Until the Real Thing Comes Along (9 page)

“So.” He doesn’t turn around.

“So you really want to buy that cottage, huh?”

He sets two glasses and the shaker on the counter before me. “This is how you do it, Patty. You want to use the best gin around. That’s Bombay Sapphire—expensive, but well worth the price. And you use some dry vermouth. Five-to-one ratio, gin to vermouth, or you’re just playing around. You mix it with a lot of ice—you got a martini that isn’t freezing cold, you got nothing.” He shakes the mixture briskly, then pours it into two glasses, adds two olives to each one. He slides my drink in front of me, takes a generous sip of his own. Then he puts his glass down carefully, spreads his fingers apart, lifts his lips away from his teeth, and sucks in air. “Yes, indeed,” he says.

I taste mine, stop just short of gasping. “Wow!”

“Goddamn right.” He takes another generous swallow.

“Wow,” I say, again.

“Very
close
now,” Muriel yells down.

“We’re coming!” Artie yells back, but we don’t move. Frank is onto “Summer Wind.” I am onto watching Artie at Home, a new person. This is not the man who sat quietly sweating in the backseat of my car.

I take another sip. And notice something. “Hey, Artie,” I say. “The stems on these glasses are naked
wo
men!”

He flushes. “Got ’em when I was in the army, stationed in Korea. I’m sorry if they offend you.”

“No, it’s …” I’m really not offended. I think probably Artie is grandfathered in for this sort of thing. I look at the glasses more closely. “But I’ll tell you one thing, Artie. Nobody has boobs like this.” The breasts on the woman tip up impossibly. Impossibly.

“Know what I used to say about these glasses? I used to say, ‘Listen, you’re a very important guest. For you, I’m going to use my breast glasses.’ ”

“Very funny,” I say. Then, looking again at the mesmerizing anatomy of the stem woman, “Is this what guys really like? Seriously.”

“Artie!” we hear.

“One MINUTE!”

“No, NOW, the gravy’s DONE! I want to get everything on the TAble!”

“Will you for Christ’s sake
wait
a minute, Muriel! I haven’t even told her yet!”

A moment, and then Muriel starts down the basement steps, stops halfway. She has a sheer white apron tied around her waist, a dishtowel in her hands. “So tell her.” Her voice is quiet, simple sounding.

He looks at me, bites at a corner of his lip, then turns away.

Muriel comes down the rest of the way.

“Artie?” I say.

“Yeah.” He keeps his back to me, starts putting things away.

“You want I should tell her?” Muriel asks.

“Tell me what?” I say, giggling a little. Then, holding up my glass, “Bartender? May I have another?”

Muriel sits beside me, folds her dishcloth into a neat rectangle, lays it on the bar. “I wouldn’t mind a martini myself, Arthur.”

“You can’t drink on your medication.”

“Neither can you.”

“I have a joint,” I say.

They both look at me.

“Did you ever try it?”

“Are you talking about marijuana?” Muriel says.

“Of course she’s talking about marijuana,” Artie says. And then, to me, “Are you talking about marijuana?”

“Yes.”

“You smoke marijuana?”

“Well … hardly ever. Really. But I do have a joint that somebody gave me.” Mark, actually, on one of the dates we had. We went to the zoo and got stoned.

“Well, I’d like to try it,” Artie says.

“Oh, my God.”

“I would, Muriel. What the hell. We always wondered what it was like.”

“I’ll get it,” I say. “It’s in my purse.”

“Oy, she carries dope in her purse,” Muriel says. “Our real estate agent is a dope addict. Who drives us around in her
car
. We could have been killed! We could have gotten
bust
ed!”

“I’m not a dope addict!” I say, at the same time that Artie says, “Muriel! She’s a nice girl! You love Patty!”

“Well,” she sniffs. “I used to.”

“You know, Muriel,” I say, “it’s no big deal. It’s kind of like your martinis for our age.”

“I hardly think so.”

“It is, but it’s less dangerous.”

“Ha! That’s what they tell you. The next thing you know—
smack
.”

“Oh, that’s not true,” I say. “It’s just something I do every now and then for fun.”

“Go get it,” Artie says. And then, to Muriel, “Come on. I want you should try it with me.”

Muriel’s hands are folded in her apron. She looks down at them, then back up at me. “Turn off the flame on the gravy when you go up, would you? Does this take long?”

“Not long at all,” I promise.

When I come back down, I open my wallet and take the flattened joint out. “Oh my God, look at that,” Muriel says. “Is that a rubber you have in there, too?!”

I look up, embarrassed.

“Muriel,” Artie says.

“Never mind, that’s exactly what it is.”

He gives her a look.

“Fine,” she says, looking away and busying herself with the curls at the nape of her neck.

I squeeze the joint back into shape, put it to my lips, and look at Artie, Bacall. He reaches into his pocket, pulls out his pipe lighter, and puts the flame to the joint, Bogart. I take a hit, then hand the joint to him. “Hold it in,” I say in the pinched voice of the participant.

“Yeah, I know.”

“How do you know?” Muriel asks.

“I’m sure he’s seen it a million times,” I answer for him.

Artie inhales, passes the joint to Muriel. She hesitates, holding the thing like it’s fifty times bigger than it is. Then she squeezes her eyes shut and inhales deeply. She coughs spectacularly, opens her eyes, and says, “That’s it. No more,” and passes the joint to me.

“I really can’t believe we’re doing this,” I say.

“You
can’t,” Muriel says. “Imagine if our grandchildren could see us! Artie, can you imagine? Can you imagine what little Howard would say?”

“Well, everything’s changed.” Artie turns around to take the needle off the record, which ended some time ago. Then he turns back to me, shrugs. “I got cancer. Terminal.”

I feel instantly sober. I look at the joint in my hand, ridiculous now, low; and put it out. “Oh, Artie.” I have no idea what to say next. What I feel is a peculiar sense of sad and frustrated privilege: I’m honored that they are sharing this with me; I feel obliged to do something about it; and I know I can’t. I look at Muriel, at her soft, crushed face, and get off my stool to hug her. Then I lean over the bar to hug Artie.

“All right,” he says, patting my back. “Okay.”

“Maybe I could just have a
little
martini,” Muriel says.

He leans over the bar, kisses her forehead. “You got it, my beautiful girl.” We are all tearful and we are all pretending that we are not.

“You wouldn’t know it to look at her now,” he tells me, “but she was some hot tomato.” He puts an inch of drink into a glass, hands it to her.

“I’m telling you,” Muriel says, agreeing with him. And holds her glass up to him for a long, silent toast.

A little while later, in the overly articulated speech of the moderately drunk person, Muriel says, “I told him, what the hell do I want that cottage for, Artie? I got everything. I was only playing around with the real estate thing.” She leans in close to me, blinks. “I’m sorry. I guess we wasted an awful lot of your time.”

“I didn’t mind a bit.”

“I still think we should get it,” Artie says. “One of us might as well have our dream spot.”

“I
got
what I want,” she says. “And that’s all. I know my own mind. You think I don’t know my own mind?”

I smell something burning. “Muriel?” I say, sniffing.

“Oh, Jesus.” She stands up, then stops, holds her forehead. “Uh-oh. I guess I’m a little dizzy.”

“I’ll go,” Artie says.

I follow his zigzag progress up the steps, then watch as he uncovers the ruined dinner.

We hear Muriel come slowly up the stairs, and then she is standing with us, looking into the pot. “But I
planned
this,” is all she says.

After tuna sandwiches and sliced tomatoes and frozen yogurt, Artie walks me out to my car. “You’re sure you’re all right to drive?” he asks.

“I’m fine. Are you all right? And Muriel?”

“Don’t worry. We had a good time.”

“I’m glad you decided against the cottage. I think you have a lovely place right here.”

“Yeah. But maybe we’ll still come and look sometimes, huh?”

“I’d like that.”

“Okay, kid.”

“I really would, Artie.”

“Listen, Patty, Muriel wanted to give you a tip. For … you know, all you’ve done. But I thought it might insult you. I guess I think of us as friends. I hope I wasn’t wrong.”

“Well … how much of a tip?” I say. We smile. And then I kiss his cheek and get in the car.

On the drive back, I think, maybe this isn’t so sad. They got to have their lives together. She will be with him ferociously until the end. That’s not so bad, considering.

At home, there is a message on my machine from Elaine to call her. I sit down with my coat still on, dial her number.

“Artie Berkenheimer has cancer,” I tell her.

“Oh no, really?”

“Yeah. But they’re … all right. They’re just carrying on as usual, you know—she kvetches, he kvetches back. We got stoned together.”

“Who?”

“Me and the Berkenheimers.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah.”

“You got
stoned
with the Berkenheimers?”

“Yeah!”

“It sounds like a contradiction in terms.”

I laugh, slide my coat off. “I know.”

“Hold on a second,” Elaine says, and covers the mouthpiece of the phone. “It’s Patty,” I hear her say. Then something else I can’t understand. And then, to me, “Listen, I need to ask you something.”

“Who’s over there?”

“Well, that’s what I need to ask you. Sort of.”

“Is it Mark?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t care, Elaine.”

“Don’t you?”

“No, I told you. He’s not right for me.”

“So … if we …”

“If you want to fuck him, Elaine, then fuck him. I don’t care.”

“See? You’re pissed. You do care.”

“No I
don’t
care. I don’t care if you sleep with him, I don’t care if you marry him! I just don’t like this whole … set-up thing. I don’t like that the two of you are over there talking about me. Just do what you want, it’s not up to me. I don’t have anything to do with Mark anymore.”

Silence.

“What
?” I say.

“You’re pissed, Patty, why can’t you just say it?”

“All right, Elaine, I’m pissed, but it’s not because of
Mark!”

“What’s it because of?”

“It’s because of
you
, all right? It’s because of you.”

“But what did I
do?
I apologized a million times to you for—”

“I told you, I don’t
care
about Mark. You’re welcome to him.”

Silence, again.

And then I say, “Look, we’ll talk about it another time. I’m tired, now. I want to go to bed.”

“Yeah, all right. Me, too.”

“Right. As you indicated.”

I hang up pretty hard. The receiver falls off the phone, and I put it back on, then take it off again. I don’t want anybody to call me for anything. I want to be alone. And I am. And Elaine is not. And I guess that’s what I’m angry about. It’s not that she has Mark. It’s that she has
somebody
. As she always does. As she
always
does, there is never a doubt. I would like to have her privileges, for just a day. Just for one day, I’d like all the favors she is granted because of her goddamn looks to be handed to me. Jesus, it’s a wonder she doesn’t suffocate.

I wash up for bed, then put the phone back on the hook. And then pick it up again, to be sure the dial tone’s there, so someone can call. Sometimes I’m a liar. But sometimes the truth is just too tiresome to bear.

E
laine and I are at our favorite Mexican restaurant, on our third margarita. “Well, that’s it, I can’t even see straight,” Elaine says. “We’re going to have to take a cab home.”

“I know.” As for me, I can no longer feel the roof of my mouth.

“I hope I don’t puke,” she says. “I get carsick in backseats.”

“I saw a movie where she puked in her purse.”

“That’s no better. That’s worse!”

I consider this. True. “Well, if you do puke in the cab, wait till after I get out. I know all the drivers.”

“So do I!”

“Yeah, but the cabdriver won’t be mad if it’s you. He’ll think it’s cute.”

Elaine puts her glass down, settles back in her chair. “Okay, fine. Let’s talk about it.”

“What?”

“I’ve been sitting here all night waiting for you to bring it up.”

“Bring what up?”

“Your jealousy.”

It occurs to me to deny it. But I don’t.

“What am I supposed to do, Patty? What will make you not so mad at me? I see it all the time. When we go into the ladies’ room and we’re putting our lipstick on, I feel you watching me and I … I feel this
rage
coming from you.”

“It’s not
rage
, Elaine.” Yes it is. That’s exactly what it is. I hate that it’s in me. But it is.

“Well, what is it, then?”

I shrug, lick some salt off my glass, find a very interesting spot on the tablecloth.

Our waiter glides up to our table like a swan. “How’s everything here?” he asks, smiling at Elaine. She doesn’t answer. Nor do I.

“Ladies?”

“I want to ask you something,” I say. “Do you guys watch people, and wait until they’re obviously involved in an important conversation, and then come flying over to ask about the chimichangas?”

“You didn’t get chimichangas.”

“We need some privacy,” Elaine says quietly.

“Fine.” He lays the check on the table. “Whenever you’re ready.” He spins smartly on one heel, starts to walk away.

“Excuse me?” I say.

He turns back, wary.

“I’m sorry. It’s her I’m mad at. Because I’m jealous of her.”

“Okay,” he says.

“It feels kind of good to just say it.”

“Yeah. I’ll bet it does.”