Making Love (9 page)

“I've got the solution. After dinner, Conlon'll call you and tell you where we'll be. You might change your mind.”
 

“Will they let me in with trousers?” Conlon asked.
 

“Just bring money,” Mel said, closing the discussion.
 

She sat on the edge of the bed pondering her next move, then called United Airlines to make a reservation for the afternoon flight to San Francisco. This task accomplished, she put on her coat and left the suite.
 

She hailed a cab. The driver demanded to know her destination, gave her a sobriety test, and at last agreed to take her. She gave him an address on Fifth Avenue. Her first lover—the cherry thief, as he was known in Fairfield County—had written to her the previous week and advised her of his divorce, also extending an invitation for a drink. He was a young man of much means and dubious accomplishment who, despite his lankiness, was still known by his nickname, Tub. Tub Feeney was the first of his age group to give up nail biting and to put down conventional sports. His manner was languid and he introduced marijuana cigarettes to the cheerleaders.
 

New York was as depressing as the cab driver's photograph. At a light, George Lapidus decided to explain his position
vis-à-vis
passengers and impart the wisdom of thirty years of driving down side streets.
 

“This morning my first fare was a couple. Man about thirty-five, girl maybe seventeen, nineteen on the outside. I pick ‘em up outside the Brasserie, the guy gives me a Village address. On Twenty-third Street, there's a malfunctioning of the light. A Firebird in front of me crosses the intersection and out of the other side comes this white El Dorado with four colored people. Blacks, whatever you want to call ‘em. Zap. A collision. Wonder that the
schvartzers
had gas in the car. I thought all they did was wash and simonize their Caddies. I get out and say to the couple, ‘We're witnesses.' Would you believe it, they was havin' an orkee in the back. The guy's got his pants down to his ankles and the girl's brassiere is in his handkerchief pocket. Hangin' out. I said: ‘Get outa my cab. I'm a grandfather, shame yourself, havin' an orkee in my back seat. Grandchildren ride in there on Sunday.' Guy pulls up his pants and steps out and this little seventeen-year-old machonist says: ‘When you're in love, you go all the way.' Would you believe it? What's your opinion, Miss? That's why I was suspicious when you hailed me.”
 

“Would you please stop talking and take me to 1045 Fifth Avenue.”
 

It was a new building, smaller than most, squeezed in between granite giants, as inconspicuous as ham in an Automat roll. She tipped Lapidus thirty-five cents and received a scowl. The doorman inspected her on closed-circuit television for a minute and came to the conclusion that she was not a delivery boy trying to crash or a drug addict fingering apartments. She remained in the vestibule where he could keep an eye on her while he buzzed Mr. Feeney. She gave her name. Feeney barked that it was okay, and she was pointed to the twin Otis Elevators, a safe conduct pass to the co-ops under his jurisdiction.
 

Tub lived on the fifth floor and answered the first ring. He was wearing an old pair of shiny corduroys and a denim shirt, which made her think of gardening and Sunday newspapers. His complexion had cleared, and he had his hair shorter and with a part on the side. Gone was that wild look that had attracted her.
 

“Jane?” He blinked, awkwardly barring her way. He'd lost a tremendous amount of weight and looked rather frail.
 

“Can I come in?”
 

“Can you come in.... Why of course you can.”
 

“I got your letter....” He wasn't making it easy for her.
 

“Oh, that. I've got this habit of writing letters and never mailing them. Well, a former friend decided to send them. I wrote it almost a year ago. Half the people I know have stopped speaking to me.”
 

Some of the sweet childishness had vanished, and his face had a tight severity about it. He didn't take his eyes off her.
 

“Why'd you write to me?” she asked.
 

“Why'd you come to see me? I suppose you ran out of people. That's what brings my old friends around ... or to have the rumors they've heard about me confirmed.” He lit a cigarette. “Well, Jane, I confirm them very quickly.”
 

“I haven't heard any rumors,” she admitted. “What's there to hear?”
 

“Nothing significant. It's not as though Genet would dedicate a book to me or something. I've simply been reclassified. They tried to induct me into the army and I decided to kill two birds with one stone. I'll always be grateful to General Hershey.”
 

“What did Coppie have to say about it?”
 

“I'm glad you asked. Because this was a real test of the girl's moral fiber. I had only one way to beat the draft.” He moved up and curled on the arm of her chair. “I simply had to tell the truth. Now is that so awful? Most men lie like mad to their wives, and I thought that Coppie would be a lot happier after two years of blaming herself for our own little failure.
 

“When my 4-F classification came through she wanted to know why and I took her to Blum's. Bad news is never quite so bad when you've got hot fudge on your mouth and I told her that I was a homosexual. A bonafide, classified one. She called me a liar, can you imagine, and me with a degree from the army telling anyone who wants to know—even American Express, if they care to check—that I'm a menace to innocent boys from Georgia and Utah.”
 

“You know,” Jane said, unable to contain her confusion, “I sometimes wondered about it when we were together.”
 

“You look disappointed,” he said.
 

“I'm not, or am I? I don't really think it matters, except to you. We didn't get married.”
 

“Seeing you after years is a shock to me. I guess I would've been happier if you didn't know. But that's hypocritical. Oh, well, who says I have to be a model of consistency. You can stay here if you need a place.”
 

“I'm staying with my roommate, but thanks.”
 

“Jane, why'd you come, really?”
 

“I think maybe because I wanted to see somebody from the old days.”
 

“They stunk.”
 

“Yes,” she said.
 

He hadn't made their past small affair distasteful or ugly but irrelevant. Her judgment had betrayed her again. Being the first man in her life didn't impose any special responsibility on him, although she thought it might and that he'd be the good sympathetic listener she needed. He gave her a green crème de menthe on the rocks with a straw and she blew bubbles in the glass.
 

“I'm going to a party,” she said.
 

I don't believe this is happening to me. It isn't my life—it's some kind of insane misrepresentation
, she thought. What she remembered about Tub didn't coincide with what she saw now. Someone had crept into Tub's body and begun impersonating him. Even the apartment didn't look real, but rather a series of model rooms stolen from Bloomingdale's and Sloane's, impermanent, a fraud. People didn't live like this—with books slanting at an angle on the secretary shelves, green suede sofas, skinny steel lamps with cobra hoods that stepped out of Miró prints.
 

“Do you know, Jane, you're the only girl I've ever enjoyed sex with?” he said, with the suggestion that it had really been theoretical.
 

“Maybe because you were the first. But now I'm a scalp on many belts.
 

“I'm sorry.”
 

“It's not something that you have regrets about after the first time.”
 

He didn't swish around the room, he wasn't that kind. He seemed more regretful than liberated to her. The apartment was ready for
House and Garden
but not Tub. His eyelids drooped and he looked with dismay at the enormous black coffee table with its repro African sculpture, five-pound astrology book (the stars told everything!), George Jensen marble game (the object is to finish with one marble), and Queen Anne silver tea service. Had anyone ever used it? Perhaps long ago around a coal fire in Exeter. Its only function now was to be polished.
 

“It's a big write-off,” he said. “I like kids, really love the little bastards. But when I touch one of my friends' boys—well, maybe I'm imagining it—I get this fishy look like I'm going to molest them.”
 

He squatted at her feet, preventing her from leaving. She had nowhere to go, but she was in a hurry.
 

“I got drunk one night with Coppie—our pre-pot period—and I said a few things before the breakup. She wanted to make love, and believe me I tried. She was so willing, so compliant, it was pathetic. I could only make it with her in the ass and that used to make her cry. God, the tears that were shed while I was coming. I was drunk and she said, ‘Tub, you wish I was a boy.' And I said, ‘You are a boy.'
 

“She called my mother the next day, and I went home for the weekend....”
 

“I've really got to go, Tub.”
 

“A few minutes more, please.” He opened a drawer and took out a box of cards and showed her one. “I passed my examination and am now a member of the Interior Design Consultants of America. And what with my contacts and the pension plan my family devised for me, I'm living it up. Coppie waived alimony, so I'm free. She called me to wish me good luck, but I sensed an ulterior motive. She wanted me to take her up to Schumacher and Widdicomb. I thought it was kind of unseemly to begin my business with my ex-wife as my first client so I turned her down. She pleaded with me, and I was under the impression that she wanted my advice—but no, all she was concerned about was the twenty-five percent off. And she's not even Jewish. There is a young lady with real problems.”
 

Slide doors from the den opened and a man said:
 

“Sorry, I didn't know you had a guest.” He had a soft, resonant voice that went with a small, miniature-featured face and a frame that might have been constructed from wishbones.
 

“This is Jane Siddley, my first love,” Tub said.
 

The man looked from one to the other through thick glasses and smiled.
 

“Tub's mentioned you.”
 

He shook Jane's hand, and told her his name was Steven. He renewed Tub's invitation for her to stay, but she looked at her watch with theatrical urgency.
 

“Steven was married, too,” Tub said, “Unhappily.”
 

“If we were only smart enough not to correct our first mistake,” he said. “But that's a test of character and there isn't much of that around.”
 

“I'm glad I got your letter,” Jane said. “It could've been years before we got together again.”
 

“Jane, you haven't even mentioned your trouble. What is it?”
 

“Nothing that I can't work out.”
 

They exchanged kisses and the promise of a future dinner.
 

He stood by the open door making small awkward waves as people do when nothing is left to say and a guest has to be seen out inoffensively. The elevator arrived and he vanished, a quirky memory that had surfaced and hurt unreasonably.
 

She took a cab back to the parking lot where she'd left the Mini, gave a disgruntled attendant her ticket, and waited by the elevator for the car. The attendant sped out like a Grand-Prix driver and said:
 

“What happens to a little thing like this if one of them big trailers hits you?”
 

“It already has.”
 

It was almost midnight and she was lonely and not at all sleepy. She couldn't make up her mind where to go, but some hysterical honking behind her made her move. She was sorry that she had broken her resolve to see old friends. They weren't friends any more, having left their families and established patterns that they could live with. Tub had been an awful shock, her first all-the-way, no-holds-barred lover. She didn't condemn or disapprove of his new bent, but somehow the early experience had been rosy and one of the few happy romantic infractions that a lifetime of law-abiding couldn't spoil. It was like suddenly finding that a much admired beauty spot high on the cheekbone had really been a blackhead. For the sake of a clearer complexion it was ruthlessly squeezed and what remained was an unfilled hole that refused to submit with good grace to make up. Deceit she could live with, the truth was a different matter.
 

Hard to believe that she had panted, counted the hours anxiously for the appearance of Tub and his magic wand. They had both had little skill but much enthusiasm. Orgasms crackled like Chinese firecrackers in the back of his first car—a much-owned XKE Jaguar with enough miles on it to get them halfway to the moon, which had sped through the hills and dales of Connecticut, not to mention the western cavities of New York State, to bring them to assorted clearings, guesthouses, nookeries, soft shoulders where they could couple peacefully. The seventeenth summer of madness, she called it when it was over, and went off to school to recover. The Moss gearbox had proved as intractable for screwing as shifting. Thanksgiving and his father's Caddy brought with it hydromatic and a back seat. Well, so nothing was precious any longer. Memories were old clothes that didn't fit.