Manhattan Lullaby (2 page)

Harry sat up, alert. “A date? With a man?”

Maxine took her compact out of her purse and checked her face. “That's the usual arrangement.”

“Who is he? What does he do? Where did you meet him?” demanded Harry, firing off a staccato barrage of questions like an anxious father whose teenage queen is off on her first date.

Maxine held the lipstick poised just in front of her mouth. “Uh, Harry, I don't know if this has just slipped your mind or what, but you are
Bradley's
father, not mine, remember?”

“I was just asking.”

“And I'm just saying it's none of your business.” Maxine applied a fresh coat of lipstick, replaced the tube and the compact in her purse and snapped the clasp shut. Then she noticed the look on Harry's face and decided to relent. “Oh, all right, if you're going to look like that. His name is Solly Berman. He's a doctor and I met him while I was jogging in the park. O.K.?”

Harry bolted to his feet. “You talked to a stranger in the park? Are you out of your mind?” He shouted, all his husbandly proprietary urges surging into action.

“He wasn't a stranger. He was a jogger,” corrected his ex-wife.

“A jogger?” cried Harry, flailing his arms in disbelief. “Muggers can be joggers, rapists can be joggers, kidnappers can be joggers! Maxine, this is New York City, for God's sake, every criminal on the streets is running!”

“It wasn't as though he was running with a television set under his arm, Harry.”

But Harry was still shaking his head.

She patted down the collar of her blouse. “Solly seems like a nice man. He's a widower. And anyway, we're just having dinner—at his place.” As soon as she said it, she regretted adding this last piece of information.

“You're having dinner, with a widower,
at his place
?” Harry was shaking his head so fast his eyes were having trouble keeping up. “Maxine, you don't know what men are like. You've been married all your life. After dinner he's probably planning on serving dessert in the bedroom!” Harry began pacing in the small office. Two steps up, two steps back.

Maxine looked up into her ex-husband's rapidly reddening face. “And what exactly did you have in mind for after dinner—mints?”

“That's different. You're my—”

“
Ex
-wife. And if I want to date another man, sleep with another man, go to Timbuktu with another man, then that's precisely what I intend to do. You don't own me, Harry.”

Harry paled and swallowed hard. “You mean you'd actually have
sex
with another man?”

Maxine shrugged. “If I felt like it. But as far as I know, I'm just having dinner with Solly.”

A fistful of air forced itself down Harry's nose. “First it's dinner,” he snorted. “Then it's breakfast. The next thing you know, you're on your way to Quogue for the weekend.”

“Harry, you're jealous?”

Harry lowered his voice. “Jealous? Of course I'm not jealous. Why would I be jealous? I'm just … concerned. That's it, concerned. One of my employees is about to put herself in a possibly dangerous situation by having dinner in a strange man's apartment, a man she knows absolutely nothing about. And in this day and age that can be fatal,” he cautioned her. “Remember
Looking for Mr. Goodbar
? Huh? Huh?”

“Solly isn't the type to own a strobe light.”

“You think you're so smart. What about
Fatal Attraction
?”

“Rabbits aren't in season right now.”

“You're missing the point!” cried Harry in frustration. “What I'm trying to say is, going out with strangers can be dangerous.”

Maxine shook her head. “Oh, Harry, for God's sake. I'm just having dinner with a nice man I met in the park.”

But Harry, who had been watching too many late-night news broadcasts while Joyce had been away, had managed to work himself into an absolute frenzy of urban paranoia. “What about the letters you get? Those people are probably jogging in parks all over this country, and people probably think they're ‘nice' too, until they expose the seamy underside of their perverted lives to you.”

“The seamy underside of their perverted lives?” she quoted back to him, laughing. “They're just trying to cope with life like the rest of us, Harry. Of course some of them cope a little less well than others but …” She shrugged. “Have you been eating all right?”

“My diet is not the topic of this discussion!” he cried, slamming his fist into the top of Maxine's desk. It hurt. He paused to let the pain subside and to catch his breath. While he was doing so he had time to consider if maybe he was going just slightly overboard. He decided he was. But the idea of his ex-wife dating had hit him a blow he hadn't been expecting. It was a possibility he had never seriously considered. “It's only natural I should be … concerned about you, that's all,” he finished off lamely.

Maxine nodded. She understood exactly what was going on. She had had a letter about something very similar only last week. “Well, just to alleviate your natural concern as an
employer
, maybe you'd like to have a look at this.” She picked up a file folder from the desk. The white label on the outside said “Berman, Dr. Solly S.”

Harry took the folder. “You had him checked out?”

“We have a research department. I had him researched.” She shrugged. “You can read it if it will make you feel any better.” She moved past him to the door and then stopped. “Harry, I think it's sweet that you're jealous, but—”

“I told you I was just con—”

“All right, concerned then. But you have to understand that I was ‘concerned' about Joyce in the beginning. I felt all the things you're feeling now, possessive, left out, jealous. But I realized that you have your life to live, and I have mine, and we have to put the past behind us. I want to find someone to love, someone to be with, just the way you did. And in the meantime, I'm enjoying my freedom to do exactly as I please with whomever I please. It's the first time in my whole life I've been able to do that.”

She took her raincoat from the coat stand and then, looking back over her shoulder, she said, “You'll just have to get used to the idea that you're not the only one who got divorced from our marriage.” And then she turned and disappeared down the hallway.

Chapter Two

It was a small, unprepossessing building on East 45th Street. It crouched anonymously between two gray granite monoliths typical of the kind that had been springing up ever since a spate of renovating had struck the area about five years before. As usual, Bradley looked first to his left and then to his right before going through the revolving door into the lobby, just to make sure no one he knew, or no one who knew him, would see him entering the place.

He rode the creaking, shuddering elevator up to the seventh floor and with another furtive glance both ways before getting off, he hurried down the hall to a door boldly marked Suite 709, and then in smaller letters underneath, City Cryo Clinic, and slipped inside.

He nodded self-consciously at the small round Latino woman at the reception desk, and she greeted him with a broad and knowing smile. “
De nuevo
, Mr. Kraft?” Then she winked at him as he walked up to her desk. “That's six times already this week.
Tu estas muy viril, si
?”

Bradley felt the flesh on his face begin to burn. Maria was the motherly type, and her comments always embarrassed him. It made him think of what his own mother would say if she knew what he was doing here, which, thank God, she didn't and never would. But at least Maria was better than Carmelita.

The previous receptionist, who had been behind the desk when he first started to come to Suite 709 nine or ten months before, didn't speak much English either, but she had been young and very pretty in a dark, lush Latino way. Her skin was suffused with a sort of permanent sun-kissed erotic glow, and she smelled faintly of mangos—or was it bananas? Anyway, it was ripe. Not that he had really noticed her, of course. But she had a way of looking at him that said she would like to get to know him—in the biblical sense. That had been enough to make him feel uncomfortable, under the circumstances. But on top of everything else, whenever he would walk past her desk on his way inside, she would flick the succulent pink tip of her tongue suggestively over the juicy roundness of her bottom lip. The implication was obvious and it made him feel all squirmy inside.

Evidently Carmelita's suggestive tongue had made other men feel “all squirmy inside” too—men who did not have Bradley's superior sense of self-control. That of course had been bad for business. Production went up, but inventory went down. It wasn't long before the doctor got wind of what was going on and fired her. Bradley was relieved. He wasn't sure how much longer his superior self-control would have held out. He was glad the first day he had come in and seen Mother Maria sitting behind the desk.

“I'm getting married on Saturday,” he said by way of an explanation. “So I won't be around for a while.”

Maria nodded understandingly. “
Si. Tu guardas por la novia
.”

Bradley nodded back, “Yes … well, I know it's not the usual procedure, but do you think you could have my check ready when I leave?”

“
Si, si, no problema
,” said the receptionist. “I make sure Dr. Carter sign it. He will not mind making an
excepcion
for you. You are practically
familia, si
.”

Bradley thanked her. He glanced over at the door behind her desk and took a couple of sideways steps toward it. “Well … ah … I guess I'll just go on in, then.”

“
Que te diverta
!” chuckled Maria with a devilish grin.

Bradley blushed a little deeper. Maybe he was too conservative, but he didn't think this was any laughing matter. It was just a job and he had to get on with it. He wasn't here to
enjoy
himself, he thought, trying to ignore Maria's wickedly suggestive laugh.

He was almost through the opaque door that led to the private rooms when she called after him. “
Senore
Kraft, we have some new magazines,” she teased. He blushed deeper still.

But before he could say anything, if indeed he could have thought of a response to make, another man coming through the door bumped into him. They both apologized, made eye contact and then looked sheepishly away. This was not the sort of place either of them wanted to be seen going into or coming out from. When it came to the celebration of masculine prowess, a sperm bank did not have quite the same elan as a squash club.

By the time Bradley got home, the soft November twilight was beginning to gather over the section of the city they called SOFI, a Manhattanesque abbreviation for a part of the island that in its shabbier days had simply been referred to by its street numbers, but now that it was becoming upmarket apparently required an appellation with more purchase-appeal, because Yuppies didn't live on streets, they resided in
areas
.

A cold breeze was sweeping up the avenues. It carried the oily, salty smell of the harbor, but Bradley took a deep breath anyway to fortify himself before going inside. He was exhausted and he hoped Janie would not be home so that he could crawl into bed and have a little snooze before she arrived.

Lately she had been questioning him about why he was so tired all the time. At first he had told her he just had a bit of a bug, and that had held her off for a while. Especially when he had made a point of coughing and sneezing whenever she was nearby. Then he told her it was just pre-wedding jitters. But, because of his trips to Suite 709, it had been a month since he had last been able to summon up the energy to make love to her, and she was beginning to get both suspicious and annoyed.

But that was all over now, he thought, mounting the steps to the front door. All he needed was a good rest and he would make up to her for lost time. In Aruba. With this last check safely folded in his wallet he had managed to get enough money to pay for a surprise honeymoon. He knew she would be thrilled. He had made such a big deal about her paying for the wedding. Had told her he just couldn't face having her pay for the honeymoon too, so, there would be no honeymoon. She had acquiesced. But he knew how disappointed she had been. Still, she hadn't insisted. Some time ago they had reached an unspoken understanding that her success in the business world was a sore point with him. So she didn't wave her money under his nose. And for that he loved her even more. Enough to do what he had been doing these last few months just so that he could give her the trip she wanted so much.

But he decided not to tell her about it tonight. She would be so happy she would be all over him trying to show him how much she loved him. And he just couldn't take that right now. Of course it was possible that after four long and celibate weeks she might just want to show him how much she loved him anyway. And if she did, he knew what he was going to have to do. He couldn't perform and he certainly couldn't explain. There was only one alternative. An argument. He hoped it wouldn't come to that. He didn't really have the energy.

He hung up his coat in the front hall closet and made his way toward the back of the house. He could hear Janie in the kitchen stirring something on the stove and he resigned himself to putting off his nap at least until after dinner. He yawned as he came up behind her and looked over her shoulder.

“Smells good.”

She turned to face him. She wasn't smiling. “Oh, so you're
finally
home.” There was a distinct and unmistakable edge to her voice.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” She shrugged and turned back to the stove. But he knew that it was the kind of “nothing” that women say when they really mean “something” but aren't ready to tell you what.