“I’m comfortable,” he said.
It seemed to her that he finished his drink rather quickly. He stood up, yawning unconvincingly. “Maybe you’re a night person,” he said, “but I’ve got to be in court tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you stay here.”
“Where did you put my coat? Is this the closet?”
“I said why don’t you stay here.” She came up behind him, leaned her body against his. “Don’t leave me.”
“Andrea—”
“I don’t want to be alone.” Her hand moved to his groin. His fingers took hold of her wrist.
“No,” he said.
“Oh, shit.”
He drew away from her, turned to face her. “Come on, now. I guess that last round of drinks wasn’t a very good idea.”
“I want you to come to bed with me.”
“No you don’t. You’re a little tired and a little worn out emotionally, that’s all.”
“Cass.”
“Things are complicated enough, don’t you think?”
She had a little more control over herself now. She was just beginning to shake inside, just beginning to realize that she had done all of this involuntarily. It was an upsetting realization and she didn’t want to dwell on it just yet.
She said, “Cass, what happened to us?”
“What happened to you and me? Nothing tragic. We turned into one of the all-time great brother and sister acts. You always said that’s what would happen to us. Why be surprised that it did?”
“I really wanted you to go to bed with me. I didn’t plan this. I swear to God I didn’t.”
“I believe you.”
“I hope you do. I’m glad you had more sense than I did. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
“You’re just so damned vulnerable, that’s all.”
“No! Don’t say that!”
“Andrea, don’t cry.”
“You mustn’t say that,” she said. “It’s not true. It isn’t, it isn’t true at all.”
The hot water was restored when she returned to her apartment, and she was back in plenty of time to shower and wash her hair. By six-thirty she was dressed and waiting for her date. Her history teacher, David Kolodny. He would come by for her at seven, so she had ample time to call Buffalo. She had sort of planned to call. It had been almost a week since she had spoken to Robin.
She never made the conscious decision not to call. Instead she kept finding things to do. She straightened the apartment, wiped out a couple of ashtrays. She started to fix herself a drink, then changed her mind and made a cup of instant coffee instead. By then it was ten minutes to seven and she couldn’t very well place the call because he might arrive while she was talking. She sat down and had a cigarette.
He was on time almost to the minute. She took his coat and showed him to a chair. “There’s scotch and vodka,” she said. “Orange juice and tomato juice to mix with the vodka.”
“Tomato juice, if it’s no trouble.”
How much trouble was tomato juice? She mixed a pair of Bloody Marys and sat down on the couch. She looked him over while he was saying something not terribly memorable about his day at school. He was not unattractive, a loose-limbed bearish man with an abundant moustache that drooped a little more than was absolutely necessary. He had large brown eyes that someone must have told him were soulful and dark brown hair going thin on top. His clothes were West Side casual — an old tweed jacket of no particular color, a plaid flannel shirt, loose-fitting brown slacks, ankle-length western-style boots. His clothing suited the rest of him, and all in all he went well with her apartment.
“Nice apartment,” he said. “You have just the one room?”
“What you see is what you get.”
“Well, that’s enough space, really. I must have about the same square footage but I’ve got two small rooms instead of one large one. At the time I took it I thought I’d want a separate bedroom but now I think I made a mistake. I’m on Ninety-eighth and West End.”
“How long have you been there?”
“Five, six months. You?”
“About two months. The furniture’s what the landlord had in the basement plus some choice pieces from the Salvation Army. I didn’t want to run up the costs because this is only temporary. I’ll need more room when I have my daughter with me.”
“When will that be?”
“After the school year ends. In June, I suppose.”
“You must have told me you had a daughter but it slipped my mind. How old is she?”
So they talked about her daughter and his two sons until they had finished the Bloody Marys. His boys were thirteen and eleven and lived with their mother in Park Slope. “So they’re just a subway ride away,” he said. “It makes things a lot easier.”
“It must.”
“I’d show you pictures of them but I decided to stop carrying them. I felt I was doing too good a job of living up to the divorced-father stereotype.” He put his glass on the coffee table. “Getting hungry? If you like Chinese, there’s a fairly decent Szechuan place a few blocks uptown.”
“That sounds fine.”
It wasn’t terribly hard to meet men. She had wondered about that, speculating on the chances that her age and her lack of contacts might make things difficult for her. Not that she had cared all that much originally. Her fantasies before she left Buffalo had been ones of liberation rather than ones of involvement with someone new and exciting. And even after she had come to New York, she found that she wanted men in her life primarily to avoid being upset over their absence. She wanted to meet men and talk with them and spend time with them and sleep with them not for the pleasure of their company but because such activity was part of a full life.
But God, she did not want to be involved. At the beginning she had even tended to resist Cal’s friendship because it might constitute a demand on her, a limitation of her freedom. That was silly and she quickly realized as much, but it showed her just how great a premium she was inclined to place upon her independence.
On Cal’s first visit to her apartment, she’d indicated the cast-off and mismatched furniture with a wave of her hand. “All garbage, but the price was right. And the place is temporary anyway until I get my kid back from her daddy.”
“But that’s months and months,” he said. “You could replace some of this, and a little paint would eliminate some of the clashing, tie the color scheme together. Just in the interest of making it more livable, you know.”
“I don’t want to bother.”
“It wouldn’t even be that much bother, and God knows the expense wouldn’t be much. You could just—”
“No, you don’t understand. I’d just as soon keep it as tacky and anonymous as a hotel room. Oh, Cal, I thought about getting a kitten. I’ve always liked cats. But I won’t get one and I won’t even get a fucking philodendron because I don’t want anything that has to be fed and watered. I don’t want to be some cat’s mommy.”
“What has that got to do with painting that table? I’m not sure I follow you.”
“I’m sure you don’t. Maybe there’s nothing to follow. Oh — I don’t want to define myself in terms of externals. I’ve always defined myself in terms of other people, her daughter and her mother and his wife. I don’t want that. Right now I’m overreacting and I know it but it suits me for the time being. I have a dull job. Well, that’s fine, because I don’t want to be labeled by what I do. Or by how I live or dress or who I’m with or — does this make any sense?”
He scratched his head, studied her for a moment before replying. “I don’t know if it makes sense,” he said. “I’m a poor judge of what’s sensible and what isn’t. But I think I know what you mean.”