In June, when the air pollution got very bad and the air carried the smell that sidewalks get when they are baked through every day, he began to complain that it was her fault that they were in New York and not in California. “But I just don’t like that way of life,” she said. “If I went there, I wouldn’t be happy.”
“What’s so appealing about this uptight New York scene?” he said. “You wake up in the night in a sweat. You won’t even walk through Washington Square Park anymore.”
“It’s because of that man with the crutches,” she said. “People like that. I told you it was only because of him.”
“So let’s get away from all that. Let’s go somewhere.”
“You think there aren’t people like that in California?” she said.
“It doesn’t matter what I think about California if I’m not going.” He clamped earphones on his head.
That same month, while she and Jack and Gus were sharing a pot of cheese fondue, she found out that Jack had a wife. They were at Gus’s apartment when Gus casually said something about Myra. “Who’s Myra?” she asked, and he said, “You know — Jack’s wife, Myra.” It seemed unreal to her — even more so because Gus’s apartment was such an odd place; that night Gus had plugged a defective lamp into an outlet and blown out a fuse. Then he plugged in his only other lamp, which was a sunlamp. It glowed so brightly that he had to turn it, in its wire enclosure, to face the wall. As they sat on the floor eating, their three shadows were thrown up against the opposite wall. She had been looking at that — detached, the way you would stand back to appreciate a picture — when she tuned in on the conversation and heard them talking about someone named Myra.
“You didn’t know?” Gus said to her. “Okay, I want you both out. I don’t want any heavy scene in my place. I couldn’t take it. Come on — I really mean it. I want you out. Please don’t talk about it here.”
On the street, walking beside Jack, it occurred to her that Gus’s outburst was very strange, almost as strange as Jack’s not telling her about his wife.
“I didn’t see what would be gained by telling you,” Jack said.
They crossed the street. They passed the Riviera Café. She had once counted the number of panes of glass across the Riviera’s front.
“Did you ever think about us getting married?” he said. “I thought about it. I thought that if you didn’t want to follow me to California, of course you wouldn’t want to marry me.”
“You’re already married,” she said. She felt that she had just said something very sensible. “Do you think it was right to—”
He started to walk ahead of her. She hurried to catch up. She wanted to call after him, “I would have gone!” She was panting.
“Listen,” he said, “I’m like Gus. I don’t want to hear it.”
“You mean we can’t even talk about this? You don’t think that I’m entitled to hear about it?”
“I love you and I don’t love Myra,” he said.
“Where is she?” she said.
“In El Paso.”
“If you don’t love her, why aren’t you divorced?”
“You think that everybody who doesn’t love his wife gets divorced? I’m not the only one who doesn’t do the logical thing, you know. You get nightmares from living in this sewer, and you won’t get out of it.”
“It’s different,” she said. What was he talking about?
“Until I met you, I didn’t think about it. She was in El Paso, she was gone — period.”
“Are you going to get a divorce?”
“Are you going to marry me?”
They were crossing Seventh Avenue. They both stopped still, halfway across the street, and were almost hit by a Checker cab. They hurried across, and on the other side of the street they stopped again. She looked at him, as surprised but as suddenly sure about something as he must have been the time he and his father had found the jewelry in the heart-shaped wooden box. She said no, she was not going to marry him.
It dragged on for another month. During that time, unknown to her, he wrote the song that was going to launch his career. Months after he had left the city, she heard it on her AM radio one morning, and she knew that it was his song, even though he had never mentioned it to her. She leashed the dog and went out and walked to the record shop on Sixth Avenue — walking almost the same route they had walked the night she found out about his wife — and she went in, with the dog. Her face was so strange that the man behind the cash register allowed her to break the rule about dogs in the shop because he did not want another hassle that day. She found the group’s record album with the song on it, turned it over and saw his name, in small type. She stared at the title, replaced the record and went back outside, as hunched as if it were winter.
During the month before he left, though, and before she ever heard the song, the two of them had sat on the roof of his building one night, arguing. They were having a Tom Collins because a musician who had been at his place the night before had brought his own mix and then left it behind. She had never had a Tom Collins. It tasted appropriately bitter, she thought. She held out the ring and the bracelet to him. He said that if she made him take them back, he would drop them over the railing. She believed him and put them back in her pocket. He said, and she agreed, that things had not been perfect between them even before she found out about his wife. Myra could play the guitar, and she could not; Myra loved to travel, and she was afraid to leave New York City. As she listened to what he said, she counted the posts — black iron and shaped like arrows — of the fence that wound around the roof. It was almost entirely dark, and she looked up to see if there were any stars. She yearned to be in the country, where she could always see them. She said she wanted him to borrow a car before he left so that they could ride out into the woods in New Jersey. Two nights later he picked her up at her apartment in a red Volvo, with Sam panting in the back, and they wound their way through the city and to the Lincoln Tunnel. Just as they were about to go under, another song began to play on the tape deck. It was Ringo Starr singing “Octopus’s Garden.” Jack laughed. “That’s a hell of a fine song to come on just before we enter the tunnel.” Inside the tunnel, the dog flattened himself on the back seat. “You want to keep Sam, don’t you?” he said. She was shocked because she had never even thought of losing Sam. “Of course I do,” she said, and unconsciously edged a little away from him. He had never said whose car it was. For no reason at all, she thought that the car must belong to a woman.