Waltzing at Midnight (18 page)

131

Amy stood akimbo in front of me, puckered her lips, frowned, then pointed at me with a straight and accusing finger. “There, Sir Anthony,” she said in a dowager voice, rolling her r’s. “There sits the deliberate simpleton who wants to disgrace her family, and lavish herself on a fellow not worth a shilling!”

It was my turn. “Madam,” I read, “I thought you once—”

“You thought, Miss! I don’t know any business you have to think at all. Thought does not become a young woman. But the point we would request of you is that you will promise to forget this fellow—to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.”

“Illiterate?” I asked.

“Mom,” Amy objected. “It’s a malapropism.”

“Oh, yeah, I forgot.”

Amy tossed her hair out of her face and began again. “But the point we would request of you is that you will promise to forget this fellow—to illiterate him, I say, quite from your memory.”

“Ah! Madam!” I read, “our memories are independent of our wills. It is not so easy to forget.”

I couldn’t even help Amy with her play without taking everything personally. Having her point her finger at me and accuse me of wanting to disgrace my family was disconcerting.

And, of course, thoughts of
illiterating
somebody from my mind made me think of Rosie. No, it is not easy. It is not possible.

I finally broke down and called her office Friday after Amy left for rehearsal. When she answered, I said, “Rosie, I can’t stand it. I’m dying without you.”

“Hey, love, this is a business phone.”

“I have to see you. Please don’t say no. Tell me where, when.

Just ten minutes. Just let me look at you.”

“Whoa!” she said. “Calm down. I’m going to San Francisco tomorrow, to an afternoon meeting. I’ve got a hotel for the night.

Come with me.”

“Yes!” I blurted into the phone.

“Meet me here at the office at ten tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll be there,” I said, overwhelmed with relief that she would see me.

132

“By the way,” Rosie said, “who is this?”

Oh, very funny, Rosie! Well, she did make me laugh, which was the point, as it was obvious that my mood needed lightening up. “See you tomorrow, Jean,” she said calmly.

After hanging up, I wondered how I would explain this to Jerry. By the time the three of us sat down to dinner, I was composed enough to lie my way through it, touting this as a business meeting for the Partnership. “I’m going with Rosie to San Francisco tomorrow,” I said, “to meet with some people who’ve implemented a program to clean up the streets. Rosie thinks we might be able to use some of their ideas here.”

“Tomorrow?” Jerry asked. “On a Saturday? Why do
you
have to go?”

“Well, I am the administrator. We’ll be staying overnight, by the way.”

Jerry looked frustrated. “Are you going to get overtime for this? Look at the work you’ve done already. You haven’t gotten a single paycheck yet.”

I realized that I had not shared any of the details of this job with Jerry, had not even told him what the salary was. And for some reason, I didn’t want to.

“Why do you have to stay overnight?” Jerry asked.

“It’s just the schedule. We’re committed to dinner with these people. It’s hard to know how late that will go.” How many lies was he going to make me tell?

“Can I go, Mom?” Amy asked. “There’s nowhere to shop in this hick town.”

“Uh,” I said, thinking fast. “No, I don’t think so, Amy. It’s a business trip. We’re not going to be downtown anyway. The meeting is at the airport and the schedule is tight, so it’d be too much trouble to get to the shopping district.”

Amy wrinkled her nose and stuck out her bottom lip. I realized that I had no idea where in San Francisco we were going.

What did that matter to me? What did it even matter what city or state or planet as long as I was with Rosie?

133

I was up earlier than usual Saturday morning. To help assuage the guilt, I made Jerry breakfast, a real breakfast of eggs and sausage, fresh-squeezed orange juice. Not the usual bowl of cereal. He loved it. “Sorry about the weekend,” I told him as he ate. “It’s okay,” he said. “Sorry for bullying you. I guess I’m just having a hard time adjusting to you not always being here.” He was being too nice to me. I kissed him, tasting sausage grease, then kissed him more deeply. I felt nothing. His mouth seemed thin and lifeless. Disappointed, I took my overnight bag and left. Yes, I was disappointed that kissing Jerry was like kissing my grandmother. If only I was in love with him again, things would be so much easier. But the truth was that I had never felt the kind of physical desire for Jerry that I felt for Rosie. In fact, I had never felt this sort of desire for anyone.

Amy dropped me off at the office where Rosie was just locking the door. Rosie and Amy waved at each other and I kissed Amy 134

on the cheek, then hopped out of the car. I watched her drive away. Turning back to Rosie, I saw that she was leaning against her car, grinning at me. She looked so beautiful standing there in blue jeans and sneakers, a self-satisfied look on her face. I knew that she was mine at last. I ran over and tossed my overnight bag into her open trunk. A minute later we were on our way.

“How do you feel?” she asked.

“Excited.”

“Me too.” Rosie glanced over at me with an easy smile. She merged onto the freeway and we headed out of Weberstown. I tried not to stare at her in profile as she drove. At one point, I reached over and put my fingers through the hair at the back of her neck. My stomach flipped. Wow, I thought, taking my hand back.“I have a meeting this afternoon,” she said. “But the evening is entirely free. I originally had plans for dinner with friends, which is why I was staying over, but I’ve cancelled them.” She turned briefly to catch my eye. I smiled to let her know that this was welcome news. “How did you explain this to your husband, by the way?”

“I lied, sort of.”

“Bad habit.”

“What else could I do? And Amy wanted to come along.”

“That would have thrown a wrench in the works,” Rosie said. “Because you do know, I suppose, that I intend to make love to you every possible moment that we can find to be alone together.”

Yes, I knew that. And now I was speechless, but there was an involuntary smile taking up most of my face. Rosie put on a soft jazz CD and I watched the cows lounging under the windmills as we climbed out of the valley and over the Altamont Pass.

“How is Amy, by the way?” Rosie asked.

“She’s good. She’s got a part in a play. Mrs. Malaprop.”

“Oh, yes, Sheridan. What a terrific part.”

Did everybody know everything but me, I wondered. If that wasn’t bad enough, Rosie, in a dreadful British accent, quoted, 135

“Sure if I reprehend anything in this world, it is the use of my oracular tongue, and a nice derangement of epitaphs!”

I laughed. “Amy seemed to think I should be familiar with the play. I guess she was right.”

“Well, don’t feel badly about it, Jean. It’s a well-known play, but not like
Macbeth
or something. And, remember, I’ve been going to the theater regularly for decades.”

I didn’t have the courage to tell her that I’d never seen
Macbeth
either. Why hadn’t I been paying attention to anything all these years?

It seemed forever getting to San Francisco, driving across the Bay Bridge and through horrendous traffic to Union Square and the Blanchard Hotel where Rosie had requested early checkin. When we finally closed ourselves inside our hotel room, it was just after noon. The room was huge, a suite, actually, with a sitting room and a separate bedroom dominated by a single, king-sized bed. There was a whirlpool bath on a second level with its own window out to the world. I suspected that Rosie had upgraded the room, that this was not the room she’d originally booked for her own overnight stay.

“At last,” breathed Rosie after closing the door. She held out her arms to me. I flew to her and we kissed for several minutes, our mouths learning each other with deliberate tenderness. She pulled away eventually, saying, “I have to change clothes. Not much time to get to where I’m going. What will you do while I’m gone?”

“Die.”

She kissed the tip of my nose and released me. “Well, while you’re doing that, you should have lunch. Once I return, we won’t want to go out again.”

Rosie changed into a pair of tan slacks and tweed jacket, a soft pink blouse, a necklace of white and gold beads, brown flats, simple gold earrings.

“How do I look?” she asked, emerging from the bedroom.

“Scrumptious. Good enough to eat.”

She snorted. “Later, love.”

136

Just look at her, I thought, so beautiful, so smart, so perfect.

And tonight she would belong to me. That was as far ahead as I would allow myself to think, fearing to shatter the happiness that engulfed me.

For the next three hours, after seeing Rosie off in a taxi, I tried to amuse myself downtown while the sun made a brave attempt to break through the low coastal fog. I walked around Macy’s, perusing the street-level windows where they’d set up displays with live puppies in them. That was a predictable draw, so each window had a nearly impenetrable crowd around it. Huge wreaths with red bows hung all around the upper story of the building facing Geary Street. I walked through the ground floors of Neiman Marcus and Saks, through the St. Francis Hotel, and then stood outside a gallery window where a large mobile hung, red metal triangles connected with wires. The whole sculpture moved slightly with the air currents. I read the card next to the piece. It was Calder, Alexander Calder. Oh, yes, I thought, remembering Rosie’s conversation with Ken. I recognize this artist. The key to knowing about these things was just to pay attention, to foster an interest. I could do this, I thought.

I wandered back to Union Square and took an outdoor table at a café so I could have a good view of the decorated tree and the crowd. By this time the sun had won out over the fog and was shining brightly. Despite the time of year, it was warm enough to sit comfortably outside.

The city was resplendent in its holiday decor, and the artists in the Square were out in full force, for this was Saturday, one of the few precious shopping days before Christmas. I had a twinge of guilt thinking about Amy. There was no way I could have brought her along, of course. Here you go, girl, I thought, take my credit card and blaze through the stores while your mother gets initiated into the joys of lesbian sex.

I watched the people walking by, especially the women, wondering which of them knew what I knew about the velvety, full lips of another woman. There were those who looked like they might know, and, occasionally, two women walked by who 13

were obviously a couple. I couldn’t really imagine what their lives were like, but I envied them their easy affection with one another, the complicit glance, the simple gesture of familiarity.

As I sat by myself with my coffee, I had that feeling again that I was a character in a movie, not Jean Davis at all, but some more interesting woman with dark desires and deep mysteries. I was the heroine in a forties detective story. I liked that. With that thought, I could hear Amy doing her Bogart impersonation. I smiled to myself.

A woman in her early forties, short hair, casual clothes, was admiring a painting nearby and turned to catch my eye as I was smiling. She smiled back at me and, after a meaningful hesitation, her eyes showing recognition in the subtlest way imaginable, she turned and walked off. And that’s how it was communicated, I thought, awestruck. These women can recognize one another, somehow, and now they can recognize me too. Was I already one of them, before I had even touched the naked breasts of another woman?

A young man with shoulder-length hair, wearing a porkpie hat, was sitting not far from me on a low brick wall playing a dobro. It was an interesting sound. It appealed to me. On my way out, I dropped a five-dollar bill in his guitar case. Oh, how Jerry would have sputtered at that! Everything today seemed new and fascinating. Today I was someone else, a woman of the world, a patron of the arts, even. And my lover, my female lover, was about to meet me for a secret tryst.

On my way back to the hotel, I stopped at a corner grocery and bought a bar of Ghirardelli dark chocolate and a bottle of pinot noir. Then I went back to the room and took a shower, pulling on an oversized shirt that fell mid-thigh, nothing under it. I thought she would like the look, the simplicity of it.

I waited for Rosie, feeling slightly desperate, trying not to think about what was about to happen. I messed with the bedside radio until I found a jazz station and turned the volume down low. At last I heard her key card slide into the lock. She stepped inside, tossed her briefcase into a chair, then slipped off her jacket 13

and tossed it there as well, not taking her eyes off of me.

“What’ve you been doing?” she asked.

“Waiting for you.”

She approached me and took me in her arms. “You’re a lovely sight to come home to.” We kissed. As her hand slid down the back of my shirt to rest on my behind, I heard her suck in and hold her breath. “I can’t wait to sink my teeth into that,” she said.

I opened my eyes and saw that she was smiling mischievously at me. She was enjoying my naiveté.

“I’ll be back in a minute.” She disappeared into the bathroom.

I turned the blankets down on the bed, then bolted the door and shut the curtains, plunging the room into dimness.

When Rosie returned, she was wearing a silky royal blue robe loosely tied around the waist. She held me and we kissed. I slipped my arms inside her robe and felt her cool skin. I watched my fingers tentatively touch her waist, her hips. Her body was milky white and lush. She had long, muscular legs, luxurious breasts, a soft, rounded stomach. Her pubic hair was dark brown, barely concealing the creamy skin beneath it. I’d never looked at a woman’s body this way.