Douglas Kennedy - Five Days

‘So this is the place?’ I asked.

‘Third floor, those three windows facing the street.’

The windows were large ones, indicating high ceilings.

‘Nice,’ I said.

‘I actually sneaked down to Boston around two weeks ago to see the place myself. Really airy space. Great parquet floors. A living room that stretches the whole length of the building. A good-sized bedroom. An alcove off the living room that would be a perfect little office. The bathroom and the kitchen are a bit out of date. But the realtor told me that the asking price of three hundred and five thousand was negotiable; that the sellers had a deal which fell through last year, and they really want a fast closing, and if I could pay two sixty-five cash it was mine.’

‘Can you pay that?’

‘Actually I can. I’ve been one of those assiduous savers who’ve set aside twenty percent of his net income every year. I’ve got about four hundred thousand in the bank. A lawyer I consulted down in Portland — Bath is too small to be talking divorce with anyone — told me that if I was to give Muriel the house in Bath, she’d have no claim on any of that money. And I have another client down here, a builder in Dorchester, who told me he could get a spiffy new bathroom and kitchen installed, repaint the walls, strip and re-stain all the floorboards, all for around thirty-five grand. After taxes and the like, I’d come out with a paid-off Commonwealth Avenue apartment and about seventy-five thousand still left in the bank.’

‘Most of all, you’d be living here — where you’ve always wanted to live.’

‘That’s right. I know I could even run much of my business down here, and probably hire someone to take over Muriel’s administrative job at the agency — though knowing Muriel she’d probably insist on staying on, taking a salary, keeping busy, which would be fine by me. She is very competent.’

‘So when are you moving?’

I could see Richard’s shoulders tense, his lips tighten.

‘Life is never that straightforward, is it?’ he said.

‘I suppose not. Still, if you have it all worked out. ’

‘Does anyone ever have it “all worked out”?’

I smiled.

‘You’re far too right about all that. But this time I really do want to make the move. as messy and unpleasant as it might all be.’

‘Everyone I know who’s divorced has always said it’s the anticipation of the end of a marriage that is the most devastating. In the end, once they had finally moved out, they were always baffled as to why they hadn’t done it years earlier. But now I really am speaking far too bluntly.’

‘Or maybe revealing a thought that had also crossed your mind as well?’ he asked.

Now it was my turn to clench my shoulders and purse my lips.

‘Life is never straightforward, is it. as you yourself said.’

‘And maybe I’ve crossed a frontier I shouldn’t have.’

‘Then we’re even. And the truth is, I wish I was in your position.’

‘I feel a little stupid about regaling you with all the financial details of the sale.’

‘But the reason you are telling me this is because you’re still trying to see if you can go through with it. and are understandably struggling with it, as I certainly would too.’

‘You’re half right, But the other reason I told you all that is because nobody, not even my closest friend the police captain, knows about this. And because I can actually talk to you. And. well. a woman I can talk to. not something I’ve had much experience of.’

I reached out and touched his arm.

‘Thank you for telling me that.’

He covered my hand with his.

‘It’s me who should be thanking you.’

‘It’s also me who should be thanking you.’

‘For what?’

‘For getting me to let down my guard for a change. It’s something everyone at work always says about me. I am perfectly professional and pleasant, but completely guarded. Dan has often told me the same thing — I have this taciturn side.’

‘That’s news to me,’ he said, his hand still covering mine.

‘You don’t know me yet.’

‘You can know a great deal about someone in just a few hours.’

‘Just like I now know that you are going to buy this apartment.’

Richard glanced back up at the top of the brownstone, his hand leaving mine. And in a voice just a decibel or so above a whisper he said:

‘I hope that’s the outcome.’

Why shouldn’t it be? I wanted to ask him. But instead I held back, simply saying:

‘I hope so too.’

Richard’s gaze returned to me.

‘So. any thoughts about what we should do now? If, that is, you want to. ’

‘. . . continue the afternoon? No, I want to flee the elegance of Commonwealth Avenue to return to that God-awful hotel and attend the five p.m. conference on advanced colonoscopy techniques. not that I do colonoscopies.’

‘But it sounds so romantic.’

I laughed. Then said:

‘If you’re agreeable, what I’d like to find now is a museum or art gallery, because that’s something I can’t walk to back home. And I’d prefer something I’m not going to see in Maine. Heard of the ICA?’

‘That new place on the harbor front?’

‘Exactly. I read an article about it in some magazine. The Institute of Contemporary Art. Modern, edgy, out there. And with a water view.’

‘And, no doubt, filled with people wearing black and looking modern, edgy, out there.’

‘So. we can gawk at all the urban boho types.’

‘The way you’re dressed you’ll fit right in.’

‘And you think you won’t?’

‘The way I’m dressed I will look like the most boring—’

‘Then change,’ I said, again my mouth working ahead of my usual cautious thought processes.

‘What?’ he said, staring at me with confusion.

‘Change — that treacherous verb. As in, if you don’t like the way you’re dressed now, change your clothes.’

‘And how will I do that?’

‘How do you think?’

He considered this for a moment. Then:

‘That’s a crazy idea.’

‘But you’re not totally against it, are you?’

He considered this for another moment.

‘Well. “change” does rhyme with “strange”. And strange is. ’

‘Maybe not as strange as you think.’

SYNONYMS FOR ‘RANDOM’: ‘unselected’, ‘irregular’, ‘chance’, ‘by hazard’, ‘happenstantial’.

Happenstantial. As in happenstance. As in, the business of stumbling into something new, unforeseen, unpredictable. Like the happenstantial way I met Richard. And met him again at that movie theater. And agreed to lunch. And the happenstantial way we drifted into the trajectory of this afternoon — which, like all events predicated on randomness, had no foreseen trajectory to it; the fact that we had proceeded from Commonwealth Ave and Newbury Street was predicated on a wholly aleatorical set of circumstances. though aleatorical almost implies chance by design, which perhaps makes it the right synonym to be used to describe all this. Because behind the random lies choice. Which, in turn, means that subtext always lurks behind the happenstantial — except that the subtext is something that only arises courtesy of the pinball-like way an event begets an event, which, in turn, begets the fact that we are now on that exceptionally elegant and luxe stretch of Boston real estate known as Newbury Street, and have just stepped into a boutique (because this is certainly not ‘a shop’) that sells eyeglasses.

‘So do we call this place an opticians, an ophthalmologist, an eyeglass store, or a spectacle emporium?’ I asked.

‘Spectacles — specs — is still, I think, parlance in England. And as we are in New England. ’