Флетчер Флора - Wake Up With a Stranger

“Did you get him?” Gussie said.

“Yes, I got him. He was still in his office. I have a feeling he was there just waiting for me to call.”

“What do we have, a celebration or a wake?”

“Neither, I’m afraid. Do you mind very much if we take a raincheck on it?”

“Oh, God, stood up again! I guess, at my filthy age and in my condition, that it’s to be expected.”

“I’m sorry, Gussie, truly I am. He asked me to have a drink with him, and I had to agree, of course, under the circumstances. You can understand that.”

“Sure, I understand, darling. And never mind the apology. If I had to choose between me and a millionaire, I sure as hell wouldn’t consider it much of a problem, you can bet your sweet chastity on that. And speaking of chastity, I wonder why it just happened to come into my mind at this moment as an appropriate allusion. Do you suppose that my female intuition warns me that yours is under seige?”

“Don’t be a damn fool, Gussie. This is strictly business.”

“Business is what I’m talking about, darling. Your business.”

“I doubt that he’d consider it worth two hundred thousand dollars.”

“Maybe on a long-term lease he would. Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of business! My God, it would be a career in itself, and it absolutely decimates me to think of it. Oh, hell, darling, I’m just kidding, of course. I wish you luck and all that, and I’ll have a drink to it at the earliest opportunity, which should occur not later than ten minutes from now. Before the evening is over, as a matter of fact, I shall probably have as many as a dozen to it.”

She stood up and walked out of the room, looking somehow graceful and very smart in spite of her slouch and sharp protrusions, and Donna went into the lavatory and washed her hands and repaired her face. Five minutes later, in the street outside, she caught a taxi and gave the driver the address that Tyler had given her. Ten minutes later than that, in another street, she got out of the taxi in front of the bar.

It was a small bar, tucked in between a book dealer and a florist, which didn’t look like much on the outside, and didn’t look much more on the inside. And it certainly didn’t look like the kind of bar a millionaire would patronize or ask a young woman to meet him in. Standing for a moment just inside the door, while her eyes adjusted to the shadows, she wondered if she could have misunderstood the number or the name of the street, but this wasn’t at all likely. And then, she could see Tyler standing and smiling beside a small table in the rear. She went back to him and submitted a hand to his cool, dry touch, and they sat down together at the table, their knees touching for an instant underneath as they settled themselves.

“First,” he said, “I’d like to offer my sympathy. I didn’t know until I called the shop earlier today that you had lost your mother.”

“Thank you,” she said, feeling that she should say more but not knowing what it should be.

“Perhaps it was tactless of me to invite you here. I don’t wish to intrude.”

“Oh, no. It’s quite all right.”

“I’m glad. The truth is, I was most anxious to see you again. I’ve been sitting here like a schoolboy anticipating your coming.”

“You’re very gracious to say so, but I don’t believe it, of course.”

“Why not?”

“If you had been so anxious to see me, it could have been arranged much sooner. As I’ve told you, I was beginning to think that you had forgotten me entirely.”

“You couldn’t have been more wrong. However, here is the waiter for our order. What will you have?”

“I think I’ll have a sidecar.”

“Sidecar? I haven’t had one for ages. It’s brandy, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Brandy.”

“I’ll have one with you. Ordinarily I drink only bourbon and water, but I’m not feeling ordinary this evening.” He turned to the waiter. “Two sidecars,” he said.

The waiter moved over to the bar, which was not many steps away. She thought, looking at Tyler, that he was certainly a man who never felt ordinary at any time, this evening or any other. His face, she decided at first, was the face of an ascetic, which he surely was not, his nose aquiline and his mouth finely fashioned, suggesting sensuality in conflict with the asceticism. Ascetic, as a matter of fact, was not quite the adjective with which to describe his appearance. She sought the proper adjective in her mind and decided that it was sentient. He was a man aware, possibly in some respects, vulnerable. The waiter brought their sidecars, and she sipped hers hungrily, controlling an urge to drink it right down. It was cold and good, the tart liquid accented pleasantly by the sugared rim of the glass.

“Do you know why I waited so long to contact you again?” he said.

“I heard that you were out of town. Mr. Joslin told me.”

“So I was. For about ten days. That is not why I waited, however. Or rather, it is, like the waiting itself, part of the effect of the cause.”

“I don’t follow that, I’m afraid. Anyhow, I assume that it takes quite a long while to decide about making such a loan.”

“Frankly, I haven’t yet definitely decided about the loan. I’m considering it.”

“Is that why you wanted to see me? Just to tell me that you haven’t decided?”

“If that had been all I wanted, I could have told you over the telephone. Shall I be perfectly honest with you? I am not incapable of subtlety and indirection when it is necessary, but I have an idea that you would prefer to have me say bluntly what is on my mind.”

“Yes, I would prefer that.”

“All right. I wanted to see you simply for the pleasure of seeing you, and I waited so long to do it because I wanted it too much.”

“Is that being blunt? It sounds rather devious to me.”

“I don’t think so, and I don’t think you think so, either. However, I can be even blunter. I have not met anyone in many years who has interested me as you have. Do you remember the day I came to your shop with Harriet? Afterward, I kept thinking about you and wishing that I might meet you again under different circumstances. Then you came to my office about the loan, and I thought that the second meeting might cure the first, but it didn’t. It only accelerated my regression to adolescence. Am I now being too blunt?”

“No, you are not being too blunt, but I can’t understand why you should consider it adolescent to be interested in a woman.”

“The quality of my interest was adolescent, and still is. If it were not, I could try to seduce you and be done with it. It involves the most exquisite misery and a kind of masochistic passion for bondage. I am much too old to feel so young — so I have waited for the passing of an emotional condition I had thought and hoped I would never feel again, and thought, when it came, that I could never sustain. But it hasn’t passed. It hasn’t even diminished. Consequently, if I must feel like a schoolboy, I have decided that I can at least react to the feeling like an adult. So I called you, and so we are here drinking sidecars, and how do you feel about it?”

“I feel relaxed and quite flattered, and the sidecars are excellent.”

“That strikes me as being an evasion.”

“If it is, it is only temporary, to give me time to understand what you are saying. Are you asking me to have an affair with you?”

“Not yet.” He smiled and shook his head. “I am only asking you if you would consider giving us an opportunity to decide sensibly, after a while, whether an affair for us would be mutually acceptable.”

“Merely to see you and go out with you? Is that what you mean?”

“Yes. In the beginning, no more than a friendly relationship without commitments on either side, so that we can decide later what we want to do.”