The Widow's Guide to Sex and Dating (15 page)

18

“I’m trying to date. It’s not going so well,” Claire said to Lowenstein.

“All right. Let’s come back to that. You mentioned another dream.”

“It wasn’t really a dream, more like a vision, a hazy sort of vision. How do you remember things?”

“How do I store certain events—is that what you mean?”

“No, not store them. How do you play them back? Do your memories have sound? Are they in color?”

It was a pertinent question, because in memory Claire took liberties. She was thinking of when she first met Charlie in the bar of the St. Regis, an old throwback of a hotel where men stroked rolls of bills and wore heavy watches, and women were busty with tottering hair. Claire had painted and repainted this scene, thousands of times since that night.

“They do and they don’t have sound and have color,” Lowenstein said. “Our memories are parceled out by sound and color, yes. When you recall them, they retrieve these links and assemble into a sort of multimedia production, if you will. Memories are pliable.”

Claire got out of her chair and paced. She felt agitated. Charlie was everywhere, but not in comforting or nostalgic ways or anything that was mildly reassuring. He raced through her mind like an extra darting out from the crowd, causing the actors to flub their lines.

On weeknights the St. Regis was flush with commuters, in that dreamy period between high-rise offices and Greenwich picket fences. The men stood and the women dangled from stools. Claire had been to the St. Regis just that once, to meet Charles Byrne, yet her memory of it was so vivid, she could tell the grade of jewels on the women’s hands when she replayed it. She could see the worn spots on the fabric that cloaked the walls. She recalled the back table where she waited, the warmed bowl of almonds she’d eaten to seem occupied. The gin and tonic she’d ordered, the bruise on the lime. The memory ran through her memory in black and white, and
sérieux
, like a Truffaut film.

“Yes, they are,” Claire said. “You’re right. It wasn’t dingy, or black and white, the room was bright. It was full. There were candles on the tables, and the girls were in short skirts.”

“Is this a memory, then? Is it a significant one?” said Lowenstein.

“I’m just thinking of when I met Charlie. What’s the point of memory, though, if we change it to suit ourselves?”

“In some cases it’s quite useful. Memories are a source of comfort, and they are also flawed. They are affected as we take on new information or add life experience. For instance, this memory of your first meeting with Charlie is likely different now than it was five years ago, based on the experiences you’ve had since.”

“I’ve turned it into a movie scene: A room of middle-aged men and saggy chins, call girls in leopard prints circling like sharks. Clenched faces, fake alligator bags, fingernails bright red.”

“And why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know. Either because I’m destined to write a mildly interesting screenplay one day, or I’m just re-scripting my averagely interesting life.”

“Are you playing with memory, to make your life more interesting to you?”

“Everything was thick. Wrists, carpet, walls, high-backed booths. The room was dark and table lights drilled down from the ceiling in the shape of cones, like an interrogation room. The carpet was the color of dried blood. Norma Desmond would have fit in perfectly sprawled out on a velvet settee in the corner with a cigarette holder the length of her arm.”

Lowenstein cleared her throat.

“Claire, the scene has changed three times while you’ve been sitting here,” she said. “Whether you consciously realize that or not, memories are affected by the information you’ve received subsequently. When you’re having conflicted feelings after your husband’s sudden death, don’t you think it’s interesting that the room decor has gone seedy? This dream-memory stands in for Charlie and for men; you’re at a point now where you’re seeking out intimacy, however tentative.”

Claire looked out the window. While Lowenstein was looking down, she exhaled on the glass and traced her name.

“I don’t know if it’s intimacy, exactly. Part of me just wants to sleep with someone and get it over with.”

“You want a lover. Someone you can place in a different scenario than you see Charlie in.”

“I don’t know. Eve, my botanomanist, said to do it out of town and don’t even ask his name. She screwed a car salesman and then got married eight months later.”

“To the car salesman?”

“No, to a tax attorney.”

“I see.”

“We’re out of time, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

19

Claire’s third date played hockey for the New York Islanders, and she arranged to double with Richard and Bridget to take the pressure off. They met, in various stages, at Bemelmans at the Carlyle Hotel. Bridget was there when Claire arrived, draped loosely around the bar, eating olives.

“Oh my God, Claire. Hi!” Bridget said. A great part of her appeal was her unparalleled fervor for almost everything.

Bridget double-kissed and Claire did not, but they got past it almost flawlessly and Claire assumed a tall chair at the bar.

Bridget was a dog stylist. She outfitted very wealthy dogs. Charlie had casually observed of her once that she was a G-string away from pole dancing, which wasn’t saying anything at all except that he wouldn’t mind sleeping with her, given the chance. Claire noticed a wobble in Bridget’s movement off of, then back onto, her own tall chair. She was drunk.

“So, are you okay?” Bridget whispered it passionately, with her head down, speaking and looking not at Claire but instead straight ahead, like a spy from central casting.

“Yes, I am. Thanks,” Claire replied, also straight ahead. Bridget was having martinis; Claire followed suit.

“No, I mean it. God, it’s so fucked up. I mean, how did you deal?”

Claire hadn’t seen Bridget since the funeral and she wasn’t completely sure they were talking about Charlie, but it hardly mattered.

Bridget was eating the olives from her drink, pulling them one at a time from a swizzle stick with her teeth. When she finished, she loaded her glass up again from a bowl the bartender had set in front of her. It was fascinating to watch. She chewed each briny fruit purposefully and with her whole mouth, like caramel-covered candies.

“And now, oh my God. You have to start dating. Doesn’t that suck?”

Claire bypassed Bridget’s questions and countered with her own, a trick she’d learned from Lowenstein. “How is work going?” If she started on this, Claire knew she wouldn’t have to talk for a while. Bridget’s eyes popped wide and she sucked in her breath.

“Oh my God, you wouldn’t believe it. It’s going
so
great. I’m in
Bark
next month!”

Claire had to ask. “
Bark
?”

“You know, the magazine? They did a huge cover story called ‘Doggie-Style.’ Isn’t that smart? We did the shoot in Bayville Beach. It was really amazing. Susan Sarandon’s dog was in it. And you know that woman who played Anna Wintour in the movie? Her dog was there, too.”

Claire took an olive and contemplated the thought that Bridget did not even know who Meryl Streep was. Bridget went on.

“I’m starting my own line now, too. Entire ensembles focused around verbs. Richard says it’s very highbrow.”

Claire took another olive, leaving them just two—one apiece—with the bartender nowhere in sight.

“They’re not a statement or, you know, a lifestyle or anything like that. They don’t say anything about you. They’re a verb. So I’ve sketched out a Sit line and a Come line, and, of course, a Shake. I’m planning to launch six verbs to start and add twelve more next year. I have to finalize my collection by November to get into spring shows.”

Bridget picked up the last olive with her thumb and third finger and placed it on her tongue like communion. A ticker tape of new verbs, no doubt, raced through her seamless head. Still looking straight ahead, and not at Claire, Bridget let escape a prolonged laugh. It was a good laugh and it brought the bartender back with more olives.

They chewed and Bridget laughed and they ordered more drinks.

Richard’s arrival just then might have been anticlimactic had he not walked in the door with Jake Murphy on his heels.

Claire was gripped suddenly by pet verbs. They had hold of her like an old song on the radio.
Stop. Stay. Heel.
Richard kissed first Bridget, then Claire, and ordered drinks for the four of them. Jake stuck out his hand and Bridget laughed.

“You girls know this guy, of course,” Richard said. Claire didn’t watch hockey, but she understood the expectation that one was to recognize sports stars. She suspected Richard hadn’t known who Jake Murphy was, either, until that morning when he googled him. “Honey, this is Jake Murphy, best center in the league,” he said to Bridget. “We just met in the lobby. And, Jake, this is Claire.” Claire smiled.
Bark. Fetch.

Jake was cute and smartly dressed. He looked like a well-appointed boxer—the dog and athlete both. He was sleek and muscular, his clothes were snug. He looked obedient.

Sasha just then began a steady stream of texts.

4got 2 tell u, J’s writing a book!
Claire took Sasha’s cue.

“I heard you’re a writer off the ice. I didn’t know hockey players could write. I thought their hands were always all broken up.”

Jake held out his smooth, unbandaged hands.

“Memoir?” Richard said.

“Something like that.” Jake was looking at Claire intently. “It’s about hockey, pretty much. So yeah.” Claire flashed a lopsided smile back. Between the chewy olives and Bridget’s verbs, she had managed to finish off three martinis. A square-jawed hockey player in business-casual Prada seemed like the next obvious thing.

“This is brilliant,” she slurred to Richard. “Sasha’s out of her mind.” She felt the buzz of her phone:
He has profile in Vogue, 2! Nxt month.

Jake was not what she expected. He was soft-skinned and had all of his teeth. He didn’t look like a hockey player; he looked like a Chippendales dancer who juggled acting gigs by day. He looked like the Golf Pro on
Days of Our Lives
.

“How’d your
Vogue
piece go?”

“It was cool. Yeah.”

“Who was the writer?”

“Can’t hear you, honey.”

“WHO WAS THE WRITER?”

Jake grabbed Claire’s hand. They moved their foursome to a table and Claire followed Bridget’s tipsy weave.

“You write or something, too, right?” Jake said. Sasha had prepped him.

Claire, heady from booze, formed a wry smile and geared up. “I write erotica,” she said. “BDSM, groups, shemales.” She laughed into her drink, looked up at Jake through wispy bangs, then sunk one pinky carelessly in the vodka and twirled.

Richard eyed Claire suspiciously. Bridget took Richard’s hand and started laughing again. “It’s okay, baby,” she said.

“My husband was a sexologist,” Claire said.

Jake smiled big, first at Claire, and then at Bridget, and Richard intercepted Claire’s next drink.

“It’s
okay
, baby,” Bridget said again.

By midnight, Bridget’s head wobbled, Richard yawned, Claire was enjoying Jake’s hand, but talk, for the most part, had died; they’d grown restless. Richard leaned in close. “Listen, you okay?”

Claire gave him a thumbs-up and felt her phone buzz again.

R U still there?

Bridget was nudging Richard to leave. Claire texted Sasha, squinting at the screen on her phone, which appeared to have gotten smaller.

Yes … little drink-richard I think worried.

After some gratuitous wrangling, Jake paid the check and Bridget and Richard got in the first cab while Claire and Jake waited for the next. “Where are we going?” she asked, her hands clutching onto his muscular arm.

“Fuck,” Jake said. “I don’t have my keys.”

“What? Okay,” Claire said.

“My keys. Shit, I don’t have my keys. I left them at the gym.”

A call to the gym confirmed it was closed.

“Shit. Oh well.”

Claire was too hazy to think through whether this was something he’d planned—the old key ruse. So she took keyless Jake home. She tossed the clutter of take-out containers under the sink and threw open her drapes to let in the city lights.

“Whoa, babe. Nice place.”

She opened a bottle of wine and started giggling.

“Beaujolais!” she announced. “Big fruit and leafy smells.” She took an exaggerated sniff of the bottle. “I think it’s out of season. There’s a season for Beaujolais, you know.” She could hear herself slurring. She found everything terribly funny. She stumbled and Jake caught her arm. She let her hair fall out of its clip and kicked her shoes across the room. She poured a glass of wine for Jake and kept the bottle. Clutching it, she put it up to her mouth for a long drink and wiped her lips with the back of her hand. This was New Claire now. Claire of the Jungle. Single, young, hot, wild, crazy Claire.

Jake grabbed the bottle and drank from it, too. “You’re a naughty girl, I bet.” Naughty Claire? She considered it. Should she spank him? Spank herself? What would Charlie have said were Claire to ever have inquired about the terms of being naughty?

“You know,” Jake said, rubbing the wine bottle against her throat.
Oh God
, Claire thought.
Am I supposed to do it with the bottle?
“I might be stuck here for the night.”

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Jake asked to take a shower, which seemed perfectly natural. Claire pointed down the hall. It was one o’clock, and they could sleep in or maybe not. They could go for coffee in the morning, or he could leave while it was dark. Who cared? There was a man in her room for the first time in six months, not counting Ethan. She was too drunk to panic. This was easy. This was nice.

At that moment, losing her widow virginity to a hockey player made perfect sense.

But fifteen minutes later Jake reappeared in Charlie’s robe. The camel-colored cashmere robe she’d bought him for Christmas just last year, before anyone knew about dying. Their last Christmas, before she knew it was the last.