The Ladies' Man (14 page)

“I did not.”

“I disagree. An open book.”

Dina says, “If my face fell it was because I thought that you were really in a poorhouse. As a kid or something.”

Byron points his spatula at a snapshot on the refrigerator. “Speaking of faces, is that him?”

Dina says, “On Christmas.”

“I'm guessing late fifties.”

“Fifty-five,” says Dina. “That's not a great picture.”

“Handsome,” says Byron. “If you like that older, matinee-idol kind of devastating good looks.”

“How old are you?” she asks.

“Forty-one.”

“You're almost bald.”

“But look: no gray hairs. If I had a full head of hair I'd look twenty-five.”

Dina smiles.

“How old are
you?”
he asks.

Dina says, “I usually lie.”

“Don't lie,” says Byron. “You're going to eat more, and you're not going to lie.”

“I'm forty-two,” says Dina.

“Excellent,” he says. “Excellent truth-telling, and an excellent age.”

“I'm older than you,” she says.

“I'm more mature, though.” He shuts off the burner with a snap. “And a much better driver.”

“Aren't you going to tell me I look thirty-five?”

“I would, but I think that's what all the guys tell you.”

Byron divides the stir-fry into unequal mounds on two blue plates. Dina pinches a taste from one and says—an experiment in how this willful contrariness feels from her own mouth—“This isn't so hot.”

“I'm not a magician. You had no ginger and no spices. I didn't even ask for sesame oil.”

Dina carries both plates to the dining room. Byron follows with the teacups, and switches the larger serving to her place. “Where were you headed tonight when I hit your car?” she asks.

“Nowhere. I heard the crash and came out to see what all the racket was.”

“Whose house did you say it was?”

“A friend.”

“A male friend?”

“A woman friend who used to be my roommate in New York, and her husband.”

“An old girlfriend?”

“Actually not. Just a roommate.”

“Are you gay?” Dina asks.

Byron says, “As it happens, I'm not, but I know exactly why you asked.”

“I didn't think you were—”

“You were starting to add up the stereotypes: He's in the theater. He's forty-one and single. He lived with a woman but they were not romantically involved. Her husband is not threatened by him. He has a sardonic sense of humor. He has those pretty-boy good looks.”

Dina says, “I guess that puts me in my place.”

“Seriously. Would I be courting you if I were gay? Right under the nose of my friends? Your neighbors? Wouldn't they report me to my lover back in New York?”

“You could be married with a wife back in New York. People cheat all the time,” says Dina.

“Like what's-his-name?”

“Nash.”

“When does Mr. Nash come back?”

“He's not,” says Dina.

“You know that already?”

“I'm almost positive.”

Byron waits a few beats before asking, “Is that a heartbreaking thought?”

She shrugs.

“Is it another woman?”

“Yes and no. He went off to Boston to find some woman he used to be engaged to.”

“When?”

“Ages ago. In his twenties.”

“Otherwise, has he been faithful?”

Dina says, “Is that any of your business?”

“I'm a playwright,” he says. “I need to know how the world works.”

“We weren't married.”

“And you think that's pertinent?”

Dina drones, “Unmarried means single. Single means not coming home occasionally.”

“Is that what happened last night?”

“No,” says Dina. “This is a breakup.”

Byron says, nodding as if rendering a serious and thoughtful verdict. “Clearly, he's the wrong man for the job.”

“Maybe.”

“Too old and too randy.”

Dina laughs.

“Whereas I'm young and true blue.”

She smiles. “And full of shit.”

“In a good way, right? You use ‘full of shit' to mean ‘silver-tongued' and ‘expressive.' ”

Dina hesitates. “You have an answer for everything.”

“I do, but I'm not being glib. It's eloquence. If it were another century I'd be a great orator, debating and running for president.”

“You could run for president in
this
century.”

“No,” he says. “I take my God-given talent and put it into monologues. Or dialogue.”

“See,” says Dina. “Yak, yak, yak.”

Byron asks, “Will you take me around to see the sights of Orange County tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“To thank me for my Zen-like composure in the face of vehicular mayhem.”

“You don't know me,” she says. “This crap about loyalty and ‘if we fall in love,' is just that—crap. I know a line when I hear one. Yours just happens to be one I never heard before, probably because I've never been to New York, and never seen one of your plays.”

“How about Laguna?” he asks. “We could have dinner. Or lunch, if that suits you better.”

“I have clients tomorrow,” says Dina.

“When?”

“All morning.”

Byron says, “Me too. Meetings.”

“Then I have stuff to do in the afternoon.”

“I'm sorry,” he says, “but you can't give me the brush-off. I have a couple of more weeks left, and then they send me home. I have to forge a bond with you before I get on the plane.”

“This is a bond,” she says. “We've bonded.”

“Dinner, then?”

Dina looks away, out the window, then back at Byron Sprock's freckled face and pink eyelashes. “I don't think so,” she says.

“I'm basically irresistible,” he tries, “but sometimes it requires an investment of time to detect it.”

Dina says softly, “I don't understand why you're trying so hard.”

Byron Sprock's East Coast heart contracts then expands. “I know you don't,” he says.

“I'm fine. I've recovered from the shock of the accident.”

He puts his fork down and pushes his plate away. “I'm serious now,” he says.

Dina puts her fork down, too.

“Where I come from,” he begins, “accidents are random. Ice melts, frost heaves, pavement becomes potholes. We have fender benders. We call the police and Triple A. In other words, our accidents have no subtext. But here, it may be something else. Chance. Fate. The gods. For example, what made me park in that exact spot, on this night? And what saved you from getting killed crossing four lanes so that you'd live to hit my driver's-side doors?”

Dina says, “I checked to see no one was coming in either direction, but I didn't expect anyone to be parked opposite the driveway.”

He resumes eating, because Dina is looking more puzzled, and no more sympathetic, and scolds himself for indulging his own voice. Unless you're Shakespeare, he reminds himself, soliloquies rarely work.

B
ecause she feels bad about declining whatever it is that Byron Sprock is offering, Dina sends him back across the street with a gift certificate for a half-hour reflexology session.

She consults her calendar, and says she doesn't usually see clients Saturday afternoon, but would make an exception. Say, one
P.M.
?

“And then I take you to lunch?”

“I'd love to,” she lies, “but I can't.”

Dina sees things slightly differently in the morning. She changes outfits between her last client and Byron, from her New Age clinician's look of a white lab coat over Mao pajamas to a short, stretchy skirt and jersey top that shows an inch of midriff. When Byron arrives on the dot of one, Dina explains the drill: foot bath, diagnostic stimulation to determine which organs or areas of the body are in a state of disorder, then the actual reflexology treatment, which she combines with aromatherapy. Does he have any particular aches or pains?

“In my feet?”

“No, anywhere. Back? Head? Gastrointestinal tract?”

“Why?”

Dina explains: He knows, doesn't he, that all organs, nerves, and glands are connected to certain reflex areas in the hands and feet?

“I certainly did
not
know that.”

Dina tells him to look up there at her chart: Toes correspond to the head and brain, with his pituitary gland here. His sinus here. His gallbladder, kidneys, and transverse colon there. “I have patients I treat for migraines, for infertility, glaucoma, cataracts, neuritis, shingles, arthritis, sinus trouble …”

Byron asks where his private parts are on the chart.

Dina traces a line on his foot, between anklebone and heel.

“Wow,” says Byron. “If only I'd known.”

“Now you're going to hop up on the table, and lie down, supine. I want you to relax completely.” Dina begins pinching and stroking and kneading his feet with the upper-body gusto of a varsity rower.

He asks if people talk during their session the same way they do to their barbers.

“Sure.”

After a few minutes he says, “Very relaxing. Is that what I'm supposed to be feeling?”

Dina smiles. “Harmony. Relief of stress and tension. Increased concentration. Maybe not right away, but over time.”

“Can I do this myself at home?”

“Somewhat,” says Dina.

“But it's not the same as having your feet caressed and squeezed by a woman?”

Dina says, “The theory is that there's a transference of energy between the therapist—”

“A
beautiful
woman, if you don't mind me saying that.”

“Why should I mind?” she says. “I never understand these women who don't like compliments.”

“Me neither. And it's not like you'll ever have to see me again.”

Dina pumps another squirt of almond-scented lotion into her hands and rubs them together thoughtfully. “Really? You think we'll never see each other again after this session? With your friends right across the street?”

“Have we had a change of heart?” he asks. “Because lunch was discussed without success.”

“Was it?” she asks. “I must've been more tired than I realized.”

Byron makes a V of his feet, and studies Dina between them. “Have you decided that I have some redeeming social value?”

“I think you're smart,” she says, “and I like hearing you talk.”

“Which you've realized is no small set of attributes.”

“I've been adding them up, as a matter of fact,” says Dina. “Your brains, your height, your nice coloring, your apparent good physical and mental health.”

“All true,” says Byron. “I'm quite the specimen.”

“I think you are,” says Dina.

“And you would know because you see a lot of specimens. And the feet never lie, correct?”

“That's correct,” she says.

“How do I stack up in the feet department? Top third of all feet? Top ten percent?”

Truthfully? Byron's feet could appear in magazine ads. He has unusually regular, attractive toes, and beautifully defined arches and soft skin. His nails are a healthy pink and there isn't even the suggestion of a bunion or a callus. “Yours are probably in the top ten pairs I've ever handled,” she says. “If you lived here, I'd use you in teaching.”

He asks how often her clients have these sessions.

“Usually weekly. Sometimes more often.” She explains that what she is doing now, if it hurts a bit, is breaking up the deposits of waste—lactic acid, uric acid, calcium—along his nerve pathways. With stress, they build up. And of course gravity carries the wastes along the nerves to his extremities.

“Of course,” he says.

Dina moves to an ankle and its neighboring indentations.