I was late to meet Felicia because again I changed five times. I have seen this woman nearly daily for years and I was suddenly unreasonably consumed with worry over my appearance. It made no sense. This wasn’t a date, just a walk over a bridge I had seen countless times. Never before, though, had I crossed it. There was a metaphor if ever I’d heard one.
Even though it wasn’t a date, I hadn’t told Sherri about it. I’d told her I had a business thing. She was so angry that I hadn’t ended the Four Seasons mix-up before it started, how would she understand me actually planning to spend a Sunday with Felicia, or, as she called her, my washed-out secretary? I was beginning to wonder what I was doing myself. After all, I was lying; it was beginning to feel a bit like an affair, not that I had ever had one. Only I would cheat on a young blonde with my middle-aged assistant. Though affairs with assistants are commonplace. What am I talking about? This is not an affair! I promised myself to talk about business a little bit so that when I saw Sherri later I wouldn’t have to lie. Well, not completely.
As my cab pulled over at City Hall, I saw Felicia on the sidewalk. She was wearing tennis shoes and capris. She looked…adorable. She approached the cab, and as I stepped out to pay she leaned over to give me a kiss hello. It was meant for my cheek, but I inadvertently turned my head and her lips ended up on mine. It was as if it unlocked something in both of us, and we began to kiss on the sidewalk like two teenagers with nowhere private to go. It seemed endless and was interrupted only by the cabbie shouting at me, “Mister—your change!” I looked Felicia in the eye.
“Do you really want to walk across the bridge today?”
She couldn’t even speak; she just shook her head. I turned to the cabbie. “Keep the change. Take us to 57 Sutton Place, please,” I said, pulling her into the cab with me.
We made out the entire way. I don’t even know how we composed ourselves enough to walk past my doorman. I pointed to the camera in the elevator and we stood in separate corners. When the doors opened it was like a race to my apartment. I fumbled with the keys and she grabbed them and opened the door for us. We barely made it to the bedroom, and by the time I touched her bare skin, she literally shuddered with desire. I had never thought about whether or not I was good in bed until I started dating someone half my age, and then I became suddenly and awkwardly aware. With Felicia it was as if I had magic hands. Every move I made, every touch was electric. And it was catching. It felt so good to make someone feel so good.
When it was over we lay staring at each other. I wondered what she was thinking. I knew what I was thinking. I was thinking, I wonder if I’ll ever feel that good again in my life. And then we did it again. Twice. No Viagra. I was officially having an affair with my assistant.
Afterward we curled up under the covers and watched TV. She nuzzled into the crook of my arm as I switched channels. We both jumped at The French Connection. It had already started, but we’d both seen it before so we settled right in. We got to cross the Brooklyn Bridge that day after all, but with Popeye Doyle in his 1970 Buick.
“Did you know that this was the first R-rated movie to win an Oscar?” Felicia said, adding, “Depending how you look at it, though. Two years earlier Midnight Cowboy won, but it was rated X at the time. It was changed to R, so retroactively that’s really first.” I had no idea she knew so much about movies. I looked at her wonderingly. What else was there I had to look forward to in getting to know her better? My look must have felt scrutinizing, as she suddenly seemed embarrassed. “I know a lot of meaningless trivia about movies…I’ve taken a lot of movie classes.”
“I would love to take a movie class,” I said, trying to make her feel more comfortable. I was amazed. We’d just had the most explosive, uninhibited sex I could possibly imagine and I hadn’t detected any embarrassment, yet this embarrassed her.
I looked over at the clock. It read five p.m. I panicked. How had it gotten so late? I was due to meet Sherri at Elio’s at six for dinner with my girls. It was our family tradition to meet at Elio’s every Sunday night. Marilyn and I started it when the girls were teenagers so that we’d be guaranteed some face time over the weekend, and it stuck. It grew from the four of us to six with the addition of my two sons-in-law, then to six and a high chair for my beautiful granddaughter. When Marilyn died we kept it going. I think it was my girls’ way of checking on me and getting me out of the house on weekends, when they worried, I think, that I would just shuffle around the apartment in my pajamas. The first time we walked in without Marilyn was brutal. There was our table in the corner, set for six and a high chair, as usual. One of my sons-in-law whispered in the maître d’s ear and we watched as a busboy removed the sixth chair. Not one of us uttered a word that night. Even the baby seemed to sense our pain and just sat there sucking ziti from her little fingers.
Over the past few months with Sherri my Sundays have been very different. My old Sundays with Marilyn involved reading the Times cover to cover, maybe taking a walk in the park, and usually seeing a movie, either at the theater or right here in the very bed I was lying in with Felicia. Sundays with Marilyn were blissful and familiar. Kind of like this Sunday had turned out, though now there was the minor addition of my having suddenly become Don Juan at sixty—a whole new definition for sexagenerian! Sundays with Sherri, on the other hand, usually involved brunch at some “amazing” new place downtown with an organic menu featuring artisanal cheese, heirloom tomatoes, and, if I was lucky, the occasional gluten-free doughnut. I once made a joke about Sherri’s generation speaking about gluten the way mine spoke about crack, and was stared at blankly by her six young friends. These boozy brunches were followed either by a shopping spree or, occasionally, a gallery visit. But no matter how we filled our Sundays, they all ended with me heading uptown alone to get ready for dinner with my family while she moped because she wasn’t invited. I could hardly tell her the real reason that I didn’t want her to come: I couldn’t bear for her to sit in Marilyn’s seat, or the looks from the staff at Elio’s when they saw I was dating someone closer to my daughters’ age than my own. But I had an ironclad excuse; the rules of Sunday night dinners had been set long ago, as soon as our oldest started dating: no significant others until they were engaged. We still met plenty of boyfriends over the years, but Sunday night was family night, and there were no exceptions—until the Four Seasons mix-up, that is. When I’d been unable to produce the little black dress, I had attempted to make up for it with an invitation to Sunday night dinner at Elio’s. Don’t ask me why I felt the need to keep pretending with Sherri. I just couldn’t bear to disappoint her, although I knew that it was coming, and that it would ultimately be for the best. But tonight wasn’t the right time to end things with her. So I had one hour to get Felicia out of my apartment as chivalrously as possible, shower, and get to the restaurant where a woman that I had nothing in common with would sit in my wife’s seat while my daughters faked happiness for me and the waiters rolled their eyes at the cliché I had become.