The Bette Davis Club (23 page)

Occasionally, Finn and I would skip coffee. We’d go for a walk in the park or visit a museum or gallery. But most of the time, we met at our same small café in the Village. And actually, I was the one who drank coffee. Finn always ordered tea. Then one day, I realized three things that shocked me down to my knee-length leather boots:

I was living for those coffee dates.

I looked forward to each one as if it were a holiday.

I was falling in love with Finn Coyle.

Okay, yes, I enjoyed learning about architecture, history, philosophy. I would have liked talking about those subjects with anyone. It was around this time that Dottie opened her first shop, and I started spending time with her, becoming close friends. In her company, I absorbed a smattering of knowledge about Art Deco.

But Finn was like no one else. He could be funny, teasing, informative all at once. I was discovering that smart, engaged dialogue with a man is extremely erotic. Cleverness is an aphrodisiac.

Which is why I found myself wanting to learn more about Finn, about him as a person. For instance, I wondered why he always wore a particular ring. It was a gold band set with a blue sapphire.

“My ring?” Finn said. We were sitting at our usual table at the café. Finn twisted the ring round his finger. “It was my grandfather’s.”

“But you wear it on the third finger of your left hand,” I said. For some reason, I jumped on that piece of evidence. “Like a wedding ring.”

Even as I said the words “wedding ring,” a terrible thought came to me: Finn was married. That was why he wore the ring. That was why he didn’t ask me out. He wore the truth on his hand, and I was too blind to see it! He’d been stringing me along for months, and all this time he was a married man.

“In America,” I persisted, “that finger is usually reserved for a wedding band.”

“Is it?” He gave a wry laugh. “I don’t suppose I pay much attention to things like that.”

Pay attention to what? To what things did he not pay attention? I panicked. I asked him point-blank if he was married.

He stiffened. “I assure you, I am not. Although I came close once when I was young . . .” He shook his head, and let the subject drop.

I wondered about the woman Finn had nearly married when he was young. Was he still in love with her?

It became increasingly apparent that Finn enjoyed talking, but—unlike most people—he did not enjoy talking about himself.

One afternoon, in a roundabout way, I tried speaking with Dottie about Finn. We were in her shop, the first she’d ever had. I was helping her unpack a crate of French antiques. She was only half listening to my story of a man I was seeing. A man I couldn’t quite figure out. I didn’t tell her it was Finn.

Dottie reached into the crate and plucked out a bronze statuette of a male nude. “Hello, sailor,” she said. “New in town?”

I felt lost, helpless. Dottie was busy and distracted. Did she have nothing to say to me, no advice?

She brushed off some packing material that clung to the statuette. “So this gentleman you’re seeing is an enigma?” she finally said. “
Un mystère
? Of course, when we don’t know someone, we tend to make up stories about them. Stories that may or may not prove accurate.”

At last she’d said something that rang true with me, though I could not have told you why. “I suppose when you think about it, everyone’s life is a mystery,” she said. “Because every human being is mysterious.”

She placed the nude on the counter and patted its behind.

Then one night, around ten, the phone rang at my flat. It was Finn. He was at the corner, calling from a phone booth, wondering if he might come up. The tenement I lived in was ancient, built in the 1880s. There was a lock on the street door, but no way to buzz in visitors. I practically slid down the wobbly wood and metal bannister to meet Finn at the entrance to my building. But when I found him there, I got a surprise.

Finn was drunk.

“I have been out with friends,” he said, in that overly formal tone drunks use when they’re trying to appear sober. “And I was walking by and said to myself, Isn’t this where Margo lives? Young Margo of the smiling face and the offers of a cup of English tea. And so I called you on the pay telephone, and now, as you can see, here I am.”

He bowed. “And if I have disrupted your evening in any way, if I have chosen an inconvenient time to visit,
mea culpa
,
mea maxima culpa
.” Which, as I learned long ago from the nuns at St. Verbian’s, means roughly, “My fault to the max.”

Finn had not been to my apartment house since that day, months earlier, when we all drove out to the Meadowlands. Even then, he’d seen only the exterior of the building. He’d never been inside. But many times during our many coffee dates, I assured him he could drop by any time. In fact, I encouraged him to do so. More than once, I’d pressed my phone number on him and reminded him of my street address. But now that he was here, I couldn’t believe it. Finn Coyle, drunk or sober, come to see me?

I was thrilled. I was flattered. I was bewildered.

“I’m glad you came,” I said. He was rather unsteady from the drink. “But I’m on the fifth floor, and there’s no elevator. Do you think you can make it?”

At the top of the stairs, Finn caught his breath. I swung wide the door to my flat. I wish I could tell you that my place, the first I’d ever had of my own, was tastefully decorated. But it was not. It was gaudy with cheap travel posters, shiny green plants in pots, oversize East Indian pillows.

Finn walked in and looked around. Seeing the place through his eyes, I was appalled at how schoolgirlish it was. I’d never been to Finn’s loft in Tribeca, but somehow I knew it wouldn’t have a beanbag chair. I shepherded him from room to room on what I called the Grand Tour: the tenement-style kitchen (with the lift-up metal countertop and well-worn bathtub underneath), the living room, and then back through the kitchen to the water closet, and over to the tiny bedroom with no window, just an air shaft.

It was in the cramped and crummy bedroom that something extraordinary happened. Something I’d long dreamed of, but which at the time seemed to come out of nowhere. Finn kissed me.

It wasn’t like the kiss on the cheek he’d given me that first night we met at Tommy’s birthday party. No, this was the real thing, smack on the lips. As kisses go, it was impulsive, even clumsy.

And then, just like that, we made love. It was not, I admit, terribly satisfying, but I wasn’t worried. That could get better, I knew. Afterward, we lay in bed and Finn kissed the top of my head and whispered that he was sorry. I assumed he meant because he’d been drinking.

He stayed the night, and I cuddled up to him. He was clean and warm and smelled lovely, if a bit boozy. Before I fell asleep, I thought, This is it, Margo. This is the beginning of being with Finn. This is the happiest night of your young life.

In the morning, we went for breakfast. Later, when we parted, Finn kissed me, told me he’d had a splendid time, wanted to see me again soon. He’d call.

But he didn’t. Not for three whole weeks.

Then one Saturday, around noon, the phone rang. It was Finn. He spoke as if nothing had ever happened between us. He went on about his shop, the latest show at the Met, and had I read the new biography of Stanford White. Finally, he asked if I were free and could I meet him right then, that day. For coffee.

By this point, I was sure I was going mad. Nevertheless, I agreed to come.

It was mid-December. It had been raining for days, but that morning the clouds broke and the sun came out. The air was crisp and cold. I threw on my long wool coat and favorite scarf and walked the fifteen blocks to the café. All the way there, I considered what I would say to Finn, how I would tell him that after today I didn’t want to see him again. Ever.

But when I walked into the café and my eye fell on him sitting there—his unhurried, pensive self, silhouetted against the light from the window—I thought I would die. I thought I would die because I knew I still loved him, and always would.

No one had ever tugged at my heart the way he did, no one had ever made me feel so at peace, as though I’d come home. The piercing longing I had for him was immutable, as unchanging as a diamond. And even though I was still a kid myself, the idea came to me, as it sometimes had before, that the two of us could make a beautiful child together. That he would be a kind father.

The place was packed, filled with young couples and groups of friends having brunch. Strings of colored Christmas lights hung on the walls. I skinnied past crowded tables and made my way to where Finn was sitting, pot of tea already in front of him.

Ever the gentleman, he stood and helped me off with my coat. I sat down. The waitress came and I ordered a coffee. “Anything to eat?” she said.

I shook my head.

“Pecan waffles to die for,” she said.

I shook my head again.

After she went away, Finn and I made small talk: about the weather, about the holidays. Inside, I was in agony. My heart was pounding, and I wanted to shake him. But I didn’t. My coffee came, and I bided my time for several minutes, participating in the meaningless banter. Eventually, there was a lull in the conversation, and I fired my first volley.

“I wrote a poem about you,” I said.

In my mind, this was a sort of accusation, but Finn gave a little laugh. “About me?” he said. “Well, that was a waste of your time, I’m sure.”

“It was not a waste of time,” I said evenly, “because I needed to do it.” Before I could lose my courage, I took a breath and began to recite:

Finn sits and sips his tea,

Looks out the window idly.

Margo comes in wet from the rain,

Wonders why she bothered again.

I paused. I felt diminished. I loved Finn, I would always love him. But I knew my relationship with him, whatever it had been, if it had been anything at all, was over, passing into history. Hurriedly, I went on:

Then they discuss,

As is their fashion,

Such clever things,

Devoid of passion—

I broke off. “It doesn’t scan correctly,” I said. “And I’m stuck on the last part. I can’t figure out how to end it.”