Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (3 page)

“Gee, it’s weird not to have Chris here. Remember how she used to imitate Marlon Brando as the Godfather? Hell, she was so damned much fun …”

There were the usual protracted leavetakings outside the restaurant, though Clover, who had to get back to her office, dashed off with promises to keep in touch, sure, and see you next time, ladies. “I’m coming down fast,” Ruth said. “How about a walk, anyone?”

“Let’s go to Bloomie’s,” Helene suggested.

Meryl was game, but Ruth said no, it was too nice a day to stay indoors, she wanted a brisk hike, “Christine?”

“You’ve got it. Alongside the park?”

“Be fine.”

“Well, have a pleasant stroll, you two, and be well. See you eftsoons.”

“Eftsoons? How Elizabethan can you get?”

“An acrostic word. Chic, ain’t it?”

“If you say so,” Ruth agreed, chuckling. “Okay, go shopping, spend the old man’s money, serve him right. Bye bye.”

Waves and smiles, and then Meryl and Helene headed over to Lex. “You don’t mind if we stop in that outlet place of Carrano’s first?” Meryl asked.

“What’s that?”

“Carrano’s, you don’t know the store? They have stunning shoes, and they have this cut-rate store on Fifty-sixth. Okay?”

“Why not?”

Meryl didn’t find anything, but Helene did, as a matter of fact two pairs. “Never been here before, thanks for telling me,” she said when they left. “Terribly good stuff.”

The light changed at Fifty-seventh Street and they crossed to the other side of the avenue. Lexington, at this point, was like a sewer, junky, odorous and a cacophany of hideous sounds, a spot where you had to keep a firm grasp on your pocketbook. Alexander’s, the mecca of bargain hunters from points all over, was on one corner and a fast food place, from which hot and greasy smells emerged, on the other. There was a subway entrance that spewed forth hordes of milling bodies, much jostling and clamor, and street kids who looked as if they had never seen the inside of a school scrambled about chaotically, screaming and cackling with an ear-splitting intensity.

One of these kids, out of his mind with mischievous deviltry, ran to the curb, unzipped the fly of his ragged jeans, and peed in the gutter. He was about nine, rips in his dirty shirt, a little Hispanic kid with wild, handsome dark eyes that were snapping with delight at the way people darted away from his stream of urine. The other kids squawked with delirious laughter; he was a hero in their eyes.

“What chance does someone like that have?” Helene wondered “He’ll O.D. before he’s fourteen.”

“Bet you a dollar he ends up on the City Council, maybe will be mayor some day.”

“You may be right, he looked smart. He certainly has chutzpah.”

A big, battered car, an old Chevy, was parked on the side next to the fast food place. The trunk was open, displaying great plastic-wrapped cuts of meat, bloody red slabs that were plainly steaks, nicely marbleized; you wouldn’t mind having some of them in your freezer. That was, if you didn’t quail at the thought of the probable consequences, salmonella or whatever. Maybe it was horse meat at that. We were almost a hundred percent sure it was hot, stolen, but there it was, massed in the car trunk in crimson heaps, peddled by two tough-looking men who looked as if they spent their spare time stuffing bodies under bridges, and they had every reason to be nonchalant about what they were doing without a license: there was never a patrolman in this vicinity.

Across the way, hunkered down and fiddling with some object on the sidewalk, a workman, or bum, squatted, a big, burly creature with an enormous behind. He looked prehistoric crouching there, clad on top with a skimpy sweatshirt that, positioned as he was, bared his massive back from midsection to buttocks as his pants strained down due to his crouch. You could practically see his sit-down, though thankfully not quite the whole of it, but the cleft between the two beefy haunches was almost fully exposed, and hairy as an ape.

He wasn’t mooning, it wasn’t exhibitionism. He was simply absorbed in something only he was cognizant of, and oblivious to anything else. It was
his
street,
his
city,
his
territory. He wasn’t aware of the unlovely spectacle he presented, and wouldn’t have cared if he had been.

Meryl said she had once seen a bag lady doing her business where the meat truck was today. She even had toilet paper, with which she wiped herself and then dropped alongside the pile she’d made. “It was so depressing, I couldn’t think of anything else all day.”

“And here I am with two new pairs of shoes.”

“As if that would help, not buying shoes. I just always tell myself I’ll avoid that side of the street down here, and then I always forget.”

A block later the Boschian scene was left behind, and they slowed their steps. “You can’t help appreciating this beautiful day,” Helene murmured. “I think I’m getting spring fever.”

“Yeah. There ought to be a hurdy-gurdy. Like when you were a kid, that tinkling music, it was like a siren song. And the monkey in his little suit. I’d love to see a hurdy-gurdy right now.”

“I don’t think they have them any more,” Helene said, and they went into Bloomingdale’s.

• • •

Clover, reaching Fifth, scratched the idea of taking a cab downtown. It would be no faster than walking, or not enough to make a difference; a few minutes more or less wouldn’t mean anything. She had a lot of work to knock off this afternoon, though, so she walked rapidly, mentally deciding what to tackle first when she got back.

She didn’t work late on the evenings she was going to be with Anton, and she was seeing him tonight, so she hoped there would be no hitches. Air fares were fluctuating so dizzyingly these days it was impossible to keep up with them. You quoted a price and the next day it went up, which was difficult for clients to understand. They thought you were gypping them. Some of them did, anyway, though in the main she had a comfy little nucleus of tried and true regulars who trusted her and she made it a point not to handle the “pushcart” trade, the people who were out to make deals.

She should be able to clean off her desk for the night at just before six and then hie herself up to Fifty-seventh Street to join Anton. He worked in the Genesco Bulding and they met outside it, whereupon they stolled up to her apartment on Eight-third, stopping off at a Gristede’s for whatever food shopping might be necessary.

She and Anton were together three evenings a week. Monday, Wednesday and Friday, though Anton didn’t stay overnight. He left at around eleven, unless they had guests, in which case it would be later. Clover always went downstairs with him to be sure he got a cab. Otherwise he might have decided to walk home. He had an arrogant disregard for even the simplest safety measures, no street smarts. She thought it was probably because he had lived through such grisly times in Europe, and everything else seemed picayune to him.

They were also together all day on Sunday. This was the way Anton apportioned his time between wife and lover. Clover had no idea how this arrangement sat with Mrs. Ehrenberg, but it suited her well enough. She was not one to cry over spilled milk, bang her head against a stone wall about things she had no power to change. She would have liked very much to be the sole possessor of this man she loved so much, but then it seem reasonable to assume that so, undoubtedly, would Mrs. Ehrenberg.

And my goodness, she was used to living alone after many a long year. Maybe it would be hard
not
to live alone for someone so accustomed to it. It wasn’t that she had planned
not
to marry, but then she had never planned
to
marry, the way girls — even today — simply took it for granted that whatever course their lives took it would include the altar and the delivery room. She had always been comfortable with herself, not so much egocentric as simply at home with Clover Martinson, though she had often wished her sister April hadn’t married either, that the two of them had just gone on, in a companionable spinsterhood, with apartments close to each other’s. April had married, though, and now lived in Connecticut, as did their mother, who had left New York when their father’s firm relocated there. Now Daddy was dead, so it was nice that she had April within visiting distance.

She didn’t miss April the way she used to, thankfully, since she had Anton now. It was just that her sister was almost like an alter ego, with the same ready spontaneity as herself and the same avid greediness for all the things there were to do and see and learn. They had always been best friends when they were growing up, doing rash things, absolutely in tune with each other, guessing what was in each other’s mind and finishing each other’s sentences as if they had a common brain pan. They had no formal religious beliefs, but she and April had always admired Jesus for his unstudied humility, his joyful poverty and his simple enjoyments, walking about in the fresh air and rapping with all sorts of people.

Before she met Anton she had plenty of fun and no lack of attention from guys. There was a period of a few years when her refrigerator was almost bare, just bread, milk, butter and so forth and in the pantry coffee and a few tins. Food was no problem because she was asked out to dinner just about every night in the week. Men wanted her, not only for her looks but for her easy, reckless abandon. She was never a great lay: her lust died quickly and maintaining a sexual relationship was difficult for her. She would rather go out to dinner, or a movie, or the opera, or take a walk. Ex-lovers found themselves gravitating back to her, for friendship and a good time. She was genuinely liked, which was primarily what she wanted.

That was over, there was Anton now, and she was just like any of the other of her married friends: she was happily hog-tied.

In her office at shortly after three, she pored over schedules, using the phone, writing out airline tickets. She had lengthy conferences with a client who had become a friend as well, and one with a male client, a lawyer who generally drove her up the wall but who today was a pussycat. All went smoothly and at five-fifty-five she paperweighted a few piles of material, locked her desk, and left.

She could see him standing there, as she neared the Genesco Building, a cigarette stuck between his lips, lean and handsome and looking expectant. She raised a hand, grinning, and he did the same. “Hi,” she called, rushing up to him.

They kissed and then walked, hand in hand, uptown along Fifth. It was that lovely time of day with the sun at its strongest, like a fiery eye, so that a kind of golden sheen glazed streets and structures. “How was your day?” she asked him.

“Çi, ça. Yours?”

“I had lunch with the girls. Meryl, Helene, Ruth and Chris. I’m stuffed. Can we have a light dinner?”

“An omelet?”

“Yeah. With a green salad. Summer’s nice, isn’t it?”

“It’s barely spring.”

She was completely happy. She couldn’t imagine any other life but this one with Anton. Everything had led up to this unalloyed contentment, and it was all she would ever want.

• • •

Ruth and Christine, after making their way over to Fifth, crossed to the park side and started downtown. “You didn’t want to go shopping, did you?” Ruth asked.

“No, I wanted to take advantage of this heavenly day, stay out in the fresh air.”

“It’s probably anything but fresh, but pollution or no it feels like champagne.”

It was indeed a rare day, a bonanza after the bum winter. Blue skies, like enamel. Cloisonné skies, speckled with delicate clouds that looked like pointillism. “How’s this for an improvement in the weather?” Ruth demanded. “I guess we’re set now, I doubt we’ll revert to icy blasts.”

“No, I don’t think so. Just about time too. I’m so sick of wool scarves and lined gloves and bundling up like an Eskimo.”

“It was a nice lunch.”

“It was great. I missed Meryl the last time, when she was laid up with the flu.”

“She looked fine today.”

They walked down to Fifty-seventh Street, watched the Hare Krishna crew with their shaved pates and jingling bells. High-stepping it, cavorting and chanting. Ruth shrugged. “I suppose if they want to make jackasses out of themselves.”

“Yes, well.”

They retraced their steps, starting back. “Ever worry your kids will go overboard for something like that?”

“Nancy’s too ambitious and Bruce is too square. Like me.”

“The trouble is you’re not square.”

“I wasn’t once but I am now. Sad to say. I’ve become a bore.”

“Okay, what shall we do, go back to school? Pick up where we left off?”

“I’d like to open a tiny shop somewhere. Over on Second, I guess. Gifts. Not run-of-the-mill garbage. Mad things, insane things nobody else has.”

“Where would the capital come from?”

“I haven’t thought that out yet.” Christine laughed. “Just kidding, of course. I can dream, can’t I? Let’s go down and say hello to the seals.”

They turned in at the entrance to the zoo area, down the steps and across the brick-tiled walkway that led to the central esplanade. On this sun-bleared day of early spring the crowds were out in full force, the vendors’ stands enjoying a brisk business. “Well, all right,” Ruth said, throwing her head back and breathing deeply. “This is more like it. I was here a week ago, I thought I’d be blown away. I can hack cold, but I detest and abominate wind.”

The seals too seemed to vibrate to the change of seasons; they were as skittish as kittens, barking croupily and sliding off their rocks to splash in the sparkling pool. Screaming kids mimicked them, volleys of admonitions from harrassed parents rang out, babies bawled, English, Spanish merged to make a great clangor, noise pollution bombarded one’s ears; it was a lovely bedlam. “You know,” Ruth murmured, “it’s little things like this that make you happy in the most idiotic way. Oh, I love New York.”

“Even if it is dying.”

“Bull. Well, maybe, who knows. So I’ll die with it.”

“You’ll get no argument from me.”

“Let’s have a soft ice cream.”

“After that lunch? Well, okay.”

They lapped it while sitting on a bench. Chatting idly for a bit and then falling silent, sitting close to each other, companionable and glad to be together and just as pleased to sit quietly and watch the passing parade. “Duty calls,” Christine said regretfully at shortly before five. “Let’s catch the hour at the clock and then we’d better get on our sticks.”