Having finished this speech with every evidence of relish, Katharine smiled a great beaming smile and drained her drink. Simultaneously our appetizers arrived, and I looked at mine with little appetite. I said, “That’s some story.”
“What do you think of it?”
“Was it published?”
“In 1968?” With a sardonic grin, she shook her head.
“I think it’s — got a certain amount of hostility in it,” I said.
“You don’t think it ends on a positive note?”
Then I realized she was laughing at me. “A very positive note,” I acknowledged. “After all, early retirement is the primary tenet of my whole approach to life.”
Overtly laughing, she said, “You are my post-revolution man, aren’t you?”
“Maybe. Are you still that hostile? Seriously, if you are it could say a lot about your problems in re Barry.”
“No, I don’t think so,” she said, more somberly. “I went through college just at the beginning of the women’s movement, and my consciousness was raised just in time to see the incredible difference in reasonable expectation between me and the boys I knew, a lot of whom were very much dumber than me.”
“We’re opposites,” I said. “Too much was expected from me, so I stopped pushing. Too little was expected from you, so you started pushing.”
“That’s rather glib,” she suggested.
“But it makes an interesting point, maybe. And you know what they say about opposites.”
“Birds of a feather flock together?”
“Not exactly. Shall we eat our appetizers?”
We ate for a while, during which I pondered Katharine’s story. Between the appetizer and the entrée I said, “You know, with so much bad history and grievances between the sexes, it’s amazing any couples ever get together at all.”
“Getting together is easy,” she said. “Biology takes care of that. It’s the staying together that’s tough. A couple begins in love and happiness, and then they spiral down through bad experiences and misunderstandings and mutual cruelties until they either split or they find an accommodation in which they live together without having anything to do with one another. Everybody I know is on that spiral. That’s one of the things that bothers me when I think about Barry. I do love Barry, Tom, I really do. I love him too much to get on that spiral with him. But is there any other way?”
“There must be happy couples around,” I said.
“Name six.”
“Maybe it’s just a phase this society is going through. Didn’t there used to be happy couples?”
“Because the divorce rate was lower? Divorce was less acceptable then, that’s all. Catholic couples today don’t divorce; are all Catholic marriages happy?”
“You’re extremely negative,” I said.
“You should talk. The first time I mentioned marriage to you, you made a face.”
“Because it wasn’t any good for me. But it’s got to be good for some people. Like my parents.” Then I thought about my parents and said, “No, cancel that. My parents are happy, but not with each other. They can’t count as a couple.”
“Marriage is a serious step,” Katharine said.
“Just like those pamphlets in the back of the church used to say.”
Smiling, she said, “I think everybody, before they get married, should take a cab across the country and think it over.”
“There’s already too much traffic. Let them take bicycles to Asbury Park.”
On that note we left it, because the wine arrived, immediately followed by the main course. The discussion didn’t pick up again until we’d finished the food and were on the last of the wine, when Katharine said, “As a matter of fact, I’m not that hostile anymore. That was a very youthful thing, and full of brand new shock and outrage.”
“It’s a strong story,” I said. “If it was told well, it could be very effective.”
“When Ms. magazine came along, I thought of rewriting it and sending it there. That was after the Reich book, so I was going to change the honey to green beans and call it ‘The Green Beaning of America.’ ”
“That’s awful.”
“True. Anyway, I got the story out and looked at it again, and I just didn’t feel that way anymore. Or at least not enough to retype the whole story. Also, the writing wasn’t very good. Besides, by then I knew I really liked men. I like men who don’t feel they have to stand on top of me in order to be tall. Such as Barry. Or you.”
“Thank you.”
“I do like you, Tom,” she said, and either it was the lighting or the wine but her face seemed softer, the bone structure less obvious. She was beautiful under all circumstances.
“It’s mutual,” was all I felt secure enough to say.
Katharine signaled for the check, signed it, and we left. The sky now was diamonds on black velvet, with a great gibbous moon rising from the direction of New York. The moon looked like a polished semi-circular piece of milk glass, with a powerful light shining through it. The parked cars we walked past were hulked sleeping beasts, moonlight glittering from the chrome of their fenders and swimming in the depths of their windows. We stopped near the cab, by mutual consent, and stood gazing up at the sky. Then I looked at her raised profile, and put my hand on her shoulder: “Katharine.”
Gently but immediately she slid away from the hand. “We already talked about that, Tom.”
“In the abstract. What you’re looking at now is concrete.”
“Tom, don’t confuse the issue.”
“Why should the issue be better off than I am?”
“Tom—” She hesitated, frowning at me in a troubled way, then glanced around as if for help, then frowned at me once more. Gently, sympathetically, she said, “Tom. Read your cab.” And she turned and walked quickly away toward the stairs.
Read my cab? Of course that was just a distraction, to keep me from following her at once, but what had she meant? The cab was clearly visible in the gray-white moonlight; from here I could see the rear deck and part of the left side. I could just barely make out the rates posted on the outside of the driver’s door. Stenciled on the passenger’s door was my father’s company name: “Harflet Livery Service Co.” On the trunk lid were several items: the large decal from Speediphone Cab, giving the company name and phone number; the decal from LOMTO, the League of Metered Taxicab Owners; the black number 27, being this cab’s call-number with Speediphone; and—