse. I’m under the impression we’re to meet. Please return my call.”

  While Claire listened to his message, her phone rang again. It was Stephen. And when she didn’t answer, it rang again. “Hi, it’s Stephen. I’m having a hard time getting a hold of you. Uh … not sure what else I’m supposed to do. Give me a call.” The process was making Claire anxious. The calls came at too fast a clip.

  “He’s kind of pushy,” she told Sasha.

  “Claire. He’s a billionaire. He has a lot going on. You can’t just leave him hanging.”

  Stephen called again on Wednesday and then again on Friday. This time he left his cell number. Late Friday, Claire called him back and he answered on the first ring.

  “Oh, good. So you’re okay.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I’m just really new at this and—”

  “I had my office call Sasha this afternoon to make sure you were okay.”

  Claire paused. She had the urge to just hang up.

  “Thank you. That was … thoughtful.”

  They arranged a date. Stephen told her he’d send a car.

  On Tuesday, a car came as promised and took Claire to a private club on Fifty-Second Street where Stephen and his billions commanded an elaborate corner table. He looked like a man who’d never had to try.

  “Well, you’re beautiful, like Sasha promised,” he said, followed up by a toothy billionaire grin. He was dressed in a plain navy suit. He’d lost most of his hair. He kissed each of her cheeks and pulled out a chair for her. The club was ill lit. Edith Piaf crooned through the walls. Nothing seemed quite in sync. Stephen had a magnum of champagne at the table, and after Claire sat down a waiter brought oysters. Oh my God, Claire thought. Really?

  Stephen, as it happened, was a Dangler. He spent the evening dangling his wares for Claire. He dangled houses and yachts and exclusive islands and private jets. He dangled the luxury suite of the football team he owned, for Claire and all her friends. He dangled an emerald bracelet that he affixed to Claire’s wrist as the night wound to its end.

  “Oh, no. I really can’t,” she said. It was hideous.

  “You have to,” he said. “I picked it out for you.”

  “Okay, well…”

  “It looks exquisite on you. I’ll take you home.”

  Claire did not invite the billionaire inside, but she br
iefly, politely, kissed him good night.

  The next morning he called at eight and two more times before ten.

  “Where were you?” he asked when she summoned the nerve to call back. “I’ve been calling.”

  “Yes, I know. I’m sorry, Stephen. I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

  “I’m confused. What happened between last night and this morning?” Stephen asked. It did not occur to him that not ready was even a possibility. He was a billionaire for Christ’s sake.

  “It’s just too soon, I guess.”

  “You guess?” Stephen asked. His voice went up a half octave.

  “No. I don’t guess. I know,” Claire said. She summoned her nerve. “You call a lot. Too much. You’re pushy and a pathological caller. I can’t be the first girl to tell you that.”

  “Yes, Claire, you are.”

  Claire mailed the bracelet to his office.

  It was the end, for Claire, of billionaires.

  16

  Sasha was understandably discouraged. She became convinced that Claire’s inability to sleep with or even French-kiss either of her first two dates was a psychiatric condition that needed to be addressed.

  “You know what you need? A second opinion, sweetie,” she said.

  “On what?” Claire asked.

  “On everything. When your car dies, you don’t roll over for the first mechanic.”

  “I don’t have a car.”

  “When Snowball coughs up fur, you talk to different vets.”

  “I don’t have a pet.”

  “But you do have a dead husband; you can’t order your own coffee or return a phone call, and Lowenstein disapproves of your every move. You waste half your sessions on made-up dreams. You need a second-opinion shrink.”

  “I have a shrink.”

  “Yes, which is why you need a second opinion. To know if your first shrink is giving good advice.”

  Dr. Evan Gordon Spence had treated the Wyse family, on and off, for thirty years. He had an opening on Wednesdays and an office on the West Side. An attractive man, he had gone to great lengths, Claire could see, not to tempt his female patients: the forced clutter of his office, the dingy beige walls, his athletic frame disguised in houndstooth trousers and a pilled cardigan. The shoes at the ends of his socks were battered and clunky. The gold ring on his left hand was tarnished. Dr. Spence, with psychiatry degrees from Yale, then Harvard, then Yale again, was not about to be mistaken for a sex object.