Cheapskate in Love (2 page)

Chapter 2

It was still daylight when Bill drove into the surface
parking lot of the modest, two-story rental complex where he lived and parked
the car in his assigned spot, resigned to another night alone. In his depressed
state, his apartment wouldn’t be any source of consolation to him or cheer. But
that was not unusual. Even when he was in a better mood, it was hardly a joyous
place. For him, it was only a habitation, a place to pass time in and satisfy
basic human needs. It was not, strictly speaking in the full sense of the word,
a home. There had occurred no events in it that he could look back upon with a
happy rush of feeling. No shocking, heartbreaking, or life-changing experiences
had ever taken place inside those walls for him. His residence didn’t stir much
of any emotion, except a monotonous, muddled familiarity. Although two decades
of his life had passed with that apartment as the physical center of his
existence, he had no real emotional attachment to it, or to the town in which
it was.

He had moved to this small town of ___________ on New York’s
Long Island, which was about an hour’s drive from Linda’s house, because he
needed a place to stay after his divorce. A temporary place, small in size was
all that he had wanted at the time, and that was fortunate, because it was all
he could afford. His former wife received most of their possessions and savings
through the generosity of the divorce court. His subsequent anger and
bitterness at the State of New Jersey, where they had been living in a large
rental apartment, made it impossible for him to stay there. A sister of his
lived on Long Island, and she said that this town was “very
treesy
with lots of birds.” Bill had never displayed an interest in plants or wildlife
before, even if they were presented as programs on television with amazing
close-up video footage—the beauty of nature was completely alien to
him—but he didn’t have another destination in mind, so he passively
followed his sister’s suggestion. This surprised her immensely, since he had
rarely paid any attention to what she said before.

What had been at first a temporary answer to an immediate
problem had become over time a lasting choice. At present, it seemed destined
to be a permanent habitation for Bill’s remaining years. He sometimes toyed
with the idea of moving to a larger apartment, since he made a good salary and
had done so for quite a while, but the higher monthly rent attached to a
roomier place quickly squished such stray thoughts. Ever since his divorce he
had saved earnestly—to show his ex-wife and the State of New Jersey that
he could survive and thrive despite their
ravagings
—and
purchasing real estate a long time ago would have been the smartest financial
decision for him. He could have had a much lower monthly outlay by now. But he
had always been a renter, and the asking prices, even for a studio, always
seemed too high to the tightwad in him to justify home ownership. He couldn’t
see past the initial expense. In the updated words of an old expression, Bill
was penny wise and dollar dumb. Although he hated wasting money, he would never
have anything to show for all the years of leasing. The situation, so
thoroughly contrary to his normal hoarding instincts, bothered him once in a
while, but he coped by pushing it out of his mind as quickly as possible.

There was one drawback, however, to his living arrangements
that he couldn’t overlook so easily, try as he might. Despite satisfying his
basic needs and being undeniably well-maintained, with an abundance of large
trees and birds, not one of which was a pigeon, the town and the plain brick
building in which he rented were undesirable for a major reason that he was reminded
of every weekday: Their location was extremely inconvenient to Manhattan.

The train station was by far the most popular place in town,
more frequented than any church, store, or bar. From it, a person could escape
the boredom and provincialism of this particular suburbia by taking a two-hour
train ride to Manhattan. There, residents could feel alive again, caught up in
the midst of things. But most who traveled that route, like Bill, were
commuters, who had to go to Manhattan for work. They were so continually
exhausted from four hours of traveling during the weekdays, that their capacity
for feeling anything extraordinary, or doing anything more than necessary, was
very limited wherever they might be. On this day, as on any other day, Bill was
tired. Although he had driven to Linda’s home in the morning and went with her
to Penn Station on a much shorter train ride than usual—Linda also had a
medical office for acupuncture treatments in Manhattan, close to where Bill
worked—he had still spent four hours traveling, and arguing with Linda
had not refreshed him. Sometimes he thought of moving to another rental studio
in a location closer to work, but, like the miser he was, he would shudder at
the idea of paying moving expenses and become paralyzed with inertia. The
prospect of his moving to another residence appeared as likely as the
possibility of the Statue of Liberty swimming to Russia.

After parking the car, Bill collected his briefcase,
overnight bag, the bouquet, and the box of chocolates. As he walked slowly to
the apartment building’s entrance in a subdued state of mind, he wondered where
the evening had gone wrong. Was there something he could have said or done
differently to change the course of events? A bottle of perfume would have been
better than a box of chocolates, he thought, but that probably would have been
expensive, much more than fifteen dollars, probably more like thirty dollars in
a department store, unless he found a real deal somewhere. Vendors on the
sidewalk sometimes sold boxed perfumes for twenty dollars, he remembered. Maybe
he could talk their price down.

He was still crossing the parking lot, planning his strategy
for next time, when he saw Helen, another resident, a widow who was the same
age as him, drive her car into the lot and quickly park. Her assigned spot was
nearer the apartment building’s entrance than his. Bill began to walk faster to
avoid talking with her, but she was the greater athlete. Neatly dressed in a
pale blue blouse and tailored grey pants, she caught up with him as he stepped
onto the long sidewalk leading to the front doors. Helen’s trim, erect figure
contrasted sharply with Bill’s expanding, slouching form.

“Bill, you sure walk fast,” Helen said, a big smile on her
face, because she had walked faster. There was a slight flush in her complexion
from her quick pace, which gave her good looks a more youthful appearance than
usual.

Bill turned toward her slightly and opened his eyes a minute
amount more, as if he had not seen her drive into the lot, nor been trying to
outwalk
her. “Oh. Hi, Helen,” he said. “I didn’t see you.
What a surprise.” His voice was flat without any lilt of welcoming recognition.

“Just coming home from a business trip?” she asked with
lively interest, ignoring his attempt to avoid her. While she was driving her
car to her parking space, she had perceived Bill’s despondent state of mind and
had guessed the reason for it. Since he was carrying a box of chocolates and a
bouquet, there was only one possible explanation, but she wanted to see if he
would tell her.

“Not exactly,” he said.

“An executive retreat at a fancy resort?” she wondered,
hoping that such a question might flatter him into talking.

“No.”

“What are the flowers for?” she asked, as innocently as she
could.

Bill was walking as fast as his flabby legs permitted, eager
to get away from Helen and her prying questions, but maybe because Linda had
rejected his gifts, maybe because she had been so hostile, maybe because he was
unconsciously grateful for someone showing interest in him, he said without
thinking, “Oh, these. Do you want them?”

Surprised that he would offer them to her, Helen accepted
the flowers enthusiastically. “I would love them. They are so pretty,” she
gushed.

“
Here.
You can have them,” he
said.

Without any romantic flourish, he handed the roses to Helen,
like someone handing out pamphlets on a sidewalk or sample sizes of soap in a
store.

“Are you sure you don’t want them? Or need them for
someone?” she asked slyly, looking from the flowers with delight at Bill.

“No. I don’t need them,” he responded with glum resignation.

“Bill, you are so sweet. Thank you,” she said, without any
feigning. “I haven’t received roses from someone in a long while.”

“It’s nothing really. Glad someone wants them,” he said.

At that moment, they reached the entrance to the apartment
building.
Although he was depressed and tired, instinctively
Bill held the door open for Helen, who responded with thanks and another smile.
She walked quickly into the sparsely decorated lobby, which seemed more
welcoming than usual, although the front desk attendant only looked up briefly
before lowering his head again to concentrate on a cell phone game.

Since the door was behind them, Bill felt no more need to exercise
gentlemanly behavior. As fast as he could, he tried to leave Helen, while she
tried to detain him as long as possible.

“Goodnight,” Bill said, striking out toward his apartment,
which lay in the opposite direction from Helen’s.

“Bill, have you gone swing dancing lately?” Helen exclaimed.
“It was so much fun when George was around to go out dancing on a double date.
Who was that woman you were dating?
A...A...Alicia?
Alexandra? Do you ever see her anymore?”

“Anita was her name. No, I haven’t seen her in a long time,”
Bill said, stopping and turning around.

“Why don’t we go to that place again and see if we can still
dance?” Helen asked. “We had such good times there.”

“I don’t have any time,” Bill replied.

“We could invite a few friends to come along and be really
rowdy,” she said. “We’ll shake that place up.”

“No, I’m too busy,”
Bill
said,
leaning away.

“It would be a lot of fun. A friendly outing for old time’s
sake,” she persuaded.

“Sorry, I can’t,” he said, walking away to his apartment.

“Will I see you at church Sunday?” she cried out. “At the
usual time?”

Stopping and turning back again, he said, “Maybe. My plans
aren’t settled yet.” This evasion was in reality a lie, because he rarely
missed attending church at the same time every Sunday, and she knew it.

“Would you like to go to brunch afterwards?” she asked.
“There’s a new place that opened near church. Maybe you saw it. People say the
food is very good.”

“No, no,” Bill said, trying to think. “I’m...I’m going to my
sister’s place after church. She’s making dinner.”

“I thought she didn’t like to cook,” Helen replied. There
was a heavy hint of disbelief in her voice. In the past, he had said his sister
was a connoisseur of take-out, who preferred to starve rather than cook
something herself. Every grocery store near her would have to run out of
prepared, canned, and frozen foods, and restaurants would have to be closed as
well, before she would see the necessity of venturing into her kitchen to do
more than heat up food.

“She’s been watching a lot of cooking shows,” Bill said,
inventing a scenario rapidly. “She wants to try some new recipes. There’ll be a
lot to taste. Something might even be good. That’s what she says.”

Seeing there was no way to convince him, Helen remarked,
“Sounds like an adventure. Enjoy. If you change your mind about brunch, you
know where I live.”

“Yeah, I do,”
Bill
said, with his
back to her, already moving away.

“Goodnight,” she said, raising her voice. “Thanks for the
flowers. They’re lovely.”

“Night,” was the only response from Bill, as he nodded to
the desk attendant and speedily receded down the corridor toward his apartment.

Helen watched him go, smiling at his lie about his sister.
She smelled the roses, but couldn’t detect any scent. They were a little faded.
Yet still she decided they were nice enough, worth the ten or fifteen dollars
Bill had handed over for them. She knew he wasn’t a big spender. That was the
last thing anyone could ever accuse him of, she thought.

Walking up to Jonathan, the desk attendant, whose fingers
were scrambling over the screen of his cell phone, trying to beat his highest
score, Linda asked, “Do you know, is Bill still seeing Linda?”

After a few seconds of intense play, Jonathan looked up.
“I’m not sure. He seems to break up with her every other week. But I didn’t
hear him brag that he was going out with her again. He usually tells me that.”

“Maybe he didn’t have time,” Helen conjectured. “Maybe it
was a last-minute make-up.”

“Probably,” said Jonathan. “He showed me a picture of her
once. She’s pretty,
really
pretty.
But they don’t seem to have anything in common. She seems crazy, yelling about
things like him boiling too much water for tea.
Or leaving a
bar of soap in the wrong place in the bathroom.
I don’t know why he sees
her.”

“She’s young,” Helen said, surprising Jonathan who knew that
was the reason, but didn’t want to say so. In their casual guy talk, Bill had
told him many times how young Linda was, and how he was only interested in
young women, and how his interest increased the younger they were. Of course,
they had to be eighteen years old, he insisted, or at least say they were,
because he didn’t want to occupy a jail cell. Repeatedly, Bill had explained to
Jonathan exactly what kind of interest he had in young women. If one of the
young, attractive, adult female residents in the building walked by while they
were talking, Bill would watch her pass, staring in full appreciation at her
appealing traits, until she was gone. Then he would judiciously observe that he
wouldn’t mind at all, if she sat on his face. Jonathan didn’t think any of this
worth mentioning to Helen, in case she might perceive some sleight about her
age, or Bill’s lack of desire in having her sit on him, so he stared vacantly
into space with a silly look, as if he didn’t understand what she meant.