“Thanks,” Joss said to the waiter, who had brought their specials, both plates on one forearm. “She’s in boarding school,” he said to Mamie: the practiced lie. “Your penmanship is excellent.”
“Oh, cursive. I practiced a lot when I was young.”
“And your writing, too.”
“I go to a private day school”—and she named it. “On scholarship. We are required to wear a uniform.” She fingered her pleated skirt.
“Ladies in green.”
“Rich bitches.” A bold smile. “So ignorant! National Velvet is their idea of a masterpiece.”
Mamie came from a large, loose, wisecracking family. “Happy Bloom could be one of my uncles,” she said. The men were sales representatives, the women salesladies, an optimistic crowd tolerating in its midst members who were chess players and members who were racetrack habitués and members who were fat and thin and good-natured and morose and peculiar—“My great-aunt walks the length of Manhattan every day”—and even Republican. She loved movies and gin rummy and novels. She had a very high IQ—“That just means I’m good at IQ tests,” she said with offhand sincerity — and because of her intelligence she’d been sent to the green school. “The uniform — it’s equalizing, that’s good; it’s a costume, that’s good too …”
“Mamie,” he said. Enough babble, he meant. He leaned across his corned beef. “Why these letters. Why to me.”
She reddened. It was not beautifying.
“A bit of fun?” he asked, helpfully.
“At first. I thought, hey, he’ll answer …”
“There was no return address.”
“Answer another way, get Happy Bloom to mention ladies, or green. Some trick. But then, I don’t know, I didn’t need an answer anymore. I just wanted you to read the words, to wonder. When you look out of the screen with that face, it’s like a carving, you’re looking for me, you’re looking at me …”
“Yes,” he soothed, thinking of the camera’s red bulb, the thing they had to look at.
“At school, they all have boyfriends.” She was all at once lonely and forty, and nothing had ever happened to her and nothing would. “I love your silence,” she said after a while.
“My silence — it’s imposed.”
“Everybody at home talks all the time. I love the way you dance.”
“The silent character — Bloom made it for me.”
“I love the way you fall down.”
He had mastered the technique young, while still at the Jesuits’. He had gone to every circus, every vaudeville show. He studied clowns and acrobats. And in the first troupe and then the second he spent seasons watching, imitating, getting it right. He practiced on the wire, he practiced with the tumblers. Never broke a bone. Learned how not to take the impact on the back of the head or the base of the spine or the elbows or the knees. Knew which muscles to tighten, which to relax …
She said: “You make me want to fall, but with my, you know, I can’t.” She paused. “I have fallen,” she confessed. She took off her glasses. Her little eyes softened. Would she ever be pretty? “Actually, I have fallen in love,” she said. “With you,” she added, in case he’d missed her drift.
There were several things he could do at this juncture, and he considered each one of them. He could award her an intent, sorrowful look, he knew which one to use; and from this and her flustered response there would develop, during future meetings, a kind of affection. Stranger romances had flourished. When she turned twenty he would be … Or he could talk smart: prattle tediously about the Irish in America, his hard boyhood, the Jesuit fathers, the early jobs, the indifference of the public, the disappointing trajectory of his life. Bore her to fidgets, push her calf love out the swinging doors … Or he could offer to introduce her to Paolo, what a pair … Or he could pretend to get drunk and stumble out of Cassidy’s leaving her to pay their bill. She probably had a couple of fives tucked into that orthopedic shoe.
He did none of those things. Instead he reached his hand across the table and gently pulled the nose, the nose with the little bump.
They lingered over their lunch and then walked the length of Fifth Avenue. Walking, she hardly limped at all.
“I don’t do sports,” she told him. “Steps are sometimes difficult,” she added mildly.
They discussed, oh, the Empire State Building and the dock strike and hizzoner: the idle conversation of two friends who have met after a long silence, and who may or may not meet again. At the subway entrance on Eighth Street they paused. He took both her hands and swung them, first side to side, then overhead. London Bridge is falling down. Then he let them go.
“This afternoon has been …, ” she began.
“Yes,” he said.
She clumped down the stairs. He stood at the top, watching her grow smaller. Soon she would turn. He’d watch until then … “Pardon,” said a woman in a hat, edging past him, rushing downward, blocking his last view of the girl.
THAT THURSDAY THEY did a takeoff of On the Town—they couldn’t make fun of the war, but dancing sailors were fair game. A movie tapster danced with them, another guy on his way down. But the spoof was too short. Three minutes to go before the good-night monologue, signaled the Brigadier. So Happy said “Sweet Georgia,” under his breath — they’d done that number together on the circuit a dozen years earlier, feet don’t forget. It was a Nicholas Brothers routine. So what? — they’d never claimed originality, Happy stole most of his jokes. The Brigadier said “Georgia” to the orchestra, and then she hooked the Hollywood fellow off the stage, and there they were, Joss and Happy, dancing, just dancing. Happy flapped into the wings thirty seconds before the finish, to get out of the sailor suit and into the tux. Joss kept cramp-rolling. He felt Mamie’s eyes on him and his on hers. He double-timed into a leap, why not, and he kicked midair, heels meeting, and dropped onto his feet and then slid down slantwise, perfect, thigh taking the weight, and now he was horizontal. The camera’s lens lowered, smoothly following him; those guys were getting better. Elbow on floor and chin on palm and body stretched out and one leg raised, foot amiably twitching, Joss grinned. Yes: grinned.
“What made you smile? They’ll get rid of you,” Mary griped an hour later.
He touched her hair. So dry, you’d think one of her cigarettes would set it on fire. “I was smiling at you,” he said.
THE STORY
“PREDICTABLE,” said Judith da Costa.
“Oh … hopeful,” said her husband, Justin, in his determinedly tolerant way.
“Neither,” said Harry Savitsky, not looking for trouble exactly; looking for engagement perhaps; really looking for the door, but the evening had just begun.
Harry’s wife, Lucienne, uncharacteristically said nothing. She was listening to the tune: a mournful bit from Liszt.
What these four diners were evaluating was a violinist, partly his performance, partly his presence. The new restaurant — Harry and Lucienne had suggested it — called itself the Hussar, and presented piroshki and goulash in a Gypsy atmosphere. The chef was rumored to be twenty-six years old. The Hussar was taking a big chance on the chef, on the fiddler, on the location, and apparently on the help; one busboy had already dropped a pitcher of water.
“It’s tense here, in the dining room,” Judith remarked.
“In the kitchen — don’t ask,” Harry said.
In some accommodating neighborhood in Paris, a restaurant like the Hussar might catch on. In Paris … but this was not Paris. It was Godolphin, a town that was really a western wedge of Boston; Godolphin, home to Harry and Lucienne Savitsky, retired high school teachers; Godolphin, not so much out of fashion as beyond its reach.