“Two weeks ago, at lunch, that table over there. You said Truman Capote and John Kenneth Galbraith were yesterday.”
“I did? What did I mean?” Now she was blinking a lot.
“I think you meant you were bored,” I said.
“It’s my mother,” she said, nodding owlishly. “I think about her, and everything looks rotten. Do you know, last Saturday in Fort Lauderdale, my mother had the ner—”
“Vickie,” I said. “Please.”
“Oh, shit,” she said. “I do talk about her all the time.” She reached out and knocked over her wine glass. “Shit again,” she said. “You want coffee?”
“No,” I said.
“You want another drink?”
“Yes, but I better not. I’m feeling what I already had.”
“So am I. Let’s get out of here.” With her other forearm resting in the salad, she waved exuberantly for the waiter.
While she was going through the credit card routine, she said, “I don’t blame you, Tom. When I get back to the office I’ll talk to Wilson, he can assign you another editor.”
“Find me an orphan,” I suggested, trying for levity.
“Mm,” she said, nodding morosely. “What a lovely sound that word has.”
We bought our coats back from the checkroom and went out to Park Avenue, where the cool damp spring air made us both totter; I was feeling my drinks more and more. Pawing in her huge leather bag for some reason, weaving back and forth on the sidewalk, Vickie said, “Shit. I’m not going back to the office. I’m going home and feel sorry for myself.”
“Me, too.”
“I’ll talk to Wilson tomorrow.”
“Good. No hard feelings?”
“Since when, you prick?” She glared at me, but then something in my expression made her laugh. She said, “Of course there’s hard feelings, but we’re grown-ups, we’ll get over it.”
“My wife is to me what your mother is to you,” I said.
“I will not stand here while you get even with me by talking about your wife,” she said. “I am going to get a cab.” She lunged toward the curb.
I lunged after her, afraid she would either fall or get run over, and it would be my fault. I said, “Wait a minute. Where do you live?”
“West 86th.”
There was an empty cab a block away; I semaphored it. “I’m on 70th,” I said. “We can share, if it’s okay with you.”
“Sure. I’m liberal.”
We got in the cab and I told the driver, “Two stops.” Then, because I was feeling guilty and chivalrous, I said, “West 86th Street first,” even though my place would have been closer.
The cabby took us up Park, and we sat back on the lumpy seat with the stingy legroom, and I said, “I’m sorry, Vickie, I really am.”
“Maybe I should go back into analysis,” she said.
“You used to?”
“Two and a half years. Money I could have spent on clothing, thrown away trying to become a good daughter.” She glared at me, speaking through clenched teeth. “Not once did that sonofabitch tell me, to be a good daughter you have to have a good mother!”
“Well, you found out,” I said.
“It doesn’t help,” she said, and glared out the window instead.
Being in close contact with a crazy person becomes physically painful. Your shoulders bunch up as you wait for what’s going to happen next. I sat there, warm in my coat, uncomfortable, waiting for this sequence to be over, and thought about my next editor. Hambleton Cudlipp the Third.
On our way through the park she started to cry, little smeerpy sounds and tiny acid tears squeezing out of her eyes. Head averted, she poked and pawed through all the crap and horseshit in her bag. I said, “You’re crying!”
“I am not,” she gritted, low and intense. She wouldn’t look at me; her head was practically in her leather bag now, as she kept searching for a tissue or a handkerchief. “Nothing on Earth makes me madder than to cry in public,” she muttered, grinding her teeth. “Therefore I am not crying now.”
“Okay,” I said.
At her apartment house, I paid and got out with her. “I’ll walk down Columbus,” I said. “I want to be sure you’re all right.”
“I’m fine,” she said, staggering on the sidewalk. She wasn’t crying any more, but her face was blotchy. “I’m peachy. Destroyed at fucking lunch with a writer. Home a basket case. Go away, you sonofabitch.”
“Vickie,” I said, “I’m not the psychiatrist. I’m not even your mother. Will you be okay?”
“No,” she said. She stared at me. “Which one of us is the bastard? Am I wrong, or are you wrong?”
“I think we’re both right,” I said. “It’s just unfortunate that—”
“Fucking platitudes.”
“You’re right,” I said. “The truth is, I think you’re a self-centered bitch, and I’m in just as much trouble as I was before, and I don’t know if the next asshole’s gonna be even worse or not.”
“Oh, I got a guy for you,” she said, with a nasty little grin. “He edits all our war books.”
“What a shit you are,” I said, but I had to laugh when I said it.
“Come on up, I’ll buy ya a drink,” she said.
“It’s the least you can do-r” I told her.
She had a tiny high-floor apartment in a once-graceful large old building in which the dignified big apartments were long ago chopped into these ant-runs. Books, posters, stereo equipment, and here and there a narrow place to sit. The kitchen was too small for two people; I stood in the doorway while she failed to find bourbon, and we agreed to switch to vodka and grapefruit juice. “It’s a food,” she said. “We won’t get drunk.”
“Very important,” I agreed.
She made the two drinks and turned toward the doorway with one in each hand. I reached out and cupped my hand around the back of her head and drew her close and kissed her lips.
I was appalled at myself while I was doing it. I’m merely astonished now, but I may go on being astonished about that bit of autobiography the rest of my life. I’m not on the prowl for yet another woman, God knows, and I don’t go around throwing heavy-handed passes just because an opportunity appears. I didn’t even like Vickie Douglas. And yet I kissed her.
It wasn’t a long kiss. Neither of us opened our mouths. At the end, I released her, and she stepped back and stared at me. “Now, why in hell,” she said, “did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said truthfully, knowing I’d found the one way to make an impossible situation worse. “I just did it. How many drinks are you going to throw in my face?”
“I’m not sure.” She stood there, thinking, holding the glasses. She licked her upper lip, as though the taste would suggest an attitude. “Maybe,” she said thoughtfully, “maybe what we ought to do is just fuck.”
Oh, my gosh. Mary, Ginger... I can’t handle this, I thought, I’ve got to get out of here, undo this somehow. But it was too late. With horror, I watched her put the glasses down on the counter and turn toward me with an expression of expectant curiosity.
I just couldn’t be that rude.
The Christmas Book, I told myself. Do it for The Christmas Book.
When I left there at quarter to five we’d agreed she would stay on as my editor. We’ll be having another editorial meeting on Thursday.
Thursday, April 28th
I own a tiger. Or maybe the tiger owns me. Whichever it is, I’m sure riding the tiger.
Vickie and I have been burning bright for two and a half weeks now, and I must admit my guilt and terror are both at last receding, though by no means am I easy in my mind. How long can this possibly continue without Ginger suspecting? I am being very careful not to bring any new ideas home, but how can I be sure Ginger — whose intuitive and paranoiac antennae are wonderfully fine-honed — won’t notice some bedtime change in me? Also, I’m losing weight.