“Yes. Brandy.”
“I’ll have one with you. Ordinarily I drink only bourbon and water, but I’m not feeling ordinary this evening.” He turned to the waiter. “Two sidecars,” he said.
The waiter moved over to the bar, which was not many steps away. She thought, looking at Tyler, that he was certainly a man who never felt ordinary at any time, this evening or any other. His face, she decided at first, was the face of an ascetic, which he surely was not, his nose aquiline and his mouth finely fashioned, suggesting sensuality in conflict with the asceticism. Ascetic, as a matter of fact, was not quite the adjective with which to describe his appearance. She sought the proper adjective in her mind and decided that it was sentient. He was a man aware, possibly in some respects, vulnerable. The waiter brought their sidecars, and she sipped hers hungrily, controlling an urge to drink it right down. It was cold and good, the tart liquid accented pleasantly by the sugared rim of the glass.
“Do you know why I waited so long to contact you again?” he said.
“I heard that you were out of town. Mr. Joslin told me.”
“So I was. For about ten days. That is not why I waited, however. Or rather, it is, like the waiting itself, part of the effect of the cause.”
“I don’t follow that, I’m afraid. Anyhow, I assume that it takes quite a long while to decide about making such a loan.”
“Frankly, I haven’t yet definitely decided about the loan. I’m considering it.”
“Is that why you wanted to see me? Just to tell me that you haven’t decided?”
“If that had been all I wanted, I could have told you over the telephone. Shall I be perfectly honest with you? I am not incapable of subtlety and indirection when it is necessary, but I have an idea that you would prefer to have me say bluntly what is on my mind.”
“Yes, I would prefer that.”
“All right. I wanted to see you simply for the pleasure of seeing you, and I waited so long to do it because I wanted it too much.”
“Is that being blunt? It sounds rather devious to me.”
“I don’t think so, and I don’t think you think so, either. However, I can be even blunter. I have not met anyone in many years who has interested me as you have. Do you remember the day I came to your shop with Harriet? Afterward, I kept thinking about you and wishing that I might meet you again under different circumstances. Then you came to my office about the loan, and I thought that the second meeting might cure the first, but it didn’t. It only accelerated my regression to adolescence. Am I now being too blunt?”
“No, you are not being too blunt, but I can’t understand why you should consider it adolescent to be interested in a woman.”
“The quality of my interest was adolescent, and still is. If it were not, I could try to seduce you and be done with it. It involves the most exquisite misery and a kind of masochistic passion for bondage. I am much too old to feel so young — so I have waited for the passing of an emotional condition I had thought and hoped I would never feel again, and thought, when it came, that I could never sustain. But it hasn’t passed. It hasn’t even diminished. Consequently, if I must feel like a schoolboy, I have decided that I can at least react to the feeling like an adult. So I called you, and so we are here drinking sidecars, and how do you feel about it?”
“I feel relaxed and quite flattered, and the sidecars are excellent.”
“That strikes me as being an evasion.”
“If it is, it is only temporary, to give me time to understand what you are saying. Are you asking me to have an affair with you?”
“Not yet.” He smiled and shook his head. “I am only asking you if you would consider giving us an opportunity to decide sensibly, after a while, whether an affair for us would be mutually acceptable.”
“Merely to see you and go out with you? Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. In the beginning, no more than a friendly relationship without commitments on either side, so that we can decide later what we want to do.”
“It sounds rather bloodless.”
“Believe me, I don’t feel bloodless. Quite the contrary. I only want, as a regressed adult feeling strangely uncertain in his regression, to be reasonably sure that neither of us makes a mess of things for himself or the other.”
“What about your wife? I have a feeling that she wouldn’t appreciate such an arrangement, even in the early stage before anything is decided.”
He smiled thinly, looking down into the shallow bulb of his glass, which was now empty. She thought that his mouth, after the thin smile left, was distorted briefly by a twist of bitterness, but she couldn’t be sure because his face was obscured by the inclination of his head.
“That needn’t concern either you or me,” he said. “Since I have proposed such an arrangement to you, however, I am rather obligated to assure you that Harriet and I made our own decision and established our own arrangement quite a long, long time ago. It has worked, in a way, and neither of us is likely to disturb it.”
As it was with Aaron, she thought. Probably it develops from different conditions, but in the end it comes to the same default. Is it going to be my part indefinitely to serve as compensation for inadequate wives?
“All right,” she said. “I don’t ask you to tell me anything that won’t concern me. There is something else, though, that concerns me a great deal, and I am wondering about it.”
“What’s that?”
“The loan. Does it depend upon my response to your proposal?”
“In other words, am I trying to bribe you? No. I’m not overly scrupulous, but I’m sure that I’m not doing that. Let’s put it this way. If we were later to decide to go ahead with this, I’d certainly establish you in the shop. That’s assured. If either one or both of us did not decide to go ahead, I might or might not make the loan, or invest in the shop myself. It would depend upon other factors entirely.”
“Well, that is clear enough, and it is also fair.”
“I’ve tried to be both, and I’m glad that you think I’ve succeeded. Do you want some time to consider your answer?”
“No. I have already decided. I won’t pretend that I’m offended by your proposal, for the truth is that I feel flattered. I can’t see that I have anything to lose from an arrangement that demands no commitments, at least in the beginning, and from which I can withdraw if I choose.”
“I see that you have an analytical mind. I’m beginning to be convinced that I would make no mistake, regardless of our personal relationship, in supporting you as a business woman.”
“I’m a good designer and a good business woman, and if it comes to it, I’ll be a good mistress.”
He laughed with genuine pleasure and lifted his empty glass.
“You have ended our discussion perfectly, and anything else would be a detraction. I suggest that we have another sidecar, and go to dinner afterward.”
“I agree to the sidecar, but I am not dressed for dinner.”
“You are dressed well enough for the place I’ll take you. I warn you at the beginning that I patronize only plain places. I drink in this plain place, where the drinks are good, and I eat in a plain place, where the food is good, and I drive a plain Chevrolet car which gets me from one place to another as well as a Cadillac would. By others, these preferences are considered affectations, and I dare say they are.”
“Not necessarily. Perhaps they are signs of humility.”
“Oh, nonsense. I’m a monstrous egoist, and they are certainly affectations. If I were poor and couldn’t afford it, I’d eat and drink in expensive places and drive a Cadillac at least.”
“Well, however that may be, I agree to eat with you in a plain place and go there with you in a plain Chevrolet.”