“Don’t you want to meet Gray? I thought you wanted to tell him what a good actor he is.”
“He doesn’t need me to tell him that. After last night, the whole world will be telling him.”
“Yes, but-”
“No buts!” I snapped. “I’m going back to bed and that’s that!”
Abby looked so sad I thought she might start crying. “Uh… well, okay… if that’s the way you want it,” she said, staring down at my kitchen floor as if it were the boulevard of broken dreams. She took a deep drag on her cigarette. “It’s just that I really need some company today.”
“Two’s company, three’s a crowd,” I said. “Gray will provide more than enough togetherness. I’d just be in the way.”
“Oh, no you wouldn’t! Gray has to go to the theater, don’t forget, and there’s a matinee today. He won’t have any time for me. He’ll only be home for a short while this morning, and that’s why we have to go so early.”
Uh oh. She was using the we word again.
“Why this sudden need for company?” I asked her. “What’s wrong? Is something troubling you?”
“No… yes… well, sort of…”
“Then tell me what it is already! The sooner you get it off your chest, the sooner I can go back to bed.”
She smashed her ciggie in the ashtray and gave me a pleading look. “ I guess I’m just lonely,” she said. “I’m so restless and depressed, I didn’t get any sleep at all last night. I’ve been feeling pretty low since Jimmy moved out.”
She was talking about Jimmy Birmingham, her most recent live-in lover, an absurdly handsome beatnik poet who wrote absurdly silly poems. Jimmy was very popular in the Village bars and coffee houses where he gave frequent readings of his work, but I’d never been able to pinpoint the reason for his success. I supposed it had something to do with his youth (Jimmy was just twenty-two years old), or his outrageous good looks (Tony Curtis, with a little Gregory Peck thrown in), or the adorableness of his little dog, Otto-the miniature dachshund who was always at his side. I was pretty sure it didn’t have anything to do with his poetry. Or his dopey personality.
“You mean you actually miss having Jimmy around?” I asked, in disbelief. “You said you were bored with him-sick and tired of being his muse. You claimed you’d rather eat nails than have to listen to one more of his pompous recitations. You practically begged him to move back to his own apartment! Are you telling me you’ve had a total change of heart?”
Abby’s lips curled upward in a shameless smile. “Not total, just partial.”
She didn’t have to tell me which part had changed. “So, you miss having him at your beck and call in bed,” I said, trying not to sound too judgmental. “That’s easy to fix. Just give him a buzz and tell him to come back.”
“And subject myself to more boring poetry readings? You must be crazy!”
She hit a nerve with that one.
“You’re driving me crazy!” I cried, grabbing two fistfuls of my shoulder-length brown hair and pulling it out by the roots.
(Well, sort of, anyway. A few strands got caught in my fingernails and came loose from my scalp.) “I’ve had enough of this ridiculous conversation. I’m going back to bed. Lock the door on your way out.” I turned and headed for the stairs.
“No, Paige!” Abby cried. “Please don’t leave me! I wasn’t kidding before. I feel really, really lonely today, you dig? I don’t know why, but I do. And since Dan is away for the weekend, you must be lonely, too. Can’t we spend the day together? You could come with me to see Gray, then we could have lunch at Louis’, and then we could catch a movie at the Waverly. They’ve got air-conditioning.”
I’d never known Abby to be so blue. Her shoulders were sagging, her chin was drooping, and every breath she heaved was a hefty, heartbreaking sigh.
“Could we go to Chock Full instead of Louis’ for lunch?” I asked.
Her face flashed bright as a sun lamp. “Any place you say, babe!”
“Okay,” I said, heaving a hefty sigh of my own. “You make us some coffee. I’ll go get dressed.”
IT WAS A SHORT BUT SIZZLING WALK TO Gray’s apartment. Just ten thirty in the morning and already the temperature had climbed to 97.4 degrees. (At least that’s what Angelo’s outdoor thermometer had shown.) Abby and I were wearing our coolest, lightest street clothes-cotton capris, midriff halter tops, thin-strapped platform sandals-but we were wilting in the humid heat. My naturally wavy hair had curled into something resembling an eagle’s nest.
“You should have called first,” I said, as we were slogging across Seventh Avenue. “Maybe Gray is still sleeping. Maybe he doesn’t want any visitors. Jeez, he’s probably not even home!” Just call me a cockeyed optimist.
Abby grunted impatiently. “Knock it off, Paige. If he doesn’t want to see us, or if he’s not there, we can hop over to Washington Square Park and groove to the sights and sounds around the fountain. Jimmy might be there.”
Oh, great. Just what I want to do. Stand out in the blistering sun and pretend to be digging some fey young composer’s new folk song, or-worse-Jimmy Birmingham’s latest incomprehensible opus.
(The circular rim of the Washington Square Park fountain is, in case you didn’t know, Greenwich Village’s theater-in-the-round. Actually, some would call it the theater of the absurd. All the Village idiots-I mean, artists!-gather there to perform their music, poetry, monologues, or whatever, to a roaming, free-wheeling audience.)
Hoping that Gray would be at home and receptive to our unannounced appearance (thereby sparing me from the Washington Square fountain festivities), I quickened my pace across Seventh and followed Abby’s lead down Christopher Street. The sooner we could give Gray our congratulations, get to Chock Full, and then to the air-conditioned movie theater, the better.
Gray lived in a neat four-story brownstone. There were eight apartments in the building, and according to the numbers on the mailboxes in the entryway, Gray resided in 2B. Abby rang the appropriate buzzer, but there was no answer. She rang again. Still no reply.
“I knew he wouldn’t be home,” I said, with a loud harrumph. “How the devil did I ever let you talk me into this wild goose-”
Before I could finish my sentence, Abby moved her finger over to the buzzer for 2A and pressed it repeatedly.
“Go away!” a tinny male voice came over the intercom. “I’m not home. Unless you’re Rock Hudson, that is. Or Montgomery Clift. If you’re Rock or Monty, you can come on up. But be quick about it. I haven’t got all day!” Then, without another word (or any answer from us), he buzzed us in.
Abby gave me a puzzled but triumphant look, then promptly charged up the stairs to the second floor. I scooted up right behind her. “Gray’s probably in the shower,” she said, heading straight to the door marked 2B. “That’s why he didn’t hear us ringing. I bet he’ll hear me knocking, though!”
As she raised her balled fist in the air and prepared to begin banging, the door to 2A was pulled wide open. And out stepped one of the oddest-looking men I’d ever seen in my life. He was short, pudgy, uncommonly potbellied, and his thick blond hair was slicked back from his face with gobs of goopy pomade. His pug nose was dotted with freckles and his bulging blue eyes were as big as… well, radishes were the first things that came to mind. And you wouldn’t believe what he was wearing! It was a short, yellow silk kimono with black embroidery and a tasseled sash! On his feet were a pair of black satin slippers. I guessed him to be about forty.
“Omigod!” he squealed when he saw us. “Who are you? What do you think you’re doing?” He suddenly ducked back into his apartment and shielded himself behind the door. Just his head was sticking out. I could tell from the growing pink-ness on his pudgy cheeks that he was embarrassed to have been seen in his unusual… um… outfit. “I thought you were somebody else!” he said, speaking a bit louder than was necessary. “What happened? Did you ring my bell by mistake?”