Not that I had a plan worked out, a schedule of fixed progression from cause to consequence, hope to happy ending. All I had was an idea of how I might go about it, more instinct than skill. Previous experience would guide me only so far, since each experience has only its own distinctive qualities. All I knew was what my next step would be.
I selected what struck me as the best bet from the Times that Sunday, and on Monday afternoon I stood in front of 1195 Park. I held in my hand a small white box, which contained a bouquet of white violets and, in the envelope, half of a pair of tickets to the Sunday afternoon performance of some Mozart horn concertos. My idea is that men prefer Bach and Handel, while women will choose Beethoven, Wagner, the Russians. Guessing at what will please regardless of gender, I always choose Mozart.
I ascended the staircase, rang, and waited, the little white box in my hand. I heard no sound from within, not even the muffled call of the bell. After a time, the door opened. A butler, entirely correct from his polished shoes to his smooth white hair, looked me over. “Sir?” he inquired.
“I’d like to leave these for the young lady.” I gave him the box and stepped back, to assure him that I wasn’t asking admittance.
His face gave away nothing of whatever he might have been thinking. “Very good, sir,” he told me. The thick wood of the door thunked closed.
There was always the chance that she wouldn’t risk it. My thought was that she would use the week to make up her mind; my hope was that she would make up her mind in my favor. Her first reaction would be that it was impossible, but she could, if she wanted to, talk herself out of that misapprehension—given time. If she didn’t want to…That was the key, what she wanted. She hadn’t struck me as impulsive, so time would work in my favor, I judged. Her quality was not naiveté but unsophistication, probably lack of experience rather than ignorance. I gave her the week to think me over. I was banking on her innocence.
She arrived at the last minute. My smile of greeting was dying a natural death before she had stumbled apologetically over the legs between us to sit down and finally meet my eyes. She’d altered her hair: straightened, it was brushed back from her face except for the long bangs, which wisped down as if left there by a wind. It still looked like somebody else’s hair, or maybe a wig, the right haircut for somebody else’s face, a face with a ready smile, confidently flirtatious eyes, an upturned nose, and a plump, kissable mouth. Not her face. Her face was narrow, oval, her nose had more boniness to it, and her mouth, while not ungenerous, was solemn. She must have left her coat at the cloakroom; she carried only a purse, blue like her schoolgirl jumper. Her nails were unpainted and the only makeup she wore was a pale lipstick. Her skin glowed like pearls.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” she murmured. After that first glance she wouldn’t look at me.
“You’re not late, you’re right on time.” The musicians proved my words, entering as if on cue. They bowed, seated themselves, arranged music on stands. She bent to put her purse on the floor.
When the concerto started, she fell still. I watched her surreptitiously for the opening bars, but I needn’t have bothered with stealth. She seemed to have forgotten me entirely, and forgotten her discomfiture too. She sat quietly, legs crossed at the ankles, skirt spread over her knees, hands resting in one another’s gentle clasp in her lap. But her face responded to the music, to Mozart, eyes and mouth, unselfconscious as a child. Until the melody and harmony took me, I watched her listen.
There was no intermission, just a brief period of applause between concertos, the audience impatient to return to its interrupted pleasure. Whether the horn was leading the other instruments on a chase like Puck mocking the Athenian lovers, or singing its siren’s song to lure them onto immolating rocks, the music played around us, played with us, and I felt as if I were myself one of the horn’s attendant instruments. I forgot everything, and listened.
The real applause came at the end, and she was smiling without any thought of where she was or who she was with. “Let’s wait until the crowd clears a little,” I suggested, and she nodded her agreement, clapping. When the stage was emptied and conversation rose around us, I remarked, “That was worth listening to.”
“Yes,” she said, still watching the now-empty stage. Then she made herself face me. “That was nice of you. Do you often do that? Deliver concert tickets to damsels in distress?”
“Are you still in distress?”
It was the wrong question, the wrong topic. Quickly, I tried another. “I didn’t know if you’d come. I didn’t know if you have a sister.”
“No sister. What if I hadn’t? What would you have thought?”
“That you didn’t like concerts. Or you didn’t like Mozart. Or you didn’t like me. Or that you had a previous engagement.” At least I had amused her. “You changed your hair.”
She nodded. “I remembered you darker,” she said.
“That was the suit.” For Sunday afternoon I wore light gray.
“If you wanted to seem safe, a safe person? A concert would be a good cover,” she said.
“I’m glad to see you have some sense,” was the response I chose to that.
“It’s not very nice of you to remind me.”
“No, it’s not.”
“I’m not as bad as you think.” Before I could tell her I didn’t think she was bad at all, she informed me, “I’m being met. Out front.” Then she heard the connotation. “I don’t mean to insult you.”
“I’m not insulted.” A little disappointed, yes, but it was no more than I expected.
“I don’t know what you planned—”
“I didn’t plan anything. A concert, with you. You listen so intently—It’s revealing, how a person listens to music.”
The thought alarmed her at first and then interested her. She had a face that gave away what she was thinking, that she was thinking. “There’s a kind of intimacy, isn’t there?”
“Much more dangerous than the usual kind,” I pronounced. “I think that might be true,” I added. “I think I might believe that.”
“Like, if two people are reading together, it’s personal?”
“Intensely personal. Reading together in bed, now that must be the most intimate thing I can think of.”
She laughed, relaxed now. Most of the audience had left but we weren’t the only ones sitting, talking. “Do you do this often?” she asked again.
“I think maybe not often enough.” It had gone well, I thought. It had been the right move. We were turned to face one another in our seats.
“All right,” she said, “don’t tell me anything,” bringing me up short. It wouldn’t do to underestimate her. “I can’t think what to talk about. I don’t even know what business you’re in.”
“If business is all we can find to talk about, then we won’t be friends.” I selected the word carefully.
“Or family? Your family? You must have a family.” She waited, unable to read my face. “You know, a mother and a father.”
“I have a mother and a father.”
“You don’t want to talk about them?”
I shook my head but picked up her cue. “You also must have a family, parents.”
She shook her head, and her mouth was serious although her eyes had mischief in them. “Well,” she said, retrieving her purse, “thank you for a lovely concert.”
I half rose in my seat, just as I had done to greet her, to let her know that I wouldn’t importune her but that she could count on my desire to see her again as well as my good manners. “It was my pleasure. Thank you for coming, for risking it.”
That pleased her, which was my intention. She moved down the row and then up the aisle, trying not to show that she was aware I was watching, the little purse bobbing at her side. I waited for several minutes before I followed.
The next afternoon I got myself togged out and went down to Ludovic’s Ticket Agency, where Mrs. Wallace was, as always, stoutly ensconced behind the desk in the cubbyhole office. There was no Ludovic, Mrs. Wallace being the sole proprietor and sole employee. When I’d explained what I wanted, Mrs. Wallace made a phone call. Mrs. Wallace seldom had to make more than one phone call to get what she was looking for.
If I wanted an entire box for a Sunday matinee, I would have to wait three weeks. A long time, I thought, then, perhaps just the right length of time. “You could have All for Love next week,” Mrs. Wallace told me, while the box office waited at the other end of the line.
“No, it’s Twelfth Night I want.” I took out my checkbook while she completed arrangements.
She wrote out the bill, at ninety dollars a seat plus her ten percent commission. I wrote out the check. “The tickets will be here by tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Rostov,” she said. “The reviews have been quite favorable.” Mrs. Wallace, I had learned, rode home to Queens by subway and preferred TV to live theater. She had never seen a Broadway show, or an Off-Broadway, she confided once; but she studied the reviews, so she could advise a client who didn’t know his own mind. Or hers.
When I returned the next day to pick up the envelope, I waited until I was back on the street to take out four of the tickets and rip them into little pieces. I didn’t want to offend Mrs. Wallace’s sensibilities, or sense of propriety, or self-image. One of the two remaining tickets I returned to the little envelope. I waited two days before I delivered it to 1195 Park, for the young lady, accompanied by a nosegay of white violets.
I had, I thought, some reason to hope.