Cheapskate in Love (31 page)

“Don’t just stand there,” Donna fumed at Bill. “Teach him a
lesson.” She gave him more encouragement by shoving him violently at Leo.

Bill was caught off balance by Donna’s shove, and though he
tried to catch himself, he fell into Leo, who was less than eight feet away.

“Watch it, buddy,” Leo warned him.

“You should apologize to Donna,” Bill said. Although Donna
owed Bill an apology for pushing him, Bill practiced an old-fashioned form of
chivalry with his dates, even when ladies like Linda, Tanya, and Donna showed
themselves to be undeserving of such gallant treatment. He was going to try and
protect them, defending their dignity and persons, even when his need for
protection was much greater.

“Well, I’m not,”
Leo
answered, as
he thrust Bill back into Donna.

“Don’t let that mobster push you around,” Donna yelled at
Bill, and she shoved him back at Leo. “He just talks tough.”

Bill was too alarmed to hear that Leo might be part of the mob
to say anything to him this time when they bumped together. Bill wondered if he
had literally fallen into some serious, dangerous trouble.

“Tell your old lady to get some manners,” Leo grunted and
tossed him back.

“And better taste in men,” Tanya sneered. She knew who was
buttering her bread.

“Get them,” Donna screamed at Bill, sending him on his way
again.

Like
a volleyball
, Bill was smacked
back and forth between Donna and Leo, with Tanya now joining in her team’s
effort. With each sally from the opposing sides, Bill became increasingly
queasy, as the contents of his stomach churned in agitation. A crowd had
gathered when the contest had first broken out, and the more they saw Bill
being lobbed from one side to the other, the more their enjoyment at the
spectacle intensified. When it seemed as if Leo and Tanya were going to win the
match—Bill came close to toppling Donna to the ground with him one
time—a few eager hands flew to Donna’s aid. With their assistance, she
was able to throw Bill harder than ever at Leo. Hit off balance by Bill’s
stronger impact, Leo stumbled backwards a few steps.

“Punch him!” Donna bellowed. “Punch him! Knock him out!” She
wanted Bill to capitalize on their side’s momentary advantage.

The well-heeled Hamptons crowd lit up with excitement.
Seeing a pushing contest escalate into a real fight would be the indisputable
highlight of their evening.

Leo had regained his footing, and he strode toward Bill with
a grim, hostile demeanor. “Let me show you how,” he told Bill, who was quivering
like a lamb before a butcher, ignorant of how to fist fight. Grabbing hold of
Bill’s right arm with his left hand to render him defenseless, Leo slammed his
right fist into Bill’s gut.

Bill bent forward in intense pain, inches from Leo’s body,
and an arc of vomit exploded out of his mouth onto Leo’s chest. Leo released
Bill, and he tried to step back from the fountain of filth. But grossed out and
stunned, he tripped and fell on his butt in front of Bill, who remained where
he was hunched over. Puke continued to shoot out of Bill, covering Leo with
undigested hamburgers, soaked in beer and bile.

“I’m going to kill you,” Leo shouted. “I’m going to kill
you! You’re dead! Damn you. You’re dead.” There was more anguish and
helplessness in his shouts than terrifying threats.

Leo tried to stand up and move away from Bill’s spewing
mouth, but Donna had quickly grabbed Tanya’s arms from behind when Bill had
started to vomit. Now Donna pushed Tanya, who was screaming like a maniac and
struggling, as if she was being deported back to the Ukraine, on top of Leo.
Tanya knocked him back down and lay on him. Bill’s stomach was still emptying
itself, and his barf coated her as well. Although it didn’t help her situation,
Tanya couldn’t stop raving like a crazed lunatic or try to get up. She could
only scream and writhe like an eel on Leo’s body.

“Get off me!” Leo exclaimed. “Shut up and get off!”

He tried to push her off, but she started to beat on his
chest with her fists, although
that made the puddles of vomit
splatter
in their faces.

“Idiot!” she shouted. “Why did you bring me here? I hate you
and your stupid friends! You have the cheapest, ugliest Rolex!”

“Leo, you have such good taste in women,” remarked Donna
smugly. Without waiting for an answer, she sailed into the house to freshen up.
She was immensely satisfied with her performance on the dance floor.

The last heaves had shaken Bill’s body, and there was
nothing left in his stomach to shower Leo and Tanya with. Weak and exhausted,
he straightened up. “I think I ate too much,” he said, to no one in particular.
Although he now had the room in his stomach he had hoped for earlier, he had no
desire to eat. The rows of tasty hamburgers beckoning him nearby offered a
unique, unforgettable opportunity to sate his greed and gluttony, but he didn’t
want to see them. He didn’t want to dance anymore either. He wanted to leave.
He followed Donna into the house.

Donna’s reflections in the ladies’ room, while she freshened
up, were very different from Bill’s reflections in the men’s room. After she
wiped a few drops of perspiration from her forehead, she checked for stains on
her clothing. “Thank God, they didn’t ruin this outfit,” she said to herself,
finding none. While she fluffed her hair, she gazed at her image, with a contented
smile. “Those kids are no match for me,” she thought. “I’m better looking,
smarter, and stronger. By any real measure, I’m younger. I certainly need a
younger boyfriend than Bill. That old goat, what a joke.” Leaning closer to the
mirror to gaze at her beauty in more detail, she thought, after a minute of
examining different sections of her face, “Monday I’ll have to call in for
another Botox treatment.”

In the men’s room, Bill washed his face and neck again and
again with cold water, as if he was trying to remove the memory of what had
happened to him and arise in a new time and place. The delightful, romantic
fantasy he had fashioned in his imagination during the previous
week—happy chatter, electric dancing,
passionate
embraces—had been the empty thoughts of a fool. He knew that now too
well. Instead of a fantasy come to life, the evening had been a phantasmagoria,
in which he had been continually haunted, harassed, ridiculed, and hurt by evil
characters swirling around him. Although it would seem that Bill’s train of
thoughts should lead him to blame
himself
for what
happened, as he should, that was not where his cogitations took him. A profound
knowledge of human nature, even a scant acquaintance with it, tells us that
humans seldom take responsibility for the predicaments they put themselves in.
Bill was no exception. He blamed Donna for his night of misfortunes. Staring at
himself in the mirror, feeling tired, sore in his stomach, and out of place, he
thought, “Donna’s too old for me. I need a young girlfriend, not someone who
only looks young. All she wants to do is stand around and talk to her friends.
Or spend hours getting dressed. I need a young woman, who likes to dine, dance,
and have fun.” The wrinkled, fleshy face in the mirror, which would have
benefited from several Botox treatments, nodded in agreement.

Since Donna thought it would be anticlimactic for her to
stay at the party after her glorious, personal victory on the dance floor, she
wanted to leave, like Bill, too. Saying few words to each other about how they
wished to go, they left the house and walked in silence to Donna’s car. There
was no discussion of anything that had happened at the party, no excuses, no
apologies, no sympathy.

When they were sitting in the car, Bill said, “You can drop
me off at your place. My car is parked near your house.”

Donna didn’t look at him or react to this news in any way.
She started her car, and the machine murmurs of her luxury automobile were the
only sounds that were heard all the way to her home.

Chapter 33

After Donna parked her BMW in her driveway, she quickly
exited the car and hurried to her front door. At first, she wasn’t going to say
anything at all to Bill—she couldn’t wait to rid herself of him—but
an impulse of common courtesy pinched her. Halfway to the porch, without
stopping, she said over her shoulder, “Goodnight, Bill.”

He had gotten out of the car soon after her and watched her
rush away. It was another odd moment in an extraordinary evening, and he didn’t
know what to do. He had old-fashioned views about first dates and thought there
should be at least a formal wrap-up: A cuddle, a kiss, a
thank-you-for-a-wonderful-time, even if there would never be another. But the
evening had been an unmitigated disaster, and he was baffled by how it should
end. He couldn’t sugarcoat what had happened, which is what he normally did
with his dates. His stomach hurt too much to do that, and he was rather ashamed
of wasting so much good food by barfing. Maybe he should let the evening fade away
without any words, he thought, and try to forget the paradise he had imagined
it would be.

When she bid him goodnight, he automatically wished her the
same. Then, since she had spoken to him, which he considered an open
invitation, he decided to make one last effort to redeem the evening and have
it end with a little bit of romance. After all, she was gorgeous, he had time,
and they were both single. He took off after her. “Donna, wait,” he cried.

She didn’t. Instead, she scurried faster. It wasn’t until he
jogged, as quickly as he could, onto her porch that he caught up with her. The
porch lights came on automatically, and illuminated the two for anyone to
clearly see.

“Let’s have a drink and finish this evening on a happy
note,” Bill urged.

“No. Goodbye,” she said firmly, as she searched impatiently
for the keys in her purse, not making eye contact with him.

“Forget about tonight,” he pleaded. “We can go somewhere
else next time. A fancy restaurant, a movie, a nightclub.”

“There won’t be a next time.” Where are my keys, she was
thinking, so I can escape this fool, who doesn’t appear to understand English
or know when to leave?

“We can go swing dancing,” he rhapsodized.

She was not interested in that or any other activity with
him and stopped looking in her purse to be blunt. “Look. I have a boyfriend. I
only asked you to come because he worked tonight, and I wanted to go with
someone. He should be here any moment, and I suggest that you leave, because
he’s hotheaded and doesn’t like seeing me with other men.
Thank
you for coming tonight.
I’m sorry about what happened. But I don’t want
to see you again.”

Bill was not so easily put off by a
woman, whom he considered attractive and who would talk with him
. “I didn’t think the evening was that
bad,” he said, twisting the truth.

When she didn’t say anything, he choked the truth to death.
“It was OK.”

Unpersuaded
by his lies, unable to stand talking
with him anymore, she turned her head away from him, looking out into the
night, and exhaled deeply. An immense frustration weighed upon her, with a
force greater than gravity. She felt as if she was being pressed and pounded
into the ground. Her unhappiness was even visible to a man like Bill, who
preferred to disregard the emotional states of his dates, along with their
verbal communication.

Without a doubt, he perceived that this would be their only
date together. The window for future negotiations and rapprochement had been
slammed shut and sealed forever. Yet, despite his accurate prediction of the
future, he could not leave. There was one more thing he had a greedy wish for,
something free. He was going to try and get it. Stretching his hands to her
waist, he leaned in close for a little happy memory of the evening, a little
romantic fantasy. Of course, he wanted much more than a little, but he would
take what he could steal.

She pulled back in surprise, exclaiming, “What are you
doing?”

“Giving you a kiss goodnight,” he replied, with as much
fondness as he could feign.

“Oh, all right,” she conceded, thinking how useful he had
been on the dance floor in her triumph over Leo. “One kiss.”

Their lips met in a touch more sour than sweet. Yet Bill
extended the kiss for as long as he could. After all, it was free.

The sound of a car pulling quickly into Donna’s driveway
caused her to break off their awkward, unsatisfying embrace. She grabbed his
arm and pushed him toward the steps. “Hurry,” she told him in a panic. “Run
down the lawn.
My boyfriend’s here.
Quick, go.”

The alarm in her voice and her words had no effect on Bill.
He was disappointed that the kiss was over. He didn’t understand why he should
run away. They had only kissed, and it wasn’t what he would call a great one.
Surely, no man could be jealous of that insipid smooch.

Donna’s boyfriend, Frank, jumped out of
his car.
A muscular
man in his mid-thirties, who worked in law enforcement, he had a rash,
judgmental nature. In both his professional duties and his private life, he was
more concerned with enforcing his hasty, intolerant conclusions than respecting
the law. “What’s going on here?” he yelled, running to the porch. Unlike Bill,
he could really run.