So where to go? Before prison she'd have gravitated toward St. Mark's Place, only a few blocks away, where all the freaks, punks, squatters, bogus Rastafarians, piercing addicts, failed models, musicians, lost Englishmen, and New Jersey teenagers found one another in the Day-Glo underground pits. She'd already walked along the block a few times, knew it wasn't for her anymore. Years had gone by, but it was the same people, the same kind of people. The girl who lets men perform oral sex on her at the bar, the motorcycle guy who needs new people to frighten, the tender junkie with a puppy inside his shirt, comparing bad tattoos.
But that was then and this was now, and so, after slipping on the same cunning black dress as before and twirling her lipstick and how's my hair, she clicked downstairs and outside and crosstown through the dusk and shadows and crowds. Wobbling on her pumps, out of practice. Yet getting a bit of action into the hips. The night remained warm, the air left over from summer. Everyone seemed in a hurry. New movies, new shows, new restaurants. Bars and cafes and bistros. Inside each, a roar of laughter and I'll have the free-range chicken. A lot of life gets lived in these places, she thought, slipping happily into a cafe off the corner of Thirteenth Street and Sixth Avenue. She established herself at the bar and sipped a glass of Merlot. The other single women pretended to be interested in talking with one another but keptwatch, perfumed with loneliness. It's harder to be a woman, Christina thought, you have to protect yourself, you have to be careful. You have to protect not just your body but your idea of yourself. Rick thought he knew who she was. But he really didn't, which was why she ended up in prison and he did not.
She finished a second glass of wine and was thinking about leaving, maybe to walk up Sixth Avenue, when a good-looking man in a suit sat next to her.
"David." He offered his hand. "I thought I'd sit down, what the hell."
"What the hell," she agreed.
"You don't mind?"
He smelled good. "No."
"I'm, I'm kind of-"
She liked his tie. "Shy?"
"Yes. Well, no." He frowned with great earnestness, as if they had reached a turning point in a long conversation. "I've been through all this too many times, so I'll just get it out. I'm a doctor, rather successful, I might confess, I'm thirty-eight, I'm available. I'm looking for someone to settle down with. I'm ready to be married. I'm very financially secure."
"That's nice," said Christina, lighting a cigarette.
"I realize this is very hurried, very fast." His eyes swept anxiously across the restaurant before coming back to her. "But it's better to be honest. I'm a guy who is ready, really ready to settle down. I saw you and thought, There's a woman who is terrific."
He's hiding something, Christina decided. "You don't know the first thing about me."
"I do and I don't." He smiled, as if with wisdom. "You'd be surprised what you can tell about a person."
"What can you tell?"
"Oh, I can tell we'd get along."
"How?" She ordered another glass of wine and noticed the women down the bar glaring at her.
"Well, I have a lot to offer," he said. "I'm ready to get married and have children. I have very good communication skills."
"I'm not ready to get married," she told him. "Not even close."
He consulted the pattern of his tie. "You're not?"
"No."
"What do you want, then?"
"Hey, I'm just sitting here drinking my wine, okay? I didn't ask you to ask me these things."
He blinked miserably. "I think we'd be very sexually compatible, just so you know."
She laughed and realized that she was a bit drunk. "You can tell that, too?"
"Yes-I think so," he said eagerly, lips strangely wet. "I think you would be understanding of… of my… I have a slight disorder-not physical, don't worry-a question of aesthetics, really. Habits-no, practices might be the term. A woman could marry me and be provided for, and just see my disorder as aesthetic. Harmless. Not much to overlook."
He stopped, waited for her reaction, or perhaps a request for clarification.
"David?" said Christina.
"Yes?" he replied with sudden hope.
"You've told me your occupation and financial status, you've virtually proposed marriage, you've asserted that we would be compatible, and you've alluded to some weird sexual hang-up, right?"
"Yes, I guess-"
"But, David, you forgot something."
"What?"
"You forgot to ask me my name."
"Oh."
"You better go," Christina said.
He studied her. "Yes. Yes. I'm so sorry." He held out his hand. "Please accept my apology."
She smiled falsely. "Bye."
He slid off the stool and drifted down the bar next to another woman. Said something about sitting down, what the hell, thirty-eight years old, ready to get married.
I'm not insulted, she thought, because I'm almost drunk.
"You mind?" A man in a collarless black shirt dropped down on the stool next to her.
"Why not?" she said, waving her cigarette. He was tall and altogether too skinny, with his head so recently shaved that she didn't know whether he was bald or making a statement. He wore a big chrome watch on his wrist, three different dials on it, and as signs went, this was bad. Men with big watches did not, as a rule, pan out. Nor, however, did men with smaller watches, so there you go, Christina. She tried to remember what kind of watch Rick wore and could not-probably something gold and the size of a hockey puck. She remembered her father's watch easily, however, a cheap Timex with grease worked into its scratches and rasp marks. An honest watch for an honest man. How she wished he were still alive. She knew enough now that she could have gone to him with uncomplicated affection, just be his daughter as he was just her father. She wanted to touch his face. I'd give anything for that, she thought, remembering that he'd let her drive the Mustang by herself when she was sixteen. He knew she would take it out on the highway and gun it up to one hundred and ten, roaring and vibrating, getting the speed into her to get the craziness out. Didn't really work, but she'd always felt better. Let the car ease down to eighty, seventy, sixty. He'd trusted her with the car, with herself. The only person who ever did, in a way. Well, the Columbia religion professor, maybe. Listened mostly. Yet after the first dozen times in bed, the professor had asked her why she was so experienced for a nineteen-year-old. But she wasn't, not really. He didn't mean experienced, he meant responsive. Oh, she'd said, I'm just like that. He'd walked into his study and gazed silently out the window toward Riverside Drive. I hate to do this, he said, I really do, but we have to stop. Why? she'd wanted to know. I made a mistake, he said. What? I thought I could handle you, but I can't. I don't understand, she'd cried. You'll drive me crazy, he said, you'll slowly drive me crazy. How? He'd shaken his head. You are actually insatiable. I am? Yes. I am? He'd nodded again. How do you know? Believe me, he said, I know. But I'm happy with you. For now, he said, for now. But I love you. No, I don't think so, he'd said. There's something hard in you, Christina. You know in your heart you can cut me up. She'd just stared. He was right. Something happened to you, he'd said. You haven't told me and I don't want to know, but it broke you and also made you too strong. I've been with enough women to understand this. I thought because I was twenty years older I could handle it, but I can't. I'm a fool, but I want to get out now, while I still can.