Blind Date (32 page)

The host told them that the stock of food and medical supplies was sufficient for eight people to subsist for six months and thus outlive the immediate danger of an atomic war, and he continually revised the list of people he would invite to join him.

Patting Mary-Jane's shoulder, he said, “You've always been one of them, you know.” Mary-Jane kissed him affectionately on the cheek.

Later, when she was absorbed in looking through the shelter's library, the host took Levanter aside.

“I'll square with you, George,” he said in a cordial tone. “You're not on my list, even though you're married to Mary-Jane.”

Levanter nodded politely.

“If you're cooped up underground, six months is a long time,” said the host, “and you have to know all about someone you're going to be cooped up with.”

“I understand,” said Levanter.

“It's not that you aren't likable, George,” he said emphatically.
“On the contrary. You are. It's just that one wonders if you haven't made a career out of being so likable.”

“I don't follow you,” said Levanter.

“You're a survivor, George. The war. The Russkies. Parking cars. You've survived it all. And look at you now.” He paused, as if to let the implication sink in. “Married to Mary-Jane, the nicest girl there is, who also happens to be one of the richest widows in America, with the most powerful friends around.”

“Mary-Jane and I met on a blind date,” said Levanter.

“Sure you did, George,” he agreed quickly. “But have all your survivals begun on blind dates?” He looked at Levanter, then continued, his lips pursed. “What if there was some deed, some awful price you had to pay to emerge unscathed? How do we know that there wasn't?” He glanced at Levanter and, as if afraid he might have hurt his feelings, quickly added, “Take me, for instance. Like every other WASP, I'm completely documented: city, state, federal records exist for every facet of my history; schools, hospitals, clubs have files on me; and there are people who have known me at every stage of my private and professional life. But where can one find out about you?” He lowered his voice. “What does Mary-Jane, your own wife, really know about who you are?”

Levanter did not know what to say.

Mary-Jane ended her tour of the library and rejoined them. Lunch was to be served here, prepared entirely from food stored in the shelter, in circumstances approximating the period after an atomic alert.

Walking to the shelter dining room, Mary-Jane fell. She said she must have caught her heel on the rug. She fell again the following day while playing tennis, and again explained that she had tripped on something. This time, Levanter was certain that she had fallen backward, as if her sense of balance had suddenly failed her.

When they were back at their New York apartment, he mentioned that he was worried about her. She admitted that she had fallen several times in the last few weeks but claimed she was just
absent-minded and clumsy. Levanter insisted that she have a thorough medical checkup and, reluctantly, she agreed.

In a week they had a diagnosis: a growth in her inner ear. Soon they had the verdict: the cancer had already begun to spread to her brain; surgery was out of the question.

Within weeks Mary-Jane was bedridden, and there were only a few rare moments when she recognized him. These lucid periods came unanticipated, and they left as unexpectedly as they came. At such times, the nurse would discreetly leave the room. Mary-Jane would start to talk to Levanter as though he had just come in, as though it was he who had been away and had only now returned to talk to her, while she was always waiting for him. He sat on the edge of her bed, and they looked at each other with the spark of rediscovery that comes after a long absence.

She was aware of her disease and of the prognosis. She cried only once — when she told Levanter that her illness had cut off what she saw as her mission: to expand his freedom, to offer him a life that he might have lived had he inherited such great wealth himself. She said she wanted him to enjoy her money without the sense of entrapment and guilt such affluence usually brings its heirs, and to pursue whatever interested him most in life.

“Instead, you're married to a vegetable,” she said, “and the law won't let you divorce me for at least seven years, because legally I'm your mentally incapacitated spouse. What if I keep wilting for years? You'll be imprisoned by me, unable to marry, to have children.”

“You've given me the best moments I've ever known,” said Levanter.

She looked at him, lost in thought, and then the thoughts drifted. Her eyes still looked at him, at the room, but her mind was elsewhere. Her body was alive, but she was indifferent to it. The nurse returned to the room and resumed her post at Mary-Jane's bedside.

Levanter spent his days in the apartment, waiting for any sign of perception, staring into the eyes that remained open but did not
see. Occasionally, he fed Mary-Jane and walked her to the bathroom, her head resting against his shoulder, his arm supporting her. He dressed and undressed her, combed her hair, helped to bathe her, to rub her dry, and to put her to sleep. At these times, she was his infant child.

The last traces of life left her body as quietly as the thoughts had left her mind. He felt he was losing his only child, becoming an orphan himself. He moved back to his old apartment, which, as a gesture to chance, he had kept as an office while they were married.

Each time his eye caught the photograph of Mary-Jane on his night table, the words “it was and it was not” returned to him.

Walking past Carnegie Hall one evening, he saw a familiar face staring at him from a row of posters. The bold black letters of her name contrasted with her light hair and pale eyes.

The concert was already in progress and the box office was closing. The ticket seller looked at him and mechanically announced that the concert was sold out. Saying nothing, Levanter took out pencil and paper. He made himself tremble. His left hand clasped his right wrist, restraining and guiding the hand over the paper, and he wrote in large uneven letters that he had to go in because he suffered from fits that only music could subdue. The woman read his note. Before she had a chance to refuse his request, he jerked his right hand free and spastically slapped his ear several times. The woman looked nervous, as if she feared he was about to have one of his fits. Hurriedly, she reached under the counter and passed him a ticket that someone had reserved but had not yet picked up. Levanter paid her and, still shaking, rushed inside.

The hall was filled with the sounds that sprang from under the pianist's fingers. The music she played elated him. His mother
had played this piece, and he recalled how he had often listened to recordings of it, as if the music itself could bring back the emotion it had so often aroused in him in the past.

His seat was near the back of the hall: he could hardly see the pianist's features and seemed to be looking at her through the wrong end of opera glasses. He remembered clearly how he had felt the first time he heard her play. Yet he was no better able now than he had been then to define the sensation.

He glanced around at the audience. People sat motionless, absorbed in the music that rushed at them, intimate and immediate, pure spirit without words, without gestures. No one stirred until the concert had ended.

He could still hear the applause for her encores when he went backstage. He walked confidently past the guard, and, murmuring that Madame expected him, asked her maid to let him sit down in the dressing room. Stagehands brought several large baskets of flowers into the room; Levanter could see a crowd of admirers gathering outside.

Pauline opened the door but stood with her back to the room, facing a group of photographers in the corridor. She autographed some programs and entered, closing the door behind her. Her face and neck were flushed with excitement. Midway into the room, she noticed Levanter. At first she looked surprised, then she simply asked him to open the wine on the table beside him. He filled two glasses. She dismissed her maid, sat down in a chair on the other side of the table, and took a sip of wine.

“Another great success,” said Levanter.

She smiled distantly. “A good audience. But the audience is gone now. All that's left is the recording, a memory.”

“But it's a memory with feeling, which can be listened to many times,” said Levanter.

“It can,” she said. “But only as a source of reflection; no more magic of the spontaneous.” She paused. “In that cavern in ValPina,” she said, “you told me about a baseball player who killed the girl he once loved.”

Levanter nodded.

“You told me about him for a reason. What was it?”

“I hoped you would remember the story. And possibly you would remember the person who told it to you.”

“How do you want to be remembered?” She looked in the dressing-table mirror outlined in white bulbs and patted her hair.

“As a memory with feeling,” he said.

“Without the magic of the spontaneous?”

She stood up and went to examine the baskets of flowers. She read the cards and telegrams with them, smelled the blossoms, rearranged some leaves. As he gazed at her, he feared that he might lose courage.

“I live half a block away,” he said. Then, before she had a chance to react, he forced himself to plead, “Come there with me. Please.”

She bit her lips. Without a word, she went behind a screen and came out moments later in a simple dress. She reached for her coat, and he helped her on with it. Behind her back, he brushed his face lightly against her hair.

As they walked out into the corridor, Pauline gently touched his arm and stopped him. “Why?” she asked.

Levanter felt at ease now. He reached for her and drew her close, his lips grazing her neck, his face buried in her hair. She folded her hands behind his neck, and he felt her body against him, pliant and vulnerable.

“Why?” she repeated.

“I'm afraid of losing you,” he said. The sound of his words brought him a faint memory, so faint that he dismissed it.

“Why?” she asked again.

“I want you to fall in love with me,” he said, “to want me as I am now. Somehow, I think you're my last chance.”

She disengaged herself from his embrace and stepped back.

“Your last chance? For what?”

“To be wanted, rather than remembered. To have a fresh emotion,
a sensation that isn't just a ricocheted memory. To be part of that spontaneous magic.”

When they stepped from the elevator and approached his apartment, he noticed that the door had been painted while he was out. The paint had already dried, but when he inserted his key into the lock it would not turn; paint had seeped in and hardened inside. He was going to lose her because of a drop of paint, he thought.

Pauline was amused. “Are you sure you live here?” she asked.

Levanter was fighting the lock. It would not budge. “You wouldn't happen to have any nail-polish remover on you, would you?” he asked.

“I don't even have a nightgown,” she answered.

Levanter didn't know what to do. It was nearly midnight; the superintendent did not live in the building.

Pauline came to his rescue. “Where would the painters keep their supplies?” she said.

They went down to the basement. Among the broken refrigerators and vacuum cleaners, the mops and pails, Pauline found a can of turpentine and Levanter poured some into an empty bottle lying nearby. Back at his door, Pauline handed him her comb and he dripped the turpentine down the handle, straight into the lock. He inserted his key. The door opened.

He turned on one small lamp. The dim light outlined the contours of the desk, bookshelves, TV set, copying machine, two armchairs, his old convertible sofa, and the small rocker.

Pauline took off her coat and placed it on the sofa. Quickly, Levanter stacked some of her recordings on the stereo; the first clicked as it fell into position. He drew the curtains over the windows and the terrace door, took off his jacket and laid it over her coat, then went to her, backing her against his desk. He slid to his knees and gently raised her dress up around her waist. He tugged her panties down and she stepped out of them. Mutely, he found her flesh hidden in the silky fur between her thighs. It was moist and fragrant, and he pressed tighter against it, warming it with his
breath. When he felt her hips quiver, he opened her with his fingers, and his tongue moved inside.

Images of her in ValPina whirled through his mind: in the hotel lounge, on the midstation terrace, at the underground lake. He remembered trying to catch her eye, hoping she would respond.

She started to shiver; a wave of tremors ran through her and she shoved her flesh into his face. Then she pulled away, almost lifting herself onto the desk with her hands. He kept his mouth over her, as he pushed her thighs against the desk. She put her hands on his shoulders. Then, just when she seemed ready to surrender to her own passion, she shrank back, whispering. “I can't, I never could.”

He continued to kiss her, sensing the yearning that coursed through her. Her hands clutched his shoulders, caressed his neck and hair. Writhing and jerking, she again seemed on the verge of giving in to her own surging when, in despair, she repeated, “I can't.” He stopped touching her. She slid onto the floor with him, her arms around his neck. He began to undress her, slowly, tossing her clothes onto an armchair. Then he quickly took off all his clothes.

He took her hand and led her to the rocking chair. He sat down, spreading her legs, and guided her over himself. The chair rocked gently, its movement bringing him deeper into her, making her straddle him more tightly. He clasped his arms around her hips, and she rested her hands on the back of the chair behind his shoulders. Heat from their bodies filled the narrow space between her breasts and his chest. In the gleaming light, he saw her eyes, wide open, fixed on him. His lips brushed hers, the taste of her flesh still on his tongue, and when he felt her tongue upon his, he realized that it was the first time Pauline had kissed him.