WE LEFT IBRAHIM and Riva behind for a husband-and-wife stroll on the Boardwalk. Ibrahim had invited us to join him in the casino but I was not in the mood and neither was Joan. Joan had turned peevish. Something had happened. As for me, too much sun in the morning and Ibrahim at night.
The heavens were lit and to our right, as we walked, the ocean was splendid in its everlasting murmur. To our left we passed Fun Spot Arcade, Ice Cream Parlor, Jackpot Souvenir Shop, Pier 21 T-Shirt Factory, Reader and Advisor and A. L. Roth’s candy and nut shop, all anachronisms against the gambling strongholds of Bally’s Grand, the Versailles, Tropicana, the Galaxy, Atlantis, Trump Plaza, Caesar’s, Bally’s Park Place, the Claridge, the Sands, all the way to Resorts and Showboat.
In the old days the six-mile Boardwalk had been an esplanade second only to the ocean as a resort feature. The rich and the weekend rich used to parade in their finery. Now the casinos were everything, and the people who played in them stayed in them, and the Boardwalk was left largely to the dregs who washed up from the interior and from the bus depot on Arctic Avenue.
Right here in what Boardwalk veterans remembered as Chelsea, here along the railing, the leisure class sat in their parked rolling chairs, the men fat and bald and smoking cigars, and the women clothed in mink stoles, munching polly seeds and spitting the shells all over the wooden planks.
People danced in those days and wore evening gowns and ate at Sid Hartfield’s or Kent’s, and they stayed at the Ambassador, the Marlboro-Blenheim, the Brighton, the Breakers.
Even the language was different. The word wasn’t glitzy. It was ritzy.
The place we were passing, Ocean One, a spreading shopping mall built over the waters, had once been Million Dollar Pier, where people danced to the music of Eddie Morgan.
But I still loved it here, everything about the place.
“Did you have a nice time?” I asked Joan after some silence.
She did not answer--so meditative.
“I purposely made it simple. Yes you did, no you didn’t. Yes or no.”
Still nothing.
“All right. Blink once for yes, twice for no.”
“He propositioned me,” she said.
I stopped dead. She kept walking. I rushed up.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“How?”
“He asked me to go to bed with him. That’s how.”
“When?”
“While you were talking to Sy.”
“But that was only a second.”
“That’s all it takes.”
“What did you say?”
Now she stopped.
“What do you think I said?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I would hope...”
Her right hand came flashing and caught me on the left side of my face. Then she ran off and I followed slowly behind. I lost sight of her when she turned to the doors of the Galaxy. I got there a few minutes later, took the elevator up, and she was in the shower when I walked in. Yes, she needed a shower.
I sat down on the bed. I felt nothing, a calm to cover fright.
“I’m sorry,” she said when she come out.
“So am I.”
“Did I hurt you?”
“Not as much as I hurt you. Forgive me.”
“Let’s just choose our friends more carefully from now on.”
“He’s no friend of mine,” I said.
“He actually expects me to be at his suite tomorrow at six.”
“I’ll be there instead.”
“No you won’t. It’s over.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Josh, a man propositioned me. I feel cheap and filthy--but nothing happened. Don’t complicate things.”
“Something smells,” I said.
“What?”
“I don’t know. But I’ve got to find out.”
“We have to remember that this is a very wealthy man. His values are not our values.”
“What exactly did he say?”
“Josh...”
“I have to know.”
“He said, ‘Let’s make love. My place tomorrow at six.’ Okay?”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? You mean you were thinking?”
“No, I was trying to make a joke of it, think of something funny to say.”
“So what did you say?”
“I said no. Of course I said no. Josh, if I didn’t love you so much I’d hate you right now.”
“I hate myself. I got you into this.”
“Okay, so now I’m out.”
I got up and held her close and firm. So often that embrace resolved our conflicts. This time we both stepped back empty. She was not even crying; she was too disgusted or too something to cry.
Now wait a minute, I thought. No one’s been raped or anything. A man made a play for my wife. Right under my nose. Disgusting, yes, but not tragic, and certainly not irreversible. Nothing happened, as Joan said.
But maybe something did happen.
“Were you tempted?” I asked.
“Absolutely not.”
“Are you tempted now?”
“Josh--why are you doing this?”
“I feel jealous as hell.”
“About what?”
“That he’s got you wondering.”
“I am not wondering. Leave it alone, Josh. It’s getting dangerous.”
How deftly he had moved. I had not even noticed him talking to Joan while I had been talking to Sy. How long had this been in the works anyway? From the time he first saw her in the lobby this evening, or gradually over dinner?
Then again, was this the first time he had seen her? Maybe he’d seen her before. Strange, I thought, how Sy just happened to pop in. No, Sy had nothing to do with this. That was going too far.
Right, a man had made a play for my wife. I should not be so astonished. She is, I thought, an extraordinarily beautiful woman. After all, I too had made a play for her when she had belonged to another, and won her. Yes, that would always be with me. If I could steal her, so could someone else.
His values, as she said, are not our values. But what are our values? We had once cheated. Those were not our values. So we had made a deal. We had agreed that we were not really cheating because we were so much in love.
So much in love that it had to be right. Once we were married we’d return to our values and settle into old-fashioned middle-class fidelity. That was the deal and the deal was valid.
This--this was different. This was not love. This was an attempted seduction.
Joan was still mine.
But there was doubt. There had to be doubt.
She hadn’t said no right away. She had paused. Doubt, in her mind, in his mind, in my mind.
Finally, she let it go. Tears flowed down her cheeks.
“Don’t you know,” she said, “that I love you more than anything? Even if I was tempted--and I wasn’t--I’d never do anything to ruin what we have. I’m yours, Joshua, fully and always. Nothing can come between us. Nothing. Do you understand?”