“What’s in the hardware-store bag?”
“Hardware,” said Lewis with a grin.
“To hang the masks?”
“I guess so. Teddy, this omelette is superb.”
“It would have been better with chorizo or Italian sausage, something spicy and piquant instead of smoky. Lila loves kielbasa; that’s why I got it.”
“Why did she stand you up this morning?”
“A man,” said Teddy. “She met him in the street and now he’s staying over, apparently.”
“Lucky him,” said Lewis with one of his sidelong looks at Teddy. “Lucky both of them.”
She brushed him off, as she had done for decades. “Indeed,” she said. “When is Ellen arriving?”
Lewis had the grace to look sheepish.
“I knew it,” she said. “Why would she come on a Saturday? Someday you’ll have the good manners to come and visit me in Greenpoint.”
“You know why I don’t want to,” said Lewis. “And I always send Benny for you.”
“You don’t want to because you’re afraid Oscar’s ghost will come out and say boo.”
“I would prefer not to encounter Oscar in any form.”
Teddy examined Lewis’s face. As usual, his expression was benign, seemingly blank, with the barest hint of a self-mocking lift at one corner of his mouth, even while he chewed. She wasn’t taken in by his apparent mildness, which was merely the lawyerly habit of many years, even in retirement, of presenting an impassive facade; behind it, his thoughts were always simmering, his feelings always churning. As a boss, he had been quietly exacting and not so quietly appreciative, at first merely of Teddy’s efficiency, tact, and integrity, but then after his movie-star wife had run off with one of her directors, his admiration frankly and immediately expanded to include her beauty, wit, charm, and physical being. One night, she’d stayed at the office late, asked to have a word with him, went into his office and shut the door, and told him, frankly and without fuss, that this turn in his feelings had made it difficult for her to continue as his secretary. Lewis had asked her whether she and Oscar were having an affair, she’d replied that they were, had been for many years, and he’d immediately agreed to transfer her to one of his colleagues and hire a new secretary, since it was now impossible for them to work together under such circumstances. Their friendship had continued through the years unimpeded by romantic complications, if only because Lewis, passionate as he felt about Teddy, had proved pragmatically capable of transcending his desires. “I’ll take as much of you as I can get,” he had told her more than once. This must have fulfilled certain needs for both of them. The fact that a man as intelligent and successful as Lewis would have chosen to languish for decades with unrequited love for Teddy, his former secretary, made no sense unless she took into consideration the real possibility that after his wife had left him, he had preferred simple unfulfilled yearning to messy conjugal complexity.
“He died owing you a lot of money,” she said with teasing sympathy, “and you chose not to dun his widow for it.”
“His widow had other things to worry about, and it was money I could easily spare,” Lewis said, taking the bait.
“He could have paid you,” Teddy said.
“Oscar chose not to pay me because he didn’t like the fact that I failed to urge him to sign the exclusive contract with Barbara Solomon. Of course, that was my fault. Never mind that I told him, ‘My job is not to advise you about career moves; it’s to advise you about a contract’s soundness.’ He took a pass and regretted it and then blamed me for every bad thing that happened to him thereafter.”
“More coffee?”
“Please.” Lewis cast around under a stack of bills and pulled out his fake ceramic cigarette and clamped it between his teeth.
“Your oral-fixation device,” Teddy remarked, pouring each of them a fresh cup.
“I wonder,” said Lewis, “whether I have now become irresistible to you due to the vicarious thrill of Lila’s new romance.”
“You wonder that, do you,” said Teddy.
“I can’t help but remark on your sudden appearance at my doorstep bearing seductive foodstuffs.”
“Kielbasa is seductive?”
“Very seductive,” said Lewis.
Teddy found to her surprise that she had no ready comeback to this.
“I will take that as a yes,” said Lewis, watching her closely.
Teddy looked steadily back at him. “I bought the kielbasa for Lila,” she said after a moment.
“Teddy,” said Lewis. “Do you honestly plan to go to your grave without replacing Oscar?”
“My grave,” said Teddy, laughing. She stood up and began to pace around the room. “Why are you bringing up my grave, of all subjects?” She picked up one of the carved masks. It bore a resemblance to a wizened monkey and reminded her of a death mask. She put it down again quickly, as if it were red-hot.
“Well,” said Lewis. “I’ve been thinking a lot about my own lately. How near I am to it.”
“Have you really been alone all these years since Deborah left you?”
“No,” said Lewis, looking her in the eye.
“You’ve had girlfriends?”
“I’ve had women.”
“All these years that you and I have known each other,” said Teddy, “I’ve never known you to have so much as a date.”
“You assume I tell you everything.”
“I do assume that,” she said, surprised.
“Well, don’t.”
Teddy lifted another mask. This one looked like a tragic owl. “Well, did you have dates with one woman or a series of them?”
“What difference does it make?”
“I’m just curious.”
“I’ve been involved, as they say, with several women over the years.”
“Ellen?” Teddy asked. Ellen was wildly unsuitable for Lewis, Teddy thought; she was so shrewd and brassy.
“Well, I could be, if I wanted.”
“But you’re not.”
“Not yet, anyway,” he said. His tone was light, teasing, and tender.
Teddy set the mask down and ran her finger slowly along the sideboard, then examined her fingertip for dust. There was none.
“You’re jealous!” said Lewis with delight.
“Of Ellen? Oh, come on. How could you possibly fall in love with Ellen?”
“Who said falling in love had anything to do with anything?”
She rolled her eyes. “Coffee cake?”
“Coffee cake,” Lewis repeated as Teddy went into the kitchen. She came back with two plates of cake and set one in front of Lewis.
“Fresh-baked this morning,” she said.
“How do you stay so slender when you eat so much, Teddy?” Lewis asked her. “Do you go into the bathroom after meals and stick your finger down your throat?”
“Of course I do,” she said, sitting down.
“Waste of good food.”
“Oh no, I regurgitate it whole, predigestion, then box it up and donate it to the poor.”
“Lucky poor.”
“They appreciate it.”
Lewis took a bite of cake. “Good cake.”
“Of course it is.”
“Joy of Cooking?”
“Is that the only cookbook you’ve ever heard of?”
“There are other cookbooks?”
They ate in easy silence for a moment.
“Teddy,” said Lewis, putting his fork down. “I think it’s really time we went to bed together.”
Teddy choked on a piece of brown-sugar topping. “You think it’s really what?”
He was looking intently at her. “You heard me.”
Coughing, she waved him away. “And wreck our friendship?”
“I’d happily wreck our friendship if it meant going to bed together.”