The Cost of Lunch, Etc. (12 page)

“About time you two made it,” I said.

“Take it easy, Eve. We talked till Allen was too tired to drive me home, so I stayed.”

“And you’re telling me you slept like two babes in the woods?”

Cam shook her head. “Like two friends on a mattress.”

Next weekend, Cam announced she was off to Springfield where she grew up, to take part in her cousin’s wedding as a bridesmaid in a hideous fuchsia gown. “Must you go?” Vicki whined.

“Must. What’s wrong, pet?”

“It’s my twenty-first birthday Friday night. Guess I’ll go down to the liquor store on the corner, flash my ID and buy a bottle of cheap wine.”

The upshot was that Cam spoke to Allen, he took Vicki out and then there were two of them ministering to his sorrows. He was always on the stairs picking up one in his little sports car or bringing the other back. What with visiting his married friends, accompanying him to parties and movies and concerts and plays, bird-watching with him on weekends (you’d be surprised how quickly two bright women can learn to identify birds they had never noticed or heard the names of a month before), their lives seemed complete. Neither of them had dated anyone else since Allen had begun to occupy them. He paid for all this entertainment, since he earned quite handsomely. While they were comforting Allen, I must have gone through about five guys I met online.

I kept hearing lectures on Allen’s character and habits. Over takeout Thai, Vicki foamed, “Even if he is older, he isn’t boring and stuck. He believes like me the important thing is being as alive as you can be, not burying your feelings under a lot of dead words.”

“He’s a big believer in honesty, so I’m told.”

“He’s tremendously spontaneous. We do the wildest things on the spur of the moment, like inventing cocktails with all the stuff in his liquor cabinet, like taking off our clothes and jumping into the fountain by the library. We stole a parking meter last week but we couldn’t get it open. Don’t tell Cam! It’s in his closet.”

I noticed that Cam had begun to cook for him. Still, she addressed Vicki Monday at supper when Allen had his regular meeting at work. “I’m worried we’re becoming too dependent on him.”

“In what way?

In every way, I wanted to say, but kept my silence. “Someday Allen is going to resume his life. He’s a wonderful person but we shouldn’t let him become too important to us.”

“I think you can never really hurt yourself by giving to someone.” Vicki was straddling a chair, all earnest with her hungry kitten face.

“I envy you for believing that,” Cam said, sighing heavily.

That Saturday, I was glad I moved in and that Cam was sitting out that evening while Allen took Vicki to the concert of a rock band she adored. My final papers had arrived Friday. I was glad to sit and drink with another woman, nothing at issue except the booze and whatever you felt like getting off your chest.

“I’m afraid I’m becoming fond of Allen. He’s really a good person—serious, responsible, not like the usual men I meet. He’s a true adult—you know how rare that is?”

“Do I!” I was thinking of my ex with his video games
and secret online porn. “American men don’t grow up till fifty, and by then, who wants them?”

“Allen isn’t like that. He’s been through a lot, but it hasn’t made him bitter. He listens when I talk—god, how long as it been since a man actually listened to me instead of counting seconds till they try to score.”

“Sounds … fine.” I was lying on the floor with my head on a couch pillow. Her voice seems to rise and sink.

“I think he’s fond of me too.” She paused, staring at her hands. “He’s been … affectionate lately. He wants a deep and lasting relationship with a woman. But neither of us is about to rush into anything without being sure … I’m babbling and you’re falling asleep.” She sat up, holding herself across her breasts. “I don’t feel jealous of Vicki—she’s so young. She makes him laugh. He’d never take advantage of her.”

I woke late Sunday a bit hung over. It’s a long time since I let somebody drink me under the table. Cam can sure hold it. Vicki came prancing into my room. “Last night was so real! I don’t want to make Cam jealous though she’ll have to get wise to it sometime. We drove to the lakeshore. I dared him and we went wading. The water was so cold, it hurt but it felt great too! He told me I looked like a water nymph, whatever that is, and then he kissed me.” Vicki didn’t just speak, she vibrated.

I groaned. “Could you speak a little more softly?”

“Cam’s in the basement doing laundry. She won’t hear. This is just our secret … He let me drive the Miata back to his place. Then … we made it … I don’t mean to fuss, but he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t mean … So we’re lovers now. But I won’t interfere with his friendship with Cam. It’s just so different.”

The next week was jolly. Each was telling me how nicely she thought her relationship with Allen was progressing, and I was beginning to wonder about him.

He was a friendly little guy with bright squirrel eyes, a thin mobile face and slightly receded hairline. The situation was hard to size up, for while I was getting a blow by blow from Vicky, Cam was her usual tightlipped self.

“Do you think I’m too defensive?” she asked me. “That I’m too closed off with people I care about?”

“Not particularly. Why?”

“I suppose I’m afraid of getting hurt again.”

“Who’s been handing you a line about your defenses?”

“It’s that just Allen and I were talking. He says I don’t let anyone really close.” She gave me a half ashamed smile.

Presumably Cam was still worrying about her defenses when Vicki decided to spill about how she and Allen were lovers now and it was just great.

“Really?” Cam managed to sound only curious, but her fists were clenched. “Well, he must be over Janice at last.”

“This doesn’t mean it’ll interfere with your friendship. Really!”

“I suppose he’ll tell me about it tomorrow. Should I act surprised?”

“Your call.” Vicki hopped up and paced as if she could not contain herself. “I’ve never really been in love before. I thought so, but this shows me that was just infatuation. I want to keep him warm at night and take care of him and remind him of things he’s forgotten.”

If we thought things were settled, we were dreaming. Allen didn’t call Vicki Sunday or Monday, and by Tuesday, she was frantic. We suggested she call him, but she refused, huddling on the couch with her arms broken out in a nervous rash, angular as a ball of spikes. Cam was puzzled. Allen had said nothing about Vicki, she confided, but had given her another lecture on her defenses. After work on Wednesday, Vicki stuffed a few clothes into a duffle bag and went to stay with a friend from work. She said she was sick of waiting for him to call and shut off her cell.

I was doing my nails when the phone started ringing. “Hello, can I speak with Cam?”

“She’s out. An emergency at work—sick bunny or something.”

“How about Vicki?”

“She’s not in either.” He didn’t ask where she was; I kept quiet.

“Allen here. And this is the third roommate, Eve, right? I couldn’t mistake your voice. Black velvet.”

“More like burlap, I’ve been told. Vicki’s visiting a girlfriend.”

“Oh, she must be out at a club. She isn’t answering her cell. I was going to ask her to a movie. Why don’t you come if you’re not doing anything exciting.”

I should have pressed the point about Vicki, but I was too curious. I wanted a close look at this intrepid, cautious, honest, thoughtful, spontaneous, mature, boyish figure of a man. He came roaring up in his Miata and off we went. We’d chatted a couple of times when he was waiting for one of my roommates, but he surprised me with how well he remembered, asking just the right questions. His driving was alarmingly fast but with an unerring efficiency that made my alarm feel silly. Besides he talked so steadily I forgot to notice his speed after a while.

“You do keep a harem, don’t you?”

“What? It’s convenient. You just call and there’s bound to be someone.”

“Aren’t you afraid they’ll get together and compare notes?”

He was parking but paused, turning to stare at me. “Do they talk about me?”

“Not with me,” I said demurely.

After the movie, his place. Besides the famous mattress-couch with a fanciful Swedish light suspended over it, he had nice prints, an elaborate home theater system, two
leather chairs and a coffee table made of driftwood and glass, a fancy little kitchen where I’ll bet it had been a long since he’d had to make himself anything more taxing than coffee. He fixed martinis and we sat on the couch to the accompaniment of good jazz, soft, discrete. But instead of Allen the Hewer of Honest Intentions or the Boy with the Bounce in his Feet, I was treated to hip Allen, Allen the cold eye, viewing with quiet distaste this bleak crummy world in which we manipulate each other.

His voice grew lower, he leaned on his elbow, his lean eager face fashioned into a mask of cool world-weariness. Something hauntingly familiar. Then I located it. His voice had gradually picked up the rhythms of my speech; he had learned my language already. He was a smart boyo, I’ll give him that. All the while his bright squirrel eyes were asking me, how about it? Do I please? I felt a sharp anger at him, the clever perfect student picking up clues to the professor’s quirks. At the same time the flattery was potent, all that intelligence and charm bearing down, that this was the real Allen. I went there curious, kept my distance.

I pressed Vicki’s friend’s number on him, and he must have called because she came back the next morning looking a couple of years older and quiet for once. All she said was, “I’m seven kinds of stupid.”

I was out Friday with a bunch of friends, but I found out the next morning that Cam wasn’t back. Vicki crouched in her bed, her face spotted with ink from chewing a pen, the floor littered with balled up papers I could see were fragments of a note she would never mail.

Late Saturday afternoon, Cam arrived. They looked at each other, wary.

Vicki asked, “Why couldn’t you come home? Couldn’t you do that?

“I was finding something out. It doesn’t matter now.”

“I’d rather have found out for myself.”

“I had to find out for me.”

Vicki stared without speaking.

After a while Cam continued, “We’ll have to be frank with each other.”

Vickie snorted. “I have been frank.”

Cam sighed. “Allen has been acting innocent about what could have upset you. He claimed nothing had changed.”

Vickie stood and paced for a moment. “When I begged him to explain, he said it wasn’t a mistake. Then he made a speech about how he is only half a man. The shadow of Janice hangs over him. Occasionally the shadow lifts, and then he can really see another person and care for her. These were just times when the shadow lifted. Then a lot about how he wants to break through and maybe I’m the one to help him.” She sank into a chair, grimacing. “He looked so sad I fell into his arms and we hoisted the damned shadow again.”

Cam rolled her eyes. “That’s a fair approximation of the speech I got when I asked him what I meant to him.”

“I thought you weren’t interested in him that way.”

“I wanted to be sure. I was surprised when you came home that day, because for a while things have been happening.”

“Cam! You too.”

“But he tried the same thing this morning and topped it off with a lecture on my defenses. You can never get anything worthwhile unless you take chances, he said, and open up emotionally.”

“That something worthwhile is him? We sure repaired his ego.”

They got madder and madder. First they decided he was sampling them to choose. Then they decided he didn’t care which body was there, so long as it was warm and female. He had made each feel she was the one he was interested in, and that as soon as he was ready for a real relationship, it would be with her.

I excused myself, leaving them to their angry spiral. I heard them leaving, but paid no attention. I was seeing Allen. If he wanted to buy me supper, why not? I was curious what he’d say about recent events. I told him I’d pick him up instead of him coming for me.

The door was unlocked. I knocked once and walked in. The room was upside-down. Broken crockery on the floor. Torn papers. Books and magazines strewn about. His pillow ripped open and feathers stirring in the breeze of my movement. The draperies were pulled from their rods, those leather chairs overturned. Ketchup was rubbed into the mattress and the Swedish light pulled apart.

“No permanent damage,” he said quietly. “Pillow easily replaced.” He was sitting on the floor with a wet towel over his face.

“Your harem rebelled.”

“It wasn’t a harem,” he said with irritation, then added smoothly, “To have a proper harem you need at least six or seven. Now I’ll have to begin collecting from scratch.” He waved me to one of the overturned chairs, letting the towel fall to his shoulders. “It takes two or three girls like that to make up one interesting woman, mature, like yourself. Women who know what they really want are rare …”

“How long did you think you could keep on fooling them?”

“I suppose you know quite a bit? I can’t understand how things got so congested. They didn’t seem the jealous type … I suppose we should start cleaning up.”

“They outnumber and outweigh me. I don’t think I can afford this supper.” I started for the door.

“Let’s do it another time.” He put the towel back on his face.

I didn’t answer. I had lost interest.

Vicki began to feel guilty about what they’d done and moved in with her friend from the office. We advertised for
a new roommate. The new one is more my age. Cam worries me. She got a promotion and decided to buy a Prius. She is doing the cooking regularly and gaining weight. She says nothing real happened with Allen, but I have the feeling now that as far as men go, nothing ever will.

Sonia drove the Mercedes alone to Ithaca. She had not expected Ron to visit her sick mother with her—her mother had endured two episodes of breast cancer already, meaning she had been seriously ill for the best part of the last four years. Now it had spread to her bone marrow. Not that her mother was ever less than serious and Ron had several important meetings.