The year I turned thirty, I spent the summer working in a Kingston, Ontario, restaurant where my friend Zalman was the chef. His wife, Rose—another Rose, obviously—made the desserts, including a legendary Spanish flan. I was the “salad girl,” washing greens in the deep zinc sink, and sometimes I worked out front too, taking cash or making the fancy coffees (the words “latte” and “barista” were not yet part of the language). Zal and Rose were dear longtime friends who were hoping that Roberto and I would stay together.
But the breakup was already in motion, like a car rolling back down a hill in neutral. You didn’t want to get in the way of it.
They had invited us to rent the small apartment at the back of their farm for July and August, with the idea that this sojourn in the country might salvage our relationship. A plan that was not working out so far. I had an assignment from Outside magazine that was overdue, and the writing had stalled. It was hard for Roberto, a news photographer from Colombia, to find much work in the small city of Kingston. The mood at home was sullen, and my response was to book extra shifts in order to stay out of the apartment. Communication was not our strong point.
During lunch shift one August day, one of the waitresses came into the kitchen with a bottle of white wine. “This is for you,” Sherry said with a slight eye-roll, “from the boys by the window.”
The hungover guys. They had ordered two double espressos from me when I was out front earlier. I went back into the dining room to thank them, and this time I recognized one as Dan Aykroyd, of early Saturday Night Live fame. The fish in a blender guy. I knew his family had a cottage on a lake north of Kingston. But I didn’t recognize his friend, who looked strikingly ordinary. It turned out to be Bill Murray. He had just finished his first season on the show and wasn’t famous yet. This was pre-Ghostbusters too. He was just a guy with nice brown eyes and a roundish nose, hanging out with his TV buddy.
I thanked them for the wine. The three of us kibitzed back and forth, and then Bill Murray asked for my phone number. Oh, that would not be appropriate, I said with a flirtatious smile, swatting him. I didn’t bother to explain that I was living with someone, my waning boyfriend. Then I went back to the kitchen and my sink full of lettuce. At this point, I believe I made a decision, although I wasn’t ready to admit it at the time. The fog of denial, when you are avoiding a breakup, can cover many sins. I dried my hands, wrote my name and number on a piece of paper, folded it inside a fresh hamburger bun, and put it in my apron pocket. As if I had no plans for it.
When I finished with the lettuce, Zal asked me to take over at the cash, which I did, just as Bill Murray and Dan Aykroyd came over to pay their bill.
“If you don’t have a phone, that’s a whole other matter,” said Bill Murray.
Which is when I took the hamburger bun out of my apron and tucked it into his shirt pocket. He acted like this was normal behavior for a cashier in a restaurant and I thought we were just playing out our little scene. It was fun to flirt with someone so nimble, really fun, but by the time I left work later on I had forgotten all about the exchange.
I took the bottle of wine home for another silent knife-clicking dinner with Roberto.
“Any luck today?” I asked. He had pitched a photo essay to the Whig about the women in solitary confinement at the infamous Kingston Prison for Women.
“No,” he said, and did not elaborate.
The next morning the phone rang.
“It’s Bill. Want to catch a ball game tomorrow night?”
Bluff called. I dithered and said I had to work. I also explained that I was currently, technically, involved with someone.
“Fine. No problem. So just meet us for drinks,” said Bill Murray.
Well, why not, I thought. I’m an individual. People meet other people for drinks all the time.
“Tell me when you get off work and we’ll pick you up outside the restaurant,” Bill Murray said.
The next day I told Roberto that I’d be working late, and put some eyeliner in my purse.
That summer I commuted everywhere by bicycle, including the twenty-kilometer ride from the farm to the town and back. I had long blond hair, wore Gloria Steinem aviator glasses, and had just come back from a five-month cycling expedition in South America with Roberto, so I was thinner than usual and in good shape. But South America had done us in—it was just too hard, too isolating, a ridiculous undertaking. We had made it up and down the Andes in Ecuador, but we couldn’t make it through dinner in a restaurant. The only problem with breaking up was that the trip, both the hardship and the beautiful strangeness of it, had fused us. Five months in a tent is a micromarriage.
Roberto was a decent, kind man—a keeper, really. Although I had run away from him at first, now I was utterly confounded by our falling apart. I had decided that it showed a deficiency in me, an inability to love someone who really cared for me, and was deserving of my love.
So I was waiting for something to happen when Bill Murray turned up, live from New York.
The next day, after my shift, I stood with my bike at the corner of Princess and George feeling silly and mildly felonious. A vintage roadster pulled up beside me. It was an eye-catching cream-colored convertible, some rare model I couldn’t identify. Aykroyd was at the wheel with his TV pal beside him.
“Hop in,” said Bill Murray. He had a faint constellation of acne pits on his cheeks and lots of wayward brown hair.
“I thought we were going for drinks,” I said.
“We are,” he said. “Hop in.”
“What about my bike?”
“Not a problem,” said Aykroyd, who was quite tall, with a sturdy farm-boy build. He stepped out and slung the bike into the back of the car. I got in beside it and they began to drive out of town.
“I thought we were going for a drink,” I said again after a while.
“We are,” Bill said. “A country drink.” We were now moving through the outskirts of Kingston, where all the boarding kennels, storage places, and car dealerships were.
“I can’t be too long,” I said nervously.
“Don’t worry, it’s not far.”
We drove north into stony, rolling farmland. Late-afternoon light slanting over cornfields. Perhaps I’m being kidnapped, I thought placidly. It seemed uncool to ask. It was also, I noticed, a fine day in late August, with goldenrod nodding in the ditches. It felt good to be out of the kitchen and the omelet-y smell of the restaurant. This is an adventure, I told myself, just go with it. Lighten up and live a little. (Years later, this sentiment would be recognized by others who have been similarly hijacked as the Bill Murray Effect.)
A half an hour later we turned onto a gravel road that took us to a cottage—a white frame house with a sun porch, and a separate smaller bunkhouse. Nothing fancy, just a typical Ontario family cottage on a lawn that slanted down to a broad, shallow-looking lake. Close to shore, reeds poked through the surface of the water like a five o’clock shadow.
“I’ll start dinner,” said Aykroyd, heading over to a charcoal barbecue. “Make yourself at home.”
“But I’m expected home for dinner,” I said.
“We’ll get you back, no problem,” said Aykroyd, scraping black gunk off the grill. “Why don’t you guys go for a dip while I put the chicken on.”
Bill Murray changed into swimming trunks—roomy ones, probably borrowed. I didn’t have my bathing suit with me, but I was wearing a Danskin body stocking, dark-green, under my summer dress, and I figured I could swim in that. I also had on a pair of candy-cane-striped red-and-white platform sandals; it was the first generation of platform sandals (unless you count ancient geisha-girl, bound-feet versions). I wouldn’t normally wear heels with a bathing suit, but in this case I had no choice.
We walked down to the lake, waded in, and paddled around, orbiting each other and talking. The lake was a little weedy but the water felt cool and welcome after the drive. I like being in the water and I’m a good swimmer; I did a dolphin dive to impress Bill Murray. There’s a kind of amusing shark-fin thing I can do with my elbow too. Being in a lake felt less datelike, and safe. I told him about a synchronized-swim group I was part of at summer camp, where we performed to a loud, scratchy recording of the thunderous piano theme to Exodus: Duh DUH … duh DUH, duh DUH duh duh … duh-duh. Very dramatic. So the two of us lay on our backs in the water, and sculled our toes together as we sang the theme to Exodus. Then we paddled back to the shore and sat in the early evening sun, drying out.
I told him that I wasn’t really a salad girl in a restaurant. I was “sort of a writer.” Which was true—especially the “sort of” part. I wrote weekly book reviews for the Toronto Star, and was working on an article about our South American adventure. I’d published a couple things in Rolling Stone too, but that little window had come and gone. Not too many women wrote for them.
Bill Murray talked about his first year on Saturday Night Live, and living in New York City. “There’s a certain amount of pressure involved,” he said mildly, like someone who had very little prior experience with pressure. Also, this was 1975, when the streets of New York were more dangerous, and the subways were like something out of Hieronymus Bosch: hellish, hot, and noisy.
“It’s a lot to take on in one year.”
I found it easy to talk to this not-quite-handsome stranger with the round nose and the slightly pitted skin. He didn’t make jokes, at all; he was sincere and straightforward. He could have been the secretly sharp guy who pumps gas at the local summer marina. He didn’t go on about himself or the show—he was more curious about what I was up to. He had the knack of tuning in to other people quickly, getting past the small talk to go deeper, but in a lighthearted way. There was a zone of intimacy he was skilled at creating without making you nervous.
Meanwhile, I could smell the chicken on the barbecue. Aykroyd was playing some R&B on a boom box.
I had the impression that I wasn’t the first roadhouse girl that these boys had scooped up, but I didn’t care. Nobody was putting the moves on me, and I was surprised by how genuine Bill Murray was. There was a formal kindness about him. Plus, I had only seen him on TV a few times, not enough to be star-struck or tongue-tied. He was no star, yet. Just as I was no writer. We were still in the lobby of our lives.
Pretty soon I found myself talking more seriously, about books, writing, and what I really wanted to do. His listening silence and his questions were encouraging.
But then, as usual, I got nervous—nervous about what would come next, nervous about how good it felt to be talking like this, nervous about lying to my blameless boyfriend. I talked to him about Roberto.
“So give the guy a call,” Bill Murray said, “tell him the truth. Tell him you got kidnapped but you’re okay, and you’ll be home soon.”
We had moved to the kitchen of the bunkhouse now, ready to eat dinner (three oversized chicken drumsticks coated in blistered red BBQ sauce). Aykroyd pushed the big black rotary phone over to me.
“I’ll turn down the music,” he said.
“Hi,” I said when Roberto finally answered, frosty-voiced. “Sorry to be late. I’m just having drinks with Dan Aykroyd, you know, the guy on Saturday Night Live, and his friend. They came into the restaurant the other day, remember I told you?”
There. The damage was done. “I’ve already eaten,” Roberto said, then he paused, and hung up.
Aykroyd served potato salad out of a cardboard container, and the three of us ate inside because the mosquitos were starting. John Lee Hooker played on the boom box. They were easy, taciturn buddies, a couple of guys who could be out there rocking on the porch, enjoying twilight.
“This is all delicious, thank you,” I said primly as I picked at the deli salad. Roberto’s cold, angry voice had stayed with me, and I couldn’t eat much. Aykroyd poured a couple shots of tequila. I passed one to Bill Murray, and drank another glass of wine instead. Maybe tonight is the night Roberto and I will finally break up, I thought. Maybe I can fly to New York with my new friends and become a highly paid television writer. Stranger things have happened.
They didn’t complain about skipping dessert when I said I had to get back home. “My life is complicated right now,” I said as they cleaned up and put my bike back into the roadster for the drive to the farm. Clearly they had hoped for a longer, more interesting evening. But this was how the dice had rolled, and that was okay with them too. It was the zen thing; the only possible, sustainable response to fame.
The long shadows were still golden. The air had just an edge of coolness, an edge of autumn. Riding in the car with these two undemanding swains, my hair whipping around in the breeze and one wheel of my horizontal bike slowly spinning in the air, I realized that it had been too long since I’d felt this way. Hopeful.
They dropped me off on Abbey Dawn Road at the top of the long gravel driveway into the farm. Bill Murray helped me hoist my bike out of the car, and we said goodbye. He crooked his finger under my chin, tilting it up in an ironic movie moment. “You’re one hell of a woman,” he said in a John Wayne voice.
Really? For a second I believed him. I hope I blushed. Then I got on my bike and headed down the road toward the lights of the farm and my last night with Roberto.
Just beyond the little bridge over the creek, I passed the horse meadow, where I could see an orange dome tent pitched in the far corner. Our South America tent. Lantern light glowed through the nylon walls. I cycled past slowly, surreptitiously, hoping he couldn’t hear the gravel under my wheels. It was obvious that Roberto had decided to skip the fight we were about to have and make the first move.
Good, I thought, good for him.