Cheapskate in Love (3 page)

Not entirely ignorant of all the sensitive matters Jonathan
was contemplating, and therefore unwilling to pry into his thoughts, Helen
said, “What I want to know is what Linda sees in him, on the occasions when she
actually does want to see him
.”

Neither Jonathan nor Helen had an answer or even a good
guess about what Linda might have seen or might once again see in Bill. It was
a thorough mystery to them both. Shortly thereafter, exchanging wishes for a
good night, Helen went to her apartment and Jonathan returned to his game.

Dear reader, lest you be on the brink of deleting this book
or, perhaps, hurling it out of a window, please have a little more patience. You
may be completely disgusted at the outrageous suggestion that a good-natured
and attractive woman like Helen might have an interest in such a man as Bill.
That is understandable, based on what has been told so far. Although Bill
wasn’t ugly or mean, he had no strong positive qualities, unless being a shabby
tightwad is a virtue. However, there are additional circumstances to consider.

First, it must be stated in Helen’s defense—hopefully
to no reader’s disappointment—that she was not a zombie without control
over her actions and propelled toward Bill by some dreadful curse, destined to
rip his limbs off methodically one by one. Nor was she a witch capable of
casting enchantments upon Bill and having him eat out of her hand and drink out
of her shoe, who was waiting for the proper moment to say the magic words. She
wasn’t even a vampire, with the normal diet of those creatures, who would be
having nighttime snacks of Bill, getting her enjoyment out of him, whether he
liked it or not. No, although all such imaginative identities might have made a
better story and pleased more readers, with the additional benefit of giving
Bill what he truly deserved, none were true.

Moreover, Helen didn’t have the seemingly bipolar behavior
of Linda to explain why she appeared to lose her mind and ask Bill to go
dancing or eat brunch together. The off-and-on attentions of Linda for Bill, on
the other hand, are easily accounted for. Although Linda thought that a man
would be a desirable addition to her life, as a successful, self-made,
hardworking immigrant she wasn’t yet ready to enter into any partnership in her
private life and change or compromise. All of her dating—even with the
men before Bill—had seesawed between the extremes of wanting
companionship and refusing to accept any differences.

Helen was more broad-minded and tolerant than this. She had
had a long, happy marriage with George, her deceased husband. Together they had
weathered the difficulties that arose with respect and love for each other. He
had died a couple of years ago before turning sixty, leaving her a widow
without children in easy financial circumstances—she wasn’t wealthy, but
she didn’t have to work if she lived wisely—and she had deeply mourned
his unexpected death. But with the passage of time she began to feel lonely.
She had sold the house where they had lived together for years and moved to the
apartment building, thinking she would be around others more and less conscious
of being alone. But that move had turned out to be a mistake. Although she
lived in closer proximity to others now, she felt even more isolated. People
living in apartments, she discovered, were more reserved than house owners.
Psychologically, she was ready to meet a new partner in life.

She wasn’t dating, though. She wasn’t even comfortable with
the
concept
of dating. The meaning of
the word “dating” appeared to have changed drastically since she was growing
up. Whenever she heard or read about young people going on a date, they seemed
to be saying they were going to bed together, without much of a detour. The
purpose of a date seemed to have become physical recreation for two bodies,
without knowledge of or affection for the other. Is that what dating now is,
wondered Helen, remembering dates from her youth and their simple, social
pleasures. The story that she overheard one day about a young woman who went
home willingly with a strange man, both of whom were slightly drunk, shocked
her. Without asking, the man squeezed the woman’s windpipe during sexual
intercourse, choking her, thinking that such attentive care would heighten her
pleasure. The woman, however, thought otherwise. Helen was overcome with
revulsion by this story.
Dating appears
to have become incompatible with a sense of decency and self-respect
, she
thought. At that moment, she missed George deeply and felt he could never be
replaced. “The world has changed too much,” she said, when her grief was
greatest, “and I prefer to be left behind.”

But that moment passed. Helen was too optimistic to dwell
among memories. Perhaps, her optimism and hope was the result of living as
close as she always had to New York City and being a frequent visitor to that
ever-changing metropolis. Perhaps, she had been touched with its energy,
constant change, and forward momentum. Whatever the cause, she had gradually
become open to change in her personal life. And she knew that the first step
toward change is to take a chance. Without attempting something new, she told
herself, there can be no change.

But trying to have a closer social relationship with Bill,
which
was all she was trying to do at the moment, was not a
big risk for Helen. In fact, she didn’t consider it a risk at all, although it
would be a change, if it happened. She had known him for many years. Ever since
Bill had moved to town after his divorce, they had gone to the same church.
After she and George saw Bill and his date at a dancing club once, they had all
gone out swing dancing together on multiple occasions. Bill had even been a
good friend of George’s, although their characters differed to a considerable
degree. Since George’s death, social interactions between Helen and Bill had
ceased, but Helen still felt a high degree of comfort with him and thought she
understood him well. She didn’t admire him, but she thought he had enough good
qualities to justify a relationship. A woman who had unreasonable expectations
of the other sex was a woman, she felt, who wanted to be alone; George had not
been a saint, and she thought that all men retained too much of the boy in them.
Despite Bill’s obvious attempts to avoid her and keep her at a distance, a
tiny, tiny thought in Helen’s head whispered every now and then that with time
and effort Bill could be the new George.

What
a wonderful
thing thinking can
be! How freely we can diminish and dismiss obstacles from our minds and arrange
everything to our mental satisfaction. If only others would think like we do,
there would be no discord.

Chapter 3

By the time he reached his apartment, Bill had already
forgotten Helen and her questions about going dancing or having brunch. As he
closed and locked his apartment door, he was remembering the failure of the
evening with Linda. His train of thought inevitably reached back to all the
other failures and unhappy relationships that he had had before. This night, as
on almost every other night he spent in his apartment, Bill wallowed in
reflections of his miserable personal past. There had been so many women, and
the string of them had grown so confused and tangled in his head. Most of the
time he could not recall with certainty what had happened with what woman, or
how long he had been with whom, or even the names of them all. His mind drifted
aimlessly amidst the disappointments, like someone hopelessly lost. From time
to time, he would flinch with the memory of the humiliations and hurts he had
received.

His bachelor pad was the perfect setting for such reveries.
The good-sized studio was dirty, littered with junk, cheaply furnished, and
dominated by a queen-sized bed, which was rarely ever made. It had been a long
time since a woman had put a foot in his den.

On top of a beat-up Formica desk against one wall, there was
an outdated desktop computer that worked sometimes. Bill occasionally thought
of replacing it, until he calculated the cost. Near the desk, a sagging
pleather sofa sunk toward the floor, opposite a faux wood console cabinet. On
top of that piece of plastic sat an old television set that gave any program,
even a news show with live coverage, the appearance of a documentary, because
the screen quality was so poor. The
fanciest
furniture
in the apartment was a dining set, a table with four chairs, which was a gift
from his ex-wife, because she hated it and wanted it out of her home. Bill
never used the dining set for eating, since he ate sitting on the couch. The
table and chairs were covered with papers, unopened mail, pens, pencils,
scissors, dirty laundry, things he had bought which had yet to be put away, and
many other miscellaneous items of dubious value. Near the bed was a rickety
wood dresser, another gift from his ex-wife. Its top was a general storage area
for the overflow from the dining table, and its drawers were never fully
closed. Clothing was bunched, scrunched, shoved into drawers, and hung over
edges, as if it were trying to escape and flee the apartment.

After he locked the door, Bill dropped his briefcase on the
floor, careless of where it landed. He then slung his overnight bag on top of
the pile that was on the dining table. On the couch, he gently set down the box
of chocolates.

Going to the one large window, he closed the blinds. His
apartment was on the first floor of the two-story building, and it had a view
of the swimming pool, which was about three hundred feet away. Bill never went
swimming in the pool or sunbathing, although he sometimes thought about doing
so, when he saw good-looking, young women out there. At those times, he made
sure his blinds were open all the way, so they might see how much admiration he
had for them, if they ever looked in his apartment’s direction. No woman ever
did. The reputation he had built for himself, talking as freely as he did with
some of the staff and tenants, discouraged most women from wishing to make any
acquaintance with him.

After turning on the television, he took off his tie and
threw it over a chair on top of other clothes. He tossed his Blackberry on the
couch, away from the chocolates. Taking off his jacket, he took a couple of
steps toward his closet to hang it up, but the dining chair was closer, so he placed
the jacket on that, too. He then went into the short, double-sided galley
kitchen, which was as dirty and disorganized as the rest of his apartment, and
took out a small tumbler. After a moment’s thought, he put it back and began
looking through cupboards, until he found a large glass, which he dropped some
ice in. He poured the glass full of scotch and took a swig from the bottle
before putting it away.

Returning with his scotch to the small living section of the
apartment, he plopped down on the sagging couch, setting his drink on the
floor. He put one of the cheap chocolate morsels in his mouth, changed the
television channel, and made himself as comfortable as he could. Because he had
to rise early in the morning for his commute, he could only spend a couple of
hours trying to dull and deaden his irritating memories by watching TV.

Unexpectedly, his Blackberry rang. He picked it up from the
couch, checked the number of the caller, and muted the television.

“Hi, Marie,” he said, answering the call.

Marie, his married sister, the one who was fond of trees and
birds, as long as she could see them from her window or car, was calling him
from her house in a part of Long Island even further away from Manhattan than
where he lived. She was a few years younger than Bill, but in poorer health,
because unlike him she had not been able to kick the cigarette habit. Her heavy
weight, greater lack of physical exercise, and greyish complexion made her look
older. She sat chain-smoking in her kitchen.

“Can you talk?” she asked with her raspy voice.

“I have nothing better to do,” he replied. “Linda and I
broke up again.”

“How many times is it now?” she asked in disbelief and
exasperation.

Bill was trying to watch the television show and escape his
thoughts more than he was trying to listen to her. He replied distractedly,
“Thirty, thirty-four, maybe thirty-five. Some breakups only lasted a few hours.
It’s hard to remember.”

As siblings sometimes do, Marie launched into a full-scale
criticism of her brother, without any hesitation. “Why do you date crazy women?
Your ex-wife wasn’t one. She knew what she was doing in the divorce. She
cleaned you out.”

“I don’t
always
date crazy women,” Bill replied, trying to think of one. “Susan wasn’t crazy.”

“What was she then?” Marie asked, remembering the woman in
question.

“Confused. She couldn’t make up her mind.” Bill could see a
clear distinction between Susan’s wavering uncertainty about him and Linda’s
harsh rejections.

“Sounds crazy to me,” Marie stated decisively.

“If it’s so easy to make up your mind, why don’t you stop
smoking? You’ve already had one stroke.”

Bill spoke without meaning to offend his sister. As the
eldest child, he had a habit of passing advice to Marie, even though it was
seldom wanted, and he seldom accepted any in return. If he had not been trying
to watch the television, perhaps he would have perceived that she was in an
unusually nervous, agitated state and been more guarded in what he said. But
the honest words were out, and Marie began to cry. She extinguished the
cigarette she was smoking in an ashtray, adding to the many cigarette butts
already there. As tears trickled from her eyes, she whimpered and quivered like
a miniature dog.