“No.”
“I don’t get it. You’ve been laid off two weeks, and you never told me? I don’t get it,” she repeated.
He grimaced; a pained look turned down his mouth. “I should have told you … I don’t know …” He bent his head, looking searchingly at the floor, as if down there he might find the answer to her question.
“I don’t get it,” Nina said for the third time.
“I kept hoping I’d find another job.… It’s stupid, but I think what I wanted … I wanted to impress you with how fast I landed another job. Big fish. Then I didn’t get a job, and I didn’t get a job, and … it seemed like it got harder and harder to tell you. Like there just wasn’t any right time to say, ‘Hey, guess what happened to me.…’”
“You should have told me,” she said, her throat filling. God, she was so emotional today. It was like being on a roller coaster.
“I know I should have.… I guess it was—vanity?”
“Is that why you’ve been so moody?”
“Mmmm. I guess that’s it.” He folded his arms. “I didn’t know it would matter so much. I felt really put down by it. Like it was my fault.…”
“It wasn’t, was it?”
“No. I told you, I was just low man on the totem pole. Somebody had to go. I was next in line.”
“Then I still don’t understand why you didn’t say anything to me. It wouldn’t have made any difference to me, Mitch. What’d you think I would do?”
“Nina, I’m trying to tell you, it wasn’t logical. I don’t pretend to understand everything about myself. All I know is I got really down on being out of work. I didn’t want to talk about it! I felt”—he shrugged—“ashamed, I think. Anyway, every day I’d think, Today I’ll find a job.”
Nina poured the hot water, stirred the tea bag around, and added honey. “Tea?” she asked again. Mitch shook his head. “What’d you do all day?” Then she thought of something else. “You went out every morning, Mitch, just like you were going to work. Took a lunch and everything.”
“I know. That was so you wouldn’t guess. Mostly I looked for work. And I hung out in different places. Go to know the United States Employment Office very well. Sometimes, afternoons, I came home … then went out again before you came back so … you know, so you wouldn’t catch on.”
“You did that?” She sipped the tea. “Do you need money? I could lend you some.”
“Thanks, that’s nice, but I’m okay. I’m going to collect unemployment, and I had some bucks saved.”
“Your car money?” He’d been planning to buy a car in the spring. He nodded. Nina’s eyes fell on the pizza box. “Did Lynell know?”
“What?”
“That you were out of work.”
She saw the answer in his face. “She knew! Mitch, that’s … that’s so …” Her eyes filled again. “That’s so bummy!” She grabbed a napkin from the holder and blew her nose.
“What are you getting so upset about?” he said despairingly. “What difference does it make?”
“I’m the one who’s living with you, Mitch!” She crumpled the napkin and threw it into the waste-basket. “How could you keep something like this from me and tell Lynell?”
“I was going to let you know as soon as I found work.”
“Living together is supposed to mean sharing,” she said in a choked voice.
Emmett stood up on his back legs, paws on the table. Nina swallowed, trying to clear her throat. “Hungry, baby?” She got a can of cat food from the cupboard.
“Are you feeding him again?” Mitch said. “Every time he opens his mouth—”
“Don’t get started on that. Leave Emmett alone! You’re always saying that. He doesn’t have that much in his life. He has me, and he has food, and if he’s hungry I’m going to feed him!”
“You’re always making excuses for him, Nina. He’s totally undisciplined. He doesn’t even cover his shits. Lynell was practically holding her nose the whole time she was here.”
“Maybe Lynell was holding her nose because the apartment stinks! And don’t tell me it’s Emmett’s fault, because it isn’t.” This was crazy—fighting over Emmett. But she couldn’t stop herself. The hell with being controlled. “You know, Mitch, it’s a real foul mess in here, and now that I’ve found out you’re not working, I’m wondering why I’m the one who usually does all the cleaning.”
“What cleaning? You just said it was a foul mess.”
“It is! And you know damn well it’ll stay this way until I do something about it.”
“Off my back, Nina. Off, off! I’ve had things on my mind.”
“What things? Lynell?” Mitch stared at her. Lynell’s name hovered between them like a poisonous insect. Appalled, Nina poured another cup of tea. The argument that had started out neatly to be about why Mitch hadn’t told her he was out of work was spilling all over the place … like the hot tea which now sloshed over the edge of the cup, burning her hand.
“Damn,” she whispered. She put her hand under the cold water.
“Did you say you had cramps?” Mitch said. “Your period? Is that why you’re so—”
“I’m not so anything,” she broke in. “Don’t say that.” She got her flannel nightgown. “I’m getting in bed.”
“Listen, Nina.” Mitch followed her into the other room. “You don’t have to be so mad at me. I’m not trying to say I did right, but you’re not utterly pure and righteous yourself.”
“I don’t keep things from you. I don’t have secrets!”
“You sure of that? All that time you’re alone with Leeman, or Seeman, or whatever his name is—”
“Lehman,” Nina said. “Lehman. And I’m working when I’m with him.”
“Right. Lay Man. Is he laying you, Nina?”
She pulled the nightgown over her head. Maybe if she stayed there in the friendly darkness of the nightgown tent and counted to ten slowly, all these nasty things they were saying to each other would disappear. “You want to take that back, Mitch?” she said as her head emerged.
“Should I?”
“You better, Mitch. You better!” She got into bed and pulled the covers up to her chin.
“Well, I’m not going to.”
“Well, you should!”
“Well, too bad!”
They glared at each other like two bad ten-year-old kids. But by now Nina had lost track of why she was feeling so depressed. She only knew she hadn’t come home that way. Was it the cramps? Lynell’s knowing about Mitch’s job? Mitch’s nasty remark about Professor Lehman? Her nasty remark about Lynell? She couldn’t sort it out. Everything had gotten all mixed up together. She didn’t even want to think about it anymore. She was sick of the argument, sick of arguing. She wanted peace!
Mitch must have been sick of it, too, because he threw himself down next to her and said, “This is stupid.”
“I agree.”
“You want to make up?”
“Yes,” Nina said.
They touched hands and a spurt of lust engulfed her. “Get in,” she said. Mitch turned on the radio. The words of an old sixties song blared out. “She wore an itsy bitsy, teenie weenie, yellow polka dot bikini…”
“Shut that dumb song off,” Nina said, but he never did.
Chapter Twenty-two
Nicholas lived in an old two-family house with upstairs and downstairs porches. The living room was filled with big comfortable-looking chairs, an old, red velvet couch and faded Oriental rugs thrown down helter-skelter on shining wooden floors. Nina looked around, surprised to see so much shabby furniture. She had expected Professor Lehman to live in a house where everything was new. Trailing after him, she caught cozy glimpses of an unmade bed, a frying pan on the stove, socks hanging over the shower bar. In the dining room the ceiling was bordered with strings of plaster roses.
“Here we are.” He opened a door, put his hands on her shoulders, and propelled her into the room. There was a small desk, two chairs, a typewriter on a metal s
tand, and a small filing cabinet. An Oriental rug on the floor, and two windows looking out onto a yard.
“You didn’t do all this since yesterday?” Nina said.
He laughed. “No, no, it’s my home office. It’s been this way forever.” Nina sat down in front of the typewriter. “Ready to work already?” He laughed again.
“Yes,” she said, smiling uncertainly. His mood had certainly improved since the day before.
“Well …” He fumbled around on the desk, then handed her one of the damaged yellow pads. “I thought you should try this first. Do you think you can make out any of it?”
She skimmed the page, then pointed to a paragraph in the middle. “That … that’s readable …”
He looked over her shoulder, resting his chin lightly on her head. “Oh. Good. Yes, yes … you’re right … Well, what you can’t figure out, I’ll either reconstruct from memory, or—”
“All that work. You did so much work, and just because of an accident.… It doesn’t seem fair that it’s all wiped out.…” She heard herself chattering; she was nervous, almost as jittery as when she first began working for him weeks ago and was so in awe of him she could hardly get out two sensible words in a row. But why now? Nervous, maybe, because she was in his house? It’s an office, she told herself, a plain office, with a typewriter, stapler, pens and pencils. No different from his other office, where she had come to feel completely at ease.
“No,” he was saying, “by this time in my life I know not to expect too much. Life rarely works out the way one wants it to.” He leaned toward her, that same faint, amused, but warm smile on his face. “No use crying over things, Nina … no use at all. Life has too much to offer.…”
She was acutely aware of the smallness of the room, of heat rising and rising to her forehead, her ears, her lips.
“You’ll see as you get older. One learns to stop banging one’s head against walls. For instance, when I see something I want, I’ve learned to judge … is it possible? Can I have that? Or is that another stone wall? And I usually know. There are compensations in life.” His eyes were luminous, shining the way they did at times when he lectured. He’d pull at his tie, roll up his sleeves, and his eyes would shine, shine with the excitement of his words.
I see something I want…
He means me. The thought jumped into Nina’s mind. No, how ridiculous … conceited, actually.… Why would he be interested in her? The house, she thought distractedly, this place is overheated. Her hands were hot, swollen. “I should go to work.” She heard her voice—high, peppy, artificial.
She rolled a sheet of paper into the typewriter. He sat down at the desk, a stack of papers in front of him. Gradually Nina became absorbed in reading the notes. The room was silent except for the clacking of the typewriter and the occasional faint rustle of pages turning.
“Break, Nina?”
She looked around. An hour had passed. She shook her hands from the wrist to take the tension out of her fingers.
Nicholas Lehman swiveled his chair toward her, put one hand firmly on each of her shoulders, smiled, and kissed her. This happened for Nina at the same slow, dreamlike pace that an accident might happen, so that she had time to know what was coming, while remaining frozen. Time to think, He’s going to kiss me … and to see his face coming closer.… And then time to register her surprise, as his mouth met hers, that his lips tasted fruity, like oranges or plums.
All those daydreams … half dreams … those fantasies … He’s kissing me … Nicholas is kissing me.… Like words to a song.… Nicholas is kissing me….
And all the strength seemed to run out of her.… Nicholas is kissing me…. Her mind, her will, her will power was gone. Fled. She sat there being kissed. Waiting. She had abdicated: Nina, her self, the person who did or did not want, the one who said yes or no, that person was absent, lost in the daze of Nicholas is kissing me. A long kiss from which, finally, he withdrew his mouth and said, “Well … Well, that was certainly nice.”
But she said nothing. Still sat there, dazed and waiting.
“Nina. You look so worried.” He smoothed the line between her eyebrows.
“Oh … no … no …” Worried? Her? Worried about a kiss?
“I just wanted to kiss you,” he said. “I didn’t want to make you feel bad.”
“Oh, no, no,” she said again.
“Because we’re friends. Aren’t we friends?” He squeezed her hand.
“Oh … yes,” she said this time. And began to come out of her daze. Friends? They were student and teacher. Employer and employee. Nicholas and Nina, older man, younger woman. Yes, all sorts of things.… But were they friends?
Calm down, she told herself. Nothing happened. Just a kiss. A little kiss.
“I like you,” he said. “I like you very much.”
He kissed me … Nicholas kissed me.…
“And … do you like me?” His eyebrows rose in charming, ironic question.
“Yes.…” Her head bobbed.
“So … you see …” He leaned toward her, kissed her again, this time on her nose. “Nothing to be afraid of!”
“No,” she said, “I’m not afraid.”
A few minutes later, saying something about needing to get home early, she left. Just a kiss…. Yes, just a kiss, she told herself again, walking away from his house. Some people thought no more of a kiss than a handshake or a squeeze on the shoulder. Sophisticated people kissed each other all the time. Darling! they said. Dearest! And then it was kiss, kiss, kiss.
Maybe he hadn’t even intended it as a real kiss. It certainly wasn’t the kind of kiss she and Mitch kissed sometimes, the kiss going on and on and on, drifting Nina into another world.
She straightened her back, hitched up her knapsack, and considered telling Mitch about the kiss. Just to prove how little it meant. How innocent it had been. A kiss between two friends.
Mitch, guess what?
What, Nins?
The funniest thing—I mean, funny-unexpected. Professor Lehman kissed me … just happened out of the blue….
And then Mitch would say—Well, what would he say? Nina, what the hell is going on? You let that guy kiss you?
Crossing the street, Nina rearranged the scene. Begin from the beginning once more. Mitch. Guess what? The funniest thing …
And Mitch, calmly, He kissed you? How was it?
Nina, in a reflective way, Ohhh, not bad. But not like your kisses.
Well, Mitch would say reassuringly, I hope you don’t feel the least bit uncomfortable that he kissed you, Nins. Why, I’ve kissed someone recently, too.
Really? Who’s that? No, no, don’t tell me. Let me guess. Sonia!
And Mitch, with a little chuckle, would nod and say, You got it!
Then, though she’d never before imagined Mitch that interested in Sonia, Nina became convinced she’d hit on something. All this time, foolishly, she had been nursing a little spark of jealousy about Lynell. Actually it was Sonia Mitch frankly admired. How many times had she heard him say complimentary things about Sonia? Many, many! She put the two of them together in her mind—Sonia so much shorter than Mitch … her bracelets rattling … lips gleaming.…
But somehow it was easier to imagine Mitch and Lynell. The two of them in the apartment.… In the background that flute music Lynell liked so much.… Certainly that made more sense than Sonia and Mitch. It was Lynell that Mitch had told about losing his job. Lynell who ate pizza with him and argued about the pitch problems of that silly soprano! Yes, Lynell and Mitch. Lynell and Mitch. Another ditty she couldn’t get out of her head. Lynell and Mitch … sitting in a tree … k-i-s-s-i-n-g…. The words blotting out what had happened in Nicholas Lehman’s house. Lynell and Mitch kissing … lying on the bed together.… Nina’s skin prickled. She didn’t like that picture. Okay, maybe they kissed standing up, or maybe she sat in his lap. And when they finished kissing, maybe they had one of their long yawn-making discussions. Or did they talk about her? Laugh together when
her name came up? Snicker because they were kissing behind her back, and she was so incredibly naive she would never guess! Nina was breathing with her mouth open, hot furious breaths.
So! Lynell and Mitch! Yes, she was in a fury, quite a fury, a satisfying fury that occupied her whole mind. It was only as she was going up the steps and thought of facing Mitch that she came to her senses. Her face turned violently hot. The image of Mitch and Lynell faded. What remained was the memory of Nicholas Lehman kissing her.
Chapter Twenty-three
Over the weekend Nina dug out the notebook she sometimes wrote in. Privately she called it her journal. It had been lying untouched, for weeks, even months, in her drawer under a pile of socks and shirts. “I wish I could write down everything that has happened to me, everything I have thought and felt and experienced,” she wrote. “Especially these last few weeks. I feel as if incredible amounts of time have passed, and as if I have grown and matured through experience. Things have happened to me I would not have thought possible, which maybe I dreamed about a little, but didn’t think could actually come to pass.” As soon as she wrote that, Nina became afraid to put down another word. What if Mitch discovered her journal?
Besides, side by side with a desire to write about Nicholas Lehman kissing her was another, equally strong impulse, and this was to blot out the whole episode. To erase it like a scrawled picture on a blackboard. Not to think about Nicholas Lehman. Not to remember the kiss. Not to wonder what it had meant or might mean to her in the coming days.
A cold rain fell all weekend and she and Mitch spent a lot of time indoors; but busy as she kept herself, it was impossible for Nina to perform that erasing trick. Just didn’t work. If her mind was a blackboard, then there was the scrawled picture, complete in every detail.
Even when she wasn’t consciously thinking about that Friday afternoon in Nicholas Lehman’s house, even when she seemed fully occupied with showering or scrambling an egg or laughing with Mitch as they watched Saturday Night Live, there was still a hard tension, like a taut rope, in the back of her mind. A sense that the moment she let down her guard, the incident would come rushing back.
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