The Anglophile (10 page)

“Love one.”

“Hungry?”

“Starved.”

“Over in the West Village there's Corner Bistro—it's been voted the best hamburger in the city for about ten years running. It's a bit of a hike, but—”

“Take me there immediately please. I haven't eaten a hamburger since Mad Cow broke.”

While Kit's in my
loo,
Kevin calls on my cell.

“When are you coming home?”

Kit and I moved our flights up by two days—we'd heard all we wanted to hear at the conference, and maybe I'm a coward, but I'm grateful for a bit of time to plan the kindest goodbye I can come up with. I never said anything to Kevin about calling in every day. I'll face my fate later.

“In two days.” I grit my teeth as I hang up, not even nearly ready to deal with my not-exactly watertight lies.

 

On the pavement, Kit slips his arm into mine, and under the midday sun our combined body-form is a double-headed midget. His midget head is higher than mine though, for in our real dimensions, I'm five foot four and he's about six foot.

After those days in Chicago together as teammates, there is no question that we are on our way to being a couple. It took us all of three hours after Kit's meteoric rise in linguistics for me to sleep with him again.

Yes there is that major hitch to this fabulous, pinch-myself-to-believe-it union (other than the small fact that my dissertation is in ruins)—I haven't broken up with Kevin yet.

“What are you grinning at now?” I say to Kit.

Kit nudges me. There's a stray tabby on a brownstone stoop awakening with a hilarious look on his face. “Churchill.”

“Huh? I don't get what you mean.”

“There's a well-known photo of Churchill looking maniacal. The photographer yelled at the old bastard to
get the perfect shot. Everything else on the roll was a real dud.”

During the next three hundred yards, a fish tackle sign in a vintage collectibles store inspires Kit to tell me how to catch trout using a lead sinker. “Rod fishing for trout is very calming,” he said. “You can sit there for hours. When you throw a lead-weighted line into the water it travels a long way. On a quiet day only the current in the water drags your lines to one side, and then they go taut—”

I've never listened this hard to Kevin. Am I a snob for wanting sharper banter than: “Check this out, Shari. I have finally found the secret for perfect oatmeal. None of that one-minute, five-minute crap. You have to buy the long-cooking kind and cook for at least ten minutes, and then instead of sugar you put in four packets of Equal.”

Am I a snob for hating the minutia Kevin insists on telling me about his
Manga
collection? My thirteen-year-old neighbor—an eighth grader at the Earth School—collects those Japanese comics, too. I've wanted to yell at Kevin all last month: Listen up. I really cannot give a rat's ass about
Marmalade Boy!

There is a luxurious depth to our conversations. We could talk all the way into the early hours, and we do. Kit knows about so many different things that I'm intimidated. I've never met a man who could utter a sentence like, “The reason so many Americans collect stoneware was that it was a truly indigenous art form; sending for dishes from England was a costly endeavor,” and then cough and explain that, “Of course, salt-glazed
stoneware was the Tupperware for the early nineteenth century.”

“Of course,” I laugh, and he winces a bit.

“I'm being terribly pompous, aren't I?”

“Not at all. I love hearing you talk.”

He seems positively relieved, a fact that thrills a bit. “No, I love hearing
you
talk.”

“The mutual admiration society,” I say, and he squeezes my hand.

The only area that seems off limits is his personal life. For once in my life I don't probe.

 

As the sun rouses me from sleep I give my new lover's sleeping lips a quick peck. I sneak some more marvelous looks of him from the sink as I brush my teeth and remove the traces of eye makeup never removed the previous night. Even though he's out like a light I gabble on about how he is as handsome in slumber as an RAF test pilot played by Leslie Howard or David Niven during World War II, power-napping after extraordinary figure-eights in the feathery white cirrus clouds over Europe.

“Where are we going today?” he says when he awakens a half hour later.

“
You
are going to the Empire State Building. I think tourists should do those things by themselves.”

“And you?”

“I have an appointment with a doctor.”

“Something wrong?”

“I've been feeling sluggish.”

“You could've fooled me.”

“Thanks, but really, I am not myself. The doctor's a
thyroid specialist. I'll make you breakfast and a map. It's always good to plunge into a new town. I'll meet you here at five.”

 

With a hand feeling my throat Dr. Zuckerman repeats, “Shari Diamond,” as if he's heard my name before. “Are you from Queens originally?”

I answer him once my neck is released. “Yes.”

He has piercing grayish-blue eyes that give him that aging-Paul Newman appeal. He checks my ears. He temporarily puts down the probe and says, “Oh, I got it. You went to my son's bar mitzvah. Do you remember Owen Zuckerman?”

“Yes, of course,” I say, as he shines his little flashlight in my eye. “Wow. Owen. How is he?”

“He's fine, fine. A very accomplished young man.”

I haven't thought of fellow bookworm Owen Z. for years, except once right before I started grad school I had an out-of-the-blue erotic dream about him.

Owen was a cute and painfully quiet boy and my dream had him acting so out of character that I still remember it. (I find erotic dreams starring rarely-thought-of persons of your past the sexiest dreams you can have.)

My dream took place a few miles away from my apartment complex in Owen's house in Jamaica Estates.

In real life, Owen had a birthday party there once and he almost became popular overnight, as no one knew he lived there before the invite went out. It was a
serious
mansion, landscaped with exotic greenery quite the anomaly to Archie Bunker Queens, and patrolled by an Alaskan husky named Tiny. Owen admitted to the gath
ered teens that Donald Trump's dad lived a few doors down, this during Trump's first prereality TV waltz with fame. But with his severe shyness nothing could save Owen.

Dream Owen was bright red and shy as he was in real life. Dream Owen started kissing me. He ravaged me with his piercing eyes, the same ones his father has—then came his embracing arms.

Dr. Zuckerman opens my paper robe and swirls my breasts to the right and gives them a little squeeze. Since the medical student observing this session from a stool in the corner seems unfazed, I assume the fondling is a legit part of a thyroid check and not malpractice.

“What do you do now?” he asks.

“I am a linguist.”

“What languages do you specialize in?”

“Volapük. It preceded Esperanto as a universal language.”

“Outside my area of expertise, I must admit, but that sounds right up Owen's alley.”

“What does he do?”

“After Cambridge he toured around the world, but he's settled in at Columbia now as a historian. He did his doctoral thesis on the Battle of Pinkie. No one ever knows that either but it's—”

“The Battle of Pinkie Cleugh.”

Dr. Zuckerman clucks in surprise.

“I'm good with British and Scottish history.”

“Now he's changed centuries and is looking at the alliance between America and Britain in the Second
World War. Goes back and forth a lot. He just got a book deal with Oxford.”

“Impressive,” I say sincerely. “That's the place you want to be in as an academic.” I continue: “I have a friend who was at Cambridge, too. Do you know which college Owen was in?”

His nurse interrupts us and the answer never comes. “Okay, Ms. Diamond, you can get dressed, and come into my office to discuss your thyroid.”

He waves off the student doctor.

Dr. Zuckerman's office is dominated by a huge 1960s 7-Up poster with the slogan
Thirst Goes Thataway Rightaway.

He smiles and checks his folder, and looks up again. “Right now, your hypothyroidism is not a serious case. But it is, I'm afraid, there. Something to watch. I suspect a bit of Synthroid wouldn't hurt, but I'll need to look at our results to be sure.”

“Synthroid?” Ever since I spent a few miserable months on the Pill in college, I haven't been a fan of daily medication. “Are there any side effects?”

“Not really. If you take it the way you're supposed to take it you should have more energy. And oh, you might even lose five or ten pounds without any dieting, not that you need to—”

“What woman doesn't want to lose five to ten pounds?” The Good Doctor is being kind: my tummy is a little much these days. My size eight jeans have been on the far right of the closet for three years now.

“Call me in a week to discuss the results. It's a
good thing you're taking care of this sooner than later.”

“Actually, I might be in England by next week, if I can rush through my passport.”

(Kit and I took one look at the emergency line by the International Building, and decided to use a passport service firm, which promises you a passport in three days.)

“What's the problem? Expired?”

I pause and say, “Actually, I've never been abroad before.”

“Really? I thought all of you kids took that junior year abroad.”

I bite the inside of my cheek before I speak. “Not me.”

“Well you'll love England. We visited Owen in Cambridge often. We even rented a castle one weekend.”

“Wow—”

“It was called Eastnor. Somewhere near the Cotswolds.
Gorgeous,
as my daughter Wendy would say. That was the loveliest weekend. Just the four of us. My son. My daughter. My wife was alive then.”

I smile respectfully, dolefully. I know from personal experience that an understanding smile is appreciated more than a false thought about a dead person you barely remember. Owen's mother was so quiet that I can't even picture her. She was at the party for sure, peeling and quartering oranges for his friends to eat. Her hair was dark, but no, her face is not coming.

As I put his card into my jeans pocket he says, “Would you like to hear from Owen? He's been single for a year and he's so shy that I'm afraid he won't go out again.”

“I kind of already have a boyfriend,” I say. (Or two.)

“Well, maybe you can touch base with him. He is really quite a brilliant young man now. I've been doing the matchmaking for the family. A regular
Schadchen.
My wife would be proud. I was in our lunchroom and found a nice pediatric endocrinologist for my daughter Wendy. She's been dating him for two months now.”

I laugh. This man does not need a history of my sordid love life—I can let Owen know where I stand love-wise if I ever meet up with him. “I'd enjoy hearing from Owen; I'm sure we'll have lots to talk about.” I fiddle with one of the beautiful marbles that are in a candy dish on his desk. “An onionskin. Nice.”

“You collect them, too? Amazing. I've never met a woman who collects marbles.”

“And you still haven't,” I smile sadly. “My father collected them. My brother Gene has his collection now.”

My father has been dead for twenty-five years and I still tear up whenever I let that relevant information out.

Dr. Zuckerman picks up on my own mood shift and says, “I'm sure Owen would love to hear from you.” He smiles kindly and writes out his son's phone number. There's a “212” area code on the piece of paper. Owen is in Manhattan, currently on this side of the Atlantic.

“Oh, Ms. Diamond, before I forget, after the blood test eat some meat. You look pale.”

“I promise I will.”

“Good. And I do really think you'll get on with Owen. I hope you don't remember him as unsociable. Many mistake his shyness for aloofness.”

“No, not at all. I always enjoyed Owen. He was quiet, but going places, and everyone knew it. I really will give him a call.”

“H
ow was your day?” I say after Kit opens the door with my spare keys.

“The Empire State Building was amazing. Much nicer than the Sears Tower. Amazing art deco details, and the view from the eighty-sixth floor truly is splendid. How was your doctor's appointment?”

“He's probably putting me on thyroid pills. It should pep me up a little.”

“I told you this morning. You're plenty peppy.”

“And I told you, I'm peppier with you around.”

He blows me a kiss. “Are you cooking?”

“I bought some food. I'd thought I'd make you a little dinner.”

“Thought I smelled something.”

“Well, it's a roast. I stopped by the supermarket for a big shopping spree in your honor.”

“A roast?”

“My doctor wanted me to eat some meat today. Don't you British people like a lamb roast?”

“On the odd Sunday.” Kit looks at his watch. “Midday though. And truthfully, I think more people eat curry these days than a joint.”

“A joint? Who's eating a joint?”

“That's what we Brits call a roast, my poor innocent. When you spend time in England you'll see.”

“So after the condescension is over, are you going to eat it?”

He grins. “The joint? If you've cooked it—”

I laugh myself as I point to the table Cathy and I bought in Kmart, formally set for the first time in its poor little particleboard life. Every inch of me is having fun. Did I really need that coming Synthroid?

“Very sweet.” Kit lights my dollar-fifty white supermarket candlesticks with his Viper Zippo.

“I even found a recipe for Yorkshire Pudding on the Internet. This is my week's allowance.”

“Can I pay for the bill?”

“No, not in New York. This is my town. Remember, this is to make me feel better? So I'm not so much of a moochie whore.”

“You are anything but a moochie whore. You are a very gracious host. I'm looking forward to dinner.” He thumps his chest, a hungry gorilla. “Meat.” When I grin he adds, “What's the side dish? You have to make sure the potatoes are overcooked and the peas are mushy.”

“Kohlrabi.”

“If you're going for authenticity, that's far too sophisticated for my country's palate.”

“Let's pretend we're on a manor estate.”

“I've been on them. Trust me, the potatoes are over-boiled there, too.”

“I love your shirt by the way.” I peek at the label. As I suspected: Thomas Pink, from Jermyn Street. “Oh, we have Pink in New York now, on Fifth Avenue.”

“You're too much. I didn't even know what label was on. This was a Christmas gift from my mum.”

“It's one of the important British labels.”

“Oh, is that so?” He shakes his head. “This British thing you got going is a bit daft, really.” But even as he scoffs at me he looks as genuinely happy as I am.

Kit looks over the kitchen oven, a gleaming brushed stainless GE Profile, and clucks. “That's some stove on a budget.”

“Cathy's mother is a chef. She gave it to her as a gift—hey, hey! Kit! Don't touch that button!”

“What button!”

“Oh no, Kit, you've locked the self-cleaning button. Cathy had to show me how to open that up.”

The culprit doesn't look worried. “I'll unlock it. Tell me what to do.”

“I don't know how to unlock it!”

He sees my face and I explain: “This happened to me once before and I spent an hour trying to figure out how to fix it until Cathy came home to the rescue.”

“We can figure this out. We have to. Otherwise we don't eat.”

After ten minutes of farce, Kit has a brainstorm. “Let's call the oven people.”

“They probably do have a toll-free number,” I concede.

We find it through Yahoo.

“Oh, hello, GE, this is Christopher Jones here in New York. My dining companion and I have a problem with a button on one of your products—yes, the cleaning—yes, oh, thank you. We have our dinner inside of it, you see—a saddle of lamb—lamb is lovely, yes—jolly good…”

Kit opens the oven according to his phone directions, but to keep cooking would mean eating far later than we expected to.

“Spaghetti?” I ask.

“I think we can salvage some of the meat that did get cooked.” As he carves off any done bits I shake my head in dismay.

“We can make do with this,” he insists politely.

I laugh. Which makes him laugh. Then we sit and eat, adoring each other.

After a second glass of wine he asks, “If money was no object, where would you want to go in England?”

I smile as I put down my glass. “There are a few musts. But money
is
an object.”

“Imagine a minute. Forget your worries. Where would you go?”

“Surely you jest.”

“Hit me with them.”

We sit back at the table, and I hand him a notepad by the telephone and a pencil with a goat marionette eraser topper, a weird souvenir that a fellow NYU linguistics
Ph.D. candidate brought me back from her recent Old German fact-finding trip to Salzburg.

Kit twirls the goat's head and smiles as I take a long sip of the bargain basement red wine I got. “Most of them aren't incredibly exotic locations, just meaningful ones. Like Jane Austen's house, and Cambridge of course, and I heard it's pretty near the town Dr. Doolittle was filmed in and the Millennium Wheel—”

“The London Eye,” he corrects.

Venturesomeness flares up inside me. “And the alley where Jack the Ripper was from, and Wimbledon, and the big tourist spots—Big Ben, and Buckingham Palace—and Abbey Road, and if we get to the Cavern in Liverpool, and of course we have to see John's and Paul's childhood homes, and Westminster Abbey, and Bath, and the Cornwall Coast, and the White Cliffs of Dover, and Sherwood Forest, and—”

“Diamond, you are too bloody much. You're a bigger Anglophile than the Queen.” He picks up my Knead-a-Pet pig, the isometric toy Kevin bought me to ease my pain after typing academic papers. Kit's thumb squishes the part with the snout. He smiles. “Where can I buy myself one of these?”

“Brookstone. A tourist trap, but men love that store. We can stop in there tomorrow.”

“Oh, don't forget the farmer in York,” Kit remembers.

I wince. “Oh, God—I forgot you are my enemy. Why'd you have to go and pop my balloon?”

He pokes me. “It hasn't been so dreadful now, has it?”

I ignore the question. “Don't forget Stonehenge.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that. Talk about bloody tourist traps. We're not going there.”

I seize his pigless hand. “I'll pay for the daytrip. Can you imagine going to New York and not seeing the Empire State Building?”

“But one is good and one is crap.”

“Where is it?”

Kit shakes his head in defeat. “In Salisbury, county Wilshire. Don't worry, we'll go if it means that much to you.”

“Hello?” a familiar voice says. “Is that you, Shari?”

I freeze in my seat. How to explain to my boyfriend the half-cooked roast dinner and the tray of mint peas? And how the hell did he get inside? I never gave him a key.

“Shari?”

I'm still mute, but then I've never been good at poker.

“Who's he?” Kevin asks with great suspicion.

“This is a fellow academic from the conference,” I say hastily.

“Kit Brown,” says my mannered dinner guest after I falter the rest of the introduction. For all Kit knows this could be my neighbor down the hall checking in.

“How did you get in?” I ask dumbly.

Kevin lasers in on my eyes. “Your door was open. And I have a key. Cathy was afraid that her bonsai would die and had me pick the keys up so I could water the plants. I thought you were coming back tomorrow.”

“I shortened my stay a bit.”

Now Kevin's expression straddles suspicion and dismay. “So you flew in after I spoke to you?”

“Would you care for some dessert?” I stammer. How will this encounter end? “I made it.”

“Since when do you cook?” he murmurs loud enough for me to hear.

“Well, considering what we're eating, I'm not sure that I do.”

Kit is still painfully unaware of the true scenario. “No,
I
ruined the roast,” he says congenially.

Kevin's delayed response is tipped with considerable poison. “What's for dessert?”

“Rice and raisin pudding,” I answer meekly.

With all of his brains Kit misses the story here. He thinks he's being helpful with: “Oh, lovely, you made spotted dick.”

Seconds seem like millennia, and I can almost hear Kit's brain processing the scene.

“Are you a friend of Shari's?” Kit says suddenly.

“I'm Shari's boyfriend.”

Kit looks at me and quietly says, “I see.”

I take a deep breath. “We need to talk, but not now. Why don't you come over tomorrow? I'm going to England next week—”

“You're going to
England?
”

“Yes, Kit has located a farmer who speaks Volapük.”

Kevin's voice strains in his attempt to sound unaffected. “Isn't that the man you were looking for?”

“Well, yes.”

He resumes his cross-examination. “You look pretty happy about it. If it was me I'd be crushed.”

“We're not competition anymore.” I look over to Kit for backup. I feel even sicker when I see he's fuming,
himself. “Can we meet for breakfast tomorrow?” I say desperately.

It was tomorrow that I had planned to sit him down and tell him, “You are a lovely person, but you are not the one. Please come to accept that this relationship sagged and twisted to its own death.”

Kevin heads toward the door. “So I'll leave you two fucking liars alone, okay?”

What can I say? I cop it.

But Kit doesn't. “I don't appreciate being addressed like that,” he says from his chair. “I have no idea who you are and I've never lied to you.”

“I don't believe you assholes.”

Kit rises to follow Kevin out of the door. “I need a smoke.”

“Wait, Kit.”

“Yeah, I see where your loyalty lies,” Kevin snarls as he twists the doorknob.

“May I be afforded an explanation as well?” Kit says with his own backward glance.

 

That elevator that is such a luxury in the East Village, even if it breaks down at a drop of a hat? I'm stuck in it. With Kit. And Kevin.

Is this Divine punishment meted out? What further castigation do the fidelity gods have in store for me?

I press the alarm button.

Kevin crushes a foam-packing peanut littered in the corner of the elevator with his hiking boot. “Listen, Shari, no more baloney, please. Can you at least tell me what is really fucking going on here?”

Hatred is really spooky in surround sound.

“Can we just speak privately, please?”

“I want to know the truth now!”

Kit looks intently at the ceiling.

“She didn't tell you about me?” Kevin says.

“No.”

Now Kevin glares at me, face scarlet-red. He's holding back tears the best he can. “That's even more insulting.”

I look at Kevin directly for the first time of the day. “I like you to pieces, but I've never been in love with you. And I never said I have. Circumstances have made it difficult to call this whole thing off, but even if I hadn't met Kit it was going to happen. I just hate that it's happening this way.”

Kevin puckers.

The door opens. We've been rescued by Max, the six foot Vietnam veteran handyman of Avenue A, a man who's been on the cover of at least three tattoo magazines for his almost completely tattooed face.

He greets us with a fat grin. “Ehhhh—it's the linguist. Where's your friend with the bonsai?”

Between Cathy and myself, we've been stuck four times in the past two years, and that's on the low side for residents of this building. Even though it's chilly outside, the fix-it man has on a white undershirt. He once told me that ever since Vietnam he feels the seasons differently than the rest of us; he claims autumn in New York feels like a hot rotten summer, while summer is “Max's inferno.”

I give him a thumbs-up. “You're the best,” I say feebly.

Kit and Kevin step out.

“No problem.” Max jokingly pops his left bicep, the one with a photorealistic tattoo of Robert DeNiro in
The Deer Hunter.
“Your janitor called me. He was too sleepy to do it himself.”

After killing people, everything, according to Max, is “No problem.”

Locked bathroom door? No problem. Kid wedged salami down the sink drain? No problem. Love triangle stuck in elevator? No problem.

“You're lucky I wasn't at my girlfriend's, kids. I've had it to here with sleeping at her place. Today there was another holdup on the number five, a robbery. I had customers in the morning, floor tiling, and they were fit to be tied. I lost a hefty tip they usually give. Everyone from the zoo stop was late again today.”

“The zoo stop?” Kit says, the first words he's uttered since Kevin's tirade in the elevator.

“Just across from The Bronx Zoo. When the gorillas urinate, I know it, and when the giraffes move their bowels. That scent just floats over.”

Despite our own shit going down, Kit opens his wallet fat with money. “Here's to make up for the gorilla piss delay.” He slips Max twenty and Max appreciatively slaps Kit on the back.

Kevin takes this in, glances at me and heads for the glass door.

“Wait, Kevin.”

“Just get the hell away from me.” He turns the knob and is ready to flee.

I won't let the door slam and I hold him by the arm.

“Get the HELL away from me.”

“What's happening here, man?” a Goth teen asks from atop a parked purple Volvo. His voice croaks either from all-night drinking or puberty.