Last Night (11 page)

— Really? she said.

It had been years since he had talked to her. There was a time they had been inseparable. They were at Goldie’s every night or at Clarke’s, where he also went regularly. They always gave him a good table, in the middle section with the side door or in back with the crowd and the unchanging menu written neatly in chalk. Sometimes they stood in front at the long, scarred bar with the sign that said under no circumstances would women be served there. The manager, the bar-tenders, waiters, everybody knew him. Clarke’s was his real home; he merely went elsewhere to sleep. He drank very little despite his appearance, but he always paid for drinks and stayed at the bar for hours, occasionally taking a few steps to the men’s room, a pavilion of its own, long and old-fashioned, where you urinated like a grand duke on blocks of ice. To Clarke’s came advertising men, models, men like himself, and off-duty cops late at night. He showed Noreen how to recognize them, black shoes and white socks. Noreen loved it. She was a favorite there, with her looks and wonderful laugh. The waiters called her by her first name.

Noreen was dark blond, though her mother was Greek, she said. There were a lot of blonds in the north of Greece where her family came from. The ranks of the Roman legions had become filled with Germanic tribesmen as time passed, and when Rome fell some of the scattered legions settled in the mountains of Greece; at least that was the way she had heard it.

— So I’m Greek but I’m German, too, she told Arthur.

— God, I hope not, he said. I couldn’t go with a German.

— What do you mean?

— Be seen with.

— Arthur, she explained, you have to accept the way things are, what I am and what you are and why it’s so good.

There were things she wanted to tell him but didn’t, things he wouldn’t like to hear, or so she felt. About being a young girl and the night at the St. George Hotel when she was nineteen and went upstairs with a guy she thought was really nice. They went to his boss’s suite. The boss was away and they were drinking his twelve-year-old scotch, and the next thing she knew she was lying facedown on the bed with her hands tied behind her. That was in a different world than Arthur’s. His was decent, forgiving, warm.

They went together for nearly three years, the best years. They saw one another almost every night. She knew all about his work. He could make it seem so interesting, the avid individuals, the partners, Buddy Frackman, Warren Sender. And Morris; she had actually seen Morris once on the elevator.

— You’re looking very well, she told him nervily.

— You, too, he said, smiling.

He didn’t know who she was, but a few moments later he leaned toward her and silently formed the words,

— Eighty-seven.

— Really?

— Yes, he said proudly.

— I’d never guess.

She knew how, one day coming back from lunch, Arthur and Buddy had seen Morris lying in the street, his white shirt covered with blood. He had accidentally fallen, and there were two or three people trying to help him up.

— Don’t look. Keep going, Arthur had said.

— He’s lucky, having friends like you, Noreen said.

She worked at Grey Advertising, which made it so convenient to meet. Seeing her always filled him with pleasure, even when it became completely familiar. She was twenty-five and filled with life. That summer he saw her in a bathing suit, a bikini. She was stunning, with a kind of glow to her skin. She had a young girl’s unself-conscious belly and ran into the waves. He went in more cautiously, as befitted a man who had been a typist in the army and salesman for a dress manufacturer before coming to what he called Wall Street, where he had always dreamed of being and would have worked for nothing.

The waves, the ocean, the white blinding sand. It was at Westhampton, where they went for the weekend. On the train every seat was taken. Young men in T-shirts and with manly chests were joking in the aisles. Noreen sat beside him, the happiness coming off her like heat. She had a small gold cross, the size of a dime, on a thin gold necklace lying on her shirt. He hadn’t noticed it before. He was about to say something when the train began bucking and slowed to a stop.

— What is it? What’s happened?

They were not in a station but alongside a low embankment, amid weedy-looking growth. After a while the word came back, they had hit a bicyclist.

— Where? How? Arthur said. We’re in a forest.

No one knew much more. People were speculating, should they get off and try to find a taxi; where were they, anyhow? There were guesses. A few individuals did get off and were walking by the side of the train.

— God, I knew something like this would happen, Arthur said.

— Something like this? Noreen said. How could there be something like this?

— When we hit the cow, a man sitting across from them offered.

— The cow? We also hit a cow? Arthur exclaimed.

— A couple of weeks ago, the man explained.

That night Noreen showed him how to eat a lobster.

— My mother would die if she knew this, Arthur said.

— How will she know?

— She’d disown me.

— You start with the claws, Noreen said.

She had tucked the napkin into his collar. They drank some Italian wine.

Westhampton, her tanned legs and pale heels. The feeling she gave him of being younger, even, God help him, debonair. He was playful. On the beach he wore a coconut hat. He had fallen in love, deeply, and without knowing it. He hadn’t realized he had been living a shallow life. He only knew that he was happy, happier than he had ever been, in her company. This warmhearted girl with her legs, her fragrance, and perfect little ears that were tuned to him. And she took some kind of pleasure in him! They were guests of the Senders and he slept in a separate room in the basement while she was upstairs, but they were under the same roof and he would see her in the morning.

— When are you going to marry her? everyone asked.

— She wouldn’t have me, he equivocated.

Then, offhandedly, she admitted meeting someone else. It was sort of a joke, Bobby Piro. He was stocky, he lived with his mother, had never married.

— He has black, shiny hair, Arthur guessed as if goodnaturedly.

He had to treat it lightly, and Noreen did the same. She would make fun of Bobby when talking about him, his brothers, Dennis and Paul, his wanting to go to Vegas, his mother making chicken Vesuvio, Sinatra’s favorite, for her.

— Chicken Vesuvio, Arthur said.

— It was pretty good.

— So you met his mother.

— I’m too skinny, she said.

— She sounds like my mother. Are you sure she’s Italian?

She liked Bobby, at least a little, he could see. Still it was difficult to think of him as being really significant. He was someone to talk about. He wanted her to go away on a weekend with him.

— To the Euripides, Arthur said, his stomach suddenly turning over.

— Not that good.

The Euripides Hotel that didn’t exist, but that they always joked about because he didn’t know who Euripides was.

— Don’t let him take you to the Euripides, he said.

— I couldn’t do that. It’s a Greek place, she said. For us Greeks.

Then, late one night in October, his doorbell rang.

— Who is it? Arthur said.

— It’s me.

He opened the door. She stood in the doorway with a smile that he saw had hesitation in it.

— Can I come in?

— Sure, tootsula. Of course. Come in. What’s happened, is something wrong?

— There’s nothing wrong, really. I just thought I would . . . come by.

The room was clean but somehow barren. He never sat in it and as much as read a book. He lived in the bedroom like a salesman. The curtains hadn’t been washed in a long time.

— Here, sit down, he said.

She was walking a bit carefully. She had been drinking, he could see. She felt her way around a chair and sat.

— You want something? Coffee? I’ll make some coffee.

She was looking around her.

— You know, I’ve never been here. This is the first time.

— It’s not much of a place. I guess I could find something better.

— Is that the bedroom?

— Yes, he said, but her gaze had drifted from it.

— I just wanted to talk.

— Sure. About what?

He knew, or was afraid he did.

— We’ve known each other a long time. What has it been, three years?

He felt nervous. The aimless way it was going. He didn’t want to disappoint her. On the other hand, he was not sure what it was she wanted. Him? Now?

— You’re pretty smart, she said.

— Me? Oh, God, no.

— You understand people. Can you really make some coffee? I think I’d like a cup.

While he busied himself, she sat quietly. He glanced briefly and saw her staring toward the window, beyond which were the lights of apartments in other buildings and the black, starless sky.

— So, she said, holding the coffee, give me some advice. Bobby wants to get married.

Arthur was silent.

— He wants to marry me. The reason I was never serious about him, I was always making fun of him, his being so Italian, his big smile, the reason was that he was involved all that time with some Danish girl. Ode is her name.

— I figured something like that.

— What did you figure?

— Ah, I could see something wasn’t right.

— I never met her. I imagined her as being pretty and having this great accent. You know how you torture yourself.

— Ah, Noreen, he said. There’s nobody nicer than you.

— Anyway, yesterday he told me he’d broken up with her. It was all over. He did it because of me. He realized it was me he loved, and he wanted to marry me.

— Well, that’s . . .

Arthur didn’t know what to say; his thoughts were skipping wildly, like scraps of paper in a wind. There is that fearful moment in the ceremony when it is asked if there is anyone who knows why these two should not be wed. This was that moment.

— What did you tell him?

— I haven’t told him.

A gulf was opening between them somehow. It was happening as they sat there.

— Do you have any feeling about it? she asked.

— Yes, I mean, I’d like to think about it. It’s kind of a surprise.

— It was to me, too.

She hadn’t touched the coffee.

— You know, I could sit here for a long time, she said. It’s as comfortable as I’ll ever feel anywhere. That’s what’s making me wonder. About what to tell him.

— I’m a little afraid, he said. I can’t explain it.

— Of course you are. Her voice had such understanding. Really. I know.

— Your coffee’s going to get cold, he said.

— Anyway, I just wanted to see your apartment, she said. Her voice suddenly sounded funny. She seemed not to want to go on.

He realized then, as she sat there, a woman in his apartment at night, a woman he knew he loved, that she was really giving him one last chance. He knew he should take it.

— Ah, Noreen, he said.

After that night, she vanished. Not suddenly, but it did not take long. She married Bobby. It was as simple as a death, but it lasted longer. It seemed it would never go away. She lingered in his thoughts. Did he exist in hers? he often wondered. Did she still feel, even if only a little, the way he felt? The years seemed to have no effect on it. She was in New Jersey somewhere, in some place he could not picture. Probably there was a family. Did she ever think of him? Ah, Noreen.

SHE HAD NOT CHANGED. He could tell it from her voice, speaking, as always, to him alone.

— You probably have kids, he said as if casually.

— He didn’t want them. Just one of the problems. Well, all that’s
acqua passata,
as he liked to say. You didn’t know I got divorced?

— No.

— I more or less kept in touch with Marie up until she retired. She told me how you were doing. You’re a big wheel now.

— Not really.

— I knew you would be. It would be nice to see you again. How long has it been?

— Gee, a long time.

— You ever go out to Westhampton?

— No, not for years.

— Goldie’s?

— He closed.

— I guess I knew that. Those were wonderful days.

It was the same, the ease of talking to her. He saw her great, winning smile, the well-being of it, her carefree walk.

— I’d love to see you, she said again.

They agreed to meet at the Plaza. She was going to be near there the next day.

He began walking up Fifth a little before five. He felt uncertain but tenderhearted, in the hands of a wondrous fate. The hotel stood before him, immense and vaguely white. He walked up the broad steps. There was a kind of foyer with a large table and flowers, the sound of people talking. As if, like an animal, he could detect the slightest noise, he seemed to make out the clink of cups and spoons.