The Ladies' Man (34 page)

“It was fine.”

“Are you glad? Was it all that you had hoped it would be? Can I have a hug?”

Adele said, “I'll get dressed in the bathroom and call it a night. No need to walk me back; no need to get out of bed.”

“I most certainly
will
get out of bed and give you a proper farewell,” he said, springing to his feet, immodest as an undiapered toddler. At the door, Assistant Professor Jelavich pressed his lips to her right hand. “Adieu, sweet and slightly sad lady.”

“I'm not sad in the least,” said Adele.

Antiseptic on one hand, messy on the other, is laboratory sex without affection or desire. This many years later, Adele thinks of Ted Jelavich more often than she'd like to, not wistfully but inevitably, her sole context for intercourse and male anatomy in action. Some days she thinks she is lucky to have come away with the job accomplished tidily by a volunteer gigolo, because she didn't want him then, and she doesn't want him now.

Adele has the apartment to herself tonight. Tomorrow is the weekly meeting between Development and Promotion, which Marty usually attends. To her annoyance, she is experiencing what could only be described as man trouble. Unseemly and unworthy. She concedes that she may be due for a policy change because it's been difficult in this world to never have married. Occasionally, when asked, she lies. “Divorced,” she'll say to a stranger at a wedding reception to avoid a certain conversational airlessness. Of late and on occasion, she has replied, “Widowed.” Everyone blames Harvey Nash, but Adele on this night blames herself. She could have encouraged some men who came calling; could have gone on second dates with otherwise respectable candidates who didn't appeal to her for superficial reasons, such as height or table manners or dandruff on lapels. At twenty, twenty-five, possibly even thirty she wouldn't have gone out with Marty Glazer; wouldn't have crossed paths with him for reasons of geography and sociology. And now, at fifty-three, she is looking around her apartment, wondering what chore she can undertake to keep her mind off the fact that she and Marty had flirted, stood out on the curb shoulder to shoulder, remarked on the full moon, and would have—if they hadn't been in the figurative shadow of the station, and weren't a lawyer and the daughter of a lawyer worried about every footnote—kissed in earnest. Gone somewhere
together. Erased Ted Jelavich as a record holder, or at least superseded him.

She could do work. She could read—the memoir she's started is a seven-day book and not renewable. She could iron while she watched—what night is it?—
Live from the Kennedy Center
. She could return phone calls or write a thank-you note or hem a dress. She could clean house, which would please Kathleen when she came home later, especially if she tackles Lois's eyesore of a deserted room.

She begins by hanging up Lois's clothes, which leads to a pairing of her shoes on her shoe tree, a disposal of dry-cleaner polyurethane bags, and a vacuuming of Lois's wall-to-wall. She straightens the perfume vials and bottles of lotion on the mirrored surface of the vanity table. Lastly, she strips the bed and remakes it with what she thinks of as Richard's sheets. Lois had painted her walls, against everyone's objections, a corned-beef rose with white woodwork for a surprisingly pleasant effect. If Lois remains at the boardinghouse, Adele thinks, or if Kathleen marries Lorenz, she'll gain a guest room. Or two. The concept of living alone takes her by surprise, and she sits down on Lois's vanity chair to imagine life without sister-roommates. Tonight, it is just right. Could she swing the rent on her own? She dusts mementos, including a small silver picture frame in the shape of a heart—Lois and Cullen, coming back up the aisle as husband and wife—and slips only that one into the top drawer of the vanity, which belonged to their mother and which gives off a trace of her sachet. Adele takes a last look at poor Cullen. She was fond of him; any one of them might have found Cullen suitable before the revelation. Kathleen passes Cullen occasionally on Congress Street, and reports that he nods briskly, but can't meet her eyes.

It is only on her way back to the kitchen for glass wax that Adele spots Kathleen's note, secured to the refrigerator with their only racy magnet—a tanned male torso wearing polka-dot boxers slipping down pale buttocks, a trade-show giveaway that offends only Richard. “I'll be staying chez Lorenz tonight,” it says.

Why am I surprised? Adele thinks. Of course it would lead to this. Well, good for her. Sex with love. She suspects Kathleen has
passed the rest of them by because she went to college in the 1970s, when men were allowed in the dorms; even before that, she was the first Dobbin to stay out all night after her senior prom. What was the boy's name? Lived on Tappan. Went to Hamilton, or was it Colgate? Brian? Brad? Kathleen said they'd gone to Crane Beach like everyone else in the entire graduating class, and after two other daughters her parents should know this is B.H.S. tradition, for God's sake.

It is the way of the world, and has been for decades: Kathleen will be staying at Lorenz's apartment, sleeping in Lorenz's bed, having sex with him and enjoying it. Lois will be sipping drinks in a bar, smoking cigarettes and looking for company. After all this time, the Dobbin girls are getting brave or getting foolish—except for me, Adele thinks. I'm fifty-three years old. What could I do that would be out of character, something that would have shocked Mother? Everything and nothing. There are no house rules anymore. The Dobbin sisters are orphans now, and not minding it. Breaking rules. Some of them. Richard Dobbin is sleeping on a couch in a bisexual coworker's apartment, probably walking around in polka-dot boxer shorts, happy as a clam, while on the other hand, Marty Glazer, dressed in suit and tie and starched collar, can't handle having a cup of coffee with her by the station microwave. What could
I
handle? she wonders. What could I write in a note left casually on the refrigerator for all comers to read? “Staying at ——'s tonight. P.S. I lost my virginity years ago (no one you know), so this isn't the milestone you think it is.”

Adele goes to her own room. The night is not young. The night is over. She could set the soda bottles right now and get into bed with the thin memoir, due in two days. Or she could make a phone call. Bring it to a head. Not apologize for waking him. Ask, “Did I do something to offend you, Marty? I had the distinct feeling you were avoiding me at the office today.”

It's late. One doesn't make phone calls at this hour. One doesn't call boys at all, even to ask the homework assignment. You don't go out with sons of parents we don't know. The boy always comes to the door when he picks you up. Never let a boy in when you're
home alone, and never go to his house unless his parents are there. Don't talk on the phone if there's an electrical storm. Don't go out with wet hair. Don't let a boy touch your knee.

I'll read, Adele thinks.

But then the author of the memoir describes in detail what she did at fifteen, willingly, exuberantly, expertly, with the scholarship college boy who tutored her in her three failing subjects. Adele is amazed that someone still alive, someone whose “About the Author” says she is married with two young daughters, would confide these activities to anyone but her therapist, let alone brag about them in a book. She puts the memoir down. She finds that the confessions have, nonetheless, dumped something chemical or hormonal into her bloodstream, something potent and very nice. She picks up the slim volume again and finds her place.

After dinner—and by dessert, Kathleen and Lorenz can't bear another word, good or bad, about Nash—Cynthia drives them to the North End. She has invited them up to her condo for a nightcap, complaining, “It's barely eight-thirty,” then guessing what their pressing engagement is. “I'm betting that someone lent you his apartment for the night, and you don't want to waste a second. Do you both have housebound roommates or something?”

“I live with my sisters, but Lorenz has his own place,” says Kathleen.

Lorenz, in the front passenger seat, flashes her a look that signals
It's almost over
. “Left at the next corner,” he says, “then left again.”

“Espresso,” Cynthia reads from a neon sign. “ ‘We invented chocolate-chip cannoli.'… Anyone?”

“Some other time,” says Lorenz.

Kathleen leans forward and touches Cynthia's shoulder. “Dinner was delicious.”

“It was, wasn't it? I love that place! I love the woodwork, and the floors, and the whole look of it.”

“My lamb was out of this world,” says Lorenz.

“And my crème brûlée,” says Kathleen.

“My father makes a great flan,” says Lorenz.

“He's from Havana,” says Kathleen.

“Is he home now?” asks Cynthia.

Lorenz laughs.

“What?”

“It took a whole campaign to get him out of the house for one night.”

“Why?”

When Lorenz doesn't answer, Kathleen says, “He didn't think it was proper for us to be there unsupervised.”

“You two? At your age?”

Lorenz says quietly, “He thinks there're two kinds of girls in this world, and Kathleen's a nice girl, period. Regardless of how old we are.”

Cynthia slaps her steering wheel. “You know what? I should give you a key to my place. I'm never there during the day, am I, Lorenz? I leave around eight and I don't get home till six at the earliest. You wouldn't even have to give me advance notice. I'd knock before I opened the door. I mean it. I'd get a kick out of helping you two.”

“Why?” asks Kathleen.

“Because I would. I'd like there to be a little luxury in your lives, and a gorgeous view, and a Jacuzzi.
Somebody
ought to get some pleasure out of it, because it sure ain't going to be me. I'm back to where I started—a big empty apartment.”

“Which sounds like heaven to some of us,” says Kathleen.

“Here,” says Lorenz. “The green triple-decker with the barrels out front.” Cynthia shifts into park and sighs. “You can have it, the big empty apartment and the big empty bed.” She studies Lorenz's house through the windshield, then adds, “Quite literally, I meant that—it's yours any time you want to use it.”

Lorenz says, “Thank you, but—”

“But what? How do you know you won't want it on a spur-of-the-moment basis? You take a lunch hour, right? If this is your first night together, you don't know what this might unleash. Ever heard of a quickie?”

Kathleen laughs.

“See?” says Cynthia. “She's no prude.”

When Kathleen touches Lorenz's penis—finally!—it is easier than she thought possible, a meeting and greeting, a quick rub through his trousers as they kiss their way up the stairs past Mrs. Nocera's apartment. Lorenz's hands travel down Kathleen's raincoat to her bottom—this still before he's unlocked the apartment door—and she, Kathleen Dobbin, presses against Lorenz with the confidence that comes from having negotiated the evening's agenda in advance. Lorenz kicks the door closed with his foot, and this time slides his hands under the layers, and encounters—where he expected silk or cotton—not much. “May I see?”