“What about Woody Allen?” asked Rebecca. “Are we going or not?”
“Excuse me,” said a man’s voice. “Did I hear you say you’re going to see Woody Allen?”
A limo pulled to the curb on the seven thousand block of Park Avenue.
The Café Carlyle doorman had a smile and white gloves. “Good evening, ladies.” The women checked their coats and the maître d’ led them to a table under muted frescoes. He bowed and left.
“Look how intimate the seating is,” said Rebecca, gesturing at an empty chair beside a piano just feet away. “He’s going to be sitting right there!”
Sam leaned and whispered to Teresa: “I can’t believe we let him come along.”
“Shhh! He’ll hear you.” They looked over and smiled at Serge, who was setting up a miniature digital recorder under a napkin to bootleg Woody.
A round of drinks arrived. Then a few more.
“Let’s check out guys,” said Rebecca. “Oooo, I like that one over there.”
“Which one? The overaged hippie?”
“No, the business type in the turtleneck. I’d sleep with him.”
“You would?”
“Sure, if I knew I wouldn’t catch anything and wouldn’t get pregnant again, and knew that he would still respect me and call, but not call too much and get cloying and possessive. And if he doesn’t have a wife, and doesn’t lie to me if he does, because I wouldn’t want to wreck another woman’s home, and…”
“In other words, in some fantasy astral plane in a parallel universe,” said Teresa.
“Right,” said Rebecca.
“Okay, Rebecca’s an easy lay. Who else?”
“I’d do that guy over there,” said Maria.
“The cheap Tom Selleck?”
“That’s the one.”
“Same terms as Rebecca?”
“Except that he also can’t smell bad after an hour or two. Or bob his head in the car to some song that he tells me perfectly captures the kind of person he is. Either of those two things, and it’s no Big O for Maria.”
“Are you talking about Charlie?”
“How’d you know?”
“I warned you not to go out with him, but did you listen?”
“Yuk is not a warning.”
“I’m starting to not want to date anyone who’s eligible,” said Paige.
“I know what you mean,” said Maria. “It’s like availability automatically disqualifies them. If they’re single and never been married, they’re either playboys or have some kind of psychological defect that prevents them from forming healthy relationships, like a private sexual ceremony you only find out about when you’re innocently going through his dresser and find the baby pacifiers and vibrating butt plugs and he accuses you of spying…”
“Charlie again?”
“Did I use any names?”
“And if they’ve been married and gotten divorced, what did they do to deserve it?” said Paige. “You don’t want to hire someone who’s just been fired…”
“And if she was the bad unit in the marriage, then his judgment is suspect…”
“The only decent ones are married, and if they fool around, what does that say?…”
“That means the only guys worth considering are widowers…”
“And you can’t go out with them because it’s way too depressing. Every few minutes some little thing reminds them of their dead wives, like a certain brand of perfume or a car horn, and they either stare off for an hour or cry real loud in a crowded restaurant.”
Sighs.
“So,” Sam said to Serge with overt contempt. “What’s with the tape recorder?”
“Preserving the show for future historians.”
The chemicals were undergoing a tidal shift in Serge’s head. He was now a man of mystery, currently involved in some kind of high-stakes smuggling game with the Russians. And these women…well, a good female agent will use any weapon at her disposal; Serge was determined not to let any of them lure him into the classic espionage “honey trap.”
Sam snickered. “You’re a historian?”
A historian was as good a cover as any. Serge nodded.
A tipsy Rebecca leaned toward Serge, brushing her shoulder against his. “Wow, a historian. I’ll bet that takes years of study and hard work.” Rebecca looked around at the others, and she could see it in their eyes: Slut!
This Rebecca could be the Mata Hari, thought Serge. But then, so could any of them. Watch your step.
A small redheaded man took the stage. Serge pressed a button on his recorder.
The Dixieland jazz began whimsically and slow but built with reckless precision. At one point, Serge had an uncontrollable urge to ask if he could sit in on trombone. Why not? It was a chance of a lifetime. But that would risk his cover because he didn’t know how to play the trombone, and national security had to come first.
Rebecca leaned cozily into Serge again. “Can you believe what this is costing?”
“Believe it,” said Serge. “You got your sixty-dollar entertainment charge, eighteen dollars for the appetizer if you want to cheap out, drinks, cab fare, coat check, tips. It never ends! Russell Baker was right. In New York, you hemorrhage money!”
The women smiled and tapped along with the music. With the exception of Sam, they were all starting to fall for Serge, so dashing and charming and funny — no clue he was crazier than a whirligig beetle — sitting there bouncing jauntily and playing the “air clarinet.”
An hour later, the room erupted in applause as Mr. Allen packed up his instrument and left the stage. White noise of conversation filled the room. Serge asked where the women were from, and they told him.
“Really? I’m from Florida, too!” he said. “What about family?”
“Most of our kids also go to school there,” said Teresa, “but a couple are out of state.”
“You have kids?” said Serge. “Pictures!”
Teresa opened her wallet and handed it to Serge. “He’s a fine one!…Okay, the rest of you!”
The others dug out wallets except Sam, who finally got moving after an elbow from Maria. Serge carefully lined the photos up on the table like a collection. “That sure is a blue-ribbon crop. You must be mighty proud parents! What do your husbands do?”
“We don’t have any.”
“Not anymore.”
“Irresistible women like yourselves?” said Serge. “Available?”
“Please!” Sam said under her breath.
“So you’re all single moms?” asked Serge.
They nodded.
“What the heck is this, a club or something?”
They nodded again.
“Well, you got all my respect. Single moms are my heroes. No tougher or more important job in America today, that’s a fact! I was raised by a single mom. I didn’t really think about it much at the time, but looking back — what she must have gone through! You may not know it to look at me today, but I was quite a handful.”
Sam muttered again.
“Did you say something?” asked Serge.
She smiled. “Nope.”
“Anyway, hats off to you. The country can’t do enough — Congress should come up with a medal!…”
His stock with the gals was going through the roof. “…If it was up to me, you’d get hazardous-duty pay, yes sir!…”
Rebecca looked at the others. “He has to come with us!”
“Yes, you have to!”
“We’ve got a limo.”
“How can a man say no to such lovely ladies…”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” said Sam. “No offense, but we don’t know anything about him.”
“She’s right,” said Serge. “I’m a complete stranger you’ve just met in New York. God only knows what I’m capable of.”
“Who are you kidding?” said Rebecca. “You look so normal.”
“It’s the normal-looking ones you have to worry about,” said Serge. “You’re not going to end up in a sex dungeon because you went off with a wacky-looking guy.”
Rebecca laughed and put a hand on Serge’s shoulder. “You’re so funny!”