A Marriage Made at Woodstock (11 page)

“Aren't geishas supposed to be Japanese?” Frederick asked, and sincerely.

“Give me a break,” the geisha said. “I been on my feet all day.” She thumped a glass of water and a menu onto the table before him. He ordered himself a Johnny Walker Black and Herbert the house scotch. Since Herbert's taste buds had been eroded from years of smoking, Frederick assumed he wouldn't know the difference. As he sipped from his glass of water, he saw Herbert's head bobbing in conversation with two young women who were perched on bar stools. Herbert's interest in women so young was a thing to be pitied, but the only pity Frederick could dredge up just then was for himself. He had spotted a pair of young lovers two tables away and it reminded him of the first time he and Chandra went to dinner. It was at a small café in Boston and they had listened to a folk trio until closing, until the crowd had dispersed, until all the chairs were legs up on the tabletops, and then only the help was left to sweep up. It was a rainy October evening and Chandra had taken the bus down from Portland to visit him. “It must be fate,” Frederick had said when they first met, in August at Woodstock, when she told him that she, too, was from Portland, Maine. It had seemed as though the cosmos had thrown them together for that one crazy night. “I come home from BU every weekend,” Frederick had lied, because he wanted badly to see her again. And he feared that might not happen, even though they had exchanged numbers and addresses at Woodstock. But he had called, and she had called back, and they had known over the telephone—not a cellular phone, damn it, but a
real
one—that they would be together for all time, that they would, as “Desiderata” instructed them,
go
placidly
amidst
the
noise
and
haste
. They knew this, as words winged back and forth between them like birds of love, as she wrote soul-wrenching letters and he plagiarized good poetry. They were, indeed,
children
of
the
universe
, and they
had
a
right
to
be
here
. Soon, he was meeting her at the bus station in Boston, in the middle of an autumn cloudburst, and she had appeared in the doorway of the bus like some vision, some mirage that thirsty men long for, some metaphor for a beautiful love poem—if only Frederick could write his own. They had gone to see
Midnight
Cowboy
, even though it was months old, and she had cried in the end when Dustin Hoffman died. Later, they shared a bottle of Chianti, and she had called it
a
basket
of
wine
. And he had taken her hand, kissed her fingertips, and whispered, “A Book of Verses underneath the Bough, A Jug of Wine, A Loaf of Bread—and Thou,” and she had looked at him with large, believing eyes and said, “Oh, I love that. It's by Omar Khayyám.” Another second and Frederick would have claimed authorship. But that first movie, that first dinner, that first special encounter after so many weeks of separation, was a flick in time that Frederick Stone would never forget. When the owner of the café had come to their table and politely asked if they might leave so that the staff could lock up, the two of them had linked arms and walked back to Frederick's apartment, huddled against a steady rain that was coming in from the sea. Frederick knew then that he would always remember two things about that night. It was the last time he ever plagiarized the
Rubáiyát
. And it was the first time he ever made love to Chandra.

Hebert Stone was back at the table, a smile on his face and the young women from the bar at his side. Frederick stood, but his knees were wobbly, so strong was the memory of that first night with Chandra, her smooth, white legs wrapped about him, her wild hair flowing like rivers in every direction.

“I'd like for you to meet our dates for the evening,” Herbert said. “This is Sarah. And this,
this
, is Valerie.” He pushed a tall brunette closer to Frederick. She put out a hand bedecked in rings. Frederick shook the hand. He even helped Valerie find a place on the table for her purse, which seemed to be shaped like a lunch pail. Then he turned to Herbert.

“Could we speak privately, please?” he asked. “Out in the foyer?” Herbert shook his head.

“The girls need a drink,” he said. He held up his arm and signaled to a geisha.

“I want a piña colada,” said Sarah. Frederick wondered if Sarah needed to stop and read the height requirements at underpasses and other such restricted places. He had never seen hair stand quite so tall on a human head.

“I want a Dirty Mother,” said Valerie. Four tiny gold beads shone brightly from her nose, two in each nostril.

“My brother is a criminal lawyer,” Herbert said. “He's good friends with F. Lee Bailey.”

“Wow,” Valerie said. “Didn't he shoot Kennedy?”

“Do you handle serial killers and if so, like, who was the worst?” Sarah asked, her eyes round with curiosity.

“Hey, what's got twelve legs and still can't walk?” This came from Valerie.

“Oh, I heard
that
one,” Sarah said. “Jeffrey Dahmer's refrigerator.” The girls giggled while Herbert laughed nervously.

“In the foyer, please,” Frederick said.

“Freddy bets the horses,” Herbert told the girls. “He needs to place a call to his bookie. Just tell the waitress what you want, okay?” They nodded in sync.

In the foyer of the China Boat, Frederick was livid. He paced back and forth in front of the high blood pressure machine. It was a good thing he was without coins. Who knew what towering peaks his pressure would reveal just then. He stopped pacing and glared at Herbert.

“Just what do you think you're doing?” he asked.

“Look, I'm sorry about that criminal lawyer line,” Herbert said. “But I couldn't tell them you're an accountant. I mean, think about it, Freddy.”

“I thought you invited me to dinner,” Frederick said. Even when they were boys, Herbert had a talent for making him lose his cool. And Herbert chose that moment to light up a Marlboro.

“So what's wrong with some company?” Herbert asked, and exhaled a string of smoke. Frederick fanned the air. “It'll be fun for us to double-date. We never did in high school.”

“Double-date?” Frederick fought to keep his calm while an elderly couple collected their jackets and went out through the front doors. “For Christ's sake, Herb, who do you think we are? Wally Cleaver and Eddie Haskell?” He had never imagined, not even in his darkest moments of puberty, that he'd end up necking in the backseat of Herbert's big Chrysler at a time when he should be considering the best retirement plan.

“Are you forgetting that your wife left you?” Herbert asked. “It's time to get a grip.”

“Chandra's only been gone for a week,” Frederick said.

“That's long enough for most men,” said Herbert. “You're in denial. Believe me, we all go through it.” Frederick remembered Joyce's diagnosis of his illness:
denial
. He suddenly envied Bobo his urinary tract infection.

“Get rid of them,” he said.

“Are you crazy?” asked Herbert. “Those are two quality young women. College girls, I might add. They could be with men half our age, but they've chosen to be with us.” He thumped his hand against the wall. The maître d' peered out anxiously.

“That's because men half our age can't afford to buy them piña coladas and what was that last one? Oh yes, a Dirty Mother. Get rid of them, Herb!”

“Mr. Stone?” the maître d' was now standing in the foyer door, his concern having grown. Herbert waved him back into the restaurant with a reassuring gesture

“You do realize,” he asked Frederick, “that Valerie once turned down a dinner invite from Jack Nicholson when he was in Portland filming some movie? And I'll tell you something else, Freddy.” Herbert wagged a finger. “That girl's got a test tomorrow and yet she's down here right now with us, instead of home studying. But do you show any appreciation? You're lucky just to
get
a date with Valerie, buddy. And you can ask anybody at the bar.”

“Listen to me,” Frederick said. “To men our age, a
date
is that which is written on a calendar to remind us of an annual checkup with our proctologist.”

“Should I have said that you were a neurosurgeon?” Herbert asked. “Is that what's bugging you?” Frederick stared at the Van Gogh tie his brother was wearing, an elongated version of
Starry Night.

“Get rid of them.”

“Let's you and me have a quick drink,” Herbert said. He put a fatherly hand on Frederick's shoulder. “Discuss this like men.”

“Men in their midforties,” Frederick said. But he allowed Herbert to lead him back into the China Boat and steer him toward the end of the bar. Herbert signaled to the bartender for two scotches. Frederick stared off toward the table in the Smoking Permitted section, to where the young lovers were now eating. The name of the little café in Boston flashed into his mind, the Fiddler's Cave. And he could hear Chandra's sweet voice,
a
basket
of
wine
. And he remembered the hot, wet grasp of her legs around his body, the warm tremble in his thighs. They had had salads for dinner, huge things laden with artichoke hearts, and the trio had sung “Angel of the Morning.” And then it was all gone, and he was back in the China Boat with the other galley slaves, heaving-ho, heaving-ho. He felt the scotch warming his stomach and realized that he could do with another one.

“We go around once, brother,” Herbert said. He waved at the girls, who seemed to be ordering more drinks from the geisha waitress, and doing quite nicely without them. “You need to get in touch with your male ego. And those two young women are the best place to start.” Now Frederick remembered Chandra standing by the window of his old apartment on Baker Street, after they'd first made love, the bedsheet wrapped about her body, the rain coming at her from the other side of the pane. And he had wondered then if he could ever hold on to something so free, so ephemeral, so like the rain as this illusive girl.

“Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands,” he whispered. He was reeling from the gossamer memories of a woman he had met twenty-three years ago, a girl so vibrant and so alive that he could actually
smell
life on her breath, in her hair, her clothing, a college girl the same age as Valerie. He had gone, in one week, from
a
basket
of
wine
to a
Dirty
Mother
. Tears formed in Frederick's eyes.

“I'm gonna buy you that book by Robert Bly,” said Herbert. “
Iron John
. It tells us guys how to release the wild man from his prison, the natural man still lurking inside all us castrated bastards.” He tapped with a finger at the invisible bars on Frederick's chest.

Frederick knew Robert Bly as a decent poet. He had even plagiarized him in one of his love letters to Chandra, something about driving around in the snow, trying to mail her a letter. His usual method was to avoid the Pulitzer Prize winners and pay more attention to the obscure poets, such as the poets laureate. That in itself had been an education.

“So whaddya say, wild man?” asked Herbert. “You game?” Frederick remembered now that the trio at the Fiddler's Cave had also played “Mrs. Robinson,” and he and Chandra had sung along, their glasses of Chianti raised high. They were both wild then, wild in bed, wild on the street, wild in ideas. But so was the world, so were the sixties, so was Mrs. Robinson, so was everyone they knew.

“I even gave you the smartest one,” said Herbert. Frederick finished his scotch. He put the glass down and looked at Herbert.

“The
smarter
one,” he said, and hoped that, indeed, there were only two of them.

• • •

Herbert ordered his mandarin duck.

“One bird with two Stones,” he told the waitress, who didn't give a shit. “Get it?” he asked the girls, who
didn't
get it.

“You're funny,” Valerie said anyway. She tossed her hair back over her shoulders with such force that Frederick feared they would not only be arrested for dining with minors, they would be sued for whiplash.

“The duck is good here,” Herbert said, “but Trudy's Palace has a great duckling in wine with green grapes. And the Ocean View has mallard with bing cherries that's out of this world.”

“Blah, blah,” Frederick mumbled. “Quack, quack, quack.” He sipped at his scotch and imagined Herbert talking with Daffy Duck's voice. It was going to be a long night.

“And then Petite Maison, on the corner of Hickman,” Herbert quacked on, “has
canard
à l'orange
that's the best I've eaten this side of Paris, when I stopped over there on a furlough back from 'Nam in 1969.” Frederick knew he was bragging in front of the females. Valerie suppressed a burp. She was probably still
unborn
in 1969. She stared at Herbert as though he were talking about the Dark Ages. Sarah bit at skin from around her fingernails, if indeed they
were
fingernails. Whatever they were, they were over an inch long and purple.

Frederick finally decided on the pasta primavera, but the girls begged off. They were both on strict diets. They were also a bit drunk. Frederick wondered how many Dirty Mothers and piña coladas had gone onto the tab while he and Herbert were arguing in the foyer.

“We probably should be going,” Valerie said, and Frederick was cheered to hear it. But Herbert settled back with his scotch, a rosy glow to his cheeks. He gestured importantly to Sarah.