at his watch. Eight thirty. A good time to call.
He decided to read his ex-wife’s letter first; then felt he was avoiding that call, was afraid of that call, he who dealt with beautiful women every working day.
‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘She may not be beautiful. She may be older than “mature” implies. She may be worn and lost and pitiful. What will you do then? How will you get through your date without hurting her?’
And even that wasn’t it, wasn’t the bottom line.
‘What if she finds you worn and pitiful?’
He opened Arlene’s letter. Mark was doing well at Columbia after a rather shaky freshman year.
Arlene’s wealthy older brother was suffering from high blood pressure caused, he claimed, by the approach of the tax season. Her younger brother was considering divorce . . .
He put aside the letter, lifted the phone and dialled, his palms sweating.
The woman’s voice was high and tremulous. For a moment he thought it an aged voice. ‘Hello?’ When he didn’t answer, she said, ‘Now who is this?’ crisply, losing the old-woman tremor.
‘David Howars, Miss Goran. In reply to your letter.’
It was her turn to be silent.
‘The New York Review, you know?’
‘Yes, of course. I was . . . taken aback.’
‘You gave me the number. Didn’t you expect my call?’
‘I . . . I find myself surprised at everything that happens in relation to that foolish ad.’
He chuckled. ‘I’ve forgotten which ad was yours. Was it “Slim mature lady with masters . . .”?’
‘Please don’t repeat it! I wrote it as quickly as I could. The slim . . . that’s a Freudian response of some sort. I am slim, or relatively slim, now, but I wasn’t always. So I tend to overemphasize the quality. As for the rest . . . I based it on what the other ads said. Silly, wasn’t it?’ She laughed painfully.
‘Good enough to get me to answer.’
‘I didn’t mean to link you to the silliness . . .’
‘Look, Miss Goran, would you like to have lunch?’
‘Lunch is a fine idea. Lunch doesn’t commit us . . .’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘I can’t on a weekday. I teach elementary school.’ She paused. ‘Aren’t you available on weekends?’
Which was a way of asking if he was married. ‘Saturday or Sunday?’ he asked.
‘Saturday.’ And then, ‘We could meet half-way. From your zip code, I gather you’re in the Hollywood Hills or thereabouts. It’s a long drive to the shore.’
Which could have been consideration, or fear that he would end up in her apartment making a ‘headlong gallop toward intimacies’.
‘Whatever you’d like. But as long as you’re willing to drive in . . . Scandia, Ma Maison, Bistro Gardens, the Polo Lounge, just about all the fine restaurants are in my area. Pick one and we’ll meet there.’
‘I’ve never been to the Polo Lounge. It’s in the Beverly Hills Hotel, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Saturday noon, the Polo Lounge.’
‘I didn’t expect to be so royally treated . . . David!’
‘That’s all right, Rita.’ The excitement in her voice was the reason he had offered the well-known restaurants. She would see the way he dressed, the way the captains and waiters recognized and treated him; would learn his occupation, his position; would see the car he drove and the house in which he lived, if it went that far. So that there would be no chance of her finding him worn and pitiful.
‘Could I have your telephone number, David? In case I have to cancel at the last minute?’
‘Home or office?’ he asked, thinking she was still questioning his marital status. He supposed married men answered those ads often enough.
‘Well . . . home, unless you’re at the office on Saturdays.’
He gave it to her.
She said, ‘Thank you! I’m looking forward to meeting you!’
He said, ‘The same here,’ and, ‘Goodbye.’
He was no longer nervous . . . until he considered what could happen if Miss Goran turned out to be less frightened and shy than she seemed, and herself made ‘a headlong gallop toward intimacies’.
Then again, that was one of the reasons he had read the New York Review personals – wanting to try an intellectual, non-showbiz woman in a complete relationship.
It was time to shower, then relax with one of the novels he read in his continuing search for movie properties. After which he would watch the late news and go to sleep.
Dreamless sleep, he hoped.
Rita Goran also had occasional nightmares. They concerned William Goran, her late husband, and he would be beating her, as he had in real life, though real life was twelve years in the past.
An over-reaction, she felt, the dreams being far worse than the actual beatings.
Even labelling them ‘beatings’ was an over-reaction, an exaggeration. Only that once, during the February blizzard, when she had suggested he sell the business before it ruined them, had he done more than shout obscenities and slap her a few times. During the blizzard he had ‘experienced a breakdown’, as he termed it. He had punched her in the face with his fist, three times, so that she’d had to call Dr Giles. Giles rather than their regular doctor for two reasons: he was within walking distance that stormy winter’s day, and he didn’t know many of the people she and Will knew.
She was ashamed, terribly, that Rita Goran who had been brought up in a loving home, who had received a fine Hunter College education, who had thought she knew the man she had married, should have cuts and bruises and broken teeth.
Will had been so contrite, so sorry afterwards, weeping, kissing her hand, pleading for her forgiveness. Of course she forgave him, and of course she understood the terrible pressure under which he had been living since Goran’s Electrical Supply Depot had begun failing.
But he had continued to throw good money after bad, as Daddy used to say, some of it money Daddy had left her and which she had put aside for his grandson’s education. Her only child, Roger, who to this day couldn’t believe his father had actually done what he had seen on his mother’s face. Roger, who nevertheless suspected his mother in his father’s death.
The inheritance, as she called Daddy’s money, was in her name and couldn’t be withdrawn without her signature. Will had talked and talked, mostly at night in bed, wheedling it out of her a thousand or two at a time (and, yes, frightening it out of
