by Rona Jaffe
When the singing was over the guests applauded for a long time and seemed genuinely impressed. A few of them went over and told Silky they liked her. The King James Version started blasting away again. Dick grabbed Gerry’s hand.
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” he said.
She saw that Libra had trapped Silky in a conversation and the Satins had disappeared. Libra was probably giving her notes about what they had done tonight, and catching up on what had happened out of town. It was just like him to talk business right here and now without even giving her a chance to say hello to Dick.
“Come on,” Dick said again.
“All right.”
They got their coats at the door and left, without bothering to say anything to their host and hostess, who were dancing wildly and couldn’t care less. The air outside was fresh and very cold. The doorman got them a cab.
“That was a New York party,” Dick said. “The way I know it was a party is that I’ll read it was tomorrow in the newspaper. Otherwise I wouldn’t know what it was. I knew it wasn’t a wake because at a wake there’s only one dead body, but here there were about a hundred.”
Gerry laughed. She was glad he wasn’t impressed with the B.P.’s and their friends. For a while she thought he was.
He told the cab to wait when they got to her building and he walked her to the door. He gave her a look she couldn’t read—was it affection, amusement, affectionate amusement?
“Good night,” he said. “Sleep well. I’ll call you tomorrow.” And then he was gone. She went upstairs. It was two o’clock and she was tired. She set the alarm for eight. Dick was nice, and she felt at ease with him. She liked him. He probably liked her. You couldn’t tell, really, what he was thinking about at any given time. He seemed so cool and self-sufficient, he had good manners, he knew exactly what he was doing. Did he act the way he did because he was so smart, or didn’t he really need anybody? She decided that she intended to find out.
CHAPTER SIX
There is a Limit to the amount of loneliness a person can take, and spring is the silly season. Loneliness makes you live in fantasies until you are ready to fall in love with the phantom lover. When he appears, whoever he is, you are ready for him. If he appears in spring, so much the better, for you are that much more ready for him. So when Gerry asked Dick to dinner at her apartment a week after the B.P.’s party—her first dinner guest—and when after dinner he took her to bed as naturally as if they both belonged in each other’s lives, her reaction was excitement, tenderness, and even hope.
She had always been a guarded person, very much aware of what was a fling or a one-night stand and what was more, and afterward, with Dick, she tried to keep rational but it was difficult. She had always suspected that she would never be able to feel the real happiness of love if she was not ready to risk the pain of a mistake, and this time, lying in Dick’s arms feeling elated and protected, she decided to try to take the chance.
Libra had called him Dick Devoid. Libra was full of slogans and nicknames. Whatever Dick was devoid in, it certainly wasn’t charm or masculinity. Perhaps it was character. But if he was, he certainly hadn’t shown it with her. She could tell Dick really liked her. Perhaps whatever he had done to other people’s lives, if indeed he had done anything destructive, which she doubted, had only been done because he was looking for more than he had found.
During their lovemaking she had thought he’d said he loved her. She was too wise to question him about it after their passion was over—for all she knew, she had told him she loved him, too. If he loved her, or grew to love her, he would say so when he was ready. It was sad, she thought, to be so self-protective as she was, but she couldn’t act any other way. She had learned that love was something you could really believe you felt for a moment or an hour, but it was not a promise. During the moment it was felt, it was real.
But the next morning when he left and she had to go to the office, she found herself daydreaming, looking out the window of the suite at the green spring trees in the park, and she was full of bittersweet joy and yearning for him. She liked the way the hair grew on the back of his neck—had she ever thought he had thin, ridiculous hair? Oh, but it was baby-fine and soft. And she liked his mouth. He wasn’t cuddly to sleep with; he liked to stay on the far side of the bed, and that made her feel lonely; but in the morning when he woke up he looked so glad to see her that she was reassured. And he had almost made her late for work. It obviously wasn’t just a jump in the hay the night before because she was there; they had wanted each other again in the morning—or was that just because she was there? No, she wouldn’t allow herself to be cynical about him. She wouldn’t allow herself to spoil what they had.
When he called her that afternoon she was so overjoyed she almost said something silly and sentimental. She had thought about him all day. He said he had to work that night but would see her the following night. He hadn’t had to say anything. But he had, and he had put himself in the position of responsibility toward her. He had set the relationship, he had steered it, and she was going to try to trust him. Even while thinking she would try to trust him she knew she was already hooked. It didn’t make any sense, but she was hooked.
After that she saw him every other night. It seemed an intelligent pattern, for if they had spent all their time together they might have grown tired of each other. Gerry had learned that sex made a relationship advance in a lopsided way; the sex made two people seem much closer than they really were emotionally. It took a long time to feel close emotionally. What had Silky said that night at the party? “It takes a long time to make a friend.” It took only a night to make a lover. A lover wasn’t a friend. Still, she could tell Dick everything. He was a sounding board, a fellow cynic, an ally. He laughed at the things she laughed at, no one impressed or deceived him. If she looked the slightest bit unhappy he was so quick to notice and ask her why that she took to trying to look happy all the time.
He sent her flowers, and he bought her silly presents. Sometimes he telephoned her at midnight and told her he had just come from a boring business meeting and he needed her. Then she would get dressed and go to his apartment, where he would cook spaghetti—although there were a lot of gourmet things in the cupboards and lying around in the refrigerator—and they would stay up until four o’clock. She began to leave her make-up on until midnight every night when he was not with her, hoping he would call. Sometimes he would call late and come to her apartment. He didn’t like to go out. But he did seem to keep going out to those dinners where he was invited as the extra man, and although it began to annoy her Gerry realized that was one of the advantages of being an attractive bachelor in New York, and she couldn’t ask him to give it up until he was ready. She wished someone would invite her somewhere so she could be popular and unavailable, too, but no one did. She hadn’t run around looking for men before and she couldn’t change her pattern now. She had always been a one-man woman; all or nothing. She was twenty-six, and she’d been dating—how long? Fourteen years! That was a long time and she was bored with dating. If she couldn’t be married, at least she could have the next best thing—someone she cared about whom she spent all her time with. Sometimes Libra made her work late, and she was irritated and nervous about it, although she knew it was a good thing because she wasn’t always on call for Dick. Work wasn’t as romantic as a party she had been invited to, but if there were no parties for unattached, attractive girls because there were too many of them already, at least work was better than sitting home waiting for him to call.
The stove and pots and pans in Dick’s apartment looked well used, and Gerry thought he must have had someone living with him quite recently who had been domestic. But there was no other sign of a girl, no old make-up, no left-over clothes. He had a maid who came in every day and he himself was personally immaculate. He was too neat and too secure to leave any clues of previous love affairs. Since she wasn’t very domestic herself she didn’t try to change him. Spaghetti was
fine. Once in a while she brought him a bottle of good wine, which they shared in bed, but it was only a personal gesture because he had enough cases of wine and liquor to open a bar. He really didn’t seem to need anything, not even company. She knew if he wanted her there it was because she really meant something to him.
At the end of the month she handed Libra a bill for all the quarters she had spent as tips in the Ladies’ Room in the hotel lobby.
“What the hell is this?” Libra asked her, waving the bill at her.
“You told me the first day, remember?”
“Told you what?”
“To use the Ladies’ Room in the lobby, Mr. Libra,” she said sweetly.
Libra exploded with laughter. “I like you,” he said. “You’re a lunatic.” But she knew what he meant was that she was a smart girl and not one to be pushed around. “Would you be insulted if I asked you to do me the favor of using the facilities this office provides from now on? I can’t afford tips.”
“All right.”
He didn’t reimburse her for the tips, which, after all, had not amounted to much except another blow to her ego, but that night when she got home there was a case of champagne from Libra with a card that said: “Drink this at home so you won’t pee on my time.”
She and Dick both laughed about it, and Dick bought caviar, which they both loved, to go with the champagne. It gave them many happy evenings at home. Oh, things were really going well—Libra liked and respected her, Dick was a part of her life and she cared about him more every day. She had been right to come back to New York and start her life again. If only Dick could become a part of her life forever she would be the happiest woman in the world.
She didn’t want to think about marrying him, but the thought still entered her mind when she was not guarded against it, and it eventually became an unavoidable wish. They had so much in common, their interests, their work, the things that gave them pleasure, their sense of humor, their observations about life—and he was a perfect lover. She wanted him more all the time. She knew she would be good for him because she understood him and she was intelligent and attractive enough for him. He was certainly good for her. She looked forward to every day now that she was with him. How many months did it take for a man to decide he really needed a girl? She usually thought of herself as a woman, but sometimes she realized she was a girl. She had always dreaded being one of those ladies from the Helen Hokinson cartoons who called themselves “girls” when they were middle-aged. But when did you stop being a girl? When you were married, certainly. She knew Dick had never been married. He never said anything bad about marriage the way most men did, nor did he say he wanted to be married. They really had never discussed it, except as a passing comment, but most of the men she had known had made it very clear that they thought marriage was a trap. A man like Dick who was too secure to protest was probably the hardest kind of man to trap. Wasn’t marriage a trap? What did he have to gain? She was the one with everything to gain. He wouldn’t go to any more dinners as the extra man, she would see him all the time. They could live together and have children. Dick had managed to keep their romance on the dating level even though it was an affair; he didn’t suggest she leave any little things in his apartment or that she stay even for an entire weekend. She had too much pride to deposit extra clothes and make-up at his place to get a hold on him. It was much too easy to make a little package of an unwanted girl’s things and leave it with the doorman. That was a humiliation she was determined would never happen to her.
But she really did trust him. It was just that she knew he was the one who always had to call the shots, and to tell the truth she found it easier that way. He would lead and she would follow. Anywhere …
CHAPTER SEVEN
Lizzm Libra, née Elizabeth Bentley Marchman, had been in the top third of her class at college and editor of the Senior Yearbook. When she married Sam Leo Libra she had not ceased to have a creative function and had never allowed herself to dwindle into a mere wife. Never mind your ticker-tape parades—Lizzie Libra was a one-woman congratulatory committee in bed. She had slept with Dick Devoid the night the Let It All Hang Out Show had won the Emmy Award, she had slept with Mad Daddy the week his picture was on the cover of TV Guide, and she had slept with Franco (who swung both ways) when he had his picture in Time Magazine. She had slept with each and every member of the King James Version (the drummer was her favorite) and Shadrach Bascombe had broken training for her when he was getting all that publicity as the hottest new future contender. He had broken training for her, and she had crossed the color line for him, she later told her analyst in delight. That Shadrach had been really frustrated in training camp: six times in one night … whew! No wonder they called him Shack-Up Bascombe, one nickname that hadn’t been created by Sam.
She had slept with Arnie Gurney, of course, long ago, on one of the trips to Las Vegas where Lizzie was allowed to accompany her husband. She had slept with poor, dear, dead Douglas Henry, and she’d had a crack at two of Sylvia Polydor’s ex-husbands, while they were still married to Sylvia, of course, or they wouldn’t have been anybody. She had slept with adorable Zak Maynard the night of the B.P.’s party, and a few days after the party she had also slept with Mr. B.P. himself, Peter Potter, who may have been beautiful but certainly had a lot to learn in bed.
Except for Shadrach, who was a darling beast, and Dick, who was sweet and romantic, Lizzie did not really bother to rate any one of her famous lovers as any better than the others in the kip, since the feeling that overwhelmed her when she saw each famous face above hers in the feathers was something akin to a heady drunkenness. She had even been happy with Peter Potter, even though he was a premature ejaculator, because after all, he was a B.P. and he was with her. If she had been asked to describe any of her sexual encounters—and Dr. Picker, her analyst, always wanted her to describe them—she would have been at a loss, almost an amnesiac. It was great. She had been happy, overjoyed, ecstatic.
“Did you come?” Dr. Picker would ask (oh, those old fossils, they really tried to talk so hip!), and she always said “Yes,” because it was none of his business. She was not in analysis to discuss her womanliness, although Dr. Picker seemed to consider that an issue.
Why was she in analysis? Well, because she cheated on her husband, she supposed, since that wasn’t a well-adjusted thing to do. And because she was bored to death, and talking to Dr. Picker gave her something to think about when she wasn’t with him, trying to think of new, lively stories to tell him. She was sure she was Dr. Picker’s most interesting client, although he insisted on telling her dull stories about other interesting patients, which Lizzie truly did not think was very ethical. Of course, he never mentioned names, but he gave out enough hints as to background and occupation and marital difficulties that if she had really tried she could have figured out who they were.
Dr. Picker was a shrunken little old man from Germany, fortunately not a Nazi, and besides being at least a hundred years old he sat in his dingy office, laden with Biedermeyer furniture, all day long, so she supposed the juicy stories the patients told him gave him his view of what life outside was really all about. It killed her the way he tried to alter his language to get on the patient’s wavelength, the poor old vicarious letch.
DR. PICKER: “It iss not zat ve haf zis problem vit scwewing, as you put it, but zat ve scwew only stars.”
LIZZIE: “Dr. Picker, I wish you would stop saying ‘we.’”
She supposed he really did think it was the two of them that were busy scwewing stars, but she had news for him: while she was doing it she never gave him a thought.
It had all started years ago in Hollywood. Not that she didn’t love Sam—she did, she adored him. He was the most brilliant man she had ever met. Why else would she have married him? But Sam had opened up a whole new world to her in Hollywood, and she was proud to think (if it was something to be proud of) that she had never, never even kissed a beachboy, gigolo, or unknown male starlet, nor
any of her friends’ husbands, unless, of course, the friends’ husbands were famous.
She had never been predatory, and she had never even intended to start. But at one party (she even remembered what she had been wearing) there had been a great circle of people around Douglas Henry, who was young then and terribly attractive. Douglas Henry never cheated on his wife, and he was known to be kind but aloof. Knowing he was no danger whatsoever, Lizzie had been nice to him at the party (the first time she’d ever met him) and had proceeded to do his horoscope. He was a Virgo, and she had told him that Virgos were undersexed. He had raised an eyebrow at her.
“Oh?”
She had glanced at his attractive wife across the room. “Well, I mean that if they do love anybody, they love that person forever and are always faithful.”
“Thank you very much,” Douglas Henry had said, and the next day he had called her.
She told him Sam was already at the office, but Doug said he wanted to see her. So he had come over, and Lizzie, demurely dressed in a sundress, had tried to hand him a drink. There she was with the drink in her hand, and he had unzipped quick as a flash and laid his cock in her other hand. None of those young stars wore underwear. Well, what was she to do? She just held it, with the drink still in her other hand, and she thought it (his cock) was certainly very large. Then he had picked her up and tossed her on the couch, pulled her clothes off, and proceeded to show her that Virgos weren’t undersexed at all.
She wasn’t drunk, having had only one drink before he arrived, but sleeping with him absolutely intoxicated her. She felt the room reeling, and knew she was grinning and giggling like an idiot. He thought his masculinity had really flipped her out, and they had an affair for several weeks before he had to go away on location to do another picture. Lizzie did a lot of investigation among the industry gossips and discovered that if Douglas Henry ever had any affairs he had always been so discreet about it that no one knew for sure. Why, she had been the chosen one! She couldn’t figure out why. She certainly wasn’t sexy or beautiful. Hollywood was full of carefully manufactured sex machines. But he had chosen her!