Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

“ Weekend ,” Gafferty whispered. “My God, man, that’s an eternity.”

Potter smiled, happy to have the power to grant such a miracle to a friend. “It’s yours,” he said.

Marilyn told her boss that her mother was ill in Florida and got a four-day weekend from her office so she could fly to the Virgin Islands for the tryst with her new married man shrink-lover. Potter went shopping with her and picked out a new bikini that Marilyn thought was outrageous but which he assured her was just the ticket. He also advised that she get a pair of tiny-heeled black mules with dainty puffs of feather on the toes.

“Why do I have to have them?” she asked.

“Because,” said Potter, “you can’t go slinking around the bedroom in your old red sweatsocks.”

“OK, if you say so.”

“I say so.”

Potter took her to the airport, and they arrived early enough to have a drink before boarding time.

Marilyn ordered an extra dry martini straight up, and some of the mercury-colored liquid drooled out over the rim of the long-stemmed glass as she brought it, trembling, to her lips.

“Relax,” Potter said. “Be cool.”

“I’m a nervous wreck.”

“Well, then you’ll wreck the whole thing. Try to see it as a wild time, leading to nothing else. A thing in itself. Then it will possibly lead to more. If you go down thinking about Future Plans, you’ll blow the whole thing.”

“OK. I know.”

“And you’ve got to stop shaking.”

“I know—oh, shit!” she grabbed for her purse, and started thrashing frantically through its contents.

“Don’t tell me you forgot your pills.”

“Not those pills, damnit. My Valium.”

“Oh, no.”

Suddenly she plucked a small bottle out, clutching it gratefully. “Thank God,” she said.

Potter smiled. “Now you’ll be tranquil.”

She unscrewed the top of the bottle, slipped a small yellow tablet onto her tongue, and swallowed.

“Don’t worry,” said Potter. “You’ll knock ’im dead.”

“Well,” said Marilyn, “I don’t want that . Let’s just say—delirious.”

“Atta way, babe. Now you’re getting it.”

“You think?”

“Absolutely.”

Under the table, he crossed his fingers for her.

Potter got up early the next morning, put out the garbage, washed the dishes, straightened up the worst of the debris, and put clean sheets on the bed. He hadn’t spent as much time tidying up the apartment since the Sunday he had Marilyn over for the omelettes. He felt almost as much anticipatory pleasure in the thought of Gafferty’s illicit weekend there as if it were an affair of his own.

He had packed a small valise to take to Marilyn’s apartment for the weekend, where he had no plans more passionate than grading the final tests of his two Communications classes. He had no dates or invitations to dinners or parties, and decided it would be a good time to get the grading out of the way. He also promised himself he would do a better job on the finals than he did on midterms, which he graded far into the evening while drinking, later realizing that scores and comments grew higher in proportion to the higher he became himself. This time he vowed every paper would be graded under the same harsh and equal stimulus of hot black coffee.

He drove into Gilpen to pick up the blue books he had stacked on the desk in his office, and, while retrieving them, he suddenly laughed out loud, thinking of Gafferty and the girl humping away on one of those desks. He started stuffing the blue books into his valise, giggling to himself, imagining the face of Dean Guy M. Hardy, Jr., if he were to ever walk in on such a scene, when suddenly, in mid-giggle, Potter stopped, frozen. A new and horrendous thought flared in his mind.

What if on just such a desk as this the dastardly cad Gafferty had been humping away on one of Potter’s own favorite students, one of those special girls for whom he felt a mixture of nobly subdued lust and virtuous protectiveness? Gafferty had only said the girl was a student, he hadn’t said what student.

What if Gafferty was fucking Miss Korsky? The innocent Rosemary Korsky! Or maybe Miss Linnett, Amanda Linnett, the wispy, ethereal, fragile, long-haired blonde who made his second Communications section a joy to instruct on the scattered occasions when she chose to attend? What if, even now, that dirty old man Gafferty was mounting one of those angels of Potter’s imagination, on the clean sheets of Potter’s own bed? He felt his cheeks burning, and his heart knocked against his chest like a Nazi pounding on a victim’s door.

Potter slumped down in his chair, pulled open the bottom desk drawer and grabbed the pint of Scotch, put it to his mouth with trembling hands and gulped a fiery swig. He breathed out, belched, and slammed the bottle on the top of the desk.

Gafferty, you sonofabitch .

At school Monday, Gafferty looked wan but glowing, like a man who has come back tired but happy from a strenuous vacation. Potter had gone back to his apartment late Sunday night and found the key under the mat, as prearranged. There were no traces of Gafferty’s frolic with his student lover, except for a certain scent to the sheets, a musky kind of perfume. After Potter’s first Communications section Miss Korsky had come up to ask him a question and he found himself leaning close to her and inhaling deeply, seeing if possibly the scent of the sheets matched her own, but he couldn’t really tell. In his second section, he looked for Miss Linnett with more eagerness than usual, but she didn’t appear. He wondered if perhaps she had been so exhausted from a weekend of sexual cavorting with Gafferty that she couldn’t drag herself to class. But her absence probably meant nothing, she cut classes so often.

Potter had hoped to have a drink alone with Gafferty and perhaps pick up some clue to the identity of his girlfriend, but just as they were debating where to go Ed Shell trapped them again, and it was impossible this time to slough him off without permanently injuring his feelings.

Gafferty drove them into Cambridge and at Shell’s suggestion they went to Cronin’s, an old-style collegiate bar-restaurant, the type with fading pennants on the wall. Potter found it depressing, but kept his mouth shut. Shell related a complex story about one of his scripts that might get financial backing from a group of young bankers in Tallahassee, Florida, who wanted to get into movie production, but Potter just nodded, all the time catching glimpses of Gafferty’s face, trying to read something in it. Finally, Shell excused himself to go take a piss, and Potter asked quickly, “How was the weekend?”

“Glorious,” Gafferty said, rolling the word around as if tasting it. “Glorious.”

“The place was OK? You find everything you needed?”

Gafferty joined the thumb and forefinger of his right hand into the “OK” sign, and twisted his face into a gigantic wink.

You lecherous bastard , Potter thought.

“Terrific,” he said. “Listen, anytime you and—uh—your girl—”

He let that hang for a moment, in the slim hope that Gafferty would fill in her name, but the red-faced old fucker just kept staring at Potter with his shit-eating grin, so Potter continued, pretending he hadn’t intended at all to worm out the girl’s identity: “Anytime you and she want to use the place, just give me a little notice.”

“You’re a friend in need, for sure, man.”

Potter was tempted to just blurt out the question— who the hell is it, what’s the name of this student you’ve been fucking on your office desk and in my own bed —but part of his personal code of honor dictated that you didn’t ask people such things, whether they were men or women, you didn’t pry into matters that were not your business unless the other person volunteered the information. If he came right out and asked he’d be as bad as Marva Bertelsen.