Although I don’t even know her, David thinks.
How can I love someone I don’t even know?
“I couldn’t believe we were doing it right on the office couch,” Stanley says. “I’m so ashamed of myself.”
He does not, in all truth, appear terribly ashamed of himself. He is, in fact, beaming from ear to ear as he makes this admission, wearing tonight the same beachcomber outfit he wore to Cats, but perhaps it’s the only good beachcomber outfit he owns. The same khaki slacks, and rumpled plaid sports jacket, the same brown loafers without socks again, the same white button-down shirt open at the throat, no tie. David is positive it’s the same shirt because there are still stains on it from the duckling à l’orange Stanley ordered that night. His beard has grown several thousandths of an inch since then, but it is still an unsightly tangle of hairs of another color. His grin appears in these incipient whiskers like a flasher opening a raincoat; Stanley is proud of the fact that he seduced a nineteen-year-old patient on his office couch.
“I leave for Hatteras on the twenty-ninth,” he says now, the smile vanishing to be replaced by what he supposes is a look of abject sorrow but which comes across as a clown’s painted-on mask of tragedy, the mouth downturned, the eyes grief-stricken. “I haven’t told her yet. I don’t think she knows that psychiatrists take the month of August off, I don’t think she’s read the Judith Rossner novel.”
Has Kate read the Rossner novel? David wonders.
“I don’t know how to tell her,” Stanley says.
But haven’t you already told all your patients? David wonders. Haven’t you been preparing them all along for the traumatic month-long separation to come, more than a month, actually, since sessions won’t begin again till the day after Labor Day, the fifth of September?
I have to tell Kate, he thinks.
“I don’t want to go,” Stanley says. “If I can find some excuse to stay in the city, I’d do it in a minute, hmm? Can you imagine being on my own here for an entire month, no patients to worry about, Gerry way the hell down there in North Carolina, just me and Cindy Harris...”
Might as well break all the rules of the profession while you’re at it, Stan.
“...rollicking in the hay up here? Oh God, I’d give my life for that. A whole month with her? More than a month? I’d give my left testicle.”
The men fall silent for several moments. The swirl of pedestrian traffic engulfs them. A buzz of conversation hovers on the thick summer air, snatches of words and phrases floating past as they move silently through the crowd. David is wondering whether it would, in fact, be possible to find some reason to stay in the city during the month of August... well, certainly not the entire month, but perhaps part of the month... no patients to worry about, just him and...
And realizes that Stanley is undoubtedly wondering the same thing.
And wonders how there’s any difference, really, between the two of them.
“Would you be willing to alibi me?” Stanley asks.
“Alibi you? What do you mean?”
“If I said, for example, that I had to come down for a conference or something. A seminar, for example. Whatever.”
“I don’t think I could...”
“Because I know I can’t stay here the whole damn month, Dave. I’m just looking for an excuse to come up for a week or so, hmm? Even two, three days.”
“Stanley, there are no conferences in August.”
“We could invent one. Or a seminar. Something.”
“I don’t think...”
“A series of lectures. Anything.”
“Stanley...”
“Somebody visiting from England or wherever the hell. Australia. Some big psychiatrist taking advantage of his summer vacation.”
“It’s winter in Australia.”
“Wherever. He’s here by invitation, France, wherever. They take August off in France, don’t they?”
“Well, yes, but...”
“Italy maybe. He’s from Italy. They take August off there, too, am I right?”
“Yes.”
“There are psychiatrists in Italy, maybe this one is a big shot who’s been invited here to speak to a select group of people, hmm? You, me, a handful of other shrinks Gerry doesn’t know. Helen, either, I guess. If it’s going to work. I mean, if you’re willing to alibi me, that is. It would have to be people neither of them know. The lecturer could be giving...”
“Stanley, really, I couldn’t possibly...”
“...a series of lectures, who the hell knows where?” Stanley says, stroking his scraggly beard and narrowing his eyes like Fagin about to send his little gangsters out to pick pockets. “Let’s say they start in the middle of the week, hmm, the lectures, a Wednesday night, let’s say, and they continue through Friday night, three lectures in all, I’ve seen plenty of programs like that, I don’t think something like that would sound too far-fetched. That would make it reasonable to come up on the Tuesday before and stay till Saturday morning. Four full days and nights with her, Jesus, I’d take a suite at the Plaza, I swear to God, fuck her every hour on the hour, go back down to Hatteras on Saturday morning. I think that would work, you know? I honestly think it would work, Dave. But only if...”
“I couldn’t lie to Helen that way,” David says.
“You’re my best friend, Dave.”
Sure, David thinks.
“At least think about it, will you?” Stanley says.
“Well, I’ll think about it.”
“Will you promise to think about it?”
“I promise, yes.”
“You don’t know how much it would mean to me, Dave.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Please.”
“I will.”
But he already knows it would work.
Curtain is at eight o’clock. The show lets out at ten-thirty. He tries her again at eleven and then again at eleven-thirty. When she does not call by midnight, he begins to believe he will never see her again.
He falls asleep wondering if Especially Ron, the Herpes King, has resurfaced.
The telephone rings at one o’clock in the morning.
He fumbles for the ringing phone in the dark, thinking at once that something has happened to Helen or the kids, a terrible accident, someone has drowned, knocking the receiver off the cradle, finding it again in the dark, picking it up, “Hello?”
“Hi.”
He does not know whether to feel irate or relieved. He does not turn on the light. He does not want to know what time it is, but he asks immediately, “What time is it?” and she says, “One, a little after one, am I waking you?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Oooo,” she says, “angry.”
He wonders if she’s been drinking.
“I’ve been calling you,” he says.
“All those hangups,” she says, “and no messages.”
“I didn’t know who might be listening with you.”
“Who do you think might be listening with me?”
There is a silence on the line.
He waits, hoping she will be the first one to speak again. The silence becomes unbearable. He wonders if she will hang up.
“Where were you?” he asks.
“When?”
“Well, for starters, how about all day long?”
“Oooo, angry, angry,” she says.
There is another silence, longer this time, broken at last by an exaggeratedly tragic sigh and then the sound of her voice again. “First, I went to see my agent,” she says. “That was at ten o’clock, but I slept late and had to rush out, which is why I couldn’t call you before I left the apartment. Anyway, I left at twenty to, and my window of opportunity wouldn’t have been till ten to, correct, Doctor? After my agent... he thinks he may have a movie for me, by the way, not that I guess it matters to you in your present frame of mind. Anyway, after my meeting with him, I went to my Wednesday morning dance class, I have dance three times a week. Then I went to the theater for the matinee performance, and had a sandwich and did a little shopping with a girlfriend afterwards, and went back to the apartment to drop off the things I’d bought, and then I took a nap, and let me see, I went out for a carrot shake, alone, at that health food deli on Fifty-seventh, and walked to the theater to get ready for the evening performance. Then I did the show, naturally, and went out for a bite with some of the kids afterwards, and then I came home. And here I am.”