When I arrived back at 52 Christopher Street at seven o’clock that evening, delicatessen pastrami in hand, a man was sitting on the stoop by the door. He was still wearing his gray courting suit, his blue-sky necktie that matched his eyes. The cool October evening ruffled his hair affectionately.
He rose at the sight of me. “You’re late.”
“I can explain.” I walked past him and fit my key into the lock.
“Wait, Vivian. You have to listen to me.”
“I don’t have to do anything, Dr. Salisbury. I’m busy.”
His hand appeared out of nowhere to rest atop mine on the knob. “Please, Vivian. Let me explain. Let me in, just for a moment.”
It crushed me, the sight of that hand. And I had planned to be so strong.
“I won’t change my mind.”
“I know. I just need you to hear me out.”
How was it possible I could be in love with a man’s knuckles?
“All right,” I said. “For a moment.”
The stairwell was cold and smelled like vomit. I kept my breath shallow as I climbed upward, listening for the guilty beat of Doctor Paul’s footsteps behind me. He didn’t say a word, and neither did I.
I opened the door to the wholesome sight of Sally lounging at the table, smoke floating from her fingers, wearing a short red kimono and conspicuously nothing else. “What’s with the suitcase?” she asked, not looking up.
I set down the pastrami sandwich and snatched the suitcase away. “None of your business.”
“You cranky thing. Cigarette?” She looked up and saw Doctor Paul. Her hands went frantically to the ends of the kimono, seeking additional silk that wasn’t there. “Jiminy Cricket. Who’s the blonde?”
“This is Dr. David Salisbury. Dr. Salisbury, this is my esteemed roommate, Sally Finch. She’s from Arizona.”
“Utah.”
“One of those places.”
Sally stuck out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, Dr. David Salisbury.”
“Likewise. It’s Paul, actually. Only my pops calls me David.”
“Paul.” She gave up on the kimono and reached for the Lucky Strikes. “I’m Sally. Smoke?”
He patted his jacket pocket and kept his eyes faithfully on her face. “I’ve got my own, thanks. I hope we’re not disturbing you.”
“Not a lick.” She looked at me. “Would you two like a little privacy? I can skip out.”
“No, thanks, Sally. We’ll just be a few minutes.” I picked up the suitcase, crossed to my bedroom, and heaved the old leather on the bed. “Come along, Doctor, dear.”
I’d been counting on Sally being out this evening—what were the odds, really?—but this would do nicely. My bedroom contained no other human perch except the bed, and that was already occupied by Aunt Violet’s suitcase. Doctor Paul stood uncomfortably next to the opposite wall, arms crossed, face flushed pink. As well it should.
I crossed my own arms. “Proceed.”
“You aren’t going to make this easy, are you?”
“Why should I? You can light a cigarette if you like.”
He sighed and reached into his pocket. I liked his cigarette case, plain silver, not even engraved. In my world, you monogrammed everything. The missing stamp of ownership seemed a modest touch. Not that I wanted to count Doctor Paul’s virtues at the moment.
He held out the case to me. I shook my head. He lit himself up and leaned against the wall, right next to the vivid blue and tangled arms of my favorite Matisse print.
The room was too warm. I took off my jacket and tossed it on top of Aunt Violet’s suitcase. “What did you say to Gogo?”
“What did she tell you?”
“She didn’t tell me anything. She never came back to the office.”
He swore softly. “I was kind, Vivian. I tried so hard to be kind.”
“Did you break things off?”
“Christ, Vivian. What else could I do? I couldn’t be dishonest.”
I slid down the wall and sat with my knees pressed against my forehead. I saw her face before they left for lunch, her tremulous adoration. “Oh, God. Poor Gogo.”
“Vivian—”
“Leave. Just leave.”
“Vivian, you’re laboring under a complete misapprehension. I don’t know where Margaux got this absurd notion that I wanted to marry her—”
“Two guesses.”
“I did not lead her on, Vivian. We went on a few dates, that’s all.”
I looked up. I knew my eyes were red, and I didn’t care. “You had an affair last summer! You moved to New York to be with her!”
“Not true. We had some fun—”
“Oh, fun again.”
“Your word, remember? Only this time that’s all it was. She was with her family. I was staying with friends. I took her out to dinner, to the beach. It was nothing.”
“Did you kiss her?”
He found the ashtray on the footstool that served as my nightstand. “Once or twice.”
“Anything more?”
“Maybe a little.” He picked up the ashtray and concentrated on tapping his cigarette just so.
“She says you were madly in love. On the hook.”
“Well, I’m sorry for that. I thought it was a little lighthearted vacation flirtation. I liked her tremendously; she’s a sweet girl.”
“A beautiful girl.”
“All right, yes. She’s beautiful. What of it?”
“You moved to New York.”
“Vivian, I’d already accepted the offer here. She had nothing to do with it.”
“But you picked right up where you left off.”
“Vivian, it wasn’t serious. I swear it wasn’t. We dated, that’s all. I hardly knew anyone else in the city. How was I supposed to know I’d meet you a few weeks later?” He finished the cigarette and started another. I reached over before he closed the case and took one. He lit me up in silence, and I saw how drawn he looked, how shattered.
“It was serious to her,” I said.
“Well, I was beginning to realize that. I tried to draw away. I didn’t want to hurt her, Vivian.”
Well, it fit, didn’t it? And I couldn’t blame him. He’d done nothing wrong, really, except he’d failed to fall in love with a girl; and whose fault was that? He hadn’t failed willfully. He hadn’t failed with cruel intent. It was just the breaks. I sat down on the corner of the bed, next to Aunt Violet’s suitcase, with my back toward Paul. The old mattress sagged beneath me. The cigarette burned quietly between my fingers, and I stared at the wall, which Pepper had helped me paint a cheerful daffodil yellow the very day I’d moved in.
“Could you open the window?” I asked.
The wood scraped obediently behind me. A rush of cool air swirled against my blouse. I felt the mattress sink behind me, and I closed my eyes as Paul’s hand touched my shoulder. “I was going to break things off anyway, Vivian. It was inevitable. I should have done it sooner, but I hated to hurt her like that. I regret deeply that she’s hurt, that I hurt her, but what could I do? Lie to her instead?”
“She would have been perfect for you.”
“No, she wouldn’t. That’s not the marriage I want. Yes, you’re right, she’s sweet and beautiful. She’ll make someone a wonderful wife, but not me.”
“Why not?”
His sigh blew against my neck. “Vivian, she’s not you. I don’t mean to be cruel, but she bored me. We never talked about anything important. In the months I knew her, we didn’t share a fraction of what you and I shared in a single hour on Saturday. She doesn’t think about things. She takes everything as it is. I don’t know what it is, really. A sense of curiosity, maybe? I couldn’t have told you, I didn’t even know what was lacking until you came up behind me in that post office line. I didn’t know what was possible.”
His hand came around my ribs to rest on my stomach. I was vain enough to let it stay.
“Let me in, Vivian,” he said. “Please. Let me in again. Let me know you.”
I took a last pull on my cigarette and reached to crush it out. The brief separation chilled my spine. “And if you don’t like what you learn?”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s you, that’s all.”
How did he do that? It’s you, that’s all. It’s you, Vivian, and whatever is inside you, whatever beauty or corruption, whatever virtue or vice, I must love.
What could I say to that? There was no answer in the world.
“Let me make you happy, Vivian.”
“I am happy.”
“Happier, then.” He plucked at the buttons on my blouse. “Tell me. What do you do at that magazine of yours?”
“I check facts. When I grow up, I want to write articles, features, the ones right there on the front cover, with my byline underneath in thick letters.”
“Sounds very Vivian-like. I can’t wait to read them. In the meantime, here’s a fact you can check.” He kissed the hollow where my neck and shoulder met. My skin shook at the familiarity of his lips. I loved the mintiness of his shampoo, the scrubbed warmth of him. I closed my eyes.
Fine, then. I was no saint. Why nail myself to the cross when Doctor Paul was right here, my Doctor Paul, ready to love me, taking nothing away from Gogo that had never really been hers to begin with?
I took Doctor Paul’s willing hand and moved it to my willing breast.
At which point, as if God himself were delivering me a thunderbolt upside the head to adjust my moral philosophy, a knock shook the hollow panel of my bedroom door.
“Shh.” Doctor Paul moved the suitcase to the floor and laid me back on the bed. The startled mattress groaned out beneath us.
“What is it?” I gasped.
Sally’s voice. “Telephone for you!”
Doctor Paul, growling in my ear: “Tell her you’ll call back.”
“I’ll call back!”
Lips on my breast. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow!”
Footsteps. Silence. I put my hands to Doctor Paul’s lapels and struggled him out of his unnecessary jacket. He was smiling, light with relief. He threw the jacket on the floor and cradled my face and kissed me.
Sally again. Bored and urgent. “Vivian! It’s your friend Gogo. She says it’s important.”
Gogo.
My hands froze in Doctor Paul’s hair.
“Vivian, no. Call her back. She’ll be fine. She’s stronger than you think.”
Just like that, in a blink of the eternal eye, Doctor Paul’s weight atop me was intolerable. I scrabbled at his chest and pushed him up.
“Vivian—”
But I was already buttoning up my guilty blouse, already straightening my telltale hair. I threw open the door and ran to the telephone.
“Gogo.”
“Oh, Vivs.” Her tears were flooding so fast, they nearly ran down the telephone line to wet my hand.
“Gogo, what happened?”
“He said . . .” Hiccup. “He said . . .” Hiccup.
“He didn’t propose?”
“No! He said . . .” Hiccup.
I lowered myself into the chair and rested my cheek against my arm. My skin still returned the imprint of Paul’s lips; the tips of my breasts still tingled without remorse. Nerves, hormones: they had no conscience. I looked out the window and wanted to throw myself into the courtyard. “Oh, Gogo. Oh, sweetie pie.”
“What’s wrong with me, Vivs? Why doesn’t anyone want to marry me?”
I heard Doctor Paul’s words in my head. “Oh, honey, because they’re idiots. They think they want something else, but they’re wrong. They want something exciting, and they don’t understand that—”
“I’m not exciting?”
“You are exciting. To the right man. The right man will come along, Gogo. A smart, wonderful man who—”
“Are you crying, too, Vivs?”
“Yes, Gogo. I’m crying, too. I’m so sorry. So . . . God, so sorry.” I looked up, and there was Doctor Paul, leaning against the door frame, arms folded, shirt untucked. His face had gone all heavy and confounded. My bed hovered in the tiny Manhattan space behind him.
“The worst—” Hiccup. “The worst of it was that he was so nice.”
“He was so k—” Hiccup. “Kind. He kept telling me how much he cared for me, how much he wanted me to be happy. I thought . . . I thought he’d pull out the ring any minute. And then lunch was over, and we got up, and . . . He kissed my cheek, Vivs. My cheek!” Flooding anew. “And then I realized what he meant. Happy! How could I ever be happy without him?”
My eyes shot a stream of gamma rays straight through the frontal bone of Doctor Paul’s skull. “Gogo, let me come to you. You shouldn’t be alone.”
“I’m not alone. I have Rufus.”
“Jesus, Gogo. Your teddy bear is not enough. You need a martini. You need five martinis. You need—”
“Vivs, stop.”
“You need to be taken out and gotten thoroughly drunk, and then we’ll—”
“Vivs, stop. I’m not like you. I just need—” Sniff. “I just need a good cry, that’s all. I’ll be fine. I really will.”
“Forgive me, but your strategy doesn’t seem to be working. You should try mine.”
Gurgle. “Oh, Vivs. I do love you.”
I turned away from Doctor Paul’s elegantly poised body and watched my finger travel along the smooth dark plastic of the telephone, the spiraling cord, the little twin buttons that could sever this excruciating connection in an instant. I whispered: “I love you, too, Gogo.”
“Good night, Vivs.”
“Good night, sweetiest of pies. Feel better.”
The line clicked. I hung up the receiver with both hands and stared at that damned apparatus, that instrument of divine retribution, waiting for Doctor Paul to speak first, because I surely to God could not. I surely to God could not say what I had to say.
A coffee cup clattered before me, black and hot and smelling strongly of cheap brandy. “From the sound of Gogo’s voice, I thought I might just get a pot going,” said Sally.
“Always prepared.” I sipped. The coffee-to-brandy ratio was just about where I needed it. Which is to say, six of one, half a dozen of the other.
“And now,” Sally went on, with a long red kimono stretch, “I think I’ll just slink on back to my cave and give you two a little privacy. There’s more brandy in the cupboard if you need it. Enchanted to meet you, Dr. Salisbury.”
“Pleasure.”
I waited until the bedroom door closed. “She’s wrecked. We wrecked her.”
“I wrecked her. You have nothing to do with it. It’s on my conscience, Vivian, not yours.”
“Gallant to the last.”
“This is not the last.”
I shook my head. “I’m afraid it is.”
“Will you look at me, at least?”
I turned. He’d pushed himself away from the door frame and stood on his own two feet. His eyes were wide and desperate.
“I can’t, Paul. I can’t do this. I’m not perfect, God knows, I’m no angel. But I can’t do this to her. I will sink like a stone if I do. I will be beyond human hope.”
“You’re not doing anything to her. It’s my fault. I’m the one who led her on.”
“You didn’t lead her on. It’s just Gogo. She’s . . . she’s romantic. But that doesn’t change anything. In fact, it makes things worse. If she saw us together, if she knew . . .”
Doctor Paul was shaking his head. “So we’ll wait a bit. We’ll give her a week or two—”
“No. Never.”
“A month. Two months. Whatever it takes. We’ll be as quiet as mice.”
“You’re not serious. She’ll understand, Vivian. She’s a beautiful girl. She’ll find someone else in no time.”
“You don’t understand. Not ever, do you hear me? Do you not understand a single thing about women? If she were to fall madly in love and marry and have a dozen kids, and if you and I were to start an affair when we were sixty, it would still not be okay. It just wouldn’t.”
He stood still and stricken, about ten feet away. The shadow from the lamp made his cheeks hollow.
“And there’s my job,” I said. “Lightfoot will fire me faster than a Soviet rocket.”
“Your job?”
“My gig, my career. A writer at the Metropolitan. It’s all I ever wanted from life.”
“Vivian, there are other magazines. Look at you. The most dazzling woman in Manhattan. They’ll be clamoring for you. You are sitting there, Vivian, and throwing away our happiness with your two hands.”
“For God’s sake. Listen to yourself. It’s Monday. When you woke up Saturday morning you didn’t even know I existed.”
“Saturday morning I was a different man.”
“Oh, lose the melodrama. This is not Saturday night at the Met. People don’t just fall in love in a minute and a half.”
“It was twelve hours. Plenty of time for a quick study like me.”
“You’re a quick something, I’ll give you that.”
Without warning, he whipped around and slammed his fist into the door frame.
I jumped to my feet. “What the hell was that?”
“You can’t, Vivian. You can’t just send me away. You can’t pretend this never happened.” He spoke into the plaster next to his fingers.
“I’m a Schuyler, kiddo. Watch and learn.”
“I don’t understand. I cannot comprehend why you’re doing this.”
I whispered: “Yes, you can.”
Here’s the thing about New York, the thing I love most: there is no such substance as silence. If you stop talking, and he stops talking, the city takes over for you. A siren forms a distant parabola of sound. A door slams. The old couple in 4A argues over who will answer the telephone. The young lovers in 2C reach an animalistic climax. A million other lives play out on your doorstep, and not one of them gives a damn about your little problems. Life goes on and on and on.
Without looking at me, Doctor Paul detached himself from the wall and picked up his jacket from my bedroom floor. He shrugged it over his shoulders and shook out his cuffs. I stared at him: handsome of face, straightforward of shoulders, sunshine of hair.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob. The entry bulb shone on the back of his neck. “One more thing. As a practical matter, after what happened Saturday night. Do you mind telling me the date of your last menstruation?”
“You sound like a doctor.”
“Imagine that.”
I fingered the wrapper on the pastrami sandwich. “Three weeks ago. We should be safe.”
“You’re never safe. So will you let me know? If we’re not.”
“Of course. But I’m not worried. I wouldn’t have . . . I mean, I would have made you . . . I’m not that reckless.”
He opened the door. “I’m not giving up, Vivian. I’m as stubborn as you are. If I have to wait until we’re sixty.”
“Trust me, Doctor. I’m not worth it.”
The back of his head swung back and forth in the doorway.
“Trust me, Vivian. You are.”