Fall and Rise (6 page)

I put my glass down and excuse myself through the crowd to the food table. She's not there. I look around. Still. Maybe in the bedroom. I open the door. No light's on and only the cat's there lying on the dresser and eating what looks like a sock. Maybe she left. I close the bedroom door and see her coming out the front door. Her coat's on. Her fur hat. She's going over to Diana. As she goes she glances at me. She's alone, though her companion could be in the hallway, struggling with his rubbers. I'll keep my eyes on her from this ten-foot distance. After she says goodbye to Diana and maybe others I'll catch up with her on the stairs. I'll say “Wait.” She'll say “What?” I'll say “I'm sorry I waited so long to speak to you, to introduce myself to you, those are what I'm sorry for. You can't believe the number of excuses I gave myself for not going over and speaking to you and the conversations I imagined we had here and you'll later have about me, even one where you'd now say something to me like ‘I've no idea what you mean.”' No. I'll say “Wait.” She'll say “What?” I'll say “You're obviously going, that's obvious, and I only wish I'd spoken to you sooner.” “Same here,” she might say. That'd be great. Or “Excuse me, sir, but do l know you? Because when I saw you staring at me before I thought maybe I did from some time back or that you were just putting on the make.” I move to them. Diana says to her “Oh no, not so soon.” “What can I do? I told you about the other party.” “Delay it.” “Wish I could.” “But this one's really just starting. People'll see you leave, they all might go. You speak to any old friends? But you haven't time to talk. I'll call tomorrow.” “If you don't, I'll get in touch with you.” “Actually, do that, since I'll probably forget by the end of tonight everyone I promised to call tomorrow. Goodnight, Helene. I'm sorry you couldn't stay.” She called her Helene. They kiss cheeks and Helene turns to the door without seeing me. I start over to her. She walks to the door. I continue after her. We're going at the same pace. Someone says “Dan.” I turn around. It was to another Dan. I continue. She's out the door and heading for the stairs. I'm about ten feet behind her. “You're not going also, Dan,” Diana says. Helene, snapping her fingers, steps back and reaches for the umbrella and sees me. I turn to Diana. “No, excuse me,” and then to Helene “Hold it, please wait.” “Me?” she says, pulling out an umbrella. “Yes, don't move, at least not off this floor. I want to speak to you. It's important. Someone we both know.”

“I'm a bit in a rush.”

“It'll only take a second.” I turn back to Diana. “No, I was only going to speak to Helene.”

“You know her?”

“No.”

“But you know her name.”

“I overheard it.”

“Want to be introduced?”

“Um, I don't know. Yes, could you? No, it's okay.” I look past the door. She's holding an umbrella, eyebrows raised as Diana's were before but hers wanting to know how long she must wait and what for. “Listen, Diana, I'll be right back.”

“That's good. I don't want all my guests leaving so soon after the party began, even though I know Helene has to.”

I walk into the hallway. “Excuse me. I was looking at you before.”

“And I was looking at you. You're apparently a good friend of Diana's.”

“Probably not as good as you two are. I met her this summer.”

“At Yaddo?”

“How'd you know?”

“I knew she went and Diana always meets two to three new people there who become her good friends. Half the people inside are from there.”

“That so? You too?”

“Maybe half's an exaggeration, but quite a number of them.”

“And you?”

“They don't take people in my work.”

“Oh yes? What's that?”

“Whatever it is, what did you want to speak to me about? Someone you said we both know?”

“That was a lie or fib.”

“I thought it was.” She's taken her gloves out of her coat pocket and is putting one on.

“You're in a hurry.”

“A hurry hurry. As a matter of fact I'm already late. I wish I hadn't had this engagement from so far back. But I did, so I really went out of my way to spend an hour here.”

“That's how long you've been here?”

“About. But I'm really in a hurry. I don't mean to sound curt, but was there something in particular you wanted to say?”

“No, nothing. I just thought it'd be nice to speak to you. I have since I first saw you.”

“Thank you. I'm not sure, but, well, I have to admit I thought something along the same lines about you.”

“Good. Where are you off to now?”

“A wedding reception. A very dear friend's.”

“That's nice. I like weddings and receptions.”

“I don't especially. Are you married?”

“Never been.”

“At your age? How'd you escape it? But I just don't like those big catered and structured affairs like that and this one seems especially unnecessary, since they were married last summer and have already gone on two honeymoons. I was the matron of honor or as close to that title as a woman with my marital history can get, and the whole dopey idea of it makes me question my friendship with her somewhat and just a little sick. But she wants me there tonight and so I have to be going. It's only right. There's a special seat for me.”

“May I speak to you another time?”

“If you want to phone me you can. I'm in the Manhattan book. My name's Helene Winiker with an i-k-e-r. I'm the only Helene in it, and my service will be home if I'm not. Your name is what?”

“Daniel Krin.”

“Okay, Mr. Krin—pleased to meet you.” She takes a glove off and shakes my hand. “Now I have to scoot,” and she goes downstairs.

I go back in, squeeze past some people by the door, push my way past some people a little ways past the door, try to squeeze and push my way across the room to get to one of the two windows overlooking the street, someone says “Excuse me” as if I should have been the one to say excuse me to her, and she's right, someone says “Excuse me” as if it's his fault the room's this crowded and he's in my way when I push past him, I say “Excuse me” to several people including the few who for various reasons said excuse me to me, one man says “I'll say,” another says “Have a heart, commander, that's my only back,” a woman says “Louis, you made me spill my drink,” and he says “No, it was he,” till I reach the freest window.

It's snowing, though lightly, not sticking except on the grass and a little on the tops of parked cars and trees, actually looking more like sleet. I want to open the window and look down to see Helene leaving the building and walking down the stoop or already heading some way along the street, but I know it'll be too cold. I could make up excuses to whoever's near me. “It's very stuffy in here,” “So much cigarette smoke I can hardly breathe,” “Maybe some people would appreciate a little cool air in the room because of the congestion and heat,” and I say to the three people talking together next to me “Mind if I open the window?”

“Might be a bit drafty,” a man says.

“The temperature's supposed to be dropping rapidly tonight,” the woman says to him.

“If you do open it,” another man says, “what do you say to only a tinkle?”

“No really, it's very stuffy in here, I can hardly breathe because of the congestion and heat. I'm serious. Too many cigarettes going. You can barely see the food on the food table being contaminated by the smoke. And I'm allergic to cigarettes that are lit. Not only my respiratory track but for some organismic reason or another, they also in heavy doses make me irritable. I'm sure some other guests must be suffering the same discomfort and so won't mind a momentary jolt of fresh air.”

“I'm really not sure,” the woman says. “But if you are going to, give me a chance to get to the other side of the room?”

She pardons her way past several people with one of the men behind her holding her hand the European way while I pull the bottom part of the window all the way up and stick my head and chest out and look down, feeling that by now Helene will be at either end of the block. She's standing on the top step having trouble opening her contractible umbrella. She gives up trying to open it by hand and bangs the handle end against the iron railing a few times and the umbrella pops open. She walks downstairs with the umbrella over her head. I want to call her name. She reaches the sidewalk and goes right. I think don't, it's stupid, but yell “Helene.” She stops, looks around at eye level: stoops, first stories of buildings, both ends of her side of the street.

“Helene Winiker—up here.”

She looks across the street as if I'm in one of the taller park trees.

“You're getting warmer, but wrong direction. Turn around a hundred eighty degrees to your left or right and look—no, now about ninety degrees to your left or two-hundred seventy to your right and look at the wet snow snowing or sleet sleeting past the red brick building you came out of and then at the middle window of the apartment you were in three flights up, which is the only top floor apartment of that building facing the street, and if your eyesight's all right and you can also see past the snow or sleet and remember who I am, you'll come to recognize me. Mr. Krin.”

“It's very cold,” a man says.

“Freezing,” a woman says. “Could you lower the window, sir?”

“Yes, that's a terrific idea,” another woman says. “Don't you think you should listen to it?”

“Hey, what's going on there, shut that window,” a man says. “My wife just got over a bad cold.”

“Who opened the window?” Diana says from across the room. “Even if no one did, could someone please close it?”

Helene's looking at the window now. I wave and smile, then take my glasses off and wave them at her and smile. She shakes the umbrella in my direction, didn't and doesn't smile, walks on.

I close the window, rub the lenses of my glasses against my sleeve till they're clear and dry, put the glasses away and stare outside. Give what you did time to subside before you turn around, but why'd you do it? Little high, feeling good, really am quite stupid, meeting a new desirable woman who also might be a potential mate could have had something to do with it. I want to ruin all good things from the start? Yes, yes, no, maybe, absolutely not. I'll phone her later next week. Don't see why by then I shouldn't be able to explain it. If her number's not in the book it could mean she never intended to speak to me again, which might have stopped me before but now I've this other reason to call. “Something came over me. Was so unlike me. I needed some air, threw open the window, saw you and thought what the heck. Oh hell, it was just an expression of joy.”

I turn around. “Opening the window so high really was a foolish thing to do, wasn't it?” I say to one of the women who complained.

“It's over.”

“Actually, though, contrary to what a lot of people might think, an open window, even if the air is cold, is a much better way of preventing colds and other virus-caused illnesses in a crowded room than a closed window. The viruses thrive in the warmth and some other reasons I read in the Times Science Section one of these previous Tuesdays. Keeps the viruses circulating, the cold air does, and breezier the better, and also more engaged in staying warm and alive than attaching themselves to us.”

“If that is the case,” a man says, “then I'd think a shivering tired virus would want to hide inside someone's warm suit or up a sultry orifice than just faint to the floor with a death of a cold and nobody inclined to help it.”

“That could be true. It was the lead article and long and I tend not to finish them in that section. And I do apologize for making you so cold,” and I look around for Diana. She's across the room, stacking used plates and laughing to herself. “Diana.”

“Was it wise opening the window that far?”

“Sorry. Got carried away though have since made my apologies to the respective parts, but that's not what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You want to know more about Helene.”

“I've known you for nearly five months. I speak to you on the phone about fifteen minutes every other week. We've had four to five cheap Chinese and Greek restaurant dinners since we've been back and ate at the same table upstate every evening for a month and we've almost always talked about a lot more than what's new, who's who, movies are phoo and whew, and the rising price of cottage cheese and beef, so how come you never told me about Helene?”

“I never told her about you either and I've known her for years and speak to her about twice the times and double the durations as I do you, even if I at the last moment at the door lost my head and said I'd introduce you. You're not suited for one another, that's what I thought. Or I didn't think it though do now. But I'm busy. There's ice to untray, trayed food to unrefrigerate, glasses and plates to wash or throw away and replace, more bells to answer, opened windows to tell people to shut, and everyone wants to talk. If you do while you're helping me, be my guest.”

We go into the kitchen. “Besides,” she says as she takes food platters out of the refrigerator and removes the plastic wrap and I empty a bag of ice into a bowl, “though I've kept it a stately secret from everyone we both know, I was vaguely interested in you myself. Why give away a relatively good thing, or till someone comparable but more attracted to me comes along? I was never that generous even as a girl. And that ungenerous spirit goes back to my months as a fetus, if you can believe me and I can believe my mother, when I more than most overgrown embryos wouldn't let her eat, sleep and make love and as a result was more than any one thing instrumental in wrecking their marriage. And because I lived with her and hardly saw my father, I created my own abject dependence on male acceptance and affection and till recently loathed my mother, who I thought was the one responsible for driving my father away from me at such an early, impressionable age. Overfill the bowl with ice so I won't if you're not around have to send someone else to refill it so fast. But now that I see you're not interested in me and probably never were except for perhaps the first few minutes after we met, nothing I can do about it. Besides, I'm inchoatively drunk, so don't believe most of what I say other than overfilling the bowl and later if you see it empty or low, getting more ice. I mean a bit tipsy, not inchoatively, and liable to say ridiculous tipsy thinks like ‘inchoatively' and ‘tipsy thinks' and that I was interested in you once, all of wish would be a thundering lie. You're okay and amusing to be around but to me not that attractive. I just never thought of Helene and you as a twosome. Not even as two people to talk together for any extensive length of time.”