by Rita Ciresi
“If you came here with someone else,” I said, “then why did you bring me here?”
“It’s a beautiful hotel. I thought you’d like it. It seemed like the kind of place that would please a woman, any woman. Should I say anything more?”
I had to laugh. “Put down your shovel. You’ve dug yourself a grave deep enough.”
“I think you’re being overly sensitive. But I’m sure from reading that story of yours, you think I’m being—what did you call Tommy?—a thunderously dumb guy?”
“That was the expression.”
Strauss kissed me on the back of my head. “Somebody older is bound to have more experience—”
“How are we defining experience?”
“You know. Serious, or quasi—serious, relationships.”
“Like living with other people?”
“I’ve never done that. Unless you count six weeks of screwing like crazy in a college dorm room—”
“Let’s not count that,” I said. “If you have to know—”
“Oh, I don’t have to know anything—”
“No, let me say this. I’ve wanted to tell you this for a while. I was engaged once.”
I bit my lip, ashamed of myself. Of course he thought this information was new to me and that it needed to be presented quite carefully, so as not to further hurt my feelings. I tried to joke it off “So why don’t you have a mortage on a split level now and two—point—five kids?”
“It didn’t work out, that’s all. Some of it had to do with religion—”
“Why? If you were both Jewish?”
“I didn’t say she was.”
I thought quickly. “You told me once you’d never slept with anyone eligible to attend a DAR meeting, so I just assumed—”
“Well. You assumed right. And there were these parent problems.”
“Hers or yours?”
“Both. It was awkward. Hers were—how should I say it? Vastly more upscale?”
“How about stinkingly rich?” I said.
“I knew you’d find the right phrase. And there were other issues.”
“Such as?”
“We didn’t get along in bed.”
“Oh.”
“Not the way I get along with you.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, I know there’s more to life than bed.”
“Of course.”
“It just seemed a good indication of some deeper problem.”
I waited for him to expand on the subject, but no elaboration was forthcoming. I moved over to the window and looked down at the flattened yellow tops of taxicabs, the seemingly miniature tourists strolling down the park, and the bright blue Strand Bookseller’s stall parked right across the street, which I hoped to check out later. He came up behind me. “It’s a beautiful view,” I said. I was wearing two-and-a-half-inch heels, and I didn’t even have to reach up to give him what I hoped he took for a grateful kiss. I could never stay in the Pierre on my own. But the faster my debts toward Strauss piled up, the more I wanted to know what he wanted back from me, and the more I kept thinking things like, God, I should make him a nice dinner.
But I had made him a nice dinner. Once. Or at least I tried to. But without my mother—or Dodie—by my side, I wasn’t half as good a cook. The veal was tough, the asparagus stringy, I was all apologies, Strauss was all thanks, and after that he never told me his mother spent a lot of time in the kitchen again.
The Met on a Saturday was so packed it felt like Macy’s day—after—Thanksgiving sale. After a quick perusal of the map, we hit the Dutch exhibit and then moved over to the impressionist rooms. We both admired the hushed, muted canvases by Degas. Strauss liked the racehorses the best.
“Which is your favorite?” he asked.
I pointed to a blurred pastel of a woman bent over an ironing board. Her hair swung down, hiding her face, and her upper arms seemed tired from the labor. For me, that was art: the ability to make beauty out of sadness.
“But why do you like that one? Do you identify with the woman in the picture?”
The question annoyed me. “Do you identify with the horse?”
“Of course not,” Strauss said. The closest he’d ever gotten to a horse in his life was rooming with a polo player at Cornell. He was from a fine Louisville family and sported a Roman numeral after his name.
“Sounds like a jerk,” I said.
“I see we have strong opinions.”
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked. “And why do you think I’d identify with a laundry lady, even if I did tell you my mother actually owns a washboard?”
“Lisar, please. You’re so defensive. I—” Strauss stopped. He told me the question was a compliment, of sorts. For he had noticed—and Peg had too—that in spite of my jaded attitude about Boorman and corporate life in general, I had an extremely strong work ethic: When the heat was on, I kept my head down and concentrated on the task.
“Sometimes that’s out of competition,” I said, “not the work ethic. Sometimes it just feels good to beat out other women.”
My use of the word women was interesting, Strauss said.
“I work in an all—female department,” I reminded him.
“So you do.”
“And Karen’s job is open.”
“She’s on leave, Lisar.”
“So what? She may never come back.”
He frowned. “How do you know?”
I kept my eyes on the washerwoman. “I just don’t think she’s coming back.”
“This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“If you’re inclined to repeat the rumor, just remember you didn’t hear it from my big mouth.”
“Did she tell you in confidence? If she told you in confidence, then you shouldn’t have told me.”
We kept on walking through the gallery. Pisarro’s admittedly dull takes on the French countryside didn’t seem to interest Strauss half as much as what I knew about Karen. He kept his eyes more on the polished floor than on the artwork. “Don’t your feet hurt in those heels?” he finally asked me.
“Not at all.”
“Let’s sit down here for a moment, so you can rest.”
“I don’t need to rest.”
“I need to clean my glasses.”
We sat down in the center of the gallery on a foolish tufted pouf that squeaked and groaned under our weight. Sunlight flooded the bleached floor and glinted off the black hair of a group of Asian tourists. A team of Swedes—big and blond as plowhorses—forged after the Asians. A woman walking backward—carrying a miniature French flag to keep her group together—paused in front of a fat Renoir portrait. It was like watching the opening—day parade at the Olympics.
Strauss, of course, was oblivious to all this, for he had reached into his pocket for his handkerchief and taken off his glasses. “Now that you’ve started, maybe you’d like to finish your story.”
I shrugged. The harm already had been done. I didn’t see any reason not to tell him why Karen was considering not coming back. “She said her husband might have a chance to join another firm. In White Plains. He’d make a lot more there. Then she could stay home with the baby and still make her mortgage payment.”
“That doesn’t sound like anything definite to me,” Strauss said. “Besides, if she left, she’d owe Boorman a big chunk of back pay.”
“Maybe she thinks it’s worth it,” I said. The methodical way he cleaned his glasses irritated me. “You’ve already cleaned that lens.”
“So I have.”
“Maybe you should get contacts.”
“I can’t. I have astigmatism.” He put his glasses back on. “I shouldn’t ask you this. But did Karen really seem inclined to leave if she had the chance?”
“I didn’t discourage her,” I said.
“What are you driving at?”
“I mean—in case it hasn’t crossed your mind—I wouldn’t mind moving into her office.”
“I am not dense. It’s don
e more than cross my mind.” He pushed up his glasses. “It would be a good promotion for you.”
“Yes.”
“But you can’t go for it, of course.”
I shifted my position and the pouf let out an angry groan. “What do you mean? Of course I’ll go for it.”
“You haven’t been on board long enough. There are plenty of women in your department who have been there much longer than you—”
“They don’t have the drive. Or the initiative. Besides, I’m the logical replacement. I’m assistant manager. And even you said Peg thought I was a workhorse. And liked me.” I pinched him on his sleeve. “Maybe you don’t like me enough.”
“But Lisar—that’s the problem—I do—” He lowered his voice, although no one could possibly overhear us in the echoing din of that crowded gallery. “Don’t you see how complicated that would be? What an awkward position you’d place me in?”
“Nobody knows.”
“But if it should come out. If people thought you moved up due to unfair means, it would be very unpleasant for you.”
“You mean, it would be unpleasant for you.”
“For both of us. Besides, the search will have to be advertised, at least locally, because of affirmative action. And please let’s not get into that issue again—”
The one and only time we had ventured onto that topic, it had quickly degenerated into a heated discussion about why Jews weren’t considered minorities. I said they should be and he said they should not.
Jews are hardly the minority in New York, Lisar.
Boorman isn’t New York. Boorman closes on Good Friday.
Yes, so all the executives can go golfing, provided the course still isn’t under snow and ice.
Do they ask you along?
Of course not. Everyone knows how hopeless my golf game is.
Do they ask once—upon—a—pro Peg?
No. But I can’t blame them. I hope you don’t think I’m a chauvinist, but there’s something humiliating about being walloped on the green by a fifty—five—year—old woman. I work on Good Friday morning and so does Peg. Then she takes me out to lunch and goes off to do her eighteen holes with—with someone else.
Because he seemed irritated, I hadn’t dared pursue the subject. But now I said to him, “You know, Strauss, you never told me if Peg orders fish sticks or steak at those Good Friday lunches.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Lisar. Peg’s as Protestant as they come. Besides, you yourself ate the meatballs—two weeks ago—when we went out to Friday dinner.”
Ever since that first date—when I had foolishly announced I kept meatless Fridays—I had taken great care not to slip up and prove myself a liar. I must have had too much wine before I ordered. “Why didn’t you stop me?”
“I remembered after the fact.”
“Thank you for pointing my sins out.”
“I forgive you.”
“You’re not God,” I said.
“I never claimed to be—”
“And I don’t want to argue about meatballs in the middle of the Metropolitan Museum—”
“Neither do I.” He rose from the pouf and held out his hand to me, which I grudgingly accepted.
But I could tell he was brooding about my gossip as we walked down a long corridor lined with pastels. We finished up the impressionist rooms in silence, and by the time we got to the bolder colors that signaled the approach of the Fauves, Strauss said, “I’m just surprised, that’s all. You just told me you’d give anything to write your book—”
“How do you propose I’d pay off my student loans doing that?”
“—and you’ve never seemed totally attached to your job at Boorman.”
“But, Strauss,” I said. “You seem frustrated with it too.”
“I am not frustrated. I don’t know why you think I’m frustrated. I’ve never spoken against the company once to you.”
“Just a feeling,” I said.
“And what gives you that feeling?”
“For starters, you’re hanging out with me, and you know I don’t totally buy into the Boorman party line.”
“No one totally buys into the party line. You play along with it to get ahead.”
“You just criticized me for wanting to get ahead.”
He sidestepped that one. “You know I can’t very well complain about work—” he said, stopping just short of saying to you. But we both knew what he meant: Management should not bitch about the corporation to underlings. Management should show company loyalty at all times. Management should not look at the devil in a Gauguin painting and say—as I did—“Ha, doesn’t that look just like the CEO?” Management should not lead the flocks down to the display of arms and armor and remark—as I did again—that a sword of tempered steel and a flintlock musket would come in handy at one of Boorman’s contentious staff meetings.
Strauss actually laughed. So I dared to tease him. “You’d look mighty fine in one of those Joan of Arc helmets,” I told him.
“You might be better suited to that outfit, since you’re feeling so feisty all of a sudden. Besides, isn’t that a typical Catholic schoolgirl fantasy, to play Joan of Arc?”
I told him no: it was to be the ultimate in the madonna/whore dichotomy, Maria in The Sound of Music, because she got to be a nun, but fuck the handsome captain too. It went without mentioning—although I was dumb enough to actually say it—that in the magical world of Rodgers and Hammerstein, as in the dream world of Jane Eyre, no one blew the whistle when the master of the house made a move on the governess. “Nobody called that sexual harassment,” I said.
It was hard to tell which man most strongly—and silently—disapproved of my behavior: Strauss, who gave me one of his impassive stares, or the security guard positioned like a statue in the far doorway, who glared at me as I stepped back and bumped into a sign that described the roped—off exhibit: some contraption that was forerunner of the cannon.
“Look out,” Strauss said. “You might set that thing off.”
I turned to steady the sign. “I think I’ve already caused enough trouble for one afternoon.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more.” He pushed back his cuff and looked at his watch. “Shall we go?”
“Wait a second. There must be a muzzle in here somewhere—”
“You have my permission to steal it—and wear it—”
“How do you know I don’t want to put it on you?”
“—on the way out.” He pointed toward the door.
As we exited the room under the close scrutiny of the guard, we passed beneath a large red and black standard that reminded me of the flag hanging from the front of the Von Trapp family mansion when Maria and the Captain came back flushed and glowing from their honeymoon. Only then did I remember that the backdrop of The Sound of Music was the German occupation of Austria, to which Rodgers and Hammerstein also gave a ludicrous fairy—tale ending. Strauss probably was appalled by such a naive portrayal of the Nazi era. I couldn’t blame him. Anyone whose father—or mother—had suffered in the war could hardly be expected to sit back with a bucket of popcorn in the movie theater and enjoy watching the dashing Christopher Plummer come out from behind the gravestones (in his jaunty Austrian felt hat) to wrestle the gun away from the Nazi youth telegram boy. Lacking such emotional baggage, Carol and I had loved the movie simply for its improbable outcome, which promised that a poor girl with a flat chest could beat out a rich baroness with cleavage.
We left the museum, stepping around the tourists sitting on the long stone steps and the bold pigeons that stalked up and down the sidewalk, their eyes on the lookout for bits of hot—dog buns and cast—off soft pretzels.
As the M3 bus roared off the curb, I offered Strauss my hand. “Let’s walk back.”
“You don’t exactly have hiking boots on,” he said.
“You don’t like these shoes, do you?”
“Heels are not safe. If someone ran after you, you’d never be able to escape.”
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“You’re here to protect me. And scold me.”
“The scolding is for your own good.”
“How do you know my good?” I asked. “I don’t pretend to know yours.”
“I don’t think you do. Otherwise you would listen to what I have to say. Lisar, I want you to listen to what I have to say, put aside these jokes for half a second about wanting to be Julie Andrews—”
“I don’t want to be Julie Andrews,” I said. “She has a flat chest and a butch haircut!” I walked quickly by the museum fountain, as if to prove to Strauss I really could do the twelve—minute mile with a man hot on my too—high heels.
“Listen to me, Lisar—”
“I’m listening,” I said, and kept on marching.
“Slow down, please. You’re going to twist your ankle—”
“These are only two—and—a—half—inch heels!” I said, and purposefully stopped to look him dead—level in the eye.
He frowned at me. “You know this is precisely what I’ve been trying to tell you all along. We don’t live in the world of American musical theater, or in the pages of some eighteenth—century novel—”
“Jane Eyre is nineteenth—century.”
From the annoyed way he pushed up his glasses, I could tell he hadn’t read it. “Whatever. This is the twentieth century and the fact is, some people wouldn’t look very kindly on what’s happening between you and me. At some point it will have to change.”
“So how are you proposing a change?”
“I’m not proposing a change—just yet. I’m concerned now that someone else will put it to a stop. And I hope I don’t need to name names.”
“You needn’t name names,” I said.
“Although you’re certainly throwing names around left and right today.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Strauss took my elbow and put his head down close to mine, as if the very pigeons scattering in front of us could be offended. “Did you or did you not practically yell the word butch back there on the sidewalk?”