Cheapskate in Love (12 page)

Tanya couldn’t see Bill’s wristwatch, which was covered by
his sleeve cuff, so she interrupted his prophetic utterances regarding their
fate. “Do you have the time,” she asked.

Bill raised his hand and pushed back his cuff. “It’s...”

“Is that a Rolex?” she asked, leaning closer to look. “Can I
see?”

Gratified to feel her move closer, Bill raised his left arm
for her to see the wristwatch. She pulled his wrist nearer to get a better
view.

His head became rather light when she touched him, but he
managed to say, “This thing? Nah. This isn’t a Rolex. I got it on the street.
Talked the guy down ten dollars. Only had to pay forty.”

She let go of his wrist and sat back in her seat. Rich
people can be eccentric, she thought, and they can take pride in wearing cheap
clothes, bargain wristbands, and hair disasters. But to her, it seemed less and
less likely that Bill was
well-off
. Yet he did seem
rather eccentric, or maybe that was how poverty made him appear. She had to
find out whether he was rich or poor. Rich and poor men could act the same, she
had seen, but she had to know for sure. Her self-interest was at stake. “You
must have lots of investments,” she suggested, encouragingly.

“No. Not really. The ex-wife got most of what I had,” he
admitted. “The divorce judge liked her. Thought she was the victim. It didn’t
matter what I said. Every time I opened my mouth, the judge just gave her more
and more. I learned why people say justice is blind. I learned that very well.
It’s blind, deaf, and dumb.” Bill was happy to tell Tanya all the
details,
because of the interest she was showing in him,
which he thought flowed from her swelling affection for him and naïve
understanding of how the world operated. He was going to tell the cuddly,
little kitten all she wanted to know.

“Do you have a big house?” Tanya asked. Her interest in
hearing what he had to say was noticeably waning.

“No, I live in an apartment.”

“Which you own?” she wondered.

“I rent.
Nothing to worry about as a
renter.
The person above me comes in late at night, sometimes wakes me
up with his stomping, but that’s the only problem. Maybe if I wrote the person
a note, the noise would stop. Now, I throw my shoes at the ceiling, and nothing
happens.”

“Is it a two- or three-bedroom?”

“It’s a studio, a big studio. There’s a lot of closet space
and a full-size kitchen. It’s nice.
Very clean, very tidy.
The place feels
very spacious
. You
would like it.” Because Bill was conscious that living in a studio was always
viewed as a weak point, he felt compelled to embellish the truth a little. As
he well knew, contrary to what he implied, the apartment was rarely in the
state that it was at the moment. With time, it would return to its typical
dirtiness and disorganization. However, what he said wasn’t a lie, only an
embellishment of what he thought would please Tanya and
help
clinch his courtship of her.

She, however, had become quite disillusioned. In the catalog
of his net worth, which she was recording in her mind, there were no assets
yet. A clean and tidy studio didn’t even reckon into her accounting, except as
a negative outflow. In her native country, such an apartment might be a prized
place to live in, but she wasn’t in her native country, and she didn’t want to
go back there. She had to find out if he had any income and what that amounted
to. What other reason, she asked herself, did she have for talking to him?

Without blinking, she looked directly at him and bluntly
asked, “How much do you make?”

Bill was bewildered by this question. He paused. His hands
dropped to his lap, and he looked at her, as if he saw her for the first time.
He thought he had been leading this beautiful, young woman into the wonderful
land of romance, where men and women lose themselves in mists of enjoyment,
leaving their petty cares behind. He had already been thinking of what
gifts—economical, of course—he might buy her and what nice,
semi-expensive restaurants they might go to. He was hoping that she would like
to swing dance, because he wanted to go dancing with her. But all his thoughts
and hopes were rudely halted by her sudden inquiry. In those five words, he
heard echoes of Linda, his ex-wife, and many other women he had dated. How
could Tanya, who surpassed them all in youth and beauty, be so crass as to say
something so typical? It had never crossed his mind to ask her the same
question. In his worldview, first came love and way after that came the
financial details.

“Isn’t it a little soon to ask that?” he replied. “We just
met.”

An awkwardness
ensued, as the stark difference in their
point of views and the conviction each had that the other’s position was false
made retreating to a neutral subject of conversation difficult. Tanya thought
Bill was a ridiculous simpleton, if he imagined she would be interested in any
man without a lot of money. He thought her a voracious harpy, if love wasn’t
enough to make her content. There were periods of silences and scattered bits
of dialogue, before he was able to start their chat flowing steadily again. She
never showed as much interest in him or what he had to say, as she had at
first. But by the time the train arrived at his station stop—she had
further to go—he had the impression that their acquaintance was as strong
as ever, and she would be calling him soon. A little doubt nagged at him,
telling him she would not call, but his hope and willingness to believe that
she would were far greater. He drove home from the station parking lot, making
plans for their next happy meeting.

When the train left his station, she, on the other hand,
picked up her overnight bag and walked into the next car, looking for a more
eligible suitor. She didn’t give Bill another thought. As she moved between the
cars, she raised her skirt a little.

Chapter 14

Later that evening, Helen was knocking on Bill’s apartment
door. In one hand, she held a bottle of codeine. There was no response to her
knocking. After waiting a few moments, she knocked more loudly.

“Bill, I know you’re in there,” she declared, raising her
voice. The sound of her words filled the hallway. “Jonathan at the front desk
told me that you had come home.”

After a short pause, Bill, who was peeking through the
peephole, replied, “What do you want?” He had been daydreaming about Tanya
before Helen knocked on his door, and the reality of who was at his doorstep
disappointed him.

“Open the door,” she said. “I have something for you.”

He opened the door just enough for her to see his face.
“What is it?” he asked brusquely, without any greeting or smile.

“Can you open the door more? You know who I am.”

He complied with her request reluctantly and opened the door
all the way, placing one of his feet in front of it to keep it from closing. He
was still dressed in his work clothes, a polo shirt and khakis. She also wore a
polo shirt, which was of a finer material than his, and Capri pants. The colors
of her outfit brought to mind blue sky, soft clouds, and the bright sun of
early summer, while his clothing suggested a sale table of merchandise from
past seasons, marked with further reductions.

“What is it?” he repeated.

“How are you feeling, Bill? Is your back better? Did you
take enough time to recuperate before going back to work? I know you’re a hard
worker and like your job, but back injuries are serious. It takes time to
heal.”

“I’m fine,” he answered.

“You said that even when you couldn’t move. I hope you’re
better.”

“I am. Thank you,” he said, without sounding at all
thankful. “Was there some reason for your visit? I have things to do.”

“Yes. I brought another bottle of codeine for you. I told my
doctor a little lie, so he would write a prescription. I said I pulled a
muscle. I think he knew it was a lie, because I didn’t act hurt enough, but
doctors always want you to leave so fast. I think he gave me what I wanted just
to get rid of me. Here, you can have it.” She held out the bottle to him.

“Thanks, but I don’t need it. Was there anything else?”

She lowered her hand. “Are you sure? Jonathan at the front
desk says you can hardly walk...”

“I’m fine.”

“That’s not what he says. He says you asked if there was a
wheelchair...”

“That was days ago. I’m fine now.”

“He said you couldn’t even think of going to the gym your
back hurt so much.”

“Well, the pain’s gone now. I’m fine.”

“Back pain can last a long time and recur almost instantly,
without any apparent cause,” she warned.

“OK. I’ll take it,” he agreed at last, having exhausted all
of his flimsy, false excuses. His back still hurt, and his discomfort was
evident in his posture and face, especially to someone like Helen, who had
known him for a long time.

She held out the bottle, and he grabbed it. “Thanks,” he
said, receding into his apartment and preparing to let the door close. Before
he moved his foot, Helen inserted herself in his doorway, placing one hand
against the door to prop it open.

“I made lasagna tonight,” she said, inviting him with a
smile. “Would you like to come to my place and have some? I was thinking that
you might want a ready-made meal to save yourself the hassle of cooking,
although I know now that you’re
fine
and don’t have
any
back pain.” The
last part of her invitation was ironical, and she delivered it like a comedian.

Despite himself, he was amused by her mockery of him, and
his mood lightened. Lasagna sounded like a good dinner to him, much better than
all of the rice dishes he ate, when he had gone out with Linda, even the spicy
dishes, which he liked. But all he could think of was Tanya, how young and
beautiful she was and how lucky, how glad he was to have met her. He was
incapable of pushing his heady infatuation of her to the side for a solid,
filling meal with Helen, whom he knew from previous occasions, when George was
still alive, to be an excellent cook. Bill had set his sights on Tanya. He was
like a deranged traveler, dying of thirst in a desert, who believes the distant
mirage of a lake to be real. Nothing was going to distract him from his goal,
no matter how substantial the alternative might be.

“I...I,” he said, hesitating, while his stomach grumbled
loud enough for both of them to hear. “I have some work to do. There’s a
project deadline tomorrow that I have to meet. Being out of the office put me
behind.” Although both had heard the grumbling of his stomach, Bill stood there
pretending as if he hadn’t.

“Tomorrow is Saturday,” she pointed out.

“I mean Monday. The project is due first thing Monday
morning. I have to work all weekend to make the deadline. It’s a really big
project.”

She looked at him as if his head had sprouted ears and a
long nose to complement the multi-colored hairs on top. He was obviously
inventing a story, and it wasn’t an interesting one or a believable one. “You
have to eat, don’t you?” She said, as if he was four-years-old.

“I’ll probably just throw a frozen dinner in the microwave,”
he replied. That didn’t appear to be an appetizing option to him, and Helen
knew it.

Since further conversation with him about dinner seemed
futile, she decided to forego more back and forth and have her delicious
lasagna alone. “Come over another time then,” she encouraged. “I’m still in the
habit of making meals for two. I won’t make you clean the dishes either.” She
moved out of his doorway back into the hall.

“Thanks for the invitation. I’ll think about it,” Bill
answered. Of course, he wasn’t going to do that. There was only one thing he
was going to think about at the moment and in the foreseeable future, and that
was Tanya. To her his thoughts turned, as he shut his door.

All weekend, he feverishly thought and dreamed of Tanya. He
relived the train ride with her over and over in his mind, erasing the awkward
moments, and dwelling upon the magical ones: How she had sat next to him, how
young she was, how hot she looked in her skimpy clothes, how she laughed at his
jokes, how she had grabbed his wrist without shyness or embarrassment, how she
had promised to call. He repeated snatches of their dialogue—of course
improving and refining what they had said to each other—until the meeting
took on the clarity, delicacy, and wonder of a fairy tale. In his fantasy, he
became a kind of battered knight, someone worn down to a low physical and
emotional state from terrible battles with ogres, giants, and
dragons—creatures that bore a strong resemblance to his previous
girlfriends—while she was a lost, wandering princess without a defender,
fearful of what the future held for her. From each other they grew strong
again, able to face any adversity.

Bill was troubled when Tanya did not call on Saturday or
Sunday to arrange another meeting. That seemed to suggest
a
certain
lightness in her regard for him, which he found hard to accept.
It caused him a great deal of agony. But he excused her when he came to the
realization that since she was
visiting relatives
for
the weekend, her time might be fully occupied. As much as she might want to
call him—and he was nearly positively sure that she did—she had
previous obligations to attend to, which prevented her from reaching out to
him.