But it was only our bodies. Our minds and emotions were engaged only at levels of embarrassment and cover-up. Arousal is only to the point when the mind and emotions agree with the body, which in this case they did not. So we stood there side by side at the counter, dewy, spongy, pliant (her) and priapic (me), and pretended there was nothing going on, while the desk clerk endlessly did things with registration forms and Ms. Scott’s credit card and a pair of keys. At last he gave me directions where to drive and park the cab, and Ms. Scott and I thanked him and turned away and went outside.
By then the first heat had faded, we were both dealing in a civilized way with the problem, and she even risked a quick sidelong glance at me as I held the cab door for her. What she saw must have been to some extent reassuring; a faint smile touched her lips as she said, “Thank you.”
We were almost conspirators; almost, but not quite. Neither of us could acknowledge to the other what was going on. I got behind the wheel, drove around to the side of the building, parked where the desk clerk had said, and carried my bag and one of Ms. Scott’s as we both went up the outside stairs, into the building, and down the long tubular hall to our rooms, which were opposite one another.
Uncertain just how reassured she’d become, I didn’t offer to carry her bag inside, and she did seem relieved when I put it down in the doorway. “See you later,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said again, but when I saw that this time her smile was nervous I stopped hanging around the hall, unlocked my way into my room, threw my bag on the bed — it wasn’t vibrating — stripped off my clothing, and took a long cold shower.
7
It was just after nine o’clock, the air-conditioner was on full blast, and I lay naked on the bed watching television commercials and thinking vaguely of food, when the phone rang. I frowned at it, irrationally suspecting a practical joke. Who knew me around here?
Ms. Scott, of course. Her calm voice said, “I’m going down to dinner now. I don’t promise I’ll talk much, but shall we share a table?”
“Give me two minutes.”
“Just knock on my door.”
Which I did, approximately two minutes later. She had changed to a thin cotton sleeveless dress, with a pale shawl over her bare shoulders; for the air-conditioning, I suppose. I myself had switched from my usual work costume of sneakers, dungarees and a T-shirt to black loafers, gray slacks, and a short-sleeve blue patterned shirt. At least we’d look appropriate at the same table.
The sexual frenzy was out of us now. We could meet one another’s eye, we could smile without fear of misinterpretation, and I even automatically took her elbow for a few seconds as we went through a doorway. She was silent on the way downstairs, as she’d promised, but amiable company; as in the cab.
The restaurant was a vast low-ceilinged cavern swathed in patterned drapery and drenched in Muzak. It was hard to believe we weren’t ninety feet or more below the surface of the earth, but if we’d actually struggled our way through the drapes to one of the side windows we would have been looking out at ground level toward the main parking lot.
Of the several hundred tables here, perhaps four were occupied, all in the same distant corner of the room. The head-waiter, a thin short pencil-moustached smiler, a kind of pocket Errol Flynn, tried to cram us in among the rest of his customers, but Ms. Scott — bless her — pointed to a table a sensible distance away and said, “Why not that one?”
Why not, indeed? We were spoiling some mathematically precise plan inside his head, that’s why not, but there was nothing he could do about it short of drawing a pistol and forcing us to sit where he wanted. With very bad grace, he led us to the table Ms. Scott had indicated, and left us there alone for a long time. I detected a few of the other diners looking enviously in our direction, obviously wishing they too had had the courage to tell our friend they didn’t feel like eating en campement tonight; while we waited for the headwaiter to get over his sulk and bring menus, I commented to Ms. Scott: “Too many people allow themselves to get pushed around in restaurants.”
She smiled in agreement, but said, “I hope you didn’t mind my taking charge that way.”
“You’re in charge,” I pointed out. “If I was taking you out, I’d have picked that table over there.”
She frowned over at the table I’d randomly chosen, wondering why it was better than this one; then looked back at me, frowned a second longer, and suddenly smiled, saying, “I see. Thank you.”
“You have enough to think about,” I told her, “without also having to worry if my male ego is being trampled on. It isn’t.”
“I didn’t think it was, but thanks for the reassurance.”
“Can we laugh now about the man with the unstoppable bed?”
She did laugh, but she said, “Maybe,” and at the same time gestured very strongly at the headwaiter, whose unwary eye she had caught with a look of steel.
He came over, then, and said to me, “Sir?”
“I didn’t call you,” I said.
“We’d like menus,” Ms. Scott told him. “And I think drinks. Yes?” That last to me.
“Gin and tonic would be nice,” I acknowledged.
“And vodka and tonic for me.” Ms. Scott smiled coolly at the headwaiter and then, as though he’d already left, said to me, “How many miles did we do today?”
Beneath the headwaiter’s pencil moustache, as he departed, were pursed lips. I said, “Just under six hundred.”
“Isn’t that a lot, in one day?”
“It’s different from Sixth Avenue,” I admitted. “To tell the truth, at first I was enjoying myself, but toward the end I wouldn’t have minded doing something else.”
“Ten hours a day is too much,” she said. “From now on, just do what’s comfortable, and stop when you’re tired.”
I wasn’t sure myself if I wanted to keep on at the same pace. “Thanks for giving me the option.”
“Of course. Um— May I call you Thomas?”
“I wish you wouldn’t,” I said. “Nobody else does. Try Tom.”
“Tom. Fine. And I’m Katharine.”
“Not Kathy or Kate?”
“No,” she said, as though people who called her those names were never heard from again.
I persisted: “Not Kit or Kitty or Kat?”
Finally she laughed. “Now, look, Thomas,” she said.
“Katharine,” I said.
“And Tom.” She extended a slim hand across the table. “How do you do?”
“Fine, thanks,” I said, taking her hand. “And you?”
“Very well.”
The handshake ended as the drinks arrived, brought by a pleasant overweight high school girl who also left us menus the size of garage doors. I counted how often the word “succulent” was used in the menus (8), and when the girl came back I ordered the creamed herring, the Junior Sirloin (I think you’re supposed to feel less than a man if you don’t order the King), the baked potato, no vegetable, and the mixed green salad. Looking at me, she said, “And wine?”
“Certainly.”
There was a tiny folded wine list that lived on the table amid the condiments. Katharine consulted it briefly and said, “The Almaden Pinot Noir.”
The waitress, who’d been efficiently and cheerfully writing everything in her pad, now stumbled to a halt. “The what?”
Katharine said it again, then a third time, then finally pointed to it on the wine list. “Oh!” said the girl, copied it down laboriously from the list, and went away.
I said, “How do you suppose she pronounces it?”