The Ladies' Man (5 page)

“Think they have a room?”

“If they don't, it's across from the Westin. The doormen will know if they're full up, and I can swing around the block. Have you been to Copley Square ever? Because that's where I'd wanna be—Copley Square or the waterfront.”

“Fine, Copley Square.” The cabby pulls away from the unsatisfactory motel. Nash looks around the interior of the cab with interest (he rarely takes cabs at home), and sees a little girl's school picture hanging from the rearview mirror along with a Saint Christopher's medal. After a minute he adds that he's been to the waterfront already, for an early supper and … other diversions. Smiling in the back seat, his hand steadying his suitcase, he notes the sound of “waterfront,” its manly, risky, cinematic ring, and right behind it, again, a ticklish unease he associates with the Copley Plaza.

Between seven and seven-thirty
P.M.
on the night of March 11, 1967, Harvey Nash was considered nothing worse than unforgivably late for his own engagement party. “Always was unreliable,” Mr. Dobbin complained. “Typical wise-guy behavior.”

“Selfish,” said Mrs. Dobbin. “So thoughtless to arrive after the guests.”

Adele's sisters and mother took turns at three posts: at the revolving door of the Copley Plaza, where one could spot the breathless arrival of a bleeding and remorseful Harvey; on the dance floor, smiling gaily as if nothing were amiss; and by Adele's side upstairs, reassuring her that Harvey was merely irresponsible and untrustworthy. Not dead, not hurt, not trying to hurt her. Adele herself called the tailor to ask if Harvey had picked up his tux the day before. He had not. “He's not coming,” she told them. Mr. Dobbin and Kathleen took her home.

Lois, on ballroom duty, walked up to the mike. The drummer hit a wholly inappropriate drumroll at the sight of such a pretty girl, in yellow chiffon, offering what was sure to be the family welcome. Fighting back tears, Lois managed, “Due to circumstances we hope are not serious, Harvey Nash has been detained. We can't say for sure when … if … Harvey …” She looked to the bandleader for help. He mouthed something to the orchestra, which struck up a lugubrious version of “Lara's Theme.” Lois stood, stricken, at the mike, until a male cousin offered her his hand and she stepped down.

For the record, Harvey had called the Dobbin house with a minute to spare before he ran for his platform. Naturally no one was home and no one answered. What would he have said, anyway, that couldn't be said more effectively after Adele had calmed down? Look, kid, have the party without me. Have a ball. Bet you look like a million bucks. Tell everyone I had to go to California for a job opportunity, something that was too hot to put on ice. Smile when you tell them, because it's not that far from the truth. You can't make any inroads from three thousand miles away. They don't want mama's boys who can't leave their families and their music teachers. The guests will understand—most of them anyway. Even your parents will if they know it's for a good reason. They never thought much of me, but now I'll have a chance. Maybe you'll come out when I get a job and a decent place.

Because he had this conversation with himself, the problem seemed disposed of and etiquette appeared to have been served.
He meant no harm. Things had snowballed. He was too young to marry. And he'd been honest—inside his own head, at least—because there was never a day in his romancing of Adele or her planning of this party that he didn't have faith in things going his way, which is to say, he'd never have to rent a tux, dance in a spotlight, or walk down the aisle.

Harvey's mother sent an unapologetic letter to the Dobbins, barely acknowledging the disgrace, claiming that Harvey didn't feel up to the responsibility of marrying the oldest Dobbin daughter. If only he had felt freer to discuss his dreams with her, she added. If only she were more like Harvey, more adventurous, less attached to her family, perhaps he wouldn't have panicked.

Just before Christmas, Adele gave her modest engagement ring to the mildly retarded man who ran errands for her father's law firm, who wanted to propose marriage to the mildly retarded woman who cleaned the building after hours. The stone had belonged to Mrs. Nash's late shop-girl mother, and was said to have—in lieu of clarity or size—great sentimental value.

Since Dina will not interrupt a reflexology session to answer the phone, she has canceled her evening appointments. Several hours have passed since Nash's plane was to have landed, five-fifteen Boston time, plenty of time to check into a hotel. She's heard nothing. At seven-thirty
P.M.
Pacific Time she decides that a healthy woman would not wait by the phone. She calls her sister, an actress-turned-paralegal, who also hasn't eaten yet, but they can't agree on where to go. Maureen, her sister, loses interest; decides to stay home and work on her already-late taxes. She urges Dina to go out, to try the new Japanese restaurant in Corona del Mar and sit at the sushi bar, where guys eating alone sit.

Dina changes into a beige linen tunic over matching pants, chosen along with jade beads for their Chinese influence. At her jewelry box, she considers a large black pearl ring that Nash never liked because it was a gift from an old boyfriend who traveled to Hong Kong on business. She puts it on her right hand, and slips her wedding-like diamond band off her left. She rerecords her answering machine's outgoing message, changing “we” to “I,” then
backs her little red Miata out of the garage, angrily and too fast into the big Mercedes parked squarely opposite her driveway.

Its owner is remarkably gracious, almost unconcerned by the damage to his driver-side doors. He calls the Newport Beach police from his car phone, while Dina cries as if her life is ruined.

“Are you insured?” asks the Mercedes owner, searching for the source of such anguish.

“Of course I'm insured,” she wails.

“Does this happen frequently?”

“Never! I never do this. I'm a great driver!”

“Accidents happen,” he says.

Dina stops crying and reflects on this odd absence of anger. “I'd go nuts if you did this to me.”

“Do you have a car-rental provision?” he asks.

Dina says she doesn't know. Does that matter?

“It would give you transportation while your Miata is being repaired.”

“We have more cars,” she says, then corrects herself: “I have a car I can drive in the meantime.”

“It's not so terrible,” he says. “It might only be cosmetic. And no one was hurt.”

Dina says she is sorry. If only she had looked. It's her fault. Today has been a horrible day, and this proves she is in much worse shape than even she herself realized.

“Do you want me to call your husband?” he asks.

Dina says, “He's in Boston.” After a pause she adds, testing the feel of the words, “He's not a husband.”

“Literally?” asks the man. “Or did you mean that figuratively?”

“We're not married.”

“But …?”

“He went back to Boston today. He's from there.” She displays her left hand, where a circle of untanned skin tells the tale.

“What's your name?”

“Dina.”

“Maybe you'll want to get checked out by a doctor, Dina.”

Dina says weakly, “Maybe, if I can use your car phone, I'll call my sister. She's doing her taxes. She'll come get me.”

The man says, “If it's a matter of escorting you home …” He points across the street to the white stucco house and host garage. Dina's embarrassed laugh sounds like the bleat of new crying.

“It's only a car,” he says. “Well … only two cars.”

She evaluates his appearance for the first time. He is tall and balding, somewhere in his forties, with an egg-shaped, freckled head, and eyelashes the color of an apricot poodle's fur. He is wearing tennis shorts, a Yankees warm-up jacket, and boat shoes of butterscotch leather. His pale blue eyes are red-rimmed, as if his contact lenses hurt. She guesses that when he wears his glasses, they are flesh-toned and professorial.

“If you're this calm, you must be either a shrink or the owner of a body shop,” says Dina, squinting left, then right, in search of the summoned police.

“I like to think I have a sense of proportion: No one was hurt. We're two civilized people with insurance.”

“But, still—” She points to his bashed-in doors and their streaks of scarlet Miata paint.

“And I have a feel for the dramatic,” he continues. “If you and I were to fall in love, and people asked how we met, I could say, ‘Car crash. She shot like a rocket out of her driveway across a four-lane highway into my new Mercedes.' ”

Dina, charmed but ignoring the bid for now, winces and says,
“How
new?”

“Doesn't matter. It's a rental.” He extends his right hand and says, “Byron Sprock.”

Adele, at fifty-three, considers that it is too late for everything: for getting married, for getting another graduate degree, for adopting children, for learning to figure skate. After the night of March 11, 1967, everyone said, in more or less these words, “Someone will come along, you'll see, and make you forget that Harvey Nash ever existed.” When Adele said, “No, they won't,” people thought she meant, No, no one can ever replace Harvey. All she meant was, I see no one on the horizon and I'm a pragmatist.

She is not studying her hair in the mirror now, nor rummaging through her closet for smart outfits, nor plucking her eyebrows for
tomorrow's lunch, because Adele—unlike Lois—despises Harvey Nash.

Byron Sprock is a playwright. “Remind me of what you've done,” Dina prompts, offering him a swig from her water bottle, which she's rescued from her back seat.