The Ladies' Man (7 page)

Richard says he thinks—how did they leave it?—that he'd pick Harvey up at his motel.

“Did you propose lunch or did he?”

“He did.”

“Richard,” says Adele, and her tone draws his full attention. “What did he say exactly?”

“Nothing concrete. He wanted to talk to you. I said, ‘Forget it. You don't just show up on someone's doorstep after thirty years.' So he asked if he could talk to me, man to man, tomorrow.”

“Does he look the same? I mean, an older version of Harvey Nash or completely different?”

Richard says, “Wasn't he a little stocky? Or am I thinking of someone else?”

It is astonishing to Adele that her brother might be so careless or cavalier as to let the image of Harvey Nash, Jr., fade. She says faintly, “It depends what you mean by stocky. He was never skinny but he had a nice build.”

“He's gotten better-looking,” says Richard. “More distinguished. More polished.”

“What did he ask you about me?”

“I didn't give him a chance. I wasn't going to invite him up, and I wasn't going to stand there in my undershirt getting grilled.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Trousers, jacket, a raincoat. He had a suitcase.”

“So he must have come directly from the airport.”

“He didn't say when he got in.”

“How odd—just showing up without knowing anything first. It makes me think there's something wrong with him.”

“I don't know about that,” says Richard. “He was awfully polite.”

“Had he been drinking?”

Richard says, “Not so I noticed.” He grins. “Know where he wanted to go for lunch? Jack and Marion's. I told him it closed, like, twenty years ago.”

“We used to go there after a movie,” says Adele. “He could eat a huge corned-beef sandwich at ten o'clock at night.”

“I miss that place,” says Richard. “Remember the Number One Club?”

“People don't eat like that anymore.”

“It's coming back,” said her brother. “In fact I could go for a corned-beef-Swiss-and-cole-slaw right now.”

“With Russian dressing?”

Richard smiles and rearranges the afghan so it reaches Adele's lap. “What will you say to him?” he asks.

Adele says she hasn't decided yet.

“How about ‘Harvey, what the fuck happened that night? And what have you been doing for thirty years that's so fucking important that you couldn't make a phone call?' ”

“Or write. Not that I would have answered.”

“The point I'm trying to make is, I'm not letting him off the hook. I'm asking him why he left and why he came back.”

“And then what? You punch him in the nose? Serve him a subpoena?”

“It depends what he says.”

“It really doesn't,” says Adele. “Nothing he says will change anything.”

“Honestly?”

Adele nods.

“There's a hundred possibilities: ‘I'm moving back here.' ‘I have a month to live.' ‘I'm deeply, deeply sorry. Will you ever forgive me?' ”

“No, I will not.”

“Or ‘Just came back to see my folks—' ”

“They're dead.”

Richard asks her what she thinks the reason is.

After a silence, Adele answers. “It doesn't really matter why he came back.”

“Because …?”

“It's too late. It was too late an hour after he ran away.”

“So why go with me tomorrow?”

Adele hasn't put words to her conviction, nor would she say the reason aloud if she were admitting it: People seem to think she is still beautiful. She hopes Harvey Nash is unattractive, alone, lonely, filled with regret, and has returned in some kind of pain to beg her forgiveness. She has even conjured, fleetingly and for her own amusement, a scene where she brandishes a small gun, and the speech she'll deliver before cocking it.

“I want to see what he turned out to be,” she says.

Richard shrugs. “Then why not let me take a Polaroid?”

“Maybe I want him to see me.”

Richard points the remote control at the TV and raises the volume. Adele asks, “Are you staying here because you and Leslie had a fight?”

“I'm here, clearly, because the gods wanted someone other than you to answer the door when Harvey Nash showed up.”

“That's not an answer.”

“Kathleen asked me the same question.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said, ‘Sometimes I need a night away.' ”

Adele touches his knee lightly before rising to her feet. “So I shouldn't worry?”

“Not about me,” he says.

Kathleen's lingerie shop is located in the lobby of a luxury apartment building with a conscientious doorman who is close to asking Kathleen out on a date. His name is Lorenz, and since
January he has been taking his coffee breaks inside her shop, and refusing to let her reimburse him for the cappuccinos he brings. Though shy, he is dignified and professionally gallant; he leaves immediately when a customer arrives, understanding that a male presence among the undergarments would make a woman self-conscious. He opens the door for her customers, sometimes stays if the customer is male; leaves if the man looks embarrassed to be there, touching his visor in an unofficial salute. His day off is Tuesday, and Kathleen has noticed how long Tuesdays feel, and how she looks forward to Wednesdays. She also notices he doesn't wear a wedding ring, and has never mentioned a wife, an ex-wife, or children. Last Christmas he returned her Hallmark billfold with a note saying, “I don't feel right taking this from you.”

Tonight, after she learns that Harvey Nash is back, she dreams about Lorenz. He is walking around the store fingering camisoles on her silver half-mannequins, checking their price tags, just as if he were a customer. She wakes up, and resolves to make the first move, jobs and stations aside. If she lived alone, or even had the kitchen to herself one night a week, she could pick up a baguette at lunch, stop by his alcove, where he sits reading and keeping his charts between visitors, and say, “If you're not busy tonight, I could make a beef stew”—the main dish changes in each rehearsal: “a chowder,” “a big pot of chili”—“and you could join me.” Kathleen talks about her sisters, so Lorenz knows they share an apartment, and she knows he lives in the North End and walks to work. He's also heard Lois's story: that she is the middle and most difficult sister, that she was for a short time the second wife of a lawyer in Mr. Dobbin's firm. That Lois moved back in with her sisters because the prenuptial agreement gave her a lump-sum settlement and no alimony; that something went wrong that the sisters, who were fond of their onetime brother-in-law, wish they didn't know.

Kathleen decides as she emerges from the T station at Haymarket and as she walks toward the waterfront that she will tell Lorenz about last night's shock in order to guide them, conversationally, into the arena of personal affairs.

She doesn't even wait for his coffee break, but stops just inside
the door to announce breathlessly, “We had quite an evening at our place last night.”

Lorenz smiles and says, “And what would that be?”

Kathleen tells him the short version, beginning with a capsule history: the 1967 engagement party for Adele and Harvey Nash, Jr., who ran away, never to be heard from again until last night.

Lorenz reacts with just the open-mouthed, bug-eyed astonishment Kathleen was hoping for.

“Can you imagine?” she continues. “The nerve? Not a word in thirty-odd years and he rings our doorbell at midnight?”

“Seriously?” he asks. “Midnight?”

“We have no doorman,” she explains. “Richard was staying over and he answered the door, and sent him packing.”

Lorenz winces.

“Not forever. They're supposed to have lunch today.”

“Is he back? I mean, is he looking to start things up again with your sister?”

“No one knows! Richard sent him away before he could say anything.”

“But they're having lunch?”

“Today. Adele's going.”

“Whoa.”

“She's determined. She'll make him sorry he ever …” Her voice drops off, unsure of what verb applies.

“Lived?” Lorenz supplies.

“Not quite.”

“Came back?”

“I don't know. I'll find out tonight. And I'll tell you tomorrow.”

Lorenz smiles and says—having heard the formidable-Lois stories—“I think I know what
Lois
would do to any guy who left her at the altar.” He lifts his brow, but doesn't speak the name of the indecent surgical act of aggression. Kathleen laughs knowingly.

“Forgive me,” says Lorenz. “That was crude.”

“Don't apologize,” said Kathleen. “I don't know where you got the idea that I'm such a delicate flower.”

She fishes her key out of her purse, and says, “Come by on your break?”

“You can count on it,” he says.

There, she thinks. The line has been crossed, thanks to the legend of Lois. Now she and Lorenz have alluded to that most private of things—that which drives the sale of intimate apparel, after all—and it is a relief.

Cynthia, in no-nonsense teal-blue sweats, picks up a quart of skim milk in the lobby convenience store. Fredo's has become increasingly gourmetlike, with recent additions of goat cheese, coffee in sleek decanters, baguettes from a bakery in Quincy Market, and a biscotti section. She says no to a bag for her milk, and adds a copy of
Self
that offers “New exercises that melt pounds away.” Not that she is going to go crazy, she tells herself. Diets are for foolish optimists and women with low opinions of themselves. It is clear that Nash is that one guy in a million who is comfortable—more than comfortable, excited by—her generous proportions. Why fix what's not broken? The ridiculous black peignoir was an unexpected hit, and an easy way to please, even if it panders to a stage of arrested male development that Cynthia doesn't like to think about.

The association is prompted by a breathtaking bed jacket of cream-and-peach-striped silk displayed in The Other Woman's window. Cynthia has admired their wares—“rich-looking,” her mother would say; even the foundation garments are chic and European, provocative yet tasteful. She hasn't needed anything like that lately; hasn't even walked across its threshold or met the pleasant woman she sees locking up the shop at six.

Maybe now, as the guarded, sensible side of her goes soft, she will.

J
ust after ten
A.M.
Richard calls the Holiday Inn on Beacon Street, and finds no Harvey Nash or Nash Harvey registered. He is barely disturbed by the news, because cornering slippery people is his occupation. He begins an alphabetical pursuit through the Yellow Pages, hesitates at “Copley Plaza,” but not for long.

The call wakes Nash. They don't chat, but agree to meet at Maison Robert in the Old City Hall at one. Richard will make the reservation under Dobbin. Nash asks, propping himself on one elbow, “Did you tell Adele I came by?”