There was a pause. She said, “Does he buy the necklace or does he just take his fixed fork and go home?”
“I don’t know. I assume he takes the paper towel that he’d wrapped his fork in and uses it to wipe you off and wipe off your necklace and then he buys it and gives it to you.”
“That’s good. He sounds like an honorable sort. A bit precipitate maybe. Um — would you excuse me for a second?”
“Sure.”
“I just — my mouth’s dry — I want to get some more—”
“Sure,” he said.
There was a long pause. She returned.
“It’s funny that you cast me as an arts-and-craftsy type,” she said.
“Not aggressively arts-and-craftsy. Are you?”
“Well, no. I’m really not, I don’t think. Do you have a ponytail?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then do you have an old-world smell?”
“I don’t think that would be the word for it.”
“I wonder what your smell is.”
“I’ve been told I smell like a Conté crayon,” he said.
“Hm.”
“Or I guess it was that I smelled like what a Conté crayon would smell like if it had a smell.”
“Well, that’s good to know,” she said. “Of course I have no idea what you’re talking about. But no, you know what your story reminded me of, when I was in the kitchen just now?”
“What?”
“I was in a museum in Rome with my mother, and we passed a statue that had all these discolorations on it, a nice statue of a woman, and my mother pointed to a sort of mottled area and she shook her head and said, ‘You see? It’s so realistic that men feel they have to …’ She didn’t explain. And I don’t know now if she was serious or not. I was — I guess I was eighteen. I thought, oh, okay, in churches in Italy, people wear down the toes of the statues of popes by touching them so much, and in museums in Italy, men come on the statues of women.”
“Yes,” he said, “I think I do remember coming on that statue. It’s all a blur, though. There were so many statues in those years.”
“Do you, as they say, like to travel?” she asked.
“You mean get in a plane and fly somewhere for recreation? No. I’ve never been to Rome. I spend my vacation money in more important ways.”
“Like this call.”
“That’s right. Now tell me, though, really, when your mother pointed out that statue, was it faintly arousing?”
“I don’t think it really was,” she said. “It was just interesting, an interesting sexual fact, like something in Ripley’s. I’m not, by the way, to get back to your story for a second, I’m not wearing a black undershirt under my shirt.”
“What are you wearing under your shirt?”
“A bra.”
“What kind of bra?”
“A nothing bra. A normal, white bra bra.”
“Oooo!”
“It’s shrunk slightly in the wash but it was my last clean one.”
“It’s always impressive to me that bras have to be washed like other clothes. Does it clip on the front or on the back?”
“The back.”
“Shouldn’t it come off?”
“I don’t think so,” she said.
“Oh, I can hear in your voice the sound of you frowning and pulling in your chin to look down at them! Oh boy.”
“Hah hah!”
“The idea of women looking down at their own breasts drives me nutso. They do it while they’re walking. Some walk with their arms sort of hovering in front of their breasts, or awkwardly crossed in front of them, or they pretend to hold the strap of their pocketbook so their hands are bent in front of them, or they pretend to be adjusting their watch, or their bracelets, and the fact that even fully clothed the helpless obviousness of their breasts is embarrassing to them drives me absolutely nutso.”
“They see you staring, with your eyes sproinging out of your skull, of course they’re embarrassed.”
“No, I’m very discreet. And this is only in certain moods, of course. Once I got into a wild state just standing at a bus stop. It was rush hour, and there were all these women driving to work, and they would drive by, and I would get this Hash, this briefest of glimpses, of the wide shoulder strap of their safety belt crossing their breasts. That thick, densely woven material, pulling itself tight right between them. That’s all I could see, hundreds of times, different colors of dresses, shirts, blouses, over and over, every bra size and Lycra-cotton balance imaginable, like frames of a movie. By the time the bus came, I was literally unsteady, I could barely get the fare in the machine. What’s that noise?”
“Nothing. I was just changing the phone to the othe ear.”
“Oh,” he said. “Did you see that thing about the Chinese kid who suffered an episode of spontaneous human combustion?”
“No.”
“You really missed something. It was originally in one of the tabloids, I think, but I heard about it on the radio. You know about spontaneous human combustion, right?”