His Wife Leaves Him

So what happened next? he thinks. As he walked, he probably looked back for her a couple of times, even though he must have known she wouldn’t be there. He was also probably thinking What a doll, what a doll. This has got to work out, it just has to. Got to the subway entrance and started down the stairs and then thought something like What’s the big rush to get home? Walk till you get tired or bored with it and then take the subway or bus. Walked all the way home. Took him about two hours. Doesn’t remember being cold. Remembers a full moon. No, why’s he making that up? But he does think there was a brief fall of light snow and he looked up at it and thought how pretty it was and romantic. Probably also thought Wouldn’t it be nice walking with her now in the snow? Starting from when he was around seventeen he’d wanted to hug a woman from behind while it snowed, burrow his head into hers, but just never had a chance to, and of course a woman he was in love with. Later, after they’d been seeing each other a few months and were walking along the park side of Riverside Drive in a much heavier snow, he got behind her and hugged her and nuzzled his nose into the back of her neck and she said “What are you doing?” and he said “What do you think?” And she said “We’ll slip; let go. You want to kiss,” she said after he let go of her, “that’s different, though my lips are probably cold,” and they kissed. First time for that during a snow? Doesn’t think so. Could have got home quicker but stopped at a bar, sat at the counter and ordered a draft beer and asked the bartender if she had a Manhattan phone book. Remembers she was tall and striking-looking and young, around twenty-five, or looked young, and was built and moved around behind the counter like a dancer and had short blond hair almost the same color as Gwen’s but not looking as real. He really remembers all that? And he means the hair color real. Yes. He still has a vivid picture of her and the bar but can’t recall what streets it was between and avenue it was on. Somewhere between Houston and Eighth Streets, he thinks, in the middle of the block on the west side of the avenue. Good-looking and trimly built as she was, if he can put it that way, he had no interest in her and wouldn’t have even if she had come on to him, which she never would have. First off, on her part, the age difference, and on his part, she came off as hard and tough, qualities, if that’s the right word, he disliked. Maybe she was just acting hard and tough because she was a young attractive female bartender and felt she had to put up that kind of front with her male customers, especially the ones sitting at the counter. She also smoked, another thing that put him off, and ground out her cigarettes in an ashtray full of butts, but he might be imagining the last part of that. But most of the rest did happen, or close to it. He recounted to Gwen several times what he did that night after she left him. And one of those times he said something like “Of course, in telling you all this, I’m saying that I fell for you immediately — maybe even while stalking you at Pati’s party — which is one more reason I had no interest in the beautiful bartender.” “With me,” she said, “I knew I liked you after our first two dates and thought that something could possibly develop between us. But falling for you took a much longer time.” “How long?” and she said “I forget. Maybe weeks, once we started going together.” “Why so, do you think?” And she said “Innate cautiousness. Self-preservation. Because of my early history, perhaps, of jumping in too fast and getting burned when the man’s feelings for me went sour and flat. I’m not quite sure why, but that’s the way I was since my senior year in college.” “Well, we went to bed pretty quickly — third date, and first was just a short walk and cup of coffee, but in reverse order,” and she said “That’s something entirely different. I liked our foreplay, I got very much in the mood, and I felt you weren’t the type to get too terribly hurt if I decided not to see you again or for a while.” “Why would you decide that when we were really just starting out as a couple and had just slept together and, as I recall, it was pretty good lovemaking for both of us, and everything seemed to be working out fine?” and she said “Because I might have thought I’d reverted to my old self-destructive propensity of jumping in too fast and risking getting hurt and I needed time alone to think more about it. I know it makes no sense, especially the part about not seeing you again, and how I’m explaining it is only muddying matters, but for now that’s the best I can come up with. If you want, ask me again some other time and I might have a clearer answer. Anyhow, my sweetie, things continue to go well with us, don’t they? And I haven’t just now troubled you unnecessarily, right?” and he said “I don’t see how you can say I wouldn’t be terribly hurt if you had broken up with me then or said you didn’t want to see me for a while. I know what the last part means. In the past, whenever a woman said it I knew she was just giving me time to adjust to what was actually her cutting me off and that she had no intention of resuming anything with me. As for your question do things continue to go well with us, yes.” He’s also written a lot about their first meeting. Self-contained chapters of novels and parts of or complete short stories, changing it around some each time. In three or four of these pieces the party’s in different kinds of buildings in SoHo and TriBeCa: a three-story brownstone, a tall modern apartment building, a warehouse or factory — he forgets which — that’s been converted to six floor-through artist lofts, with a fancy women’s shoestore occupying the entire ground floor. Other times he meets her in a theater lobby with a mutual friend, at a subway token booth where he tells her he forgot his wallet and could she loan him a token or money to buy one and he’ll mail one back to her if she’ll give him her address, at a rally for the Solidarity movement in front of the Polish consulate on the East Side, at a book signing in an academic bookstore on the Upper West Side, with the Gwen character the author of a biography of a not-very-well-known avant-garde twentieth-century Russian fiction writer. He came into the store to browse and look at the literary magazines and maybe buy one or a book if they weren’t too expensive. A table was set up with Georgian wine and chilled Russian vodka and various pickled herrings and a small dish of caviar on a plate with little squares of black bread around it. The Gwen character — he thinks her name was Margo — was seated behind the signing table — no, it was Mona — with stacks of her book on it. A lot more copies were in two large cartons on the floor. Oh, boy, he thought, would he ever love to meet her. Beautiful face and smile, trim figure, nice-sized breasts, he liked the simple way she was dressed, and no doubt a big brain too. Also, the way she graciously and unhurriedly made conversation with each of the four people on line who wanted her to inscribe her book for them. “Take as much as you want,” she said, when a woman said she’s taking too much of her time; “I’m not going anywhere for the next hour and I’m truly enjoying our little chat. Thank you.” He looked at her hands and saw she wore no engagement ring or wedding band — an action he used, he thinks, in every piece he wrote about their first meeting, and also in each she had long blond hair, sometimes hanging loose over her shoulders or in a ponytail, but mostly pinned or rolled up in back, with a big enough clump there that he knew it was long. So let’s see, he thought, what could he do to meet her? Got it, and he grabbed her book out of one of the boxes and read the jacket copy and checked the price. Book was more than 400 pages and had lots of photographs and was published by a university press, so it was very expensive. Really worth buying it? Hopes so, but if his plan doesn’t work out he could always, when she wasn’t looking, and before he paid for it, slip it back into the box. He got on line with it. When his turn came — there was no one behind him — he said to her “Hi, how’s it going — exhausted by all this yet?” and she said “No, and I’m fine, thanks.” And then something like “I first want to say — and I’m going to buy your book, by the way — but how unusual it is for a bookstore, or maybe it was your publisher who sprung for it, to put out such a generous spread. Usually, and not that frequently these days — publishers and bookstores alike are cutting back — it’s crudités without the more expensive veggies, and cheap white wine. But caviar, and all the appropriate accompaniments? They must really love you. For me, and here I’m talking about just once, it was pretzels and tortilla chips with no salsa or dip, and nothing to drink.” “Well, I’d like to give this store and my publisher credit for this modest spread — it’d certainly look better for me — but I happen to be the sole provider of it. I thought it the least I could do for anyone who’d make a s