The Ladies' Man (17 page)

“I know,” she sighs.

“Remember what happened at the Towers? The guy posing as an exterminator? That's when our board made the rule.”

“You win,” she says. “And the truth of the matter is, I voted for this stupid rule.” She walks back to the elevator and waves with the two fingers she can spare from the grip on her pizza box. “Have a great time, whoever she is.”

He says thank you, formally and sincerely. He is fond of Cynthia, and he is sympathetic to her need to chat. It reminds him of the children in the building who draw him pictures and invite him to their birthday parties. He guesses why she didn't want to leave the apartment—a hoped-for phone call from the tanned man in the raincoat who left the building at ten-fifty
P.M.
the night before—“w/suitcase,” Felix had jotted under “Comments.”

“You enjoy your evening, too, Miss John,” he says.

Lois is not stupid. Adele and Richard are a team, the oldest and the youngest Dobbins, united forever by today's near tragedy. Their tight circle has squeaked open one body's width to include Kathleen—nurse, mother, cook, companion, and everyone's pet. Lois knows her sisters view her as a defector prone to boy-craziness, but too bad. She's the one with manners, not Adele, who is recognized on the street by supporters of public television for being professionally gracious; not Richard, who is acting like their father; and certainly not Kathleen, who today has revealed a side that disqualifies her as anyone's darling.

Lois feels that she alone is right. She can't help being grateful to Nash. And who wouldn't be curious about where he's been and why? History is filled with truces and with swords being turned into ploughshares. The Cold War is over. Russians and Americans room together in space. Yasser Arafat made a condolence call to the widow of Yitzhak Rabin. And, really, when the layers of anger and hatred are peeled away, shouldn't
one
of the sisters embrace the man who's come to make peace with the Dobbins?

Tonight, things are falling into place. Adele excused herself as soon as Kathleen left the table. Richard and Nash are watching CNN with bowls of ice cream on their laps. Richard has already announced his plans to return to his friend's couch in Newton—Nora, the lesbian, who has Surround Sound. When he leaves, Lois will take off her WGBH apron, change into the hostess outfit of
champagne-colored shantung with the mandarin collar, and bring a selection of after-dinner drinks and two cordial glasses into the den. She'll sit. Then she must tell Nash her story, even if he doesn't ask: her short marriage to a divorced man, a patent attorney. The whirlwind courtship. Their being deeply, passionately in love. The sparks that flew, and the attraction that was obvious to everyone who saw them together. Here, she will pause and smile ruefully. “One never knows someone until one gets married. I mean, things were normal—in private, I mean. In the bedroom. But as early as the honeymoon, things changed. He had very specific likes and dislikes. I don't mean the normally adventurous things that sophisticated partners engage in—you know what I mean—but peculiar things. Props. Outfits. I know what you're thinking: I was naïve and inhibited, but I wasn't. I'm not. I can't say too much because he's still a partner in my father's firm, but he liked dressing up, and … I'll say only this: I should have realized he was
way
too insistent on my friends throwing me a lingerie shower;
way
too interested in my trousseau and Kathleen's shop.… But that's as far as I ever confide because he's well known in legal circles.”

It is a set piece, sadly true, one that serves her conversationally in bars and on rare blind dates. She is silently rehearsing it as she packages the leftovers in deli containers and loads the dishwasher, wishing she hadn't suggested the mint chocolate chip, which is holding Richard up.

Actually, Richard's ice cream is melting as he urges Nash to be a good sport and to return to his far more comfortable hotel room.

“It's a lot of dough,” Nash says. “Besides, what kind of lessons would it teach your spoiled sisters, which is all I'm trying to do here: to let the punishment fit the crime.”

“Don't say that too loud,” Richard warns. “Especially in front of Numbers One and Three.”

But Number One has retired without even saying good night, and Number Three is out on a date. Nash is tempted to ask, “What about Number Two? Anything I should know about Lois?” But he doesn't. Richard appears to be ally material, but he waxes and wanes. The Dobbin honor evidently overrides loyalty to his fraternity of fellow males. Nash can wait. He is confidant that
he'll hear Lois's story after Richard leaves. Poor Lois. He sees in her eyes that she has decades of heartache to confide and confess. She'll want to know if that letter she sent ever reached him, and he'll say, No, what letter? You sent a letter? He'll denounce the studio for not forwarding his mail, and she'll feel better. “What did it say?” he'll ask, and she'll say she can't remember. Nash will touch the hand that still wears the engagement ring, and ask, “Is there a story here?”

Richard is asking one more time if the joke is over, if he can drop Nash off somewhere.

Nash says no, he's quite comfortable, notwithstanding his bleeding face and stinging head.

“Am I crazy to leave you here?” Richard asks. “Will I have reason to regret this?”

“I
haven't broken any laws,” says Nash. “I'm not the one you need to police.”

Richard sighs, takes Nash's empty bowl, and says, “I know that, Harv. Didn't mean to insult you.” Nash offers his hand, and Richard shakes it.

“Good night, old man,” says Nash.

After Richard leaves, Nash flips through the channels until he finds a coffee commercial he likes, a jingle that's been around for years, sung by a vocalist who must have earned, he calculates, a million in residuals. He helps himself to the granny afghan—Adele's handiwork, he guesses—and pulls it up to his chin. The time on the screen reads “8:37p ET.” Excellent. His next dose of acetaminophen is due at quarter of nine, and he knows Lois won't forget.

K
athleen has never seen Lorenz in anything but his two-toned brown uniform, so this—in a car, wearing a herringbone sports jacket over a V-necked sweater and wool trousers—feels different.

After twice circling the commercial blocks of Coolidge Corner in search of a parking space, he suggests they give up and have coffee back at his apartment.

Kathleen knows his address, having checked the Boston White Pages for signs of a joint listing, but she asks where he lives just the same.

“North End. Prince Street.”

“I love the North End. You must not have to go anywhere else to shop.”

“That's true,” he says, but not wholeheartedly.

“Not true?”

He hesitates, then says, “My father does most of the shopping and all of the cooking.”

Kathleen doesn't need clarification. It seems as familiar and inevitable as the shape of her own family tree: Lorenz lives with his elderly dad, who must be retired, who must putter around the shops of the North End during the day and cook for them by night.

“How old is he?” she asks.

“Seventy-seven.”

“Healthy?”

“Knock wood,” says Lorenz.

“Seventy-seven,” she repeats.

After a pause he says, “I'm forty-nine, if you were wondering. Two old bachelors and a cat.”

“Named?”

“Chicha.”

Kathleen says the name fondly.

“Sixteen years old and blind in one eye. My father makes her fish soup.”

“I'm forty-six,” says Kathleen.

“Young.” He grins.

“Will he behome?”

“Pop? Home but asleep. He turns in at eight and wakes up at five.”

“Sweet,” says Kathleen.

“Not sweet. He doesn't know how to be quiet in the morning. That's when he empties the dishwasher and listens to talk radio. I sleep with earplugs.”

Kathleen says, “So I won't meet him?”

Lorenz meets her eyes briefly. “You will at some point.”

“And when things calm down, I hope you'll get to meet Adele and Lois. Everyone's been a little crazed by the reappearance of the old flame.”

Lorenz asks how the dinner went.

“Horrible. He invited himself to sleep over.”

“No!”

“Yes! He thinks he should recuperate at our place.”

“Recuperate from what?”

“I hit him with a casserole,” she says.

Lorenz laughs, and Kathleen is relieved. She looks over to be sure it is a kind of indulgent laughter that she secretly believes the event warrants.

“I assume he wasn't badly hurt.”

“It caught him on the side of the head, and he crumpled.”

“And you hit him with a casserole because …?”

Kathleen says, “You're the first person I've told this to, but he was flirting with me.”

“Uh-oh,” says Lorenz.

“Not regular flirting. This was the guy who ruined my sister's life, takes three decades to apologize, and on his way out the door, tells me I don't look a day over thirty.”

“So you hit him?”

“I snapped.” She checks the effect on Lorenz and says, “Which is not my usual behavior.”

“I know!”

“Adele is furious. She won't even talk to him. My brother's mediating.”

Lorenz asks if this Harvey is a good-looking guy.

“He's a little battered around the face right now, but Lois would say, Yes, very.”

“
Lois
would?”

“Adele thinks she's always had a thing for Nash. She's acting really rattled.”

“More than Adele?”

“Adele is … Adele pretends to be immune to most matters of the heart. She doesn't have a romantic bone in her body.”

“Anymore.”

Kathleen sighs and says, “That's true. She used to.”

“Who
is
the big romantic in the family?” Lorenz asks coyly.

“That would be me,” she says.

Mr. Sampedro is not asleep, but energetically scrubbing live crabs on the ridged sideboard of a big white enameled kitchen sink. The room is hospital white, with old-fashioned white metal cabinets; the marbled green linoleum looks as if it's been waxed with a space-age acrylic that Kathleen would like to know the name of.