“Yes. Please.”
“We’ll walk,” Marvin said, coming up behind her.
“I want to go home, Marvin,” she said.
“We’ll walk to the subway.”
“The subway?”
“Yes,” Marvin said, and he took her elbow and began walking her toward Times Square. They shuttled across to Grand Central and then boarded the Woodlawn Road Express. Marvin seemed not to notice the turning heads, the craning necks, the pleased smiles and excited whispers of the riders everywhere around them on the subway. When they got off at Mosholu Parkway, he walked Nora into the park, and they sat together on a bench some distance from the nearest light.
“Nora,” he said, “there’s something I’ve got to tell you.”
“What?” she said.
“Nora, do... do you know how I feel about you?”
“I think so.”
“I love you,” he said.
“Mmmm.”
“I love you,” he repeated.
“Mmmm.”
“Is that all you can say? I just told you I loved you. Twice.”
“What do you want me to say, Marvin?”
“I don’t know. Say you love me, too, or say you hate me, but don’t just say ‘Mmmm’ as if I told you it’s a nice day or something.”
“Marvin, you don’t love me” Nora said.
“I don’t, huh?”
“No.” Her voice lowered. “You only love Kim Novak.”
“Who?”
“You heard me.”
“Kim Novak? I don’t even know Kim Novak. How could I...?”
“Marvin, it’s because I look like her, and that’s all.”
“Nora, I don’t care if you look like Kim Novak or Phyllis Diller, believe me.”
“Then why did you take me to that movie with her in it?”
“Because I wanted to tell you I thought you were beautiful, that’s all. Nora, what do I care who you look like? To me, you look like Nora Feldman, that’s who.”
“No, Marvin...”
“Nora, I love you. I’ve loved you from the first day Mr. Mergenthaler brought you into my office and said he wanted me to meet his new secretary. I was pricing that shantung, do you remember?”
“I remember.”
“So how could I be in love with Kim Novak? Did Mr. Mergenthaler ever bring Kim Novak into my office?”
“No, but...”
“Nora, I’m in love with you. You.”
“Who am I?” Nora asked. “Tell me that, Marvin.”
“What?”
“Who is Kim Novak, for that matter? If we look the same, and walk the same, and talk the same, maybe we are the same.”
“No, Nora, because...”
“A man in a restaurant thinks I’m Kim Novak, and I sign Kim Novak’s name on his menu, so he goes home and tells his daughter he got Kim Novak’s signature for her, and who knows the difference? Does he know the difference? Does his daughter? Does even Kim Novak herself know the difference?”
“Nora,” Marvin said very gently, “do you know the difference?”
“Yes,” she said. “The difference is being somebody when I walk into a restaurant.”
“Nora, when you walk into a restaurant you are somebody. Nora, to me you are everybody in the room.”
“Oh, Marvin, don’t you see? It means somebody caring whether or not I would like a little dry sherry before my meal.”
“Nora, I care. Nora, if you would like a little dry sherry before your meal, I would swim to Spain for it.”
“Or yelling out ‘Hi, Kim!’ on the street.”
“Nora, I’ll yell ‘Hi, Nora’ from the rooftops. I’ll yell it twenty-four hours a day, if that’s what you want.”
“Marvin, don’t you see? Everybody loves Kim Novak.”
“Not me,” Marvin said, “I love Nora Feldman.”
They were silent for a long time. Outside the park, on the street comer, the boys were telling jokes, and Nora could hear their laughter. At last, Marvin cleared his throat.
“There... there’s something I want to ask you, Nora,” he said.
“Don’t,” she told him.
“Nora, will you be my...”
“No, don’t,” she said, and stood up. “I want to go home, Marvin. I want to go home now.”
Marvin stood up and looked at her, and then he sighed and said, “All right, Nora. I’ll take you home.”
They walked past the boys on the corner and then up the block and into Nora’s building. Outside her door, Marvin said goodnight and tried to kiss her, but she turned her face away and began looking for her key. She opened the door and heard his footfalls on the steps going down the street. The minute she turned on the lights, her grandmother said, “Who is it?”
“Me,” Nora answered.
Her father must have heard their voices because from his room he called, “Who is it?”
“It’s Kim Novak, who do you think?” her grandmother said, and Nora smiled and turned out the lights and found the way to her room. She undressed and then washed out her underwear and set her hair and sat up for a while reading some of the fan magazines. One of them said that Kim Novak was left-handed. She hadn’t known that. After a while, she felt drowsy, so she put out the light and got into bed and instead of falling asleep, she stared up at the ceiling and wondered why she’d stopped Marvin just when he was about to propose, wondered why she’d turned away when he tried to kiss her. He was really a very nice fellow, and he’d said he loved her. She lay there thinking about Marvin and about being married to him, and finally she got out of bed. She walked to the window and looked out. She could see the lights of the elevated platform on Jerome Avenue. She went to her desk and turned on the lamp, and then she opened the top drawer and took out a sheet of stationery. She picked up her pen. She was about to begin writing when she remembered what she’d read in the fan magazine. She shifted the pen to her left hand.
Then, over and over again, she wrote Kim Novak, Kim Novak, Kim Novak...
Barking at Butterflies
Damn dog barked at everything.
Sounds nobody else could hear, in the middle of the night the damn dog barked at them.
“He’s protecting us,” Carrie would say.
Protecting us. Damn dog weighs eight pounds soaking wet, he’s what’s called a Maltese poodle, he’s protecting us. His name is Valletta, which is the capital of Malta. That’s where the breed originated, I suppose. Some sissy Maltese nobleman must’ve decided he needed a yappy little lapdog that looked like a white feather duster. Little black nose. Black tips. Black button eyes. Shaggy little pipsqueak named Valletta. Who barked at everything from a fan to a butterfly. Is that someone ringing the bell? The damn dog would hurl himself at the door like a grizzly bear, yelping and growling and raising a fuss that could wake the dead in the entire county.
“He’s just protecting us,” Carrie would say.
Protecting us.
I hated that damn dog.
I still do.
He was Carrie g, you see. She rescued him from a husband-and-wife team who used to beat him when he was just a puppy — gee. I wonder why. This was two years before we got married. I used to think he was cute while she was training him. She’d say, “Sit, Valletta,” and he’d walk away. She’d say. “Stay, Valletta,” and he’d bark. She’d say, “Come, Valletta,” and he’d take a nap. This went on for six months. He still isn’t trained.
Carrie loved him to death.
As for El Mutto, the only thing on earth he loved was Carrie. Well, you save a person’s life, he naturally feels indebted. But this went beyond mere gratitude. Whenever Carrie left the house, Valletta would lie down just inside the door, waiting for her to come home. Serve him a hot pastrami on rye, tell him, “Come, Valletta, time to eat,” he’d look at me as if he’d been abandoned by the love of his life and never cared to breathe again. When he heard her car in the driveway, he’d start squealing and peeing on the rug. The minute she put her key in the lock, he jumped up in the air like a Chinese acrobat, danced and pranced on his hind legs when she opened the door, began squealing and leaping all around her until she knelt beside him and scooped him into her embrace and made comforting little sounds to him: “Yes, Valletta, yes, Mommy, what a good boy, oh, yes, what a beautiful little puppyboy.”