They had had two dates, quick things, going to a movie, out to dinner, chatting about their lives superficially — the therapy was always about the past, about ugly feelings, and so they had a lot to catch up on. Tonight had been the same at first, but then she began to flirt with him, getting high on the champagne (she had suggested they order it), and now, asking him back to the apartment. For Marion such behavior was wild, wanton. He liked her for this girlish happiness, remembered dimly that in college she was like that, but still he wasn’t comfortable with it either. She simply wasn’t the woman he had lived with for eight years, and that made him wary.
She settled on the couch, kicking her shoes off and putting her feet beneath her, her oval face dreamy. “Your book was accepted.”
“Yeah.” He didn’t know how to comport himself, Should he sit on the couch and begin necking (this sense that he was in a virgin sexual circumstance with Marion was really weird, silly, and embarrassing), or sit in one of the armchairs, more formal, like a meeting of superpowers?
“How come you didn’t tell me?”
He grunted. “Come on, you said over and over in the therapy that all I did was talk about my work constantly. As long as I live, I’m never telling you another thing about what I do.” He sat down in an armchair.
She pouted. She made a big show of it, but it was real. “Oh, that’s terrible. You don’t mean that.”
Fred looked down. She was trying hard. He wasn’t. He felt ashamed of himself. “No. I’m sorry. They accepted it about a month ago. Who told you?”
“I heard from somebody who knows Bob Holder that he’s wild about it. Getting everybody in the house to read it, talking to book-club people—”
“Really?” Fred said, looking up, surprised. He had assumed for so long that Holder’s talk was merely bluster that this came as a pleasant surprise.
“Yeah. Sounds like it’s gonna be a big book.”
“No,” Fred answered. “He hypes everything. You told me that yourself.”
“Did I?” she said, looking at the ceiling in wonderment.
“Oh yeah. Told me I was a fool to believe him.”
“Can’t believe I said that.”
“You did—”
“No, no,” she said, laughing at him. “I mean, what a bitch I was. I believe you. Just what an incredibly bitchy thing to say. Holder hypes books, but when he does, they sell.”
Fred smiled at her. She was great — he loved her like this. “I want to go to bed with you,” he said.
“Great,” she answered. And smiled, sitting there like a cheerful doll eager to be played with but helpless to initiate anything. “I thought maybe you’d found somebody else.”
“What?” Fred asked, puzzled.
“You never said whether you were dating anybody,” she said, shyly now, lowering her eyes, her smile fading.
“Well …” he huffed, shifting uncomfortably. He didn’t want to admit that his sex life had been at best dull, at worst dormant, but on the other hand, he didn’t want to enrage her with a portrait of promiscuity. “I have gone out.”
“With anybody serious?” she asked, suddenly hoarse.
He sighed. He shook his head. “I been doing the book. It took everything I had. It was a bitch. Marion. I went out a couple times, but …” He trailed off.
She nodded. Not triumphantly, not smugly, not with confirmation. She nodded in acceptance of how hard, how tediously grim their lives had been. He felt, too, that the stupidity of their marriage, its begrudgement of love, might have been dreary and disgusting … but it was the only real content in their lives.
Tony lay in bed. The day was bright. And loud. Nearby a brownstone was being gutted. He heard its insides landing in a dumpster. He looked at the clock. Noon. He still didn’t want to start the day and it was half over. Betty usually made coffee before leaving for work. He should get up and heat it. The Times would be in there, the business section untouched, still ironed flat by neglect. But the C section with its reviews (not of his plays) and its Broadway column, full of plans for future work (none of it his) and gossip about those now working (none of it about him), would be on the kitchen table, wrinkled, open to the last article she had read. All of them read it, even the fucking stockbrokers who read the business section. Less than ten percent of New Yorkers actually went to the theater, but by God every one of them knew who was hot and who was not on Broadway — because of the accursed, the horrible, the infuriating goddamn cultural pages of the Times. It was better to do without coffee.
And he was dead for years, by that standard. Now, when a review made reference to the promising young playwrights, his name was no longer listed. A few more years like the last two and he would no longer be able to complain that he should be mentioned in a young-playwrights roundup.
A month had passed since he threw his fit at the artistic director of the Uptown Theater. He hadn’t returned Hilary’s calls. He had skipped the regular readings since then as well as the meetings of the Playwrights’ Lab. Indeed, he had done nothing other than attend a few publishing cocktail parties for Betty’s sake. He had spoken to a friend from college about seeing a shrink, frightened by his exhibition of rage in the restaurant, but hadn’t called the names suggested.
He sat up in bed and thought about Proust. He felt he understood his work habits today — the bedroom was cozy, protected. Still can’t read him, he thought, and laughed. The sound felt lonely in the empty apartment. Outside they worked on, the whole city, memorizing the New York Times, working, and not knowing his name.
Tony picked up the phone and dialed. He had to think for a moment about the number — disuse had made what was once automatic unfamiliar. It rang only once before she answered, brightly, energetically:
“Hello!”
“Hello,” he said. And there was silence, a shocked silence.
Then, tentatively, incredulously, Lois asked, “Tony?”
“Yep,” he said. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, sounding uneasy, as though she were constrained by the presence of someone. Could that be? “I’m fine. I’m really surprised to hear from you.”
“Why? Am I supposed to be dead or something?”
“No,” she said in good humor. “I thought you …” Again the hesitation.
“Thought I was out of your life?”
“Yeah,” she admitted, and laughed quickly. “So what’s new?”
“What’s new! What kind of question is that? I expected rage or tears of happiness or something! What’s new indeed!”
She was laughing while he spoke. “Well, I’m sorry, I can’t provide any of those things. They happened long ago.”
“What long ago? A few months.”
Her voice was gentle, solemn. “It’s been seven months at least, Tony.”
“I didn’t realize it was like a visa. What happened? I didn’t renew it in time and now it’s canceled?”
“Sort of,” she said. “Listen. I really can’t talk now. Can I call you back in an hour? Will you be home?”
“Yeah.” She’s got somebody there, he realized, shocked. It had never occurred to him that she wouldn’t remain frozen, unchanged, awaiting his defrosting presence, the warm light of her life.
“Talk to you soon.”
Who the hell was it? Who was she fucking? Some TV writer? A producer? Maybe she was fucking a TV star. Maybe she was a lesbian. He was furious. He got out of bed and turned on the shower in a rage. He stepped in without checking the temperature and scalded himself, jumping away and hurting his back against the towel rack.