Enigma Variations

  But as I keep walking toward the courts, I realize that I don’t share his despair. The thought of Maud and her beau zipping their way up to the nth floor in his Midtown high-rise co-op doesn’t disturb me. I can see the two of them walking down a long corridor until they finally reach his apartment door, a bit awkward and hesitant, yet grateful that their steps are muffled by the thick carpeting. The cuff links, the necktie, the image of her legs wrapped around his bare waist, don’t disturb me either. I’ll play tennis, they’ll play at lovemaking. Who’s the happier of us? Who knows?

  At the 72nd Street entrance to the park, a group of bicyclists have assembled and are waiting for some sort of signal to enter the park. A whole lot of people are sitting on the benches at the entrance, some have been skating and are removing their Rollerblades, others putting them on. The usual skateboards. Most of those lounging on the benches don’t look like tourists, and they aren’t students either. Does anyone work? None except for the Greek.

  I think of the poor man selling hot dogs all day, already planning what he’ll need to pack up, what to give away, what to remember, what to let go of, things, places, people, a lifetime. Perhaps I too should think of sorting out my things. None of it seems to faze me. I was more disturbed by the possibility of being caught watching the lovebirds than by the fear that Maud had found happiness with another man. She looked so expansive, so ebullient and rapt. I haven’t seen her like this in so long. Part of me was even happy to watch her beam, one elbow resting ever so nonchalantly on the thin ledge that was supporting the large mirror behind them as she touched his hair, looking like a model for Mauboussin’s bracelets. She is beautiful. So why am I not jealous?

  Is it because it’s still too soon—this is not the shock, not even the beginning of the shock? Or is it because none of this should disturb the universe if you don’t let it, if you don’t push, if you don’t discuss it, not even with yourself? Can one really not think of this? Maud is cheating on me, my Maud in bed with another man, doing things she doesn’t, can’t, won’t, do with me because he knows how to lead her there, Maud astride me as I look up at her when she shuts her eyes and I’m all the way inside her, except that it’s not me, it’s someone else.

  Soon, I know, I’ll be rifling through the drawer where she keeps some of her things in my bedroom. I’ve done it with others, will do it again, though I already know that it’ll be out of principle, not because I need to know, or even care. I may end up being jealous because I have to be.

  * * *

  THE GREEK WAS right. This is beach season already, and the weather is clearly working its way into the midseventies. Soon we’ll be planning weekends away. The thought buoys my spirits, and stirred by this presage of summer, I remove my jacket and loosen my necktie. It reminds me of school days when they’d relax the dress code as soon as they caught a hint of spring weather in the air, when afternoons felt long and my mind invariably drifted to the beaches of San Giustiniano. Except I still remember how the lure of sea weather always coincided with approaching finals and my dreaded report card. I want to call her and tell her that I can’t believe how beautiful the day is. I also want to tell her that I’ve had a good meeting and am now headed to the tennis courts. But I catch myself. Things have changed, might change the moment she hears my voice and is reminded of the humdrum rhythm of our days and nights. I must learn to keep my mouth shut. No hints, no cunning winky-wink prods as in, Oh, was that you I saw at lunch today? Just try to keep your mouth shut. And don’t call.

  Suddenly, I feel a growing access of tenderness for her. Is this love, or just compassion for someone who is chasing after romance, the way I and everyone else craves the luster of romance in our lives?

  The worst is going to be watching her lie to me and, knowing she’s lying, helping her sidestep the small traps I might unintentionally lay down, and by steering her away from them credit myself both for being so magnanimous and so very clever. I must never let on that I know.

  Nothing would hurt me more than watching her flinch each time she hears the word “lunch.” Must never mention Renzo & Lucia’s and stay clear of anything remotely bearing on midday, Madison Avenue, or high-rise residential buildings, or cruise ships from Hollywood B movies from the early forties where new lovers stray from first-class dance floors to meet by starlight on the bridge and watch the moon shimmer on the placid ocean. I am thinking of Paul Henreid bringing two cigarettes to his lips and lighting both at the same time, one for him and one for Bette Davis.

  The beauty of romance.

  Could I live with her after this?

  The real question is: Could she?

  The truth is: I could.

  I can envision her coming by my place tonight after yoga class, dropping her bag in the kitchen, trying to change and get ready for our dinner with the Plums in Brooklyn. She looks at my face and says, You’re a bit sunburned today, aren’t you?

  Whenever she asks about my day, there’s always a playful allegation that I might have spent it with one of my young interns. Usually I play along. Not today. I just hit a few balls with Harlan this afternoon.

  She steps out of the kitchen, stops on her way to the bedroom, and then turns and faces me.

  I may have some bad news.

  I look at her with a glance that wishes to seem at once earnest and not entirely surprised.

  About us, you mean. Us, I figure, is safer than him.

  I think so.

  I’m not going to say a word about lunch, but I won’t play dumb either.

  I know.

  Oh?

  I take a moment to gauge whether I’m not on the wrong track.

  Is it serious? I ask.

  She looks at me and purses her lips as if she’s never thought about it in exactly these terms.

  I don’t know. It could be. Or may not. Too soon to tell. I just thought you should know. She is about to turn on the light in the corridor, but she is still not moving. This is difficult.

  What I’ve always admired about her is that in our eight months together difficult admissions have always been civil.

  I know, I say. It’s not easy for me either. Do you still feel like going to dinner tonight?

  She nods. But just before she goes to change, she turns around, looks at me, takes a deep breath: Thanks.

  Welcome.

  They say the signs are always there, right before you, but like the stars at night, they are impossible to count, much less read. Besides, signs are no better than oracles. They speak the truth provided they’re not heeded. While we were sleeping a week or so ago, our feet had touched, then our legs, then our thighs, and before we were even fully awake, we had started making love, way too soon and too fast, which is when she did something unusual and dug her fingers into my hair and kept rubbing my scalp with such fiendish abandon as we kissed that without holding back or giving it any thought, we both came at the same time. I had no idea how long we’d been making love or how we got started, or whether we’d even said a word before or during. There’d been no foreplay, no afterglow, no trace, no stain, just a vacuum. We didn’t even open our eyes. Two alley cats scuffling in the darkest dead of night slinking away no sooner done. I fell back asleep in a stupor and so did she, her back to me, while I, as always, put one leg over hers. She liked it that way, she said, and moaned herself to sleep. Both of us were late for work that morning. The strange thing is that the next day neither of us uttered the most passing remark about our lovemaking. I could have made the whole thing up.

  Something, however, did surprise me in the stubborn ferocity with which we ground into each other’s bodies. She kept playing with my hair as if she meant to pull it out. I had attributed all this to midsleep, unbridled, savage sex. Then while shaving, it hit me. She was making love to someone else’s body, to someone else’s rhythm, not to mine.

  Or there was this: her very recent love affair with a kind of salad dressing that consisted of a few drops of regular vinegar, not balsamic, and lots of lemon, with just a
tablespoon of oil. Except that the lemons had to be grown in the groves of Sicily, and you had to use salt from the salt pans of Trapani in western Sicily. It never occurred to me to ask where had she learned so much about Sicilian products, or who had taught her to mix cavolo nero with anchovies and Parmesan and, of course, lemon juice. You didn’t learn this in books or at Renzo & Lucia’s. You learned it in a high-rise bachelor pad over lunch or dinner. He can’t be married.

  Then there’s the trip to Sicily we’ve been talking about, because she wants to visit the whole island, not just the supercrowded beaches and islands everyone travels to. She wants to visit Erice and Agrigento and Ragusa, Noto, and Syracuse, and then the hill town of Enna, where Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen built his pleasure palace. I have no idea how she came to know so much about the puppet theater in Syracuse, or about tiny Ortigia, which she tells me comes from the Greek word for quail, owing to a semigoddess who hurled herself into the water and became a quail, which became an island, which became … I never bothered to ask why this sudden yen for Sicily. I would have been perfectly happy spending a few weeks on the islands off the mainland.

  All I know is that Maud, who is so tame sometimes, wants excitement in her life. The woman with the slender arm and the beautifully chiseled elbow resting with such grace and whimsy on the ledge of the huge mirror behind her wants fun, wants romance, wants a fresh, new gust in her life. I am sure she resisted at first, and I can just see him trying and trying again before she finally relented.

  Look around you, he says in the restaurant.

  Yes, and?

  Did you look around?

  Yes.

  Who is the most beautiful, smartest, most intimidating woman in this restaurant right now? What am I saying? Most forbidding.

  Maybe that one over there, she says as she points to a woman who’s had work done and is wearing lots of jewelry.

  Not her.

  Then who? she asks. Maud must love this.

  It’s the woman sitting by the large mirror who knows that the man sitting next to her is struggling to keep his hands on the table.

  The things you say.

  I just want to hold you.

  Had I ever spoken to her this way? With her there were no balconies to scale, no struggle to win her over, no dashing histrionics, no rivals, no door to ram down or to bolt shut Fragonard-style once I’d stepped into her bedroom that first time after we’d played tennis. The door was always open, and everything had come so naturally, so easily, just as it had in midsleep the other night. We crossed the bridge and didn’t even see the water underneath.

  * * *

  I LIKE WHAT I am feeling this Friday afternoon. Come to think of it, what I’ve seen isn’t so terrible, isn’t so bad, isn’t even interesting. Am I going to be jealous—seriously? Sneak into her e-mail, pick up her cell phone while she’s in the shower, try to find out what they text about, or sift through a morass of factoids to determine how they meet, when, where? How cliché!

  I roll up my sleeves, remove my tie, and enter the park, heading through the bridle path toward the tennis house. With any luck I’ll find a partner if Harlan is not there. It will be good to see who’s playing, chat with the regulars whom I haven’t seen since Thanksgiving weekend, buy a soft drink, hit for an hour or two, and then lie on the grass till it’s time to get back home, shower, and go to dinner.

  Keep things in perspective. Think how far, far worse off is the Greek hot dog vendor. This is not the end of the world.

  As chance would have it, when I arrive, Harlan has already booked a court and is waiting for me in the tennis house. “Go change,” he says. I like the brash tone. It reminds me there are other, speedier things to attend to right now besides Maud. I don’t want to think of her. As I take off my watch, I think: For now we’re okay, we’re not hurt, not damaged, just a wee bit bruised, but not flailing. The self’s a touch scuffed, of course, but not the heart. The thought comes to me as I’m wrapping tape around the handle of my racket the way one might swaddle an Ace bandage around one’s calf, one’s wrist, one’s ego. We’re good.

  One last thought before I head to the courts: Must not utter a word to her about what I’d seen at lunch, not the most elusive hint, nothing. I’ll do exactly what the Brits did when they broke the Germans’ Enigma code during the war. They knew where and when the Germans were planning bombing raids. But they refrained from stepping up defenses for fear of giving away that they had decrypted the enemy’s code. A misplaced word, a doubting glance, a hint of irony, and she’ll know.

  While I’m finishing wrapping tape around my racket, I call her to say I’m going to play tennis. “I figured, when you didn’t pick up at the office. I’m so jealous,” she says. So she had called me. Why? “To say hi.” When? “Less than an hour ago, just after lunch.” How was lunch? I ask.

  Haven’t I just promised not to bring up lunch? She takes the question in stride and doesn’t seem to mind it at all. The usual fare at Renzo’s. Actually, not very good this time. Oh, another journalist.

  Is this because she spotted me at the restaurant and knows I saw her?

  Maud says she has a meeting this afternoon and is heading directly to the Plums’ from her office. Does she want to meet me before going to the Plums’? I ask. “No, we’ll meet there. Just don’t be late? I hate when the two of them gang up on me and go on about their dreaded Ned.” I laugh. I’ve taught her to hate their son, now she dislikes him more than I do. “I’ll bring something,” she says. I say, “Bring nothing. They plan their dinners from beginning to end. We’ll send flowers tomorrow.” We say goodbye. She loves me. I love her too.

  By then, I’ve completely forgotten about lunch. If she meant to placate me, she succeeded. Which is probably why I called her. Just telling me that the food was not good lifted a huge load and for some inexplicable reason frees my mind of all worries and doubts. Suddenly tennis seems a godsend. I take out a can of balls, open it, and we descend the stairs to court 14, the one totally in the sun. We are going to sweat, we are going to run, play hard, and think of nothing but tennis. All I want is to be one with tennis. As long as we can be one with something, anything, we’re okay. As I walk down the stairs and step on the courts, a rush of pleasure courses through my body, I am tingling with a sense of total well-being. I could do this for the rest of my life and not care a whit, about her, about work, about summer, travel, about anything. I am happy.

  We had met here on a Friday last summer. She was looking for a partner. I offered. She wasn’t a great player, she said. It didn’t matter, I said. We played for four hours that day. It was July Fourth weekend and we had both left work early. Neither had plans for the weekend. That evening, we had dinner at a pub and ate at the bar, which both of us said we loved doing. It was like being alone together, one of us said. Early the next morning, without having arranged it, the two of us showed up to book courts. We played for more than five hours. The courts were scorching that day and many stayed empty. We had to change clothes, biked home, came back, and played till sundown. Shower. Drinks. A late movie. Dinner at the bar? Loved dinner at the bar, she said. The air was balmy, my hands, her shoulders, our faces were moist and clammy. Three Dominicans, one with his guitar, were singing on a bench on an island in the middle of Broadway. We sat on the same bench and listened. I kissed her. We made love all night, playing a Brazilian CD again and again, until, in the days to come, it was impossible to make love without the music. We ended up in Italy later that summer, with the music.

  I unzip my other racket cover and remove the racket she bought me as a Christmas present.

  Manfred, an ace player in his late twenties, comes over to me and asks if he can join us. We find a fourth player for doubles, an elderly gentleman who is a fixture at the tennis courts. He wanted to play on my side, but Manfred had asked first, and Harlan didn’t mind having the old man as his partner. I’ve never played with or against Manfred before, but after almost two years now I’ve gotten used to seeing him e
arly every weekday morning. I admire his game, his grace, his build. Occasionally, when our eyes meet, we exchange a few words by the soda machine or in the locker area, but I would never have dared ask him to play with me and have always felt he kept his distance for fear I might ask someday. I imagine there’s been a cautious chill between us. Yet watching him grow nervous and almost lose his footing asking to join us this afternoon is like seeing a high school champion look gawky when turning to the class nerd for homework help. His voice was shaky; he must have noticed and tried to dissemble by affecting an awkward laugh. It made me feel strong, proud.

  When we were done playing, I could almost feel the old chill rise between us. It would estrange us and we’d be back to perfunctory nods. So before things cool down, I ask if he wants a beer and suggest we play again soon. “Tomorrow morning if you want.” “Tomorrow it is,” I say, perhaps too fast, fearing he might change his mind. Since I had a reservation with Harlan on Saturday, I say I’ll give mine up to someone else. “Do that,” he says. I feel elated. We leave the park and head to a café for a quick beer. I’m sure he knows I’ve got a crush on him.