Stephen Dixon - His Wife Leaves Him

Why’d he take so long to call her? A week, maybe a day or two more. Thought about calling her every day during that time. Three-four times a day. What’s he talking about? Five-six times a days, some days more. Had his hand on or near the receiver lots of times while thinking about dialing her number. Picked up the receiver a few times to call her but put it down. After a couple of days of doing this he knew her number by heart. The number eventually also became his number when he gave up his apartment and moved in with her. He still knows it though they haven’t lived in what he always called her apartment for years. 663-2668. Lots of sixes, so that could be why it was so easy to remember and it’s stayed with him this long. They loved that cheap spacious rent-stabilized apartment overlooking the Hudson, but were evicted about fifteen years after they moved to Baltimore for not occupying it often enough. Some New York City law which a landlord can take advantage of if he wants. They didn’t fight the eviction. Would have cost too much and they would have lost. He dialed the first part of her number several times but stopped and hung up. Or stopped and held the receiver awhile, thinking if he should go on with the dialing, before hanging up. At least twice he dialed her number and hung up after the first ring, and he thinks the second time after two rings. If this were happening today — if he’d only just met her and was thinking of calling her to arrange a date — he wouldn’t let the phone ring even once before he hung up. She’d probably, living alone — in other words, all their personal circumstances would be the same but it’d be 2006 instead of 1978—have caller ID and she’d be able to call back and might say something like “Excuse me, I don’t recognize your phone number and no name came up with it on my cell phone screen, but did you just dial me?” He’d heard her, from the next room, do that once after, he assumes, she looked at the cell phone screen and didn’t recognize the number that had just called her. The only other time, though — at least while he was around — she didn’t call back and said something like “Maybe that ring was a mistake, but if that person does want to reach me, he’ll call again.” With him, when he once called her from his office at school and had to hang up after the first ring when he suddenly realized he was late for a meeting with his department chair, she said “Hi. Did you just phone me for any reason and then decide it wasn’t important enough and hang up? Whatever it was, I thought I’d use it as an excuse to chat with you, even if nothing new or interesting has happened to me or our sweet little baby since you left the house.” Either she heard the phone ring those two times he dialed her number and then hung up, or she wasn’t home or was in the bathroom with the door shut — she once said she always closed it when she was on the potty, even when she was home alone — or some other place in her apartment far from the phone — at the rear of the kitchen by the service entrance and pantry or putting the garbage out by the service elevator — and didn’t hear the phone. The one phone she had was in the bedroom, at the opposite end of the apartment. Soon after he moved in he convinced her to have a phone extension installed on the kitchen wall so he wouldn’t, if he was there, have to run to the bedroom to answer the phone. “I hate missing calls,” he said, “and it could be good news.” He never spoke to her about his hesitation in calling her. Hesitation? Fear . He was actually afraid of what he might lose, or not gain, so “fear” used loosely — anyway, if the conversation went badly on his part. If he sounded like an idiot, in other words. On her part, who cared, long as she agreed to meet him. No, that’s not altogether true, but go on. It would have been different if he had felt sharp and confident and other things like that. But those seven to nine days or however long it was he didn’t call her he felt weak, vulnerable, nervous, worse, every time he picked up the receiver or sat down on the bed next to the night table with the phone on it or even approached the phone to make the call. He doesn’t know why he didn’t tell her why he took so long to call her. Yes he does. At first he thought — very early on in their relationship — she’d think he was a bit silly and even immature having had those anxieties about calling her, especially for a guy who, judging by his looks and maybe his recounting certain experiences — when he got out of college and so on — was obviously, if he hadn’t already told her his age, about ten years older than she. He also didn’t want her to think he had had any doubts about calling and seeing her. But after a few weeks of knowing each other — meaning, once they really started going together — he thought she would have said in response to his what-took-him-so-long confession, something like “Why the worry? If I gave you my phone number or the way to get it, that had to mean I was willing to meet you, at least for a cup of coffee.” But by this time he didn’t see any point in telling her, or would tell her or speak about it only if the subject of what took him so long to call came up, and even then he might lie or skip around the truth. “I’m not ready yet,” he thought after her phone rang once that first time, and he hung up. “I’m still not ready yet,” he said out loud the next night or night or two after that, after her phone rang once or twice and he hung up. “What will make you ready?” he said. “Just feel ready. But so far the whole thing’s making me crazy. Look at me. My stomach hurts. I’m sweating. I’m talking to myself. I’m still talking to myself. I’ve got to call her already, but I’m still not prepared for it. How do you get prepared? And you’re just dragging it out, substituting ‘prepared’ for ‘ready,’ when you know they mean the same thing. Like I said: Get prepared. Be ready. You have her number, so call and relax and let her phone ring and don’t hang up. Do not hang up . Even if she doesn’t answer the phone, you were at least ready for her to.” Wait a minute; didn’t he talk to her a little about it? Not about how he got her number. It was a while later. Weeks, months. By now they were a couple, being with each other almost every night. Most days he’d work in his apartment, then around five or six or seven he’d walk uptown to her apartment, usually along Broadway, which was livelier and had more to see than Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues, or take the subway or bus. If it was raining hard or the sidewalks were icy, he always took the subway or bus. They were eating dinner in her apartment; duck, he remembers, which she cooked in a rotisserie her godmother had given her years before. She put down her fork, seemed deep in thought, then said something like “I was thinking. Maybe you don’t remember this. By the way, meat wasn’t undercooked? I’m relatively new at this kind of cooking, and have only used it once before because it makes such a mess.” “No, it’s good,” he said, “just right, perfect. You did it like a real rotisserie pro, and I’ll do all the cleaning up. You cooked, I’ll clean.” “It’s okay, I don’t mind. I hope you didn’t think I was complaining. But clear this up for me. How did you get my phone number to call me the first time? I’m glad you got it, of course, but did I give it to you on the street or did you get it from Pati or some other way on your own?” “Oh, boy, your memory’s getting to be as bad as mine. That could be what happens when you spend a lot of time with me.” “I don’t need that,” she said, cross, stern; she’d never come even close to acting like that to him before. He said “Sorry, I didn’t mean it as a slight. Truth is, I don’t know how I meant it. It was a stupid remark, if it was said without my realizing why it was said and what I meant by it. My apologies, honestly. Please accept them. Damn, our first disagreement or whatever you want to call it — where I made you angry at me — and all my fault. But not important, right? I hope not. You gave me your last name and the spelling of it and told me to look for it in the Manhattan phone book — that you were unique. You didn’t say that; I added it.” “So that had to mean I was willing to meet you for coffee or something simple and short like that, and we’d see how things went from there. But why didn’t I just give you my phone number rather than make you work for it? That wasn’t right,” and he said “I don’t think either of us had a pen and there was nobody around at the time to borrow one from.” “You, a writer,” she said, “who as far as I can tell has never left your apartment or mine without a pen and something to write on — never even gone to the toilet for any extended length of time without a paper and pen,” and he said “Maybe you were in a rush to get to wherever you were going — I know you once told me but I forget what that was — or wanted to put me through some serious test on my pursuance of…of…Jesus, why do I get hung up on big words and long rambling sentences; probably the phony in me. In a nutshell: maybe you wanted to see if I’d make even that little effort to try to contact you. No, that’s not you. I don’t know why. Another thing that’s not important, do you agree?” Suddenly he has to pee. Can’t wait, either. Gets up, squeezes his penis to keep from peeing, rushes into the bathroom and sits instead of stands because the seat was down and he’s tired and he had a lot to drink tonight and most of it strong stuff and he feels a bit woozy, so thinks he might fall. Sitting down, he pisses a little on his thigh and the floor. This sudden urgency to pee is beginning to be a problem, he thinks. Something to do with his prostate? Worse? He once had prostatitis, more than thirty years ago, before he met Gwen. Only symptom was a few spurts of blood coming out of his penis one or two days, scaring him but there was no urgency to pee or anything different in his peeing, and he took some medicine for it a friend with the same condition had some extra of and it went away. He’s not going to call his doctor about it. If it continues, he’ll tell him at his next annual checkup. Or maybe he’ll put that one off — it was scheduled months ago — till next year, and maybe he won’t even go in for one then. He’s sick of doctors. Now that’s a funny expression. But he doesn’t want to see any of them. Saw them enough with Gwen, and all they seem to do — he knows that’s not all of it, but it seemed so with her — is put you through a slew of tests and medications and refer you to other doctors. Doesn’t think they did much for her but tire her out more than she already was as he dragged her from one doctor’s office and lab and imaging center to the next. Besides, this sudden urgency to pee could be from his drinking and maybe also, as sort of one thing setting off another, remembering Gwen mentioning the toilet in that business with his pen. It could also be his age, where he’s increasingly losing control of his bladder, just as his father did when he reached seventy or so, with nothing to do about it except pee more frequently though without waiting till he feels the need to. Prophylactic pees, once every other hour and a couple of times where he’d have to get up at night, so he wouldn’t have to run to the bathroom and wet his pants or his thighs and the floor. Or it actually could be his prostate, enlarged or inflamed or even cancerous, but the hell with it. Once you get to around his age, he’s read in a few newspaper articles, that kind of cancer is very slow growing, and the treatments for it could end up doing more harm to the body than leaving it alone. He thinks he’s got that right. Finished, no more drops or dribbling to come, he wipes his thigh and the bottom of his feet with wet toilet paper and then the part of the floor he peed on. Before throwing the paper into the toilet he checks the water for blood, is none, and goes back to bed. One thing he has to remember, he thinks, is not to become hypochondriacal. He’s bound to get sick one day, that’s a given, but for now he’s fine, not to worry, let him just have a little healthy time to himself. But what’s he going to do with his life from now on now that this whole thing is over and he’s really alone? In the morning. What is it, he thinks, resting the back of his head on the bed’s two softest pillows, that makes him want to sleep on his right side or at least start off in that position, rather than on his left side or his back? He never thought about this before? Thinks he has and that he even discussed it with Gwen, but forgets what he came up with. Oh, sure: the back’s easy for him to explain. It’s impossible for him to fall asleep that way. For thinking, okay. He’ll even get on his back in bed — either of his sides is no good for this — in the afternoon, not to nap but when he has a problem with something he’s writing and wants to work it out. He hasn’t written more than a couple of pages since Gwen died, and these over and over again. But when she was alive he used to say to her — she’d usually be in her study, working at her computer—“I’m going to take a break and rest awhile, so try to answer the phone, all right? I’m turning it off in our bedroom.” He’d take the paper out of the platen, cover the typewriter and put a paperweight or sea-polished stone he got off a beach in Maine or something heavy like that — the petrified wood his older daughter brought back for him from the Painted Desert — on the manuscript pages he was working on, and lie on the bed. The right side because, of course, that’s the side she ninety-nine times out of a hundred went to sleep on. Like him, before he had to do it for her, she turned over to the left side sometime at night. It was much easier for him to fall asleep if he could hold her or press up to her from behind. Her left breast. Both breasts. Left buttock. His hand between her thighs. So there’s his answer, no big deal, and he can’t imagine having discussed it with her. At the most he might have said something like, when they were lying in bed once, “I love holding you like this when we go to sleep. Don’t change it; stick with going to sleep on your right side.” He remembers she did once say she preferred falling asleep on her right side not only because her face faced open space, making breathing easier, rather than him and more bed on the left side, but also because she knew he liked to hold her when he was going to sleep and because she liked him to. “Otherwise, falling asleep,” she said, “one’s so alone.” So it’s obvious why, after twenty-seven-plus years of sleeping with her that way, why he still starts off on that side. And also…no, he was going to say it’s as if she’s still there sometimes, but he never feels that. Anyway, just a thought. But getting back to that first phone call, how do you get prepared to make a call like that, he thought, when you’ve little confidence you’ll come out sounding okay and you very much want to see this woman again? As he thought before: you don’t prepare yourself; you relax. You dial her number and wait for her to pick up and if she does, you say hello and your name and maybe where she knows you or you know her from and then jump right in talking about something you think will interest her. You might even say, not right away though, that old as you are, and you don’t want her to think you’re ancient—“Well, you know I’m not”—you still get a bit nervous and frazzled calling up a woman for the first time. Not that you call that many; you’re not saying that. In fact, to be perfectly honest, you could say, you haven’t called a woman for months, for a first time or one you know for a while. No, maybe that’d be too honest, he thought, and she’d think there was some hidden motive in his saying it. That he was trying to seem like someone he isn’t: right up-front, no hidden motives, and so on. Oh, he doesn’t know what. Instead he could say “Not that I do it regularly, calling up women, I want you to know, or calling up anyone. Phones were just never my best form of medium. I’m much better talking directly, with no, whatever you want to call it, interconnecting medium. There’s that word medium again,” he’d probably say if he said all that, “confirming to you, I’m afraid, my difficulty in talking on the phone. I wasn’t always like that, I want you to know. As a teenager I was a regular chatterbox on the phone with my friends and girls my age, infuriating my father, I can tell you, as he was pretty tight with money. Or maybe he was just being realistic, since you paid, I think, a dime a minute for a local call then, after the forty or fifty free minutes a month the phone company gave you.” But he wouldn’t even say that. Going into personal family history and his youth too soon, and most of the other stuff he’d sound silly saying and he’d get flustered trying to get out of it. Best: keep it simple and relatively quick. You’re relaxed, you’re ready, you dial and if she doesn’t pick up, you call again an hour or two later, still relaxed and ready, and if she doesn’t pick up then or the next time you call that night, you call the next day, and so on. But she has to pick up some time, unless she’s away, and even if she is, she’ll come back, and when she does pick up, you say “Hi, how are you?”—if she has been away, that’ll be his excuse for not having called sooner: he tried, her phone didn’t answer, he suspected she was away and decided to give it a few days—“it’s Martin Samuels, fellow you met at Pati Brooks’ party the other night, or should I say, in the hallway outside it, by the elevator.” Or better: “Hello,” or “Good evening”—no, too formal; just “Hello, it’s Martin…Martin Samuels, guy you met the other night in the hallway outside Pati’s party, both of us waiting for the elevator that didn’t seem to want to come. Did we ever figure out what the delay was all about? Anyway, how have you been?” and maybe, with her help, since he’s never been much good at initiating things to talk about on the phone, especially with someone he barely knows, the conversation will take off from there or just proceed naturally if maybe a bit awkwardly, but get better as it goes along. She might say something like “I’ve been doing okay, thanks, and you?” but the point is to get her to talk a little about herself and what she’s been doing so then he could respond to it. A new movie or museum show she might have seen that he’d seen also and they could talk about it, or if he hadn’t seen it — more chance of that with a movie, since he never goes to them alone — he could say “I’ve heard about it” or “read a review. Is it worth seeing?” Or he could try to come up with something else to get her to say what she’s been doing lately, he thought. Teaching. “How’s it going? I’ve never taught anything but junior high school for the Board of Ed for six years. Mostly per diem work, which wasn’t too awful because you just come and go in different schools and rarely see the same surly and sleepy and sometimes sweet faces for more than two days in a row. But for a year and a half I was a permanent sub, teaching language arts to eighth graders, the worst and most dangerous job I ever had, and believe me, I know: I once drove a cab here when drivers were being robbed and bumped off regularly.” If he did say that — maybe he wouldn’t say the cab part — he’d just be trying to bring her in and keep the conversation going — she’d probably say something like “What made it so bad?” “Knots in my stomach going home every day, and weekends ruined thinking about going in to teach Monday. And twice, a knife, pulled on me in class, and I had to physically disarm the kids, leading to the mother of one boy complaining to the principal that I ripped the kid’s sweater when I threw him to the floor and I’d have to pay for it. And one time I was going down the subway entrance after school and my least favorite student called me to look up and dropped a brick on my head. You probably saw the ugly scar my hair doesn’t cover up anymore because of my receding hairline.” He’d mention his growing baldness? Even in jest, why allude to it, possibly giving her more reason for turning him down? She already must think he’s a lot older than her. He’d more likely just say “which left a long scar on my forehead you might have noticed. Not so bad. My head’s full of them, most of them much smaller and on the sides where they don’t show, from when I was a very active but clumsy boy. I had that student suspended”—if she asked what happened to the kid, and if she didn’t, he’d just tell her—“and feared for the wholeness of my head for the rest of the school year, especially when he was let back in school after two weeks though not in my class.” She might ask why did he continue teaching if it was so bad? and he’d say “Money. At the time it was the best I could do and the long summer break gave me time to write. Not that I ever stopped while I was teaching, but did much less of it. But enough about me and my occupational hazards and adversities.” That’d be a good line if he got the chance to use it and it didn’t feel forced. “Tell me about your teaching. I want to know what it’d be like standing in front of a class without losing my voice every day shouting the umpteenth time for quiet, or not having to turn around every five seconds when I’m writing something on the blackboard, to prevent another head-cracking object thrown at me.” Then he could ask, if she didn’t bring it up, what are some of the books she uses in class and then talk with her about one of them he might have read — chances are always fairly good for that — or say he hasn’t read them all or maybe any of them, but one particularly he’s wanted to read, or if he’s read it, reread. “What’s a good translation of it,” he could say, “or maybe there’s only one? Wouldn’t I love to read even a semi-serious novel in the original foreign language. I’ve tried, in German and French, but couldn’t get halfway through them without going to the bilingual dictionaries a million times, even with Simenon and Remarque.” So, plenty of things to talk about. Her thesis and dissertation — what were they on? She could then say that would take too long to explain on the phone, and he could say “Then let’s meet. I’d like to hear about your work and what you’ve written, and if you’ve done book reviews or published some of your scholarly work, maybe I could locate them. I’m always interested in the art work and critical writings and such that people I’ve just met do.” He can be such a bullshit artist, he’s thought lots of times. Maybe less so now but plenty then. But whenever he is he tries to do it in a way where he doesn’t seem like one. Here, he’d just be trying to get over the early humps of his first call to her. Maybe, he thought, he should just say to her, without anything else about her teaching and writing and nothing about his, “I’m curious who some of the writers are that you teach, or did I say that the other night in front of Pati’s building? Even if I did — it sounds like something I’d ask because I’m always looking for something new to read — we talked for so short a time, we couldn’t have gone into it very much,” and then see where the conversation goes from there. If he does refer to his teaching and writing — even if he told himself not to, he could find himself doing it — should he slip in how, in his one free period a day in those schools, he used to, with a fountain pen, edit and then rewrite repeatedly, and never without making a change or two every time he rewrote the page, a couple of pages of a short story he was working on at the time, while the rest of the teachers in the teachers’ lounge were grading papers, writing lesson plans, napping, eating, smoking, talking, reading a newspaper, playing cards. It’d be a good anecdote, he thought, and again, without pushing it and if he could fit it into the conversation smoothly, give her an idea how committed he is to his writing. That he never leaves it home. In other words, if she asks what he means by that or he feels he needs to explain it or elaborate, that he always takes it with him, physically or in his head, so long as he has a copy of the original manuscript on his work table in his apartment in case the part he takes to school gets damaged to the point where he can’t read it or lost. And when she does answer the phone and they talk and the conversation goes well or lags a little but sort of reaches a certain time limit for a first call and he says something like “With all your teaching and other activities, you must be quite busy and I’ve taken up a lot of your time, so I should come right out with it and ask if you’d like to meet for coffee or something one of these days — tomorrow or the next day or whenever you’re free,” what could be the worst thing that could happen? She says no. But no with an explanation that does something to his stomach. She’s seeing somebody. Not only is she seeing somebody but it’s somebody she feels quite strongly about. She’s sorry she led him on. She probably wouldn’t say that. At the time when she gave him her phone number—“You mean, how to get it,” he’d say if she said that, and maybe say it a bit angrily, and she might say something like “Whatever way you got it — I wasn’t completely aware how deep my feelings were for this man.” She probably wouldn’t say anything like that either. She’d probably think she doesn’t need to explain. After all, they barely know each other, they only talked briefly, this is their first and probably their last phone call, so who is he to her? She’s not even sure about his name. Is it Martin Samuels? Samuel Martin? Oh, she’d know his name all right, he thought, but as a joke to herself it could be what she’d think. Lots of people, when they first meet him and some awhile after, have called him Samuel or Sam. Instead, she might say, if that she is seeing somebody what’s stopping her from meeting him for coffee and possibly also that she doesn’t want to lead him on, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.” If he said “Is it because you’re seeing somebody that’s stopping you from meeting me for coffee and also perhaps you might think you’d be leading me on?” she’d probably just say she’d prefer not going into it. Or just — after he asks her if she’d like to meet him for coffee one of these days or even a drink — she’s sorry, she doesn’t think so and she’d rather not go into why, but it was nice meeting him even so briefly, maybe she’ll see him again at one of Pati’s parties, and this time at the party and not after they leave it. “She gives so many of them,” she could say, “and always one on her birthday, or has since I’ve known her, but where we have to promise not to bring a present.” “Yeah,” he’d say, “she already told me to set aside that date. An easy one to remember: Lincoln’s birthday,” and she might say “Darwin’s too — Pati told me that.” “Same here,” he’d say. “That’s the only reason I know and I’ll probably always remember it.” “Well,” she’d probably then say, “goodbye,” and hang up. Anyway, bad as he’d feel if she turned him down for coffee, or a drink at the West End, let’s say, which is just up the street from where she lives, on Broadway, he can only find out what her answer will be by calling her. But if she told him how to get her number, which is the same thing, really, as giving it, then it had to mean she intended to meet him, other fellow or not, at least for coffee, and to continue what he thought, and she might have too, was a fairly good conversation for a first one, at the elevator, in it and on the street. They did talk in the elevator, didn’t they? he thinks. More than just that business about pushing the floor button, or was that just in one of his dreams tonight? But the butterflies in his stomach, and they’re flying around now like fighter planes, he remembers thinking and writing down someplace and coming upon sometime later and thinking “What was in my head at the time to want to write down such crap?” are telling him something. What? Something. But what? That he really doesn’t want to blow this. He knows, he knows. So attractive and elegant and dignified, he meant to say, and seemingly good-natured and probably high-minded and obviously smart. He knows: whatever you do, don’t blow it. For how many future chances will he get to meet a woman like this? And he wants the whole works with one: sex, love, marriage, children, and the chances of getting all that, let’s face it, are fading. He’s losing his looks and hair and back teeth and is only minimally successful in his writing after almost twenty years at it, and the prospects, though he is being published by small places and in one recent big place though at the bottom of its list, seem slim of ever living anything but skimpily off it. And he has very little money saved and only a small amount of royalties owed him and no job possibilities to speak of and it doesn’t look good he’ll ever have them: applied the last five years to he doesn’t know how many English and writing departments, college and a few New York City private high schools to teach writing and, if he has to, a little contemporary fiction with it, and not one of them bit. Not one even asked him to be interviewed for the opening or wanted him, when he suggested it, to send his one and then two and then three published books. And a couple of them said, so many more must have thought, they’d never consider anyone who didn’t have an advanced degree in literature or creative writing no matter how great a teacher and writer he may be, “and I’m not saying you are,” one of them added, “though in all probability you could be. I’m unfamiliar with your books and have no idea what you’re like in the classroom and was simply being hypothetical,” and he doesn’t know what other kind of work he can now do. Certainly not bartending or waiting on tables again or subbing in public junior high schools. So what would he be bringing to a relationship at forty-two? Though she might have found him halfway interesting and even physically appealing to a degree and maybe intelligent or whatever positive things she might have found him when they first met, on the phone with her, since he’ll feel some pressure to perform and because of that will have a hard time trying to act naturally, she could easily think him dull or too self-absorbed, or self-conscious, or something, but fake. And just being nervous about calling her up and speaking to her and afraid of blowing it, he might say the wrong thing or a series of them and turn her off. Something dumb or trite or silly or truly stupid and then try to apologize or alibi his way out of it and get himself in even deeper. And would she agree to meet what she was beginning to believe was a silly or stupid man even once? Would he with a silly or stupid woman even once? he thought. He might. No, he wouldn’t. He’d think nothing good could come of it. Going to bed with the woman that first date? After all, if she’s silly or stupid or let’s just say not very clever, she’d probably be more persuadable, so there’d be a better chance. That used to be enough, but not anymore. He feels too lousy about it after. That he’s being totally dishonest, done something wrong, hurt the woman, convinced or tricked her into doing something she didn’t want to or intuitively knew not to and now thinks less of herself, and so on. And she’s a woman, this Gwendolyn is, who could probably get just about any available man she wanted, so he’s saying if he acts like a sap on the phone, why would she want to meet up with him? Though maybe she’s not as intolerant of people as he is, or so quick to pass judgment, is more like it, besides sensing his nervousness and making certain adjustments for that. After talking with people for a minute or so or a little longer, he often thinks he knows what they’re like — silly, stupid, vapid, nothing to say, no original thoughts, uninterested in anything serious he is — and he sticks with that opinion. She, on the other hand, might think — she somehow seemed like this — that everyone’s good for at least one conversation over coffee or a beer — well, maybe with her not the beer; but something he ought to try thinking himself, since he can be so rigid with people. That’s not the word he wants, but he knows what he means. You can learn a lot about a person, and thus, people in general, that first and maybe only talk: hopes, goals, background, life history, so on, so on. Where the person’s been, what the person’s done, and everything that goes along with it, whatever he means by that. Maybe no conversation, or few, between two people can be so wide-ranged and packed tighter than the first one if it’s long enough, hour or two, especially if they’re eager to get in almost everything that interests them or think the other person will think interesting and makes them look good, something he doubts very much she’d do and he has to watch out for in himself if, and he should be so lucky, it ever comes to that. It’d be interesting, though, to find out what she really thinks about what he thought she might — that everyone’s-good-for-at-least-one-or-two-hour-long-conversation, etcetera. For all he knows it could be close to what he guessed. And his hopes and goals and such, if they do meet and she asks? She’s a part of them, that’s for sure, but of course not what he so soon would want to express. Talk about scaring her off fast. He’d just be matter-of-fact, not give away anything as to what he’s been thinking about her, talk seriously about his writing and where he wants it to go and that if some college, preferably here but almost anywhere in the States if that’s all he can get, would give him a break and look at his list of publications and the New York State writing fellowship he’s gotten and not just his lack of any postgraduate degree, he’d like to start teaching, for the income and time it’d give him to write, and other things in his life—“To be honest, eventually marriage, children. I’m already past forty, so you understand, but not to rush into anything, just to have these things.” And after an hour or so and they’ve finished their coffee or she, tea, and maybe a refill — well, you don’t usually get a refill of tea unless it’s already in one of those small teapots that sometimes comes with the cup or mug — and start to leave — he’ll pick up the check even if she insists he don’t and she’s had something, for him, expensive with her coffee or tea. He’ll only have coffee and if she says something like “You’re not having anything to eat?” he’ll say “Not hungry, thanks,” although he might be but knows once she orders a sandwich or some other food like that and he’s intending to pick up the check, that he really can’t afford more. Or maybe he’ll do this — ask her if she’d like to meet him again — in front of the coffee shop, for that’s what he thinks it’ll be if she agrees to meet him a first time, someplace simple — and just pray, maybe even hold his breath; in other words, hope very hard she says that important second yes. She does, he thought, he thinks he’d begin to believe that maybe they’d started something, for why else would she agree to see him again? Would talking about his fairly prestigious writing fellowship be too much like boasting? Not if he says it in a way where it doesn’t. For instance: The fellowship, and this only if the subject or it comes up or something closely related to it, enabled him for the first time in his life, and he’s been writing for around twenty years, to do nothing but write for a year. More than a year. He managed to stretch the fellowship money to a year and a half before he had to look for work again. His most productive period too, though he won’t say this to her, at least not yet, on the phone or if they meet, because that would really be boasting: forty-two short stories and a rewrite of a short novel, and most of those stories eventually got into one magazine or another and some of them into his first two story collections, while the novel is still making the rounds. Actually, he had another writing fellowship, but he doesn’t know if he’d want to talk about it, again at least not yet, even if he had the chance. Certainly nothing to do with boasting. He got it years ago, an academic fellowship, and he had to uproot himself to California at some expense to take advantage of it and about a third of the fellowship money went to the tuition of the once-a-week graduate writing seminar he had to take and he felt the criticism he got in class from the other fellows and graduate student writers set his writing back a year. Just about all of them and one of his two teachers, though they referred to themselves as coaches, hated his work, and the other teacher or coach thought he showed some promise in the short story form but none in the novel and that he was going through the obligatory experimental phase almost every serious writer in his mid-twenties does who’s been reading Faulkner, early Hemingway, Kafka, Borges and Joyce. Anyway, what he wants now, though, and he wishes he hadn’t set himself up for such a big disappointment if he doesn’t get it, he thought in his room about a week after they first met, sitting on his bed fully dressed, first week in December he thinks or last in November, for Pati’s party was right around Thanksgiving, either day after or before, holding the receiver so long the dial tone went dead, determined not to stall anymore but to call her right now or sometime tonight and if she doesn’t answer, he remembers thinking, not to wait around to call again but to go out for a short walk, maybe stop in someplace for a coffee or beer and call her from there or after he gets back home, is for her to say after they’d talked awhile about various things and he then asked her out some day for coffee — no beer: that could be the second date if the first went well—“Yes,” or “Sure, that’d be nice,” or “I don’t see why not,” or “Why not? What’s a good day and time for you and we’ll see if it jells with my own schedule? Let me get my appointment book,” but something like one of those and they work out where and when. Just imagine, he thought, if it came out like that. After he hung up the phone he’d go “Whoopee,” and make a fist and slam it through the air and maybe shout “Yeah, yeah; goddamn it, you dood it, you done dood it, you imbecile; it’s working,” and be all smiles and maybe have a shot of vodka from the bottle in the freezer or a glass of wine just to calm himself down and then go out to his neighborhood bar for a draft beer and hope his friend Manny was there — he usually was around this time; it had become his weekday nighttime hangout, first stool nearest the door if he could get it, under the shelf with the television on it and by the payphone, where he got and made calls — if when he reached her was the first time he dialed her and she answered and he hadn’t already been out for a short walk. Oh, forget it for now, he told himself or might even have said out loud. He thinks he did. “You’re still too nervous. You can call later if it’s not too late. Or tomorrow. But definitely no later than tomorrow if you don’t call tonight, around this time or late afternoon, the likeliest times, you’d think, other than early morning — and you don’t want to call anytime in the morning; that’d seem like you were desperate to reach her — when she’d be home. But again, not too late if you call at night. No later than ten, maybe ten-thirty, but not a minute after that, and probably, because your watch might be slow, no later than a few minutes before. People get uneasy when they get calls later than that. You do, anyway — a little uneasy: your mother suddenly sick or hospitalized or worse, for instance? — and she might. You can see her hearing the phone ring and looking at her watch or a clock and wondering who could be calling this late and what could it be about. And later than ten-thirty, she might be preparing for sleep. Or she might be tired after a long day and want to get to bed and be in no mood to talk. She might even be in bed or soon going to be with some guy, a boyfriend or just some man she finds attractive and likes to sleep with. You hope not. Come on, what you really hope for is that you become that guy — the boyfriend, though you’d take the other for as long as you both wanted it and it could always lead to something deeper — and you never know. You can look at what you’re giving off in a different way than you did before. You’re actually still not a bad-looking guy and she never has to see that you’re missing most of your back teeth, and you’re built well, tall, not much blubber. Okay, you have lost a fair amount of hair and nothing you can do about that, certainly not comb it over. But you’ve got brains and a sense of humor and you are a serious writer and published — there are plenty of serious writers your age who can’t even say that, or not published in so many places — and it’s happened with a couple of women as beautiful, or almost as beautiful as she. Give it time. Whatever you do — all this, of course, predicated on her agreeing to that first meeting — don’t push it faster than it should go. You think you know what you’re saying there. If all works out, it could end the way it did with the two other beauties, but better, and one of them — the other said she’d never marry you, when you raised the possibility; being married once was enough, she said, just as her one kid was all the children she wanted: that living together till either one of you lost interest in the other was as far as it could ever go — you were even engaged to, only time you were engaged, and came weeks or months away from marrying her, when she broke it off. Why? Some bullshit excuse that was nowhere near the truth. Their different religions and also that she didn’t want to get tied down so young. She was how old? Twenty-five or twenty-four. Twenty-four, spring of ’61, and you were a few months older. Maybe in the future, she said. Truth is, she didn’t love you that much, nothing like the way you did her, and she didn’t want to come out with it because she didn’t want to hurt you. And when you grabbed her shoulders and shook her back and forth and screamed for her to give you the real reason she was breaking it off and admit she was getting rid of you for good, she told you to get your things together — she hadn’t planned to ask you this soon, she said — and leave her apartment because she was afraid you were next going to hit her. ‘I could, I could,’ you said. But enough; no more talking to yourself out loud or at least not to go on so long with such chatter. Bad sign. Of what? Of the obvious.” Anyway, it’s not like he has a problem. He’s not crazy, in other words. Talking to himself out loud isn’t something he does regularly or has ever done, far as he can remember, at such length before. He was just horsing around, so what’s the harm? — nobody was here to listen. And the butterflies — butterflies and horse, he thought; anything to make of that? — are gone. Went when he decided not to call her just yet and maybe not even till tomorrow. So maybe that’s why he talked out loud to himself so long. To get his mind off the call he knows he’s going to make. Something like that. He remembers slamming the receiver down fast after one or two rings the two times he dialed her entire number. So there’d be no chance she’d answer the phone and hear him putting the receiver down without saying anything. He thought she’d be alarmed or concerned in some way if she heard the slams. But he thinks he got the receiver down before she’d be able to pick up the phone. He just didn’t want to get caught. Caught how? She wouldn’t have known it was he slamming the receiver down. She might have guessed, though, maybe not the first time but the second — a wild guess, maybe something to do with the nervous and erratic way he thinks he acted with her by the elevator and then in it and later on the street and also that someone ringing and quickly hanging up twice in so short a time in one night, and the chances are pretty poor it could be two different callers, would seem less like an accident than only once would be — that it was he and wonder, if she was right, and it increasingly looks like she is, she might think, why he didn’t stay on the phone. Butterflies in his stomach at speaking to her? she might think. She’s so beautiful and desirable that it’s probably happened, and she’s aware of it, with other guys when they first called her for a date, he bets. If she asks, when he does finally call her, did he call her twice before or twice in a row last night and hang up after the first rings — it was just so unusual, she could say, and she thought, for some reason, it might have been him — he could say it wasn’t, this is the first time he called, or he did call those times she said and he hopes he didn’t upset her, and then give an excuse. Suddenly had to go to the bathroom and she might say “Twice?” and he could say “Yes, unbelievable as it might sound — and I don’t have a health problem with it, by the way — twice.” “Why didn’t you call back after?” she might say, and he wouldn’t know what to say to that, or not right away, so some other excuse. He’s good at excuses, or usually. He’s a good liar, is what he means. Probably has something to do with being a writer, or what helped him or steered him into being one. “I suddenly — just after your phone started ringing — got an idea for a story,” he could say. “I’m a writer, you see — I don’t know if I told you that night we met — fiction, only — so an idea for a story involving several phone conversations, though not one with you, and wanted to write it down before I lost it, and hung up. I figured I could always call you back later, but a good story idea, when I lose it I usually lose it for good. I hope you didn’t mind, hearing the ringing cut off. And I was right. Wrote the idea down, then started on the first draft of the story right after — somehow got caught up in it — and I wrote the entire first draft in one sitting and it’s a story I like and that stays with me, so after I finished the work I was working on — a short-short that took much longer that I thought — I started the first draft of the new one and will work on it till it’s done.” “I can understand your hanging up for that,” she could say, “but why did you hang up a second time without waiting for me to answer?” “Did I say I hung up twice?” he could say. “I guess I did. Well, to be honest, and it wasn’t something I thought quite right to talk about in our first phone call, but the first time I hung up — getting the story idea was the second — occurred when I all of a sudden had to go to the bathroom. I have no medical problem with it, you see. I just waited too long.” “What’s the story about,” she could say, “other than involving several phone conversations?” He could say “Oh, I’m very bad at summarizing my plots — they always come out sounding idiotic and trite — but I’ll give it a try. It’s about a writer, pretending to be a customer, who phones several bookstores in town asking if they have his newly published book. Saying things like ‘I think I have his name and the title right — anyway, it’s supposed to be an exceptional novel.’ Or ‘I tried getting it at a bookstore closer to my home but it was all sold out,’ etcetera. None of the seven or eight stores he calls carry his book or had planned to and most of them hadn’t even heard of it. Maybe all of them hadn’t heard but they just didn’t want to admit it. His aim, or course, was to generate interest in the book and increase sales. What he finds out, though, is that his novel, far as interest and sales go, is pretty much a flop, which will hurt if not kill his chances of selling his next novel to the same publisher. Not to go on too long about this, most of the salespeople he speaks to on the phone say they can special-order the book for him and have it in the store, depending on its distributor, in a matter of days. To the first one he says something like — to the others he just says ‘Don’t bother’ or ‘No thanks’—‘Yes,’—and all this will change a little to a lot in the final draft, since I do more than one of them and am always changing the text—‘Yes, please order it for me — I wish the bookstore near me had suggested that — and I’ll drop by in a few days to pick it up,’ which he had no intention to. And this woman, or maybe it was a man — doesn’t matter — asks for his name and phone number so she can call him when the book comes in, and he says ‘Actually, I’m going to try some other stores to see if one of them has it, because I want to start on it right away,’ and so on. You get the idea.” He also thought in his apartment that night when he was debating with himself whether to call her now or put it off another day, maybe he’s blowing this way out of proportion and she’s really not right for him and same for him to her, so why bother? He was also worried — but didn’t he go over this before? He’s almost sure he did but forgets what it was he thought. Anyway: worried he’ll sound like an idiot on the phone with her and he won’t have anything to say, and he can’t just come right out and say “Like to meet for coffee or a beer sometime this week?” without saying much of anything before. And he’ll hem and haw and then probably apologize for hemming and hawing and maybe even admit he’s a bit nervous speaking to her — now all that he’s sure he went over before in his head. And she’ll probably ask why, or she could, or she might not say anything but she’ll certainly think it and already have formed a not very positive opinion of him and maybe think him, which he can be at times, a little goofy and juvenile and even somewhat dumb. By then, she might want to end the conversation, what little there likely is of it, because it was obviously going nowhere and she was getting tired of it and has things to do and it was getting late, and say — just come right out with it, since she has no interest in him so has nothing to lose — Did I really tell him how to get my phone number? she might think during or after the call — that she doesn’t think it’s a good idea their getting together, if that’s what he called for, and she can’t imagine, she could say, any other reason for his call, and it was nice speaking to him but she has to go now and then say goodbye and hang up, maybe not even waiting for him to say goodbye. No, she’d wait. And she wouldn’t be so blunt. Way he reads her he’s sure she’s never rude and is usually very polite and would never slight or say anything that would hurt or anger him in any way, if she could help it, and she would know what would. But isn’t most of how he imagines the phone conversation would be, going too far? First of all, surely he could talk and act on the phone much better than he’s depicted himself here. Secondly…well, he forgets what that was. Anyway, he might be nervous or anxious on the phone with her, or maybe not, but he’d be able to control it where it doesn’t show. Answer this, though: why’d you think she might not be right for you despite your wanting to call her so much? The possibility of your not being right for her you’ve already gone into, you think. Physically; intellectually, perhaps, and maybe even the age gap. Forget the “physically.” You can see her — again, just something about her you quickly picked up — dating and even sleeping with, if she thought highly of the guy enough, homely, intelligent and artistic men. Scholars and talented poets. Architects who read, and the like. But the first question you asked? And there’s those times when you’re feeling worst about yourself and don’t think you’re right for any woman, but that always passes. Who doesn’t have serious self-doubts? But answer the one about her not being right for you. I don’t know. Yes, you do. I just can’t this moment come up with an answer for it. Yes, you can; don’t worm your way out of it. Her looks. Was she really all that good-looking? Oh, come on. First you think she’s gorgeous and then you don’t think she’s that good looking? I didn’t say she wasn’t. I was just wondering if I saw right. I did have a little more than a little to drink that night. Also, my eyes are bad and my glasses are old and I need a new eye exam and lenses, so I could have mis-seen what I saw, for want of a better expression or word. “Mis-seen” isn’t either, right? Stop it. She was pretty, very pretty, maybe beautiful, maybe even drop-dead gorgeous, besides being exceptionally pleasant, gentle and bright. Pleasant and gentle, yes, but that could just be good manners. But how can you tell about her being so bright, for you know I wouldn’t want to go out, over a period of time, if it ever came to that, and same with sleeping with, with someone who wasn’t, not necessarily “exceptionally,” but very bright? The way she spoke, her look. The words she used, and other things: her voice. Maybe she’s too smart for me, then. Did she seem that way? No. She just seemed smart, learned, quick, articulate, and probably very bright, and interested, from what I could make out — I forget what it was, but it was something — in some, maybe many — no, we didn’t talk long enough for me to say “many”—of the same things as me. Literature. She teaches it, must have spent years at a very high level studying and writing about it. She has a Ph.D., said so at the elevator. But you know these academics. No, what? I never really got along with them, and for some reason the women more than the men. There was Eleanor, years ago. No Ph.D., just a master’s in English literature, not that I’m knocking it with that “just.” I barely made it out of college and never wanted to go further. Actually, not so. In ’58, couple of months after I graduated college and exactly ten years before I met Eleanor and twenty before today — those ten-year intervals could be significant, although in ’48 I was in seventh grade — I started an M.A. in American lit at Hunter and lasted all of three weeks. Walked out of a class in bibliography — one of my two courses — other was in pre- or post-colonial or — Columbian literature — remember, this was twenty years ago — still open to me because I registered so late. Left in the middle of the class, in fact, with the professor saying to me as I gathered up my books and stuff and headed for the door, “Yes?” and I saying “I’m sorry, this is just not for me. I was either naive or stupid enough to think that going for a master’s in literature, we’d just read and talk about what we read, and after class, sometimes with the teacher, go out for coffee or beer and talk some more about our books and all sorts of things.” No, I didn’t say that, but wanted to. Also, what a pedant I thought he was and that I can’t, because of the technical language of his trade, understand half of what he says. What he actually said to me was “Mr. Samuels, is it? Class hasn’t been dismissed,” but I just left the room without saying a word. But Eleanor — second woman I went with, although she was the first, whose thesis was on some aspect of Dickens’ work. Windows, I think, and doors. “Oubliette.” I never heard the word before and don’t think I’ve seen it since. Good in bed, though she needed a lot of pot to get that way, but unattractively coarse and stingingly frank and aggressively self-serving and insufferably smug. Enough adverbs for you? I usually don’t use them other than for “obviously” and if “probably” and “possibly” are adverbs. Boy, what she would have done with that. “Hey, buddy, let’s get to it,” she once said. “You only helped me get one orgasm, while I helped you get three.” I didn’t have three but couldn’t convince her, so had to perform when I was spent. I told her this can lead to a heart attack and she said “Rubbish, you’re too young.” The second and third orgasms she referred to were continuations, separated by silence for a few seconds and then accompanied by the familiar noise, of the only one I had. But an example of her smugness? “Oh, you didn’t know Dickens died before he was sixty? You must not have been paying attention in your high school English class.” He did die that early? It’d seem with all those lengthy novels and book-length travel journals, he had to have lived well into his seventies and never put his pen down till he dropped. No, under sixty, but not by much. Funny, she mentioned high school, because that was the only time I liked Dickens. The abridged Tale of Two Cities . I memorized and used to declaim when I was alone and nobody could hear me the “It is a far, far better thing and place,” etcetera, speech, from the ending. But as an adult, I didn’t much care for Dickens. All those masterpieces I thought weren’t. A good storyteller, if you like stories. Today I’d say MFM: made for movies. In those days, for reading tours. Written too quickly, with little re-examining and revising, and some of the most contrived situations and resolutions and initial encounters and final partings imaginable. Or that’s my take on his work, but I could be wrong and he did write meticulously and go through multiple revisions, but to me it didn’t come out that way. Two carriages going in opposite directions, each containing a member or members of the main cast, passing each other without recognizing the other at dawn, usually while crossing a moat. Maybe I’m exaggerating. Also, I don’t know what funny names do to you, but they don’t make me laugh. I once said some of this to Eleanor, and did she blow up. “You should be a quarter as good as Dickens,” she said, “an eighth as good, even a sixteenth, in any page from all of his books, but with the literary conventions of your own century. Even if you adored his work you’d probably say otherwise, simply to rankle me. Anything I’m good at and devoted to, you put down.” That true? No, I admired a lot of what she did, particularly how fast she read and got her ideas down, and went out of my way to praise her. Just when it comes to literature and what I like, I don’t fool around. I break off a twig, chew one of its ends to a sharp point, dip it in ink and draw the line. What that means and where it came from, beats me. “Blood” for “ink” wouldn’t make any more sense, or not to me at this moment, but it does sound more serious and dramatic. But I’m not much for the unconscious or accidental supplying some of my original ideas and thoughts, creative and otherwise. I think I meant something there that’s connected to what came before it. What’s the word for a mind that’s going? It shouldn’t be for a guy my age but sometimes it seems like it. Anyway, he never got along for very long with academic women — women who teach literature in college and have one or two advanced literature degrees — and he probably won’t with this Gwendolyn or Gwen. Why? He’s already spoken about some of her more positive qualities: pleasant demeanor, good looks and speech, soft voice and quiet smile, and she seems to have similar interests as he and an even disposition and a terrific mind. So, what’s not to like? as his father used to say, though he was talking about other things: money and schemes to make it and getting things for free. She seemed a lot different than Eleanor and Diana, his other Dickens scholar. They were okay, he’s not really complaining about them, and they certainly had a lot to put up with in him — he doesn’t want to go into it but there were many things he did to them that were wrong — though they could be a bit stagy and stiff and too often cold and hard. It didn’t seem she could be any of those, especially cold and hard, or if she could it’d be rare, short-lived and justified. How can he tell? He can’t, little time he was with her. Then why’s he saying it? Probably to give him more reason to call her or ward off reasons not to. Did he make any sense there? he thought. Does anything he say make any sense? He used to, almost all the time, but maybe he was mistaken. Maybe meeting her and wanting to call her so much and see her again has made him more unsure of himself than he typically is. What else? What else what? Her, about her. He liked the way she was dressed. Simply, good taste, muted colors. Small matter, but it does say something about why he was attracted to her. He likes his women — now that’s funny; his —not to dress stylishly or ostentatiously or expensively, and nothing she wore seemed that way, or to wear something or have on some adornment that calls attention to herself and you think she only put it on because it does. Again, is he making himself clear? he thought. He knows what he wants to say but is having trouble saying it clearly in his head and he for sure would have even a worse problem if he had to say it out loud. It’s late, or it’s not so late, so maybe it’s just been a long day, but it’s something, so don’t worry about it. But he doesn’t want — a thought he knows he’s already had tonight — to call her and have his words dribble out uncohesively. Incoherently. Unintelligibly. Un- or incomprehensibly. He’s not joking with himself: suddenly he doesn’t know. And right now if he had to decide on only one to use, because two or more if he said them to someone might seem like showing off, he couldn’t. Couldn’t decide. But to illustrate something he touched on before — clothes: Eleanor wore what to him were ridiculous hats and wool caps made in Guatemala and Morocco and Peru and enormous metal necklaces, maybe from the same places — she had family money and was a world traveler — that clinked when she bent over or walked. And Diana, who grew up “dirt poor,” she said, “and made it all the way through grad school, unlike some of your previous girlfriends, entirely on my own,” had a new hair style or cut every other month, it seemed, some of them he thought unflattering and made her intelligent face look a little silly. “What do you think?” she’d say. “You haven’t said anything.” “About what?” and she’d say “My hair; you noticed. So, out with it. Is it the disaster your face says?” and he’d have to hedge or lie. “I don’t know what was wrong with the last one, and all these different stylings must come at considerable expense, but this one’s nice too.” Gwen had beautiful straight hair, worn simply. “Worn” the right word? Oh, there was another Dickens scholar. How could he have forgotten her? Also had her long blond hair up when he first saw her and he also wondering how far down her back it’d fall. Or he thinks he wondered that about Gwen at the party. Sharon’s almost reached her waist. He likes long hair on women. All the things they can do with it. Loves it when he’s on his back in bed and the woman’s on top and leaning over him and her hair would cover his shoulders and head — this only happened with Sharon and Gwen — blocking out the light. And if not Dickens, then at least Victorian literature, and a Ph.D. also, so her studies, and possibly her teaching, had to include Dickens. California, Bay area, thirteen years ago. Got along with her just fine for about a year — in fact, as smooth a relationship as he ever had till then…never a disagreement between them till she broke up with him. Then he went berserk, smashed a glass on the floor, pounded the wall with his fists, called her a whore and a liar and a bitch who’s just been leading him on or stringing him along but doing crap like that to him since they met, and even threatened to hit her. Saw her three to four times a week — usually she drove to his place because her husband, who she said had no trouble with her romance with him—“He’s had his own sweeties, one he really flipped over, and he above all hates hypocrites”—worked at home. Then she wanted to have a child, and to be sure, for genetic reasons, who the father is—“It’s very important medically, you know, and if he ever separated from me, for financial support”—and because she wanted to conceive soon as she could and then lead a normal family life—“I know I must sound like an utter bourgeois on this, but when it comes to my own child, out comes the hidden traditionalist in me”—she couldn’t see him again except if he wanted to meet from time to time for coffee and just to talk and to see how big her up-till-now tiny belly can be. Before he went crazy that day, he said calmly “Divorce him and marry me and have a child. I’ll never cheat on you, I’ve been wanting to get married for years and start a family, and you love me more than you do him.” She said “No, I don’t. What made you think that? You’re a sweetheart, but you come in second. And for my marriage to end, my husband would have to divorce me. But he likes the way things are and doesn’t mind adding marital fidelity and a baby or two to them. Besides, he’s a successful writer, so has the means, while you’ll be struggling for years.” Met her at a health-food co-op in Berkeley. Diana he was fixed up with by a friend in New York. Eleanor he also met at a party in SoHo, but so far east it might be called something else. Sharon was behind him on the checkout line with three items in her hands: an unsliced loaf of millet bread, a can of inorganic garbanzo beans and a square chunk of tofu in a little plastic bag tied with a tab and almost filled to the top with water, like the kind one carries home a goldfish in from a pet store. Remembered how the bag always stunk from fish feces when he opened it. How’d he get the fish into the bowl without the feces? It was so long ago. When he was a kid. He gave them names. One was “Goldie.” The fish kept quickly dying, never lasted more than a few days, so he must have done it several times before giving up on owning a fish. Probably emptied the bag out into a container of water first and then picked the fish up with his hand or a net and put it into the bowl. “If that’s all you have,” he said, “—even if you have more”—he was immediately attracted to her as he was to Gwen—“go in front of me. I’ve got a lot more than you.” She said “No, thank you. I’m in no hurry. And what I have is hardly weighing me down.” “Put everything on the counter then,” and she said “The water could spill and I didn’t bag the bread.” “Of course,” he said. “I should have realized that. I don’t know what’s making me so dense, but you’re right,” and he couldn’t think of anything else to say and she looked away from him, so he turned to the front. Outside the store, he tied and retied his shoes, waiting for her. When she came out, same three items in her hands, he stood up and patted his pants pockets as if he were searching for his wallet or keys or just wanted to make sure they were there. Then he looked at her as if he had only just noticed her and said, “Oh, hi. Just thought I lost something, but as usual I didn’t. Wait a minute. None of my business, but you going to carry that bread home or to somewhere, not in a bag?” She said “I have a bag for it in my bicycle but forgot to bring it in with me,” and she unstrapped one of the saddle bags on a bike in a bike rack in front of the store, got a paper bag out of it and stuck the bread in. “So you slice it each time?” he said. “With a breadknife,” she said. “The loaf always falls apart when I do it that way, even with a breadknife, which is why I get it sliced.” “It stays fresher unsliced,” she said, “and will stay even fresher if you put a few raisins in the bag.” “Raisins?” and she said “Take my word. Try it.” Then she put her three items into the saddle bag, the tofu wedged between the beans and bread and something else holding it straight — a rolled-up hand towel, it looked like — so it wouldn’t move around and burst or spill. “Very ecological,” he said. “I should do more of that. I try, in other ways — biking instead of driving if it isn’t raining hard and the distance isn’t too great and if there isn’t an enormous steep hill along the way, since my bike’s only got one speed, unlike yours — but I never thought to bring my own bags to a store. I’m afraid I’ve only used them for my garbage till now.” “That’s putting them to good use,” she said. “You’re being ecological by not buying garbage bags, which would probably be plastic.” “I suppose. But what if I first used the bag to carry home goods from a store and then used it for my garbage?” “You could do that. Doubly useful. What an odd conversation this is.” “Well, you get into things, you never know where you’re going to go, but we’ll get out. Unfortunately, I’m almost inherently discursive and digressive. My father, by the way — am I holding you up? I shouldn’t say that, because I’m enjoying the conversation,” and she said “I’ve got a few minutes.” “My father was practicing ecology or environmentalism or whatever the right word for it is, long before most people, it seemed. But more out of thriftiness, which I’m sure came from his family being very poor when he was a kid, than saving the planet or preserving it a few years more than the global experts were giving it because of our planetary profligacy, I guess you can call it. As an example, and he’s retired now and disabled and quite sick so he no longer does this, every day for lunch he took a sandwich to his office wrapped in the same wax paper he used for the entire work week. That is, if it didn’t get too messy or tear, and by the way he wrapped the sandwich and refolded the paper after he used it, he made sure it wouldn’t. He probably would have used it the following week too but had no place to keep it over the weekend. My mother I know wouldn’t have allowed him to stash it in the refrigerator someplace because if anyone saw it, it would just seem too cheap, and if he kept it out for two days the paper would stink and parts of it maybe rot by the time he used it again Sunday night. Same routine with the paper lunch bag he carried the sandwich in, if it also didn’t get too greasy or start to come apart. Folded the bag carefully along its natural seams after taking the wrapped sandwich and paper napkin and that day’s whole fruit out of it — apple, orange, tangerine, etcetera. Napkins he used came from the dairy cafeteria he treated himself to lunch to about every third week, maybe also to restock his napkin supply. Would grab a couple of handfuls out of the dispenser and stuff them into his jacket and coat pockets. Where he kept them at home I don’t know, but he took me to lunch there once or twice and I saw him do it and figured out that’s where his never-ending supply of napkins came from.” “Outside of the napkin part, she said, “it seems he knew what he was doing, reusing what other people indiscriminately throw away.” “I guess, but I’m not certain, though I like your idea of looking at it in a good light. When I was growing up, though — even till about five or ten years ago — I saw it the way my mother did: that he was cheap. But to really exhaust the point and also to see this segment of my father’s life, since it is sort of a story, to the end and then I’ll stop, though I’ll stop sooner if you want me to, he made the sandwich right after dinner, or right after he smoked his cigar after dinner — wouldn’t allow anyone to do it for him — usually from a few slices of that meal’s meat leftover. If it didn’t look like there was going to be any meat left over, he saved a slice or two already on his plate and made the sandwich from that. What I’m getting to here is that if he only ate half the sandwich the next day, he brought the other half home with him, or whatever was left of it — even meat and bread scraps — in the same wax paper and bag he took the sandwich to work in and gave it to our dog, no doubt, in his mind, to save on the dog-food expense and, looking at it the way you do, to cut back on waste. He certainly didn’t do it because he liked the dog. He called her ‘public nuisance number one.’ The only thing I can think of now working against taking the sandwich half and scraps home is that it gave the wax paper and lunch bag one less chance of surviving the entire week. After the dog died from something she ate — it wasn’t from the sandwich but something she managed to claw out from behind the stove — I don’t know what my father did if he didn’t eat the second half of the sandwich, and there had to be times he didn’t, since he never brought it home. Okay, that should do it, and did I go on? This is the classic tale of a stranger telling a stranger his family history and life story, but much more than she bargained for or ever wanted to hear.” “No, I didn’t mind,” she said. “I kind of liked it. You’re a funny guy. And I bet everything you said was intended to be funny, so a successful funny guy. So, not only amusing but interesting, your delivery and material, in a sort of time-capsule way. What was your dog’s name?” “Penelope. I named it before I even heard of Homer. I must have got the name from a character in a comic book, which at the time was all I read for diversion. Anyway, enough of me. I’d like to shut up now. You might think that impossible, but I’m really not much of a talker and don’t know how I got started rattling on so much. I’d much prefer hearing some of your life story and family history, but over coffee if you have a few spare minutes. More if you have more but a few if that’s all you can spare. I’d also like to know what you meant by my delivery. But could we do that?” Please, please, he was thinking, and she said “I don’t see why not. My bike’s safe here even without a lock — the co-op manager once told me they never had a bike stolen — and what little food I have won’t spoil. To save time, should we go to the snack bar they have here?” They went back inside, split a warmed-up buttered corn muffin and had herbal tea, his first. She ordered it for herself and he told the counterperson “I’ll have one too,” since the store had no regular coffee — not even in pound bags on the shelves — just grain coffee, which he didn’t like. He thought he spoke more articulately and his mind was clearer and he said more intelligent and clever things when he drank caffeinated coffee with someone, at least when his was real coffee and black and strong. That was then; not today and not for years. Now he doesn’t think it makes a difference, with or without. He’s become somewhat inarticulate and often unintelligible, when he was almost never that way, and gets lost in what he’s saying or breaks off his speech in the middle of a sentence because he forgets what point he was trying to make. There’s a long word for it he always forgets. Starts with an A or O, he thinks, and when he finally remembers it, he forgets how to pronounce it. What happened to him to make him like that? Age; again, loss of confidence and resistance to doing anything new or to change. Not that so much or much of it at all, but just things repeating themselves. Page after page, section after section, novel after novel, and so on. Same job and same workers at work and same bed and same newspapers and same news and same things to eat and drink and clean up and same dawn. Wait, what’s he missing? Gwen getting sick, that changed things, but ended up being the same day-to-day tasks taking care of her. Ah, why worry about it? He’s not worrying, just thinking. But to get back. And why’s he going on so long about Sharon? Could be because she reminds him of Gwen so much, more than any woman he’s been close to. The quietness and education and intelligence and serenity and sense of humor and modesty and the way she smiled and spoke and her soft voice and the soft features and other soft things and that she always had a book with her and read a lot of poetry. Both also wrote poetry. Sharon, he later saw, published some of hers in literary magazines and may have even had a book or two of her poems published, while Gwen never sent hers out. “It’s not that I fear rejection,” she said, when he said if she doesn’t want to do it, he’ll send them out for her, he knows the market. “They just never seem ready.” Maybe he can put together a collection of her poems, he thinks, with help from a poet friend of hers and the kids. Might take some doing, retrieving them from her computer, but the kids are probably whizzes at that. Also, how he met her. No, not even close, so why’d he think it? Gwen was by the elevator, after his eyeing her at the party for so long and she a few times catching him doing it, though she denied it. Sharon on the checkout line, when he looked around, as people waiting to be taken care of will do on lines, and saw her for the first time — she was looking around too and didn’t for several seconds see him looking at her — and was instantly, he could say, as he was with Gwen when he first saw her, attracted to her. That didn’t happen to him with many women, maybe just those two. And Terry, actress he saw almost every day for a couple of months — his first real girlfriend, really, meaning the first one he went with a while and also slept with — till she fell in love with an actor she was doing a love scene with in acting class. Her he also first met at a party — New Year’s Eve, vast West End Avenue apartment, enormous tall paintings on the walls and smaller ones leaning up against the bookcases and chairs of elongated male and female nudes by the mother of the guy who gave the party, same day or day before Batista fled Cuba and Castro’s forces were filtering into Havana for the final takeover of the island. He was elated at the news and then disgusted soon after when the revolutionaries, no doubt on Castro’s orders, or maybe not, but anyway he didn’t stop them and it went on for weeks, began lining up police and suspected Batista sympathizers and such against walls and shooting them. And Frieda, but should he really count her? He was sixteen, she fifteen, when he went with his friends to a dance at her all-girls’ private high school on the Upper East Side and first saw her, dancing the Lindy, he thinks, with another girl in the gymnasium turned into a seedy nightclub. She looks like a model, he thought, so beautiful and slim and dressed so well and sophisticated looking. “Hands off,” he told a couple of his friends who were also admiring her. “She’s mine, or at least give me a clear shot at her before you horn in.” She was the first girl he was in love with. It never came to anything, and he never told her how he felt but knew she knew by the way he acted toward her, other than for a number of dates, all but two of them on Sunday afternoons and a Jewish religious holiday during the week and one big long kiss at her apartment door at the end of their second and last evening date and a few French kisses in the Loew’s 83rd Street movie theater. Just “Loew’s 83rd” did they call it? He said on the phone weeks after she stopped going out with him “Didn’t those kisses we did mean anything?” She said “I don’t want to hurt you any more than I may have, but I’m new at it and was just practicing.” He went over to her and said something like “Hi, I’m Martin and I wonder if I could have the next dance,” and she said “I don’t see why that couldn’t be possible. Jessica.” “Hi, Jessica.” “It’s actually Frieda, but I’d like it to be Jessica.” They danced several dances in a row. He was surprised no other guy cut in on him, and told her so. She said “Oh, I’m a very unpopular girl,” and he said “Tell me another one.” She seemed to be having a good time with him — laughing and joking and whispering something in his ear he couldn’t hear — and he found himself falling for her. She had a nice smell about her — carnation or something. It didn’t seem like perfume or cologne — not as strong — so probably from soap. Wherever it came from, he thought, it was intoxicating, as they say. He imagined sitting in a movie theater, her head on his shoulder, and he was smelling that smell. When the Charleston was announced over the loudspeaker as the next dance, he said “Darn, I don’t know how to do that one. But my aunt, who tried to teach me it, was one of the six original dancers in the George White’s Scandals to introduce it to America.” She said “You’re making that up,” and he said “I swear,” and put his hand over his heart. “We can call my mother right now — it’s her sister — and ask her,” and she said “Okay, I believe you. It’s not a man’s dance anyway — you don’t have the legs for it. It’d be like a man dancing the cancan. It’s my favorite dance, though — I’m so glad it was brought back — so I’m going to dance it with my best girlfriend, if you’ll excuse me.” He said “In case my friends suddenly drag me out of here, can I have your phone number?”—she had her own phone, in her bedroom, something he’d never heard a girl her age having — and called the next night for a date and she said “Thursday’s okay, but it’ll have to be an early night; I don’t want to be too tired for school Friday.” They went to Radio City Music Hall. Took the Broadway bus down and then walked the two blocks to Sixth Avenue. But a cab back because he didn’t want her to think him cheap. Weekday afternoons and all-day Saturdays he worked as a delivery boy for a catering service and was making enough money to pay for everything that night, even the candy at the theater’s refreshment counter. “Should we go in for a snack someplace?” he said, after the movie, but she said it’s getting a little late and she should get home. The movie was Rhapsody . The leads were Elizabeth Taylor and Vittorio Gassman and another young well-known actor at the time whose first name was John. She suggested they go to it. “So, what movie would you like to see?” he said when he picked her up — they’d talked about going to one when he called her up for the date — and she said “First things first — this is a family ritual,” and she brought him into the living room and introduced him to her parents and younger sister and the live-in housekeeper. He didn’t think he’d like the movie when she described what it was about — a conservatory and music competitions — but wanted to please her, and ended up loving the movie because of the music in it. He’d never before heard any part of Mendelssohn’s violin concerto and Tchaikovsky’s first piano concerto, he thinks it was, or maybe it was Rachmaninoff’s second — both were his favorites for a couple of years, the Rachmaninoff a while longer — and a few days after he saw the movie with this music, he bought long-playing records of them. He played them in his bedroom so much that his father came to the door and said “Do you think you can play something else, and lower?” “You ought to be happy I’m listening to this kind of music — I’m the only one of my friends who does,” and his father said “I am — we all are. This is a big change for you, but you’re busting our eardrums. Turn it down now.” He was sure that buying the records and listening to them so much had nothing to do with his feelings for Frieda or anything else with her, other than that he probably never would have seen the movie if it hadn’t been for her and maybe not got started listening to classical music so early. After their cab pulled up in front of her apartment building and he pulled out his wallet, she said “Will you at least let me pay for this ride? I do have money, you know.” He said “No, tonight everything’s on me, not that I’m trying to give the impression I’m a big sport. Can I see you to your door?” and she said “It’s not necessary. I know my way home from here.” “Think we can go out again sometime?” and she said “Call me and we’ll see. You might change your mind by tomorrow and not think it such a wonderful idea,” and she kissed her fingertip, put it on the middle of his forehead and went to her building. So far, he thought, as the doorman opened the door for her and said something and tipped his cap, it seems to be going okay. What’s with the finger on the forehead, though? He’ll wait a few days, or just two, at the most three, even if he doesn’t think he’ll be able to hold out that long — he’ll want to know — before he calls her. Doesn’t want to make her think he’s too eager. But maybe that’s a good thing with her. She’s different in almost every way, so who can tell? He walked home, which was approximately — for how do you measure it, he thought: Eighty-first to Seventy-fifth and three, no, two long sidestreets and two medium-length ones and the much shorter one on Seventy-fifth between Amsterdam Avenue and Broadway — fifteen blocks away. Did Gwen, he thinks, when he first saw her at Pati’s party, remind him of Sharon? Doesn’t think he thought of the resemblance and similarities till now, hard as that is to believe. Length and color and texture of their hair, though Sharon’s a bit coarser. Was that because she shampooed less? She said shampooing your hair every day or every other day, as most women do, injures if not kills the hair follicles, so she did it no more than once a week and a lot of brushing. He forgets how often Gwen shampooed, but he doesn’t think it was more than twice a week, and also lots of brushing. Blond eyelashes and eyebrows, where you had to look closely to see if they even had them. Sparse pubic hair, although it might have only seemed sparse because the color was so light. Lots of differences too, of course. Both liked to make love and usually let him do it when and how he wanted to. “Can I come in from behind?” “Sure,” both would say, maybe in different ways, and get on their knees. “Could you be on top this time?” he’d say, and both, in different ways, would say they don’t mind, and he’d get on his back. Both let him know early on in their relationship that anal intercourse wasn’t something they’d ever let him do, so don’t try. He asked Sharon why, “not that I ever thought of doing it with you or any other woman,” and she said “Because that’s where my shit comes out of. And no anus, no matter how meticulously it’s wiped and washed, is ever entirely clean.” He didn’t ask Gwen what her objection to it was, but did say “Not to worry. I never did it that way and don’t plan to. If you ever do find me approaching or touching or even penetrating that hole with my prick or finger or any other part of me, it’s because the room’s dark or I’m a little sloshed or very sleepy or both and I’m not conscious of what I’m doing, and it’s a complete mistake.” He now assumes her objection was for the same reasons as Sharon’s, or it could be she let some guy do it to her once and it hurt. Actually, he now remembers Sharon saying once “Is this all I’m good for with you? I know it isn’t, but sometimes I’m not sure. But I’m not here ten minutes and you already want to drag me to bed? If you are intent on doing it, and you know I always give in to you because I know you’ll be miserable and petulant and other unfortunate behavior toward me, please be quick. In no way am I in the mood now and nothing’s going to make me, so you can skip all the preliminaries.” Maybe she didn’t say all that. Of course, she didn’t. He could never have remembered it from that far back, or even remembered it word for word if she’d said it two days ago, but she said something like it and he thinks she said it more than once. In fact, the first time she said it — this he particularly remembers because no one had ever referred to him in this way before — she spoke about what she called his “abject impetuousness,” which is a real problem in their relationship, she said, but not fatal. She said she hates doing something she doesn’t want to do, and hates herself for allowing him to get her to do it. Gwen, he still thinks, never said anything like that when the circumstances were similar. For instance, when he, all of a sudden and related to nothing that came before it, started fondling her. Usually both her breasts from behind and sometimes he’d sneak up on her and do this and a few times under her shirt and bra. Or he had that look that he very much wants to make love even if he knows it’s the last thing on her mind, and he can’t wait till later when it might be a better time for her. Or maybe he forgets. Almost thirty years together, she must have. If she did, he’s sure she put it in a way that was milder or gentler or more lighthearted or good-natured, or whatever the word he wants but can’t seem to come up with now, than the way Sharon said it. He even thinks he remembers Gwen saying, when he suddenly fondled her from behind, “What a goof you are.” “Goof?” he thinks he said, and he thinks she said something like “Yes; goof; you. It’s goofy, sneaking up and pouncing on me when I least expect it and frightening me, like some guy in his young twenties would do, not that I want you to stop the fondling part…just warn me,” and he thinks he remembers her turning her head around to the right, while he was still behind her, so they could kiss. And what about when either of them wanted to make love and he was the one who wasn’t in the mood for it or was involved in something else — writing, not reading — and didn’t want to be disturbed? Can’t remember Sharon ever doing that. That right? Thinks so. They either made love when he wanted to and she went along with it, not always happily, or when they were in bed, ready for sleep, had probably read awhile because each of them always took a book to bed — even when he just lies down to nap, though a little less so since Gwen died — and turned off their night table lights around the same time, though he usually read a few more minutes than she — didn’t want to read any longer, even if he really wanted to, because she might be asleep when he turned off his light and she didn’t like to be woken up to make love — and almost immediately turned to each other in the dark, if she wasn’t already turned to him expecting what was to come next, and started touching and kissing and other things to each other. If she drove to his place — they both lived in the Bay Area but about an hour’s drive from each other — she always stayed the night. With Gwen he was the one who took a book to bed. She once said she reads more than enough during the day — student papers and books and journals she reads for pleasure or class or research — and anyway she knows she can’t read five lines in bed without her eyes closing and book dropping out of her hands. So she just got in bed, and if he was there she said “Goodnight, sweetheart,” always “Goodnight, sweetheart” or “my love,” and he gave her a little kiss, she shut her light off or, if she was facing him, he reached over her to shut off her light, and pulled the covers up over her shoulders. Then, when he was done reading, he’d shut off his light and maybe start making love to her, or lie for a while in bed thinking about other things — maybe the book he was reading — before he thought about making love, and she then would start making love to him. He knows he’s contradicting himself here with some of the things he’s saying about Sharon and Gwen, but that’s because he’s remembering things — he thinks it’s because of this — he hasn’t remembered before or not for many years. Back to Gwen, though: there were plenty of times — he’d guess a hundred or so — she came into the room he was working in — here or in their first house or in the apartments in New York and Baltimore they once had or the cottages in Maine they rented every summer for more than twenty-five years—1979 to the last summer — and would say “Like to take a break?” Or “Excuse me, I hope I’m not disturbing you, but would you like to take a break?” Doesn’t think he ever refused, other than if he was sick, and then he probably said something like “You know me, I’m always up for it, but I’m just not feeling that well.” But if he was feeling sick, would he be working? Depends how sick he felt. Or maybe he didn’t ever refuse her, even when he wasn’t feeling well, and he probably said something like — just to warn her—“Sure, or I’ll try. It might cure whatever’s ailing me.” Not that but something else. “Maybe it’ll make me feel better. If anything, making love with you would do the trick.” A couple of times he remembers her saying, after she came into the room he was working in, “I know you weren’t feeling well before. But do you think you feel well enough now to take a break?” Other comparisons and similarities? Sharon liked going down on him, Gwen not so much. Both of them, though, didn’t much like his going down on them, something he loved doing, but usually put up with it. Fact is, he thinks Gwen only did it to him — other than the times he couldn’t get or keep it up and she said “Maybe I can help”—when he pushed his penis near her face or swiveled his body around so his groin was near or over her face while he was going down on her and she felt it her duty or something to do it or just didn’t want to deal with him if he made a fuss. But he wouldn’t have made a fuss, so what’s he talking about? He doesn’t think he ever pushed either of them to do anything they didn’t want to at the time. To Gwen, if he saw she didn’t want to do it — she’d push his penis away — he would have said something like “I understand; maybe some other time.” He remembers even once saying “But you aren’t ruling it out forever, I hope,” and she said no and he said “Thank goodness.” Gwen had bigger breasts than Sharon, Sharon a narrower waist, slimmer tummy, thinner legs and smaller rear, more flat than Gwen’s round, and they were about the same height though Gwen, he’d guess, was about ten pounds heavier. He just now remembers the time Gwen was in a hospital bed at home — she slept in one for around two months — and he was about to turn her over on her back and sit her up and help her into her wheelchair then, he thinks, and start the morning going. Instead, possibly because he’d been thinking of making love to her before he even went into her room or it had something to do, which it never had before or else he hadn’t ever acted on it, with his exercising her legs and feet in bed and massaging her shoulders, he lowered the shades in his older daughter’s room where the hospital bed had been set up — Rosalind was living away from home and her bed had been temporarily dismantled — and unzipped his pants and took his penis out of both flies and stuck it through the bed rail — doesn’t know why he didn’t lower the rail and drop his shorts and pants, maybe because he didn’t want to give her the chance to say “What are you doing?” and pulled at it till it reached her mouth. She didn’t object. She even smiled, as if she thought his doing it through the rail was funny or from her angle it just looked funny. He did say, when he got it by her mouth, “Is it all right?” and she nodded. She kissed it a few times and maybe — yes, definitely; it only happened once like this and he remembers it clearly — put her lips around it a short while and then said, still holding it, “Why don’t you get in bed with me?” and he said “Wouldn’t the marital bed be better?”—he actually used the word “marital,” maybe the first and last time that way—“but we could do it here if you don’t want to be transferred so much. I’ve never done it in a hospital bed, have you?” and she said “Don’t be silly; come on, get in.” He took off his clothes, put the other bed rail down, turned her all the way over on her side so there’d be room for him, got in bed and stroked her from behind and probably kissed her neck and shoulders and back, said “Think we need any gook?” and she said “No, I’m ready,” and he lifted her right thigh a little — she was still a lot paralyzed on that side, which was why her doctor and physical therapist wanted her in a hospital bed: so her legs and back could be raised and lowered and she could be exercised better and there was less chance of her getting blood clots and bedsores — and stuck his penis in. After it was over for him he said “That was very nice; thank you,” and she said “I just wish it had gone on longer. But since I wasn’t expecting anything like this happening, I’m happy,” and he kissed her back and she kissed the air. So, anything he left out? Both: long graceful necks, bluish green eyes, Gwen’s with a bit of yellow in them, maybe just flecks; very pale skin that would burn under the sun, so they rarely exposed their faces to it without a brimmed or peaked cap on and a strong sun block for the other uncovered parts of their bodies that might burn, slender fingers that played Chopin and Schumann and Schubert and Brahms, and Gwen those short pieces by Satie: Gymnopedies , he thinks they’re called, or close to that. He never heard Sharon play but she told him some of the pieces she’d learned or was practicing then and that if they were ever at a place where there was a decent piano and nobody else was around — it could even be her home, she said, which he never set foot in — she’d play for him. Gwen he heard hundreds of times before her first stroke. If she was playing an entire piece, not practЧитать дальше