“I’m sorry. It’s the wine. So — I was talking with Howard Feingold about you. He needs an associate editor. He expects you to call.”
“Oh.” This made Patty feel guilty at having snapped at Betty. “Where is he?”
“Fire Books. Quality paper.”
“Thank you. Do I know him?”
Betty laughed again. “I don’t know. Do you?” She controlled her smile to ask seriously, “Are you okay? Tony said you seemed fine at Fred’s.”
“Fred,” Patty repeated, remembering the kiss in the hallway. Had last night really happened? Everything in her life seemed to quiver in her consciousness, as if her memory were a poor television signal.
“Tony said you went home with someone, a journalist.”
“We shared a cab,” Patty said. She had intended to tell Betty of her passionate night with David Bergman, but Betty’s eagerness to hear gossip turned off Patty’s desire to give it. “No more talk about me,” Patty said with pert emphasis. “I’m sick of me.”
“Well, I’m very boring. I have no gossip.”
“How about work?”
“I don’t have enough books for my list. I had something earlier in the week, but Jeffries said no.”
“How does he expect you to fill your list if he doesn’t let you buy books?”
“I asked him that. He said, ‘Dear, your job isn’t simply to buy books, but to buy good books.’ Anyway, Howard Feingold is nice. You should call him.”
“Okay. But do we want to work in publishing? Have these middle-aged men saying no to our books and calling us ‘dear’?”
“Yeah!” Betty said, making a fist and shaking it in the air. Then she laughed. “I should tell him to stop calling me ‘dear.’ My God, it’s been five years. You’d think he’d start treating me like one of the guys.”
“Did he ever make a pass?” Patty asked with abrupt curiosity.
Betty blinked. “No. You know that.”
“I did? I’m sorry.” Patty did know, but from time to time she asked, hoping Betty would answer truthfully. Patty was convinced her denials were false.
“How could you forget? That’s the story of my career. Everyone thought I was promoted to senior editor so fast because I had slept with Jeffries.”
“Oh,” Patty said, as if that were also news. Of course, it wasn’t.
Betty sighed and lifted her glass. She held it wearily. “I can’t win. I only get credit because of the men around me. My uncle got me the job, Jeffries’ praise has made me important within the house, and my Tony, my beautiful Tony, he gives me the authors with his contacts.” Betty drained the glass.
Patty leaned forward earnestly. “Your life is wonderful! You’re the ideal!”
“No, no. The ideal is me with a baby.”
“You want a baby?”
“I mean, according to the women’s magazines. We don’t want to totally repress femininity for the sake of career drives.”
“I don’t know.” Patty stared off. “I’d like to squash my femininity right now. Squash it like a roach and flush it down.”
Betty, though she smiled, blinked her eyes. She was astonished and somewhat appalled by Patty’s vehemence. “I think you’d better call Howard Feingold this afternoon. You need a job.”
“Am I promiscuous?” Patty said, staring earnestly into Betty’s eyes.
Betty stared back for a moment, and then laughter burst from her, as if she had been shocked into it. “What? Where did that come from?”
“I HS’ed with David Bergman last night.”
“HS’ed!” Betty said in a loud, irritated tone, pursing her lips. She didn’t know what Patty meant, and Betty always reacted impatiently to anything she couldn’t understand.
“Had Sex.”
“Oh.” Betty laughed again. “You did? Great! So you did like him.”
“I don’t know. That’s why I asked if I was promiscuous.”
“Because you went to bed with one man?”
“Well …” Patty was also thinking of Fred’s kiss. She wasn’t comfortable mentioning it, but she wished she could solicit Betty’s opinion — she tried desperately to think of some way to explain her situation without going into details. But there was no way. “Did you sleep with Tony right away?” she asked, which, of course, gave entirely the wrong impression.
“We met while we both apprenticed in the Berkshires during the summer. We worked together and even did a scene together before we really, you know, dated. Not dated, but spent time alone. I knew him a few weeks before we slept together. But there’s nothing wrong with going to bed with David Bergman the first time you meet him. God, I sound like a decadent Dear Abby.”
Patty listened admiringly. “And he proposed then?”
“No!” Betty laughed. “God, no. I had a terrible time with him for more than a year. I know he was involved with at least one other woman.”
“The louse.”
Betty ran a hand through her red hair — the gesture seemed defensive. “No, he wasn’t a louse. He didn’t want to be married that young.”
“How did you convince him?”
“I didn’t. I had given up. Even decided that we had only a few more months to go before breaking up.” Betty paused and stared off with a glazed look in her eyes.
Patty waited. She felt it was important to know why Tony married Betty: maybe the answer to what could make a relationship work was something simple and definite, something Patty could put into action and in one sweep change her life. Marry David Bergman with all that loft space, get a job from Howard Feingold, and have a mature lifelong friendship over expensive lunches with Betty. “What!” Patty finally asked with furious impatience.
“Oh!” Betty said, startled. She laughed. “I’m sorry, I was thinking of how he proposed. He showed up dressed like an English professor and sang ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Your Face’ and then handed me slippers.”
“Oh,” Patty said with noticeable disapproval.
“It was cute.” Betty argued.
“Sounds degrading.”
“Degrading?” Betty straightened. “He was joking. And besides, he has a beautiful voice.”
“So what changed his mind?”
“I don’t know.”
“You never asked him!”
“Oh, I asked him. But what makes Tony so charming at a cocktail party, that is, his gift for a pleasantly clever answer, in human terms, makes him slippery and unknowable. When I’m depressed, I think to myself that someone he truly loved rejected him, and when I’m happy, I decide that he recognized my virtues.”
“I’m sure it’s that,” Patty said, leaning so far forward that she was halfway out of her chair. “He loves you.”
Betty looked at her with cool curiosity. “Thanks. I’m glad to be reassured.”
Betty’s tone set off an alarm. Patty scurried for an exit. “So when should I call Howard Feingold?”
“He said anytime. He’ll be happy to talk to you about a job.”
“Great. Now you have to get me a boyfriend.”
Betty laughed. “Maybe you’ve got one.” She laughed again, and with her laughter, relaxed. Patty did also, now that the bells had been turned off and there was no more worry that a burglar had entered Betty’s fine store to steal her prize possession.
Fred’s heart was pounding so hard it felt as if it were surging up through his lungs and might hop out into the air, leaving him without nerve or confidence. But he did manage to answer the secretary without spilling any blood. “Yes, I’ll hold.”
And there was the silence and the loneliness of being on hold, reduced to a flashing light on Bart Cullen’s phone. Fred wanted a cigarette, but the pack was on the coffee table and his phone cord couldn’t stretch that far. He moved the distance anyway, and tried to reach, balancing on one foot, holding the receiver with his shoulder, and pulling the cord so tight its curls disappeared. Idiot, he said to himself, if you had put the phone down right away and got them, you would have had time. But now Bart might come on any second and Fred didn’t dare risk greeting him with silence.