"Joseph, please come and eat before it gets cold. I'm a terrific cook. I made you seven hundred waffles, and you have to eat them all or you'll get a D."
"Are you a teacher?"
"Yes, indeed. Seventh-grade social studies." She made a wry face and flexed her muscles like a strongman in the circus.
She sat down at the table and picked up a fork. We both sat there and watched her hand shake. She slowly put it in her lap. "I'm sorry. Please, though, you go on and start eatin'. I'm sorry, but I'm still scared to death. It's sunny out, and it's over, and no one's goin' to get me now, but I'm scared. It's like havin' a bad chill, you know?"
"Karen, would you like it if I stayed with you today? I'd be glad to."
"Joseph, I would like that very very very very much. Which part of heaven did you say you came from?"
"Vienna."
"Vienna? That's where I was born!"
Vienna, Virginia. Her parents lived near there and raised greyhounds for dog racing. She said they were fine people who had both inherited so much money it confused them.
Karen went to Agnes Scott College in Georgia because her mother had gone there, but she hated everything except her history courses. Richard Hofstadter came to the college and gave a lecture on Jacksonian democracy. She was so overwhelmed by it that she instantly decided to transfer wherever he taught permanently, which turned out to be Columbia University in New York. Totally against her parents' wishes, she applied and was accepted at Barnard. Later she went on to get a master's degree in history at Columbia before she got tired of going to school. She liked New York so much that when she was finished she took a teaching job at a private girls' school in the lower sixties.
This all came out over the longest breakfast I'd ever eaten. I kept asking her questions so she wouldn't think about the night before. But you can eat only so many waffles. Staggering up from the table, I suggested through swollen cheeks that we go out for a walk. She agreed; it crossed my mind it would be nice to have a change of clothes, but I wasn't sure if I should leave her alone yet, so I went as I was.
The day was snappy cold, but it was clear for the first time since I'd arrived. West Seventy-second Street is a world in itself, and whatever you're looking for is usually there: cowboy boots, organic pasta, Japanese box kites . . . We promenaded up and down and spent a long time looking in store windows, comparing notes.
I fell in love with a pair of cowboy boots that she made me try on. I remembered Paul's story about the Austrians in the Vienna airport wearing them, but they were beautiful. I came close to buying them, until I found out they cost over a hundred and forty dollars.
We had lunch at a delicatessen. She had a hard time eating her corned beef sandwich because her lip was so sore, but she laughed and started purposely talking out of the corner of her mouth like Little Caesar.
"Awright now, Lennox. I told you enough about myself. What's the dope on you? You gonna open up or am I gonna have to pound it out of you? What's your story?"
"What would you like to hear?"
She looked at an imaginary wristwatch. "Your life story in one minute."
I told her a little about everything – Vienna, my writing, where I came from. When she listened, her eyes grew wide and excited. Without thinking, she touched me often when some part of my story moved or dismayed her. She said things like "No!" or "You've got to be kiddin'!" and I often found myself nodding to assure her that it was true.
An hour later we were having a glass of hot spiced wine at a glassed-in sidewalk cafй. We started talking about the theater; in a small voice I asked her if she had ever seen The Voice of Our Shadow.
"Seen it? Hoo, Joseph, I had to read that play for a drama class at Agnes Scott. I made the mistake of bringin' it home over vacation, and my daddy got hold of it. Wow! He picked it up and flew 'round the house like an eagle, yellin' about how they were makin' us young girls read books about juvenile delinquents and feelin' girls up! Hell, Joseph! I know all about that play!"
I changed the subject, but later, when I told her about my connection to the play, she smiled sadly and said it must be hard to be famous for something you didn't do.
The wine turned into a Cuban dinner and more talk. It had been a long time since I'd so comfortably shot the breeze and laughed and not worried about things. With India you quickly realized she expected you to speak well and interestingly because she was listening so carefully. A moment before you said anything, you were still shaping and polishing it so it would arrive in first-class condition. When I was around India, both before and after Paul died, every moment shook with such importance that I was sometimes afraid to move for fear I'd break something – the mood, the tone, whatever.
Here, on the other side of the world, Karen made you feel that with no effort at all you were the cleverest, wittiest devil in town and that laughter was meant to boom across a room and drain you of everything you had. Life wasn't easy, but it certainly could be fun. We made plans to see a movie together the next night.
We went to a revival of the original Lost Horizon. When we left the theater she was wiping her eyes with my handkerchief.
"I hate them, Joseph! All they have to do is throw me some violins and that old Ronald Colman and I'm a goner."
I wanted to take her arm, but I didn't. I looked at the sidewalk and felt glad she was there.
"I had this boyfriend a couple of months ago? He'd take me to movies like that and then get all mad when I started cryin'! Now, what did he expect me to do, take notes? New York intellectuals – ink for blood."
"Do you go with anyone special?"
"No, that fellow was my last big steady. Oh, you can go to parties. I even went to a singles' bar once, but I don't know, Joseph, who needs it? I get choosier the older I get. Is that a sign of senility? I go into one of those jittery places, and everybody's eyes are as big as TVs. It makes me all depressed."
"What was the name of your last steady?"
"Miles." She pronounced it "Molls." "He was a very big-time book editor. He gave me a rejection slip."
"Oh, yeah? Didn't he like your style?"
She looked at me and poked me in the ribs. Then she stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk and put her hands on her hips. "Do you really want to know or are you just makin' chitchat?"
People walked by with smirks and expressions that said they knew we were fighting. I told her I wanted to know. Sticking her hands back in her coat pockets, she started walking again.
"Miles wore his watch when we made love. Do you believe it? Drove me completely crazy. Why would someone do that, Joseph?"
"Do what, wear a watch? I never thought about it."
"Never thought – Joseph! Don't start makin' me upset. I have great hopes for you. No man should wear a watch when he's makin' love. What is he – on a schedule? What would you do if a woman came into bed wearin' a big Timex on her arm? Huh?" She stopped again and gave me the big stare.
"Karen, are you serious?"
"You bet I'm serious! Miles wore this big hundred-pound dive-bomb thing. Every time. It'd end up cuttin' me to pieces. Then I'd lose all the bliss because it was tickin' away at me."
"Karen . . ."
"Don't look at me like that. You're lookin' just the way he did when I told him about it. Listen – a woman wants to be taken and ravished and adored by a man. She wants to forget the world and leap right the hell off the edge! But not here – tick, tick, tick – it is seven-oh-eight and thirty seconds. You see what I mean?"
" 'Taken and ravished and adored'?"
"That's right. Don't start embarrassin' me – you asked."