“How so?”
“Oh, I don’t know where to start. His whole concept of women, for example.”
“The standard Male Chauvinist Pig?”
“No, I’m not talking about that kind of crap. But this total inability to relate to women stands out on page. He needs women but he’s afraid of them. He believe they’re really people. Every female character his is either too good or too bad. They come alive anyway because of his craft as a writer but he puts impossible speeches in their mouths and impossible ideas in their heads. I’ll bet he’s never really loved a woman in his life. He may make a fool of himself over a woman now and then but never knows her enough to love her on an adult level.”
He stroked his beard. “Interesting,” he said. “As a man, I’m less apt to pick up on that sort of thing. What else have you doped out about him?”
“Oh, it’s not fair to play detective like this,” she said, smiling. “But other things seem fairly obvious.”
“For example?”
“The usual latent homosexuality. Narcissism. And his emphasis on communal roots—I’d guess he lacks roots himself and has never gotten over the fact. Of course that would have to be the case or he wouldn’t have wound up in Bucks County.”
“You don’t think he has roots here? It seems to me he’s been here forever.”
“Not deep roots. Transplants never do, do they?”
“Interesting,” he said. He took his pipe apart and blew through the stem. “And yet you read his books.”
“They’re interesting. He’s interesting, as far as that goes, even if he’s not admirable.”
“Uh-huh. Anything else you don’t like about him?”
“Definitely.”
“Such as?”
Now she did look away from him. “His beard needs trimming,” she said, “and the patch is coming off the left sleeve of his jacket.”
When she dared to look up at him he had turned slightly to the left and was looking at the juncture of ceiling and wall. Without looking at her he said, “I’ll bet you’ve handed out a lot of coronaries in your young life.”
“You did ask for it, you know.”
“Indeed I did. But you certainly pushed enough of the right buttons. I can’t tell you how relieved I am it was a put-on, not that that will keep me from brooding for weeks about what you said.”
“Oh, I was just being a little rotten, that’s all.”
“That’s what I’ll tell myself. When did you—”
“Yesterday.”
“Before or after I left?”
“After, I’m afraid. While you were here all I knew about you was that you were the most godawful pest so far this week. Then something made me turn the book over. Why don’t you wear your glasses for photographs?”
“I think people should be able to see eyes. If they’re going to see an author at all.”
“What about his chin?”
“No one ever called the chin the window of the soul. What do you do when you’re not making people wish they were dead?”
“Nothing much. I hope it wasn’t that cruel.”
“Crueler than you could have known. Incidentally, one of us hasn’t been introduced.”
“It’s Linda Robshaw.”
He swooped to kiss her hand. “Mrs. Robshaw, the pleasure is mine.”
“It’s Miss Robshaw. As you already know, because otherwise you would have kissed a ring.”
“I feel increasingly transparent. When do you finish work here? Which is a euphemism for when can I buy you a drink?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Or coffee. Or a sandwich, or an ice-cream cone, or a—what? A ping-pong ball? A subway token? An autographed photo of Mrs. Warren G. Harding? You need merely ask.”
She laughed aloud.
“Well?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“There’s no Mrs. Markarian, you know. There was, but she has a different last name now.”
“I know.”
“I have no wife, no criminal record, and no significant bad habits. I could submit character references.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“You’re involved in something.”
“It would be easy to say yes to that, wouldn’t it? Something, perhaps, but not someone, which I suppose is what you meant.” He nodded. “I’m not. I was, and now I’m not, and I’m getting over it.”
“I see.”
“Do you? I’m not sure I do myself. I’m getting more than the person I used to be involved with. It seems to be a time-consuming process. Just now I’m not ready for anything complicated.”
“Not even something as uncomplicated as a cup of coffee?”
“I think we both know it would amount to more than a cup of coffee.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes.”
He filled his pipe and lit it. This took a great deal of time, in the course of which she found herself constantly looking at him and then glancing nervously away. When the pipe was going well he took it from his mouth and held it at arm’s length, fixing his eyes on it.
“Fair enough,” he said. “Yesterday was my day for being a pest, and I try not to do that more than once a week. We’ll probably run into each other from time to time.”
“Yes, we probably will.”
“You threw me as wide a curve this afternoon as I’ve ever seen. Naturally I’m going to want a couple of swings at it.”
“I’m not trying to strike you out.”
“I’m not aiming to strike out. I’ll see you. Enjoy the book. The ending’s a little weak, but then so at the moment is the author. ‘Bye.”
Friday night she recapitulated both conversations with Markarian for Peter. Her report was virtually verbatim. She sat on the floor of her room and shared a bottle of wine with him and told him everything in great detail.
“I think you made an impression,” he said.
“More than I planned.”
“You couldn’t have expected him to take all that in stride.”
“I hadn’t planned on giving him all that to begin with. I got carried away.”
“So did he, from the sound of it. Has he been back since?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Which does or doesn’t please you?”
“Both.”
“That’s cool. I’m beginning to develop a taste for wine.”
“So am I.”
He had brought her the wine an hour ago on his return from the theater. Earlier he had asked if she would sit with Robin. Gretchen had gone to Philadelphia to have something complicated done to her teeth. She had been born in Philadelphia, he explained, and like many people she never got over it She still went to a Philadelphia dentist. He had booked her for Friday afternoon and Saturday morning, and there was an aunt with whom she would stay.
“Or she won’t stay with her aunt and isn’t going to the dentist, and I’ll tell you something.”
“You don’t fucking care.”
“I don’t fucking care is right. It’s good if she’s seeing the dentist because it’s a good sign if she takes an interest in that sort of thing, but all I do fucking care is that she’s off my back for a night. Robin already had dinner. All she needs is someone to keep her company and laugh at her jokes.”
“I always laugh at Robin’s jokes.”
“That’s just one of the reasons I love you. I’ll see you when I see you.”
He saw her at eleven thirty, by which time Robin had been laughed and played with and bathed and cuddled and tucked into bed. He knocked lightly on the door and when she opened it he presented the bottle of wine. “Valpolicella,” she read. “How lovely.”
“Is that how you pronounce it?”
“It’s how I pronounce it. For me? I suppose you know you didn’t have to.”
“I know, and it’s only for you if you insist. I was thinking of it as for us.”
“This is the real stuff, isn’t it? That means a
cork. I think I know where the corkscrew is. She’s out cold, one of us can check her every once in a while and she’ll be fine.”
He locked the door and they went up to her room and opened the wine. They were both light-headed and buoyant. He said he never got a cork out of a wine bottle without breaking it and she asked if he generally broke the cork or the bottle and he said nobody loved a smartass. He opened the bottle perfectly and they sat on the floor and passed it back and forth while she told, about her encounters with Hugh Markarian.
She said, “What do I do when he shows up?”
“That’s the question.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What do you think you’ll do?”
“I don’t really know, Peter. I don’t want to go out with him. Or I think I don’t.”
“Because it might turn serious. You really think it would?”
“I don’t know. Not serious serious, but maybe pretend serious. Whatever the lady means by that. What do you know about him?”
“He’s a writer and he lives a few miles out of town. I know what he looks like because somebody pointed him out once. But I never—wait a minute, I met him about a month ago. We were at the same table at Sully’s but he wasn’t saying much and I wasn’t listening closely anyway. I never read any of his books. He’s just a name to me on the list of Bucks County writers who make this place such a culture center. Pearl Buck and James Michener and S. J. Perelman—”
“Didn’t he move?”
“That’s right, he did. And who else? The tall skinny one who wrote three books set here with real people in them, that everybody’s still uptight about. I can’t remember his name.”
“Neither can I, but I know who you mean.”
“From what I’ve heard they almost rode him out of town on a rail. The guy I can’t think of, that is. Not Hugh Markarian. I suppose you can afford to turn him down a few more times. It sounds to me as though he’ll come back for more.”
“For a while. And not if I really put him down.”
“It sounds as if you have his combination, too.”
“I think I do. I was just enough of a bitch the other day. If I was a little bit more of a bitch he wouldn’t have been interested.”
“You really do have a bitch streak, don’t you? It’s hard for me to believe it.”
“I usually keep it on a leash.”
They each had some more wine and he said, “Linda? Mind a question? Even if it could be serious, so what?”
“I knew you were going to ask that.”
“I mean it’s not as if you were likely to freak. You’ve got yourself very much together.”
“And want to stay that way.”
“I think you’re worried about nothing.”
She put down the bottle and looked at him. She was beginning to feel the wine and she was enjoying what she felt. And there was something besides the wine, an extra presence in the room. No, it wasn’t a presence, it was an absence. Gretchen had always been present in their previous conversations and tonight she was in Philadelphia.
“Makes the heart grow fonder,” she said.
“Huh?”
“Did I say that out loud? I must have had either too much or too little of this wine. There’s only one solution.”
“Here. What were you saying?”
“Thanks. I wasn’t saying anything, but maybe Tanya was right.”
“About what?”
“About what she said.”
“I’m starting to feel like the dentist Gretchen is going to. Pulling teeth. What did Tanya say now?”
She gave him a long look. “Well, Peter,” she said, mock serious, “I don’t think I’m going to tell you Tanya’s most recent utterness. Utterance. I don’t think I’m going to tell you now.”
“Okay.”
“Later. I may tell you later.”
“Okay.”
“But I will tell you what Tanya said before.”
“Okay. Well? What did she say before?”
“There is alcohol in this wine.”
“That’s what Tanya said?”
“That’s what I said just this minute. Or last minute. What Tanya said is that a woman has certain basic needs, and once she gets used to it she can’t get along without it, and of course I’ve lived with a man and must be able to recognize my needs, and what Tanya said in so many words is I ought to get laid.”
“Oh.”
“She said when she goes without it for a couple of days, she starts climbing the walls.”
“How would she know?”
“Do you know, I almost asked her that. I wonder what she does when she has her period.”
“Shhh, they’ll hear you.”
“If that would bother Just Plain Bill over there.”
“It might if he noticed. If he noticed.”
“He might if they showed it on television.” They went into hysterical laughter again. He got hold of himself before she did. It was just so much fun to laugh life this. When she could talk she said, “Peter, are we really this funny? Or is it just the wine?”
“I think we’re really this funny.”
“She wanted to know what I did for sex. Tanya.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I don’t remember. I made a joke and explained the joke to her and then she asked me again. She’s not too good at taking a hint.”
“Neither am I.”
“Huh?”
“What did you finally tell her?”
“Oh, I get it. That wasn’t a hint. I have to be a lot soberer than this to be subtle. Where were we? What did I tell Tanya. What I told her was I didn’t do anything for sex.” She stared owlishly at him. “What I didn’t tell her was the truth.”
“Oh.”
“Just ‘Oh’?”
“If you think I’m going to ask—”
“Then I ain’t about to tell, Massa.”
“What do you do for sex?”
“Ah plays with mahself.” In her own voice she said, “I never said that before. God knows I did it before. Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Plays with yoreself.”
“Jesus.”
“Oh, I’m in a weird mood.”
“I’ll say.”
“It feels so good. The mood. So does playing with myself. Oh, I feel about six years old. I feel like Robin-Lobin. You better teach her another game, incidentally.”
“I know.”
“Because it doesn’t work with my name and it’s frustrating the piss out of her. Robin-Lobin and Peter-Leter and Gretchen-Letchen, and then along comes Linda-Linda, and what kind of big hairy deal is that?” She moved around the room in little two-steps. “This is Robshaw-Lobshaw speaking,” she announced, “and this is Truth Time! Do you play with yourself, yes or no, you have ten seconds to answer, bong.”
“Yes.”
“The man says yes! Now our next question. One hand or two?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“I know, isn’t it wonderful?” She plopped herself onto the floor, folded her legs. “Give me my bottle-lottle,” she demanded.
He hesitated.
“Come on.”
“Do you think you should have any more?”
“Well, I don’t think I should have any less. You can’t save wine, you know. Or it tastes corked or something. I’m sure you can’t save Valipo, Vapilo—I can’t say it, Peter.”
“If you can’t say it you can’t drink it.”
“Valpolicella. There. See, I’m not as drunk as I seem. When push comes to shove I make the grade. Fucking Peter, give me the fucking botttttle!”
“Shhhhh.”
“Then give me the bottle. If you give me the bottle I’ll tell you what else Tanya said. Thank you. This is good wine. See, if this was bad wine we would be getting drunk, but the bottle’s almost empty and we’re both sober. Except I am talking very loud. Now I am not talking very loud. Is that better, Peter?”
“Uh-huh.”
&
nbsp; “You just finished the wine. You made the wine all gone. That’s what Robin says. Peter-Leter made the wine all gone.”
“You ought to drink this stuff all the time.”
“Just what I was thinking. Don’t you want to know what Tanya said?”
“I never in my life heard her say anything worth repeating, and we’ve been talking about what she said for the past six hours.”
“She said you and I are sleeping together. Peter? You’re not laughing.”
“Tanya really said that?”
“Oh, shit. Why isn’t it funny? It was funny as hell when she said it. But I didn’t laugh then either. I blew up at her and she almost cried, and then I came home and broke up laughing, and I thought you would too if I saved it for when you were in a good mood, and all of a sudden it isn’t funny, is it, Peter?”
They looked at each other for a long time. She couldn’t get her eyes away from his. Gretchen was in Philadelphia and the room was full of her absence and the heart was growing fonder all the time.
“I have to check Robin,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
“Anyway, it’s late.”
“Don’t be long,” she said.
She listened to his footsteps on the stairs. Don’t be long. She should not have said that and it was good he had not reacted to it. He would go downstairs and go to bed, and that was as it should be. It was a good thing one of them had sense.
She took off all her clothes. She turned on the bathroom light and left the door open a crack, then turned off the other lights. She touched herself, thinking One hand or two? and sniffed her fingers. She got in bed and covered herself only with the sheet.
She thought Don’t come back, and then she heard his footsteps on the stairs again.
He stood in the doorway with the hall light framing him from behind. He said, “I just came up to say good-night.”
“Kiss me good-night.”
“Linda, I’m scared.”
“So am I. Kiss me good-night.”
Until he sat on the bed and kissed her it was never entirely real. It was the mood and the wine and the absence of Gretchen and it was not entirely real. It was kids playing chicken. You could always change your mind at the last minute, and so it was not real.
There is always a moment when you can change your mind and a moment when you cannot, and the line that divides them holds fewer angels than a pin head. There is the moment in roulette before the ball drops. There is that instant before a trigger is quite squeezed, before a trap is sprung. On one side of the line is possibility and on the other side is certainty.