After Claude (5 page)

“Leave that thing off,” an order came floating out of the bathroom. “I don’t want to catch cold.”

Claude had more theories about the hazards of air conditioning than your vegetarians have about meat. I went into the kitchen, and for a change, there was no lovingly prepared Chemex of fresh-brewed coffee. I filled the kettle and put it on the stove. Another slave day had begun.

I found Claude submerged to his neck in gray water. “Get out of here,” he said. “I’m taking a bath.”

“Well, it’s a relief to know I’m not interrupting your baptism. Don’t you believe in answering a person?”

“Don’t start on me, Harriet. I’m tired.”

“You know, seeing you in the tub like that reminds me of a drama I saw on One Step Beyond. It was about this murderer, a doctor, who killed five of his wives before justice caught up with him. The thing that made justice suspicious was that all five of his five wives died in the bathtub, which struck them as too much of a good thing, since the doctor didn’t exactly marry paupers. You want to know how he did it?”

“Finish what you’re doing and get out of here.” Claude pulled himself up in the tub, the black ringlets on his chest straightened by the water. “I want privacy.”

“I sympathize. I want the ruby necklace that Onassis gave to Jackie so she’d have something to wear with her ruby earrings, but we take what we get in this life. Right? You want to know how they caught him?”

“No. Hand me the sponge and get out of here.”

“There was a time, handsome,” I chided him, “when my Arabic prince liked to soak in his marble tub, while his Scheherazade entertained him.”

He pretended not to remember.

“There was a time, Royal One, when your faithful captive used to soap her master, and when he was in a benevolent mood, he would invite her into his royal tub. Does he remember that?”

This time he cut off my fond reminiscences by turning the water on full blast.

“This bath is too damn hot.”

“Oh, Master, why didn’t you let me draw your bath? What else am I here for?”

“Stop being so revolting first thing in the morning. I’m tired.”

You didn’t have to be Rose Franzblau to observe that Claude found the merest hint of sex disturbing.

“How come you’re so tired? Didn’t you sleep enough last night?”

“No,” came the sour answer. “You kept crawling all over me. I finally gave up and got out of bed. What was that all about?”

“Perhaps it was merely a dream?”

“I didn’t shut my eyes. Hand me the sponge, it’s at the edge of the sink. Then get out of here.”

I arose from my toilette to do my lord’s bidding and inadvertently caught my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror. I wasn’t expecting to greet Sophia Loren, but my God, I wasn’t ready for the Bride of Frankenstein. My face looked like it had been crushed into an overstuffed suitcase that Muhammed Ali did me a favor and closed.

“You’re destroying me,” I cried, throwing the sponge at him. “You should be arrested for what you’re doing to me.”

“You look the way you always look.”

“Lies. Fabrications.” I desperately combed the egg foo yong out of my hair. “Are you trying to tell me you invited this face to move in with you?”

Me and my spontaneous nature. I could have auctioned off my tongue to the lowest bidder. That was all I needed, to remind the crank that I lived with him. Fortunately, Claude was too absorbed in soaping his precious armpits to notice my Freudian slip.

“Your face is still okay, considering the weight you’ve put on.”

To men who are not basically fond of women, every additional ounce of flesh is like a thorn in their side. Fortunately, I had gained a few necessary pounds and was no longer the helpless waif he had captured.

“Excuse me for not being an emaciated wreck any more. Now that I know your tastes run to cadavers, preferably hanging by their thumbs, I’ll certainly make the necessary adjustments.”

“Don’t be so touchy. You still have a groovy figure. You’ll have no trouble catching a replacement.” He emphasized his sinister statement with a ghastly smile.

“What in the world would I want to replace? Honestly, Claude, the way you talk, you’d think I had nothing on my mind but rape.”

He looked embarrassed or bewildered, and concentrated on soaping his legs.

“Would you like me to do that for you, darling?”

“Get raped?”

“No, silly, wash you.” I laughed recklessly at that excruciating sample of French wit.

I dried my eyes. “You know, Claude, I may neglect to mention it from time to time, what with the cleaning and cooking and the shopping, I do get distracted, but for a man, you have a wonderful body, and for a Frenchman, it’s practically a miracle. Good lord, those runts in Paris, strutting around as if they had something special to show off. It’s a blessing how they don’t see themselves. But of course, French women are positive geniuses at convincing any gnome that he’s Tarzan. I suppose they had to learn the art of flattery in order to assure the propagation of the race. Is your father short?”

“Harriet, I hear the water boiling in the kitchen.”

“Oh yes,” I jumped up. “Would you like a Nescafé, sweetheart?”

“No. What is this disgusting darling-sweetheart routine?”

“You look like a Greek god.”

“Cut it out, Harriet.”

I handed him a fluffy towel that I myself had transported to and from the laundromat.

“Let me dry your back?”

“I can manage.”

Between you and me, Claude, naked, was a delightful surprise. In his corny French corduroys, fag turtleneck sweaters, and cowboy boots, he looked like any other Russian spy, but undressed, shazam, there appeared a long, lean, compact, subtly muscled runner’s body. All his parts, including the sexual ones, were firm and well placed and even attractive. I couldn’t avert my eyes from his smooth, strong bulges and curves.

“Stop staring at me.”

“I’m not staring, I’m admiring. Honestly, Claude, if you knew how desirable you are, at least to me, you’d stop tormenting yourself about my opinions.”

He made a disgusted sound and pushed past me. I followed him into the bedroom.

“Goddamn it, Harriet, quit crowding me.”

“Your mastery of English is astounding. Not only your vocabulary, since any dummy can memorize lists of words, but you never even have to think when you talk. It just spouts out. That’s what I call learning a language. When you dream about me, is it in English or French?”

“Go get me a cup of coffee. Sugar, no milk.”

“Really, you silly. As if I could forget how my favorite customer takes his coffee?”

I went tripping to the kitchen to do my Gunga Din number.

“Here, Sahib.” I cheerfully handed him the chipped mug.

Claude eyed the bentwood. “Do I have a clean shirt?”

“Who cares about shirts? What’s your big hurry to get dressed?”

“I have to be at the bureau in half an hour.”

“Forget your pig career for one minute. You know what I’d like, Claude? I’d like it if we could lie down on the bed, quietly, just relax together and let nature take its course.”

I watched his face go scarlet with self-doubt.

“To hell with nature.” I quickly revised my scenario. “I’ll take nature’s course. You just lean back and pretend I’m your harem.”

He located an immaculate shirt that my loving hands had tucked into his top drawer.

“This is the last one. Will you remember to take my shirts out today?”

“If I get cancer, darling, I won’t forget.”

He cleared his frog throat. “And while you’re at it, pick up a
Village Voice.”

“That Commie rag?”

“They’ve got lots of apartment ads. I didn’t mean to be so harsh yesterday, baby. Of course I’ll help you find something to rent or share, and I’m prepared to help financially. You know my token salary?” he added quickly. “I can’t support anyone. But it will be good for you to work like the rest of us peasants.” His French cash register of a heart broke into a sickly smile. His loathsome efficiency stunned me, and I found my vocal chords paralyzed.

“I’ll be home early tonight,” he pulled his shirt over his smooth shoulders and sat down on the bed beside me, “and we’ll go through the ads together.”

He reached down and found his socks all by his wonderful self.

I grabbed his hand and tried to hinder his progress. It was as though he were putting on armor, not clothes, to protect himself from my touch.

“Aren’t you going to give me just one more chance? Are you too afraid to just lie down next to me?”

“Look at that bed,” he said evasively, sticking his feet into his boots. “When were the sheets changed?”

“I’ll call room service immediately. If you’d stop being so fanatically clean, we could be having a much better time.”

“I’m late for work. How often must I repeat myself?”

“So you’ll miss one mugging. Isn’t saving our relationship more important?”

“I believe I made it clear last night that our relationship, as you persist in calling it, is over.”

“But why?” I cried. “Why? Why? You haven’t given me one reason why.”

“Harriet, don’t make a scene. I was very explicit about the reasons.”

“Ridiculous. You mean that babble about pots and pans and plants. I’m not a charlady. I’m a sensuous woman. Please, Claude, please. I’m not asking you to take me to rapturous heights. Your feeble efforts mean more to me than all your mountain goats rolled into one. Remember how it was for us at the beginning, Claude? Gigantic. You were a tidal wave. All right. Maybe it’s not in you to maintain that hectic pace. I don’t care. I’m not like other women. I’m not asking for heaven, Claude, I’m just asking to be held.”

When the echo of my shrill voice died out, there was a resounding silence left in the room, as if a monster rock-and-roll concert had ended on one abrupt note.

“Harriet, don’t cry.”

“Why not? After all we’ve meant to each other, suddenly you’re horrified by my touch.”

Claude, completely dressed, took my hand and held it tightly. “I’m sorry if I’ve given you that impression, Harriet, because it’s not correct. I had no right to blame the breakup on you.

“There doesn’t have to be a breakup. I don’t want to hear about breakups,” I wailed.

“You’re a beautiful girl, an intelligent girl, a sensitive girl. It’s just that we’re not suited.”

“Are you determined to spend your life with a stupid slut?”

Claude sighed. “I need to be alone.”

“What is this suicidal despair? So you haven’t been King Farouk for a couple of weeks. It’s not such a tragedy.”

“Harriet, I’m not a one-woman man. Can you understand that?”

“For most women, yes, but not in my case.”

“I must have my freedom. Maybe it’s immature of me, but, I cannot live with a woman. For me she is a delicacy, a treat, but in my home, no. I suppose I’m a born bachelor.”

“All men are born bachelors, but they change. Don’t push me away because you fear the change. How many times must I say I don’t expect to be dazzled. I don’t ask you to be perfect. You’ll find me patient, understanding, tolerant, and most important, always waiting to give you a helping hand. And even if you don’t change as much as you feel you should change, I love you as you are.”

“I have to go to work,” Claude mumbled. “I’m late.”

“Will you promise to think over what I’ve said?”

“Will you remember my shirts?” the brute answered. Then he actually slapped his forehead. I dimly hoped he was awakening himself. “Oh, good God, today is Friday, isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m the laundress, not the court astronomer.”

“Charles and his current stewardess are coming here to dinner tonight.”

“What? You managed to arrange for that eunuch to come here and gloat over my eviction?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. He’s been in Washington for ten days. I don’t know how to reach him.”

Claude went into the living room, which was better designed for pacing.

“When were these disgusting arrangements made?”

“You were there.”

“Why does that freak keep inviting himself over when he hates me so much?”

It was too disturbing for me to even think of Charles and the Miss America Contest he paraded before Claude’s glazed eyes, in the hope that one of the entries would have the guts to do what he couldn’t, namely, to disembowel me.

“He doesn’t hate you. He’s just a bit frightened of your direct manner.”

“Ha,” I said, “I forgot, it’s not fashionable to hate. It’s all fear. Hitler will go down in history as the most frightened man of the twentieth century.”

“This is impossible,” Claude said, looking at the deep-sea-diving watch that was strapped around his fag wrist. “I’ll try somehow to reach him and call it off.”

“Couldn’t we just not answer the doorbell?”

Claude looked scandalized. I intuitively sensed that it was crucial to my boy friend to keep up appearances, since it was essentially the only thing he could keep up. With that intuition came the wisdom to participate wholeheartedly in his superficial life.

“Really, dear, it won’t be so bad. I’ll pick up some cold chickens and cold roast beef and chopped liver and pickled herring. It will be fun. I kid around, but you know I love to entertain your friends.”

Claude made a critical survey of the living room.

“No,” he said, half to himself, “it’s impossible to entertain anyone in here.”

“Don’t be a goose,” I protested. “I’m planning to scrub the place from head to toe. I’ll get that kitchen so clean, Charles could perform an abortion in there.”

Claude opened the hall door. It was even hotter out in the business world.

“I’ll call you later,” he said sullenly.

“I promise the place will be spotless. Get plenty of lovely cold white wine,” I called down the fetid stairway.

Alone, I turned on the air conditioner. I felt strangely cheered. Due to my eternally optimistic nature, I was already scheming to turn this unwelcome occasion into a triumph. Here was a golden opportunity, call it a challenge, to unveil the depths of my capacity to flatter and charm. I decided to prepare a homemade meat loaf.

A
S SOON
as I hit the street, I knew that meat loaf was out. Only a pathological martyr would cook in such weather. The heat sizzled over the filthy streets like an invisible mustard plaster. If you fancy cooked banana peel with pizza and eggshells, there was a feast in the gutter. There were a lot of drunken bums hanging around, competing for nickels with hippies in hair-shirts, rehearsing the plague. I dragged myself to Bleecker Street, holding my unmasked breath until I was in the sheltering arms of the A&P. It was freezing in there. I asked a mustachioed clerk where the cold cuts were hidden, but naturally he didn’t speak a word of English. “Cold cuts,” I shouted into his insane face. He laughed gleefully, as if I had proposed that we both crawl under the check-out counter and knock off a quickie.