Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

Potter got up and walked around the room, rattling the ice in his glass. “You want to look sexy, but not obvious. You don’t want to make it so he can just come in and throw you on the bed and then tell you later he’s sorry but he can’t leave his wife.”

Marilyn nodded. “So what should I wear then?”

“The effect, I think, you want to create, is of a very beautiful, sexy woman on trial for murder who is dressing for the jury—dressing so they know she’s beautiful but not loose—that she’s cool, and in possession, and wouldn’t do anything crazy.”

“A pants suit?”

“No no. You don’t want to hide yourself—but on the other hand you don’t want to flaunt yourself.”

Potter looked through the considerable wardrobe she had brought and settled on a plain, dark blue dress. Short, but still rather prim and severe. A simple strand of pearls.

“And no makeup,” Potter said.

“Not even eye shadow?”

“That’s OK. Yeah. Eye shadow. But try to look pale.”

“Pale.”

“Like you might faint.”

“Actually, I might.”

“No, no. You mustn’t really faint. Just have the aura of fainting.”

“I’ll try.”

“You can do it And remember, above all, don’t give in. If he’s not splitting with his wife, this is it. You won’t see him anymore. He’s got to make the choice. And try not to cry. Let him do the crying.”

“Oh, Phil.”

“You can do it.”

They hugged, and Potter left her to her preparations.

Potter went back to his room and had a Scotch. It was a little after four, and he had the evening before him. Till midnight, anyway. That was when Herb would have to leave Marilyn to go back home, and she would most be in need of Potter’s company. To help her celebrate or keep her away from the window.

So he had Saturday night in New York ahead of him, alone. It was the first time he’d returned after moving to Boston, and he hadn’t told anyone he was coming.

He wondered what Jessica was doing. She was sure to have a date on Saturday night. He wondered whatever happened about the guy who wanted to marry her, whether it was all off or she was still seeing him, still considering the proposal. He wondered where she was living, how things were going for her. But he didn’t want to go through the scene that would be required to find out.

Maybe he should call up one of his old buddies. One of the guys from the office. But then he would have to explain. His life. His work. His plans. He would have to defend and justify.

He had another Scotch. It might be fun to see Al Kolonkis, a buddy from the old theatre days. But that would mean hearing about Al’s life—the old frustrations, the fragile new hopes.

Maybe there was a party somewhere. He thought of Lorna Cassell, a sharp, striking blonde who had her own boutique on the East Side and always knew where the parties were. He called information, and they confirmed that an L. C. Cassell on East Sixty-first Street indeed had a telephone, but that the number was unlisted. Potter smiled. She was moving up.

He heaved the Manhattan phone directory onto his lap, and began to flip through it, hoping that suddenly a name would pop up from the page of someone he was dying to see. Looking through the H’s, he thought of Agnes Hyer. She lived—or used to live—on Bank Street, with a lot of cats and plants. A fat, philosophical girl. He once got drunk and laid her and the next morning couldn’t look her in the eyes, but they managed to stay friends and he never made that mistake again. During the day she was a commercial artist at one of the big agencies, and at night went home and put on her leotards and her string quartets and drank wine until she resembled the image of who it was she started out to be when she came to New York. Potter found her name—she still lived on Bank Street. He called the number, but after it rang once he hung up:

He really didn’t want to plug into his old life, in any way. He wanted to remain anonymous, a tourist.

Around six he went out walking through the Village. He was hungry, but he didn’t want to go into a good restaurant, alone, and sit at a table, alone, and have a good drink and dinner and wine, alone. Nor did he want to go into one of the floodlit greasy spoons and wolf down a hamburger and a Coke, mashed among junkies and winos and speeded-up kids. Finally he chose La Crêpe, where you could eat alone in relative comfort, have a glass of wine, and perhaps be sized up as a busy fellow who was just grabbing a bite on his way to a big party or late date. He had the sausage-and-egg crêpe, number thirty-seven, and two glasses of chilled rosé.

Back out on the streets, he felt alien and uncomfortable. It seemed to him that New York was even more crowded and desperate than it had been only six months ago, though he figured that was probably because he was accustomed now to the relatively slower, less strangled streets of Boston. Whatever the reason, he felt as if he were drowning in flesh and neon, the stench of stale vomit and the squeal of sirens. He hurried, faster, back to his room, threw off his coat, poured himself a Scotch, and flipped on the television. He was happy to choose what seemed the lesser of a vast array of evils.

Saturday Night at the Movies.

Marilyn called a little after midnight, her voice noncommittal, and he yanked on his coat and rushed to her room.

She was focussing on the lighted tip of her cigarette with a concentration that suggested an attempt at self-hypnosis.

Potter already knew the answer so didn’t ask. He poured himself a drink, sat down, and waited until she felt like talking.

“His shrink said no,” Marilyn said.

“Just plain ‘no’ or No with a theory?”

“Compulsive patterns. Anal and oral fixations. Hasn’t worked out his real feelings.”

“He agrees? I mean about the ‘no,’ not about the symptoms.”

“He has to think it over.”

“How long?”

“I told him to let me know tomorrow, I had to go back.”

Potter looked at the bed, which could have passed for the scene of a six-day orgy. “You know, of course, he’ll come tomorrow, fuck you some more, and say he still needs time to think it over.”

“I won’t let him.”

“Fuck you tomorrow?”

“Think it over anymore. After tomorrow.”

“OK.”

Potter suggested they take in the late-late show. After that they watched the late-late-late, and then, connoisseurs that they were, stayed glued to the late-late-late-late-late, which brought them into the early. One thing you could say in favor of New York, its TV stations knew what the citizens needed.

Continuous numbing.

The morning was cold and soot-speckled. Potter went out and got orange juice for them, put Marilyn to bed with a call for ten, and said he would meet her that afternoon at four. He went to his own cubicle across the street, took a shower, and passed out. He slept fitfully, woke around noon, and went out for the Sunday Times and something to eat. The Times , like the New York TV stations, filled its most important mission of providing enough material to blank out the customer’s mind as long as needed. It kept Potter going till four.

The special sad sunlight of Sunday afternoon spread over Marilyn’s room. Maid service had cleared the traces of whatever had happened with her and Herb, but there was no type of service to clear her face of what anyone who saw it could surmise had occurred.

Passion. Pleadings. Pledges. Post mortems. Protests. Promises. Parting. Packing.

She sat quiet and prim, like a political exile who has been ordered to leave the country on the next train.

Potter looked around the room and found the bottle of Scotch with a tiny bit left. He poured it into a bathroom water glass, sat down, and guzzled it. “You ready?” he asked.