Sol Stein - Other people

"Like it?" he asked.

"A hermit's keep."

"Let's go inside."

Inside, the place was a surprise, a den of opulence, walnut walls, expensive furniture, lots of places to sit comfortably or lounge, bookshelves floor to ceiling on one long wall, a carpet that looked authentic Turkish, swirls of blue-grey against a background of burnt umber and a subdued maroon. Over the couch, lit by a recessed ceiling light of its own, was a single painting of a long-necked woman.

He was looking at me as I looked at the Modigliani.

"Cost a fortune?" I asked.

"Half. I bought it quite some time ago."

"It's beautiful."

"Yes," he said, then looked away from me.

"This isn't the kind of bachelor pad one expects," I said.

"What did you expect? First, let me get you a drink."

"Anything. With soda."

He busied himself.

"I guess I expected something that looked like a couple of furnished rooms."

"A man without a woman equals poor taste."

"Right."

He handed me the drink. "Well, there's a lot of chauvinism around on both sides," he said. "You are the first female visitor I've had who'd know who painted that picture."

"Maybe you've gotten into the habit of fucking down."

"What does that mean?"

One second I feel I can say anything to Thomassy the way I would to a close girl friend, the next it's like this, trapped on the giving end of something that startled him.

"You choose the women you go with."

"Sure I do."

"And they're like Jane what's-her-name?"

"More or less."

"Less. Maybe you fuck down because it minimizes the whole procedure."

I couldn't tell what he was thinking. He was avoiding looking directly at me. Uncharacteristic. I felt cruel joy. Thomassy was vulnerable. He was a human being, just like the rest of us.

The dinner he prepared was an avocado with a choice of lemon or vinaigrette, a Basque omelet that may have been the best omelet of any kind I had ever had, an endive salad made with walnut oil and an unlabeled vinegar he said he bought privately. The coffee had a touch of chocolate and was served with whipped cream.

We ate in the short leg of the L that connected the living room and the kitchen. In the corner where the walls met there was an arrangement of plants, a three-foot dracaena in a tub on the floor, and three or four hanging pots with ivies and ferns. In the center of the long wall hung a large painting, perhaps four feet wide, of a grain field in a high wind, done with thousands of small strokes. It was very close to abstraction, yet one knew it was a field ready for harvest and that the velocity of the wind was a danger to the high stalks.

"Who?" I asked.

"Hyde Solomon."

"A newcomer?"

"No. He started making it in the fifties I guess. He's got bad eyes. Very nearly blind."

"He's got good eyes," I said.

"What's left of them. I was introduced to him at an opening after I bought that. He's a tall man, stammers, painfully shy, knows his work is good that's all. In one respect I envy him."

I tried to guess, unsuccessfully.

"When he's finished, some of his work, maybe just a few, will survive. Nothing I do survives. A lawyer is a member of the performing arts, though not even movies are taken to preserve the act."

He was right, of course. Cocksure success, master of his profession, winner, finds life wanting. Wanting posterity. Denied Dr. Koch, denied doctors, lawyers, teachers, except for the innovating genius, the legend. Art, if it survives, lingers. The rest of us head for the dustbin. I'm surprised artists aren't hated more by the transients.

"I'm a salesman," he said. "I sell cases to juries. Or to punk D.A.s. Get that look off your face," he said to me, "I'm not fishing for sympathy. It's just that sometimes I wish I made something that might last. I cook up an act that vanishes as fast as this meal."

"It was very good." I touched my napkin to my lips.

"You expected a TV dinner."

"Sort of."

"You're a treasury of prejudices," he said.

"So it seems."

"Attractively packaged."

"Thank you," I said.

"With a good mind."

"That surprises me," I said.

"That you have a good mind?"

"That you think I do. I know I have."

"I know you know you have."

"Two modest folks," I said. "I thought opposites attract."

At ten o'clock George snapped on the TV for the news.

"Good news or bad?" I asked.

"Always bad," he said. "People watch to be sure others are worse off."

"Why watch?"

Out of habit, I'd run the sink water and started cleaning off the few dinner dishes.

"I'm not," he said.

I turned around. He was watching me. Suddenly he was on his feet. "I'll do those," he said.

He came up behind me. The front of his body was touching the back of mine. I felt his lips on the lobe of my right ear, just for a second.

"It's all right," I said. "A woman doesn't want to be admired just for her mind."

He put his arms around me and took the dish I was rinsing carefully out of my hands and put it aside.

"I'll do those later," he said.

"I should be going soon."

He turned me toward him.

"My hands are wet," I said.

He took my head in both his hands and touched his lips to mine, a skim for a split second.

I kept my wet hands wide apart as he kissed me again, this time mouth to mouth.

I broke away. "My hands are wet," I said, breathless.

"I don't care."

And then I put my wet hands around him as our mouths met. I could feel his body's warmth and my own heart pound. And suddenly he was kissing the side of my neck, then below and behind my ear, I could feel his tongue flicker, and then our mouths were together again until, to breathe, I pulled away, feeling the blood in my face, and I was quickly drying my hands on the dish towel when he pulled me into his arms again and I knew we both knew it was no use fighting it any more and we were holding each other tightly and desperately, and then we were moving each other to the couch, not wanting to let go, but we had to, to open the couch, and then it was kissing again, and clothes coming off, his and mine, and we were lying clasped, kissing lips, faces, shoulders, then holding on, sealed against each other, until he raised his head and realized there were tears in my eyes and his bewildered look was begging for an explanation.

I could hear the thud of my heart.

"What's the matter?" he whispered.

I couldn't find my voice.

"Tell me," he said.

It was like the anxiety attacks I would get in the middle of the night when insomnia stole my sleeping hours, a fear that my heart would burst from the thudding.

"It's like driving the first time after an accident," I said.

We lay side by side for a while. I tried not to think of Koslak. The harder I tried, the more I thought of it, detail by detail.

"I want to get drunk," I said.

"I wouldn't recommend it. Do you get drunk often?"

"No. Not in ten years."

When I was in my last year in high school, I had gone on a triple date, the jocks enjoying their own company. We girls felt dragged along, I wanted to leave, I didn't want to be a spoilsport, I drank too much of whatever we were all drinking, and I was sick all over the ladies' room and wretched all night and the day afterwards.

"I am not a drinker," I said.

George smiled. "I know that."

He got up, naked and unashamed, and went somewhere, returning with two elegant glasses filled halfway with something I didn't recognize.

"Madeira," he said. "Rainwater." He took a sip. "Magic," he said, and handed me my glass. "It's a one-drink drink. Safe."

I looked at the glass skeptically.

"It's okay," he said. "Try it."

I took a sip.

"Lovely," I said, licking it from my lips.