Cheapskate in Love (4 page)

Annoyed that his television time was spoiled by an outburst
of tears, Bill was no longer distracted and said gruffly, “OK, OK, we can talk
about something else. What did you call for?”

After wiping her eyes and sniffling, she asked, “Has uncle
Joe called you?”

“No, I haven’t heard from him,” Bill said.

Marie sniffled again and tried to shake off any lingering
tearfulness. “I wonder how he’s doing.”

“If you’re concerned, call him up. He’s your uncle, too.”
After a slight pause, in a more pleasant tone, Bill added, “By the way, I think
I’ll come over Sunday for dinner. Is that all right? Linda and I probably won’t
be back together again by then.”

“There won’t be anything special,” she responded, without
sounding in the least delighted at his coming. She sat up straighter, brushing
away any sign of moisture on her cheeks. She took another cigarette out of the
pack and lit it.

“I know,” Bill said. “You’ve probably never watched a
cooking show in your life.”

“I have, too,” Marie insisted. “Every Tuesday at seven
o’clock...”

Before she could recite all the occasions on which she had
seen cooking shows and what she had learned, Bill cut in, “Well, I have to go.
Have to get up early for my commute. It’s a two-hour trip, you know.
Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she said, deciding that she was not going to
exert herself at all for the Sunday meal. In fact, she would wait a day and
tell him that he had to bring some side dishes, if he wanted anything to go
with the baked chicken she would pick up at the grocery store. That would stop
him from taking her for granted, she thought.

Bill put his Blackberry down, relieved to be back in the
privacy of his own reflections, as depressed as they were. Why were women so
unreasonable, he
thought.
Why was it so hard for his
sister to simply pick up the phone and call their uncle, rather than work
herself into an emotional frenzy and call him? And what sense was there in her
crying, when she knows she ought to quit smoking? Can’t they
think
, he
wondered.
He concluded that they couldn’t. That’s why they can be such nuisances, he said
to himself. With that question settled, he unmuted the television’s sound,
drank some scotch, and picked out two more chocolates from the box to chomp on.
He was sure that he, being a man, could think.

When the box was picked clean and the scotch finished, Bill
drifted away from the blare and blaze of the television, away from the haunting
memories of his past, into a troubled sleep, stretched out on the couch.
Stirred into consciousness by the television at one point during the night, he
turned it off and continued to sleep on the couch, still fully clothed.

At five in the morning on Friday, when he should have
started to dress for work, he was startled awake by the arrival of a text
message on his Blackberry. He sat up, groggy from a poor night’s rest on the
flimsy couch. Checking the message, he saw it was from Linda. It read: “Lets
hike Saturday. Yesterday was bad. Linda.”

She’s crazy, Bill thought, just like his sister had said.
She must have the most severe form of schizophrenia, he swore, to be able to belittle
what had happened yesterday, as if she wasn’t responsible. And she must be
completely delusional to think that overnight he could forget what she had done
to him. Adamantly, he declared that he was surely not going to go hiking with
Linda on Saturday, nor any other day. Nothing and no one could convince him to
do that. Indeed, he was never going to speak to her again. Never ever was he
going to see
her.
He wasn’t crazy after all.

With that rousing resolution that ignited every fiber in his
body and hardened his will into steel, or at least a more solid substance than
his usual, weak flesh, Bill was fully prepared to face another day. He deleted
Linda’s message. After checking to see if any chocolate remained in the box or
any watery scotch lingered in the glass, he went to shower and dress for work.

Chapter 4

For lunch that day, Bill met Stan, a friend and former
coworker, at an inexpensive Chinese cafeteria in Midtown, which he had recently
discovered when he walked on a different street around his office. It was a
dingy-looking place from the outside that did not improve in appearance when
one entered. A few blurry photos of China and faded Chinese prints decorated
the walls. An assortment of used tables and chairs, too many for the space,
crowded the dining area. The entire place looked as if it needed a gut
renovation, or at least a thorough cleaning, but Bill was utterly delighted at
first sight, because a large sign in the window advertised a five-dollar, hot
buffet lunch. He smiled, transported with joy, at finding his new, favorite
dining spot. The fact that the cafeteria had a mostly Chinese and
Chinese-American clientele, which he could discern from outside, only added to
his belief that he had found a real deal, a bargain from Beijing buried in the
bowels of expensive Manhattan.

It was only a short walk for both Bill and Stan from their
offices to the cafeteria. When they arrived, they shook hands outside the
place. As they almost always did when they met, they started trading old barbs
about how sick and near death the other looked. Joking and laughing, they hoped
in turn that the other would be able to hang on a few more months, even though
it didn’t seem likely. “Your tumor has metastasized too much,” they would tell
each other. “You look terrible.” Or one of them might say with mock concern,
“Buddy, I’m afraid there’s no miracle of medical science to help you now.
Whatever your illness is, it’s a killer. It’s been good knowing you.” Their
friendship was not of a sensitive, fawning nature.

Stan was a physically imposing man in his forties, tall and
broad-chested
, who carried his extra bit of weight well. An
executive at a large company, he worked at a higher level than Bill had ever
attained and looked as if he did. Although balding, he was
well-groomed
and well-dressed. He wore a superfine, summer-weight, dark wool suit, white
shirt with cuff links, and a luxuriant silk tie. Externally, Stan did not
appear to be the sort of man who would maintain a friendship with Bill, who was
dressed in a final-sale polo shirt and chinos and toting his worn briefcase,
which he thought safer than leaving it in the office. But Stan had come from
modest roots and retained an open, generous personality. He enjoyed the frank,
joke-filled talks he could have with Bill, although he thought Bill dense and
inflexible at times. Stan actually lived near Bill on Long Island and would
have liked to travel on the train with him to and from work, but Bill was a
creature of habit and would not alter his earlier work routine to join Stan,
even though Stan was his closest friend. Since Stan was married with two young
children, his weekends were filled with family activities. Consequently, the
two saw each other infrequently, usually only when they met for an occasional
weekday lunch. Bill demanded that it always be an inexpensive lunch. Stan
wasn’t so picky.

Inside the cafeteria, each picked up a tray and waited in
line to be served. Stan did not have to insist much for Bill to go ahead of
him. The thought of a five-dollar lunch filled Bill with excitement, and he was
eager to get his food. When it was Bill’s turn to select from the buffet
choices, he pointed to a pan of food on the steamer and asked the Chinese
immigrant behind the counter serving, “What’s that?”

She replied with a heavy accent, dropping a syllable, “
Shiken
brokli
.”

“What?” Bill asked louder, confusion taking over his face.
He wasn’t prepared to comprehend someone who spoke poor English. His attention
was focused on getting his money’s worth.

“
Shiken
brokli
,”
she repeated, in the exact same tone and volume.

“What did she say?” Bill asked Stan. “Do you understand
her?”

“Chicken and broccoli,” Stan said, in the even voice of an
executive accustomed to delivering news without any commentary or explanation.
His face remained impassive as a corporate logo.

“Oh,” Bill said. Pointing at other pans on the steamer, he
asked the server, “What’s that and that and that? Are they hot?
MA LA TONGUE?
I want MA LA TONGUE.” Linda had taught him the
Chinese words for hot, spicy soup, when she was in a good mood one day, and he
used the term mistakenly for any spicy food.

Ignoring his questions, the server put a portion of the
three dishes he pointed at onto his place, next to a mound of rice. “Mala tang”
she said, correcting his pronunciation. “
Seese
dallas
.”

Bill understood the last part of what she said perfectly
well. “Six dollars,” he nearly shouted. “The lunch special is five dollars. The
sign outside says five dollars.” Bill gestured repeatedly toward the door and
drew the shape of the sign with his two hands in the air. He then counted on
his fingers for all to see. “One, two, three, four, five. Five dollars. Not six
dollars.” He kept shaking his head no.

The server thought to herself that capitalists are just like
communists, and people like Bill would be properly disposed of in jail if they
were in China, but she only said, “All meat.
Seese
dallas
.”

“No, no, no,” Bill said, raising his voice. “The sign says
five dollars. Five dollars.”

Before East-West tensions could rise any higher, Stan
intervened. “She’s right. Five dollars is for two vegetables and a meat dish,
and you have three meat dishes. I can pay for you. It hardly costs anything.”

“No,” Bill said, still huffy that he was denied the special
price. “I’ll buy my own. She never told me what they were. She never said they
would cost more. All she said was ma la tongue.”

“Mala tang,” the server corrected him loudly, daring to show
the glimmer of a smile. “
Seese
dallas
pleese
.”

Flustered, Bill searched for his wallet, which was in his
briefcase.

“Do you want a drink?” Stan asked him.

“I brought a bottle of water in my briefcase,” Bill replied.
Stan was surprised enough to raise his eyebrows. He knew Bill was a tightwad,
but it was a slight shock to see that he might be becoming a miser, someone who
wouldn’t even spend money on a drink. Bill finally found his wallet and
grudgingly paid the server six dollars. To her cheery “Tank you,” he nodded his
head in assent, although his face was dark and gloomy.

While Stan paid for his lunch special and drink, Bill waited
with his tray, looking for an empty table.

“Let’s sit there,” he said to Stan, pointing to empty seats
on the far side of the crowded dining area. On the way to the table, Bill
accidentally hit a few customers with his briefcase, which was hanging over his
shoulder, because of the lack of space in which to navigate. “Sorry,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me.” Bill left a path of discontent behind him, but as soon
as he sat down, he began wolfing down his food, oblivious to anything that had
happened since they had come in.

Without hesitation, Stan also began to eat, since he knew
that Bill would finish his food quickly, even if he had a choking fit, as he
sometimes did from shoveling food in his mouth too fast. Bill never let a
choking fit stand in the way of a plate of food for long. Occasionally, Bill
would relax and talk for a while after eating lunch, but usually he was
impatient to go. Stan tried to accommodate Bill’s dining quirk as much as he
could, but he was only a moderately quick eater.

It soon became apparent why Bill had chosen the seats they
sat in. In between huge scoops of rice and mala meat dishes disappearing down
his throat, he said to Stan, “Take a look over there.” Bill pointed toward a
good-looking, young, Chinese woman sitting behind Stan. “I’d like to get my
hands on that Asian dish,” he said.

Looking behind, Stan observed, “She’s the most attractive
thing in this filthy hole. How did you find this place?”

“I walked by one day,” Bill replied.

“And thought it was the imperial palace, I bet,” Stan said.

“It seemed worth trying,” Bill responded. “Not everyone
makes your salary.” Gazing at the Chinese lady, Bill’s eyes took on a dreamy
expression, and his fork stopped moving for several seconds. “She would make me
forget all about Linda. She’d be better than any herbal remedy or acupuncture
treatment.”

“Have you ever had one of Linda’s treatments?” Stan asked.

“That stuff doesn’t work,” Bill scoffed. “There’s no
scientific proof. I once showed her a study report on acupuncture in which the
treatments had the same effect as placebo, and she started screaming, ‘Shut up
or get out.’ She threw the pages back at me.”

“So you shut up,” Stan concluded.

“I don’t go to her for medical advice. What do I care what
she thinks? She’s always giving me bottles of pills for sleeplessness or low
energy or something that she thinks I have. But I never use them. I throw the
bottles in a drawer at home. The drawer is full of bottles.”

“It’s the thought that counts. At least she cares for you,”
Stan said.