Patricia Gaffney (14 page)

“Y
ou fell asleep during meditation,” Mo accuses me.

“I did not.”

“Did, too.”

“I did not. I was deeply, deeply into the present moment. Look, those guys look like they’re leaving, let’s get their seats.”

“She was asleep, right?” Mo turns to Greta for support. “You heard that little snort?”

Greta, my loyal employee, merely casts down her eyes and smiles. Mo made us come to her yoga class this morning, and Greta didn’t fix her hair afterward. I see now why she always wears it in braids or dreadlocks or some other bound fashion: otherwise it explodes like Easter basket filling, like orange tinsel glued to her head in piles and left to wander. I like it this way, myself. Free.

We’re waiting for a table at a restaurant I’ve either never been to before or they’ve remodeled out of recognition. That happens a lot in my neighborhood, which is nice, lots of variety and everything, except as soon as you get attached to some little Milanese bistro, you come back and they’ve turned it into a cigar bar. This place features high round tables with uncomfortable stools, a long, lively bar, and a shiny black counter along the front window, behind which you can sit, eat, and watch the world go by. My first choice every time—and lo, the three businessmen I’ve been watching all stand up at the same time. While they’re still putting their coats on, we swoop down and take their seats at the counter.

“Isn’t this nice?”

“I love people watching.”

“I could do it all day.”

The waiter comes. We’re examining our menus when Mo says, “What an incredibly good-looking man.”

Greta, sitting between us, murmurs, “Mmm.”

“He was,” I say, not looking up, thinking of our yoga instructor.

Greta giggles. “Not him.
Him.
”

“Oh.
Him.
” Out on the sidewalk, a tall man with his hands stuffed in the pockets of a soft brown leather coat, his shoulders hunched, back to the wind, is talking to another man, older, not as attractive. They shake hands, say final words, and the older man walks off. And then, as if our collective, barely conscious wish has been granted by the god of oglers, the Leather-Coated Man makes a quarter turn and strolls into our restaurant.

He takes a seat behind us at the bar, invisible unless we turn completely and gracelessly around, as if looking for the waiter or at the clock. How many times can you do that? Twice, I decide, and return to my menu, but Mo is much bolder. “Doesn’t he look familiar?” she muses, openly staring, resting a finger on her cheek. “Like someone we know?”

“No.”

“I wish,” Greta says.

“I’m sure I’ve seen him before.”

“Go ask him,” Greta says, giggling again. She really does not know who she’s dealing with. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mo asked the hunky yoga instructor for a date. But maybe that’s not fair, because she was really into it today, incredibly focused and precise. She says she goes three times a week now, and it shows. She looks fabulous. She’s cut her hair and stopped coloring it since I saw her last; now it’s a cap of streaky gray, and she’s an aging Joan of Arc. There’s a new sharpness in her face, too, as if living a Phil-less life has scraped away all the soft curves and made her pointy and avid. But attractively so. I think.

“I’ve met somebody,” she says, closing her menu with a snap. “Christ, there’s not one healthy thing to eat here.”

“Who?”

“His name is Anwar, but he’s British. He’s something in the consulate—I found him a condo. Get this: He only has one ball.”

“Like Hitler,” Greta and I say in unison.

“Yes. How do you know about Hitler?”

“Everybody knows about Hitler.”

“It doesn’t affect anything; I mean, he’s still potent and all.”

Oh good, this is going to be easy. I wasn’t sure how Mo and Greta would like each other, and now I see it was silly of me to worry. We are getting
right down to it
, heavy-duty woman talk before the water comes.

“So?” I say. “Do you like him?”

“Yes, except he smokes. Tonight I’m going out with a guy from the office, and he smokes, too. I don’t get it. Don’t these people—”

“Whoa, wait—what about Anwar?”

“Oh, Dash. If God wanted us to be monogamous, he wouldn’t have made us multiorgasmic.”

Ha-ha, we laugh. That’s funny in a sort of
Sex and the City
way, and here we are, girlfriends at lunch dishing on men, nothing missing but the Cosmos. It doesn’t feel quite real to me, though. I feel like the oldest one here, and I’m not. I feel as if I’m
impersonating
a frank, breezy girlfriend. I’m in a funny mood.

“Seriously,” Mo says, moving her head oddly, peering at what I take for bare tree branches outside until I realize she’s found a way to see Leather-Coated Man in the window’s reflection. “Monogamy doesn’t work, obviously, because it shuts out so much of
life.
”

Here we go. “Maureen is recently divorced,” I inform Greta—not very kindly, I suppose, but she deserves a warning.

“Two people can’t be everything to each other forever, it’s just not possible. We’re not built that way. Or if you
must
institutionalize monogamy, then everyone gets three husbands. For ten years each, and in between you can have as many lovers as you want. I’ve given this a lot of thought.”

Greta and I mull that over, searching for flaws. It does have an appealing sort of symmetry.

“Maybe you have to keep falling in love with the same person? Over and over again?” Greta ventures. “And sometimes you just have to wait?”

“Yeah, but too bad you keep falling
out
of love over and over, too.” Maureen signals the waiter, asks for the fruit salad with yogurt dressing and a side of asparagus, no butter, no salt. “So then your only hope is that your remarriages ultimately outnumber your divorces.”

Greta and I order the zucchini omelet with
pommes frites.
“Why are you eating like a bird?” I ask Maureen. “You’re getting way too thin. It’s not healthy.” We’ve even discussed this: It’s what people who wish they weighed less say to their slim friends. A snarky defense mechanism. Deliberately tarnishing your idol.

“Those fries are what will kill you,” Mo says in a superior tone. “Before yoga, I only eat fresh fruit. The rest of the time, vegetables, fruits, and whole grains, mostly. Very little alcohol.”

“You’re a
vegetarian
?” News to me. Although not that surprising, on second thought.

“Practically. Virtually. Anyway,” she resumes, “monogamy is unnatural, that’s the point. Because all it comes down to, after all the pain and heartbreak, all your hopes and dreams, the struggling—all it comes down to is money.”

I sigh. Greta’s shoulders sag.

“Well,” I rouse myself to say, “nobody’s saying there should be monogamy—or
marriage
, that’s what we’re really talking about—without love. That would be slavery. That would be lack of imagination to the point of lobotomy. Apathy to the point of coma.”

“Love,” Mo says, thinning her lips. “Good luck. All you can trust, bottom line, is lust. Outside of eating, sex is the most natural thing we do, but we suppress, suppress—women, not men—and then we wonder why married women have the worst mental health and married men have the best.”

“Is that true?”

“It’s absolutely true.” She’s turning around again, craning her neck to see Leather Coat. He’s taken it off; underneath, he’s wearing that sort of thick beige cable-knit sweater men never buy for themselves—it’s always a gift from the wife or the girlfriend. He looks very
taken
to me.

“Lust is great,” I say, “but it’s not what holds two people together for a lifetime.”

“What does?” Greta asks. She and Joel are still an item, but she doesn’t talk about him as much as she used to. Good: I don’t like the sound of him, and I was afraid his hold on her was lethal.

“What does,” I say ruminatively, cronelike. “The details. A million little details, like threads in a tapestry. Weaving our lives together.”

Maureen coughs behind her napkin.

“No, but lust is great,” I backtrack, “you gotta have that. Absolutely, it’s a prerequisite.”

“So do you and Andrew…” Shy, Greta lets that trail off.

“Have lust? Well…yes. You know. Peaks and valleys. Good times and bad, mostly good.”

Both women look skeptical.

“No, we
do.
Really.” I’ve put it too mildly—they think I’m equivocating. “We definitely do. We had sex in Andrew’s office not that long ago, last fall sometime. On the
desk.
” Now I’ve got their attention. “And it wasn’t because we wanted to get caught, nothing kinky like that, I mean, we locked the door and everything.”

“Then…”

“Well, we just wanted to. So we did.”

I don’t know who’s looking at me with more subtle amazement, Greta or Mo: Greta, because she finds it incredible that two old fossils like Andrew and me can still get it on at all; Mo, because she’s wondering why I’ve left him if my husband is still so virile and desirable. (Phil was a dud in their bedroom for a year or two before the divorce. But not, it turned out, in other women’s bedrooms.)

“Wow,” says Greta. “That’s…”

“A fucking miracle,” Mo finishes.

“Is it?” I watch a couple of teenagers out on the sidewalk, moving fast arm in arm, their breath visible as they laugh at something one has said. They look so healthy and vigorous with their jutting knees and swinging arms. Like nothing can stop them. “I guess I take it for granted.”

Andrew used to tell me it was
my
doing, the fact that we’re good at lovemaking. I was happy to take credit, but the truth is, there’s never been a time with him when I haven’t felt safe. In every conceivable sense of the word, and you have to have that, you absolutely have to have that firm, friendly ground under you, like your native land, before you can…take off and go flying around in the wild blue yonder, so to speak. And by the same token, maybe he needs me to yell at him from high up in the thin air, “Come on, let’s go for a ride!” So we’re a team. Of acrobats, the flashy woman on top, laughing, going “No hands!” the strong, silent man on the bottom, steady as a rock.

It’s true—I’ve had that for so long, I take it for granted.

Mo shakes her head, as if clearing it, and stops staring at me. “Lust is a fever,” she pronounces, “and marriage is the powerful antibiotic that cures it.”

“Oh
God.
” I make imploring gestures toward heaven. “Would you stop? Poor Greta, she’s going to think you’re a misogynist.”

“A misogamist, you mean. Which I am. Okay, okay—I’m tired of
myself
,” she says, laughing, sprinkling a dash of forbidden salt on her asparagus—and this is why I love her. Just when she starts to get really tiresome, she always pulls up short and boomerangs back into my funny, normal friend. “Greta,” she says, stabbing at a piece of dry lettuce, “tell me about yourself. All I know from Dash is that you’re perfect.”

“She is! She’s smart, she’s creative—look, she’s beautiful.” She’s blushing. I put my arm around her. “And she’s going places, the sky’s the limit. Oh yes, I can see it,” I say, squeezing poor Greta’s shoulders while she wobbles and grins, looking down. She likes it, though. And she needs it. I was lucky, my mother spoiled me with it almost, if you
can
spoil someone with encouragement.

Mo asks Greta if she has a boyfriend, and she glances at me, says yes, and sums up Joel in about two sentences. I trust she’s not skipping over him so quickly on
my
account. True, I have very little use for Joel, but I’ve kept that to myself. I’m sure I have.

“And you like your job, Dash isn’t too tough on you? Not too bossy and demanding?”

That’s a joke, but Greta’s a bit of a literalist. “Oh
no.
She’s terrific, I’m learning so much. Today—well,” she defers, “you tell her.”

“No, you.”

“Well…this afternoon we’re doing a studio shoot, and I’m going to sort of, um…”

“Be in charge!” I crow.

“Yeah.” She stares out the window with a half smile, rubbing her bare white arms in what I’m sure is nervous anticipation. She’s excited, but she’s trying to hide it.

“Well, now,” Mo marvels, looking at me. “That
is
something.”

It is, and she’s right to be impressed. Mo knows I’m not one to relinquish control, not in the studio, where my undemocratic reign is supreme. This is a special occasion—but I have confidence in Greta, whose only weakness is lighting. Which, okay, is the whole ball of wax, but I lent her the money to take a lighting seminar to get her up to speed, and in the meantime what she needs most is hands-on
experience.

“Who are you photographing?” Mo asks.

“A thirteen-year-old girl,” Greta says.

“Oh my God, what a horrible age.”

“Isn’t it?” Greta agrees. “The worst.”

“There should be a moratorium on photographing children between the ages of twelve and seventeen,” Mo says. “For girls. For boys, eleven to eighteen.”