Rafael Yglesias - The Work Is Innocent

After ordering, Joan turned excitedly to Ann. “She was really great, wasn’t she? Especially in those scenes with the writer.”

“I didn’t like him,” Ann said, with a small pout of distaste.

“Yeah,” Richard said. “He was unreal.” The heroine’s lover, a famous young novelist, had been cast as a tall, dark, languorous young man, whose emotional aggressiveness was matched only by his sudden fits of vulnerability.

“Really?” Joan said with an inoffensive air of superiority. “He seemed quite real to me. There are men like that.”

Her assurance about any type of man was stunning to Richard.

“No,” Ann said. “That’s a bourgeois man’s idea of a man. You know, the tortured artist.”

Joan looked at Ann with her eyes unpleasantly small and hard. “How do you know the director or the screen writer or anybody else connected with the movie is bourgeois?”

“It’s a natural assumption,” Richard said. He was pleased by the wise, bemused tone he adopted. Ann laughed and looked at him confidingly. Joan, indignant, shrugged her shoulders expressively. Richard decided he didn’t care if he angered her: for some reason he suddenly felt masterful. “Come,” he said to Joan. “One usually has money if one is making a film.”

“I just meant their background could be working-class.”

Richard laughed. “But what does that mean? Their attitude would have become bourgeois.”

“Well,” Joan said with a smile, “this is something between Ann and me. She’s always putting things down by calling them middle-class. Anyway, I know what she really means.”

Ann covered her face with exaggerated shame. “I didn’t mean anything,” she said in a small voice.

“Come on, honey. You meant Raul thinks he’s like that.”

Richard was dismayed that Raul was so controversial, and therefore important, a subject for them. He must have clearly shown his unhappiness, because Joan, after a glance in his direction, said, “I’m glad you didn’t run away also. We’d be arguing all night.”

“Yes,” Ann said. “You little boys are a lot of trouble.”

Richard laughed. “You know, I don’t think I ever recovered from the time, I guess it was in fourth grade, that a girl my age kept taunting me with the fact that girls mature more quickly than boys.”

“So that’s why you hang out with older women,” Ann said.

“Well, isn’t it supposed to reverse itself in adolescence?”

“Oy,” Joan said. “You and Raul are holding us back. I mean we’re eighteen. We’re supposed to be marrying dentists.”

Ann made a joke but Richard didn’t hear it. He had assumed they were in Raul’s class. There was no chance for him, theirs was only a friendly interest.

“Joan said you aren’t in school. I know it’s a drag to answer, but what are you going to do? Or doesn’t it matter?”

“I think I’ll just be a mess,” Richard said, making a choked sound that was intended as a laugh.

“No,” Joan said with a compassionate look. “Be serious.”

“Well, if I tell you what I expect to do, you’ll think I’m out of my mind.”

“Oh goody,” Ann said gaily. “It’s really wild, huh?”

“No, it’s very sedate. But I’m sure it’ll strike you as an incredible pretension.”

“So tell us and we’ll laugh at you,” Joan said.

“I’ve written a novel.” Richard had really expected ridicule, but they questioned him closely about his book and, once encouraged, he became expansive.

They were still excited by his novel after they had eaten and paid the check—Richard, to their astonishment, picked up the checks with a forbidding look and paid for them—and as he walked them to their bus, they said he should come over tomorrow and read some of it to them. Richard was embarrassed about doing that but they insisted. Joan spotted their bus ahead and ran to catch it, but Ann turned around and kissed Richard on the cheek before running after her. As the bus pulled away they waved to him and he felt revenged on his fourth grade tormentor.

Richard didn’t plan to go to Joan’s the next night without additional encouragement. He felt her offer could have been more polite than serious. He was unable to begin the final draft of his novel because of this anxiety. By five o’clock the issue was still unresolved, but Joan settled it by calling and asking him if he could come at eight.

Richard badgered his mother into making an early dinner, his father amused at this boyish display. Aaron had him laughing nervously through the meal with taunts about his new girl friend. His fear of missing a moment of Joan’s company got him to her apartment at seven-thirty. She opened the door and they greeted each other shyly. From the foyer Richard saw two adults seated on the couch he had sat on the night of the party. Joan and he entered the living room tentatively. The male adult, a short, neatly dressed, ordinary businessman, rose and extended a hand to Richard. Joan said, “Richard, this is my father, Leonard—”

“Hello,” Leonard said with a quick smile.

“—and this is Mary.”

Mary, not rising, flashed a smile at Richard that seemed fake and simpering. He caught a glimpse of a dress that didn’t suit her. Mary held her smile and said, “Joanie tells me your father is Aaron Goodman. I love his plays.”

“Thank you,” Richard said, flustered. “I mean thank you for him.”

“Well,” Leonard said. “We’d better be going.”

Richard sat down on the couch once it was vacated and watched with great interest as Leonard instructed Joan as to what she should say if certain people called. He fetched Mary her coat, and while she was being helped on with it she said to Joan, “That’s a lovely top you’re wearing.”

Joan received this compliment stiffly and moved toward the front door to let them out. After she closed the door behind them, Joan re-entered the living room and rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I don’t like her at all,” she said.

“Who is she?”

“She’s my father’s girl friend.” Joan smiled. “Oh, I see. You don’t know. My mother died when I was a child. So my father dates.”

“Oh,” Richard said. Her mother being dead seemed very dramatic. “How did your mother die?”

“Cancer.”

“I hope I didn’t upset you.”

“No. She died when I was eight. It was hard for a while but it no longer bothers me.” She laughed. “Too much, that is.”

Richard got up from the couch and took his coat off. He folded it, laid it on the couch, and placed his novel on top of it.

“You brought it. Good,” Joan said. “I hope Ann gets here soon so we can hear it.”

“You can read it now, if you like.”

Joan considered briefly and said, “Let’s wait. Do you want something to drink or eat or anything?”

Richard asked for coffee. “Come and keep me company,” Joan said, and he followed her through the foyer into a long, narrow kitchen. He sat on the countertop next to the refrigerator and dangled his legs, beating an irregular rhythm on the cabinets below. Joan, after filling a teapot with water and placing it on the stove, lit one of the burners. “Reach in the shelf behind you and get a mug,” she said.

Richard did so and gave it to her while Joan got a jar of instant coffee from another cabinet. “What does your father do for a living?” Richard asked.

“He’s a salesman for a toy company. Do you want two spoonfuls?”

“Uh, yes. What does a salesman do, exactly? I mean he doesn’t go door to door.”

“I don’t know what his title is, but he handles distribution to department stores. You know.”

“Has Mary been a girl friend for a long time?”