Chapter Twelve

WHEN THEY CAME BACK upstairs there was no sign of the conflict, except for a debate among Crumbs about the virtues of wearing a jockstrap in everyday life. Paula was disconcerted to see the new young waitress that Neil was already equipping. A stack of guest checks, a box of pens, a wine key, and a Sansom Street Oyster House baseball cap, which Paula knew would remain in her locker until this girl’s version of today.

“Where’d she come from?” asked Paula.

“Owner just sent her my way,” said Neil. “Katya, this is Paula. Paula, Katya.” Paula gave Katya a once-over, and for the first time ever a small wrinkle, a faint tilde, appeared on Paula’s forehead.

“How old are you?” Paula asked the girl.

“Eighteens,” she said.

“Great accent, Neilly,” chimed a Crumb. “Like that fucking Elton John video. What’s the name of that video with the hot Russkie?”

“‘Nikita,’ Crumb.”

“I was even younger than you when I started,” said Paula. “Good luck here.”

“Thanking you,” said Katya.

Neil and Cactus had seen many a barmaid exit that front door, their boyfriend holding a box.

“Don’t be a stranger,” said Neil. It was what he always said, and nine times out of ten it was the last thing they ever heard him say.

“Can’t believe this is it,” said Paula.

“How long you been here, anyway?” asked Neil. “Five seconds?”

“Almost two years.”

“Years are bullshit,” said Neil. “Decades are what matters.”

“Years aren’t bullshit to me. I learned a lot here.”

“By the time you hit Broad Street, you’ll be saying to yourself, ‘Neil who? Oyster what?’”

“I for one will never forget this place,” said Charlie.

“No shit. Most people leave with a few oyster crackers in their jacket pocket, maybe a mint and a toothpick. Look at what you got.” Neil chortled.

“Bye, Pauly,” said a Crumb. “Whaddya say we do a goodbye smooch?”

She blew him a kiss.

“I’ll take it,” said the Crumb. “Adios! Hey Katya, you a Commie or what?”

They walked in silence, Charlie a little behind Paula, the weight of her boxed personal items testing his fight-weary arms.

“She was pretty,” said Paula. “Don’t you think?”

“Who?”

“You know who. My replacement.”

“Not my type,” said Charlie.

“Yeah, right. If she was the first girl you met at the Oyster House, I wouldn’t be your type.”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s been a long day.”

Charlie wanted to say ditto. He felt unmoored, in a part of his life that he didn’t recognize, and all he wanted was to lie down next to Paula and acclimate to this strange new place.

“Are we going to your apartment?” asked Charlie.

“I guess you can come up for a little bit.” She hoped he wouldn’t try to kiss her. She’d be obliged to kiss him back. He’d won the fight, and it was the right thing to do. Besides, she didn’t want to go to sleep alone. She’d ask him to wait, to watch her fall asleep, and then he could leave. Most guys would try for more, but this Charlie was safe. Obedient, even. And then she heard her mother: All boys are the same, Paula.

“I’m usually not like I was today,” said Charlie. “I mean, you have nothing to worry about. I’m not a violent person. Not at all.”

She was going to say how weird it was that they’d both touched the same part of Tommy’s body but thought better of it.

“I’m not worried. I’ve been with lots of tough guys, and they all want the same thing.”

“I don’t want that.”

“You don’t want love?”

“I thought you were going to say something else.”

“So, you don’t want sex?”

“No, of course I do.”

“Well, it’s not happening tonight, I’ll tell you that much. So, here we are. This is my apartment building.”

“Wow, so stately. I thought it would be different. More modern.”

“It’s nothing special.”

It was smallish, eight stories, maybe nine, “1922” etched in the stone above the entrance. A little piece of Manhattan in the Philly streets.

She lived on the sixth floor and the elevator was broken.

“The elevator’s always broken,” she said. “The pizza guy makes us meet him halfway.” Charlie watched her bounce up the stairs. The golden brownish corkscrews of hair—ten question marks? Twenty? It was hard to count.

Her apartment was larger and cleaner than he’d envisioned. There were flowers on her bureau, another dozen on the coffee table in the living room, and a third set in the kitchen.

“Lots of flowers,” said Charlie.

“From Tommy. He sent them this morning.”

“I’m surprised you kept them.”

“The flowers don’t know where they came from.”

She believes in things, he thought as he watched her put away her work stuff. She had, she said, about $150 to her name and no clear plan for adding to that. Rent was due on the fifteenth, and Jasmine’s name was on the lease.

“Jazz would do anything for me, but when it comes to the rent, she becomes a different person.”

Charlie sat on her bed, not a futon but a four-poster antique. Apparently it had belonged to her mother. There was a story about how it ended up in Paula’s possession, but Charlie wasn’t listening. He was watching her put away her jewelry and choose a CD.

“I have to get out of these pants,” she said.

“Should I close my eyes?”

Before he could look away, she’d removed the khakis.

“It’s just like a bathing suit, and I don’t ask every boy at the beach to shut their eyes. They’re just my legs. Everyone’s got ’em.”

Not like these. The only other girl legs he’d seen, live and up close, were born of diets and lotions, cleverly chosen shorts and muted lighting. Paula’s had no bad moments, no detritus behind the knees, no overworked calves or pillowy thighs. Legs are composed of lots of little parts, but hers had exactly two, thought Charlie, as he watched her fold her pants into an improbably small rectangle.

“Is that you?” he asked, nodding at a framed advertisement hanging above the bed. A slightly younger Paula, wearing a soccer outfit, drank a sports drink after a game, her foot on the ball, her curls soaked.

“God, don’t I look sweaty?”

“No, not really.”

“It was for this drink called Frucor. Hence the big ‘Frucor’ on the bottom. It’s an Australian drink, but they shot it in Ireland.”

“I didn’t know you modeled. I’m not surprised.”

“I’m not a model. Please. I only really did that one gig. Summer after junior year. Better than selling ice cream, and I loved Ireland, even though I was only there for a week. I was supposed to stay a month, but then this boy gave me a bracelet, and when I gave it back to him, he accused me of stealing it. Irish boys sure are interesting.”

“You look a little Irish. Maybe something in your cheeks?”

“My dad’s side, his cheeks are always red. Booze.” She held out three CDs. “Okay, you’re the guest, so you get to choose. But if I start to fall asleep, you have to go.” They were all by Chet Baker. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

“His voice?”

“Everything.” She put on men’s boxers over her underwear. For sure they were Tommy’s.

“Can I wash my hands?” asked Charlie. “I probably should—after, you know, the fight.”

She was already in a Chet Baker trance, so he helped himself to her bathroom, the mothership of all her smells, while “My Funny Valentine” played and she hummed along from her bed. She fell asleep one song later, during “Like Someone in Love,” rolled over, and made the bed creak. He felt privileged to hear these sounds, but knew others had heard them, too. Worse—they’d contributed, masculine weight testing the old wood. He hovered over the bed. There were no chairs in the room, just the antique bed and its four posts. His mother hung hats from her bedposts, but Paula’s posts were clear, a clarity that would have spoken to Angelina’s Dignidad. Multipurposed furnishings offended Angelina. She had once called her sister a peasant for keeping a box of tissues atop the television.

“I guess I should go,” whispered Charlie, but there was no response. She was out, breathing deeply, occasionally making a clicking noise, but not snoring. Lips barely parted, eyelashes fluttering. He touched the feathery blanket that was touching her, rolled an edge of the comforter between his thumb and forefinger.

“I’m going to turn off Chet Baker,” he whispered. After the CD player stopped whirring, she changed positions. Now she was an S taking up most of the bed; the notion that he might join her was reduced to impossibility.

He tried to memorize the scene. He wanted to own the Frucor poster. That her advertisement was not above all the beds of his future seemed wrong and crazy. He also wanted to pop open a bottle of champagne, slip into a lounger, like the ones they had at Adam’s Rib when your table wasn’t ready, and have a conversation with himself about her.

And then she took off her pants right in front of me and folded them so carefully. And in her bathroom was this pink razor blade with its plastic cap. Unbelievable princess of small things.

“Hey,” said Paula, her eyes still shut.

“Hey.”

“Thank you for everything. For telling me the truth, last night, about Tommy, and for my giraffe, and just—for wearing that—um—Jewish hat.”

“Yarmulke?” asked Charlie.

“Yeah. And for noticing the My Little Pony sticker.”

“Always,” said Charlie, moving closer to the bed, but she was out again. Protective of the sleeping girl, he ended his own loitering and showed himself the door.