THE COVER-UP, AS USUAL, WAS FULL OF PEOPLE WITH LITTLE plastic-sheathed security cards clipped to their lapels. Behind the counter, Freddy Fu was taking money and dispensing Princetonian suavity. There was no sign of Mrs. Lump. We had our usual order of goat and Tasmanian beer, and when we finished I asked Boog if he would make a reservation for two at the best restaurant in town.
“I’d like to meet this woman,” he said.
“You might, someday.”
“I doubt it,” he said. “You’re stingy with your women.”
“I brought you Josie, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but she ain’t yours,” he said. “She’s married to some little third-generation fuckup down in Henrietta. If it hadn’t been for you, me an’ Coffee would have been true sweethearts long ago.”
“Coffee’s got enough problems as it is,” I said. “Do you know about the dope dealer?”
“Yeah, he’s a midget I-talian who wears bracelets,” Boog said. “That girl ain’t leading a wholesome life.”
On the way out he stopped at a pay phone and spoke in French to someone. I was surprised.
“I didn’t know you spoke French,” I said.
“Some polish is gaint with one’s ruint, said she,” he said. “That was your maître d’. You got your reservation. Just try not to disgrace me by orderin’ the wrong wine or something.”
In the afternoon I felt like an auction. I needed something to get my adrenaline pumping, so I wouldn’t get sleepy and take a nap.
Unfortunately the only auction scheduled in the D.C. area that day was a mixed auction of Oriental rugs and estate glassware, at a gallery I was unfamiliar with. I seldom handle rugs, for the simple reason that most of them won’t fit in my car, and what’s called “estate” glassware by two-bit auctioneers is usually just ornate junk.
But an auction is an auction. I got out my map and managed to locate the gallery, which was one of a row of cinderblock warehouses in a warehouse area not far from the Pentagon. To my surprise, the place was packed, mostly with depressed-looking men in cheap suits. At any auction where there is glassware there will usually be a lot of women, but in this case there were only a handful, three or four hard-bitten ladies with silver hair who were obviously dealers, and a couple of young mothers who had thought to relieve the boredom of young motherhood by bringing their babies out to an auction. The babies were strapped in strollers and had their own boredom to contend with. They dealt with it mainly by trying to wriggle out of the strollers.
The auctioneer, a thin, nervous little fellow, was trying to teach a couple of surly Cubans how to hook the rugs to a pulley arrangement so they could be hauled up briefly for display.
The men in the cheap suits all looked pallid, as if, collectively, they had been raised under artificial light. The warehouse was dusty and the free coffee which was being served tasted like it had been brewed the week before. There was not one single piece of glassware that was even decent. One Chinese lacquerware dish might have been described as half-decent. The rugs were no better than the glass. The old ones were ragged and much repaired, and there were only a few of them. Most of the rugs had been manufactured since 1940.
Though there was no point at all in staying, I stayed, sitting in a hard little bridge chair and watching the terrible auctioneer auction the worthless rugs and terrible glass. The two Cubans were totally without interest in the proceedings and half the rugs slipped loose from the pulleys and flopped on the floor. Once a large one fell on the auctioneer, who was having a terrible day. He tried to laugh it off, but the rug that fell on him was big and dusty and from then on he was prone to fits of coughing. Every wretched little Canton plate he held up he described as being a “real early piece,” his phrase for anything between the dawn of time and 1975. One of the young mothers worked up her nerve and bought a set of glasses which the auctioneer described as “real early crystal,” when in fact they had been made in Minnesota within the decade.
It was such a disgracefully amateurish auction that I spent most of my time wondering why I wasn’t leaving. I tried to tell myself it was discipline: after all, the principle that anything can be anywhere still held true.
Back there somewhere could be a rug that Genghis Khan had sat on, as he trekked eastward in his years of conquest. It could happen. The odds were scarcely longer than the odds on a great Sung vase turning up in De Queen, Arkansas.
At the same time, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. For one thing, apart from two silver-haired ladies who undoubtedly had an antique store somewhere nearby, I was the only professional there. Blink Schedel wasn’t there, nor were any of Brisling Bowker’s many runners. Of course, none of them had been in De Queen, either, but De Queen was out of their territory and south Arlington wasn’t. If there had been something great in the auction one of them would have sniffed it out and been there.
For the last forty lots of the sale I amused myself by winding up a windup plastic duck for the fat little child of the nearest mother. The duck was meant for a bathtub, and didn’t perform well on the concrete floor of the warehouse. Its little plastic propeller kept tipping it over on its nose. This amused the child, a little girl with a few wisps of orangish hair. When the duck tipped over I picked it up, let its propeller spin down, and then wound it up again. In this harmless fashion the auction finally passed.
I had bought nothing, and what was worse, no adrenaline had pumped, as it would have at a good auction. I left feeling as flat as I had felt when I entered, went to the nearest phone booth, and called my banker in Houston, to see if twenty thousand dollars had materialized in my account.
It hadn’t. John C. V. Ponsonby was losing his chance at the Luddite truncheon. Or maybe he wasn’t. Perhaps a well-trained agent had already been dispatched, to deal with me. He might follow me to a swap-meet and steal the truncheon out of my car. He could slip a tranquilizing drug into my hotdog or something. Most swap-meets have a hot-dog stand nearby, a perfect cover for a well-trained agent.
I felt a little nervous, but since there was no way to anticipate the agent’s moves I drove to Wheaton, checked into a motel, and lay in a bathtub until it was time to pick up Jean.
Soaking in water was more refreshing than taking a useless nap.
While I soaked I thought of women. My moods were flickering, like a radio with a loose wire. At moments it would occur to me that if I just continued to be a scout I could lead a consistent and interesting life. I didn’t really have to have women. They were not a necessity of nature. In fact, they were a lot of trouble, disrupters of the peace, almost all of them.
For moments, as I lay in the tub, I thought how nice it would be just to drive around America buying things, not having one’s own peace disrupted. America itself was very beautiful, very various. There was plenty to see. The skies over the west were so lovely that they alone should have been enough to sustain me.
When I looked at it that way I felt light for a few seconds—I felt like an escapee—from tantrums, confusion, fucking, and a million needs, stated and unstated.
Then, only a few seconds later, I would remember that I liked fucking, and was interested in needs, stated and unstated. Even America could get boring. I wouldn’t really escape women. As soon as I got over one, another one would pop up. Things would repeat themselves, some of them nice things, some of them not. After all I had a date with a very appealing woman. We had even made love once, although so briefly that I couldn’t really remember it. When I tried to remember it I got an erection, and soon after went to sleep in the bathtub.
At Jean’s, Beverly let me in, edging out Belinda by a step.
“Mom’s getting ready,” she said.
“I was gonna get it,” Belinda said, annoyed to have been edged out. Her hair was impossibly curly. The girls were both looking fresh and mischievous.
I sat on the couch and Belinda climbed into my lap.
“I thought you said you were bringing some presents,” she said. She felt in my shirt pocket, to make sure no small presents were hidden there.
Then Jean came downstairs, looking a little discontent. She looked lovely, but she was not elaborately dressed. Often, in dressing up, a woman will make herself into a person that doesn’t look like the self you know, but Jean hadn’t succeeded in doing this at all.
“I failed,” she said, anticipating my comment. At that moment the doorbell rang, and both girls flew to get it. Since Belinda was in my lap she was in a poor takeoff position. She tripped over my boot and fell sprawling. Once again, Beverly got to get the door. Belinda burst into tears at this double defeat. The babysitter was a thin teenage girl with lots of braces.
“He tripped me,” Belinda said, sitting on the floor with a tear-streaked face.
“So?” Jean said. “Who told you to run?” She introduced the babysitter, whose name was Debbie.
“Nobody cares,” Belinda remarked, still crying.
“That’s right,” Jean said. “You’ve exhausted all sympathies. You’re going to have to go the whole rest of your life without any, because you’re so greedy.”
“What’s sympathy?” Belinda asked.
Jean helped her up, wiped her face, kissed them both, grabbed a coat, and went to the door.
“Let’s go,” she said. “All this is Debbie’s problem now.”
“Have a good time, Mom,” Beverly said.
“Oh, Beverly, you’re so generous,” Jean said.
Belinda gave us both a cool look and marched out of the room.
“She hates being omitted from the honors list,” Jean said.
“You look awfully nice,” I said.
“I hate talking about how I look,” she said. “I hate thinking about it. I hate trying to change it. I spent all afternoon trying, but it didn’t work. This is how I look.”
“Why shouldn’t it be?” I said. “You look fine.”
“I meant to at least look sophisticated,” she said. “But I can’t. I’m too ordinary. I just have to come to terms with that fact.”
When she said it she looked so appealing that I leaned over and tried to kiss her. She jerked back against the car door.
“I may get out,” she said, “if you’re gonna do that.”
“Okay, okay,” I said.
“Why’d you try to kiss me?” she asked, as we drove off. “You’re supposed to take me out to dinner.”
“You just looked kissable,” I said. “One kiss wouldn’t have limited your ability to eat.”
“Yes it would,” she said. “I’m scared of you and I can’t eat a bit when I’m scared. Now you’ve already made me miss my one chance to enjoy a meal at the best restaurant in town.”
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “You don’t have to be scared of me.”
“I told you I’m out of practice at dates,” she said.
To complicate things, we were stuck in a traffic jam, four blocks from her house.
“I wasn’t meant to eat in fancy restaurants,” Jean said. “That’s why this traffic jam is here. We’ll never get there.”
Just as she said it the traffic jam began to break up. I took a shortcut I had noticed and circumvented what was left of it.
“It’s interesting you figured out that shortcut,” Jean said.
“Anyone could figure it out,” I said.
“I live here and I never did,” Jean said. “I’m a very passive driver. I just endure whatever traffic I encounter, and I encounter a lot.”
She had a lovely voice. Instead of rising when she was depressed or nervous, it sank and became more throaty.
Jean sat way over against the door. Although the door was locked, that made me nervous. I had a fantasy of having a car wreck in which she popped out and was killed. Though ridiculous, it was a powerful fantasy.
“I wish you wouldn’t sit so close to the door,” I said.
“Leave me alone,” she said. “I’m having a lot of regrets about this date as it is.”
We were silent all the way to the restaurant, which was very fancy. I had put on a tie, but still neither Jean nor I looked anything like the other people eating at the restaurant. They all looked more elegant than us, and more at home in fancy restaurants.
Jean was brooding over the menu. It was such a huge menu that it made her seem smaller than it was. Also, it was very elaborate and required a lot of thought. She was frowning as she gave it the thought.
“Why are you frowning?” I asked.
“Are you going to ask me why I frown every time I frown?” she inquired, peeping around the menu.
I shut up.
“It’s because it makes me realize what a limited life I’ve led,” she said, answering the question she had just objected to.
“We eat pizza, cheeseburgers, or carry-out Chinese,” she said. “That’s stupid, isn’t it? But they’re all in the neighborhood and I don’t have the energy to change my habits. My girls won’t know what to do in a restaurant like this because they’ll never see one. I haven’t seen one in years myself.”
“Don’t your folks ever take you out?” I asked.
“My folks don’t eat out,” she said. “They’re worse than me. What are you gonna eat?”
I ate veal niçoise, and Jean ate a flounder stuffed with crab-meat. Then she had an endive salad. For dessert I had profiteroles, after having failed to persuade her to have some, too. They came in a rich chocolate sauce.
“I’d gain a lot of pounds if I ate that,” she said.
“Well, you’re small,” I said. “A few pounds wouldn’t hurt you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I get lumpy very easily. Two or three extra pounds makes me lumpy. Then I feel even more discontent than I usually feel.”
Then she stole several bites of my profiteroles anyway.
I had an irrational urge to propose to her, but managed to choke it down. It’s an urge that strikes me often, whenever I’m truly charmed by a woman. I was charmed by Jean, although I knew I hadn’t known her long enough to have made contact with her true character; however, lack of contact with her true character didn’t keep me from being charmed enough to want to marry her.
“What are you thinking?” she said shrewdly. Her cheeks were glowing, probably from the wine.
“I was thinking it would be nice if we got married,” I said.
“Probably would be,” Jean said, wiping a speck of chocolate sauce off her chin. “I guess this sauce overcame my resistance. I could eat chocolate sauce all day if I let myself. Since I wasn’t responsible for ordering it, anything it does to me is your fault.”
“It won’t do anything to you.”
“Well, it might give me a pimple,” she said. “Good chocolate sometimes has that effect. I’m glad we came to this restaurant. It’s working. I’m beginning to feel slightly sophisticated. That’s a treat for a full-time mom.”
“Let’s have some brandy,” I said. “It might make you look even more sophisticated.”
We had some brandy. Jean was looking quite happy.
“I guess you think it’s utterly ridiculous, that I said that about marriage,” I said.
“I hope you aren’t going to start apologizing for yourself,” she said.
“No,” I said.
“You would have, given time,” she said. “You should learn to stick to your guns. I don’t see anything wrong with your wanting to marry me. I’m a good prospect. I know how to do marriage. It says a lot for your judgment that you said that.”
“I just didn’t want you to reject the idea too quickly,” I said.
“Ha,” Jean said. “I’m an experienced woman even if I’m not exotic. I don’t reject ideas too quickly. Proposals don’t grow on trees, if that was a proposal. Although actually I had another one last week, from a guy I haven’t even gone out with.”
“You did?”
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s always admired me from afar. We grew up on the same block, so I guess he feels he knows me. He just called up and proposed.”
She looked a little depressed, just for a moment.
“Shows you what an abstraction marriage is, to some people,” she said.
“Actually, it can be kind of abstract,” she added.
“Was yours and Jimmy’s abstract?” I asked.
“Not at first,” Jean said. “It was very tangible, at first. Very much a realistic experience. Then the tangibility kind of drained out of it and it became sort of minimal. That was before he was angry. Then I decided to leave and he didn’t like that. He got angry and it became sort of expressionistic. Very black blacks, and very white whites. Sort of Franz Kline. He still has the anger. He’ll never forgive me for being able to leave him. All I’ll ever get from that man now is big black swipes of anger.”
Then she giggled. “For a relatively dull marriage it approximated quite a few modes of modern art,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. It makes it seem more interesting than it actually was.”
Jean looked around the restaurant, which was beautifully decorated and arranged, and still full of people who looked far dressier and more important than us.
“It’s sort of magic,” she said.
“What is?”
“The feeling you get, coming here,” she said. “It’s so elegant and the food is so good it convinces you you’re living on a far higher plane than you’re actually living on. But then you sink so quick, once you leave. It’s why I’m not in a hurry to leave. I’ve been sunk for a long time. I wish I didn’t have to sink again, quite so soon.”
“Sink to what?”
Jean shrugged. “Oatmeal for Beverly and bacon fried absolutely crisp for Belinda,” she said. “If there’s one particle of unfried fat on a piece of bacon the little bitch won’t eat it. I don’t know how I could have had such a picky child. But that’s what awaits me, at seven o’clock in the morning. Then I’ll have to wash the saucepan I made the oatmeal in. Beverly only likes old-fashioned oatmeal, which is a lot of trouble. By the time all that’s done there won’t be a cell in my body that feels glamorous.”
“It’s a long time until seven a.m.,” I said. “We could try and find a glamorous place and go dancing.”
Jean shook her head. “Not necessary,” she said. “This is all the illusion I require. Let’s have one more brandy.
“Why do you think you want to marry me?” she asked, as we were driving home.
“I can’t say I’d thought it through,” I said. “We could go in the antique business together. Pool our talents.”
“Pool your talents, you mean,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind being in business with you but it’s certainly no reason to marry you.”
“It might be an extra asset,” I suggested.
“We have to get the real assets first,” Jean said, looking out the window.
“Which are they?”
She didn’t answer. When we got to her house she told me to wait in the car and take Debbie home. She didn’t have quite enough babysitter money so I loaned her a dollar. The money she fished out of her purse was all crinkled up, whereas my dollar was absolutely crisp and new. The contrast amused her.
“I’m not sure your money would want to live in the same house with my money,” she said, before going in.
When I returned the front door was unlocked, so I went in. Jean was nowhere around, but while I was inspecting various small objects I sensed a presence and turned to see Belinda, standing at the bottom of the stairs.
“What are you doing here?” she asked in a distinct, unsleepy voice.
“Just looking around,” I said.
“Belinda?” Jean said, from somewhere upstairs.
Belinda marched over to the stereo and turned it on, though she made no move to play a record. She seemed mesmerized by the little green light that indicated the stereo was on.
Jean came hurrying downstairs. “How come you’re not asleep?” she asked Belinda.
“I woked,” Belinda said. “Wanta play Pat Benatar?”
Jean swooped her up and gave her a kiss. “I want you to unwoke,” she said.
I followed them up and watched Jean put an uncomplaining Belinda back in her bed. As we were going out of her room Jean took my hand and led me a few steps down the hall, into her bedroom.
“I was gonna hide all my treasures but I didn’t get time,” she said. “It’s simpler just to turn off the light. That way you won’t know you’re surrounded by treasures until morning.”
The only light in the bedroom came from a streetlight a block away. I felt nervous. I hadn’t allowed myself to assume I would be spending the night. I could see various dark shapes in the room that could have been chests or trunks but I couldn’t tell a thing about them.
“You don’t have to worry so much,” I said. “I’m not going to try and buy your favorite objects.”
“No, but you’re gonna wanta look at them—as opposed to me,” she said. She had her head tilted—she was taking off her earrings. I heard her put them on top of the TV at the end of the bed. I put my hands on her shoulders and encountered one of her small hands. She had been about to take off a small gold necklace she wore. I helped her.
“Belinda spoiled my elaborate seduction,” she said. “It’s stupid to plan anything with kids around.”
“Why did you want to plan an elaborate seduction?”
“Because I never get to. Are you nervous?”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“I figured you for a shy one,” she said. “It goes with your lying.”
She bent and shucked her dress off over her head. “If the light were on you could see my whole wardrobe,” she said, “It’s scattered around here. If you could see it you’d realize how hard I tried before I gave up and decided to look like myself.”
I sat down on the bed and began to take off my boots.
“I wondered about that,” Jean said, coming to stand in front of me. She rubbed my hair a little.
“About what?”
“Whether you had to sit down to take your boots off,” she said. “I’ve never seduced anyone in boots. It’s an important question. If you could have done it standing up I would have been really impressed.”
“Have you been fantasizing about me taking my boots off?”
“Ever since I met you,” Jean said.
“I thought you were contemptuous of boots?”
She turned the covers back and hopped up on the bed.
“So I’m a little inconsistent,” she said. “Hurry up. It’s cold in here.”