by Rita Ciresi
“I deleted everything,” I said. “I’m not interested in—you know, what we’ve talked about before. Using sex as a weapon.”
“I’m not either.”
“So why do we have to talk like this?”
“Because, Lisar, we talked like that—”
“But we’re friends. And I want to trust you.”
“I want to trust you too.”
“So let’s forget about it,” I said.
“Could I say one more word on the topic?”
Knowing Strauss’s definition of one more word probably could run the entire length of Webster’s Unabridged, I firmly told him, “No, you may not.”
The walk we took that afternoon was peaceful and pleasant. But afterward I forgot to scrape the mud off my heels with a Kleenex, and when I got back to the office the secretary said, “Lisa, what happened to your shoes?”
I looked down. “Oh,” I said blithely, “didn’t you know the CEO’s got a whiskey still in the woods? I spent the lunch hour with him, swilling moonshine.”
That story made the complete rounds of Editorial within half an hour, with everyone snickering at what an unlikely couple the notoriously hard—drinking CEO and Lisa “Cheap Date” Diodetto would make. Back at my desk, I congratulated myself on thinking fast—but I also swore I’d never let myself get into a situation like that again. What if next time I couldn’t come up with a smart—alecky answer? What if Strauss was tracking mud—right at that very moment—up and down Boorman’s heavy—duty industrial carpet?
The amber glow of my computer gave me a headache that afternoon. I couldn’t concentrate on my work. Maybe I did have a blood—sugar problem, I thought. Maybe I shouldn’t have skipped lunch. Maybe I needed more caffeine.
By quitting time, I faced facts: I was in love with Eben Strauss, and it was making me nauseous.
By the end of August I knew Strauss kept his dish towels in the bottom cabinet by the sink, his aspirin was in the nightstand, his shot glass sat in the basket on top of the refrigerator, and the oolong tea that I liked—and that Strauss bought at Macy’s just for me—was in the white canister with the rubber seal next to the coffee maker. I knew which drawer held his socks and which drawer held his underwear. I knew he put his pants on right leg first and knotted his tie without looking in the mirror, then did a quick check. I knew he loved to be teased, that he liked a hand on his waist and a finger looped under his belt and my other hand on the back of his neck when we kissed.
Strauss’s cleaning woman came once a week. But when I visited, I found gray buildup behind the faucet, three—month—old issues of The Economist on the coffee table, and coffee grounds scattered beneath the dusty, empty fruit bowl on the counter, and I found myself taking over the role Dodie always played when he visited me: fixing and tidying when Strauss was on the phone or in the bathroom, and happy when he came back and told me, “Looks good in here. Nice. Did you change something?” Why did I find this so gratifying? Why did I want to turn to him and say I am carrying your child? Why didn’t I put down my sponge and give him a swift kick in the shin instead of a French kiss?
For years I watched my mother, under the despotic reign of my father, press her lips together until they became thin as well—worn credit cards, and I swore I’d never hold my tongue for a man. I told myself—and plenty of others—that I would never get trapped in a relationship where the man controlled what did or didn’t get said, usually by means of wielding his wallet. I told myself I’d never be like Carol, who sneaked home the back way from the Boston Post Road shoe stores and buried the new pumps she bought at the back of the closet because Al Dante would hit the roof if he found out she had spent some of his bowling money on new heels—or any heels, for that matter—to wear to the next wedding. I swore I’d never get like my mother, who stashed away the last ten from her weekly grocery allowance in an old Kotex box, where she rightly figured my father would never look. I swore I’d never hide anything from a man. He could like me—and everything that went along with me—or lump me. That was his choice.
Yet if ever I felt subtly under a man’s thumb, it was with Strauss. I didn’t like that. But I loved that when I saw him in the hall at Boorman, my stomach dropped. I loved the way his name felt fresh on my tongue, odd and tangy as an Altoid’s. In all fairness, we both were aware of the discrepancy in this—a moment after making love, I called him by his last name, as if he were a drill sergeant barking out orders at boot camp. He said maybe I should call him something else—but he never went by Eben, and it had been years since anyone other than his parents and sister called him Ibby.
“How about your other girlfriends?” I asked. “What did they call you?”
“Before or after they broke up with me?”
“Did they always break up with you?”
“Maybe.”
“Why? Because you weren’t a good cook?”
“No, no.”
“You drove too fast.”
“Never an issue.”
“What then?”
“Actually, I’ve been accused of being domineering.”
“You?” I said, in mock disbelief “Domineering?”
“And I was trying so hard to conceal it.” He paused. “Another time I was told I was too much there. Whatever that means.” He took my hand in his and traced the lines inside my palm. “And you?” he asked. “I can’t imagine why they’d break it off with you. Unless they got sick of your backtalk.”
“Oh, they never stick around,” I said. “Besides, I’ve never been sorry to get rid of them.”
Strauss was quiet for a moment. “You’ve never felt serious about someone before?”
I shook my head.
He hesitated. “Maybe you will, someday.”
“Maybe.”
“Can I take you into New York next weekend?”
I assumed he meant to meet his parents. But I wasn’t disappointed when I answered yes and he told me good, because he already had booked a room at the Pierre and gotten tickets to Lincoln Center for a visiting production of Rigoletto.
“For your twenty—fifth and third—month birthday,” he said.
“How did you know it was coming up?”
“You forgot. I have access to your personnel file.”
I blushed. For now he knew my middle name was Assunta.
Chapter Nine
A Thunderously Dumb Guy
My phone rang just as Strauss picked up my suitcase to carry it down to his car.
“Skip it,” I said.
“But it might be something important. It might be your mother—”
I put up my hands to push Strauss out the door. But then the answering machine clicked on and Al announced, “Yo! Lise! Had the baby!”
“Have a seat,” I told Strauss, dropping my keys and purse. I ran to pick up the phone. “Congratulations, Al.”
“He came early,” Al said.
“So it was the famed boy, after all?”
“We’re looking at a sizable wiener here—”
In the background Carol said, “Al! Al! Cut it out!”
“So who does he look like?” I asked Al. “You?”
“Poor kid, huh? Hold on for Carol. I can’t even remember what color eyes he’s got. God, it was something, Lise. You shoulda been here.”
“Al started crying,” Carol told me when she got on the phone.
“Bullshit!” Al called out.
“It was so moving,” Carol said.
“Didn’t move fast enough!” Al added.
Carol gave me a long account of her sixteen—hour labor, and an even longer report on the last gruesome five minutes—the way Al had to push her legs up past her head, and the grunting and the groaning and the crowning of the baby’s head and how the nurses cheered her on and the way the doctor did nothing more than catch the kid and cut the cord, and for that he charged close to fifteen hundred dollars. Then she finally got around to describing Al Dante Junior—how sweet and warm and red he was. “Come and
see him.”
“I can’t,” I said. “Until next week. I’m going to New York. I was just leaving when Al called.”
“Visiting Dodie?” I hesitated. “Yup.”
“Change your plans.”
“Why don’t I come see you when you’re out of the hospital? I could help you out around the house for a couple of days.”
“That would be great. Although you’ll probably get grief from Mama about waiting until Monday.”
“Is she there?” I asked, wanting to get Mama’s tirade over with.
“Are you kidding? Would Al say wiener in front of her? She went to church to light a candle to Saint Anne—”
“Why am I not surprised?” I asked. “Tell her I’ll call over the weekend.”
I got off the phone after Carol made me promise—again, as if I would renege on my vow—to be the godmother. I went into the living room, where Strauss rose hastily from the couch.
“My sister had a baby boy.”
“So I gathered.”
“My brother—in—law’s name is Al.”
“I also gathered that.”
“His middle name is Dante. They called the baby Al Dante Junior.”
“You’re making that up. It’s a wicked gift you have, Lisar, this penchant for exaggeration.”
His eyes fixed on the coffee table. To my horror, I saw I had left out the first chapter of Stop It Some More, which I had been editing in red pen right before he came to pick me up.
“You didn’t tell me you had literary ambitions,” Strauss said.
“How far did you read?”
“Far enough.”
“So what’d you think of it?” I asked. “Not much, I guess.”
“On the contrary. I thought it was clever. And stylish. But a little too artificially witty. There also are a couple of credibility issues you might want to address.”
“You don’t think office romance is believable?”
“I don’t think this art—shop director—Donna, as you call her—would be quite so flirtatious on her first meeting with the chief financial officer. A grown man of forty probably wouldn’t go by Tommy. And I’m not certain Donna needs to wear green glasses to prove she’s the artistic type.”
I stared at him. “Maybe we can hire you in Editorial.”
He raised his eyebrow. “Maybe we can say doesn’t respond well to constructive criticism on your next employee evaluation.”
“You’re pissing me off.”
“You’re overreacting.”
“It’s just a first draft,” I said.
“When can I read more?”
“The story heats up in Chapter Two,” I said, heartily glad I hadn’t left that Don Juan subplot out on the table.
“I’m sure. Well, it’s funny, Lisar. And on the mark. How long have you been working on it?”
“Since I got hired.”
He hesitated. “Do you write it on company time?”
“Of course not,” I said, although I took company time almost daily to write short passages that appeared brilliant in the midst of inspiration—and complete dogshit one day later.
“That’s the same typeface as your printer at work,” Strauss said.
“What do you think I’m doing those Saturday afternoons when we’re both at Boorman?” I asked, for Strauss and I were known to drag ourselves in on the weekend—always arriving and leaving at separate times—to what I imagined was the silent amusement of the night and weekend watchman, Gussie. “I don’t have a computer here. I need to type it and print it.”
“I thought you were hard at work on projects for me and Peg.”
“Think again,” I said.
“Once or twice—before we went out together—I seem to remember you leaping up from your desk to block my view of your printer.”
“I was trying to show you my gorgeous body.”
“And your stockinged feet? Why don’t you buy more comfortable shoes that you don’t need to kick off beneath your desk?”
“Why don’t you mind your own business?”
He smiled. “I like making you my business.” He looked down at my manuscript. “Is writing something you’ve been burning to do with your life?”
“I don’t like to admit to it. Everybody wants to write a novel. And very few people do it right. I want to do it right.”
“This is a good start.”
“It feels kind of false.”
“You said it was a first draft.”
“I lied. It’s really my third.”
“Think of how good it’ll be on your fifth.”
“Actually, I can only think of how pissed my mother will be when she reads the seventh.”
“Why would she be angry? She isn’t the one being parodied.”
I shrugged. Then something in his tone of voice—too neutral—put me on the alert. “You think I’m parodying you.”
“Not at all.” But I was sure he saw himself in Thomas “Tommy” Akins, because he immediately switched the subject. “Aren’t you glad you picked up the phone? But I guess we need to change our plans.”
“I don’t want to change. I want to be with you. I’ll take Monday and Tuesday off With your permission, of course.”
I reached—again—for my purse and keys. Strauss reached down for my bag, then stopped himself. “Why didn’t you tell your sister why you were going to New York?”
My anger—at myself—for leaving that manuscript on the table came blurting out all at once. “I’m going to tell my sister I’m boinking my boss in a hotel room?”
“You might find a more elegant way to put it.”
I looked down at the carpet. I clutched my keys. “I’m sorry. I’m confused. I wish I hadn’t picked up that phone—”
“I understand. If it makes you feel any better, I felt a little thrown for a loop after my sister had her first baby. There was something … disconcerting about it.” He paused. “You’ve complained, but you seem to get along all right with your sister and brother—in—law.”
“Strauss,” I said, “be honest. I have a feeling you don’t really like this sister of yours.”
“It’s her husband I don’t like. The guy’s a full—time professional Jew … Lisar, are you crying?”
“Of course not,” I said, digging through my purse for a Kleenex. “I have something in my eye. I need to dust my apartment. Let’s take off, okay?”
Except to comment on how every classical deejay in the world felt Saturday morning was just the right time to play chestnuts such as The Four Seasons and Rhapsody in Blue, both Strauss and I were quiet on the drive into the city. I tried to forget how close I would have been to delivering a child by now, one that neither I nor its father even wanted. I told myself I had done the right thing. The right thing was to be by Strauss’s side. He was the only guy who ever had treated me decently, and I didn’t think God would object to that.
The entry of the Pierre was long and narrow, carpeted with a light blue and gold runner and lined with cloyingly rococo murals that pictured lush—lipped goddesses in pastoral settings. Beyond the heavy gilt mirrors and the clink of the silverware against bone—china cups in the Café Pierre, and beyond the hushed hallway of the twelfth floor—I was still me and Strauss was still Strauss. He made sure to tell me he found the Café Pierre a bit pretentious, but that certainly put him in another category than me, who never had set foot in the luxurious lobby and whose only knowledge of the hotel came from those discreet black—and—white ads in The New Yorker.
The whole thing smacked of a way of life neither one of us had been brought up to live. Yet because Strauss was older than I was—and traveled in different circles—he had grown accustomed to it. I looked away when he tipped the bellhop, just as I suddenly had found myself absorbed in inspecting the huge vase full of daylilies on the counter when Strauss gave his credit card to the clerk upon check—in. I also had every intention of looking away when he cleared the bill upon checkout, although I knew I would be consumed with cur
iosity to know the price he had paid to put his head next to mine on a Pierre pillow for just one night. The Pierre was not the kind of hotel where they listed the rates on the back of the room door, along with warnings not to smoke in bed and maps that showed where the ice machines and the video arcades and the indoor pool were located.
Our room—which was lightly scented by the fresh flowers on the mantel—overlooked the park and was dominated by a huge gilt mirror opposite the queen—size bed. I moved over to the writing table, where a black lacquer tray held a small stack of heavy cards printed with all the hotel information. I turned the top card over and found the menu of the Café Pierre. I noticed that a single grapefruit cost six dollars. In my head I heard my mother say, Where’s it imported from—the moon? And then I heard Strauss describing the café as pretentious, and I remembered his ex—fiancée—that nebulous piece of competition, the psychiatrist from Short Hills who I imagined always wore crisp white blouses under wool blazers.
My eyes went up to the mirror and connected with his. “You’ve been here before, haven’t you?”
He blinked. “I wish you wouldn’t ask me that.”
“Okay,” I said, for that was close enough to a yes. “Scratch that. I didn’t ask it.”
“I really just came here for lunch one time.”
“With another woman.”
“Of course with another woman. It wasn’t you, was it?”
“You could lie.”
“I don’t want to lie to you.”
“You could say you were here on business.”
“Would you believe that?”
“Was I born yesterday?”
“No. That’s why we’re here, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know,” I said. For all of a sudden I had no idea why I was there. Something felt unnatural and off. The previous evening I had gotten a haircut, and as I parked my hopeless head of curls beneath the beauty—salon dryer, I had picked up the latest issue of Glamour, where the lead article cautioned women that taking a vacation with a man often spelled instant death for the relationship. I had read the article word for word, then dismissed it as so much fluff The author clearly had some ax to grind against a former boyfriend. Yet there I stood in the Pierre, wondering how many rooms the hotel had, all full of couples weighted down with their own fears and grievances, sighing as they undressed to go to bed at night.