"It was on my way and no trouble at all. Thanks for the taxi ride. If I had been by myself, I would probably have taken the subway." She stood up. "Shall I clean up the tea things?"
"No, leave them."
She wondered whether to shake his hand, but felt awkward, and in the end she simply left. "Don't get up. I'll see myself out," she assured him. She couldn't help contrasting this visit with the other visit last spring. Then the sharp banter between the men had intrigued, even excited her. She perfectly recalled the cool May twilight lit by slanting yellow sunlight, the fresh fragrances of flowers and new leaves, the steady murmur of passing traffic, and, permeating all of these like a background, the faint fetid odor of the river.
Walking down the street after that visit, she'd seemed to float rather than step. She'd felt somehow transported—or transformed. Had she fallen in love with Paul at that moment? She could no longer be sure, but of this she was certain: she'd been inspired with the conviction that life was mysteriously beckoning to her.
Now, in contrast, she felt confusion and doubt. She even questioned Bryce's politeness. In retrospect it seemed too deliberate, even unctuous. She realized, as she descended in the elevator, crossed the lobby, and walked past the adjacent rowhouses to her own address, that Bryce kept his own counsel, and he had already chosen a course of action. She appreciated that he was a man of depth and complexity. Perhaps she ought to be grateful that he was extending his hospitality to her. After all, he didn't have to.
She tried to guess his thoughts. Very likely he was intending to repay her and Jeanne by inviting them to a party. Then he could consider the slate wiped clean. He also might be trying to prove to her and Jeanne that he and Paul were a united couple, even if this wasn't really the case.
She could probably come up with other reasons, too, if she tried. As she unlocked the door to her apartment, she reminded herself that she didn't have to decide immediately if she wanted to go to Bryce's party.
* * *
After saying goodbye to Althea and Bryce, Jeanne walked home. As she entered her apartment, the blinking red light on her phone machine informed her that someone had called in her absence. She rewound the tape, but not far enough at first, for she found herself listening to the middle of a sentence. She recognized the voice of the caller instantly. With a thrill of excitement, she located the start of the message.
"This is René Duval. Do you remember me? We met at The Mount Restoration last Monday."
As if she wouldn't remember him! she thought, as the message continued, "It's Saturday, after five o'clock. I'm at the offices of an architectural firm in Boston, where I've been working as a consultant. I had to go in to work this afternoon, and I'm just finishing up now. I'm calling to tell you that I'll be in New York at the beginning of the week, on business.
"I realize this is short notice, but I'm hoping I can see you. I'll try you again, or else, if you like, you can call me. My home number is 617-926-3124.
"Right now I'm alone in the office. The others have gone, and I'm standing at the window, thinking of you. It's the end of a day so mild that it seems like spring. From my window I can see the Charles River basin and a beautiful, nuanced, golden-brown sunset, moving and precarious. Au revoir."
Jeanne was entranced by René's recorded voice, silky and passionate, and his poetic speech. Less than a week had passed since they'd met, but after the events of this afternoon and evening, it seemed like a long time ago. She wondered why she wasn't more suspicious of him. Somehow he inspired belief in her, and yet her responsive warmth made her feel shy. She was eager to speak to him.
Glancing at her watch, she realized that it was after eleven o'clock. Shall I call him right back? she wondered. If I lose my nerve, I can always hang up. He'll probably be out anyway; it's Saturday night.
She dialed his number. To her surprise, he picked up the phone.
"Hello, René?"
"Jeanne." He pronounced her name in the French way, rhyming it with "ahn."
"Is this too late to call? Are you alone?" She could have bitten her tongue for asking that last question.
But he let it go. "I'm wide awake and all alone. I suspect you are, too, or you wouldn't be phoning me."
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be snooping."
"I think you did, but I accept the apology."
"And I accept your invitation." She realized that she appreciated his candor. "I'm looking forward to seeing you again. When do you arrive?"
"Tuesday morning. I have meetings on Tuesday afternoon and all day Wednesday. Are you free on Tuesday evening for dinner?"
"Yes. Where would you like to go?"
"It doesn't matter. You select the restaurant."
She gave him her number at work, and they agreed to speak again on Tuesday. Then he said good-bye and hung up so abruptly that she found herself wondering if he was really alone after all.
From René, her thoughts returned to Paul. She hoped he was asleep and not suffering from pain in that depressing hospital room. She considered how her life seemed to be opening with possibility just when his was closing in. How strange it was to feel pity for him; it didn't seem right.
* * *
The morning after his surgery, Paul awoke feeling wretched, and in the days that followed, his state of mind went from bad to worse. At first, after the accident, he hadn't been able to think at all. Others had taken over and cared for him. Afterwards he was under sedation from the pain that continued to increase just when he'd assumed it would be lessening. Then he became groggy from morphine and the after-effects of the anesthesia.
How he disliked the hospital—the regimentation, the unpleasant odors, the constant noise. The offerings of flowers and other gifts that filled his room were like gilding over an essential grimness.
Once he might have found in the selection and abundance of these gifts a measure of his importance. He would have enjoyed the possession of so much bounty. But now, mired in apathy, he hardly cared. Any other attitude, he decided, was a pretense. He thought he wished to be left alone, and so he suffered from the intrusions of visitors, from the phone calls, and the cards with cheery messages.
The day after the operation his parents had telephoned from Minnesota. They had heard the news from "your roommate," as they referred to Bryce. Now they wanted to learn about it from Paul directly. But Paul couldn't bring himself to say very much. Hearing himself speak of the accident made it seem unreal and distant, as if it were an event that had happened to someone else.
He knew that, no matter what he really desired, he would have to change this reaction, but he didn't realize how much resistance he would give himself. How he wished that he might have regaled his parents instead with accounts of recent triumphs on the stage, but the opportunity for that conversation had come and gone.
"How long will you be in the hospital?" his mother asked.
"I don't know."
"Should I come to New York?"
"She'll come if you like," Paul's father emphasized, lending an awkward note to an already strained conversation.
"It's not necessary," Paul assured them.
Their relief was so palpable that Paul could sense it over the long-distance phone lines. Nevertheless, his mother wanted to feel good about being let off the hook. "Are you sure?" she insisted.
"Yes."
"We want you to know that we're here for you if you need us," his father reminded him.
To Paul, however, his father's tone of voice, questioning rather than confident, seemed to belie this assertion. Besides, Paul had known for years that his mother didn't really like presiding over sickrooms. He predicted that Bryce and she would clash if she stayed in the apartment, and if he put her in a hotel, her feelings would be wounded. He concluded that, inevitably, her visit would be more of a burden than a blessing.
Just as he was trying to figure out how not to say any of this and still persuade her that she needn't feel bad about not coming, there came a knock on the door to his room
. He was able to excuse himself from the phone without actually bringing the conversation to a close. "I'll be in touch," he assured his parents without conviction.
After he hung up, Paul spoke to the door, shut three quarters closed: "Come in."
It opened, revealing Kurt Matthews with the company in tow. With hearty hellos, they entered the room, crowding the available space. Immediately Paul was given a large box of imported chocolates. After he removed the wrapper, he handed the box to Eric, asking him to pass it around. Pamela presented Paul with a lime-green stuffed alligator which wore a collar around its neck displaying the following warning: "I bite." "For protection against the doctors," Hector explained.
From the instant they arrived, Paul wished they would leave. He could hardly bear to accept their concern. It was too painful for him to observe his fellow dancers and friends, relaxed and contented, now that their engagement was over, an acknowledged success. He didn't want to hear about the final performance at the Joyce Theater, in which he'd been replaced. Fortunately, they were sensitive to his feelings, for after he failed to ask, no one offered to tell him. In addition, they all avoided the obvious question: would he be coming back to the company, and in what capacity?
After some innocuous exchanges between Paul, Kurt, and other dancers, Hector and Eric, irrepressible for long, were beginning to enliven the atmosphere with their brand of humor, when the visit was ended by the arrival of Paul's lunch. "It's time for the patient to eat," announced the aide who had brought the tray, as she shooed the Kurt Matthews Dancers out of the room. "You can come back later." Once Paul might have resisted such bossiness; now he was glad of an excuse to be left alone and to let himself shut down.
But as long as he was in the hospital, he had no real privacy. His intermittent periods of solitude were abruptly interrupted by nurses, residents, aides, and—more rarely—by Dr. McNab, his surgeon. A hospital resembles a jail, Paul conceived, and I'm like a prisoner waiting to be released, with the expectation that I might somehow, even modestly, be rehabilitated.
He suffered from regret: if only he could take back those moments before the bumper fell! In his mind he replayed them, adding different conclusions in which injury was always averted, until he grew disgusted with this useless exercise.
He reproached himself: why had he deliberately waited to see the Thunderbird being hoisted? He'd believed that at the time he was acting purely from curiosity. But now he couldn't get the notion out of his head that there was some deeper significance to his procrastination. Yet if his injury was a punishment, for what was he being punished? Did his sins truly deserve such retribution?
This kind of magical thinking was impossible for Paul to resist. It permeated and affected his apathy and denial.
He soon realized that word about his injury had gotten around. Besides the Kurt Matthews Dancers, he heard from many of the members of Loti Tenenbaum's Pantomime Circus. He'd been performing with that troupe of ten dancers for a couple of years. At the moment, Loti herself—the director—was out of the country. Yet she'd somehow been informed about him, for he received a cable from her: "My heart is with you. I pray for your recovery. May God be with you."
Paul was surprised. He had never suspected that Loti was devout, and because he wasn't, her message irritated him. Her assumption that her prayers could actually improve his condition struck Paul as arrogant and presumptuous.
He realized that he was overreacting, that she'd meant to convey an expression of concern, but in his present state of mind, he was offended. He couldn't help but wonder if, besides the claims of sympathy that he was receiving from other dancers, there was also some secret rejoicing that now he was out of the competition.
* * *
After five days Paul was discharged. It was November 27- Thanksgiving. Bryce had come to take him home. Paul was wearing a non-weightbearing fiberglass cast on his right leg that went from just above his toes to his knee. Two aides had brought him down in a wheelchair to the ground floor of the hospital, where Bryce was waiting for him. The aides gave Bryce Paul's overnight bag. The bag and a pair of crutches were all Paul was taking with him. He'd left the wilting flowers, the cards, and the gifts behind in the room.
With Bryce accompanying them, the aides wheeled Paul out the front door. After being shut in for five days, Paul was shocked by the feeling of the raw, wet air against his skin. Although the dreary noon sky was as dim as twilight, he was cheered by being out of doors. The cold braced him; he felt as if he had been asleep and were just waking up. He waited in the wheelchair, flanked by the aides, while Bryce hailed a cab. Watching Bryce fling up his arm, Paul couldn't help but wonder if Bryce was secretly glad that he, Paul, was the one who needed help now.
A taxi pulled up to the curb. Paul endured the aides lifting him from the wheelchair to the backseat of the cab. From lifting other dancers, he knew how to be lifted, and so he helped them.
Once they were headed uptown, he turned to Bryce. "Did you notice that the cashier's window in the hospital was closed?"
"No, I didn't. It must have been closed for Thanksgiving. Why do you ask?"
"I was told to go to the cashier's window before I left."
"I guess someone forgot it's a holiday."
"I guess so." Paul lowered his voice. "That's the first time anyone even hinted about the bill to me." He paused. "You know, I don't have medical insurance."
"No, I didn't know. You've always been healthy so it's never come up."
"I've never had any, not since I left my parents and have lived on my own. It's not a benefit that usually comes with part time employment with dance companies. Since individual premiums are so expensive and since, as you say, I've always been healthy, I took a chance and did without. What am I going to do now?" Paul sighed. "I was beginning to hope the bill had been forgotten."
"I hate to disappoint you, but they never forget about the bill. They know where to find you. They don't need to pursue you out of the hospital, yelling, 'Stop, thief!'" As Bryce invoked this image, his smile was twisted with suppressed laughter.
Paul hung his head. In the past he would have applauded Bryce's wit, for he was accustomed to encourage Bryce's teasing as a way of coaxing him from sulks and broodiness. Why am I so wounded by his teasing now? Paul wondered. I don't like my reaction, but I can't seem to help it. Without looking, he felt Bryce's hand over his.
"You don't need to worry about the hospital bill," Bryce assured him.
"Why not? Are you offering to pay for it?" Paul heard the petulance in his voice. As soon as he'd spoken, he was ashamed of himself. Though he'd received help before, he'd never asked for it. He'd always taken pride in not appearing needy, even when he really was. He'd had an unwritten rule: everything given to him was offered freely. Now he wondered, Has this principle changed as well?
"No, I don't have to," Bryce replied.
Paul looked at Bryce. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Don't you realize that you have a liability suit against the moving company? They were clearly negligent, and their negligence has resulted in an injury which has apparently ended your career. They could be liable for the cost of your care as well as the estimated amount of your future earnings as a dancer."
Paul snorted. "And judging from my earnings so far, that must be an enormous amount, indeed."
"Who knows? Your star was rising—wasn't that what Kurt Matthews has said, and what some reviewers have claimed? Leave that part of it to your lawyer."
Paul noticed a glint in Bryce's eye. Or was it a twinkle? "Who's that going to be?" Paul asked. "You?"
"Oh no, we'll pick someone who specializes in these cases. I'll serve only in an advisory role."
Halted by a red light, the taxi driver jammed on the brakes too suddenly, and Paul was flung forward. Bryce grasped him by both shoulders and braced him. "Whoa!" Bryce exclaimed.
Separated from them by the divider, the driver seemed oblivious. "I'm all right," Paul assured Bryce. But even as he shrugged off B
ryce's protective embrace, he still felt trapped in his angry mood.
"You stand to make a windfall—an innocent bystander minding his own business," Bryce continued. "The absurdity of the accident will undoubtedly help you. A car doesn't belong in an apartment as a piece of furniture. The jury will be amused and contemptuous. If you don't make mistakes, I predict that they'll find for you in a big way."
"I'll tell you what," said Paul. "I'll let you take care of it. You're the lawyer."
Paul surprised himself by how rude he sounded. He couldn't understand his resentment. He reminded himself that Bryce was on his side.
"If you want me to manage the case for you, I'm willing to do it."
Bryce's voice was measured and careful. Paul recognized its ring of sincerity. Yet the better Bryce behaved, the more annoyed Paul felt. "Do we have to discuss this now?" he complained.
"I'm sorry. You're much too exhausted. I ought to have waited to bring it up. Please forgive me."
Bryce patted Paul's wrist again in reassurance. Paul looked away again, out the window. Too precipitously his annoyance was dissolving into self-pity. It frightened him. He had to resist it. "I'm glad we're almost home," he said, keeping his face averted.
He had always assumed that he was the worldly one, and Bryce, because he stayed home more, was naive. But now Paul began to consider that he'd been mistaken, and Bryce was actually more worldly than he was. Paul had always believed that he himself was interested in money, and that he would unfailingly act on this self-interest. Once Bryce had pointed it out, a lawsuit seemed an obvious remedy. Paul wondered why he hadn't thought of it first, and why he should be reacting now with an apathy so pronounced that it seemed a disinclination. He tried to summon up an interest in discussing the grounds for a lawsuit, but he couldn't, because he'd have to talk about the accident, and right now he couldn't bear to. He slumped down in the seat, but no sooner had he closed his eyes than they arrived at home, and he had to face the ordeal of getting to the penthouse.
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