The Confessions of Edward Day (18 page)

“It’s impossible,” she said. “Guy comes to meet me at eleven; that’s when we close.”

Guy, I thought, Guy Margate. Her husband. How was it possible? “Can you leave now for a while? Can you make some excuse?”

“I could go out for a few minutes.”

“That’s no good,” I said. “Where can we go?”

She gazed at the professor, flagrantly fingering book spines near the end of the aisle. A sly smile played at the corners of her mouth. “Follow me,” she said softly, and I did, awash with desire, past Theater, through Nonfiction, which went on and on,
to a door marked
DO NOT ENTER.
We entered. It was a narrow dark office with a desk, a chair, and a battered leather couch. Oh, blessed couch. We made for it without a word, pulling our clothes aside, eager and abandoned, just as we were that first night under the staircase on the Jersey shore, that night when Guy Margate saved my life.

It didn’t take long. Madeleine was stifling laughter near the end; she’d told me before that she found the “state” I got into amusing, which was another thing I liked about her. We gasped for a few moments, pulling ourselves apart. “God, Madeleine,” I whispered.

She sat up, demurely rearranging her clothing, but I was too whacked to bother. “I’m going to go out first,” she said. “You can stay here a few minutes. No one comes in here at night.”

“Don’t go yet,” I said.

“I have to. I don’t want to lose my job.”

“When can I see you?”

“I don’t know. It’s difficult,” she said. She was feeling around for her hairpins, thrusting them into her hair.

“Can’t you call me? Will you just call me, so we can talk? I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I know you don’t,” she said. She stood up, brushing down her skirt. “It’s so dark in here.”

“Will you call me?”

She guided herself to the door by clinging to the edge of the desk. “When you go out,” she said, “don’t look for me. You should leave the store.” Carefully she opened the door a crack and peered through it. A thin shaft of light dashed across the floor
and up the opposite wall. “I’ll call you,” she said. Without looking back she pulled the door just wide enough to pass and slipped away, leaving me on the couch with my pants around my ankles, satiated, stunned, and, as usual, completely in the dark.

F
or two days I stayed close to the phone and checked messages when I couldn’t, but there were no calls from Madeleine. I called her service and left a message to call me at midnight. I figured Guy would be out walking. I got back from work at eleven forty-five and sat next to the phone, making notes on my Pinter script. Pinter is an actor’s playwright, there’s a lot of room in those loaded exchanges, a lot of choices to make, a lot to do or not do. I was finding it hard to concentrate; I kept staring at the phone, which was an old dial model, ponderous and obtrusive. Like Pinter it had a quality of menace. At twelve thirty it rang. “Talk to me,” I said.

“Were you asleep?” she asked.

“No. I’m studying my play and I’m waiting for you to call me.”

“You didn’t tell me you had a job.”

I laughed. “We didn’t talk, sweetheart.”

“What is it? Where is it?”

“The Birthday Party
, Stanley, the Roundabout.”

“That’s incredible,” she said. “That’s fantastic.”

“It is,” I agreed. “I’m excited. When can I see you?”

“That’s easier said than done.”

This response irritated me. “Whose fault is that?” I snipped.

There was a long Pinteresque silence which I steadfastly refused to enter. I listened to Madeleine’s breathing. Was it uneven? She was a weeper; was she weeping?

“Yours, actually,” she said calmly.

The eruption of mutual recrimination that followed went on for some time. It was unpleasant, but some errors were cleared up on both sides. In the midst of my lame explanation of the compromising Connecticut pub photo, she exclaimed, “Stop, darling, I can’t talk, he’s here.”

“When can I see you?” I pleaded. “Where?”

“Tuesday night,” she said. “At nine. I’ll come to you.”

“I’ll be here,” I promised.

“I won’t have much time.” The line went dead.

W
hat was I supposed to think of Madeleine? She was a complete puzzle to me, yet I felt, as I had during those weeks when we were pounding the streets for work, a bond of goodwill between us. She was married and pregnant and there was nothing either of us could do about that. I wasn’t excited about the prospect of a baby, to say the least, and I wasn’t looking forward to seeing her swelled up in that awful, ungainly, explosive way I find so disturbing. It would just get worse when the creature was out in the world, mewing, spitting, and shitting; demanding all the attention in the room. I’ve always known I wasn’t cut out for fatherhood. What man is? It’s a service role after all, unless one decides to take prisoners and call it family life. I wanted none of it.

But just to demonstrate how truly perverse human nature is, Teddy, having discovered that he was not biologically inclined to perpetuate the species, was in a nesting mood. “Come by,” he said in his phone message. “I’m having a drinks party. Wayne is moving in and we’re celebrating. Saturday. Anytime after eight.”

Within the hour Mindy called. “Go with me, Ed,” she pleaded. “I can’t face this by myself.”

To buck ourselves up for whatever was in store for us, Mindy and I agreed to have dinner before the party. We were determined not to be early, so we met at eight in a little place she’d chosen near NYU where the food was cheap. She was looking great. She’d lost weight and she was dressed to kill. I wanted to talk about Madeleine but Mindy wanted to talk about Teddy. She feared Wayne would be the ruin of him. So far he hadn’t told his family about his mad affair, but this moving in together, which was so unnecessary, was bound to get back to them. His father came to the city regularly on business. Suppose he stopped by unexpectedly and the Chinese boyfriend answered the door in his kimono.

“He could just be a friend,” I suggested.

“Wait until you see him,” she said.

We split a bottle of not good wine and picked at our food, comrades in rejection. When I asked how soon after my departure for Connecticut Madeleine and Guy had become an item, she was evasive. “We were both so busy, I hardly saw her all summer,” she said. “And then she called to say she was getting married and needed a witness.”

“Did she say it was because she was pregnant?”

Mindy chewed a lettuce leaf, considering my question. “She didn’t,” she said. “I thought she was in love.”

“So maybe she wasn’t pregnant.”

“I think she must have been.”

“She doesn’t look pregnant,” I said.

“So you’ve seen her.”

“Briefly,” I admitted. “I went to the bookstore.”

“That’s good,” Mindy said. “You two should be friends. I know she’s very fond of you.”

“Fond,” I said.

“She cares about you.”

I finished the wine. “Let’s go meet the Chinese,” I said.

A
party, after all, is a kind of play There are entrances, exits, sudden outbursts of emotion, affection, or hostility, lines drawn, tales told out of school, and there’s a set. Many plays contain party scenes. Chekhov is fond of having them offstage, with characters drifting in and out and shouts going up from unseen guests. The eponymous birthday party that transpires in Pinter’s play is a kind of anti-party, a grim affair that includes threats, seduction, and a nervous breakdown but there is a song, a sweet love long, in the midst of the general decline. I wondered how my director would see this moment.

Which brings me to the important difference between a party in a play and a party at a friend’s apartment in Manhattan: at the latter there’s no director.

Teddy’s party was well under way by the time we arrived; we could hear the sound of laughter and the gaggle of conversation from the hall. A young man I didn’t recognize opened the door and waved us in urgently, as if he was on a boat pulling away from a dock. “Drinks in the kitchen,” he instructed as we came aboard, returning his attention to a short, pale girl dressed in a tie-dyed caftan. Mindy stuck to my side as we made our way through the crowd, which was composed of small groups that yielded like amoebas to let us pass. I saw Gary Santos near a window, and Jasmine, poised beneath her brother’s artwork, in heels and a tight red dress, hollering into the ear of a seriously older man. I recognized a few others as actors, but most of the guests were strangers to me. “These must be Wayne’s friends,” I ventured to Mindy.

“He’s over there,” she said, rolling her eyes stagily to my left. I looked past her shoulder and spotted Wayne without difficulty—indeed he would have stood out in any crowd.

“Good God,” I said.

“Don’t stare,” Mindy cautioned, prodding me on.

“He looks like Genghis Khan,” I whispered.

Which was true. Wayne had an amazing face, bizarrely flat with black slits for eyes and a shock of stiff black hair that stood out in all directions. A Mongol face that made the word “steppes” leap to mind. One could picture him wearing a yak-fur hat and a yak-skin coat, astride a tough little pony. Instead he wore a gray V-necked sweater that looked like cashmere over blue-and-red-plaid bell-bottom pants and loafers without socks. He was tall, slender, elegant; his hands were as delicate as
a girl’s. I made these observations on closer inspection. In that first glance all I saw was that he looked completely foreign, not just from another world but from another time.

In the kitchen we found Teddy setting out bite-size dumplings on a plate. The counters were freighted with trays of brightly colored snacks. He looked polished up, bright, as a painting does after it’s been cleaned; his colors were refreshed. “Here you are,” he said. “Come try these before they get snapped up. They’re fantastic.” Mindy approached him tentatively, as if she expected a rebuff, but he passed his free arm around her waist, kissed her cheek, and popped a dumpling into her mouth. “How are you, dear?” he said. “I’m glad you could come.”

“Good,” she replied through the dumpling.

“It’s delicious, isn’t it?” Teddy said. “Wayne made them. He was up all night.” He raised his arm in an introductory flourish. “Chinese party food!”

“One hour later you power hungry,” I quipped.

“Now, Ed,” Teddy chided, “let’s not have any low ethnic humor.”

I poured myself a Scotch. I felt uncomfortable and defensive, as if I was waiting for an audition. “Who are these people?” I asked.

“This is the art scene,” Teddy said. “They’re a fascinating bunch. Painters aren’t like us at all. They have these funny things called identities.”

“That sounds gloomy,” I said.

“It isn’t very playful,” he agreed. “Wayne thinks it’s hilarious
so of course they’re all in awe of him. Have you met Wayne?”

Though this was a simple yes or no question, Mindy and I exchanged perplexed looks. “You two look lost,” Teddy said. “Grab a tray; go play waiters at a party.”

I threw back my Scotch, took up a tray, and led the way into the scene. Clever Teddy had assigned me a role I knew I could play to perfection. A pod of guests opened before me and I lowered my tray skillfully before them. “Will you try one of these?” I offered. A lady with a prodigious nose snatched up a shrimp toast. “And here’s a napkin,” I offered. Our eyes met, I read her thought—what a handsome waiter! I raised my tray and moved on. Two hirsute young men, vacantly repeating the name “Cy Twombly” at each other, paused to load their flimsy napkins with treats. I looked past them into the kitchen where Mindy and Teddy still stood face-to-face over the dumplings. He was rubbing his hands together, his eyes cast down, his mouth slightly ajar. Mindy was talking earnestly, wagging her head with the force of her argument. Teddy took up a paper napkin and passed it to her. She dabbed her eyes with it, but she didn’t stop talking. Poor Mindy. Teddy had tried to help her out, but she had refused the part.

My progress led me away from the painful confrontation going forward in the kitchen to the blithe and exotic author of that suffering. Wayne was leaning against a bookcase in conversation with a large blonde who pursed her lips skeptically when it was not her turn to talk. I eased my tray between them.

“You’re Edward Day, aren’t you?” Wayne said.

“No,” I replied. “I’m just a waiter.”

He narrowed his impossibly narrow eyes at me, lifting the corners of his mouth. “That’s funny,” he said.

“Why is it funny?” asked the pursing lady.

“Because we didn’t hire any waiters.”

“What makes you think I’m this Edward person?” I asked.

“Teddy has a photo of you, at the beach house.”

“Ah,” I said. “The beach house.”

A surge in the conversational volume near the door caught Wayne’s attention. I had my back to it but I recognized a too-hearty laugh, followed by a squeal that could only be Mindy Banks in the rapture of greeting an old friend. “Now I’m confused,” Wayne said. “I think that could be Edward Day too.”

“They do look alike,” his large friend agreed.

I pulled my tray in close to my chest and turned to see Mr. and Mrs. Margate arriving at the festivities. Guy’s head, visible above the company, swiveled from left to right, taking in the scene. He had cut his hair short and was clean shaven. All I could see of Madeleine was her hair; Mindy’s fond embrace blocked the rest of her. “Take this, would you?” I said to Wayne, pressing the tray upon him.

“No, no,” he protested. “I don’t want to be a waiter.”

“Just put it down,” the large woman said testily.

I took her advice, ditching the snacks on a nearby coffee table where they were instantly decimated by ravenous artists. I made for the door where Madeleine, having been released by Mindy, stood facing me. She was dressed in an off-the-shoulder blue peasant dress with a black Mexican shawl, very flattering, but what I noticed next was that she looked ill. She was what
my mother called “green around the gills.” Her eyes, which had been so sparkling and mischievous only a few days before, were dull and sunk in dark circles. As I approached, she hunched over abruptly, pressing both hands against her abdomen. Her eyes closed, she took in a frantic gasp of air. I reached her side.