The apartment was huge, with wall-to-wall carpeting, steel-colored, and a great view of the city. Eight or ten people were sitting on pigskin sofas around the living room, wearing frosty, pale cottons and linens, and gave off a certain New York type of elegance, as if they were in a photo session for a Blooming-dale's catalog. The room was stuffy with perfume and conditioned air. I shook hands with the various middle-aged men and women. Though the room was crowded, I felt like shouting out, "Hello, is anybody home?" These people seemed so smooth, correct, as if they were leading their lives according to standards set by Better Homes and Gardens.
Ray's mother insisted I go with her into the bedroom. She was frisky and plump, with hair the shade of cedar chips, and told me right away that she ran an independent film company —she ran the New York office for her brother, anyway—and Ray's father designed mattresses, one of which was now in the Museum of Modern Art.
In her bedroom, clothing was piled several feet deep on the floor. That morning, she told me, she had had a woman come over and go through her wardrobe to show her how to wear her stuff: what skirts she should throw out, which old sweaters went with newer things, what she should buy. The woman charged $150 for two hours, but her assistance was worth it. I thought for a minute Mrs. Connors was going to offer to give me her old dresses—which I would have happily accepted— but all she wanted was to show me some slacks which she still thought were nice but which the woman insisted she get rid of.
It made me nervous to think I wasn't envious of this sort of lifestyle. What could be wrong with me? Had I no cravings for a milky-white fur coat, an ice cream maker to spin gelato from invisible threads—or whatever it was those machines did—or a baby with hot, sweaty palms to cling to me like a marsupial? Aside from somebody's old clothes, I couldn't think of anything to want: I even lacked the desire to go on a macrobiotic diet and have my cards read by an Indian master. Once I had read about a person who had had a lobotomy—I could empathize with this, at least when I was in the presence of others.
We went into the terra-cotta-tiled kitchen, whose ceiling was covered with hanging stainless-steel pots and pans. Ray's father came in and kissed my hand. Mr. Connors had iron-gray hair and was really good-looking: he was taller than Ray, and very sexy. I imagined him as my father-in-law, chasing me around the sofa late at night. He made me a Tom Collins and told me how he could converse with their cat—a Maine coon cat weighing at least twenty-five pounds. I thought he might mention something about Ray, but Mr. Connors seemed almost to have forgotten him. I liked Ray's parents much better than Ray. Despite their ostentation, they seemed younger than Ray, and livelier.
When Ray came back into the kitchen, his father gave him a slap on the back.
"Jesus, Dad," Ray said. "My back! I'm already in agony, and you're trying to kill me."
Ray's parents wanted us to stay and have dinner with them after the guests left, but Ray said he was taking me out to a Japanese restaurant nearby. I had never had Japanese food before, so Ray decided to order portions of everything: chunks of raw tuna, abalone, mackerel, some stuffed into rice and wrapped in seaweed, more lying pinkly on little wooden tablets with legs. Pieces of fish flopped from my chopsticks. To cover up I gulped the plum wine. I felt like I was being forced into recreating a bout of seasickness I had once experienced on a boat trip. "You didn't try the California-make," Ray said. He dabbed a piece of sashimi into a dish of green mustard and wiggled it in front of my nose. I realized my palms were sweating. I wondered how much this whole business was going to cost. My mother and I had been broke our whole lives; I had a loan from Yale that barely covered my expenses. Ray would probably expect some form of compensation for this meal, this much I knew from past dinners with men. I tried to put it out of my mind.
We had nothing to talk about, though Ray told me more about Max, the cat, and his younger brother. Then he fell silent and stared down at his hands. I thought of a few topics: my courses at Yale, my feminist professor. Ray didn't seem very interested. I mentioned my father, whom I hadn't seen in twenty years. My parents had been divorced when I was four. My father, whom my mother called "Captain Ahab," had remarried and moved to New Zealand in order to avoid nuclear fallout. There was a thirty-three-percent chance that New Zealand wouldn't be affected. But Ray apparently wasn't listening; his eyes wandered to his reflection in the mirror behind me and he reached across the table and jabbed my elbow with a chopstick.
I pretended this hadn't happened and Ray asked for the check. Before he paid with his charge card, I got a look at how much the dinner had cost: two weeks' worth of groceries. The food was barely touched. I wasn't used to eating so well. At night, alone in my apartment, I ate a takeout sandwich from a vegetarian place up the block, of lima beans with melted mozzarella cheese. By eleven-thirty I had said good night to Ray and was back on the train to New Haven, a takeout paper bag in my hand.
A few nights later Ray called to ask if he could drop by. I was surprised to hear from him; though I hadn't felt any elementary particles hopping between us, I decided to go to bed with him. The prospect seemed somewhat boring, but I thought I might as well get it over with. Perhaps I'd be fonder of him if something physical happened between us.
When Ray showed up, he had a carload of furniture from his apartment to give me: two chests of teak, with many tiny drawers and compartments, three chairs, an expensive floor lamp, very modern. "When will you need this back?" I said. I assumed he was just lending it to me, or storing it with me for the moment.
"No, it's for you," Ray said.
"For keeps?" I said.
"Yeah, yeah," Ray said. "My father has a whole warehouse of furniture." He looked pleased.
After carrying the furniture upstairs we went out to an espresso place a block away. Cappuccino coffee was two dollars, so I had never gone there. I had one of the coffees with whipped cream, and a big piece of carrot cake. I ate the cake eagerly, cramming it into my mouth as if it were a drug, somehow feeling this would give me strength for whatever was to happen with Ray. "I like to watch you eat," Ray said, looking at me dreamy-eyed. I wiped off my chin with a napkin; the cake had abruptly become quite tasteless.
Ray stopped at his car to get a bottle of wine out of the trunk. He put his arm around my shoulder as we walked back to my apartment. It was after midnight. I sat on one of the twin beds; it had no frame, just a mattress and box spring on the floor. Ray sat on a chair, uncorking the wine. I figured either he'd make a move and I'd go to bed with him, or he should go home. I was tired. Once again, I felt we had nothing to say to each other, but Ray told me the plot of a movie he had just seen. This is a symptom. I've noticed how any time a man tells me the plot of a movie, it is a kind of declaration of love.
After about fifteen minutes, just as I was ready to suggest he leave, Ray went over to the closet. He took off his shoes and socks and put on my favorite pair of high heels, red leather pumps. "How do I look?" he said.
A wave of rage rose within me. He walked all around the apartment in my shoes. I didn't dare say, "Listen, Ray, you're going to stretch out my favorite shoes," because he had just given me all that furniture, and I didn't want to embarrass him. My mother always said, "Lend people your clothes, but don't wear other people's shoes or lend yours, because your shoes conform to your feet and other people's feet are different shapes and will stretch them out." Ray didn't have very large feet, but I just didn't see how he could fit them into my shoes, which were definitely small. I didn't have the money to replace them, anyway.