An Available Man (29 page)

“Why don’t I come out to see you?” she said.

“I’m not great company right now,” he told her. “And there are things I have to take care of.”

“But don’t you want someone to cheer you up?”

“You’re sweet,” he said, “but, no, really, I’m fine.”

He had the body cremated and let the vet dispose of the ashes. Nick and Amanda commiserated with Edward together on the phone, while their dog yipped frantically in the background. Only Mildred and Julie paid condolence calls that evening. Mildred pulled out the vacuum cleaner in the middle of her visit and cleared the rugs and furniture of dog hair. When she left, she took the few battered rubber toys and the food and water bowls with her.

By the time Julie arrived, only the leash and collar were left, enough to set off an anguished moan from her. Edward supposed she was lamenting the puppy she’d once considered her own, or feeling guilty about so carelessly abandoning him later. Maybe Bingo’s death was a reminder of her own mortality.
Margaret
,
are you grieving
 …, he thought. But her sorrow wasn’t just for herself. “Poppy, now you’re all alone!” she cried.

He could have assured her that he wasn’t, really, but he didn’t think this was the right time to tell her about Laurel, although if she were there, as she’d wanted to be, no explanations would have been necessary. He maneuvered the conversation to Julie’s life—her job, her boyfriends. She was thinking of applying to law school, something Bee had encouraged her to do. And money her mother had left her would help make that possible.
“That sounds good,” Edward said, with cautious optimism; Julie had considered law school in the past.

She was still seeing both Andrew and Todd, and she’d gone on a blind date the week before. No one had asked her to be exclusive, she said, and she didn’t want to limit her options right now. Edward tried not to appear as impatient and judgmental as he felt. Anything he said might tip her in the wrong direction.

After she was gone, he checked his email, and beneath the ads from Sears and Staples and Amazon, there was a letter from Olga. “Edward,” she’d written, “Sybil told me about your dog, and then cleverly offered your email address, but believe me I’m not doing her bidding. I intended to write, anyway, to say how sorry I am. It’s what you bargain for when you get a dog, I guess, but some of us never learn. Thanks again for that fine dinner last week. My best to you and Laurel. Olga”

Before he went to bed that night, he wrote back to say that he’d enjoyed having dinner with her, too. He thanked her for allowing him that special visit to the conservation lab, and for her kind note about Bingo. Did she still have a dog?

A question begs an answer, and early the following morning there was one. She had a seven-year-old pug, a heavy breather named Josie, for the Empress Josephine, whose own pug was said to have carried secret messages to Napoleon in prison. What breed had Bingo been?

Just a mutt, he wrote back, or a composite, to quote Mark Twain. And that was that.

Edward checked the computer for new messages a couple of times before he had coffee. He deleted a fresh round of ads and took a shower. He began to regret not having gone in to work now that his “urgent personal business” was finished. His students would be tormenting some pitiful substitute teacher by now.

And it was another dazzling spring day, too good to waste moping around indoors. He put his birding journal and binoculars in his backpack and started to drive to Greenbrook. But as soon as he got onto the parkway, the traffic slowed, and then kept stopping and starting; there seemed to be an accident ahead. Edward remembered what Olga had said about Central Park, about getting her fill of greenness there. It was an excellent birding site, too. He got off at the next exit and headed south, toward the bridge.

He found a garage on 84th Street between Park and Lexington and started walking in the direction of the park. As he was approaching Fifth Avenue, he thought of calling Laurel—how surprised and pleased she’d be—to ask her to meet him. That evening, he imagined, she would wear the terrific little black dress he’d bought for her at Saks, at what had turned out to be an astonishingly high reduced price. He’d even taken his phone from his pocket, but then he saw the museum, with its brilliant banners and populated steps, and he put the phone away and changed course.

Edward chose a place for himself close to where he’d sat with Olga. The steps were sun-warmed as they’d been the previous Friday, and the only birds in sight were the freeloading pigeons, pecking and cooing around his feet. Again he closed his eyes and turned his face upward. He could hear people nearby speaking in German or Dutch, laughing, and he remembered lying in bed as a boy, listening to his parents talking in the next room, in what had seemed like a foreign language when he was on the verge of sleep. He didn’t know how long he’d been sitting there when he felt himself cast in shadow. “Hey, what are you doing here?” someone said. When he opened his eyes, Elliot Willets was standing above him.

This time Elliot asked Edward to join him for a meal, for
lunch, right there on the steps. He said that Ollie would be down in a few minutes, too. By the time the two men had climbed back up the steps with hot dogs and soft drinks, Olga was sitting and waiting for them in what she’d described the week before as heaven. She didn’t seem as startled as Elliot had been to see Edward. “Hello,” she said. “Do you have a reservation?”

My Old Flame

A
fter lunch, they strolled into the park, where pedestrians, bicyclists, and skateboarders went by in a constant stream, as if everyone in the world was a truant from obligation. “Green enough for you?” Olga asked Edward, her tone like a poke in his ribs. The lawns and the foliage were intensely green—the word
verdant
came to mind.

“Milady considers this her own private garden,” Elliot said, “but she deigns to let the peasants in.”

“Gee, thanks, Ollie,” Edward said. Her nickname had just slipped out. “Nice place you have here. Who’s your landscaper?”

“Oh, Cézanne, most of the time. Sometimes Sisley.”

Elliot and Olga couldn’t venture too far or stay very long; they had to return to work, and Edward was torn between walking back with them to the Met to look at some actual Cézannes
and Sisleys, and going farther into the park. Finally, nature won out over renderings of nature, and he shook hands with the other two and followed the path he was on for a while, then veered off to the left and kept on going.

He used to know Central Park pretty well when he lived in the city. He and Laurel had picnicked in the Sheep Meadow, and attended concerts and performances of Joe Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park.
Twelfth Night
under the stars! And they’d cheered together for the Fenton soccer team on one of the playing fields.

Now Edward wandered around and found Cleopatra’s Needle again, and gazed up at that imposing statue of the king of Poland on his horse. Then he went looking and listening for the birds. There were many to be found that afternoon: a magnolia warbler singing in couplets, a couple of rose-breasted grosbeaks, thrushes and wrens—and whole families of Canada geese and mallards floating on Turtle Pond, where dragonflies and damselflies darted and hung suspended in air. All of those creatures, even the common house sparrows and rock pigeons, gave Edward a sense of peace and pleasure. He sat under a tree on the low stone wall near the pond and entered them in his journal, adding a few notes about the park itself.

Then he took out his cell phone. There were two missed calls, both of them from Laurel, but she hadn’t left any messages. The phone had vibrated in his pocket a couple of times while he was sitting on the museum steps having lunch, and he’d chosen to ignore it. Now he dialed Laurel’s number. “Edward,” she said, “I’ve been trying to reach you. Where have you been?”

“You didn’t leave a message,” he said.

“Of course I did, two of them, in fact.”

“You mean at home?”

“Well, that’s where I
thought
you were, where you
said
you’d be.”

“I know,” he said. “But I changed my mind; I’m in the city, actually.”

“Oh? Did you decide to go to work?”

“No, I came in to do some birding, to take my mind off things.”

“But when did you get in, and where are you?”

“I’m in Central Park.” But as he said it, he didn’t picture any of the good times they’d had there when they were young. He just saw himself being chased by her that day at MoMA, and ending up under a similar tree in similar flickering sunlight. “I’m feeling better,” he said, although she hadn’t asked. He might have been referring to that other time, to his gradual recovery from overwhelming rage and misery. “And I want to see you,” he added.

There was a brief dead silence, and he wondered if the connection had been lost. “Laurel?” he said.

“I’m still here,” she said, seeming to convey a lifetime of waiting.

“Shall I come downtown?” he asked.

Another silence before she said, “I made other plans, but I suppose I could change them.”

Edward had a rush of remorse. He’d been selfish, unfair, keeping her at the end of a string he could pull or loosen at will. And she’d been pretty patient with him, for Laurel. Was he still just being cautious, or was he punishing her for past sins without admitting it, even to himself? “I don’t want to mess up your plans,” he said.

“It’s all right, I guess,” she said. “Why don’t you come by about seven?”

Edward looked at his watch. It was just past three thirty. He’d hoped to ransom his car from the garage and drive downtown, where he might have been lucky enough to find a parking spot on the street. His back was beginning to ache and he felt tired. He wanted to take a hot shower and lie on Laurel’s bed with her. They could have napped together afterward before going out to dinner. That morning he’d imagined her in the little black dress, but he was wearing chinos and a faded old T-shirt. He looked down at his clunky, scuffed hiking boots. And he’d neglected to shave for the last couple of days. He hadn’t really thought any of it through, and then he’d made that detour to the museum.

Now he had to kill over three hours. He considered finding a movie in the neighborhood to fill the time, or checking to see if Frances or Bernie was at Bruno’s. The Met was still open, so he could have gone back there, but none of those options really appealed to him. When he’d finished talking to Laurel, he called Julie at her midtown office and asked if she could take a long coffee break in half an hour or so. She was as surprised as Laurel had been to discover that he was in the city, but she sounded much happier to hear from him. “Sure,” she said. “It’s Friday, so my boss is long gone. I’ll meet you at the Starbucks on the corner.”

He had to put his car in another garage a few blocks from the Starbucks, and he was dragging his feet by the time he got there. She was waiting for him, sipping from some elaborate frozen concoction at a table against the wall. “Poppy!” she called. When he approached, she rose and kissed his cheek with cold, foamy lips. “Ouch, you need a shave,” she said. “And you look like a mountain man.”

“The birds didn’t mind,” he said. He ordered coffee for himself and a pastry they could share and sat across from her.
Before she could begin their usual chitchat, or a litany of the highlights and low moments of her life, he said, “Jules, I want to tell you something.”

She put her hand to her breast. “You’re not sick or anything, are you?” she said. Her face paled, the way it had in those moments right before he’d told her about Bee.

“No, no. I’m as healthy as a horse.” What a stupid expression. And why was he reduced to clichés? He merely wanted to open up a little, to stop treating her like the needy child she no longer was. “It’s good news, really. I’ve started dating again.”

“You have?” she said. “Well, that
is
good news. Anybody I know?” Now she clapped her forehead. “That was dumb. I don’t know anybody you could date, do I?” Before he could answer, she said, “So, are you exclusive?”

Another stupid expression. Edward thought of a realtor’s
FOR SALE
sign on a lawn in his Englewood neighborhood, offering the property as a “co-exclusive.” He didn’t know how to respond. He hadn’t been seeing anyone besides Laurel, but they’d never discussed an official arrangement. Maybe it was about time. Yet shouldn’t he talk to Laurel about it first?

“Not really, not yet,” he said. “But the woman I’m seeing later is someone … well, not someone you know, exactly, but you spoke to her once on the phone.”

Julie looked blankly at him for an instant and then she cried, “Your old flame, Laura!”

A riff of that wonderful standard came into his head:
My old flame
,
I can’t even think of her name
 … He didn’t bother correcting Julie; she’d get it right eventually. “That was a very long time ago,” he said, implying that the flame wasn’t eternal, that it may have burned itself out. “But yeah.”

Julie wasn’t deterred by his reticence. “Still …,” she said. Then, “Hey, we could double-date sometime!”