A Certain Age (9 page)

She sat in the car. She could hear the sea, quite close by, probably just on the other side of the house. It was the real thing, the real summer beach cottage for rich people, and it made her realize just how poor an imitation Natalie's house was: no matter how much money had been spent, nothing seemed quite right, as if aliens from another planet had constructed a human habitation based on photographs. She was about to go in and find out where Darryl had disappeared to when he emerged with a suitcase and several paper bags. "Sorry about that," he said. "My . . . uh, they were still awake, and kind of upset that I was going. They were expecting me to stay at least through tomorrow."

"Who lives here? Friends?"

"You might say."

She was surprised he knew anybody as wealthy as people who would own a house like this. They sped in silence back toward the city. She was relieved he didn't mind being quiet. She turned toward him, watching him in the flickering lights off the highway. He drove quite badly and she was grateful there was so little traffic; he had a way of pressing the gas pedal with a jumpy motion and then releasing it, so that the car jerked forward and then slowed.

"So tell me, what happened?"

"The hostess threw me out," Florence said. "She threw a big scene, and accused me of sleeping with her husband."

"Of what?"

"Screwing her husband."

"You slept with John?" He sounded sickened.

"He attacked me. I pushed him away, but he told Natalie I seduced him."

"That's terrible! These are terrible people, Florence. You should never have gone to stay with them."

"Mmm."

"God, if I had known, I wouldn't have gone to her party. I'll never have anything more to do with them."

"That's nice of you."

"I've never liked them anyway. I just went because I knew you were going to be there ... So maybe now you are liking to come for a drink, and I will show you how are Russian peoples?"

"How are Russian peoples?"

"Just as bad." He gave her a grin.

They went to a noisy club under the subway tracks somewhere in Queens. It was an area she had never been to, full of shops with signs in Cyrillic, almost like visiting another country, dirty and yellowish and sour. The club was crowded, but the man at the door obviously knew Darryl, who held her hand and pushed through the crowd. They joined a large table of people—he shouted out their names to her, she shook her head with a dismayed smile. A bottle of half-frozen vodka was placed in front of them; he poured them each a shot and passed the bottle down around the table. A little orchestra played Russian music, hokey but charming, on a small stage while a revolving disco light spun on the ceiling.

She had the sensation she was on a ship, probably a sinking ship, but nevertheless everyone seemed determined to have a good time. Or perhaps that was why it was so much fun. At the far end of a table a red-haired woman, in her forties, sat weeping into her drink; no one
else paid any attention. Next to her was a large man with a red face, who gave the illusion of having a large walrus mustache, no doubt some ancestral trait that haunted his face. He put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her to him. "Why are you looking so sad?"

"I'm not!"

"What?" the man haunted by the mustache shouted, spewing flecks of spittle. His small blue eyes almost popped out of his head. "You are not treating my friend badly?"

"Who?"

"My friend Darryl. He is a good person. You, I think, are not such a good person."

She was irritated. "What makes you think you can make a snap judgment? You don't know anything about me."

"I look." He seemed pleased to have provoked her. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Everything in the magazines and TV, said to be considered attractive, to get a good job, to find the right man, one should have one's nails done, keep up with the latest hairstyles, buy the latest silkening shampoos, dye one's hair gilt and bronze. Shoes should be polished, never down-at-heels. The right outfits were necessary for every occasion. Then, when a slim measure of perfection had been achieved, there was always some guy to look at her with a sneer and judge her a phony.

"Perhaps not. I'm just a typical American girl. Think whatever you want to. You will anyway." She sipped her vodka.

"No, no! Wodka must be drunk like this!" The red-faced man drank the whole jiggerful in one gulp, then gestured for her to do the same.

She couldn't figure what Darryl was doing with these people. He seemed to speak fluent Russian—that was a surprise, but not a shock. He was brilliant, he could have done anything, but instead he wasted his brains on useless projects, people, places; he had no desire to get ahead. The air almost crackled with Russian energy, vitality, despair, but she could muster no interest in this group. In some way it reflected badly on her—on Darryl—devoting an evening to people who weren't right socially. That was the way things worked here: unimportance was a qualifiable entity that could rub off on you, like a skin fungus. Associate too long with the wrong types and she would join their ranks.

If she got slightly drunk she wouldn't have to think about the humiliation of the past two days. What could she have done? John had basically raped her, sort of—at least she had done her best to cover up the whole thing. If she had told Natalie that her husband had broken into her room, Natalie still would have blamed her.

She drank the vodka in one gulp; it was like swallowing a mouthful of frozen gasoline. For a moment she was transported to some Antarctic plain, a howling whiteness where she crouched, alone, in an improbable igloo made of blocks of clear ice. When she came out the other side, the man sitting next to her, whose name she had been unable to comprehend, refilled her glass and

held it to her lips. What was going to become of her? At least tonight she could have a vacation from the real world. Darryl was looking across the table at her with a worried expression. "Are you all right?" He gestured toward the ruddy-faced man and addressed him sharply in Russian.

"I'm fine!" Florence said. She took the glass from the man's hand and drank it. "I want to sit next to you," she announced to Darryl.

"What?"

"I want to sit next to you! You're too far away, on the other side of the table. I can't hear you." He looked down, embarrassed yet pleased, and fiddled with some crumbs next to one of the great puffy slabs of bread that had been left untouched on a stainless-steel salver. Then he came around to her side and switched places with the man next to her. Seated now across the table, the man began to bellow in Russian the words to the music, and those sitting beside him joined in. "Nikolai is a curator at the Tretyakov Museum," Darryl shouted in her ear.

"Yes?" she said.

He nodded. "Tell me, have you been to Russia?"

She shook her head. "You seem to know something about the art scene."

"No, but Nikolai is my best friend, and so I know a little. How's your job?"

"They don't pay me anything! If they don't give me a raise or I find a rich man to marry, I'm going to do something desperate!"

"You're just kidding, right? Oh, God, Florence—take a look around you! The reason I brought you here . . . was to show you these people, my friends.
They
don't have any money! But they're out here having a good time, happy to be together, happy just to be alive—these are real people!"

She looked around. The red-haired woman, holding a glass of vodka, was sitting in the corner singing in Russian to the music, tears streaming down her face. Her cheeks were red and rosy like those of some barmaid in
The Brothers Karamazov.
Two men were arguing passionately at a nearby table. One had a little beard and

round glasses like Lenin's; the other, the beatific expression of Prince Myshkin. "If these people are real," she said, "then I don't want any part of reality."

"How can you say that?" Darryl leaned forward. "These people—my friends—they're like me. Once you're their friend, they're completely loyal. Like me. And you won't find that in New York City. Nobody even knows how to be a friend, let alone has any idea of what loyalty and friendship mean. I'm your friend, Florence."

She was drunk, she thought, and so was he. She was sorry she was so cynical, but the conversation didn't seem to make any sense. The only thing she knew was that abruptly, spontaneously, Darryl had become very attractive; perhaps it was his previously unannounced belief in the goodness of people and the world, or perhaps the idea that she had, at last, one true friend.

They began to kiss as if they were two birds, wild macaws high in some tree, and his arms were wings she could crouch beneath. Abruptly Darryl began to cough and he pulled away, gasping. "Give me some water." He finally managed to speak. "I don't know what's wrong with me. I guess I should go see somebody."

"Not tonight what?"

"What?"

"A minute ago you said, 'Not tonight.' "

"I don't remember." He looked puzzled, distracted. Now that he had pushed her away, she flung herself on him, pawing his hair and kissing the rim of his ear.

7

He got her back
to Manhattan around four a.m. A Sunday morning in July, the West Side appeared shut down and there was a yellowish cast to the light, as if it had been abandoned due to some environmental disaster. There was no traffic; pulling over, he got out and went around to her side of the car, opening her door. "Why don't you come up with me?" she said, clutching him.

"No, no, I can't," he said.

"Why? What's wrong with you?" she said. Her voice was slurry. "Are you gay?"

"No, I'm not gay," he said. "Come on, Florence, are you telling me you don't remember?" She had fallen over his shoulder, a limp, clinging zoo animal nuzzling his neck. "Will you be okay? To go up in the elevator?"

The front door was locked; the doorman must have been dozing inside and it took a few minutes of pressing the buzzer before he got up. In the meantime, she kept wrapping herself around Darryl; each time he detached or pried off her arms and legs, she would manage to fasten on to him again.

"Please don't make me go home alone."

"It would be taking advantage of you, in your present condition." He kissed the side of her cheek.

"In what present condition? You think I'm drunk? I might be a little drunk, but I remember what a great screw you were."

His face crumpled. "Is that what you think happened? That's all it was for you? I was a good screw?" He looked so hurt she had to say something.

"No, just kidding," she assured him. "I just thought you might want to come up with me—even for a drink, or something."

He was still somewhat suspicious. "I don't want to go home with you and have you tell me tomorrow that the only reason was because you didn't want to be alone. You must know by now I don't feel casual about you. I'm not that type of guy." The doorman had staggered over and was unbolting the front locks on the glass door. "I'll call you tomorrow. You free tomorrow evening?"

"You want to see me again?" Florence said. "Or are you just saying that to get rid of me?"

"No, I want to see you again!" He was mildly irritated yet at the same time almost swooning with delight; he had waited for years for this.

"Okay, but tomorrow night we'll go to where I want to go. No more Russian . . . vodka factories."

"You do the choosing."

The doorman was looking out at them sleepily. Mustering what little dignity she could, she turned and went in. "I hope you have a wonderful evening," she said exaggeratedly. "Drive safely!"

There wasn't a single message on the answering machine. If she hadn't gone away, she would have sat in the dark apartment without speaking to a soul. For half an hour she paced back and forth, picking up old magazines and catalogs, only to realize she had read them all before. The words wiggled around the page. There was no central air-conditioning in the building and the two rooms were hot and stuffy. She turned on the unit in her bedroom window. Then she remembered something. She went to the kitchenette and opened the freezer: half a quart of chocolate—chocolate chip ice cream. She grabbed a spoon and got into bed. When she plunged her spoon methodically into the hardened mass, like a miner picking at chunks of coal, her mouth filled with the darkly bittersweet coolness. She ate blindly, unable to stop herself, no different from a butterfly repetitively plunging its proboscis, or a leopard tearing at a carcass. Such animal bliss! If only life could be lived in this state of pure being.

Then she felt sick, not physically but mentally. The ice cream was gone. She studied the back label over and over. There were more than four hundred calories in a cup. She must have consumed nearly three cups. Twelve hundred calories of pure fat. It had taken so little time to consume; the delicious taste had already vanished. But the calories would remain.

For a long time she couldn't fall asleep. Her bed was spinning. It was as if, having had a respite from thinking, her mind was going to punish her by working overtime. How could she have slept with John? But maybe they really were getting divorced: he would marry her, there would be gossip for a time, but it would all pass and she would be a member of that world inhabited by the right sort of people, the only world there was to inhabit in New York.