Флетчер Флора - Wake Up With a Stranger

“What now?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. I’ll think about it.”

“Sure, darling. You think about it. Goodby, now.”

“Goodby, Gussie. See you in the morning.”

She began to wonder what she could possibly do with the rest of the afternoon and the long night to come. She was still protected by a sense of detachment, but she realized it would not last, that she must — and quickly — find support. And the support she needed was one which, at the moment, she lacked, a man and the reassurance of a man, a man to talk with if not to sleep with, a man to use if not to love.

She wanted Aaron, but Aaron was dead — if he were not dead, she would not now be in excessive need. Because she had been faithful, in infidelity, she was now alone. While she was trying to decide what to do, the telephone rang. It was Earl Joslin. She thought she heard, after his voice saying hello, the sound of a chuckle, like a dry crackling in the wire.

“How are you feeling?” he said. “Quite well,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I think you must have just gone through a rather trying experience.”

“Oh. With Mrs. Burns, you mean. Apparently she lost no time in calling you.”

“When it comes to registering complaints, Mrs. Burns never loses time. I’ve never known her to be quite so furious before, however. You must have ticked her off pretty thoroughly.”

“I confess that I used poor judgment.”

“Well, that’s in how you look at it. As for me, I’m not so sure. You probably understand, of course, that she’s demanding your immediate dismissal.”

“Am I to take it, then, that this is notice?”

“Not at all. I’d merely like to talk with you. Is it possible for you to see me this evening?”

“Yes.”

“Would you consider having dinner with me?”

“I’d be happy to. Thank you very much.”

“Good, good. I’ll come for you about eight. Is that acceptable?”

“Perfectly. I’ll be ready.”

“Until eight, then. In the meantime, I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you.”

After hanging up, she looked at her watch and saw that it was exactly five o’clock. Her present problem, then, was reduced to the expenditure of three hours, and she tried to think what she could do that would be a defense against her increasing sense of disaster and the concommitant threat of depression. She had reached, she felt, a state of suspension in which she was impotent, a body without energy. She was more than ever by her feeling of impotence irrationally convinced that she had reached a time of enormous significance, that she must now in the matter of the shop, which was somehow identically the matter of her life, succeed enormously or fail definitively.

She mixed a much-needed drink in the kitchen, and stood leaning against the cabinet, feeling inside her the diffusion of the drink’s warmth, and reviewing in her mind the selection of gowns that were hanging in her closet in the bedroom. Without knowing exactly the reason, or trying to know it, she felt compelled to make on her dinner date with Earl Joslin the best possible appearance. This need was stronger and more directed than the natural desire of a woman to make the most of her assets, but it was not concerned specifically with the effect she might have on Joslin himself. What it surely was, though she didn’t verbalize it or even recognize it, was a reaction of pride and defiance to the threat of devaluation.

The decision made regarding the gown, she did not think of it again. She finished her drink and rinsed the glass and went back through the living room and into the bedroom. Moving with a deliberateness that was imposed to kill time and secure serenity, she undressed and lay down on the bed and closed her eyes. If only she could make her mind impermeable to all ideas and images, she would be able to go to sleep, but it would be necessary to awaken by seven, at the latest, in order to be ready for Joslin when he came. She began telling herself that now she would sleep and would awaken at seven precisely, for she had heard that this was a kind of control to which the mind was actually subject. Whether or not this was true, she did go to sleep after a short while and did awaken at approximately seven. She got up at once and bathed and fixed her fingernails and face and brushed her hair and dressed. She was looking at herself in the mirror and thinking that the silk taffeta had been a wise choice when the buzzer sounded. She went to the door and admitted Earl Joslin into the living room.

“Good evening,” he said. “Do you mind if I say that you’re looking particularly lovely?”

“On the contrary,” she said, “I would mind if you didn’t. Do you want to leave at once, or would you prefer to have a drink first?”

“Perhaps it would be as well to have a drink after we get there. I thought we might go some place not too elaborate. A quiet place that permits conversation. Do you agree?”

“Yes. I’d like that.”

She got her coat, and they went down to the street where he had left his car, a black Chrysler Imperial. He drove neither slowly nor excessively fast, but with the same precise conservatism with which he apparently did everything, regardless of the degree of its significance, and they reached the restaurant he had chosen within half an hour. He let her out at the entrance and drove around the corner to park the car and was back after a few minutes. Inside, in an L-shaped dining room, they sat with approximately nine square feet of snowy linen between them, a candle burning in a frosted column in the center of the linen. A little to her left was a small combo — a piano, guitar, bass fiddle, and drums — that played a variety of rhythms, mostly Latin American, and played all of them softly. In the soft light, hearing the soft rhythms, she felt somewhat relaxed and less imperiled, and his presence across the table, his thin gray face and suggestion of surety, contributed also to the relief of depression. But despite all this, the light and the music and him, she retained the insistent sense of crisis which she could not lose. She picked up her menu and glanced at it and put it down again, feeling suddenly that even the nominal task of choosing among appetizers and entrees and salads was a burden too heavy to assume.

“I would like a Martini,” she said.

“Good. I’ll have one too. Would you prefer that I order dinner for both of us?”

“Yes, please.”

He studied the menu while the waiter was getting the Martinis, ordering quickly when the waiter returned. She lifted her fragile glass and let some of the Martini slip down her throat; it was dry and strong and did her good.

“I won’t ask you what you said to Shirley Burns this afternoon,” he said. “I’ll only comment that it must have been most effective.”

“I’m sorry that it turned out as it did,” she said. “I went there to try to influence her to keep the shop and let me manage it, but I was not very successful.”

“That was apparent. I believe I warned you that she wouldn’t be receptive to the idea.”

“Yes, you did. It was something, however, I felt I had to try.”

“I can understand that. As I said earlier on the telephone, you are to continue in your present position so long as I am in control of Aaron’s estate. If you still want to, that is.”

“Yes. I want to stay on for the present.”

“Have you considered what you will do when the shop is sold?”

“I’ve been trying to think, but I’ve been unable to come to any decision.”

“Perhaps there will still be a place for you under the new owner, whoever it may be.”

“I’ve considered that too, but I don’t feel I should depend on it.”

“No. You’re right there. It doesn’t pay to anticipate these things.”