The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating

by Carole Radziwill

  “Meet me in Charleston,” he said.

  * * *

  IMAGINE THE TWO of them—Jack Huxley, Claire Byrne—on a giant split screen as they carry on their conversation. On the left side, Jack holds a phone to his ear and tosses a tennis ball in the air over and over with his free hand. On the right, Claire holds her phone with one hand, while her other hand traces letters on a book cover, absentmindedly.

  Claire is wearing a long beige sweater over jeans. Jack has on a blue nylon sweat suit. “Massachusetts?” she says, moving from the book and table to her window seat, tucking her legs up beneath her, and staring out her long window at dirty snow piles on the street. She is trying to be cute. He knows. His laugh is soft and warm, like her sweater. “No. No. South Carolina. I have to be there all week and I want you to run away with me.” On the one side of the screen, his movements are fast and jerky—a hand darts to catch the ball, he stands up, walks to the bar in his den. On the other side, the movement is languid and slow. It is late at night; it is out of the blue. Claire feels she should be put out, just a little. Shouldn’t she?

  “I can’t just leave,” she says. “I have work.”

  On the left side of the screen, Jack Huxley’s demeanor has changed. It becomes clear that his attention has shifted; he’s wrapping up. An assistant brings him a stack of papers; he mouths “thank you” to her and starts to skim them.

  “You can work,” he says. “I’ll have the best paper flown in. I’ll have a case of the finest pens.”

  “Let me think. I can’t think.”

  “Ritz-Carlton. Use my code name at the front desk.”

  Jack Huxley is gesturing to someone offstage we can’t see. His side of the screen begins to fade.

  “What’s your code name?” she asks, quickly.

  Huxley pauses, one final frame to catch his smile. “Larry Darrell. I’ll see you tomorrow, Claire.”

  She likes the way he says her name.

  “Okay, Larry Darrell. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  * * *

  “WELL?” CLAIRE ASKED Ethan impatiently. She already knew what Sasha would say. “Did you get my e-mail?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s it? Yes? What am I supposed to do?”

  Sigh.

  “Don’t breathe at me. Do I just keep following him around like this?”

  “Can you get to Charleston direct?” Ethan asked. “The question is, is he worth a connection?”

  “You’re right. This is stupid. Flying around the country,” Claire said. Then softly added, “Is it?”

  “I’m kidding. Don’t be silly. You have to go. You are the one who doesn’t get to decide.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means, you don’t get to decide. You don’t get to decide when it’s over, where it begins, what it does in the middle.”

  “Yes, I do. I can ignore the whole thing.”

  “You know you’ll see him, so see him. You’ll agonize over it and end up going anyway. Your strategy in all of this should be to waste as little time as possible in unnecessary angst.”

  He had a point.

  “Sweetie, don’t overthink it. People can spot ‘overthink.’ You don’t wear it well.”

  “I don’t want to see him.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “I mean it.”

  “Unnecessary angst. Cut it out.”

  * * *

  CLAIRE WENT TO Charleston. Jack, of course, was never alone. Their private encounters to date had been red herrings. He was Jack Huxley, nephew of Aldous. Hollywood royalty, candy store smile, eyes like pools of water at midnight under the moon. If only 80 percent of the people in America believed in God, all of them believed in Jack Huxley.

  When she arrived, he was in the lobby and so was everyone else. The mayor and his daughters. Cast and crew from the film. Tall and short women; old, young, and middle-aged; thin and voluptuous women—there was an entire chorus line of cleavage. Black women and Asian women and white women, and they all looked to Claire like zombies, as if a spell had been cast, and they were all perched on the edge of orgasm waiting for Jack Huxley, the hypnotist, to say the word.

  Claire was fascinated. Charlie would have flipped out. She understood suddenly why he had never finished the book. Charlie couldn’t compete with this level of adoration. It would have driven him mad. “I’m glad you came,” Jack said, and kissed her cheek.

  He introduced Claire to a dozen or so people; he kept his hand on her elbow; he guided her gently this way and that. He moved her deftly away from critique. He knew what women were subject to. She certainly wasn’t the first he’d protected. He was too good at it.

  There was a laborious dinner of salty courses and competing anecdotes, each and every one requiring some sort of performance laugh. Claire felt the heat in the room. She was, she knew, a mild nuisance. She was the victim of an unwarranted amount of curiosity. And what do you do, Claire? You write. How interesting. What do you write, Claire? Is there any money in that? You probably don’t get out much then, to something like this, do you, Claire? You’re a widow. I’m sorry. What did you say you were doing again in Charleston? How did you say you know Jack?

  Their tongues fluttered like butterflies. Their bodies were plucked and soft, their voices hard. The men among them hung back. There were the soloists and accompanists, there were slightly weathered-looking session players and dewy-lipped women vying for the lead. It was like a Vanity Fair layout—The Women of Huxley. They twittered and trilled, and hoped to land somewhere close. There was the woman who’d been in feature films ten years ago and was trying to make a comeback. Her lips did not close together straight. They were crooked in a way that on a man would look like a sneer but that, on this woman, looked sultry.

  There was a young girl—she looked seventeen at most—whose father was a senator. “My father’s a senator,” she said. That’s how Claire knew. There was the wife of a producer who was having an affair with a young pop star, if you believed the tabloids. There was the sister of someone, the former child actress with new tits; there was a woman who played the lead in a popular video game. And there was Claire.

  Here was a room of people who were in movies, in the movie business, a room of people who were (mostly) paid to entertain and, with the obvious exception of Jack Huxley, Claire thought, not one of them was lovely to watch. There was the director who had just wrapped a remake of Mothra: Nemesis of Godzilla. There were two Oscar-winning producers, and a theater actress who refused to speak to anyone but the men. There was a musician, a playwright. Creative, free-spirited people, all of them, and yet the whole night managed to feel dull.

  The Mothra director was coming off promotions for his film. It was to premiere the following week, and he was budding with stories. The film had been reported as going way over budget and there’d been no early release for the critics. Claire had seen a trailer. It featured Mothra removing the limbs—legs and arms—of a giant tortoise. Nonetheless, the director was allowed to tell a story, and as he began Jack gave him his full attention, and a hush fell as the table followed suit.

  “One of the things,” Mothra began, “that keeps my heart beating for this job is the wow moments.” He seemed unaware that impeccable manners kept the movie star listening, and the others were simply taking his lead. Glances at the table flicked from Jack to the director. As long as Jack maintained eye contact, so did they. Mothra cleared his throat. “In Australia when we started filming, there were a handful of us in the room.” He paused and looked down the table, gave a slight nod as if he were assessing it—yes, a table, an ordinary table, one just like this.

  “Some of those in the room were filmmakers, giants, and as the lights went down, I became aware…” Mothra used artistic license here to full effect, took a swallow of his wine, kept the glass in the air, pitched his head forward a bit, causing the room to unconsciously lean in. “This” he said, “is a moment, I’m thinking to myself, I will ne-ver for-get. We all
shot each other a look right then, at the same time, as if to say, ‘Don’t Forget This.’”

  Jack nodded, and like dominoes around the table other heads nodded and then shook side to side. One man began to rub his companion’s back. Claire picked up her wineglass, and so did the former child star. She swirled it softly and the comeback actress swirled hers. Jack Huxley’s face went from wry to bemused.

  I’m screwing Jack, is what I’m doing in Charleston, she should have said.

  All of it ended swiftly and immediately, just at the point Claire thought it never would. Then Jack was shuttling her into an elevator that stopped at a private floor.

  “I have to tell you, whatever it is you do to drum up that fascinating little circus, it’s worth it,” Claire observed, watching Jack Huxley’s lips on the inside of her elbow.

  “Yes, fascinating,” he said.

  “A nonstory about the remake of a horror film as if he had been witnessing the Paris peace talks.”

  “Exactly. Movies are bigger than peace.” Jack kissed her shoulder. He kissed her neck, and then behind her ear, and then back down her neck to her shoulder again. Claire knew what to do—she’d watched the movies. Richard Burton slides one strap of the dress off, then the other. Elizabeth Taylor steps out. Later, Claire thought it odd that she couldn’t remember a sound. Not a single one. Not the sound of breathing or clothing rustled, or even the soft pad of a slow foot on carpet. None of the standard noises of hotel rooms—heat, muffled movement from other rooms. There was no noise anywhere, as though the sound hadn’t yet been dubbed in.

  “If you sleep with me tonight, you’ll hate me.”

  “Why tonight? That’s a bit fatalistic, isn’t it?” She laughed.

  “You will. I’m afraid of it.”

  “Third time is not the charm?” Claire unbuttoned his shirt.

  “I’m bad at endings,” he’d said.

  “Relax,” Claire said. “You’re jumping ahead.”

  Just don’t tell me how it ends, she thought. Not just yet.

  34

  “Is sushi okay tonight?” Jack asked, before heading off to the set the next morning. “There’s a little place downtown no one knows about.” He put his arms around her from behind. “And bring something to read to me.”

  Claire turned in his arms. “I can’t do that. I’m not far enough along, with anything.” She cocked her head—saucy Claire. She put her arms around his neck. “Do you believe in fairy tales?” It was something she wanted to explore in the book, though she wasn’t sure Charlie would approve.

  “Of course. If there’s no hero or someone who needs saving, what’s the point?”

  “Right.”

  “I wouldn’t have a job if people didn’t like fairy tales.” He grabbed a polished red apple from a bowl near the door and examined it. “Work here, in the room today. The light’s great in the morning. Order something to eat. I forget, does the prince get the poison apple?” He took a bite. “I’ll be done at five. If you’re running around Charleston I’ll come get you. I’ll be starving, literally. We have to go exactly when I call.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “I’ll plan accordingly.”

  “I’m not leaving.” He pulled her closer, twined his fingers through the ends of her hair.

  “I see that.”

  “I have to go.”

  “I’ll see you later,” she said.

  “Call if you get lonely,” he said. “Claire?”

  “Yes?”

  “Miss me.”

  She held her composure intact. “I’ll see you later.”

  He kissed her on the forehead and the door shut, in the heavy, permanent, self-shutting way of hotel doors.

  Claire pulled out her laptop. She hadn’t been entirely honest: the manuscript was coming along, but it wasn’t ready for Jack’s eyes; she wasn’t sure it ever would be. The title page read “by Charles Byrne.” Claire put the laptop away. Claire despaired.

  At five o’clock or somewhere near there, the fairy tale returned, but then dark clouds descended—it was the coach turning back into a pumpkin, the forest of thorns strangling Sleeping Beauty’s castle. With a glistening piece of tuna held tight between chopsticks, Jack Huxley said, “So here’s the thing.”

  Here’s the thing. That’s never good.

  Claire switched her expression to bemused and waited.

  “What are we going to do about this?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  “About this, here. This.” He took a bite and watched her while he chewed. Waiting. Claire felt like she’d missed something.

  “What?” She smiled tentatively, not sure of the joke. “I don’t know,” she said. She lifted her own piece of sushi and chewed, looking askew, not directly at him.

  “I don’t know either.” He let his smile come in slow. “I guess it’s like The Lost Weekend. We seem to keep replaying it.”

  “Right,” Claire said. The Lost Weekend. Billy Wilder. A movie Claire’s never seen, so she didn’t immediately get the implication. She knew enough, though. She didn’t like the word lost. She knew she didn’t want to lose any weekends.

  “Let’s just play the scene out,” she said in her best sultry voice. She dipped her head toward her plate and looked up at him through loose hair. “We’re good at that,” she said.

  The next morning Jack was due on the set by seven but he called in late and left at ten. He ordered breakfast, they ate in bed, they showered together. Nice.

  Before he left, he handed her a scrap of paper. “This is my secret number,” he said. “The double-zero spy phone.” She wasn’t sure if this was a joke. “It’s the only one I answer. For friends.”

  “Oh,” Claire said. The word friend stuck in her throat. “Okay, thanks,” she said.

  “Have a good trip, sweetheart,” Jack Huxley said. He was close to the door. He had his jacket on. Claire leaned against the arm of a chair in a T-shirt. It was painfully clear who had the advantage. He gave her a long, soft, Hollywood kiss, tipped his baseball cap, and then left, walking backward, out the door. Kicking the heels of his ruby slippers.

  * * *

  CLAIRE MADE IT to the airport for her 2:00 p.m. flight. She had time to return the rental and browse magazines. She had time to find a book. She had time to kill. She had time to see, on the cover of Star, that Jack Huxley was in a love triangle with two starlets.

  It made her think about Charlie, and the book, a book that was as much about one as the other. Is Jack a boy? Claire thought. Was Charlie a man? The difference, it seemed suddenly obvious. A boy says, Have a good trip. A man says, Call me when you land.

  When she got into her apartment, she wrote Jack an e-mail. Then she deleted it and wrote another one. She deleted that and wrote a note, then tore it up, then wrote another note, then crumpled it up and called the Ritz. She asked for his room, then hung up. She called the “friends only” number he had given her and it went to voice mail. Beep.

  “Hi, it’s me. Call me when you get this. Or not, I guess. I just, something was bugging me, and I wanted to say it. About your question last night. Well, just call me. Or, you don’t have to. I don’t need to talk to you. I just wanted you to know—I meant to say it last night—that I should watch more Billy Wilder, and I will, I promise, but even before I do, I know that I don’t want a lost weekend, for what it’s worth. I want to see you again. I don’t think we should rule it out. Wait, that’s not even what I mean. I just mean, simply, I want—”

  You have exceeded your recording time. To play back this message, press two. To send, press pound. To delete this message and record again, press three.

  Claire took a deep breath. She couldn’t do that all again. What then? Erase it? No, she wanted him to know. But she sounded so scattered. Who would want to get that message? Redo it. She couldn’t redo it; she’d screw it up more. She tried to remember where she’d been cut off—was it an ending, or close enough to one? Would he be able to fill it in? It sounded fine, she told herself. Se
nd it. But then what if he didn’t call? She’d never know if it was because of the message. She’d told him he didn’t have to call, but how could she not expect him to call? Oh fuck!

  To replay this menu, press star. To send this message, press pound.

  Claire pressed pound.

  35

  The worst thing was the yawning chasm of time from point A—a wonderful, sweet weekend with a boy, the kind that made Claire think of butterscotch Life Savers—to point B, an undetermined, and maybe completely nonexistent point in the future. The few days following the weekend were upbeat and hopeful. He’ll call, she’ll see him again. Or, she supposed, she could call, she thought, but she didn’t know how to call—she’d already botched that once. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, you shouldn’t be in the business.

  * * *

  THERE WAS A wedding three weeks after Charleston: Emily’s. Emily was a photographer Claire had worked with on and off for years on different freelance assignments. Now Emily was producing a reality show and marrying an ex-priest. Everything was going according to plan for her. Claire, on the other hand, had a dead husband, lost weekends with Jack Huxley, a diviner and a soothsayer, and too many shrinks.

  Claire couldn’t bear to go to the wedding alone, so she made Ethan her plus one. He was coming from Miami. His new boyfriend, Kevin, was a flight attendant, which made flying much more fun, first class all the time. So Ethan came from the airport looking relaxed as one only can when they’ve been served warm hand towels and chocolate cookies with their champagne. Claire, on the other hand, had taken a crowded subway and tromped through puddles of gray, melting snow; she was frazzled.

  At Le Cirque, she was seated between a much younger photographer—“He’s single and totally hot,” Emily had told her—and a new mother. Across from her, Ethan was wedged between the new mother’s mother and a middle-aged cousin from Seattle. Emily was right, the photographer was gorgeous, but he said, “Oh, like Kevin Spacey,” when Claire said she’d recently been to Charleston. “Remember, in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?” And Claire said, “Yes, although that was Savannah,” and picked at her salad.