Nine & a Half Weeks (3 page)

A year later he housed his eleven-year-old niece, in New York for a spelling contest in which she did not place. In gratitude for the care with which he had shown the girl around town, her mother—his sister—presented him with a second cat, apparently in a manner that made refusal impossible. “It was just a kitten, not much better looking than the old one, and out of its gourd for the first couple of days and the other one no help at all, snarling and carrying on as if I’d brought in a boa constrictor. After a while, somehow or other, they ended up getting along.

“Then one night I come home and I see some kids in the alley. They move off but, you know, making a big deal out of being casual. So I go back there like a fool and on the ground, what can I tell you, it was in pretty bad shape. I go upstairs like a sane man, and fix myself a drink and start reading the paper, thinking: in an hour it’ll be gone. And an hour later 1 tell myself, you need another cat like a hole in the head.

“And 1 think, if anything, somebody should kill it, not pick it up, it’s too far gone. I cook myself some eggs, I eat a salad, I have some coffee; I tell myself I’ll go for a walk after the eleven o’clock news. Sure enough, it’s still there, only somebody’s pushed it over by the garbage cans. So I take a newspaper out of the trash and bring it up here and next morning 1 think, what am I, a nurse, and take it to the vet where I’d had the other two spayed, and by the time 1 picked it up, six days later, it was pretty chipper. Should’ve been, for $68.80. And every time I go out of town I have to have my cleaning lady come in all the way from Queens; and sometimes she can’t, and not one of my friends has the sense to live around here and I can’t very well ask somebody who won’t take money for it to come all the way down from Central Park West in the Eighties, or from Sixty-fifth and York, or from godforsaken Brooklyn Heights. Even Andy, Thirtieth and Park to here isn’t exactly a five-minute stroll. And the kid down the hall had to go away to Michigan State, Michigan State, Chris-sakes! That leaves him out. So now I keep rotating a couple of other neighbors and I hate asking favors of people I’d just as soon never lay eyes on….”

“They don’t shed much,” I say for the second time this evening, and he says, “big deal.”

I WENT TO work every day, an articulate businesswoman, liked by my friends, valued by my superiors. At 5 P.M. sharp I cleared my desk, exchanged pleasantries with colleagues going down in the elevator, and went home—to his apartment. 1 went to mine only to pick up clothes and later, once a week, the mail. In the mornings we took the same subway line back to work, sharing the Times: a well-shaven man in a pinstriped business suit, carrying an attache case—good teeth, charming smile; I with my own briefcase and my summer handbag and heels and lip gloss and freshly washed hair. An attractive, well-educated couple in New York City, average, middle-class, civilized.

“Up, UP, time to get up,” he shouts from the doorway. He is holding a scuffed metal TV tray with a plate of scrambled eggs, three toasted English muffins, a pot of tea, one cup. A peeled, sectioned orange sits in a small wooden salad bowl. He grins broadly above the tray. “What on earth is this rush,” I say. “It’s nine-thirty, please…” I push both pillows behind me against the wall, sit up, smooth the blanket over my legs. “And it’s Saturday!” He sets down the tray and mops up the few drops of spilled tea with the roll of paper towels he has brought along, clutched under his left arm. “It’s Saturday,” I repeat. “I hope you don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t want to see a soul. I want to stay right here and sleep until noon and the rest of the day I want to do nothing more strenuous than calling my sister and reading next week’s TV Guide.”

“Sounds exciting,” he says. “You can do that when we get back. I have to go to Bloomingdale’s.” “You better go back to playing on those indoor courts,” I say. “You’ve clearly been in the sun too long. No way will I go to Bloomingdale’s on a Saturday.” “It’ll take no more than half an hour, I swear. An hour and a half, all in all. Half an hour up, half there, half an hour back. The sooner you stop talking and eat, the quicker we’ll be done. You’ll be back in bed by eleven-thirty.”

We are halfway down the block when I say, “You’re not by any chance walking toward the subway, are you?” He nods, blankly. “Absolutely not,” I say. “I have to take that thing twice a day all week long, I’m not setting foot in it on a weekend.” We get a cab at the corner. Bloomingdale’s teems. “I always think these people are at the Hamptons this time of year,” I say loudly. “Do they all come back every Saturday just to stock up?” “Half an hour, I promise you,” he says. “All right” I say. “It’s you who doesn’t like stores, I like stores fine, I’ve got some sense about when I go in them, too.” “Listen, sweetheart,” he says, “will you please shut up, I’m asking you nicely. I’m being very patient under this petty cynicism, but pretty soon I’ll tie you to the men’s makeup counter and you’ll end up buying a lot of Braggi bronzer and not having a good time at all until I come back.” This vision makes me giggle. “What are you looking for?” 1 say. We’re on the fifth floor. “A bed,” he says. “A bed!” I exclaim. “You’ve got a perfectly good bed.” “It’s a great bed,” he says. “So?” “It’s a great bed for one person.”

He is steering me past opulent dining room sets. There is one particularly dramatic group: small, piercing spotlights illuminate a black glass tabletop above obligatory chrome legs; black napkins are coiled inside black crystal rings, black glasses sit next to black bowls. “It’s to serve caviar on charred steak,” he stage-whispers to me, while we both almost stumble into a momentous arrangement of innumerable sofa sections, taking up more floor space than is offered by my entire apartment. “White velvet,” I say. “Good God! One speck of cigarette ash, one cat hair, and poof it goes, all down the drain.” “Bloomingdale customers are a clean lot,” he says, gravely. “It may be a mystery to you, but it’s very simple. We keep our pets in the John and smoke only in closets….” “… hear you’re going on vacation Monday,” says a woman’s voice behind us. “Yup,” answers a man’s. “Where’re you off to?” I look over my shoulder. A red-haired woman, elegantly dressed and holding a pad of sales slips, is speaking to a man in a Cardin suit, also holding such a pad. “New York Ci-ty,“he says, his mocking inflection of pride making them both laugh. “Smart man,” she says, walking away, “best place in…” “Come on” I say—the massive sofas have been a fluke, we’re amid more dining sets—“I’m not that big, and if you’d only said something, I’d have stayed on my side more.”

“It’s not the size,” he says. “Then what is it?” I persist. He stops before a fantasy room, a black-lacquered desk facing us at an angle. It supports, on its flawless and gleaming surface, one huge-bottomed lamp, six ceramic jars in assorted sizes, a narrow vase holding eight glorious tulips, a stack of oversized current photography books, a collection of artfully arranged foreign magazines, and an address book, covered in finely patterned silk. “Now this is what I like to see,” he muses. “A real working desk. You can roll up your sleeves, spread out to your heart’s content over all of two square inches, and get down to business.” “Stop sneering,” I say. “Nobody made you come here and that address book makes my mouth water. That’s what all this stuff is supposed to do and it works.” He smiles and puts his arm around me.

The bedrooms are next. The first one has a polished dark floor, the next is light parquet, a third is tiled in red; there is a bed with a headboard like a barndoor supporting the cloth-covered canopy, matching satiny fabric spilling to the floor on either side. A large plant inside a decorative and even larger basket sits inexplicably on the bedspread, slightly off-center. Another bed is staked out by four fat, spiral-turned posts. Six small pillows, covered in various but harmonizing prints, stand in orderly fashion on end against the bedpillows that presumably reside beneath the lush bulge in the spread. “That’s what you need,” I say. “I need a lot of little toy pillows?” “About four great big fat ones. Those two stingy flat ones of yours are a pain, you can’t ever really lean against them comfortably.” “What’s to lean at, in bed,” he says. “When you brought me breakfast this morning, just an example. Lots of times. It’s great watching TV in bed or reading.” “I don’t actually do that,” he says slowly, making me laugh. We pass a combination steel-brass bed, gray rods, big yellow bulbous things at the corners. An all-brass one is next: massive, impossibly curlicued at the same time, the most ornate bed I’ve ever seen. I stop before it. From a puffy quilt sewn in a pink and white starburst pattern embroidered eyelet cascades to the floor. A round table is covered like the bed, its skirt consisting of the same four frothy layers of flounces; at right angles to us reposes a majestic chaise longue, its white wood frame edged in gilt.

“Do you like this?” he asks. “Like a stage set,” I say, “made to order for a heartbroken, sixteen-year-old Judy Garland.” “Just the bed, I mean.”

“It’s nice enough in its garish way,” I say. “The headboard and the footboard, they’re like parts of a gate to some fairy-tale grounds, all that’s needed is some brass birds mixed in with the rest of the swirls, and a monster head or two.”

He motions to the red-haired woman who earlier wished the pale salesman a happy vacation. “When can I have this bed delivered?” I gasp. He squeezes my arm sharply. “This particular bed, sir”—she smiles firmly, first at him, then at me—“I would have to check, if you’ll be seated for a moment, my desk is just over there.” “You have gone out of your mind,” I whisper. “A red face and a deranged brain, all from being outdoors a few times….” He watches me; he does not smile. “Can you imagine what this baroque wonder is going to look like in your monk’s gymnasium of a bedroom?” The saleswoman is off the phone. “There won’t be any problem at all, sir, they’re about to change the display. If you tell me where you want the bed delivered I can tell you into what delivery area you fall and on what days of the week our men are in that area.”

“I’ll need to check something,” he says, once she has written down his address. The saleswoman and I follow him back to the stage set. It is closed off by a chain made of large plastic links. “May we go in?” he asks and then all three of us are standing at the foot of the bed. “It is one of our most—” He interrupts her: “I’m afraid my friend needs to lie down on this bed before I am able to make a decision.” His voice is impeccably courteous. “I hope you don’t mind.” And to me: “Maybe you should take your shoes off.” People always try on mattresses by lying down on them in public, in stores, I tell myself, but something makes blood rise into my neck and face. I take off my sandals, sit down on the bed, swing my legs up, and lower my back onto the star-quilted bedspread. “Lie in the middle,” he says. I follow the glistening swirls above my feet with my eyes and move over carefully, supporting my weight as best I can on my hands and the heels of my feet, trying not to disturb the quilt. “Stretch your arms above your head and hold on to the headboard with your hands,” he says. I think: it’s a Saturday at Bloomingdale’s, where’s everybody gone to, this place is like a morgue; I could jump off the bed, leap over the chain, run to the escalator, go to a movie. … “Come on, sweetheart,” he says neutrally, “we don’t have all day.” The brass is icy in my hands. I close my eyes. “Spread your legs.” “Your delivery area is Thursday.““Spread your legs.” “You will be happy to hear that you will have this bed next Thursday.” “Spread your legs.” “Our delivery men are in your area Thursdays and Fridays, but 1 will personally ascertain that your delivery date will be Thursday.” 1 do as he says.

I buckle my sandals, avoiding the eyes of a couple holding hands beyond the plastic chain. “Do you have mattresses?” She clears her throat, her voice smooth again. “Bedding is on four, but I can sell you a mattress and box spring from that floor, too.” “Will you pick a hard mattress and box springs and have everything shipped at the same time?” “But, sir, you will want to select…” “I won’t,” he says. “A Posturepedic maybe…” “Fine,” he says. “But what about the type of ticking…” “It would please me very much if you’d pick the kind you like best,” he says and smiles at her, a tall man in tennis shoes and old khaki pants, a white tennis shirt, his nose peeling, skin more red than tan on his arms and throat and face. “Yes, of course,” she says, smiling up at him in return. “And four fat pillows,” he says. “Goose down or Dacron? I’ll need to know their sizes….” “Just pillows,” he says. Neither of us speaks on the way home.

When I stop by my apartment a few days later, I find a box from Bloomingdale’s containing a silk-covered address book.

WE’RE DOING ERRANDS: supermarket, liquor store, dry cleaner’s, drugstore. It’s a lovely Saturday, a week after our trip to Bloomingdale’s (the bed arrived on Thursday as promised), in early June. We spend a long time at the toothpaste counter: he is giving dramatic recitals of competing TV commercials—BETTER CHECKUPS wins. I think: I’ve never been this much in love before. Twice I ask out loud, “How can I be so happy?” Each time he smiles at me, a delighted grin, and shifts both shopping bags onto one arm to hug my shoulders with the other.

We are both laden down with packages when he says, “I have to get one more thing,” and hails a cab. We end up in Brooklyn, at a small, obscure hunting store. There are two clerks, one dignified and elderly, one in his teens, no other customers. He is pricing insulated vests, the kind to be worn under windbreakers.

I put my parcels on a chair, walk around, get bored, sit down on the edge of an old mahogany desk, pick up and leaf through a three-year-old New Yorker, which miraculously looks brand-new. “This one, I guess,” he says. I look over at the counter, he is looking back at me. He is holding a riding crop: “I’d like to try it out.” There is a peculiar shift: from one second to the next I have become disoriented, I am on alien territory, in a foreign century. He walks a few steps to where I am half-sitting on the desk, one foot on the floor, the other dangling. He pulls my skirt up over my left leg, which is resting on the desk, steps back, and strikes me across the inner thigh. The searing pain is an inextricable part of a wave of excitement that robs me of breath and speech and the ability to move; every cell in my body is awash with lust. It is silent in the small, dusty room. The clerks behind the counter have frozen. He slowly smooths down my skirt and turns to the older man, who is wearing a suit and still looks like an accountant, though a deep flush is spreading upward from his shirt collar. “This one will do.”