…”
Jeffrey went on telling her about his current assignment, invariably the principal topic of conversation when they were together. He was a freelance photographer who did magazine spreads for a living and more consciously artistic work on the side, some of which had been exhibited at the smaller local galleries. The galleries provided little income, but the magazines, glossy large-circulation publications with exorbitant advertising rates, paid well-well enough to cover the rental of a two-bedroom house in the Hollywood Hills north of the Sunset Strip, a good neighborhood. The house served as both residence and studio; Jeffrey had converted one bathroom into a darkroom, and used the garage for many of his photo sessions.
On assignment he would shoot anything in any style or format desired, but when he worked for himself he limited his medium to high-grain black and white and confined his subjects to the buildings and monuments of the city; “urbanscapes,” he called the results. To get such shots, he often worked in the early morning, when the streets were empty; no human beings could be permitted to clutter up his vision of the city. Jeffrey positively hated photographing people, because with people, he felt, a photographer could not be in complete control. And as Wendy knew only too well, Jeffrey Pellman was a man who needed to be in control.
Maybe, she’d often reflected, it was his passion for control that made him play tricks on her, in order to keep her off balance, dependent on his whim. Maybe-she didn’t care for this thought, but it sometimes came unbidden, especially late at night when she was alone-maybe that was the only reason he’d ever gone out with her. Maybe he liked the way he could dominate her, control the course of any conversation, hold court with no fear of being challenged by a stronger personality with an opinion of its own. Yes. Just maybe.
Their drinks arrived. Jeffrey made an elaborate show of testing the beer with a connoisseur’s wariness, then pronounced it acceptable. The waiter took their order. Wendy asked for an egg roll as an appetizer, followed by won ton soup and almond chicken. Jeffrey chose pan-fried dumplings, hot and sour soup, and of course, shrimp with lobster sauce.
The waiter returned to the kitchen, vanishing through a swinging door into a haze of steam and a clatter of pans. Jeffrey resumed his monologue as if there had been no interruption, describing in considerable detail the specific lenses and filters he’d used, even though he must have known that the technical jargon meant nothing to her. Wendy found herself tuning him out. She didn’t think she was being rude; as far as he knew, she was still listening in rapt attention. Anyway, he mainly wanted to hear himself talk. She was merely the wall off which his voice was bounced.
Still pretending to listen, occasionally prompting him with a word or two-“Yes.” “Uh-huh.” “Really?” “Did you?”-she let her thoughts drift back to the gourmet cooking class where she and Jeffrey had met three months ago. Even signing up for the class had been a major accomplishment. She remembered how she procrastinated about sending in her check, desperate to escape the prison of her loneliness even if only for one night a week, yet afraid to commit herself to the unknown. Finally she went through with it. She was proud of herself, although as things turned out she was too much of a klutz in the kitchen to learn much of value.
Jeffrey, on the other hand, mastered each new recipe with ease. He began showing her how it was done; looking back, she supposed he must have enjoyed playing the part of teacher, master, guru, with Wendy herself safely relegated to the supporting role of the humble apprentice at his side.
At the time, she’d been both astonished and flattered by his attention, while the other single women in the class were clearly envious. Jeffrey was trim, tall, certainly good-looking enough. His eyes, half-concealed behind wire-frame glasses, were a pleasing shade of blue-gray. He wore his sandy blond hair in deliberate disarray, as if stressing his indifference to the superficialities of grooming. His wardrobe consisted mainly of dusty jeans and white shirts, often with a sport jacket tossed on, seemingly at the last minute, to suggest the hurried, harried elegance of a successful man on the move.
And beyond all that, he was a gentleman. He opened doors for her, he always picked up the tab, and he had never gotten fresh, had never pressured her to go further than the brief parting kiss they shared at the end of most of their dates. Perhaps he sensed that if he tried coming on to her, if he even suggested the possibility of greater closeness between them, she would be frightened away like a bird launched into flight by a clap of hands.
And it was true. She would fly from him. She might not want to, but she would. Intimacy scared her, any sort of intimacy, and physical intimacy most of all.
Jeffrey was still detailing the difficulties posed by the photo session when the waiter delivered the appetizers and soup. Cutting into her egg roll, Wendy squinted at the jet of escaping steam. She blew on forkfuls of food to cool them, wary of burning her tongue.
She told herself she ought to quit grousing about Jeffrey’s inattentiveness, ought to be happy he’d taken an interest in her. Certainly it was an interest no one else had ever shown. In high school, in college, in L.A., she’d had no boyfriends, no dates. She’d never imagined that anyone of the opposite sex could be attracted to her-and certainly not a successful photographer, handsome, confident, worldly. When Jeffrey asked her out for the first time, she was stunned, simply amazed, then so excited she kept fearing she would throw up, literally throw up, during their evening together. But gradually her excitement turned to disappointment as he realized that Jeffrey was not aware of her as a person, that he never saw or heard her, that he merely wanted a silent respectful audience, a role she played so well.
After disappointment came self-reproach. She asked herself how she ever could have thought Jeffrey would be interested in her anyway. Was she good at conversation? Was she worth listening to at all? Did she have anything worthwhile to say, to give, to share? The silent questions, asked and answered on many sleepless nights, were like hammers, padded in soft velvet, striking again and again at her face, leaving no visible scars, but numbing her; in that numbness she found an odd sense of relief.
A few minutes before seven o’clock the main course was served. Wendy spooned steaming white rice onto her plate, then piled on a hot mixture of skinless chicken chunks and chopped almonds, water chestnuts and sliced carrots, celery and onion, in a mildly spicy sauce. She ate slowly, appreciating the taste and texture of the food, the pleasing contrast of the stir-fried chicken and the crunchy nuts and vegetables.
“How’s yours?” Jeffrey asked.
“Really good.”
“Mine too. I’m glad I found this place.” Jeffrey always treated the Mandarin House as his personal discovery, even though he’d once let it slip that he learned of the restaurant’s existence through a favorable review in the L.A. Times. “I like it, tacky dragon and all.”
“Hey”-she attempted a joke-“the tacky dragon is what makes it work.”
The line fell flat as predictably as any of her occasional stabs at humor. She wished she’d kept quiet. It was always safer to-
“You know,” Jeffrey said suddenly through a mouthful of shrimp, “that necklace is really something.”
Her heart was ice, her breath frozen. She stared at him.
“You… you noticed?”
“Sure.” He smiled. It was the same smile she’d seen through the car window. “I could hardly miss it, could I? You’ve been fiddling with the darn thing all night.”
“I have?” She hadn’t realized she’d been doing that.
“Uh-huh. Anyway, I saw it right off. As soon as you got out of the car. Must be brand new.”
“Yes. It is. I bought it today. I went shopping. Well, not really shopping. I was just out for a walk. At lunch time. I went into the department store, and there it was. It wasn’t cheap. But I figured, you know, you’ve got to splurge once in a while…”