The Best of Everything (21 page)

"I don't see why a girl has to quit her job just because she gets married," Caroline said. "I'd like to keep mine. It's really more of a career to me than a job—I like it."

"Maybe you'll marry Paul," Kippie said comfortably.

"I haven't even laid eyes on him yet!"

"You'U like him. He's sweet. He always kisses me goodbye, he kids me and says I'm his girl friend. It's a standing joke."

"Oh, God."

"No, he's funny," Kippie said. "He's so cute; wait and you'll see."

Caroline was looking in the mirror, combing her hair. She glanced down at the assortment of perfume and cologne bottles on the dresser tray. "Oh, you still wear that. I remember it from high school. You were the first girl to wear perfume instead of cologne. I remember how sophisticated and rich I thought you were."

"My goodness, I don't remember that."

"Oh, sure." Caroline sniffed at the stopper. It brought back memories, one after another, like an image reflected and re-reflected in a series of mirrors. "And I remember our freshman year when you first started to shave your legs. I was kind of shocked, for some reason."

Kippie lifted her foot and looked ruefully at her calf. "I hardly even have time to do that any more."

"Why?"

"Oh, there are millions of things to do around a house. I didn't believe it either until I was married. And my natural-childbirth classes, and cooking school, and entertaining the in-laws every Sunday or going over to their house, and shopping for tlie baby. Maybe it doesn't sound like much, but I make it much because I like it."

"As long as you're happy," Caroline said. "That's the main thing."

"I am happy. I always hated my job and when I found out I was pregnant I was so delighted because then I could quit." She took Caroline's hand. "Come on. I want you to meet Paul."

Caroline glanced back at the bedroom as they left. The new bedspread with its dust ruflfle looked out of place next to the un-carpeted worn wooden floor. The two chairs in the bedroom did not match, and there were shades at the windows instead of Venetian blinds. Caroline remembered very well the home Kippie had lived in in Port Blair, a comfortable, attractive home, much like her own. Kippie had left all her pretty bedroom furniture for her younger sister, who still went to the high school. The king-size bed here was new, and so was the dresser, but the rest would have to wait for the future. A new baby was expensive, medical school was expensive, and so were rent and food. Eventually Kippie and her husband hoped to have a house in the suburbs, where her husband could have his practice. Maybe she's right and I'm wrong, Caroline thought, but I couldn't stand to live the way she does now. It depresses me just to be here for an hour. And she hardly even sees her husband; he's always at the hospital or studying.

Could I have done it for Eddie? She remembered Eddie again, as a part of her past, the past that came back whenever she saw anyone she had known before these nine important months at Fabian. And the past still hurt a little. Of course I could have done it for Eddie, Caroline thought; I'd probably be just as boring and domestic as Kippie is. No . . . not quite as boring. I'd do all this with imagination. And Eddie was different from everyone else because he had imagination too, and humor, and life.

"I'd like you to meet Paul Landis," Kippie said. "This is my friend Caroline Bender from high school, you remember how many times I've told you about her."

"Indeed I do," Paul Landis said.

He held out his hand and Caroline shook hands with him, thinking how rather formal it was for anyone to take time out to shake hands at a cocktail party. He was a bit over six feet tall, with dark straight hair and a generous straight nose and brown horn-rimmed glasses. He reminded Caroline of a large, earnest bird. He wore a gray flannel suit that was almost black, a white shirt with a tight little round collar and a coUar pin in it and a narrow black knitted

tie. The suit was obviously expensive, and the collar pin looked like real gold.

"Can 1 get you a drink?" Paul asked.

"Yes, please, a Martini," Caroline said.

"Oh, we don't have Martinis," Kippie said. "But Paul can make you one!"

"I'd be delighted," said Paul. "Do you have a water glass handy?"

"We even have a Martini pitcher," said Kippie. "A wedding present. I'll get it, you stay here."

"You're the editor," said Paul. "That must be very interesting."

"When I get a good book to read, it is," Caroline said. "Then I think to myself, Is this what I'm actually getting paid for?"

Paul laughed. "Have you put out any books I might have read?"

"I don't know. Have you read Beautiful Bodies? Or Tobacco HilW

"They sound vaguely like steals. That, or trash."

Caroline would ordinarily have been the first to admit that Derby Books liked to find titles that sounded either like the tide of someone else's successful book or else seemed to promise carnal hterary adventures, but Paul's uplifted eyebrows made her feel rather hostile toward him. "That's the point," she said.

"You mean, that's what people want."

"Several milhon people," she said.

"Well, I wish you'd send me some," Paul said. "I'd like to read them. You'd better mail them in plain wrapper, I think."

"Why don't you buy some?"

"AU right, I will. Where do I get them?"

"Any drugstore."

"All right," said Paul.

"Here's Kippie with the Martini pitcher," Kippie said brightly, edging in beside them. "Now Paul can impress you."

If making a cocktail is supposed to impress me, Caroline thought, then I should be in love with every bartender in town. But I won't let Kippie's pushing throw me—it's childish to dislike him just because someone else is so obviously trying to make a match between us. I'm going to try to Like him, he isn't bad, really, he's just a little stuffy.

"Let me analyze you," Paul Landis said, stirring the Martini briskly. "Now, none of this is from Kippie, I'm getting it from looking at you. You went to either Radcliffe or Wellesley."

"Radcliffe," said Caroline. "And there's a great difference."

"All you Radcliffe girls say that. You live on the East Side between Fiftieth and Eightieth."

"A safe guess," Caroline said.

"Am I right?"

"Yes, but I happen to live far enough east so it's no longer chic. Only inexpensive."

"You have a roommate."

Somehow it annoyed her that he was categorizing her so neatly, even though he happened to be correct. It's as if he's not really looking at me, Caroline thought, but just at what he wants me to look like. "Right again," she said. "Gregg Adams."

"Gregg?" He lifted his eyebrows, not really because he thought Gregg was a man's name—he wouldn't believe that in a million years—but because he couldn't let the chance for the feeble joke pass untaken.

"Gregg with two G's," Caroline said. "She's an actress."

"You get along together very well because she's hardly ever there," he went on.

"Also because we like each other."

"I assumed tliat."

"You're cross-examining me," Caroline said. "I can tell youre a lawyer."

"Does it bother you?"

"Not particularly. But I'd like another Martini."

"A girl after my own heart! I'll have one with you." He bent over the Martini pitcher, measuring out the gin and vermouth, and Caroline looked around the room. There was Kippie's husband Don, round, bouncing, cheerfully putting his arm around his friends' necks. Everyone in Port Blair thought he was a genius, they said what a great future he would have. Perhaps so, Caroline thought, and I'll bet he has an endearing bedside manner. For the patients, that is. I can't imagine him and Kippie sleeping together, even though they obviously have. He looks to me like a shaved Teddy bear.

"What do you like to do?" asked Paul, handing her the drink. "Go to the theater? The ballet? Watch out, that glass is dripping." He quickly handed her a cocktail napkin, took the glass from her

hand and wiped oflF the bottom of it with another napkin, and handed it gingerly back. "Be careful. I miscalculated."

"It's all right now."

"I hope you didn't get any on your dress."

"No, it's fine."

"That's a beautiful dress, by the way," Paul said. "I like girls who wear black. To me, there isn't any other color."

There wouldn't be, Caroline couldn't help thinking. But he was nice, he cared about her welfare, and he noticed things. If her ideas and feelings couldn't be pigeonholed quite so neatly as he expected them to, perhaps it wasn't his fault, perhaps it was hers.

"I guess every winter dress I own is either black or gray," she said.

"That's good fabric, too. I notice fabrics because my dad is in the textile business. I couldn't help picking up little bits of information."

"Well, I'm glad to know an authority approves," Caroline said, smiling.

"Oh, I'm not an authority. He wanted me to go into business with him when I was graduated from Columbia, but I put my foot down. I went on to law school instead."

"Are you going to do courtroom work?"

"No. Contracts and corporations. There's a lot of money in that."

"Somehow I always thought of the lawyer being clever in a courtroom as a very romantic figure," Caroline said. "Too many movies, I guess. But I'm a little disappointed you aren't one of those. I've always wanted to meet one."

"I've been lucky enough to get into one of the best firms," Paul said. "There's a future in it, and I love the work. If you're interested in books, you should be interested in hearing about some of our cases. They'd make a novel, or at least a short story."

"I'd like to hear one," Caroline said, hoping he wouldn't tell it. For some reason she was tired, very tired. It had been a rough day today: Miss Farrow breathing down her neck, Mr. Shalimar deciding that the yen he'd had for her all these months was too beautiful to be denied and trying to kiss her behind his filing cabinet, the manuscript clerk losing one of their most important manuscripts and general hysteria throughout the oflBce until it had been found again.

"How about dinner later?" Paul asked. "I feel like having a steak. How about you?"

"That's very nice of you. But I'm so tired I thought I'd just go right home to bed."

"You have to have dinner! You're not going to go to bed without dinner? The bad Httle child sent to bed without any supper?"

Caroline held her hands out in a gesture of helplessness. "I'm just not up to going out and being entertaining. I'd only make you feel sleepy too. Those things are contagious, you know."

"You don't have to talk to me. I'll talk to you. I'll feed you a steak and another Martini and then I'll take you right home."

He was nice, what could she say to him? To tell the truth, she was hungry, and she hadn't had steak since she couldn't remember when. He liked to talk, and she could listen to him, which would make him happy evidently. Perhaps he had no one to keep him company, perhaps he was lonely. Perhaps despite her coldness toward him he really thought he liked her. Perhaps she had been unfair to him, and if she got to know him better she would be glad she'd taken the time.

"Well, I'd love to, if you really mean it about taking me home early."

1 hat s a promise.

She smiled at him. "I'm ready to go whenever you are."

He downed his Martini and they went together to say goodbye to their host and hostess. Paul put his arm around Kippie and kissed her soundly on the cheek. "My girl friend," he said. Kippie grinned.

"You're going out to dinner, you two?" she asked.

"We're going to the Steak Bit," Paul said. He put his arm around Caroline.

"Oh ... I love the Steak Bit!" Kippie sighed. "Don and I used to go there before we were married. Remember, honey?"

"If you're going to kiss my wife goodbye, then I want to kiss Caroline goodbye," Don said. He advanced upon Caroline, his Teddy-bear arms outstretched. Caroline turned her head but not quickly enough; unexpectedly Don was kissing her on the mouth. She could feel his teeth behind his lips, then his tongue was trying to probe further. She pulled away from him and smiled in a friendly way for Kippie's benefit.

"Thank you for the lovely party," Caroline said.

"Thank you for coming," said Kippie. "Have a good time with my

boy friend." She put her arm around her husband's waist and beamed at Paul and Caroline.

"Come back soon," Don said.

"Yes," said Kippie. "The four of us can play bridge together some night. Wouldn't that be fun? I'll call you soon, Carohne." She nodded significantly.

"Good night."

"Good night."

In the cool air of the street Caroline felt more awake. She moved away from Paul's encircling arm and transferred her purse to the hand that was nearer him so he could not hold her hand. She could see into the lighted rooms of some of the apartments on lower floors across the street, and in one of them she saw people moving about as if they too were at a cocktail party. She wondered whether there was a girl there being introduced to a boy she might marry, or a husband who was clandestinely kissing his wife's school friend in a meaningless moment of extracurricular yearning. She felt lonely and, for some unknown reason, rather sad.

The restaurant where Paul took her was one of those substantial, plain-looking places where the high price is always a surprise. The steaks were served charcoal black on the outside, red inside, and must have weighed two pounds apiece. The Martini before the food had made Caroline feel pleasantly fuzzy. She knew that the depression which had hit her in the street was waiting somewhere outside this temporary euphoria, but if she concentrated she could manage to keep it away, at least for a while. She smiled at him when she leaned forward for him to light her cigarette.

"You don't eat much," he said. "No wonder you're so thin. I like girls who have a little more . . . um . . ."

"Shape?"

"No, you have a good shape. I just think you could use a little more of it."

"You sound like an old-fashioned man."

"Maybe I am," Paul said. "I like gracious living, three-hour dinners, a home that always has fresh flowers in it, and a girl with comfortable curves. I guess I should have been bom at the turn of the century."