Charles Bock: Alice & Oliver

Ego was a small thing. Its pleasures were shallow and venal. Alice had bathed in them anyway. If my friends are jealous, she told Oliver, at the end of more than one such soiree, you know we’re onto something.

Still. When she was at her worst, when she needed to blame Oliver for something, for anything, she returned to the promise she couldn’t forget, high on his list of guarantees: they’d be insulated; the smells from the warehouses, frozen beef and lingering death, wouldn’t reach them. But they did.

AND THEN THEY were on their way. Or something close to it.

The cabbie kept glancing over his shoulder, through the scratched bulletproof divider, getting his fill of the crazy woman in the blue wig and the surgical mask.

Well, let him enjoy himself.

Ignoring the driver, she asked: “Don’t we deserve a treat? After everything we’ve been through?”

“Believe me.” Oliver stared out the side window. “I want a treat just as much as you.”

“And it’s not like Thursday night reservations at the Black Tide are easy to get.” Alice paused. “Honestly. I’m amazed we’re discussing this.”

Oliver checked his watch, the third time in maybe five minutes.

“I’m not just going to give in and play the martyr,” she continued. “Just stay at home and be frail and wear a caftan—”

“No one’s saying—”

“Friends will visit and I’ll flutter my eyes and everyone comes away saying, She’s so noble, it’s so sad. That may be later. But for now—”

He released a breath that Alice knew meant he was trying to hold his temper. “If you could just walk me through it,” Oliver asked. “Reservations or not, it’s still the middle of one of the coldest winters in who knows. If I’m a freshwater crab swimming in the vicinity of the East Coast, I’ve got to be freezing my balls off.”

“Actually,” Alice answered, “I think those are the blue crabs.”

There wasn’t time to enjoy the right corner of Oliver’s mouth rising, his grudging smirk. Perched in her lap, Doe had become fascinated with the string and fabric of Alice’s mask. Her dimpled mitts grabbed. Alice began the delicate task of distracting her before those elastic bands hurtled, with extra momentum, back into her face. “Okay. Very good, sweetie. That’s right.”

Oliver had been up late, she knew, entering Lynx into the UNIX, which could mean entering code, or secretly masturbating, just enjoying some male alone time. Alice didn’t begrudge him. She’d been asleep long before he’d come to bed. It was only when the Blueberry needed formula that Alice had stirred, enough to watch her husband clomp in from his work space. Seeing that she already had a bottle prepared, Oliver had been more than happy to get back to work.

Presently, Alice admired her husband’s perfect nose; she appreciated him having shaven during the night, was impressed by the egg-blue silk scarf he’d chosen, surprised at how well it matched with the deeper blue of his cashmere topcoat. Usually Oliver displayed a willful disregard for his looks. He often wore the swag she got him through his four-day programming benders, unchanged. Alice suspected he actually enjoyed fine garments — not so much wearing them, but putting them through the wringer. As if he wanted to show they weren’t so special. Not today. Today, he was immaculate. Groomed and ready to make nice.

Still, his eyes were puffy. He didn’t just seem worn out, or preoccupied in his usual way, enmeshed in some logic loop or technical quandary. This was different. Since hitting this stretch of traffic, he’d avoided any sustained eye contact, and instead had sat hunched over his splayed legs, looking out the near window. Alice knew he was itching to tell her they should’ve taken the FDR instead of going up First. She also knew that he knew that, if he opened his mouth, she’d remind him about Beth calling from Whitman, chirpily informing Oliver the slides had been found, all crises averted.

Oliver checked his watch yet again.

“It’s going to be fine,” Alice said.

From her leather shoulder bag she coaxed an oversize plastic key ring, prompting a high squeak from Doe, who bounced in place and quickly occupied herself with the task of devouring the toy. Each landing of compact weight on Alice’s thighs brought white pain. Alice winced, and followed her husband’s line of sight out the window, for a time gazing at the fugue: a bus stop advertisement featuring a muscled white hip-hop star in sexy briefs; small red neon Hebrew letters blinking from a glatt kosher diner.

“Late or not, we have an appointment. It’s not like they’re going to refuse to see me.”

“Oh, that ?” he answered. “I forgot all about that. I’m still stuck on, if there’s no way crabs are in season, how can that place be having mondo crab nights?”

She could have screamed. What did he expect her to do? She hadn’t found the right nanny yet, and Monday morning was a nuclear waste zone for sitters, and his parents sure weren’t about to hightail it across the country from Bakersfield to help. Which meant there wasn’t any choice but to bring the infant, was there? Since they didn’t have a baby car seat, she’d asked the driver to go slow. Was it her fault he made a beeline for the far right lane, or idled behind each double-parked delivery truck, every fourth dry cleaning van? Yes, blame her because progress up First Avenue no longer seemed the result of an engine, wheels, and unleaded gasoline. Osmosis was more like it. Magnets, maybe.

“My sweet lummox,” Alice said. “The reason Crab Fest is a sensation is because nobody can figure out how the restaurant can be getting fresh crabs off the East Coast during the third week of January. They’ve had inspectors, government regulators. New York magazine literally staked out the restaurant. One shift of reporters in a van with a telephoto lens focused on the delivery dock. Another crew watching the front entrance through a telescope from a ninth-floor office across the street—”

“ New York magazine doesn’t have anything better to do?”

“ Nobody has anything better to do.” She laughed. “It’s turned into this whole thing. I’m telling you, every know-it-all in the tristate area wants to partake in these magical mystery crab boils. Apparently people are crammed into these long public tables covered in newspapers. All kinds of hoi polloi and celebrities are in with you, cracking shells with their hands and thwapping claws with little hammers. Shards and crab goo flying hither and yon, the only thing anybody’s talking about is whether they’re all being played for fools.”

Oliver’s grunt suggested a grudging curiosity, even bemusement. “I bet they just flew them in from Australia.”

—

Between Sixty-seventh and Sixty-eighth, the west side of York was nothing but sandstone, limestone, and marble. Remnants of the building’s previous incarnation were apparent: Gothic stained-glass windows, a central cathedral, a rectory spire, parallel statues of the Virgin Mary with her arms out, accepting all in need. Where turrets guarded each building corner, however, the baroque ended, gleaming steel and glass blocking out the dishwater sky.

Alice reminded herself to breathe. So long as she kept breathing, the time would pass, she would get through this. Every day brought more humblings, she told herself. It was up to her to accept them.

She patted the sprouts of hair atop Doe’s skull. The follicles were silky on her fingertips. Pressing lightly, Alice made an effort to absorb each single sensation. Appreciate each stroke. In the puffy pink winter coat Oliver’s mother had bought, the little girl was a living doll. Alice kissed the center point on Doe’s crown. She raised the miniature hood and its pink fringe over the child’s head, and did not rush in passing her girl to Oliver, who was already out of the cab, waiting with the shoulder bag.