From my place behind the bar in the living room, I could oversee the workings of the party. Waitresses moved about, offering trays of artfully wrought, colorfully assorted canapés. Mr. Theo moved among his guests. Alexis, I assumed, was doing the same in the library, accepting congratulations. The long living room, at one end of which I stood, was noisy with conversation, the air thick with perfumes and colognes, the space crowded with bodies, limbs, faces. I overheard scraps of conversations, as glasses were asked of me or handed to me to refill, and I poured wines, whiskeys, gin, vodka, adding cubes of ice or twists of lemon where appropriate.
“The scenery in the Alps I give you, but the trails are like everything else in Europe, graded to a different degree of difficulty than I’m used to. It’s like buying clothes in France, I’m always ready to discover I’ve read the trail wrong and ski into an abyss, or an avalanche. Give me Sun Valley any day. There I’m—”
“Losing Teddy to such a dumpy—I know it’s not kind, but honestly, she is. I don’t see what he sees in her. It’s not as if he was looking for intellectual companionship—”
“I run three miles a day, at least, gave up smoking, only drink wine, and I’m so much sharper—”
“I very much doubt she’ll go on for the degree now. What does someone need with a second doctorate who never really needed the first?”
“Still, it was good of her to invite us. And she is bright enough, a good student.”
“Yes, very sound. Often thoughtful. Too much money, of course.”
“The earrings? Phil gave them to me, just before I left him. As if you can buy love.”
“It can’t be love, do you think? Not money either. I think, it just gets to be time, and people think they ought to get married. Teddy’s the right age for it, isn’t he? Early thirties?”
“Not to mention that her biological clock is ticking. It’s safer too. I don’t blame them. Does she garden, like her parents?”
“She goes to school, that’s all I know. But it’s not as if Teddy is any more interested in education than gardens. Although I do think they’re doing the right thing.”
“—trapped in this endless round of his business engagements. We don’t have any friends, I certainly don’t, we just see a lot of people who might be useful to us. They’re just useful people we see. Just people we see.”
“Two years at the outside, that’s what I give it. He’ll be bored long before that, and as soon as he’s bored, he’ll be available again. No, I’m not upset.”
“—sixty-feet, gaff-rigged, you’ll have to come out on her someday, it was a lucky buy. One of those oilmen whose fortune disappeared on him. I paid half what it cost him.”
“She’s lucky to catch him, that’s all I can say. She’s had a crush on him for years.”
“Has she? I wonder why.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“They don’t have anything in common. Except background, upbringing. But have you ever tried to talk to Teddy? I mean, exchange ideas? It’s like trying to talk to my father. I’d go crazy.”
“But you’re not Allie.”
“No, and she seems happy enough.”
“Never mind them, what about us? I told you from the start it was marriage I wanted, and it seems to me that everybody I know is getting married. Except me. Always excepting me. I’m beginning to think there’s something wrong with me. Or with you, Bobby.”
Briefer than a rose, the party bloomed and faded. Mr. Theo and Alexis stood side by side as they sped the departing guests. Her hair had gone limp, as had his smile. As I closed the door behind the last couple, she said, “I’m too tired for dinner, Theo. I’m sorry, but—”
“Hey, that’s OK. Maybe I’ll drag Sarah out of her room, take her out to cheer her up, or something. Gregor will drive you home: I’m too lit to be behind the wheel of a car. Hell, I’m not all that hungry myself. Is ten tomorrow morning going to be too early for you?”
“No.”
“It might be for me, so I guess you can expect me when you see me. We’ll have the whole afternoon for looking the house over, which is more time than I’ll need.”
I went to get my coat and cap. The waitresses were finishing up in the kitchen. Mr. Theo walked her to the car, and I drove her to 1195 Park. There, I went around to open the door and hand her out. “Thank you, Gregor,” she said, and didn’t look at me.
“Good night, miss,” I said. I didn’t blame her.
Frankly, it was a pretty dismal time for me. I’d had other opportunities, a few, but none of them so protracted, none so promising as Alexis. The pattern had been a couple of meetings, a room at the Pierre or the Plaza, a few days, maybe a week, and then she’d tell me she was leaving town—for the West Coast, for abroad, for anywhere else—and didn’t know when she’d be back. I knew I had had my own purpose for those women, and they had had their own uses for me. The experiences had been frustrating, no more. I had felt the way Gauguin must have felt, looking at his paintings, before he went to Tahiti. Alexis had looked like Tahiti.
And now she was sitting in the back of the Mercedes, which I drove, beside her fiancé, for whom I worked. All had been revealed. All was lost. It was entirely dismal and I found myself curiously debilitated by the experience.
We left the city and arrived at the Connecticut Turnpike; we looped along the shore at sixty-five miles an hour. I don’t know if they talked; the window was raised. I don’t know if they necked or held hands; I didn’t look into the rearview mirror. We left the turnpike and went inland for a few miles, until the gate of the Farm appeared on my right. I turned into the estate, but instead of bearing right, to approach the Mondleigh home, I kept on straight, to the old house, the original house, set on the highest point of the property with a view of the distant Sound.
Impassive, I held the car doors for them. Mr. Theo seemed ill at ease when he stood on the Belgian brick driveway and looked up at the pale stucco facade. “Gregor, you’d better come in with us. This has as much to do with you as anyone else,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
We walked through long, high-ceilinged rooms, where furniture sat shrouded in dusty air. We walked around the large kitchen, then back through the butler’s pantry to the breakfast room and into the dining room. We ascended the main staircase. They were silent. I followed them. By the time we arrived at the master bedroom, Mr. Theo was both bored and uneasy. I stood in the doorway. They entered. Each arrived at the foot of one of the two massive beds. Both looked around the room without looking at one another.
“You’ll probably want a decorator in,” Mr. Theo said.
“Yes.” She made an effort. “Are there colors you prefer, Theo?”
“No, it doesn’t matter, I never thought about it. Look, Allie, I need to see Dad about some business. Anything you decide is all right with me. Anyway, Gregor has better taste than I do. You two will probably work better without me. Don’t bother, Gregor, I’ll walk. It’s not far. I could use the fresh air.”
I stepped back to let him pass by me. I returned to the doorway, hat in hand. Alexis turned around, looked at me, turned away…embarrassed, was my guess.
“If you’ll excuse me, miss?” I asked her.
“Yes, thank you.” She sat down on the edge of the bed and studied the carpet.
I went back down to the kitchen, then ascended a narrow back staircase to the servants’ wing. Three bedrooms, one with its own sitting room and a private bath, a low sloping ceiling and flowered wallpaper. A double bed, iron, painted white, occupied this bedroom. I sat down on it, hat in hand. The ceiling seemed to press down on me.
I thought about what I would want to do with the room and its sitting room, with the servants’ rooms, to make them pleasant living spaces. I knew what I would do with the whole house, to lighten its heaviness of walls and ease the formality of the rooms, to make it a place where a family could live. But it had nothing to do with me and I didn’t plan to occupy the bed I sat on. I was merely busying myself, keeping myself busy, until the afternoon would pass.
Aimless, that’s what I was, especially when alone. Purposeless. There was a woman in a bar, late one May afternoon, an afternoon in late May…and what I was doing in a bar I couldn’t have said. She looked married, she looked unhappy, she suited my mood. She had asked me to pass the pretzels, please. Not a pretty woman, not young, her body looked as if it had borne children, her face looked lived in. I passed the pretzels. She yawned, covering her mouth with a not-manicured hand.
“Long day,” I suggested, sympathetically.
“Are there any short ones?” She smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Gregor.”
“Mine’s Joy.” She made a sound like a bark of laughter. Or a bite. “And that’s a joke. What brings you in here, Greg? You don’t exactly look the type.”
I made up my mind. It was something to do with the way her hand emerged from the tailored cuff of her blouse, with the strong wrist. Unless her looks and clothing were entirely deceptive, she wasn’t in a high-risk group. You couldn’t be entirely sure, not of anyone, you can’t be, but I had condoms in my wallet. Even with condoms, you can’t be entirely sure, but the way I felt, a little surety was enough. “I was thinking of dinner, and a movie.”
She waited, then asked the question herself. “With me?”
“If you’d like to. We could see a movie first and then eat, if you’d rather.”
She didn’t look me up and down but concentrated on my face, eyes. “Are you married?”
“No,” I said.
She sighed. “You’re lying. I can tell, I can always tell. I was married, for twenty years almost, until last New Year’s Eve. Isn’t that a hell of a time to tell your wife you want a divorce?”
“Maybe he thought there was something symbolic about it?”
“There was. There sure as hell was. Have you ever been married?”
“No.”
She munched on a pretzel and considered me. “I like you, Greg, you just bare-faced lie. And you’ve got sympathetic eyes. I like your eyes. So maybe we’ll do that, even if you are married. Because you have to begin sometime, don’t you?”
I didn’t answer.
“And after all, my husband was married too, wasn’t he?”
“I should warn you,” I warned her, “I’m not looking for anything permanent.”
“Who is, Greg? Who in the whole lousy city is?”
We never made it to the movie. We also never made it to bed. We ate and talked, drank coffee and talked—about her life, children, marriage. “I didn’t expect Prince Charming, nobody in her right mind would, but he did. Not Prince Charming, and not Cinderella, exactly—more Sophia Loren, some dark Italian beauty, oversexed and overdomesticated…What do you think, Greg, are all men that stupid? Or just him?” I walked her home, to an East Village apartment, kissed her at the door for whatever good that might do, and said good-bye, good night. I walked home, uptown, along dark streets. I would have liked it if someone tried to mug me, the way I felt. But nobody rose to the bait.