The Ladies' Man (24 page)

The girl is no youngster, but that's okay. They could adopt. Her visiting nurse went to China for a baby and got an adorable one. Mrs. Glazer drags a bridge chair over to the set for closer examination. The redhead is touching the sleeve of Marty's suit jacket to interrupt him with an announcement of a dollar figure. They look happy. She turns up the sound. Maybe she'll call in a pledge and say, “That's my son on television. I'm not kidding. I'm Marty Glazer's mother. Could you put him on?” Her boy can't take his eyes off this girl. Maybe she'll call Leota to make sure she's watching and to second her own, very clear impression: that this girl in the claret dress wants Marty to take her on a date.

In the time it takes Lois to walk from the door of the Parker House to her brother's table, Richard doesn't recover from the shock of how terrible she looks as a blonde. He stands and kisses her cheek.

“Do you like it?” Lois asks.

“Sit,” says Richard. “I ordered you a glass of white wine.”

Lois touches her hair, rakes it back from the temple with her fingers. “You hate it,” she states calmly.

“It's just … people dye their hair red to get your natural color.”

To his dismay, Lois's voice shakes when she answers. “We're not three redheaded sisters rolled into one. I'm sick to death of that. I want people to be able to distinguish between us. You never had to worry about that.”

“Lo, it's fine. If you like it that's what's important.”

“You don't get tarred with the same brush: the three spinsters.”

“Who said that?”

“Adele!”

“It doesn't sound like a word she'd use.”

“She used it! She
reveled
in it. She smiled when she spit it out! I'm no spinster. ‘Spinsters' don't marry. Spinsters can't be women who are popular and—I'm going to say this because we're both adults—not dead yet.” Lois doesn't know how to whisper. The man at the next table looks over. “I can't conduct a social life from Stearns Road, and that's the problem.”

“Because?”

“Because I have too many chaperones there. I can't invite someone for dinner, light some candles, put on some music—”

“And who'd cook for this tête-à-tête, Lo?”

“I can cook a meal for company! I certainly can follow a recipe. Or defrost something of Kathleen's.”

Richard asks if she has kitchen privileges at the bed-and-breakfast.

“Unfortunately not.”

“So you're not exactly throwing dinner parties every night.”

“But my life is my own! I come home from work and if I want to go out, I just go. No questions asked.”

“Where do you go?” he asks.

Lois waves a hand with each lie: “Restaurants. Theater. Parties. I just go. I don't have to tell Kathleen by nine
A.M.
to buy one less lamb chop.”

“Hey,” says Richard. “You don't have to justify that to me. You don't see me apologizing for not living there.”

Lois nods once, twice, as if entering into a black-sheep pact with her brother. She holds up her glass, then stops in midgesture. “Richard,” she says. “I just had the most incredible idea.”

A waitress brings a salad bowl of pretzel mix, and Richard thanks her by name: Kelly. Kelly asks if he'd like a refill and he says, “A little later. My sister might like something to eat, though.”

All of the sisters know this “my-sister-and-I” routine, the announcement to an object of possible desire that he is in the company of family. Kathleen—the one most easily mistaken for a date—has perfected her role as Richard's wry accomplice. She'll confide in the woman being wooed, “He's trying to tell you that he's single and I'm to be ignored.”

Lois says without consulting the menu that she'll have the shrimp cocktail, and Richard says, “Nothing for me this minute.”

Lois repeats that she has an amazing idea: She and Richard should get an apartment together.

“Absolutely not,” he says.

“Because?”

“Because guys my age don't live with their sisters unless they're eunuchs.”

“I wouldn't interfere. You could come and go as you please and I wouldn't care what you did or with whom. Besides, I'd look after certain things you don't care about.”

“Such as?”

“Bookkeeping. Changing the linens. Watering the plants.”

“I like things the way they are,” says Richard.

“Which is how?”

“On my own. Living in Newton.”

“With this Nora woman?”

“It's her apartment, but she's not there that much—”

“Where is she?”

“At her girlfriend's.”

The connotation doesn't register. Lois asks if Richard met her on the job.

“Yes, but not in the usual way; not serving her any papers. She's a colleague. Came over from Franklin County last year.”

“Are you seeing her?”

Richard laughs. “You're so dense, Lo. She's not interested in men. She likes girls. Women.”

“Oh,” says Lois. “That doesn't shock me. I'm no stick-in-the-mud.”

“We're friends.”

“Okay. I get it.”

Richard thumbs the condensation on his glass and smiles.

“What? Is there someone else in the wings?”

Richard grins and pops a few peanuts. “The lesbian thing aside? I think she likes me.”

“Nora?”

“I'm trying to find out.”

“So she's not a real lesbian?”

“She lived with a guy once.”

Lois says, “There's so many nice single women around, Richard, without this complication. Can't you find one who prefers men all the time?”

He shrugs and says, “I like her. She's great.”

“You like the unavailable ones, the uphill fights.”

“It may not be as uphill as you think,” he says, and raises his eyebrows.

Kelly brings Lois's shrimp cocktail and a bottle of Tabasco. Lois says to Richard, “You're eyeing mine already. Why don't you order one yourself.”

“Should I?” he asks Kelly.

“Up to you,” says the waitress.

“I'm not sharing,” says Lois.

“I'd go for it,” says the waitress.

“My treat,” says Lois.

“Absolutely not,” says Richard. “Besides you're making me look like the poor relation in front of this very charming young lady who serves shrimp cocktail all day to yuppies in Armani suits with big wads of cash.”

“Platinum credit cards,” says Kelly. “But I'm not impressed by guys who are impressed with themselves.”

“He'll have one,” says Lois, “and I'll have another glass of the house white.”

“I'm Richard Dobbin,” he says.

All six rows of Hillel volunteers are staring at the monitor, where Richard Benjamin is lying on top of Ali MacGraw. No phones are ringing with pledges. “How are we doing?” Marty Glazer asks Adele.

“Too soon to know. Ninety-odd calls so far, which is low. We'll see how we do during the movie.”

“I found the movie pretty faithful to the novella,” says Marty. “Or maybe I'm merging the two in my memory.”

“I never saw the movie,” says Adele. “And I'm embarrassed to say I never read the book.”

“I saw it in college.” He smiles. “With Barbara Dinoff, if I'm not mistaken.”

“Old girlfriend?”

“Blind date.”

“And you remember her name?”

“I knew her from afar, and my sister engineered the fix-up.” He grinned. “To no avail. That was all there was to it:
Goodbye, Columbus
, good-bye, Marty.”

“I'm sorry,” says Adele.

Marty shrugs.

“Did you call her, or did you just assume she didn't want to see you again?”

“I called. She had a quiz the next day.”

“Ouch,” says Adele.

“Terrible time, my twenties.”

“Mine, too,” says Adele.

Marty smiles and tilts his head. “I find that hard to believe.”

Adele doesn't amplify. She has written a new rule and here is its first test: no more relaying the hard-luck broken-engagement story to any man, and no more evoking the name of Harvey Nash. “Oh, you know,” she says. “I think we feel more confident now. I was a self-conscious kid, and relatively tongue-tied. At this age, I feel like I can carry on a conversation with almost anyone. I think it gets easier.” She glances over to the movie on the screen. “What am I missing?” she asks.

He wants to put his arm around her shoulder and explain the plot as if they are staring at a distant shore and he is helping her locate
the dot that is their cottage. But he can't. He is the station manager; she reports to him. He's attended seminars and knows he should not propose renting
Goodbye, Columbus
at a later date, and watching it without phones ringing or calculators whirring. Instead, he allows himself to move an inch closer so he can narrate the mid-movie action. “Her old man is a plumbing contractor, and he's taken his son into the business.”

Adele checks the studio clock. “Less than five minutes … I'll reintroduce you, then I'll say something like, ‘Tell us about the letter your mother wrote to Julia Child.' You'll have about thirty seconds.”

Marty looks newly worried. “If I don't get in the part about the kosher salt, she'll never forgive me,” he says.

“What about kosher salt?”

“My mother thinks that regular salt has cornstarch in it and makes the soup cloudy. So you have to use the kosher.”

“Is that true?”

“I never researched the question,” says Marty.

Adele smiles. “Then I think we can give you another ten seconds. And don't be nervous. Just pretend we're chatting at the copy machine, just the two of us, with no one else listening.” Marty swallows hard. It draws Adele's gaze to his Adam's apple, where she notices that the knot of his tie is askew. She hands him her index cards, and, in the interest of good television, straightens it.

Cynthia is washing glasses in the kitchen, and has declined Nash's insincere offer to dry and put away. He doesn't notice that she is angry—snatching plates aggressively from tabletops, banging the stainless into the dishwasher's utensil basket, soaping crystal petulantly. In bed alone, he is studying
TV Guide
while flipping channels with the remote control. A familiar voice causes him to look up. “New members, old members, lapsed members,” the woman's voice is saying. “We want to hear from all of you
 … right
now.”

It is the televised, dressed-up Adele, looking damn good. He takes another pillow from Cynthia's side of the bed and props himself higher against the headboard. The dress she's wearing shows off her
waistline, and even if she has small tits, she's got curves. Who knew Adele would look this good on TV, better than she does in real life? He revises that with a charitable thought: What dame'd look good after choking on a steak and breaking a rib and hanging around in her bathrobe, scowling the entire time? Here she's looking happy, confident, less like a bitter and pissed-off old maid. Good makeup job. He knows this phenomenon, having seen enough middle-aged actresses looking haggard in the supermarket, then a week later on a talk show looking pretty sensational. Now Adele's talking to some suit, a wimpy guy with no hair. Overeager, Nash thinks. Adele's lips match the maroon of her dress, and Nash likes the effect against her pale skin. So does this guy, obviously; it'll be fun to tease her later about her new admirer. Now that flat-chested Ali MacGraw is on the screen. And here's Jack Klugman.
Love Story
, he guesses. He had some buddies who were extras in the hockey-rink scene, pretending to be Harvard fans. Maybe if he'd stuck around, he'd have been an extra, too. Maybe even talked his way into some composing or arranging. Francis Lai got rich on that sappy score.