Nine & a Half Weeks (2 page)

Next to the shirts lie two tennis rackets, their handles protruding over the edge of the shelf. Six white polo shirts on cleaner’s cardboard, five pairs of tennis shorts. (He plays on Tuesdays from 12:30 to 2:30, on Thursdays from 12:15 to 2, on Sundays from 3 to 5, year round, I will come to understand. He carries the rackets in the covers in which they came. the rest of his gear in a brown paper bag.) Toward the right wall, still on the second shelf, sits a stack of ten white pillow cases, next to a larger one of ten white sheets.

Not counting the one he is presently wearing in the next room, and possibly others out to be cleaned, he owns nine suits. Three—dark gray, dark blue with pinstripes, gray tweed; all with vests, all cut identically—are brand new. Three others—white linen, medium gray flannel, blue and white seersucker; the first two with vests, and all, again, cut alike—barely less so. A gray gabardine and a dark gray wool with pinstripes may both be two years old; and there is a tuxedo. (It is four years old, he will later tell me; I will not see him wear it. He will mention at one point that his suits have been made by the same tailor in Little Italy for eleven years, and that he has not gone to a fitting for this year’s or last year’s suits, delighted to have persuaded the protesting tailor that it was unnecessary. “It suddenly dawned on me, why should I, year after year. It’s such a drag and I’ve weighed the same since high school and I’m long past growing.” When a suit shows any sign of wear he gives it to the Chinese man who does his laundry—though not the dry cleaning. “But he’s a good two feet shorter than you,” I will say when he disposes of the gray gabardine this way. “What can he possibly do with a suit of yours?” “Who knows,” he says. “I never ask. He always takes them.”)

He owns two pairs each of dark blue ski pants and old khakis, one with paint stains. (“I tried to do the bathroom a couple of years ago, some mistake. I’m no good at doing stuff I do just because I think I ought to. It’s never worth it, that bathroom was the worst paint job you could hope to see.”)

A beige raincoat hangs next to a dark wool overcoat, a down-filled ski jacket takes up a foot in width at the very end of the rack. A furled black umbrella leans in the left corner. Wedged diagonally across the back wall is a set of skis and poles. Suspended from a brass rod on the inside of the left door hang a dozen ties so similar that they seem like an expanse of one piece of fabric when I squint. Most are dark gray or dark blue with small, geometric patterns in maroon; two are dark blue with small white dots, the most adventurous is gray, discreetly patterned in white and maroon. (“I don’t like variety in clothes,” he will say. “My own clothes, I mean. I like to know that I’ll look pretty much the same, day after day.”) Lined up on the floor are three pairs of sneakers, four pairs of identical black, wing-tip shoes, one pair of plain, oxblood-colored loafers.

I shut the doors and tiptoe to the bureau against the wall that divides the bedroom from the living room. It has six drawers: three shallow, two medium, the bottom one deep. I begin at the top. A stack of white, initialed handkerchiefs, a wristwatch without a watchband, an old pocket watch, a black silk bow tie folded once and—lying in the upturned lid of what might have been a jelly jar—one set of plain gold cuff links, one narrow gold tie clasp, and one made of dark blue enamel with a thin gold line running its length down the middle. Somebody gave that to him, I think, this is clearly a gift, a nice one, too. Next drawer: two pairs of black leather gloves, one lined, one not; a tan pair, unlined; large, puffy ski mittens; a cummerbund. Third: navy swimming trunks, a jockstrap, one pair of pajamas—navy with white piping—still in the manufacturer’s plastic wrapping. Another gift? No, the price tag’s still on it. The next drawer, first of the medium-sized ones, holds white jockey shorts, easily a couple of dozen. Fourteen pairs of white wool socks and a boiled-front shirt in cellophane are housed below. The largest drawer sticks and I have to tug at it repeatedly. When I’ve finally edged it open 1 stare in amazement: jammed to overflowing, the drawer bulges with what seem to be a thousand identical, long, black socks. I think: this man owns more socks than all the men I’ve ever known combined; what is he scared of, they’ll shut down every knitting mill in the country overnight? (“I hate going to the laundry,” he will say, a few weeks later. “It’s simple once you figure it out but it took me long enough. The more of the stuff you keep around, the less often you have to go either to a laundry or to a store.” I will watch him from the bed, my body liquid, afloat: he takes out two socks, pushes his hand into one—the skin shows through the weave at the heel, though there is, as yet, no sign of a hole—and drops the sock into the wastebasket. “It’s better to have them all the same, too,” he will tell me. “That way you never have to match them. I messed with that crap all through graduate school, it’s a pain in the ass.”) I close the drawer, jump on the bed, lie on my back, bounce, ride a bicycle in the air above me. I’m beside myself. Falling in love with a stockpiler of socks, a sock-stockpiler, a man who socks away socks… I cannot keep from making grunting, snorting noises in my effort not to laugh put loud, though his slow friend’s voice is piercing by now, I could probably shout “fire” without being heard.

It’s a quarter to ten. I finally calm down, fold my arms under my head. I look at the ceiling and follow the shape made there by the bedside lamp. If your mother could see you— rummaging through people’s stuff, it’s the worst. Not really rummaging, I tell myself, feeling contrite now, yet unable to stop grinning: I didn’t touch anything. God forbid he’d snoop around my closet, though! Assuming correctly that we would soon be moving into the bedroom, I had surreptitiously closed its sliding door beforehand, while he was still drinking coffee in the living room, night before last. The jumble, the mess: the record of a decade’s worth of changing fashion, ever accumulating next to and alternating with what I happen to be wearing this year. A month ago, looking for a dress that subsequently proved to have been lost at a cleaner’s, I came across a leftover miniskirt; appalled, I threw it out, then retrieved it and hung it back up; I’d had a good time in it, what a thrill it had been at first! And the beaten-down raincoat with the plaid lining, still from my sophomore year, and the slacks bought on sale at Bonwit’s because they were made of such fine plaid wool, though they turned out not only to be too short that very fall, and the hem only half an inch deep, but nearly impossible to wear with what else I owned; yet I can’t bring myself to get rid of them because they were a bargain and so very well made. The heaps, the junk, the odds and ends at the bottom of my closet—pointed-toe sling-back shoes that may do, in a pinch, under a long skirt; the ungainly rubber rain hat I wear once a year when it’s pouring out and I need to get cigarettes; the Gucci bag that I haven’t taken out of the closet for years now, but how thrilled I’d been when I’d bought it for nearly two weeks’ worth of my salary, gleeful at having reached the heights of what I then considered New York elegance; belts that have fallen off their hooks, small red boots now long outgrown, left behind by the boy in the photograph on my mirror; the soccer jersey formerly belonging to a forgotten lover, which I wear while housecleaning…

So what did you learn from it all, I ask myself; what does it add up to besides your being a snoop? Well, he’s neat, I tell myself. Plays tennis, skis, swims. Doesn’t know the meaning of the word “laundromat.” Are ten white, eight pink, and eleven blue shirts normal for a man of his age and profession? I have no idea. Though it’s my age, too, I remind myself, more or less, and when do I ever own that many of anything? One thing I do know: I’ve never been with a man who has such a limited idea of the spectrum. Nothing purple, fuchsia, turquoise, orange—all right; but nothing brown? Nothing green, nothing yellow, nothing red? Those tiny maroon things on the ties don’t count. Everything’s blue or gray or white or black, except for those pink shirts, of course. This is an unusual man you’re getting mixed up with, I tell myself. Never mind the clothes he’s got, what about the clothes he hasn’t got. I make a list, on a thick sheet of stationery. His pen gives my usually small, narrow-spaced handwriting a slant and breadth I’m not accustomed to. No bathrobe, I write—so what. One pair of pajamas kept under wraps? Maybe to have on hand in case he has to go to a hospital in a hurry, bought in the spirit in which mothers tell one not to rely on safety pins in underwear…. No scarf, no hat: probably immune to head colds. But why does this man not own any jeans? Do I know anyone— anyone—who doesn’t have at least one pair, even if no longer worn, just one last pair left over from the sixties? And no turtlenecks. No leather jacket, no blazer, not a single, solitary, measly little T-shirt! Where are the corduroy pants I’m used to on men, where are the sandals, where are the sport jackets, the plaid flannel shirts?

I study my list. “It’s O.K.”; his cheerful voice in the other room raised now. “Never mind, I was glad to do it, glad we’re done, too. See you tomorrow, relax, you’ve got nothing to worry about….” I swing my legs off the bed, sit up straight, fold the piece of paper along a sharp crease, stuff it into my handbag, which sits on the floor next to the bed. The front door slams, he’s at the bedroom doorway, smiling: “Over, done, he’s gone. Time to celebrate, sweetheart, you couldn’t have been nicer about this mess, time to drink a little wine….”

Just before midnight we are lying on his bed. It turns out we drank no wine at all to begin with, but made love instead, hastily and with most of our clothes on; we’ve taken a shower together and I’ve told him it was my first in a decade, that I much prefer baths. Wrapped in towels, we ate three large pieces of blueberry pie left over from dinner and finished a bottle of Chablis. 1 am lying on my back, looking up at the ceiling, my arms under my head. He is stretched out on his stomach. His right arm supports his head while his left lies flat and lightly across my breasts. In the middle of the statistical tale he’s requested from me— brothers and sisters and parents and grandparents, hometown, schools, jobs—I stop and close my eyes… please, I think, inarticulate even in my own mind, unable to turn to him and make the first move, please… He says into the silence, “1 want to show you something.” He leaves the room, returns with his shaving mirror, slaps my face, sits down on the edge of the bed. My head has fallen on one side onto the pillow. He takes a fistful of my hair and pulls me back until I look at him. He holds the mirror up for me to see and together we watch the symmetrical mark appear on my cheek. I stare at myself, mesmerized. I do not recognize this face; it is blank, a canvas there to display four smudges, red like war paint. He traces them gently.

Next day, during a business lunch with a client, I lose my train of thought in mid-sentence when last night’s mirror image floats onto the surface of my brain. Desire sweeps over me so intense it makes me nauseous. I push away my plate and hide my hands under the napkin. I want to cry when I think it’s another four hours before I see him.

So IT WENT, a step at a time. And since we saw each other every night; since each increment of change was unspectacular in itself; since he made love very, very well; since I was soon crazy about him, not just physically, but especially so, it came about that I found myself—after the time span of a mere two weeks—in a setup that would be judged, by the people I know, as pathological.

It never occurred to me to call it pathological. I never called “it” anything. I told no one about it. That it was me who lived through this period seems, in retrospect, unthinkable. I dare only look back on those weeks as on an isolated phenomenon, now in the past; a segment of my life as unreal as a dream, lacking all implication.

“IT’S UNUSUAL FOR a man to have cats,” I say. “Isn’t it?” We are watching Cronkite: a dear, familiar face forever arranged—beneath an appropriate layer of surface concern—into the reassuring alignment of dependable benevolence… a faraway earthquake, the less faraway threat of yet another transit strike, Dow Jones up by two points. “Are you kidding?” he says wearily. “Don’t I know it! Dogs, that’s a different story. But not one man I know, who’s not married that is, owns even one cat, let alone more.” “Hm,” I say. “Cats are for kids and little old ladies, if you ask me,” he continues. “Or farms, or whatever.” “Well,” I say, “then why—” “They’re nothing but a nuisance,” he interrupts. “At least these don’t shed much,” I offer feebly; and finally I say, “Nobody’s forcing you to keep cats.”

“That’s a laugh,” he says. “That’s a real laugh, if I do say so. You have absolutely no idea….”

There are three cats in his apartment, all equally homely. They are as oblivious of him as he seems of them. While he provides them with food and fresh water and a daily change of litter, he seems to take doing this for granted in much the same way in which they expect the regular presence of these commodities. There is no observable exchange of affection between them, or only if one chooses so to interpret a cat’s slow progress across his prone body, and his wordless tolerance of such behavior; a questionable interpretation at best, considering the lack of expression these encounters evoke in either cat or man.

He is sitting on the couch. I’m sitting on two bed pillows on the floor, one of his calves at either side of me, my back against the couch, neck and shoulders supported by its front edge; my head, bent back, rests between his thighs. He plays with my hair: taking up strand after strand and curling each around a finger; pushing four fingers under a section of hair, lifting it up, and pulling it gently away from the skin; rubbing a small area of scalp at a time, his hands moving slowly across my head, over and over.

Cronkite bids us good-night and we watch the ensuing game show and then a program consisting entirely of policemen alternately involved in car chases and crashes. The repetitive images (at the end of the news he has turned off the sound) form a soothing and oddly appropriate accompaniment to the story of the cats, which he unfolds for me at leisure. The first one came into his life along with the woman who lived with him briefly four years ago. She had just moved her cat into his apartment when she was offered a lucrative position in Zurich and decided to live abroad. The cat stayed behind—with him. For a number of months he continued to think of himself as only a stopgap caretaker of the animal, which appeared, from the first, to feel at home: mangy, scruffy, with a nearly bald tail and as eager an assortment of ambiguous colors as the garments that have been popular for the last several winters: fashioned from a substance enigmatically referred to as “fun fur,” imitating the concept and construction, if not the appearance, of an early American quilt. He tried, at first energetically, to relocate the cat. But he was soon forced to acknowledge that the people he knew (some of whom would have taken in a kitten, while others might have been tempted by a Siamese) were hard put to disguise, for the duration of their awkward visits, how appalled they were at the thought of welcoming this particular animal into their attractive and carefully assembled Manhattan apartments. At one point he even placed an ad in the Times. Though he listed both his home and his office number, and though the ad ran five consecutive days, he received not one call in response. Off and on, as the months went by, he considered giving the cat to an animal shelter. But he decided to put off such a solution, at least for the time being. This sort of option, he thought, would always be open to him; in the meantime, something more suitable might turn up.