The Best of Everything (39 page)

"That was so long ago," Sidney said.

"Two years and five thousand hours of hand-to-hand combat away."

He laughed. "That's the last word on the gentle art of dating."

"If they only knew."

"I'm trying to think back to when I was about ts\'enty-five," Sidney said. "I can't remember ever forcing myself on a girl."

"And you were probably more successful than these strong-arm men."

"I guess I was."

Now I'm talking about it, Barbara thought, and I brought it up myself. Sex, sex, why can't I think of some small talk instead of this? Is it because it's what we're both thinking about, even I, without really wanting to? I hate it. But she kept on talking, like someone talking in his sleep, in a pleasant, emotionless voice that was meant to be the sort of voice one uses for small talk but which concealed so much more. "I'll tell you about the date I had last Saturday night, if you can bear it."

"Tell me."

"Well, I'd seen him around at parties but he'd never said more than hello to me. And then one night he called me and asked me out, so I went on Saturday. The first thing we did was go to his apartment for cocktails, and he played some dirty songs on his lii-fi set."

"On a hi-fi set!"

"With three speakers, so you would be sure not to miss a word, God forbid. Then we went out to dinner at a terribly expensive place, and he turned out to be suave and intelligent and I was really starting to like him despite the dirty records. I figured that was probably his sense of humor and I shouldn't be a prude. Everything was fine until we got to my house and he asked if he could come in and have a drink. I didn't want to seem mean, after all, the dinner had been so expensive and it was only eleven-thirty. My mother knew I had a date and she always scuttles into her bedroom when she hears my key in the lock because she knows how diflBcult it is for me to have to live with her and entertain my friends at the same time she's in the living room. So there we were, he and I, and I gave him a drink and he didn't even touch it. He leaped on me. I swear, he was just one generation away from growling."

Sidney smiled. "Then . . . ?"

What was making her tell this dreadful story, she was embarrassed already. It was too late, he was waiting. Why didn't I keep my mouth shut, she thought, why did I have that second drink? What's the matter with me? "Well . . . nowadays when you snap a girl's garter you're pretty far up. I kept trying to struggle away from those clutching hands and I'm sure it was perfectly obvious to him that I hated every minute of it. I didn't dare make any noise because I didn't want my mother to hear—it made me feel silly. And

I was afraid to wake the baby. It was kind of a silent death struggle, and then do you know what he had the nerve to say to me? He said, as if that made everything perfectly all right, 'Don't worry, I won't lay you, I just want to neck with you.'"

"If I were a girl I would have taken ofiF my shoe and hit him with it," Sidney said. "That raises quite a welt."

"With the heel or the sole?"

"The heel."

"I wish I had."

"What did you do?"

"I got away from him and he was angry, of coiu"se. I never heard from him again and I never will, unless it's second hand about what a drip he thinks I am."

Sidney shook his head. 'It sounds incredible," he said sympathetically. "Where do you find these oafs?"

"I'm lucky, I guess."

"When my son grows up, I hope he won't be like that."

"How could he be?" Barbara said.

They looked at each other for an instant and Barbara felt the meeting of their mutual glance with almost a physical impact. She forgot entirely what she was going to say next and simply looked into Sidney's face, helplessly. He looked away first. "Do you want another drink?"

"No, thank you."

He beckoned to the waiter and held up one finger.

"What's that song," Barbara said, floundering, "or is it a comedy routine . . . Tm going to put sand in that baby's spinach because he might grow up and marry my daughter'?"

"Grow up and date my daughter sounds more likely," Sidney said. He reached over and took hold of her wrist very lightly with two fingers. "Look ... I have to meet some people for dinner. WiU you come with me?"

Other people; what could be safer? She was relieved, and yet, in a way, she was disappointed. She was beginning to feel warm and cozy inside, she didn't want to talk to anyone but Sidney. But this way was obviously more sensible. "Yes," she said, "I'd like that very much."

She was astonished, first of all, to find that he did not take her to a married-man's restaurant counterpart of the married-man's bar

where they had met. He took her to a well-known, luxurious, brightly lighted place where people went who could afford the prices and liked gourmet food, a place that attracted both successful people and the oglers who follow them. Tliey met another couple who were already waiting for them at the bar. The wife was a former movie actress who had now settled down to being a mother; Barbara had never seen her in a movie theater but she had seen her once on television in a rerun of an old motion picture. Her husband was a press agent. They seemed neither surprised nor shocked that Sidney was there with a girl, nor did they act as if they had met him dozens of times with other girls. Barbara felt at ease in a moment, even though they were much older than she was, and halfway through the meal she found herself talking to the other woman about make-up and clothes and the problems of bringing up young children. Sidney had made no excuses for Barbara when he introduced them, he had not said that she was an old friend or a business contact, and yet no one showed by extra solicitude that they considered her an oddity. It was a strange situation to her; somehow she had expected everything to be different. And that's how provincial I am, she thought.

They finished dinner at eleven o'clock. Despite the fact that she had never before known anyone who could afford to take her to this restaurant, and she had always wanted to go, Barbara could hardly eat anything. The wine she had drunk during dinner and the after-dinner brandy made her feel rather odd, as if she knew she ought to be high and yet she wasn't. She had the feeling that everything she would say would be perfectly sensible and yet she had to be careful still because it might sound different to someone else.

When the other couple were about to climb into a taxi the actress leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. "Barbara dear, I'm glad we met. You will send me a copy of your magazine, won't you?"

"Of course." She stood there with Sidney as their taxi drove away. "Why do people always ask me to send them a copy of the magazine when they can buy it anywhere any time, for a quarter?" she asked him. "Not that I mind at all."

"It's her way of keeping up with you. She liked you."

"I liked her too."

"I'm glad." He took her hand and she gave it only an instant's thought, it seemed so natural a gesture. "Those are two of my favor-

ite people. I hardly see them, though, maybe six times a year. I hardly have time to see anybody I want to."

"You're working nearly all the time, aren't you?"

"Nearly. The stupid part is I don't really have to. You get in a rut, think you can stay at the office one more hour, do one more thing. Then you get tied up in something and you can't leave. Let's go someplace for a brandy."

"All right."

They walked down the street in the dark, hand in hand, and although Barbara had always disliked holding a boy's hand on the street because it looked so soupy and teen-agey, with Sidney it suddenly seemed as if it was the only thing to do. She didn't care who walked past and saw them. They strolled up Fifth Avenue looking into all the store windows. "I like that," he would say, or "I think that's awful, don't you?" and she would find herself agreeing with everything. They stopped in front of one garish display, shaking with laughter.

"That's just what I need!"

"I want a dozen!"

It was trite, just as trite as holding hands in public, but with Sidney it was new. She remembered what he had said that night when he held her hand, that it was a braille the sighted had worked out to learn things they couldn't see. There were all sorts of signals, the first tentative relationship between a man and a woman was full of them. Even such a silly thing as midnight window-shopping was one of them. Barbara remembered all the dull first dates she had had with boys in which the entire evening was spent exchanging likes and dislikes: records, politics, books, places to dine. It had been so mechanical, so boring. And here, for no reason she could reasonably think of, every interest of Sidney's was fascinating to her. She wanted to find out everything he had ever liked and pour out to him everything that she had ever found important.

They went to the Oak Bar at the Plaza for a drink and sat at a table in the comer. "You know," Barbara said, "more and more lately whenever I see people who have been married for a long time, whether happily or unhappily, I wonder, How did they meet? What makes tv/o people decide to stay together for the rest of their lives? It seems so long ago that I got married, and all for the wrong reasons, that I guess I'm looking for a formula in somebody else."

"Somebody else's marriage is always a little of a mystery," Sidney said. "Isn't it? Especially if they're happy. You wonder how they did it. You wonder what they have that you never managed to have. I think about it too."

She looked at him in the dim light. "Maybe this is none of my business, and tell me so if it isn't. You're unhappy, aren't you?"

"I guess so, if I stop to think about it. That's why I don't think about it."

Something inside her moved, painfully. "Then it is none of my business."

He covered her hand, on the table, with his. "I'll tell you anything you want to know."

"I never ask anybody personal things. I don't know why I asked you. I'm a little high, as usual, I guess. You've never really seen me at my best."

"If we don't ask each other personal things how will we get to know each other? We don't have much time."

"We don't ... do we?" It hit her then, the futility of it, the haste and the artificiality. They didn't have much time because each of them had his own life, Sidney at least had, although hers was far from full. And soon his wife and son would be coming back, although she was sure that hadn't been what he meant at all. Haste, haste, a quick romance, a few dinners, a few more drinks, a few evenings in bed. What could they oflfer each other that was lasting, that would not die of its own helplessness? Of course they had to hurry, because the ending would be upon them before they knew it, and the beginning was so full of doubts, and the only part that mattered was the high point in between. Whatever had moved inside her moved again, until it filled her chest, and Barbara turned her head away, looking at a mural on the wall.

"I shouldn't have said that," Sidney said. "It was a stupid thing to say."

She turned to look at him. "What?"

"We have all the time we want. You know that, don't you?"

"Yes."

For the first time she felt relaxed, calmed, and a real warmth came over her. He was not like other men, she knew that now. And she wanted to see him. She no longer felt as if it were a battle of wits, she could really be herself. He had taken the tension out of

their relationship constantly all evening by the little things he did and said, and now by this final promise. "Tell me," she said, leaning forward, 'Tiow you met your wife."

"At a party in Greenwich Village when we were both twenty-four. It doesn't sound like me now, does it? She was a ballet dancer, or at least she was taking ballet lessons three hours a day, and I was working in an advertising agency. During the day I wore a gray flannel suit and at night and on the weekends I used to hang around the Village with a group of guys I'd met when I first came to New York."

"From where?"

"Lebanon, Pennsylvania. They were from all over the place. There was one who wrote for little magazines, and one who painted terrible pictures and never washed the paint oflF his arms, and one who played the guitar. There's always somebody who plays the guitar. It was two years before tlie war broke out in Europe and we were all very nervous and full of ideals and we used to talk each other to death. I guess all over the Village there were other groups of kids who thought they were going to be the Thomas Wolfes and Picassos of tomorrow, just like us. Anyway, I met this lovely, graceful girl and took her home from the party. She was living alone in a drend-ful little cold-water flat, but it was summer and we both thought the place was beautiful. I never left. We were each of us lonely without admitting it, and we thought we were being very Bohemian. When we decided to get married we went to Cartier's in blue jeans on a Saturday afternoon to pick out the ring. I remember wondering what would happen if anyone from my office saw us."

"It doesn't sound like you at all," Barbara said. "I can hardly picture it."

"Well after a while all the guys I knew got married, one by one, and became respectable. We were becoming pretty respectable ourselves. After my wife had our baby she gave up ballet for good and we decided to move to the country. That was probably the worst idea we ever had. As a matter of fact, it was my idea, I had to talk her into it. Some of my friends, the newly respectable, were moving to Westchester. So we went too, and after a year I was all ready to move back but she liked it. We stayed, and finally we bought the house where we are now. The trouble is, it was such a long trip from the city and I had to work so late some nights that we really only

saw each other on weekends. I had one set of friends in the city and she had another in the tall-grass Upper Bohemia. It took us ten years to discover that we hardly knew each other any more."

"Why didn't you move back to the city then," Barbara asked, "before it was too late?"

"If I had been sure it was the country that was to blame I would have insisted on it. But I was never quite sure. That's what I keep asking myself. I wish I really knew, I'd feel better then."