I Loved You Wednesday (3 page)

“Don’t you simply adore New York? I’ve always planned to come here to work in the theater. All my life.”

“Well, you made it.”

“We had to wait until Arthur got his teaching permit.”

“Arthur?”

“My husband.
Yuccch!
Let’s not talk about him. I think I want a divorce. I’m Chris. Chris Canaday. Who are you?”

“Steve. Steve Butler.”

“How-do-you-do
?” said Chris, enunciating each word, pumping my hand for emphasis before exclaiming excitedly, “OH, MY GOD, THE HOUSELIGHTS ARE DIMMING!”

“Yes,” I offered back, being somewhat at a loss for words. “I’M
SO
EXCITED! MY HEART IS BEATING SO FAST I’D ASK YOU TO FEEL, BUT YOU’D PROBABLY THINK I WAS MAKING A PASS OR SOMETHING!”

“Ssssssssh!” came a harsh note from one of the old ladies seated in front of us.

“I’m terribly sorry.” Chris leaned over and whispered to the shusher. “You see, this is my
first
Broadway show, and I guess I’m a little excited. You won’t hear another peep from me until intermission! Musicals are my favorite thing in the whole world. I’d rather do a musical than eat!”

The old lady didn’t answer Chris, as I recall, but just looked at her in disbelief.

The houselights did go out at that point as the conductor rose above the orchestra, acknowledging the accompanying smattering of applause. He raised his baton . . . paused several beats . . . and then charged into the overture.

Chris, standing next to me, grabbed my hand and squeezed it so tight I thought sure the circulation would clot. Her face lit up and she smiled and beamed and glowed and sighed and winked at me and I winked back because I had been where she was many years before and
I knew.

She was experiencing that one-shot loss of innocence as the overture in the Lunt-Fontanne Temple began, and that costly bolt of magic electrified her entire body, relinquishing her theatrical virginity to Broadway, the high priestess of us all.

And watching Chris that matinee day as the overture mounted to a rousing finish, I knew she was hooked by the religious experience, just like the rest of us orthodox neurotic dramatis personae.

After the show, I took her to the bar at Sardi’s, a corny thing to do even then. It thrilled her.

“What a terrific day!” she said, beaming, after we toasted her success. “I don’t want it to ever end.”

“But what about your husband?”

“Please. It’s all too messy. I should’ve listened to my mother. I was so sure it would work out. What a letdown! Have you ever opened your eyes one morning and realized your husband is a total stranger?”

“Never.”

“Well, believe me, it breaks a lot of balloons. You know, I get very serious about my relationships. I think love should always be permanent. I mean at least temporarily!”

“I see.”

“But that’s me: always getting into situations for the wrong reasons. Then, by the time I realize it’s not going to work, POW! it’s too late. I’ve already committed myself.”

“Like with what’s-his-name?”

“Yes. Like with Arthur. You’re very perceptive.”

“Perhaps, but you’re also somewhat transparent.”

“I am, aren’t I? Well, I promise you, right now, Mr. Steve Butler, if there’s one thing I plan to develop in New York besides great fame and success, it’s sophistication and cosmopolitanism.”

God knows, she was off to a shaky start.

Well! So much for my
first
day with Chris.

Now.

Five years, four drama coaches, three rather serious affairs with married men, two psychiatrists, one divorce and one attempt at suicide later, our story begins.

It starts on a Sunday.

ACT ONE
 

Chapter One
 

I am comfortably sleeping with the bulldogs: Ruth, snoring on top of the blankets, squashed in between my calves, and Harry, his head resting comfortably on the pillow next to mine, farting like gangbusters.

The doorbell rings, and opening my eyes, I look at my digital clock.

Blinking twice to make sure the figures tally, I see, sure enough, it’s six forty-five in the morning. I’ve had auditions almost every day this week, some starting as early as nine, and was really looking forward to sleeping late.

The bell rings again. Indignantly, Ruth stretches and moves to the bottom of the bed. Harry, the watchdog of the family, sighs an exasperated chortle and goes back to sleep. There’s no defending the castle at this hour.

A third bell, and I am standing by my bed, naked, freezing and, throwing on my blue terry robe, wondering why I never trained the dogs to answer the bell.

Opening the door, I find it is of course Chris, standing there looking ravishing, hidden behind three huge packages branded with ZABAR’S across their fronts in red ink.

“I couldn’t sleep, so I came here.”

“So I gathered.”

“I’m just so excited about that soap opera I haven’t been able to shut my eyes for two days. Do you think I’ll get it? I was
so
right, I’ve got to get it. The tarot cards were very vague.”

“I thought you threw out your tarot cards.”

“I did. I gave up reading. For two days. Then I had to find out
something
about my audition, so I bought a new deck. Oh, you came up in my reading this morning.”

“What’d it say?”

“That we’d be getting together soon.”

“And here you are!”

“You see. The prophecy came true.”

“It’s a miracle.”

“If I don’t get that part, I’ll kill myself! Don’t worry. I’m only kidding. Look. I brought brunch!”

“Terrific. Wake me when it’s ready,” I say with a yawn, stumbling into the bedroom. Disrobing, I crawl back into bed, careful not to wake her majesty, Ruth, who has moved into the warmed spot I claimed as my own not three minutes before. The body isn’t even cold yet.

I try pushing Ruth over a bit so as to make way for myself. But Ruth doesn’t go in for being shoved about. You don’t bully a bulldog. So we compromise, and our detente consists of
sharing
that part of the bed we each now claim as our own turf.

No sooner do I pull the covers over my wearies than there’s Chris, hurrying in behind me, complaining about the itchiness of her clothing, and, in so saying, she removes her skirt and sweater before recovering herself with my blue terry robe.

Now comfortable, she draws back my covers and crawls into bed.

My digital clock says it’s six fifty-two, and here in my somewhat-less-than-queen-sized bed with me are one crazy lady in a blue robe, two bulldogs of questionable repute and three Zabar’s shopping bags.

I hint it might be a good idea to put the shopping bags in the kitchen.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” protests Chris. “We have to eat out of them.”

And of course she is right. Turning around and sitting up, I find Chris unloading her groceries ON MY BED and then, right there, preparing from many unwrapped waxed, boxed and Saran-wrapped bundles, a lobster salad-onionroll combo replete with tomato slice, onion sliver, Swiss cheese wedge and black olive. She has even brought plastic utensils with which to cut, slice and pierce. After handing me her mammoth creation, she goes to work on one for herself.

Chris picks up a new dollop of lobster-laced cream cheese, which she slaps onto her roll with gusto. Tickling her side, I ask, “How come no coffee?”

“Oh, of course!” And saying so, she opens the contents of another of her Pandora’s bags, dips her head in and pulls out a steaming container.

“Cream and sugar?” she daintily inquires, handing it to me.

“Incredible. I don’t get this service on TWA.”

“That’s what friends are for. Care for anything else?”

“Your body.”

“Naughty, naughty,” Chris scolds lightly. “Let’s not get primitive.”

“I wasn’t getting primitive. I was getting seductive.”

“Well, I should hope so. My ego would be demolished if I thought you didn’t want to seduce me anymore.”

“But I can’t get near you.”

“Well, don’t stop trying. Who knows? Maybe someday, in a mad moment of passion, I’ll toss reason to the wind and we’ll get it on.”

“You think?”

“Sure, I think. God, sometimes I want you so bad, I could do it on the spot. But I hold back.”

“Why?”

“Because! Don’t be so impatient. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen. The cards have never linked us romantically, you know.”

“I’m depressed.”

“Don’t be depressed, Steve. I’m depressed enough for both of us. Look! You’re my best friend! Who pulls me out of all my downs and all my depressions and anxieties and insecurities and nasties?”

“Your psychiatrist.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. My shrink merely tells me
why
I’mupset, and that usually makes me
more
unhappy, and that’s why I stop seeing him so often. You, Steve. You’re the one who pulls me up from the depths whenever I get the yuckies. And I love you for it. In many ways more than any of the idiots I get myself mixed up with. Besides, you carefully avoid permanent relationships while I run all over them. What would we do together? Understand? You’re always there when I need you, and that’s more important than all the best screwing in the world. I won’t risk losing that, and when friends start to ball, their relationship changes, and I know I’d just freak if I couldn’t depend upon what we have together. Okay?”

“Fuck you.”

Chris bats her eyelashes innocently and gives me her Southern belle. “I declare, sailor, you do have a way with the words.”

“I really do adore you.”

“Complaints, complaints!” And Chris is gone again, hidden in the third of her Zabar’s bags. She reappears moments later with dessert; marzipan cookies, my downfall!

Trouble is, marzipan is also Harry and Ruth’s weak spot. One sniff of the almond-scented pastry, and both my docile dogs
lunge
at Chris like starving peasants on a Siberian bread line. Their attack sends her flying backward, making her lose control of her container. The coffee erupts into the air like the bomb at Hiroshima before it comes splashing down, splattering its brown glue all over the sheets.

Ruth, slightly scalded, leaps from the bed with a yip, leaving for posterity a paw print in the crowded cream cheese and also knocking over a cucumber salad we haven’t even yet tasted.

Five minutes later Chris, still in my blue terry, and I, now in blue boxers, sit in the living room while the bulldogs stay in the evacuated bedroom, devouring the remains of our aborted six-in-the-morning brunch. My hunch is that right now we’re probably the only people in America serving their dogs breakfast in bed.

“I’m starving,” grumbles Chris.

“Join the dogs.”

“No thanks.”

“Chris, I got a call from Maggie and Douglas. They want to know, finally, whether or not you’re coming with me to Vermont next week for Thanksgiving.”

“I’d like to go, sure,” says Chris. “But how would we get there?”

“We’ll borrow someone’s car.”

“Oh, come on. Who do we know dumb enough to loan
us
their car?”

We reflect upon that awhile, thinking of likely candidates, and having a difficult time of it, until about seven fifteen, when Chris is taken, rather suddenly, with a powerful wave of weariness and now must get to sleep.

“This is it,” she tells me. “I’ve been up for three nights, and my cycle is returning to Rest, thank God. So I gotta get out of here. I may sleep for days! Call if you think of a way to get to Vermont. We should leave early. It’s a long drive, so it’s important we get a good, healthy start. I’ll pack a lunch basket. . . . Oh, I’m
so
exhausted!”

Chris dresses in forty-five seconds flat and is soon at the door, saying good-bye.

“Now don’t thank me for the brunch.”

“I hadn’t planned to.”

“It was my pleasure.”

And like a tornado whose maximum impact has passed before one has time to take it all in and assess, Chris is out the door and gone.

Since my bed could be condemned by the board of health, I cannot return there. I am also no longer tired, so I crawl up on the couch with the Sunday
Times
and try to plod my way through a very unfriendly crossword, in
ink
, of course, since you
never
can find a pencil when you want one.

I am up.

I am awake.