Til the Real Thing Comes Along (52 page)

“Yes?”

“Why do you always sound angry when you answer? Honestly, David.”

She was calling to apologize. She was a good person and she knew she had behaved badly, so now she would say “I’m sorry, Davey,”
and he’d say “Don’t even think about it” and hope he could get her off the phone quickly so he could get back to work.

“My sister and I both agree that we should make an offer on the house on Bellagio,” she said.

“No, Babs,” he said.

“David, don’t say no until you hear Helen’s idea. It’s brilliant.” He could picture her, his bride: She was probably sitting
outside their apartment on the little tiny balcony in her bathing suit. She’d been patient to put up with living in his too-small
bachelor apartment with him.

“What’s the brilliant idea?” he asked, shuffling the messages on his desk.

“We’ll make a very low offer,” she said, emphasizing each word as if she were telling him something profound. If her naiveté
wasn’t such a royal pain, it would almost be cute. Babsy. She was fixated on that goddamned barn of a house.

“I agree,” he teased. “Let’s offer them a measly two million two ninety-nine. Now
there’s
a bargain if I’ve ever heard one.”

“No,” she said. “You heard Daphy say the seller was anxious. So we Jew them down. And maybe we could get it for under two
million.”

“Babsy,” he said, as if to a child. “Let’s forget the money. All right? We’re talking about something else here.”

His secretary walked in and put a note on the desk in front of him. A union boss from the Chatsworth, Georgia mill was on
the phone. The workers were on strike and David needed to talk to this guy. Now.

“I have to go,” he told her.

“Why? Finish what you were saying. Of course we’re talking about money. I mean that house is perfect for us, David. Let’s
look at it again. Say that you will. I’m not saying we have to buy it, but just tell me that you’ll look at it again.”

“No.”

“If I get pregnant right away, can we…”

“No.”

Barbara Ashton Malcolm slammed the phone down on David Malcolm and he laughed to himself as he changed lines, realizing that
after talking to his wife, talking to the union boss of his striking workers would be a relief.

The next two days and nights were filled with a Babsy he’d never seen and couldn’t understand. She wanted to talk only about
the house on Bellagio Road.

“The tile,” she would rhapsodize, “the stairway, the porch off the bedroom.”

“No,” he said, penciling some changes into the draft of the annual report: “Regarding the aggressive development of the computer
forms department…” By the time his workday was over at eight-thirty, he didn’t want to go to the dub for dinner, but Babsy
had promised they would meet the Woodses there.

“Buying a place in Bel-Air, Malco?” Charlie Woods asked, boxing David on the arm. David could see, from the corner of his
eye, that Daphy was elbowing Babs, and he knew that both of them were listening carefully for his answer.

“Not a chance,” David said, and quickly changed the subject to Charlie’s new law offices. Babs was sullen for the entire meal,
in spite of Daphy’s funny stories and giddy attempts to pull her out of it. All the way back to the apartment she was silent.
In the morning, David woke with an aching neck and rolled over on his pen and the rough draft of the annual report he’d worked
on until when the pouting Babs had fallen asleep wearing a sleep mask that matched the black nightie he’d loved so much on
their honeymoon.

It was seven-thirty. He was unusually late for his morning start. He had to get moving or he’d miss the timing on his Bast
Coast calls. Babsy must be in the kitchen starting the coffee. It was the only thing she knew how to make. Naked and bleary-eyed,
he walked into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and turned on the shower. A three-by-five note card was scotch-taped to the
mirror of the medicine cabinet. An apology, surely. He let the water run and walked closer to read Babs’s flowery handwriting.

I am moving in with my mother until you stop acting like such a Scrooge. I hate this cold awful side of you that doesn’t even
take my feelings into consideration. I hope I haven’t made a mistake loving you and believing in you the way I have.

B.

Impossible. He had known she was like a little girl in so many ways. But all the good ways. Her dependence on him, her need
for his approval, and she was so goddamned bright. Top of her class at Harvard. He’d sat glowing at her graduation, in the
back of Dunster House, watching her walk to the podium time and again to accept her awards. He had glowed with pride in her,
the same way her parents had. And now this? It made no sense. He turned off the water and dialed his in-laws’ number. Delia,
the Ashton’s black housekeeper, answered.

“She here, Mr. David, but she say to tell you she ain’t talkin’.”

“Deeeeee-liaaaa,” he said in that way he did that always made the woman giggle.

“I’ll go see what I c’n do,” she said.

While he waited he put on a robe, went into the kitchen, where he picked up the wall phone and started some coffee. Finally
Babs’s icy voice spoke into the phone.

“Yes, David?” she said.

“This is preposterous,” he said.

She didn’t say a word.

“I can’t believe you’re going to behave this way. Sacrifice our happiness over some goddamned house.”

“It seems to me that you’re the one who’s doing that. You’re so immovable you won’t even discuss it with me. All you do is
say no to me as if I’m some child. Well, I’m not a child, David, I’m your wife.”

His patience was flagging. “The first part of that sentence is obviously not true, and the second part won’t be either unless
you stop this and come home.”

“Don’t you threaten me.”

“Barbara,” he said. “This is getting dangerous. So I’m going to forget it ever happened and go to work now, and let’s just
proceed. I’ll see you when I get home from work and we’ll forget you ever acted this way. But I can’t waste any more time
on it. Goedbye.” Then he hung up the
phone, burned his hand on the coffee maker, took a fast shower, and went to work.

Once, in prep school, David, fearing his fate at sixteen might turn out to be driving the utilitarian beat-up family Chevy
station wagon, wrote an essay entitled “Why I Should Have a Porsche.” With the aid of friends he listed all the safety features
of the car, with statistics from
Car and Driver
and Porsche advertising. He even cut out a picture of the car and pasted it on the front page. When he handed it to his father,
Rand Malcolm put on his glasses, leafed through it, then threw the manuscript across the room and said to his son: “The goddamned
thing’s too long.”

At lunch, when David told his father, with some embarrassment, about Babs’s bad behavior, the older man scowled, took another
bite of his sandwich and, when he’d chewed it and swallowed, said, “You have to educate her.” Rand Malcolm knew Babsy’s parents
well and liked them. He admired the girl’s intellect and her academic accomplishments. He approved the marriage, but also
let David know as soon as he announced his plans that he himself had waited to many until the sensible age of thirty-eight.
And what if Babsy wouldn’t change? David wanted to ask, but didn’t. Clearly the expectation was that it was his job to get
his wife to stop acting like a brat.

Two weeks went by. There were endless problems at the company to occupy his mind, not to mention his worry about what seemed
to be his father’s failing health since the previous week, when Mal’s doctor had called David at home.

“You must urge your father to slow down,” the doctor said. “He’s killing himself.”

So much to worry about that by the time he got home each evening and heated up the dinner that Berta, his father’s cook, had
sent over, David was ready to collapse, and the silent Babs-less apartment was almost a pleasure. Sometimes he would turn
on the television set and just stare mindlessly as the shows went by. Carol Burnett, Patsy Dugan. Silly jokes, splashy colors,
no thinking. Just what he needed.

Babs hadn’t called once. He knew she was waiting for him to capitulate. You have to educate her, his father had said, obviously
meaning
Don’t acknowledge this kind of behavior.
He felt as if he were the parent of a spoiled child. One night
Daphy Woods called him under the guise of inviting him to her younger son’s soccer game, but the call was obviously at Babsy’s
bidding.

“Don’t you miss her?” Daphy pried.

“Daph,” he said, “let’s not discuss it.”

At the end of three weeks he felt a great sadness. Despite her parents’ objections, he and Babs had lived together for a year
before the wedding. He really was lonely for her and missed the good times they’d had. Their trips together. The parties they’d
given for their friends. The night they’d won the dance contest at the club. It was at the beginning of the fourth week, when
he got out of the elevator in his garage on his way to work, that he was served with the divorce papers. He looked at them
and then made a sound that was something between a gasp and a shocked laugh.

“Boy,” he said aloud. “Some judge is going to get a real hoot out of this one.” But when he got into his Jaguar and drove
out into the morning to go to work, for a minute he sat at the stop sign, not sure if he should turn left or right to get
to his office.

R.J. and David

1981-1982

T
he prison cells were filled with hollow-eyed wretched convicts. They leaned heavily against the bars, harassing the guards
and taunting one another with catcalls and hoots. But in one tiny cell, far at the end of the row, one prisoner was oblivious
to their cries. Thinking only of himself. Because that prisoner was having a conjugal visit with his wife after not having
been with her in five years.

“Oh, baby,” he said, “you sure look good to me. Bring yourself over here, and let’s get together.”

“Not tonight, darlin’,” said the wife. “I got me one real bad headache.”

The camera crew laughed. Patsy took a compact out of her purse and powdered her nose, and Freddy stood and walked toward her.
The black-and-white striped prisoner’s costume made him look even sillier than usual.

“A headache?” he growled. “On the first night we been together in five years?”

“Stop the tape,” Patsy said, looking at the director. “That dumb pea-brain did it again.” Then she turned to Freddy. “Don’t
you remember that you ain’t supposed to walk over to me on that line, ya big mess of turkey poop? I swear to God, you are
the dumbest white man alive.”

R.J., who had been sitting on a metal folding chair in the back row since seven in the evening, looked at her watch. It was
one in the morning. This was the latest she’d
been at the studio in weeks. The writing staff was doing well under her guidance and the material was working.

“Meydele,”
Eddie Levy had said to her yesterday when he called. “It kills me that you’re working for that
meshugene
broad. No offense. But I hate to see it. At least Elfand, no-good bastard that he was, gave Patsy back some of the same kind
of shit she dishes out. But you? She’ll eat you for breakfast.”

“You’re sweet to worry about me, Eddie, but so far it’s working out okay. And it sure pays the bills. How’s by you?”

“By me I got bad news, and I got good news.”

R.J. grinned. Never a straight answer.

“Which do you want first?” he asked.

“The bad news,” she said.

“I got fired from
Three’s Company.”

“Now the good news?”

“I got fired from
Three’s Company.”

They both laughed.

“So big deal, so I don’t have a steady gig anymore. But you know what? I already got a job on a special. It’s one of those
trips-down-memory-lane shows. The sixtieth anniversary of Hemisphere Studios. Every day I sit and work with a film editor
culling out old clips. It’s fun. Then we transfer everything to tape and I write the commentaries and the intros for the people
who are hosting. It’s gonna be great. Carson, Hope, George Burns. All of ’em doing my intros. Not bad, huh? Better than Artie
Zaven. He’s writing Saturday morning cartoons for Hanna-Barbera.”

“Better than Sherm Himmelblau,” R.J. said. “He goes from one show to the next, writing episodes.”

“Hey, listen,” Eddie Levy said. “A hell of a lot better than Nussbaum. He’s dead.”

“Is he
still
dead?” R.J. asked. A dumb old joke but they both laughed again.

“So you’ll call me one day and we’ll meet at Canter’s for a pickle. Yes?” Eddie said. “My office is right around the corner.”

“I promise,” she said.

“It’ll be nice. We’ll sit, we’ll eat. I’ll complain about my job. You’ll complain about your job. That’s what I call a good
time.”

She wouldn’t complain. It was a tough job, but she was
doing it well. And more important, it kept her busy. Very busy. Which was what she needed more than anything. David. It was
exactly a month today since she held last seen him, and still her chest felt heavy with longing every time she thought of
him. Still she looked at the message pad by the kitchen telephone every night when she got home from work, wishing each night
when she walked in the door that once she would come in and see a note in Jeffie’s deliberate hand saying
David Malcolm called.