by Teri Emory
Cameron shrugged.
“Out of Africa,” I said.
“‘When the gods want to punish us, they answer our prayers,’” said a male voice behind me, practically in my ear. “It’s what Streep says to Redford when he disappoints her.”
Turning to see who was speaking, I inadvertently spilled a few drops of my drink on the man’s jacket.
“Oh, sorry!” I said. “Let me get some club soda . . .”
“Not to worry,” he smiled. “I’m Gabe Bryant.” Cameron and I introduced ourselves.
“I think you’re at our table tonight,” I said.
Gabe looked intently at me. “I apologize for staring, but I’m trying to place you. Do you work at Gillian Investments? I could swear I’ve seen you before.”
“No wheeling and dealing for me. I’m a reading teacher. Cameron is in real estate.”
“How do you folks know the Gillians?”
Before I could answer, Beth and Jim appeared.
“Everything looks gorgeous,” I said to Beth. “Including you.”
“I’m glad you talked me into getting this dress, even though I can barely breathe in it. Have you seen Sarah in her tuxedo?”
“She’s a knockout.”
“And you! How many women could get away with a clingy number like that?” Beth said.
“Jean Harlow, maybe?” said Gabe. “Myrna Loy? I know, Kim Basinger in LA Confidential. Brunette version, of course.”
“Overrated movie, but thanks for the compliment,” I said.
“Don’t you like film noir?”
“The real thing, yes. But that one? More like film latte.”
Gabe smiled. “I thought they did a great job. I’d love to hear some more of your ideas.”
Jim shook Cameron’s hand. “Welcome,” he said. “I’m glad we finally got you up here.”
“Thank Miriam for finally inviting me. What are the chances of my getting a tour of the place?”
“How about now? All right with you if I steal him for a few minutes, Miriam?”
The two men headed towards the stairway to the second floor. One of the reasons I like Cameron’s company at parties is that he doesn’t expect me to take care of him. He likes to work the crowd himself, look for openings to talk about golf and real estate, distribute his business card.
I turned to Beth. “I’ve somehow missed the hors d’oeuvres. Where is that woman I saw earlier with the tray of puffed pastry goodies?”
Gabe Bryant’s voice was in my ear again. “I just remembered where I saw you before.”
“Really, where?”
“A Times article, maybe last spring? You’re the teacher who started a film program in one of the middle schools in the city.”
“You remember that piece after all this time?”
“Apart from the lovely picture of you, I had good reason to remember. I have the article pinned to a bulletin board in my office.”
“Whatever for?”
“Long story. Let’s just say I was interested in what you were doing.”
Beth said, “I’m glad we decided to seat you two at the same table. Looks like you’ll have a lot to talk about. Will you excuse me? The caterer seems to be flagging me down.”
Out of habit, I checked Gabe’s left hand. No wedding band.
I asked him, “Do you live around here?”
“No, in the city. I’m remodeling a brownstone in Yorkville. I feel like I’ve been living in a construction site for five years.”
“I live in Yorkville, too. East End Avenue. You know the white high-rise with the circular driveway in front? I’ve been there for twenty years.”
“I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other at Gristedes.”
Something like a tiny electrical current passed between us. A flash—light, heat, danger ahead. I took a deep breath. Standing near Gabe made me feel shaky, in a distantly familiar way. A sexual frisson? No, more like an old wound starting to throb, the way my Uncle Fred’s bad shoulder does when a storm is approaching.
“Will you excuse me? I need to—to—um—” I stammered.
“I’m sure we’ll have a chance to talk at dinner,” he said.
I meandered through the crowd, eavesdropping on snippets of arcane chatter, racking my brain to remember names and stories of people I see once a year, at this event. I gave my annual wave and wink from afar to Mark and Ellen Whatever-Their-Names-Are, who bore witness, years ago in this house, to Peter’s invitation for me to join him in Savannah. At every Gillian party since, they’ve studiously avoided anything resembling real conversation with me, for which I am grateful. I managed to slink unnoticed past a woman who was vehemently advocating that people like her, with lactose intolerance, be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act. One of Jim’s London partners was expounding on the future of e-commerce. (“The Asians still find the idea most seductive.”) A woman who had just published a children’s book about lesbian mothers was describing her experience on a promotional tour. (“And then in Salt Lake, no radio show would book me.”) I caught scraps of local gossip about celebrities who reside in Connecticut; now I know where David Letterman boards his pets and why Meryl Streep recently switch dry cleaners.
A menu in gold calligraphy was propped up on a small easel in front of the chafing dishes at the buffet. Vitello tonnato, pommodoro a riso, carciofi alla giudia, tagliatelli ai funghi porcini. Italian, of course, Beth’s favorite. The guests were beginning to fill their plates and take their seats at round tables that were set up all over the first floor of the house. Our table on the patio gave us a commanding view of the pool and hot tub as well as a floodlit weeping willow on the far end of the Gillians’ property.
Sarah seemed keen to sit next to Beth’s brother Bruce. From what I could overhear, Bruce was urging Sarah to call him at his office on Monday. “I’m sure I can get you the right person,” he was saying. Kevin listened intently, nodding in agreement with Bruce. Sarah realized that I was tuning in on their conversation. I flashed her a “What’s up?” look; she responded with a “Not right now” shake of her finger. Number Four, the toned and talkative Kimberlee Jacobs, engaged Cameron in a lengthy discussion about the merits of dietary supplements for weekend athletes. Grant gave me an update on his grandson’s dyslexia. Brendan and Lilly, absorbed in gossip about their Boston cronies, were oblivious to the rest of us. Gabe Bryant sat directly across the table from me. Every time I looked his way, his eyes were on me. Great, soulful eyes, sparkling above what my mother would call a million-dollar smile.
I heard Violet ask Gabe if he might be related to a Jessie Bryant she knew in Atlanta.
“Afraid not,” he said. “The only female Bryant I know is my mother. There used to be another Ms. Bryant, the one I was married to for eighteen years. She and I created a junior Bryant, another male. After we divorced, she dropped the Bryant from her name.”
“And the junior Bryant?” Violet asked.
“He’s married, lives in North Carolina, works in his father-in-law’s car rental business. His wife has kept her own name, so she’s not exactly a Bryant, even if she is part of our family.”
The opening bars of “As Time Goes By” reached us from the living room.
“Did everyone see the little sign on the piano that says the pianist’s name?” Lilly said. “It’s Sam Humphrey. No kidding. I wonder how often people ask him to ‘play it again, Sam.’ Do you suppose that Humphrey is really his last name? Or did he just make it up to capitalize on the Bogart connection?”
“I recognize a lot of the lines from Casablanca, but I’ve never seen the whole thing,” Cameron said.
“You know, no one in Casablanca ever actually says ‘Play it again, Sam,’“ Gabe said.
“You seem to know a lot about movies for someone who works for an investment company,” I said to Gabe. “What do you do for G
illian Investments, anyway?”
“It’s not so much what I do for them, but what they do for me. I don’t work there,” he said.
“When you said you thought you had seen me at the office, I assumed . . .”
“I can see why you might get the wrong idea. I do visit Jim’s office from time to time, but I’m not in the investment business.”
“What do you do, then? Let me guess: Fix computers? Cater lunches? Deliver office supplies?”
The others at the table had drifted off into their own conversations. Random phrases flew through the air . . . laptop in the taxi . . . holistic soybean diet . . . time-share condo . . . plane tickets online . . .
“Gillian Investments is a major supporter of the organization I work for,” Gabe said. “I’m with one of those not-for-profit cultural groups that survive at the mercy of corporate sponsors. Gillian sort of pays my salary, but I don’t exactly work for them, if you see what I mean.”
He reached into his wallet and pulled out a business card, handing it to me across the table. “The New York Independent Film Institute,” it said across the middle of the card, “Gabriel B. Bryant, Executive Director.”
Cameron and I said our goodbyes to Beth and Jim. Cameron went in search of the teenaged parking valet who had the keys to his Lexus.
Gabe Bryant found me in the foyer. “Just tell me if I’m out of line, and I’ll go away. But I’d really like to see you again sometime soon, and not only because you are incredibly pretty. I think we’d enjoy spending time together. And while Cameron seems like a very nice guy, I’m afraid he’s not for you.”
“Is that so? How do you know I’m not crazy about him?”
“I can see that you like him well enough. But I’m betting you could never be crazy about a man who can’t sit all the way through Casablanca.”
I said nothing.
Gabe smiled. “Look, no pressure here. You know I’m interested in you. You have my card. Call me if you’d like to meet for a cup of overpriced coffee in our neighborhood sometime, argue about film noir. Whatever.”
Cameron, jiggling his car keys, reappeared.
“Take care, Gabe,” he said.
“You, too,” said Gabe. “Nice to meet you. Both of you.”
__________
Violet and Grant went to bed as soon as we got back to my apartment. Cameron stayed for a brandy.
“It’s been a long time since I saw that happen,” Cameron said. “That guy Gabe. You swept him off his feet.”
“Cameron, it was only . . .”
“Don’t think I’m not jealous. Not that you and I have ever considered making what we have anything more than it is. What I envy is the way that Gabe looked at you. I’m used to men eyeing you, but this was the damnedest
thing . . .
“I hope you’ll understand this, Miriam. I’m crazy about you—what man in his right mind wouldn’t be? But I’ll never feel about anyone the way I felt about Charlotte. I don’t know everything about your past, but I know you’ve never been married. I’m sure you’ve been in love, but I guess it wasn’t the kind that lasts.”
“It’s ridiculous to be talking this way about someone I just met. We’re not teenagers.”
“I know what I saw. Listen, you know I’m not going anywhere. You can call me any time; I’ll always be glad to see you. But, as comfortable as it is when we’re together, why should you settle for comfortable? For me it’s different—I lost the love of my life, and I’m not looking for anything more than . . . than what you and I have had, whatever you want to call it. You could have something more. Could be that you recognized that tonight, for the first time in a while. And you should have whatever you want in this life. Invite me to the wedding, will you?” Cameron said, planting a peck on my forehead before he left.
__________
“I wasted decades, doing what I thought I should do,” Gabe said.
It was Saturday morning, a week after Beth and Jim’s party. We were digging into mounds of French toast at the Green Kitchen diner. I had asked him to breakfast. He was telling me the story of his life.
“You can’t imagine how I envy people like you who have always worked at something they love. I have a master’s and a Ph.D. in history, but I spent more than twenty years managing my family’s plumbing business. No, I’m not a plumber, but I ran the company. All that grueling academic work, to wind up scheduling home repairs. My brothers left town for college and never thought about returning to work with Dad. They still find it amusing to call me Dr. Drainpipe. I was the dutiful son. After graduate school, I came back home. Dad’s health was starting to fai,l and he needed me. Besides, working in the business gave me a pretty good income, and I had a wife and son, so . . . It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement. Turned out to be twenty years.”
“What did your wife do?”
“Trudy started going to school to train in a number of fields, never finished anything. Most of her jobs were entry level receptionist gigs, that sort of thing. Not a whole lot of ambition there.”
“Where is she now?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Excuse me?”
Dark cloud over his face. “She’s an alcoholic. Been in and out of treatment for years. Has spells of sobriety and then falls off the wagon. Last I heard she was living with one of her sisters in Virginia. Our son Oliver wants nothing to do with her. After he got married, he decided that he didn’t want to see her anymore. She was, let’s say, badly behaved at his wedding. When he and his wife Moira have children, he may have a change of heart. I haven’t spoken to my ex-wife since Oliver and Moira’s wedding.”
“Tell me about your work now.”
“I’ve been crazy about films since I was a kid. Jim Gillian and I went to high school together. He was always a film lover, too. When he was in a position to put some serious money into a cultural project, film was his first choice. He rescued the New York Independent Film Institute from bankruptcy, helped turn it into a training ground for young filmmakers and an archive on filmmaking. My father had died, and I was selling the family business and looking for a new line of work, maybe teaching. You can imagine how surprised I was when Jim called me to talk about the Institute. We hadn’t even seen too much of each other over the years. No one but Jim would have hired me even to scrub the floors at a place like the Institute, but Jim figured that I had acquired some business sense during my years at Bryant Plumbing. He trusted me to handle the money he was putting into the place. And he knew that I loved movies. These days, we get donations from a number of sources, but Gillian Investments is still our primary supporter. My income is less than half of what it was when I was selling appliances, but I’ve never been happier.”
“It occurs to me that you and I may have met before, at Beth and Jim’s wedding. Or maybe at their son’s funeral.”
“I was on a flight to the Cannes Film Festival the day Adam died. By the time word reached me, I had missed the funeral. I spent some time with Jim when I got home, but I don’t know how much good I did him. He didn’t talk much about Adam. Still doesn’t. And I missed Beth and Jim’s wedding day. I was in graduate school, in the hospital with appendicitis. But my parents were there.”
“Your parents were close to Jim?”
“During college, after his parents died, my family sort of took him in. He’d spend holidays with us—Thanksgiving, Christmas and Chanukah.”
“Chanukah? With a name like Bryant? And those Nordic good looks?”
“Mom’s family name was Bernstein. My middle name. Dad was Dutch and Irish. We had a Christmas tree and we lit Chanukah candles. We went to the Good Shepherd Church on Easter Sunday and to Grandma Ida’s house for Passover seders. I don’t think I was ever christened, but I know I was bar mitzvah-ed. I have pictures of myself in a ruffled tuxedo shirt, dancing the hora to prove it.”
“And now?�
�
“I’m comfortable in most churches and synagogues, except for the really fanatical, dogmatic ones. But I don’t go to either very often. You?”
“Secular Jewish. No strong pull to follow any rituals. Most of the time I believe in God, I think.” I took a sip of coffee. “Can you tell me now why you kept that Times article about me?”
“I was out of town when the piece ran. My assistant clipped it out for me. She tacked it to my bulletin board, where it still hangs. She thought maybe we could do something for your kids, possibly give them a tour of the Film Institute. And, as an afterthought, she mentioned how pretty you were. She used to work for a matchmaking service—can’t help herself.”
“But you never called.”
“Meant to. Then it was summer, and I figured you’d be off from teaching and I’d just wait until September. And then, truthfully, I forgot. If I’d known you were friends with the Gillians, I could have tried you over the summer. Hey, I’ve been doing all the talking. Tell me the story of your life.”
“What can I tell you? You already know about my work, and you met my closest friends at Jim and Beth’s party. What’s left?”
“I’ll bet everyone who meets you wants to know why you never got married.”
“Wow . . . ready to start with the big questions, huh? Not my favorite topic.”
“Tell me the reason.”
“I can ask you the same question. Why haven’t you remarried?”
“I’ve had one serious relationship since my divorce. We lived together for six years. I wanted to get married, she didn’t. When she left, rather than staying in the apartment we had shared, I bought the dilapidated brownstone I keep trying to make habitable. I started at the Film Institute around that time, too. Since then I haven’t had much of a social life. The women I meet through work are generally too young for me. So, if you’ll pardon the somewhat crude summary, I’ve simply learned to do without. Okay, now it’s your turn.”
I shook my head.
“Hey,” he said. “I’ve already told you about my dismal professional history, my alcoholic ex-wife, the girlfriend who dumped me, my son’s dysfunctional relationship with his mother, and my meager salary. All I know about you is what I read in the Times, plus a few biographical tidbits I picked up at the party.”