Frog (73 page)

face—bold, and maybe what he said quick and clever. “You're alone I hope,” he whispers into her ear. “Otherwise, I'm sure Charlie won't allow anyone else in.” “I'm alone. You know him?” and he says “No, just based on his face and what he said, I was giving him a name. No meaning; just my usual nonsense, I suppose,” and she says “I'm not sure you can gauge much from superficial contact with someone and only one expression on his face. And he's justified in how he acted, since I did cut in and what if they close him out right after us?” and he thinks Oh shit, here I go blowing it again, acting the snob, which I'm not. Think what you're going to say; make everything hit; for a few hours she's all yours and this might be your last chance. He asks and she tells: bit of fashion modeling, been learning Hindi, ice-skating a lot, was in an experimental film that got some attention—a western made in New Jersey if he can believe it—and is preparing to go to college. The line moves. They talk some more in the lobby during intermission. People stare at her she's so beautiful or maybe they've seen her in the movie and fashion ads. After the second act she says her feet are tired, she doesn't much like the opera and there are two more acts, so she has to go. “I'll go with you. I've seen it several times and I have to be at work early tomorrow. I'm starving besides, since I came straight here from night school. Like to have a bite somewhere nearby?” and she says it's really getting quite late. He says “Want to go by cab?” and she says she likes subways; so full of characters and life, especially at night. During the ride she says “No need for you to go with me all the way,” and he says he wouldn't think of letting her walk home alone from the subway stop. She says “I do it all the time. It's reasonably safe and I can handle myself well. I carry a canister of mace and I've developed my diaphragm through voice and acting lessons where my screams would be heard for blocks.” In front of her building she says he can't come up. Her folks are there and they object these days to midweek dates. “Wouldn't think of it, my dear, wouldn't think of it,” and shakes her hand. She leans forward, her lips out, he hopes to kiss his and waits to see, and she pecks his cheek. Maybe if he'd leaned down to her she would have done it, but probably not. “Good night, nice seeing you again,” and swivels around and walks away whistling and looking up at the sky and thinking what should be his strategy now? Don't call her for weeks; considering his history with her, she'll be mystified. He calls two days later and she says that was fun that opera night but what she neglected telling him is she's seriously mixed up with a Dartmouth man and has promised him she wouldn't see anyone else when they're apart. “Oh shucks,” he says, “a little movie or something won't hurt.” “I can't. I'd have to lie to him—he's very strict about this dictum, living like a celibate up there, all work and no women. And if I did tell him it's all innocence and old friendship between us, he'd still get incredibly jealous and mad.” “Oh well,” he says, “maybe some other lifetime. See ya,” and gently hangs up. He cuts his hair short in front of the bathroom mirror, cuts his sideburns off, looking at the mirror over his shoulder, shaves the hair on his neck. He feels the hair on top and the sides, he can still grab some, and cuts it even more. Doesn't know why, other than it had something to do with her, of course, but he suddenly felt prissy and like some fake artist with all those curls on his head and over his ears, and a little unclean. He asks some people in the film department at his college if they know of an experimental western made recently which which might have got some good reviews, but nobody can think of anything coming close to that other than
High Noon
and
Shane
. About a year later someone mentions a film like that and gives the title and he sees it at an art movie house and either she gave a different name for the credits and he didn't recognize her in it or this one wasn't it. He next sees her in a photography magazine. A friend shows him the full-page photo. Very high-fashion pose, and she's holding a smoking cigarette, though she never smoked when he knew her. Buys the magazine at a stand, though it's very expensive, cuts the page out and puts it in a book he's reading, and every now and then at school and work, takes it out to look at. Guy sitting next to him in the department store employees' cafeteria says “Who's the chick—some new actress? Never saw her before.” “You want to hear something crazy? I used to go out with this piece of ass.” “Yeah, me too, me too, was even married to her once.” “No, it's the god's honest truth. Gwendolyn Wakesman. I even know her middle name, which it doesn't give here: Cora. Year and a half younger than I. When we were in high school, though she went to a fancy private and I to a junky public. And we were in love, or maybe I was more with her than she was with me, and I was the first to ball her also, and her second, third, fourth, all the way to maybe her fiftieth.” “You're full of it,” the guy says. “Knew you wouldn't believe it. Only thing wrong with her was that her calves were too fat and she smoked. I can't stand smoking. I get these physiological reactions to it—sneezing, trouble breathing, besides getting irritated; that's why I'm sitting in the corner here, away from all those chimneys around us. And she smoked those smelly French cigarettes—she was kind of a phony also but not enough of one for me not to go out with someone so beautiful and to say no to screwing her, and I was sure that part of her personality would go away with age. Anyway, it was because of that smoking that I broke up with her. What a schmuck I was.” “Good story, but I think you're still full of it.” “What can I say that I haven't already? Kill me for it.” Next sees her in the Metropolitan Museum. He's going up the big flight of stairs, she's coming down. “Gwen?” he says, for a moment, because of her shorter differently styled hair, not sure. “Well, hi, how are you? My, we always seem to meet in the more cultural places. But I have to run. See you at Carnegie Hall next, yes?” Watches her go. Body fuller, face as beautiful, still the same perfume smell and artistic clothes. Maybe if it was just lunch she was going to he should have said “Want to go to the cafeteria here?” Follows her downstairs but at a distance of about a hundred feet. If she turns and sees him he'll say “Sorry, didn't want you to think I was following you, which is why I kept at such a distance, but I realized I originally came here to see the Greek collection.” She leaves the museum. He watches her hurry down the steps, hail a cab. Next sees her at Rockefeller Plaza. He's sitting on one of the long concrete planters, reading, waiting for Janine, when someone says “Howard.” Looks up. “Oh my God. Gwen, Jesus, howaya, what's going on uh…” “You look great, Howard; different, natty, all the rage, and your face; blooming.” “Not me, but—” “No, life's got to be going smooth for you. What have you been up to?” and he says “Nothing unusual, as usual. Actually, things are going OK, thank you. Job, personal life.” “You just plunk down here to read on this gorgeous day or are you waiting for someone? For if you're not doing anything too important, we can talk while you walk me to Fifty-seventh Street where I've an appointment.” “I'd love to but I am waiting for someone. My fiancée, as a matter of fact. I'm on my lunch hour. My job starts at noon, so it might sound peculiar saying lunch hour at four or so, but I'm a newsman.” “So. Good luck then, in everything. I'm sure we'll bump into each other again, and my best to your fiancée.” She puts out her cheek and he kisses it. “Before you go,” he says, “and I know it's almost a mandatory question, or at least from one of the parties, when two people from the past meet after a few years, but you see any of the old people we knew?” “Who might they be? We didn't know anyone mutually, did we?” “Robin Richards? … The fellow who used to say “The nose knows'? He had an unusually long nose, which now probably people look at as handsome, but he always had lots of gossip and social information to give out, so he made fun of himself with the nose line.” She's still shaking her head. “I thought he crossed both our crowds. He went to Trinity. Then Ellen Levin? I didn't know her that well, really not at all, but I certainly remember her.” “Her name's not familiar either,” and he says “Ellen Levin, or Levine, or Levine,” pronouncing it the other way. She was your best friend at school, I thought. Tall, pretty, bouncy blonde. Father had a hamper factory.” “No,” she says. “Then Helen? Evelyn? I don't think ‘Eleanor.' Because I remember first talking to her at your school dance, night I first met you, and then she introduced us, or you just came over and introductions were made all around, because she thought we'd get along or saw I was mainly interested in you and not her.” “Is that where we first met? I thought it was after a movie.” “No. And maybe I got her last name wrong, but I'm sure her first name was something like Helen or Ellen.” “I've never known a Helen or Ellen.” “Everyone in New York's known an Ellen.” “Then in high school or college. And I did always think we met after a movie. I still do. I even know what movie.
Modern Times
, at the New Yorker. You came up to me after it, in that lobby-entranceway where they have that enormous refreshment stand and long vertical box with movie calendars for the next few months, and asked what I thought of the movie and we had coffee or tea at a coffeehouse nearby, or you asked me.” “I don't even think the New Yorker was the New Yorker when we first met. It was the Stoddard or something. And the only movie we ever went to—no, there were two, but the first was
Rhapsody
, with Elizabeth Taylor and Vittorio Gassman—the one about music. They're music students, concert performers. But young. And some other actor. John someone. A flash in the pan, pretty face, no talent, but the male romantic lead. Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto was also in it, I think, all over the place, and another schmaltzy piece—Rachmaninoff's Second or Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto. All I know is I loved the music then.” “No, I never saw it.” “At Radio City Music Hall. It was our first date. We sat for a while in the waiting room outside the two big restrooms downstairs.” “I thought our first date was at the Metropolitan Museum. You showed me all the paintings you knew something about, talked nonstop about them, I guess to impress me. I was so young I didn't mind being impressed by a knowledgeable young man, especially about anything involving art.” “No. We once met there—the last time, in fact—several years ago. We were going in opposite directions on the grand stairway there. It was very brief, hello, not even a how's-by-you, and then you ran as fast as anybody could run down those steps and I, I've got to admit, followed you out of the museum, or at least to the top of the steps, and watched you get into a cab.” “Why'd you do that?” “Because, because, why do you think? A bitten smitten. I mean, maybe not then—at the museum. Then probably I was following you to see what had interested me—maybe even obsessed me—for so long about you.” “You were that way about me?” “Are you crazy? Excuse me, but how could you say that? When I was sixteen, and then seventeen, eighteen and ninteen or so, I would have put my head under a speeding car's wheel for you. I in fact almost did do something like that for you once. I walked out of my house—no, I should shut up.” “Go on, if you want. It's long ago—unless it embarrasses you. It doesn't me.” “With only a shirt on—a short-sleeved—you know, not an undershirt—” “A T-shirt.” “That's right, and pants and shoes too, of course, but no socks. To get pneumonia. In the freezing cold and snow, that's what I mean. So you'd hear about it later—from Robin Richards or through him to someone you knew—that I died or at least got very sick. And you'd be worried, concerned, upset, call me, want to see me—in the hospital room where I was recovering, for instance—then out of pity or something bordering on affection, start seeing me again but exclusively.” “We never really
saw
each other. It wasn't even close to that.” “I know. But that's how I felt. But all of that—the movie; movies, actually. I forget what the other one was but it was at Loew's 83rd or RKO 81st. And bumping into me not only at the Met museum but at the old opera house Met and standing in the orchestra standing room section with me to see
Faust
, plus my feelings for you then—none of it rings a bell?” “I remember the opera. I met you there by accident, I think, though whether I stood with you inside or sat alone or with someone else—and certainly whether it was upstairs or downstairs where we stood, if we did—I forget.” “We stood alone. I stood behind you. We took the subway back to the West Side together. Before we took the subway I asked if you wanted to have a snack. Asked you outside or in the lobby after you wanted to leave after the second or third act. I stood behind you at the opera so you could see. I mean, that's not why I told you I was standing behind you, though I might have, but that's why I did it.” “Well that was very nice of you if that's what you did. And whether it was
Modem Times
and at the New Yorker theater where I first met you, I could also be mistaken. My memory's never been one of the keenest. Though I do feel sure it was at an art movie house where we first met—the Thalia perhaps. And that you struck up a conversation about the movie, to get to meet me I realized and didn't mind, and we had coffee after or we didn't. Maybe I'm getting all the art movie houses mixed up with the art coffeehouses—and then you phoned me a few times. Unfortunately, or quite truthfully, I couldn't go out with you or wasn't interested. It could have been I was seeing someone at the time. Though I'm almost certain I did go with you once to the Metropolitan Museum. Probably just an innocent Sunday afternoon date. And then for the next few years I kept running into you at various palaces of culture in the city. Carnegie Hall, I believe.” “No. Carnegie Hall is the place you said, when I bumped into you at the museum Met, ‘Well, I suppose we'll next meet each other there.' Meaning, at another palace of culture.” “Then the Modern.” “Never the Modern. I would have remembered. Of all places, that's the one I most wanted to go to with you. And to also have a snack in the garden restaurant there, or if it was too cold, the one inside. Never the Modern. Never Carnegie Hall.” “But places like that. As I said, my memory was never that sharp, but I never thought it was this bad. Anyway, it's been nice talking with you, Howard. Again, my regards to your fiancée. See? I remember I said that.” “Listen, she'll be here any second. She's usually late, but not this much, and I'm sure she'd like meeting you.” “I'm already very late.” “You also might be interested in her. She was an actress, pretty successful at it from the time she was ten, but gave it up. She even did TV soap operas and a couple of drama shows and made Broadway three years ago, in a good play, as far as the critics were concerned, and she's friends with a couple of women who went to Sarah Lawrence and you went there, didn't you?” “I graduated last year, but I don't have the greatest memories of the place or the people in my class, so I'd rather not talk about it. Well, Howard, I'll see you again I'm sure,” and heads uptown. Years later he's living with a woman who once took a class at the Sarah Lawrence continuing ed school and for some reason was being sent the alumni magazine. He always reads the alumni news in it for the year Gwen graduated. She's never listed. Years after that he's seeing a woman and they're at the apartment of a friend of hers and he asks where the bathroom is. The friend says “I think the one off the living room's filled; there's another in my bedroom.” He goes to it. On the night table is the latest Sarah Lawrence alumni magazine. He takes it to the bathroom, turns to the alumni news for Gwen's year and looks at it while pissing. Nothing about her. Puts the magazine back on the night table and sees a stack of alumni magazines on the radiator. He goes through about ten of them before finding something about Gwen from two years ago. She's produced documentaries on nature, done public television writing, “ghostwritten a poetical biography of a dying city,” finished a “mastodonic novel which I decided would never get published and if published, never be received well, so I immediately trunked,” took up residence in five cities in three countries in the last eight years “doing work research on I won't say what or with whom and I hope the finished results won't show,” been married and divorced twice, no children and “because of all the undertakings I feel I still have to do and get done, I doubt I'll have any—my loss, not theirs,” is now living and painting in a “saintly little town in the mountains near Santa Fe, something I'll most likely be doing for the rest of my life, for I feel I've finally found my art form.” “She gives,” the class correspondence secretary says, “no address, and no one should even attempt to reach her through New Mexico phone information, since for the next two years she's in self-imposed solitary without so much as a flush toilet, running faucet, mailbox or phone, refining her work for a solo showing at what I'm sure will be a prominent NYC gallery. Gwen also writes she's periodically gloomy because of her solitude but has never been more creative in her life—this from the one who was Ms. Creativity in our class for four straight years, and we had some winners. For companionship she says she has several sheep, horses, innumerable cats and a hundred-ten-pound Great Pyrenees named Fluffy to protect her from real mountain lions, bobcats and bears. Gwen only answered my inquiry—which came via a family member of hers, so don't think I have her address—to spare me the task of trying to track her down for the next ten years. Her parting words—and I apologize if she didn't mean for me to print any of them, even if I'm sure she doesn't get the alumni mag and wouldn't read anything about herself if she did—were ‘Right now I'm solely and totally involved with my animals, artwork, and putting the finishing touches on my house' (which she built all by herself, I forgot to say, and without the help of electric screwdrivers and saws) ‘but no people, and if all that sounds phony if not pathalogical, so be it.' It doesn't, Gwen. It sounds heavenly. From all of us: Follow your star.” He reads art reviews and announcements of art exhibits in the