“Yes?” Edith repeated.
“Oh, I got thrown off.”
“So I’ve noticed. That’s what makes you so interesting, your withdrawals. And a little maddening. What’s it all about this time?”
“What a day. It starts off with a midterm quiz on Milton. Anyway, I had a long, long confer — I don’t know what you call it — with Larry in the subway. Was that today? Boy, it seems like yesterday.”
“Yes?”
“He wanted to hang on to our friendship. It didn’t matter that his love affair with you was over. He said we were friends before that.”
“There doesn’t seem to be much reason it shouldn’t continue, if you were interested.”
“That was it. I told him I wasn’t. Poor guy. I guess I hurt his feelings.”
She had busied herself in the cubicle of the kitchenette, filled the electric coffee urn. “It’s sometimes impossible not to. Lewlyn trampled on mine — and in not a very honorable way.”
“Yeah. Anyway, I said no. I said something about going my own way. I really don’t know what I meant. Just another way of saying no.”
“I can understand, Ira. Your ways have separated. Just as mine and Larry’s have — if ever they were very close and not an illusion. It can very well be that once, given time, this pseudo-romance begins to fade, we may become good friends again in a different way. If Larry matures.”
The perking of the electric coffee urn became audible, like a prompter to an actor.
“I gotta go,” Ira said.
“Do.” Edith smiled. He went into the bathroom, familiar bathroom, but more in order than usual, towels, tissues, washcloth, because of the late ministrations of the cleaning woman. Boy, you take your cock out to urinate, you think a thousand thoughts. Did anybody ever ask a woman whether urinating had the same effect? It couldn’t, could it? And he wanted to explain so much, but he buttoned his fly.
“Gee.” Aroma of coffee met his nostrils as he came out. “What I wanted to say, and I suppose he felt, I owed him such a debt of gratitude. I mean Larry.”
“Did you think of what he owed you? You provided him with a view of another world he never would have had otherwise. He was always repeating the things you said. These things are never completely one-sided, you know that, Ira. In this case not even remotely. Toast?” Edith asked.
“No,” he began. “Yes. I love toast, but I can eat just bread. You still have raisin bread?”
“It happens that I do. And butter? You sure you don’t want me to toast it? It’ll only take a minute.”
“Yeah.” He adopted a dour front. “But that’s enough. My grandfather always said that anybody who had bread and butter to eat shouldn’t look for more.”
“Did he?”
“Especially raisin bread. Of course, he ate everything else, the old tyrant.”
“I know you don’t take sugar or cream.”
“Well, this time I want everything. Zuleika Dobson got hungry with deep emotion. So this guy Larry has been smashed, like a kid’s paper boat in a curbside brook, you know what I mean? You know, when he asked me to share in my life, and he envisaged, he made all kinds of offers — I don’t remember, because my mind was on Stella, pregnant, all that — he spoke of our different backgrounds, lives together; we could write about it — collaborate, yeah, the thing that kept coming back to my mind — I don’t know whether I ought to tell you. Oh, thanks. That’s toast.”
“Be careful of the raisins.”
“Hot, you mean? Yeah, they are. I wonder why?” He gobbled.
“You think you’re good for another slice or two?”
“Yeah. Thanks, I mean. If it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Oh, no. You were saying?”
“I kept thinking of sitting here — I mean in that basement room — reading T.S. Eliot, while you two — well, you spooned.” She turned from the frustum of the toaster over the gas to look at him, stood quietly gazing.
“Yes?”
“I thought, boy, I’d never share that with you.”
“Is that what you thought of?’
“I mean even through all my troubles, it kept coming back.” He smiled apologetically. “I got my nerve, haven’t I?”
She shook her head. “You are beyond all doubt the strangest, most unusual person I’ve ever met. And I’ve met many, young and old.”
“It wasn’t because I wanted to be.”
“I don’t think you could.” She removed the slice, quickly, with dainty finger. Bearing the plate of toast, she crossed the room so gravely Ira was sure he had said something wrong. He shouldn’t have told her what he thought. The giddiness of the day had slackened everything.
“Thanks. It’s good.” He took the plate from her. “I still haven’t thanked you enough for all the trouble you took, and all the rest I put you through.”
“It really wasn’t very much trouble. Mostly I was concerned about you. Especially not hearing from you all afternoon, as I said.”
“Yeah. I was inconsiderate.”
“She might have come here in any case.”
“Oh, no, what was the point?”
Balancing her coffee cup, trim, petite, in her brown dress under the open black Japanese kimono, she went back to the couch, sat athwart. “I might have cared to meet her.”
“That’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen.”
“But why?”
“I told you.”
“And I explained to you before that I didn’t expect to see anyone but an adolescent girl — not a mature beauty, nothing of the sort — with very little charm of person, and no sophistication. You already described her to some extent.”
‘I know. And that’s what you would have seen, only more so.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks, Ira! Honestly. Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot all about napkins. I’ll get you one.” She slid off the couch again, more carefully this time. What a pretty figure she had, so feminine, neat, and yet so modest, as if she were bred to deprecate it — something like that: the way she cantered her horse that golden September afternoon in Woodstock, so adeptly, so modestly. And now, a glance at the mirror was all that betrayed awareness, and yet, judging by the angle of her gaze, it was directed at her face. It was her face she cared about. Well, why not? Odd irrelevant wisp of speculation: exchange Stella’s. She was outside the realm of permissible comparison, in a forbidden world—
“Thanks.” Ira took the napkin, and as he watched Edith sit down: “In my house, we don’t have napkins. Only, my father brings home a napkin sometimes from a restaurant, you know? We got two butter knives from the Waldorf Astoria. We’re not kosher, you see? So — well,” he snickered wearily, took a large bite: “Yum!” He chomped: “Gr-r-r.” He sipped, grunted: “Ah.”
He felt an insane impulse to abandon all pretense to seemly behavior, to alienate her entirely, to do any number of idiotic, uncouth things, pick his nose, dig at his ears, scratch his rump, hoist his scrotum. He wasn’t sure why. To fend off what he sensed coming. Or like an insolent tyke, to punish her for having learned what he was, and to build new barriers against her finding out more. Samsonish, Parsifallic, ho-ho, he was weary. He would have paraded any kind of immature caprice, except that he knew she wouldn’t be in the least deceived, in the least fazed. He’d only prove himself all the more a futile ass. Besides. . he had a little pride left, a little stoicism, the recalcitrance of disgrace, maybe, the obduracy of frailty. Or a smidgeon of maturity that dictated that he endure his own failings — and she knew only half the story. So: preserve a scrap of rectitude.