Robert Tanenbaum - Falsely Accused

“Was it?”

“Was it ?” Lanin’s voice rose to a screech. “ Was it ? Marlene, I don’t even know this son of a bitch. It’s all in his head! ”

“Wait a minute-he just, like, seized on you on the street?”

Lanin sighed deeply and rolled her eyes. “You want the whole story? You got an hour?”

As it happened, Marlene’s calendar was free for at least the next eight months, so Lanin made some coffee and Marlene sat down on the Haitian cotton sofa, and Carrie Lanin settled herself on the bentwood rocker across from her, sipping from a steaming mug enriched with a tot of sour mash bourbon and told her tale.

“I went to high school in Jersey-Englewood Cliffs. I was sort of a player in high school-captain of the cheerleaders, junior prom queen-like that. People knew me. Okay, a couple of months ago, it must have been before we went to the beach, like June, I’m in Gristede’s on Sixth, picking up some things, when this guy comes up to me in the dairy department. ‘Carrie Tiptree?’ he says-my maiden name, right? He holds out his hand and says his name’s Rob Pruitt, he went to high school with me. So I sort of smile back at him. Of course, I don’t remember him at all. I mean, if I ever actually saw him, he was just a face in the crowd. So we started chatting, he carried my packages for me, and I thought, okay, a pleasant guy, chance meeting, nothing special to look at but neat. I mean, he didn’t have red eyes and fangs. After I got home, I was curious, so I dragged out the old yearbook and looked him up.”

She paused, and Marlene asked, “He was there? In the yearbook?”

“Oh, yeah. Want to see?” Without waiting for an answer, Lanin went to the bookcase and brought back a volume bound in maroon imitation leather and marked CLIFFHANGER in faded gold. She riffled through it and handed it, opened, to Marlene.

“That’s him-Robert T. Pruitt, no nickname, no friendly little tag line, one extracurricular activity,” said Lanin.

“The rifle team,” read Marlene. She examined the tiny photograph: Pruitt was a close-faced youth who looked more than usually stupid in his academic cap. Dark and unruly hair squirted out from under this headgear, and the retoucher had not been entirely able to disguise a bad case of acne.

“See? A geek,” said Lanin.

“Is he still geekish?”

“No, and that’s what sort of threw me. He looks regular, normal. I mean, he had a neat haircut, and he was wearing, like, chinos, Nikes, and a white shirt. And it made me feel sort of sad-I mean, high school is such hell. I was in and he was out, and I guess the in-crowd just doesn’t think about what it’s like for the nothing people, the ones who aren’t rich, or bright, or gorgeous, or funny. So, uh, I don’t know whether it was guilt or what, but he asked me for my number and I gave it to him.”

“And he called, of course.”

“The next day. Asked me out for dinner that Friday. In retrospect, needless to say, I should’ve heard the alarm bells going off. But I figured, what the fuck, right? New York is not exactly full of straight guys dying to buy nice meals for thirty-one-year-old divorced ladies with kids. Plus, he was at least presentable, and there was that expiation thing, being a little princess in high school and ignoring kids like him. And he lost the pizza face-I figured he deserved something for that, too. So, Friday, he arrives at the door, dead on time. He’s still got the chinos and the white shirt, but now he’s wearing a leather jacket, not the cool kind, but the kind that looks like a sports jacket. It’s like brand-new and shiny. And he’s got a fucking Whitman’s Sampler box of chocolates and a huge purple orchid in a plastic box.”

Marlene could not suppress a snort of laughter.

“Yeah, you’re laughing,” said Lanin, whose mood had much improved. “As a matter of fact, I thought it was pretty funny too, at first.”

“Sorry,” said Marlene. “So then what?”

“So then, after I put the goddamn orchid in the fridge, we went out. He’s rented a limo for the evening. With a driver. Okay, to be brutally honest, this is not something that happens to me a lot. I’m dying of curiosity. So I try to pump him on the ride up, what does he do, where does he live, what’s happened since high school. He’s not saying. What does he do? A little of this, a little of that. He lives ‘uptown.’ Actually, it turns out he only wants to talk about me, and what happened to the people in my crowd back then. So I perform, I bullshit away, but meanwhile, I’m thinking, uh-oh, please let this guy not be in the dope business, because that’s all my ex needs to hear, I’m keeping company with Mr. Coke, it’s court again and maybe good-bye, Miranda.”

“Where did he take you?”

“Elaine’s. Where else? Of course, there’s a line outside, and when our limo pulls up, they’re all gaping. The doorman looks at us funny, but he lets us past- I guess a limo is a limo. Also the geek’s got reservations, which means he’s not a regular, but we go up to the maitre d’ and Rob says he wants us to have a banquette table, where all the celebrities sit. The guy smiles and shakes his head, and then Rob pulls out a roll of bills, Marlene, I swear it was the size of a pastrami sandwich and solid twenties, and he starts peeling them off one by one onto the maître d’s little lectern. And the guy’s embarrassed, you can tell, but all the same, he can’t take his eyes off the pile of bills.”

“So you got the good seats?”

“Oh, yeah, the best. Burt Reynolds was at the next table. And we saw Bill Murray and a bunch of people from Saturday Night Live. I was looking for Woody and Mia, but they didn’t show.”

“Poor you,” said Marlene. “Let me understand this: you are running away from this guy? This is your problem ?”

“Oh, God!” Carrie wailed, “I knew you were going to say that. Okay, listen to the rest of it. There we are, and, to be frank, I’m pretty excited. I mean, the Bread Shop on Duane Street is my usual speed since the divorce, and I’m trying to get a conversation going. But there’s nothing coming from him. Zip. He’s not looking around. He’s barely interested in his food. He’s just looking at me, as if he’s finally achieved this big dream and I’m just some kind of trophy. The geek bagged the prom queen? Right about then the little buzzer started to go off: wronggg! wronggg! And after that all I could think about was, this guy must have blown a grand tonight, he’s going to expect his money’s worth, being, as I now realize, the same old geek but with money, and how the hell am I going to keep him out of my panties?”

“And did you?”

“Oh, yeah. As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem. We get back here. I turn to him, grab his hand, give it one shake, say ‘thank you very much for dinner, Rob,’ and I’m gone. And he took it, didn’t say a word. So, I pay the sitter, have a bath, go to bed. Around three a.m. the phone rings. I let the machine take it. In the morning, I see the blinker and I play the tape. It’s him, and it’s weird. In this voice, ‘Hi, it’s me.’ Like we’ve been married for six years, and then he starts talking about what a great time we had and how he’ll be around to pick me up at eight, and a lot of other crap about how he always knew I liked him in high school but he had to get his shit together before he was worthy of me, and how, way back when, he was in this place, this joint we used to hang out at in high school, Larry’s, and somebody played ‘Twist and Shout’ on the jukebox and I looked at him and he knew that our love was real. It was incredible. It just went on and on like that, and then he played the song.”