“I have to get a job,” Patty said, looking thoughtfully at her slim body, wondering if it was staying slim enough. She had put back some of her weight since moving in with David, relieving her anxiety that she had become an anorexic. But now yesterday’s hope had become tomorrow’s worry. She patted her stomach, which was flat and firm, as though it were a beer belly. “I’m too fat and lazy,” she added.
“You have a job. If you’d only finish it.”
“That’s not a job,” she answered contemptuously.
“You wrote the first book in a few months. If you concentrated, you’d be finished with this one in a month.”
“I know,” she admitted. “I told you. I’m a lazy slob.”
“Talking that way only stops you from working.”
“I need a job. I need to have to be somewhere at nine in the morning. I can’t be self-motivating.”
“You were.”
“But I fell apart, didn’t I?”
“Stop trying to make me say what you want me to say,” David snapped. “ ’Cause then you turn it around and act like it came from me instead of from your cross-examination.” David got up in the middle of this outburst and moved to the table, beginning to stack the dessert plates, plopping them onto each other, the clattering implying anger.
“Why are you angry at me?” Patty asked, her eyes wide with innocence as they peered over the back of the couch.
“I’m not,” he snapped.
She stared at him while he carried his load of dishes into the kitchen, and continued when he reappeared to gather coffee cups. He noticed her when he turned to head again for the kitchen.
“What?” he said.
“How much money do I owe you?”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I want you to figure out how much I owe you for the rent and everything else.”
“Why?” he said with a sneering smile. “Are you moving out?”
“No. I want to pay you back when I start earning money again.”
“Well, you’re not earning money now, so why do you have to know now?” David argued.
“I want you to keep track.”
“I don’t care about your earning money. You care about it.”
“I know!”
David opened his mouth to say more, but her admission puzzled him. He closed it, turned to go, and then abruptly wheeled back. “Then you keep track of it.” And walked out with a satisfied air, a lawyer closing a case.
Patty didn’t believe him. She thought his attitude toward her was dominated by the fact that she wasn’t earning her own keep. Within the last few months. David had left to her the doing of more and more housework. He used to make the bed in the mornings, occasionally cook dinner; often he called from the office and asked whether he should buy groceries on the way home. This party, however, had been dumped on her, like she was responsible for the domestic side of his being promoted, as if she were a suburban wife expected to focus on her husband’s career, as if … as if she were living her mother’s life.
Patty sat on the couch listening to David load the dishwasher, contempt for him filling her mind. I even had to supply the friends, she thought to herself, marveling at the fact that David didn’t know anyone, outside of Newstime, who he felt was impressive enough to invite over along with his bosses.
“You know …” David called out in a cheerful, eager voice, startling her.
She didn’t answer, unwilling to leave her abstract plane of judgments and rest on the ground with the reality of him.
“I really think Chico hates Rounder,” David said, emerging from the kitchen. His pants were wet at the thighs from rinsing plates.
Patty could only look at him: she had no voice to answer him.
“I don’t mean.” David continued eagerly, “just that Chico envies Rounder ’cause he was passed over for being Groucho. I think Chico actually hates the man’s guts.” David laughed self-consciously, embarrassed by his glee at this observation.
“I don’t think so,” Patty said coolly. She hadn’t thought about it, she merely wanted to disagree because she knew it would bother him. “It’s in your head. You want them to hate each other. So you have something to gossip about.”
David looked stunned. He stared stupidly at the floor for a moment. “God,” he said. “Maybe you’re right.” He turned and went back to the kitchen.
Patty looked at the spot he had deserted as if it were a hole in the earth expanding rapidly, heading in her direction, ready to swallow her. She got up abruptly and walked to the desk near the front windows, where she wrote. She sat at the metal chair, shivering at the cold on her naked legs, but not wanting to slow down to get a pillow or clothes. She put paper in the typewriter and began to write a scene for her heroine like that night’s dinner was for her: a series of small revelations about her fiancé that increased her longing for the dark, brutal stranger — a rescuer from the dull journey that life can so easily become.
CHAPTER 8
Fred made a decision. He had tried to ignore the hostility of the others at the poker game, hoping they would eventually accept him as a player and ultimately begin to socialize with him. Fred had consciously avoided making a social move first, assuming it would meet with rejection. But now, utterly rejected, he was willing to face more.
Tom Lear, the journalist turned screenwriter, had been least unfriendly to him. Possibly because of his habit of disagreeing with everything Sam Wasserman did, or said, or believed. Tom had never been discourteous to Fred. Fred looked up his name in the phone book, pleasantly surprised by the good fortune of its being listed, and dialed.
He got a phone machine.
His irritation at this left him baffled when the beep came. He hung up without speaking. Within moments he knew what his message should have been, but now he worried that if he called back immediately. Tom would know Fred had been the hang-up. He let two hours go by, assuming that the intervening messages after his hang-up would obscure any connection.
“Hello, Tom. This is Fred Tatter. I have two courtside tickets to the Knicks-Celtics playoff game tomorrow night. My fellow Knick fan can’t make it. I thought I remembered your saying you love basketball. I need to know by tonight — I don’t want the ticket to go to waste. Could you call me?” He rattled off his number casually, in a tone that implied Tom already had it but was being saved the trouble of looking it up. Fred laughed to himself afterward, thinking of the dilemma he had placed Tom in. Lear had gone on and on recently about how much he had loved the glory days of the Knicks and how he looked forward to their being in the playoffs this year. The game Fred had invited him to was scheduled for the night of the poker game.
Fred had done many pieces on the Knick management during their losing seasons, when they were widely criticized in the New York press. Fred’s interviews were soft, easy, and made them look good. He had earned the right to request good seats for any game. It pleased him that he had acquired this weapon in his battle to be liked by the writing boys through his own writing. He phoned the Knick office after calling Tom and arranged for the tickets, and then sat back at his typewriter, resuming work on his novel with renewed vigor, producing effortlessly for the first time in months.
He finished a chapter at five-thirty. Marion would be home soon. Tom Lear, if he had been out to lunch, would have come home by now and gotten his message. He read over the chapter, his mind distracted by waiting for a bell to ring. He thought about having sex with Marion. He’d have to ask, of course. He might get her to agree if he offered to give her a back rub. He tried to remember when he had last gone down on her and brought her to orgasm orally. Well, he told himself defensively, when was the last time she gave me a blow-job? The prospect of negotiating through all these preliminaries drained the desire for the ultimate goal. What he really wanted was for her to arrive, magically strip off her clothes, open her legs, and let him take her on the parquet foyer floor, pulling him to her with enthusiasm, moaning with joy. Fast, fast, fast, without all the garbage, the tentative shy touching. Why couldn’t she come home one night and say, “Fuck me,” and like it? Why couldn’t she slip under him and let his penis invade her throat? Why wouldn’t she get on her haunches, without being asked, without being seduced, and beg for it up the ass?