Dan Wakefield - Starting Over - A Novel

“No hurry.”

“No booze, either.”

She shrugged. “Order some if you like.”

“You join me?”

“If you like.”

Potter dialed room service and ordered a double Scotch on the rocks and an extra dry martini straight up with a twist.

They finished those off without saying anything, and Potter ordered up two more rounds of the same.

When they neared the end of those, Marilyn said they might as well have some more, since Herb was paying. She hadn’t checked out yet, and he would pick up the bill.

“Fuck it then,” Potter said. “Let’s celebrate.”

“Celebrate what?” she asked.

“Don’t ask what, ask how.”

“All right. How?”

“We’ll figure it out as we go along.”

Because it was to be a celebration, they started with champagne and caviar. Since Herb was paying.

The notion that Herb was paying served as an incentive.

Since they had such a hard time deciding what to have, Marilyn hit on the idea of simply ordering the most expensive item offered in each category of the menu, from appetizer to dessert.

And more champagne.

After the feast, with a fine bottle of brandy, they decided it was silly to go out into the night and fight their way to a cab and on to the next shuttle flight. Marilyn said in the past couple months she had learned there was nothing so depressing as catching a Sunday night shuttle flight back home. They decided to take an early one next morning. What the hell. Potter had already checked out of his hotel, but Marilyn had already stayed past check-out time and had told the desk she wasn’t sure when she was leaving, so the room in effect was paid for the night anyway. There was a double bed, with plenty of room for Potter.

But they didn’t need the extra space. For the first time since they had stopped being lovers they fucked, in a kind of spontaneous frenzy of anger and lust, mean and low-down and totally abandoned, hurting and liking it, saying no words, only making sudden squeals or grunts or moans or shouts, tearing and clawing and pumping and thrashing. It was like a “grudge fuck” only the grudge was not against the partner involved but against Herb, against all betrayal and loss and frustration, against the whole damn rest of the world.

On the plane going back the next morning, they were silent, and exhausted. They never spoke again of what happened that night. They were friends.

The faint hint of spring in the air at the end of February was only a temporary tease, and the day after Potter and Marilyn returned from New York, Boston was hit by a full-scale blizzard. Potter woke to an arctic scene outside his window. The cars parked up and down the block bumper-to-bumper, including his Mustang, were one solid chain of frozen silver humps. He didn’t even attempt to scrape and shovel his own car out, but literally bundled himself to the teeth, wrapping a woolen scarf around his mouth and nose, and set out in full winter regalia to go for supplies. He tromped back home from Mass Avenue with a half-gallon of Cutty Sark, a dozen eggs, a dozen knockwurst, a Sara Lee cheesecake, a jar of Maxim freeze-dried instant coffee, and a carton of Pall Malls. He felt secure and self-reliant, a plastic era pioneer.

Potter welcomed this early March regression to winter. It constituted a kind of postponement of a spring he was not looking forward to. It would bring, among other things, his thirty-fifth birthday. It would also bring decisions about his “future,” the very thought of which depressed him. He no longer saw “the future” as he once had in his mind’s eye as a vast road widening purposefully before him toward the horizon, but rather as a rocky, downhill path that dwindled darkly below, a not-very-smooth slide toward oblivion.

The blizzard allowed him to hibernate, which suited his mood. Classes were cancelled, traffic was stalled, and for several days Potter was able to burrow into his apartment, into himself, without feeling irresponsible, having the legitimate excuse of being a common victim of the elements just like his fellow citizens and neighbors. He read Shakespeare, took long hot baths, watched television, and felt himself recuperating from the ordeal he partly shared with Marilyn. If the whole thing had left him feeling beaten and bruised from what was mainly vicarious participation, he figured it must have laid Marilyn out flat, and he didn’t think he should even call her until she too had time to recuperate.

On the first day of warm sunshine and melting slush, Potter slogged his way to the subway and in to school, and arranged to stop by Marilyn’s for a drink when she got off work. Her own office had carried on with business much as usual during the storm, and Potter expected to find her bleary-eyed and distraught, depressed and down at the mouth.

Instead, he found her humming.

It surprised and even annoyed him a little. He hadn’t expected any sign of cheeriness and wondered if it wasn’t even … improper, somehow, her recovering so quickly from what was supposed to have been a major crisis. After dragging Potter down to New York and her dire dilemma with Herb, did she now consider the whole thing had only been a lark?

Humming indeed.

“What’s that?” he asked irritably.

“What’s what?” she said, her eyes large and fresh and blinking.

“What you’re humming.”

“Oh, that .”

“Yes, that .”

“Probably something from the new Cat Stevens album.”

“Cat who? ”

“Cat Stevens .”

“Who the hell is that?”

“A singer. Singer-composer. You know—like your Judys and Jonis—except—”

She grinned gleefully, and said, “He’s a guy instead of a girl.”

“That’s swell.”

Potter got up to make himself a drink, since the usual pitcher of martinis was noticeably absent. “You want me to mix the martinis?” he asked.

“Oh, no. Not for me, anyway. I’m just fine.”

Potter made himself a Scotch and sat down, eyeing Marilyn suspiciously. “What’s up?” he asked.

“Hmmm? Why, nothing.”

She was rummaging around in her purse.

“Looking for a cigarette?” Potter asked.

He reached in his pocket and held a pack of Pall Malls toward her.

Marilyn giggled. “Not that kind,” she said.

Proudly, she pulled from her purse a rather bulkily-rolled joint.

“Oh, for godsake,” Potter said.

“I know you don’t think you like grass, but this is something special.”

“Oh, Jesus. I suppose you’re going to tell me it’s Acapulco Gold.”

“Not at all,” she said smugly. “Vermont Green.”

She lit the twisted end and it flared, almost singeing her eyelashes.

“For Christsake, be careful!” Potter shouted.

Marilyn coughed, patted herself on the chest, and opened her eyes, cautiously.

They were watering. She held out the joint to Potter.

Resigned, he took the damn thing and did his best to inhale. They passed it back and forth until it was too small for either of them to hold, and when Marilyn tried to stub it out she burned a finger and the roach dropped to the carpet, under the couch. Potter went after it, as if the goddamn thing were a live animal, which in fact it might as well have been. When he mashed it out he sat back up and had a long sip of his Scotch. Marilyn was sitting back smiling, her eyes closed, looking like St Teresa just prior to lift-off.

“You want a drink now?” Potter asked.

“I’m fine ,” she said. Not opening her eyes.

Potter freshened his Scotch.

“Try to go with it,” Marilyn whispered, her eyes still closed, her voice unbearably mystic.

Potter lit a Pall Mall, deciding to wait out Marilyn’s trance.