Dark Plums (6 page)

“Well, maybe. Say, Don, maybe I can meet you at the same Nedick's stand,” she said with cunning, aware that Irene and Rose were listening and wondering whom she met at Nedick's stand.

“Swell, Adrianne. Five-thirty?”

“Yes, that's okay.” Get him off the scent. She'd take another route home. “All right,” she repeated sweetly. Why she was so compelled by his urgency, she had no idea, except that she experienced herself now as a pure wave of energy, even as perspiration from her hand clung to the phone. “I'll see you.”

She hung up again.

Irene handed her a kleenex. “You're perspiring.”

“Just too popular,” mocked Rose.

Adrianne laughed again, on the edge of her abyss. Now she was paying for all those encounters she'd had before she met Alfredo. She felt as if she had betrayed him. He must never know about this incident.

She had absorbed herself in typing the orders when her supervisor, Joyce O'Grady, came into the room. Joyce was a large, grey-haired woman in her fifties. Her skin was soft and pouched.

“Adrianne, I need to talk to you alone,” she said.

Adrianne followed the supervisor into her small office. Shelves at one end were heaped with fabrics in many hues. Swatches of brightly colored fabric and a multitude of papers covered the desk as well as part of the floor.

“What do you want to talk to me about?” Adrianne inquired.

“You were late again today,” Joyce began.

“I know. There was a subway tie-up.”

“You're nearly always ten or fifteen minutes late. Last Thursday you were an hour and a half late.”

“I'm sorry. I'll try to do better.”

“I'm afraid you won't have a chance.”

Adrianne swallowed, and her stomach tightened.

“I didn't want to fire you because you're a nice girl. I tried to protect you, honey, I really did. But when Mr. Schwab spotted your latest mistake, he hit the roof. He told me I had to let you go.”

“What did I do?”

“
This
!” Joyce shoved two torn yellow orders at her. One, written in Joyce's large, circular hand, had red markings on it. The other, which had been typed and bore Adrianne's initials, was crossed with large blue-inked X's. “See here, August second.”

Adrianne glanced at the original order and then at the ones she had printed, but at first both were blurs.

“The addresses match.”

“Yes, I know. Look at the quantities.”

With her pencil, Joyce lightly circled both numbers which had already been marked. “The original is for one hundred and fifty yards of Midnight Pima, and your order is for fifteen hundred yards. Mistakes do happen, but this is inexcusable.”

Joyce handed her four more pairs of orders. “Just look at the addresses and the quantities. They've been incorrectly copied, and they're all signed with your initials.”

Adrianne could not repress a smile. Somehow it delighted her to think of the commotion all the extra material had created when it was delivered.

A smile escaped Joyce's lips, too. “I'm sorry to see you go. I know you have a good heart, and the other girls in the office don't treat you right.”

Tears rose in Adrianne's eyes. She liked this warm, motherly supervisor.

Joyce added, “Let me give you a little advice.” She patted Adrianne's wrist. “There now, don't take it so hard. You'll get a week's severance pay. I tried to cover up for you. I wanted you to get at least twenty weeks in so you could file for unemployment. Don't tell anyone I said that,” she muttered. “I want you to wise up,” she continued, clucking like a hen and settling invisible feathers around herself. “All those men who call you … a nice girl like you … all they want is to get inside your pants. Believe me.”

Adrianne stared at the golden cross which gleamed on Joyce's ample bosom.

“Find a decent man who respects you, and marry him. You need some steadiness in your life. Take my advice.” Joyce squared herself in her chair like a soldier while she wrote out a memo for Adrianne to take to the Accounting Office.

Adrianne looked down at a swatch of dusty black velvet in front of her on the desk. What had caused her to make such stupid mistakes? She'd tried so hard. She could not do anything right. Something inside seemed to be trying to destroy her.

What would she do now for money? She couldn't face looking for another job just yet. She certainly couldn't use anyone here, not even Joyce, as a reference. What would Alfredo think of her?

Dazed, she walked back to the office she shared with Rose and Irene.

“I've been fired.”

“We know,” said Rose.

Heavy silence.

“Joyce told us this morning. She wasn't sure you were going to show up at all.”

“Her boyfriends will take care of her.”

The phone rang again. Irene answered. “For you, Adrianne.”

“How are you, Adrianne?” asked Max.

“All right,” she said. His voice gave her comfort. He seemed to send roots into the earth.

“Adrianne, I am sorry to call you at work, but so often now you don't come home,” he said plaintively. “I wondered if you will do me
the honor of attending a concert with me this Friday night.”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said. What if Alfredo wanted to see her? Go with Max, pounded the voice inside as she considered that destiny depended on the slightest decision, a hair's breadth.

“It is a concert of excellent musicians who will play Beethoven and Mozart. Do you know this music?”

“Yes,” said Adrianne. The prospect of listening to the music filled her with joy.

“Then it is not only jazz you like?”

“No.”

“I will get the tickets then,” he said. “You give me hope,
meine liebchen
.”

“Another boyfriend,” said Irene after she'd hung up. “A new one, huh? Joyce told us to make sure you clean out your desk before you go.”

Trembling with anger as she felt their gaze on her, Adrianne took out her straw handbag from the bottom drawer of her desk. She straightened out the other drawers and defiantly shoved a few pencils and paper clips inside her bag. There was nothing else she wanted to take. She would leave her faded magenta cardboard flower. Let them throw it out.

At the Accounting Office she received her check.

Goodbye, Rose and Irene.

Goodbye, Joyce, with your advice about not letting men get into my pants.

Goodbye, office. Goodbye, everyone.

She walked out of the elevator and onto Sixth Avenue. Although a light rain had begun to fall, she trudged along, not caring that she was getting damp and chilled. How could Alfredo love her if she couldn't even hold down a job?

People were settling down in the concert hall and waiting for the music to begin. In the midst of them sat Adrianne and Max. Her face looked very white to him beneath the bright lights, and her cheeks were flushed. The way her low neckline revealed the curves of her breasts, sheathed in a black brassiere, tantalized him. She seemed sad, and her smile seemed forced.

“Is something wrong?” Max asked.

“I lost my job.”

“Poor child.”

He clasped her hand. “You are lovely,” he said. His voice grew emotional. “Let me know if you need help. I have money.”

“That's very kind of you, Max.”

The musicians were warming up, and at last the concert began.

A Beethoven quartet was first, and Max unconsciously swayed in rhythm. The closeness of Adrianne's body stirred him. She didn't say anything about the music, but she was very still for a moment after the first piece finished.

He put his hand on her thigh. She did not move away. Max's heart felt too large for the space it took in his chest, and he had a sense of foreboding.

Next was a Mozart quartet in D major, serene but full of delicate melancholy.

Memories came back to Adrianne. She was making love with Alfredo all over again, and the intensity of it, the sweetness was overpowering. Then more troubling images arose from the past.

She was lying on an operating table, enveloped in the smell of ether
.

“
You'll be all right. Just close your eyes,” said the surgeon, a friend of Gerald
.

Afterwards they'd thrown the fetus into a garbage bin
.

It would have been a girl, they told her
.

During intermission, Max and Adrianne walked outside. It was hot and humid. Max wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “I am so sorry about your job,” he said, trying to bridge the distance between them.

“I don't know what I'll do now,” she said. “I just don't know.”

“Don't worry,
meine liebchen
,” he responded, softly caressing her hand. “If you need help, I am here.”

“Oh, you are good!” Perhaps she ought to give more of herself to him. Perhaps he was kinder and more decent than Alfredo.

Suddenly he felt dizzy. “Let's go back to our seats,” he said. “I need to sit down.”

During the Bloch sonata, sadness wound through him. He was acutely aware of Adrianne's flesh, while she seemed absorbed in the music. Long ago Mathilde had been a real wife to him, as had Monique. Old age caused him to seek a child-wife for his tired, flaccid body. How he had degenerated. Tears welled up in his eyes.

After the concert ended, they went outside again. People pressed against them. There were smells of sweat, smoke, and perfume, sounds of voices and traffic. They walked a little way up the block. Adrianne sighed. He was aware again, as he had been during the concert when he had stolen glances at her profile, of a radiant warmth about her that made him want to be close to her. Then he would have a reason to go on living. The heavy blackness would evaporate.

She looked nervous.

“You would like to go somewhere for a drink?” he asked.

“Oh Max, that's kind of you, but I'd better not. I have to meet someone.”

He nodded, raging inside. “Is it the bartender we met the other night?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. That's my business.” She hugged him. “I'm sorry. I should have told you earlier. Thank you for taking me to the concert. It was wonderful, Max,” she said earnestly. “Goodbye. I'll see you,” she added in a rush.

“Wait, Adrianne, before you go. Please take this money.” He handed her five ten-dollar bills. As she hesitated, he added, “You will do me a kindness. I cannot take money to the grave. I know you do
not have enough, so do me the honor to accept this small gift for a taxi and something nice for yourself.”

With generosity he would overcome his rage. What right had he to possess her, after all? Perhaps by being generous to her, he could atone in some small degree for the past. Poor child, he thought. Perhaps she will not be mine, but I can still love her.

Swiftly she ran off.

He felt pain beneath his breastbone. The space in front of his eyes swam. He was dizzy, as he had been earlier in the evening, and as he walked in the direction she had vanished, fever shot through him. Feeling faint, he clutched at a lamp post for support while people swarmed past. What a fool he was to think she would ever love him!

Adrianne found another job as a cook in a sleepy little bar in the West Eighties. There she worked from one in the afternoon until nine at night five days a week, grilling hamburgers and french fries, preparing salads and B-B-Q chicken and steaks.

In comparison to her last job, it was restful being in the small, greasy kitchen. The owner had told her that the restaurant was kept open for legal reasons, as only a few customers ordered food.

Two or three nights a week she spent with Alfredo. These were the high points of her life. As she worked in the kitchen or sat on a stool with nothing to do, waiting for orders, she would brood over what she might have said or done wrong the night before, and she would go over their lovemaking in her mind, trying to savor it all over again. When she and Alfredo were physically close, it was like being on fire, but afterwards she felt so isolated.

One night late after work she wandered into a bar on her way home. A bald man sitting next to her bought her two beers and talked in a drunken way about himself. Then he touched the bulge between his thighs, slyly, secretively, yet apparently so that she could see. She was revolted. “I've got to go,” she said in a panic. Jumping up, she ran to the door. “Hey, wait a minute!” he shouted.

In the darkness she ran and ran until she was sure she had left him far behind. Her side ached with exertion. Then she slowed down, and her footsteps sounded against the pavement as if they belonged to someone else. She told herself that she should never have gone into that bar. Before she ran off, she had felt a surge of desire for that bald man. Alfredo, with his telepathic vision, would perceive that she was faithless in her thoughts and that she could crumble in an instant.

When she was not with Alfredo, not reassured by the strength of his presence, sometimes she felt as if her body would fly out into tiny pieces like dust and dissolve into the atmosphere. There was no center, nothing to hold her together. When she walked, she sometimes felt as if she were dissolving outwards into the strangers she passed on the
streets. Only when she was holding someone close did she feel solid.

Her furnished room on 97th Street seemed suffocating, and as much as possible she avoided it, continuing to wander the streets after work. She hated her room, which was filled with the signs of her despair. Her clothing was heaped up in piles on the floor, on the bureau, and on the bed. The week before she had lost her door key and a twenty-dollar bill, which had been wadded up on her bureau for days. It was all she could do to get to her new job and concentrate on her simple tasks there.

If she moved in with Alfredo, she believed it would put an end to the chaos and uncertainty of her life. Then, too, Max would no longer plague her. Max's desire hung heavily in the air. This bothered her because she did not like to be cruel.