He kissed her. “You’re terrific.”
“Ed,” she said, “if you don’t call me, I will never forgive you.” She was smiling, but he knew she meant it.
“I’ll call you before I head to the courts.”
“Too early,” she said, climbing back under the covers. “Call me after you win.”
He made it neither out of the elevator nor past Rodrigo’s silent but obvious appraisal before the panic set in. He fought against the tightening in his chest, assuring himself that he cared deeply for Connie, that he’d enjoyed the time spent together in bed, and he had no good reason to feel anxious. And maybe if he’d decided to take a cab home, the panic would have ceased by morning. He would later realize that this was not the first time his life had nearly taken a drastically different direction with regard to the opposite sex. If he had taken a cab or even a different route home, maybe he would have had a good night’s rest, aced on the court (he really did have a game; he hadn’t lied about that), and gone to bed with Connie again, even nightly for the rest of his life.
But it was a warm fall night. The medians on Park Avenue were still choked with blooms. And even if he had left Connie’s place in order to get sleep the night before his Saturday tennis game, Ed—while tired—was equally restless, and he decided to walk home. And maybe it was due to having just had sex, or the waves of panic that followed the sex, but his senses were heightened; he had the distinct sensation that he was either being watched or that he needed to pay attention. He wondered, almost idly, if he was about to be mugged. Or maybe hit by a bus. He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes, trying to get ahold of himself.
When he opened his eyes, he walked west, and—seemingly a direct answer to the question: What requires my attention?—there appeared an expensively dressed young woman who was, improbably, sitting on the steps of a magnificent townhouse and rubbing her foot.
“Shit,” she muttered. “And how can I help you?”
It was true: He’d been staring. She had gorgeous legs and was in a bad mood; he couldn’t help himself. “I should be asking you that. Can I?” he asked. “Can I help?” There was, he reassured himself, no shame in being chivalrous. It was late; maybe she was in trouble.
“Cruel shoes,” she said. “Fucking cruel. Expensive, too.”
“I’d imagine,” he said. He thought of Connie’s beaded high heels and how, at the Plaza, she’d twirled with such grace. “Beautiful and painful all too often go hand in hand.”
“And you’re a philosopher, too,” she said, with far too much sting for any healthy man’s ego. He had begun to suspect he was not a healthy man.
“Not at all,” he said. “I hate philosophy. What a colossal waste of brainpower. Are you coming from or going to a party?”
“Coming from. It was actually a dinner.” He noticed that sizable diamonds were in her ears and encircling her wrists but—surprisingly—there was nothing on her fingers. “You?”
“Charity ball.”
“Mine was a sit-down dinner. No one was looking at my feet and I shouldn’t have bothered with the shoes. I do realize that.”
“You’re probably right,” he said. “But I understand the impulse.”
She stopped holding her foot quite so desperately. “What impulse?”
“Extravagance.”
“Huh.”
Her change of expression was no less palpable or uplifting than a pleasant shift in the weather. She was young. Her clothing and her jewelry had made her seem older at first. What did she look like? She had brows much darker than her dark-blond hair, and this, combined with a truly aquiline nose, gave her a slightly serious and exotic air, even though she had distinctly adorable dimples. Her lips were so full it was distracting, and her skin was a rich person’s skin, which Ed had noticed was different somehow. Sightings of a woman like this all alone in the city—not just a beautiful woman but a clearly wealthy one—always gave him the feeling of glimpsing a rare bird in its natural habitat.
“Would you like me to hail you a cab?” he asked.
She began to laugh. “No,” she said, “that’s fine. I live here,” she said, glancing up the stairs of the townhouse. “I just wasn’t quite in the mood to go inside.”
“Oh,” said Ed. “In that case—”
“I’m kidding,” she said, shaking her head with—again—annoyance. She put on her shoes, wincing as she did so. “Buy me a drink?” she asked.
Did she frequently ask strangers to buy her a drink? Was she a crazy swanky nymphomaniac?
He sort of hoped so.
Miraculously, there was a burger joint with a decent bar right on the corner. Then they talked until the bar closed, and he did finally hail her a cab.
While the cab waited—he was about to kiss her—he noticed her lips were the same size on the top and the bottom, like two perfectly even rose petals. And as the streetlights shone and the cabbie’s meter ran, it seemed to Ed that her lips were like one of those glass flowers in the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and he was one of so many gawking tourists, marveling at how something so delicate and intricate could, in fact, be made of glass.
But she wasn’t made of glass. Nor was she a Manhattan princess, nor was she (as far as he could tell) a high-society nymphomaniac. She was Jill Solomon, a whip-smart third year law student at Columbia University, with a job waiting for her at one of the top firms in the city. In addition to intensive studying—and evidently going to dinner parties—she played tennis three mornings a week and she really liked to win.
She wasn’t nearly as young as she looked, but she was still six years younger than he was.
And she was Jewish.
When he did kiss her, those lips were soft, almost passively so, but then she whispered goodbye and, astonishingly, gave his ear a little bite.
So. Jill Solomon?
For the first time in years, he found himself having an inner dialogue with Hugh Shipley.
Yes, said Ed, Jill.
Who is she?
She’s … powerful.
Sounds kind of frightening.
She isn’t, though, not exactly.
Okay.
Okay?
Maybe she’s—
What—out of my league? Is that what you’re suggesting?
I’m not suggesting anything like that. What is it with you? What league? Why do you always think in terms of leagues?
Because it works like that. I disagree.
Fine. I feel like if I devote my life to her, I will, somehow, stop orbiting and finally land.
Okay.
I want to land.
Right.
Do you know what I mean?
I think so.
So what are you not saying? I feel like you’re not saying something.
Fine. What about Connie?
I feel terrible about Connie.
No one’s asking you to feel terrible.
She’s terrific.
She is. I always loved her smile.
There’s no accounting for desire. We want what we want. Isn’t that true? Hugh?
Here is what he actually said out loud, if not exactly to anyone else, each night of that life-changing week: I’m sorry, Connie. He practiced saying it as he fell asleep, but still he hadn’t told her. He’d called that Saturday morning as promised—after he’d played (though lost) his tennis game. He told her how much he enjoyed not only the night’s unexpected turn but also the dancing. But he also told Connie that he had to go into the office that evening, which was only the first of the lies. He lied to Connie Sunday through Thursday, claiming office disasters of epic proportions, blaming Hy for everything. And every evening—Monday through Thursday—he took Jill to dinner. Each night after dinner they made out on the sidewalk with progressive intensity, so that by Thursday he nearly forced himself into her taxi after she was already inside it.
“Get out,” said Jill, breathing heavily.
“Where to?” the cabbie said.
“Get out,�
�� she repeated, but this time she wasn’t kidding around. “Just a minute,” Jill said to the cabbie, before telling Ed to get his own cab. “There is no way I am sleeping with you tonight,” she said. “Do you understand?”
“I do,” he said. And he got out. “I’m in pain,” he said.
“I know,” Jill replied, before giving the cabbie her address. “You came of age in the 1950s, so I know you know how to do this. Go take a shower,” Jill said. And, with an additional quiver of cruelty, “Oh, and I forgot to mention: I’m leaving town for the weekend.”
On Friday morning he’d been expecting calls from at least a handful of bad-tempered executives. CBOR–Ordway Keller had coped respectably during a grim couple of years, but since both underwriting and brokerage commissions had leveled off, and because volume levels were low, the daily atmosphere in the office was more tense than ever. The CBOR–Ordway Keller Midtown office had intentionally kept the same open layout as their Broad Street one, so privacy did not exist, and therefore when Ed picked up the phone and heard Jill Solomon’s voice, he knew better than to draw attention to his immediate elation. It was generally understood that the men in this room had all kinds of pretend conversations in order to save face, usually with their wives. He’d once caught Hy saying: All right, honey, I’ll see you this evening, then, after it was clear to Ed—who’d heard Franny screaming on the other end of the telephone—that Hy’s wife had already hung up.
Although Jill had certainly cleared whatever plans she may have previously made this week in order to see Ed, and she was likely staying up studying into the morning after he’d seen her home, she had yet to call him—he’d simply telephoned her home each day until she picked up. And since she’d told him she was leaving town until Monday, he was doubly shocked to hear her voice. So when she said, Hello, how’s Wall Street treating you today? he stifled a broad smile.
Then he glanced out the window at the 59th Street traffic, at Hy huddled over papers and Steve on the telephone and Marty pacing back and forth the length of his desk, and Ed realized he was not entirely convinced that Jill would have said yes to any kind of date with him if he wasn’t a part of this world. He had seen when her eyes lit up (the time he met Johnny Carson, had chartered the private plane) and where they lost their focus (his steamfitting summers, the woes of Blue Hill Avenue). This was not college, where potential in itself was some kind of currency, now it was the money that mattered. His money enabled him to attract a woman like Jill. It was an ugly thought, but it wasn’t a deluded one.
“So,” said Jill, “I hope you don’t subscribe to the effortlessly-whip-up-something-marvelous school of entertaining,” she said. “Because I’d love to make you dinner tonight.”
“Really?” he asked softly. “I thought you were leaving for the weekend.”
“I was,” she said, “but I decided to stay.”
Maybe he was being a little reductive about the money. He sat down and then stood up again. “I’d love to come to dinner.”
“Good,” she said. “I’m more of an I’m-panicking-and-so-you’d-better-panic-too kind of hostess. Just a warning.”
“Due diligence?” he said.
“Something like that.”
“Any other warnings?”
“Let’s see … no.”
“That sounds like a qualified no.”
“And it is.”
Ed recalled her skin, her lips, and her insistence on never being in a room alone with him. While waiting for her coat at the Four Seasons, with the coat-check girl on an absurdly long break, Ed had kissed Jill’s neck, and when she let him, he’d tried to put his hand beneath her blouse. She had not smiled when he whispered: I’m not sure if you’re aware, but there’s a sexual revolution going on. Even uptown. She had, in fact, swatted his hand away.
And now she was inviting him to her apartment.
“Wait a second,” he said, “is this some kind of dinner party?”
She laughed.
“What.”
“I guess you’ll just have to take that chance, now, won’t you?”
He stopped at Connie’s apartment on his way home. He didn’t know if she’d be there, he wasn’t even sure he wanted her to be, but when a doorman—not Rodrigo—told him that he could go up, Ed knew what he had to do.
Connie was too smart for the bullshit he’d been offering, and though Ed knew this, he wasn’t sure if she might play a little bit dumb for the sake of believing in him. He knew if she did that, he was going to have an even harder time coming clean, and so, when she greeted him coldly, he was relieved.
“Connie,” he said, going in for some kind of clumsy embrace, and she turned toward the kitchen before he had to decide what kind.
“I’ll get you a beer,” she said.
“That would be terrific.” He tried not to sound too grateful.
She brought him a bottle, even though she knew he liked his beer in a glass, and he took a sip, stalling. “Let’s sit down,” he said.
“Fine.”
Her couch was beige suede and he ran his finger one way, then another, creating and erasing the same wobbly line. “I love this couch.”
“Ed,” she said. “Please.”
“Connie, I—”
“Just be a man and say the words, Ed. We’ll both still be sitting here after you do.”
“You’re right,” he said, sitting up straighter. “We will.”
“You met someone else.”
“I met someone else. How did you know that?”
Connie just looked at him; her face was not hardened, she had the nicest-looking freckle on her neck, and for that moment he was fairly sure he was making a mistake by closing this door. But then—as certainly and inexplicably—the moment passed.
“I know you met someone else because I know you,” Connie said, not unkindly. “I know you bolted after what happened between us, and I know that you would have done anything to find someone else so that you wouldn’t have to be totally alone when you backed out of this.”
“No,” Ed said, “I swear that isn’t how it is. It’s been one week—less than a week. How could I have—it was just the strangest circumstance—”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Fair enough.”
“Don’t call me for a very long time, okay?”
“If I don’t call you for a very long time, do you think we can be friends again?”
“I doubt it,” she said.
“That would break my heart,” he said.
“Your heart is already broken,” she said, with a tone of pity that he’d never quite shake. “Remember?”
That same evening, the first Friday in November, he approached Jill’s address, and he noticed the russet trees and the one denuded ginkgo with its fan-shaped leaves fallen to the sidewalk. He noticed the relative smoothness of the concrete, fouled only by a smear of dog shit. He noticed two teenage boys—one carrying a basketball—hustling at a good clip. The air felt cleaner somehow, and he wondered if it had rained while he’d been in the shower. He checked to make sure of the address, even though it had long ago been fixed in his brain, and as he walked soberly up the stairs, he realized this townhouse was, in fact, a more modest version of the one Jill had parked herself outside only one week ago. He’d brought her a bottle of Bordeaux, which now seemed unoriginal. Shouldn’t he also have at least brought some flowers? She was making him dinner. It was autumn in New York.
He was greeted by a taller, darker, boy version of Jill, wearing jeans and some kind of shirt that suggested a life of picking fruit and sleeping in one’s car. “Howdy,” he said. “Ed?”
“Howdy … Jill’s brother?” asked Ed, extending his hand.
“One of them.”
“How many are there?”
“She didn’t tell you?” he asked. “Talk about insulted.”
Jill came forth in a red apron and kissed Ed on the cheek. “This is my kid brother, Mark,” she said. “He’s a junior at
Columbia, and when he’s not smoking grass, he shows up, sniffing around for food.”
“Nice introduction,” said Mark. “Though,” he said, stifling a laugh, “basically true. And, by the way, we do have an older brother, too. Don’t forget Jeremy.”
“No,” said Jill. “Of course not.”
“And Jeremy is …?” asked Ed lightly.
Jill took an audible breath. “Jeremy lives somewhere in Canada after dodging the draft but won’t tell us where. Our parents’ nerves are shot. Soooo … you look great,” she said. “You didn’t have to wear a suit, you know.”
“Well, you didn’t give me much to go on: Is it a party? Is it just us? And, look, given the option of being overdressed or under, you know I’ll choose over. You’ve figured out at least that by now, I’d imagine.”
“Yes,” said Jill. “Yes, I have.”
“Take off your tie, man,” suggested Mark.
“No thanks,” said Ed.
Her apartment was the first floor of this townhouse, and with its fireplace and French doors and garden, it reminded him of Boston, which he almost said but didn’t. He didn’t want to talk about that time at the Mervas’, even in the abstract, even just to compare the houses. He tried to imagine describing that time in his life, the time spent with Hugh and Helen, but any description, he knew, would only serve to scrape away its clarity; words would dilute the meaning. Mark turned up the hi-fi until the apocalyptic tone of the Doors threatened to bring down Ed’s mood. Mark was excitedly recounting how Jim Morrison’s death was obviously not from natural causes, and Jill—who was disconcertingly well informed—was disagreeing. Ed was eating all the cheese. He could barely recognize the music of the Doors, let alone have any kind of conversation about its members. They drank the bottle of Bordeaux. When Ed asked Mark what he was studying, he answered vaguely that he wasn’t so sure anymore. This wasn’t what Ed had pictured when he’d set out for the evening. About an hour in, Ed took off his jacket and tie; he rolled up his sleeves. He had to physically readjust himself in order to continue paying attention.
But then Mark said, “Okay, I’m taking off. I volunteered to be part of a psychological study. I really dig the grad student, so I figured it couldn’t hurt my chances with her. Do you think that’s unethical?”
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