I was welcomed at the restaurant in the language particular to upscale New York waiters—part French, part Irish, with something of Italian liquidity to it, especially around the gestures—and seated without delay. I asked for a glass of the young Sangiovese and on the waiter’s recommendation ordered veal; with everything settled, I sat back and looked around the room.
Besides myself, she was the only person eating alone. It’s unusual to see a woman eating alone in such a restaurant, especially lunch, especially a young woman. A bright metal bucket was set beside her, the swathed bottle resting a little askew, the tulip glass half-filled with champagne. She seemed lost in contemplation of the glass and her hands. She looked barely old enough to be drinking legally, if she was in fact old enough.
There are millions of people in New York on any working day. Over half of them are women, and perhaps four percent of those have money of their own, and maybe ten percent of those—a tenth of that twenty-fifth of that half—are what might be called monied. I studied the solitary young woman.
She had a fresh-from-the-salon look, everything about her carefully in place, everything new and expensive. Because her head was bent, I couldn’t see much of her face, just a part of a cheek, the chin line, half of a bright-red mouth, and the rest a long tumble of curls. The wild gypsy look, which women seem to like on themselves, was at odds with her baby-blue dress with its wide sailor-style white collar and long sleeves. The red lipstick matched the red piping on collar and cuffs, matched the red nail polish, matched the red boots visible under the tablecloth. She looked like a doll somebody had dressed up to go out with. I wondered if she had been stood up for a lunch date; she had a stood-up look to her. Her cheeks were pink, but whether from blusher, champagne, shame, or chagrin I had no way of knowing.
A plate was put in front of her and she toyed with her food but didn’t eat much. Her glass was kept full. She kept emptying it. The bold nails were at odds with the hesitant movements of her ringless hands.
I didn’t stare at her as openly as it sounds. I drank my wine, ate my own lunch, looked around the room, thought my thoughts. I was savoring my coffee when she asked for her bill. Her red purse looked unworn, stylish, too small to carry much more than comb, lipstick, powder, and a couple of credit cards.
I paid cash, as always, and tipped generously. I was in no hurry to leave, so I watched her carefully sign her receipt, carefully slide out from behind the table, and walk carefully to the door to the coatroom. It was a sailor dress she was wearing. Between the shapeless blouse, the full skirt, and the boots, her figure was effectively concealed. She was short, I could see that, but I doubted my own eye because in everything else—hair, makeup, dress, footwear—her appearance was designed for a tall woman, a tall and stylishly thin woman, most certainly a woman old in experience. This girl suggested innocence. But the coat she accepted was a long, dark, worldly mink, and she puzzled me.
Perhaps she had no mother. Perhaps her mother had bad taste, or kept herself young by keeping the daughter younger. Or perhaps this young woman was convinced that as long as she spent a lot of money, she was getting her money’s worth.
I didn’t follow her out of the restaurant. I wasn’t that puzzled; she was only a girl. It was, however, not many minutes later that I stood outside the entrance, looking up and down the street, assuring the waiter that yes, my meal had been delicious, and yes, I had tried the veal, which had been all he had promised. The young woman in mink was, I noticed, making her slow way down the street.
While we watched, she wobbled over to a set of scrubbed steps and sat. A nanny wheeling her pram toward us made a wide circle around the hunched figure.
“She’s never been in the restaurant before, not that I remember,” the waiter said. “But I mean, look at her. She’s not a woman you’d remember.” He had forgotten his accent.
After a brief rest, she pulled herself erect and hesitated. A man walking toward her looked at her, and she looked down at the ground before moving on her wobbly way. He gave her the kind of smile that explains why women have taken up martial arts and approached closer.
“What a city this is,” the waiter remarked, accent remembered. “Terrible, yes?”
That would have been a long argument, so I just nodded my head as if I were agreeing and buttoned my coat. She had crossed to the opposite side of the street and the man had started to cross to intersect her but, seeing me, veered off by the time I overtook her.
I put a gloved hand on her arm—not the upper, intimate arm, but the lower arm, just above the wrist, and just the slightest of touches. I spoke in my plummiest voice. “Excuse me, miss?”
She stopped. Her quick glance had nothing but alarm in it. She wasn’t a girl. She was old enough to be wary of chance encounters, and her face had none of the unfinished look of girlhood. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m on my way…” She spoke with slow self-consciousness, and she swayed gently where she stood.
“You’ve had too much to drink,” I said, nonjudgmental, impersonal.
She moved to pull her arm away but the gesture almost unbalanced her, so I held on. Fur is slippery, not easy to grip with gentlemanly firmness.
“I don’t think I know you.” She spoke almost in a whisper. “I’ll scream for help.” She looked carefully at me. “Do I know you?”
“I was in the restaurant. Let me get you a cab. Really, I’m safe.” There was no reason for her to believe me.
She drew herself up. Even in the high-heeled boots she didn’t reach my shoulder. “I don’t want a cab. Thank you.”
“You can’t wander the streets like this.”
“A cab would take me home.”
“Home is the best place for you.”
She shook her head, then reached out to steady herself on my arm. “I’ve had too much to drink,” she said. “I need to sit down.”
I raised my hand to signal an approaching cab. “That’s right, you do. You’re absolutely right. That’s very sensible of you.” The cab pulled up beside us, halting traffic. I opened the door for her. A few horns protested the inconvenience. She hesitated.
“I can’t go home. You don’t understand. It was fine when I was sitting down, I was fine.”
I nudged her toward the interior. Surprise made her sit, her legs out of the cab, her purse on her lap. “Tell the man where to take you.”
“No.” Sullen, mulish refusal.
“It’s not wise not to go home. Even this part of town isn’t safe. You need to go home and sleep it off.”
She pulled her legs into the cab—“You can’t make me”—and slid across the seat to the opposite door.
I got in, again holding her by the mink, and pulled the door closed beyond her, and pulled the door closed behind me. Horns honked. “You want a cab or not?” the cabbie asked.
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” I told him.
She giggled. “But we haven’t been introduced,” and tears slid out of her eyes.
The cab inched closer to the parked cars, letting those from behind pass. One blared as it went by, to let us know we were not forgiven. “Where do you live?” I asked her.
“I can’t go home,” she wailed.
I could have shaken her.
“Mister,” the driver reminded me.
“It was only champagne. I was only sitting down. I can’t stand up.”
“Look, mister, you’re costing me money.”
“I don’t have to tell you.” She wouldn’t look at me. “Nobody can make me. Can they?”
The cabbie was easier to deal with, so I did that. “Just drive. Anywhere. To the park, take us to the Seventy-Second Street entrance.”
He pulled out into the line of traffic. Horns greeted him.
“What are you doing?” She sounded frightened now.
“I’m taking you for a walk.”
“I’ll scream. Do you hear me? Driver, stop.”
He pulled over, cars honked, and she reached for the door handle.
I held her wrist. “Be reasonable. You won’t go home, wherever that is, you’re drunk—”
“Am not.”
I didn’t laugh, but it was an effort.
“You can’t get drunk on champagne,” she told me.
I was tempted—I really was—to leave her to her own devices. I think if she had looked drunk enough to throw up, I would have. But she didn’t have that greeny-white, sweating look and I didn’t have anything better to do with the afternoon, so I stuck with her. With it. My knight-in-shining-armor act.
“You need to walk it off. Or at least walk some of it off.”
“Not sitting down you can’t, not champagne. Everybody says. I know.”
“And I’m probably the safest man in a ten-block radius.”
At that she lifted her face. “Probably twenty,” she said. “Maybe in all of Manhattan. I’m sorry, I should thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Drive on, cabbie.”
He did, crossing an avenue. She smiled at me, without showing any teeth, all sweet reason. “I’m sitting down. Everything’s all right now. I’m fine now. You can leave me alone. Cabs are safe places, they have to be: the drivers have to pass a test. What’s his name?” she leaned forward to peer at his license. “Leonard. Leonard? Stop this cab at once. Please.”
He obeyed her, grinning at me in the mirror. At least somebody was enjoying himself.
“Take us to the park, Leonard,” I said, in my most commanding voice. “The Seventy-Second Street entrance.”
He hesitated, thinking, then made up his mind and pulled out again. “I hope you’re a big tipper, mister.”
“But you can’t, you can’t do this. Listen, what’s your name, Leonard? This man is a perfect stranger. I want to go home.”
I seized on that. “And where would home be?”
“Uh-uh.” She shook her head from side to side. “You’re not going to trick me that way. You know I can’t go home, not like this.” She turned away from me to glare out the window.
We got out at the park, where I hoped the presence of many people would be reassuring to her. She marched along beside me quietly enough but plumped herself down on the first bench we came to, coat collar turned up, coat held around her, so that she looked like a giant, overfed mink. She wouldn’t look at me. She didn’t speak.
I didn’t insist. I was only cooperative. When she got up and walked, I went with her. When she sat, I sat. We circled the pond, walking and sitting. It must have been a couple of hours. Finally, she turned to face me, but she wasn’t looking at me, she was looking at doing what she had to do. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Really, whoever you are. I’m really sorry and I’m really embarrassed too.”
“Good,” I said. Then she did focus on my face, a brief irritated glance. “Let me get you a cup of coffee, to complete the treatment, and then I’ll leave you alone.”
That took a minute to sink in. “You’re being very kind.”
“Very kind,” I agreed.
“And patient.”
“And patient.”
We left the park, crossed over to Madison, and entered the first coffee shop we came to. She wanted to sit at the counter, where she wouldn’t have to face me. She wanted to pay. I didn’t quarrel with her. She blew over the top of her coffee cup, and sipped. “It’s just I’m really embarrassed.”
“It’s all right,” I told her. I had no idea what she was thinking; all I could see was a mass of wormy curls and the mink shoulder. “Believe me, it is.”
“I hope I never see you again,” she mumbled.
“Yes, well, I can imagine.”
“And I feel rotten about hoping that.”
“It’s only natural.”
“I don’t even want to know your name. I’ve probably ruined your whole afternoon too, and all.”
She sounded about eighteen years old, and those years cloistered. She sounded young, again, and I couldn’t puzzle her out.
“It’s all right. You’ve bought me a cup of coffee, we’re almost even.”
She let her smile move from her eyes to her mouth. “How about a bagel, would you like a bagel?”
“No, thanks. I had a good lunch.”
When she swung around she didn’t look eighteen. It was a woman’s face, and a woman’s wary expression. “That’s right, you were in the restaurant. Across. I do remember. I wasn’t blotto, just snorkled. Look, I want you to know I don’t do this…that. I don’t go around drinking too much. I never did before. Although there’s no reason for you to believe me, since—but I don’t.”
Her earnestness required reassurance. “I believe you. I can tell, anyway.”
“How?”
“A man knows these things.”
She stopped short of outright laughter, but not far. “A man of the world…like yourself.”
I nodded agreeably. “A man of the world like myself.”
She swung away and lifted her coffee cup. I did the same. The manicure was all wrong for her small hands, nails too bright, too pointed. She was incongruous. The mink was perfect, first-class pelts and tailored for her shortness. Within the mink, she looked dainty and desirable, but the dress…The dress was not a successful effort. She had looked dumpy in the dress, and that hair…but she had wonderful skin, what I could see of it, skin like the traditional peaches and cream, the cream gently warmed. She was beginning to interest me.
“Do you want to talk about it?” I asked. “A stranger is safer to confide in than a friend, it seems to me, sometimes. Cheaper than an analyst—”
Her glance, quick up, then quick down as if to conceal its nature, had the ferocious intelligence of a child. It stopped my words in my throat, it was that quick and clear, gone so suddenly I couldn’t be sure I had seen it.
“No, I don’t,” she said. And smiled at me. “It’s too stupid, even I know that. Of course, even though I know that, I don’t believe it. Maybe I do want to talk about it. After all, I went out this morning to be remade; this is the new me. So obviously I’m not satisfied with myself as I am. Obviously I want to change my life, so maybe I do want to talk. You’re probably right about strangers too. I just don’t meet many strangers. What do you think about marriage?” she asked.
“Are you proposing?”
She ignored that as a frivolous response. “Everybody says it’s no big deal, you can always get divorced, but I think it’s a big deal. And what if you got married because it was the smart thing to do right now, and it turned out dumb? If you meet someone later and really love him, but because you’d done the smart thing…see what I mean?”
“You’re romantic.”
She shook her head, impatient with me, or with herself, I couldn’t tell. “There’s an analogy: America and the rest of the world, especially developing nations. The smart thing to do is usually just a euphemism for the expedient—measured in terms of profit, of course—but it’s most often shortsighted. Smart, but pretty stupid. I can’t figure it out, because it could be something as simple as not being ready. How can I be twenty-nine and not be ready?”
Following her mind was proving a challenge. I opted for moderation. “Give yourself time.”
“How old are you?” It was an accusation.
“Thirty-three.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“If I were a man, being that age would make me nervous.”
It took me a minute, and then I laughed out loud. “Now that you point it out to me, it does.”
“Are you married?”
I shook my head.
“Why not?”
“Not because I haven’t been looking.”
She nodded her head, as if the conversation was making sense to her. I thought that when I replayed it in my memory I might be able to figure out more about it. For the moment, it was proving difficult enough just to hold up my end, to follow the cues she was giving me.
“I wonder,” she said, “why a man wants to marry a woman, a particular woman I mean. It can’t be the same as just love. Is it? Men don’t marry all the women they fall in love with.”
“Marrying someone may be less threatening than loving her.”
“What do you mean?” It was that glance again.
“I have an image in my head of stepping into love, and it’s like stepping into battle, you know? Gun at the ready, and feeling vulnerable, helpless, wary, under attack—like I said, battle. I’d be a lot less frightened of getting married.”
“You’ve been in love?”
“Once, probably, but I was so young I can’t tell how valid it was.”
“You’re the romantic.”
“That’s not a bad thing.”
“When I first saw you, I took you for older than you are.” Now she was facing me, considering me. I wasn’t entirely comfortable.
“Well, I try.”
“Why?” she asked.
“I took you for younger,” I said.
“Well, I’m a cliché,” she said, mocking my tone of voice. “I wasn’t even that drunk, was I? I went out to get drunk and even that I did within safe limits.”
“Not a cliché. A romantic. Not to worry.”
“I’m not worried.” She thought for a moment. “A little embarrassed, and not even too much of that by now, but not worried. I’m ready to go home.” She slid off the stool. “Thank you—” and she held out her hand.
I accompanied her. Out on the street, she held her hand out again and got ready to thank me, but I took her elbow and walked her across the street into a flower shop. She didn’t know how to stop me, mindful as she was of my courtesy to her and her obligation to feel grateful, so I pinned the little spray of white violets onto her coat and went back outside with her, as if we were together by choice, or at least intention; as if we were together.
People moved around her, distracting her, as she tried again to say her thank-you-and-good-bye. I hailed a cab. “It’s for you,” I forestalled her protest. “Just you. Alone.” I held the door open for her.
She got in and sat back. I still held the door open. It was a contest of wills.
“Where to?” the driver asked me, up through his open window.
I waited. It took her a minute to give in. “Eleven ninety-five Park.”
She looked me right in the eye as she said it, nothing coy, no attempt to kid herself, and gave me her address. A straight shot.
I handed the driver a bill and repeated the address to him. She had a hand on the door, to pull it closed, and a little speech to deliver before she left. “I’m sorry I thought at first…I probably should have known better. You’re a prince, whoever you are, a prince in prince’s clothing. Thank you for rescuing me.”