wrapped a thick elastic around the manuscript he had (not) been reading and dropped it to the floor. He certainly wasn’t getting much done this morning. But then, even when he was working full throttle these days, he still felt like he was spinning his wheels.
Howard went into the living room and sat down on the couch. “Turn to Channel 8, would’cha?” Rosanne said, coming in from the kitchen with a toasted bran muffin on a plate. He picked up the remote control from the coffee table and pushed 8. “Oh,” Rosanne said, sitting down cross-legged on the floor, “I found that envelope in the couch. It belongs to her highness.” Howard saw the envelope on the arm of the couch and picked it up while Rosanne hummed along with the theme song of the Mc-Donald’s commercial.
“138 East 77th Street” the return address said in thin black type.
Jackass, Howard thought, turning the envelope over.
“Melissa Collins.”
Melissa Collins Stewart, jackass.
“Oh, Howard,” Melissa had said to him when the first one arrived. “Stephen’s just lonely. The divorce really hit him hard.”
Yeah, right, Howard had thought. So hard that Stephen Manischell felt free to call and write his wife whenever he felt like it.
“Oh, Howard,” Melissa had said later, “it was entirely accidental. Stephen used to summer on Fishers Island and he rented the house this year not even knowing we’d be there.”
Yeah, right, Howard had thought.
“I thought you’d be pleased, Howard,” Melissa had wisely added. “You won’t have to play gin with Daddy.” (Daddy owned a house down the road.) “Stephen loves playing gin with Daddy.”
Hmmm, Howard had thought, brightening a little.
What the hell do I care anyway? Howard thought, tossing the envelope on the table. If he gets her in bed, I’ll pay him for the secret of how he did it.
“She’s on! She’s on!” Rosanne cried, pointing to the screen.
“Hey—I know her,” Howard said. “What’s her name again?”
“Mrs. C—now shut up, Howie.”
Mrs. C was the stunning blonde who lived on the other side of 88th, in 162. Howard had been watching her in passing for years. From the way Rosanne talked about her, Howard had always visualized “Mrs. C” as looking something like his mother (slightly plump, graying, matronly). Melissa knew her from the Block Association but had never introduced him to her. (“Oh, I suppose Cassy’s all right,” Melissa would say, “but not for us.”)
“How old is she?” Howard asked.
Rosanne held her hand out to shut him up and so he did.
“Using the Oval Office as his pulpit, President Reagan recently compared abortion rights to the institution of slavery,” Cassy was saying into the camera. “He also said that we cannot survive as a free nation until the constitutional right to abortion is overturned. Mr. Reagan did not, however, bother to explain that the views he expressed are his own personal opinions, and not the shared belief of the majority of Americans, to say nothing of the highest court in the land.”
I bet she has fun in bed, Howard thought.
Abusing the powers of the executive office…Injecting religious doctrine into the political process…Defiance of the Constitution…WST does not condone or condemn abortion policy…WST vehemently opposes the merging of church and state…
“Hi, I’m Howard Stewart. I saw you today on television. If I may say so, you were wonderful.”
The editorial was over and Cassy smiled in a way that made Howard smile back. Nice. “I’m Catherine Cochran, vice-president and general station manager of WST. Thank you.”
“Wowee kazow and go gettum, baby!” Rosanne cried, rolling backward into a somersault.
With their engagement official and documented in the New York Times, Howard took Melissa to Columbus to meet his family. It was not a great trip. The nice middle-class home in the nice middle-class neighborhood was not to Melissa’s liking. Nor was Howard’s father. Oh, Melissa was polite, but Howard knew her withdrawal into silence was a condemnation. And Howard noticed that his dad’s undershirts showed in the top of his open shirts, that he brought his beer bottle to the table, and that he did not notice Melissa swooning at the suggestion that she and Howard attend the dance at the VFW Hall. And then Howard’s younger brother had clomped in, bare-chested, from his construction job, and his sister announced she had to get ready for her date, which was fine, until her date arrived and explained to Melissa that he was an undertaker’s assistant.
On the plane, flying back, Howard had dared only to ask Melissa’s opinion of his mother. “I liked her,” she said. And then, gazing out the window, she added, “But it must be very difficult for her.”
“What do you mean?”
Melissa sighed slightly, turning to look at Howard. “Well, it’s rather like being stranded for her, isn’t it? Didn’t you tell me her parents were well off?”
Melissa had not gone over very well with the Stewarts, either. And it wasn’t her money, his father claimed over the phone in the kitchen. She was, well, kinda uppity, wasn’t she? “We mean, Howard,” his mother had said from the extension in the bedroom, “do you have fun with her? Do you—laugh?”
Howard and Melissa were married in a huge wedding outside on the grounds of the Collins house. It was the most god-awful wedding Howard had ever attended, though everyone said they had had the best time of their lives. Melissa’s mother’s family, the Hastingses, adored the Millses of Shaker Heights, and they had a grand time of it at the tables by the dance floor which Melissa had designated for them. The Al Capones who comprised Mr. Collins’ business associates had a ball in the house, filling the playroom with cigar smoke, playing billiards (“stupidest pool table I ever saw”) and making phone calls to Hong Kong about missing shipments of swizzle sticks. Ray and his friends were lured away to the swimming pool by a keg of ale and a box of fireworks that Melissa thoughtfully told them about. The Stewart contingents from Maleanderville, North Carolina, Vandergrift, Pennsylvania, and Teaneck, New Jersey, conducted their family reunion under the tent Melissa had set up for them by the gardens at the bottom of the hill. As for Mr. Collins’ family, apparently he had none (or, perhaps, had none he cared to acknowledge).
And then there had been the legion of Melissa’s “friends.” Hundreds and hundreds (it seemed) of perfectly coiffeured dainties—selected and collected at Ethel Walker, Bryn Mawr, Yale, God only knew where—escorted by an army of vaguely good-looking men, all appearing to be wearing the same suit. (“Harvard,” one said to Howard, flapping his school tie at him. “Princeton,” said the one next to him, flapping his. “Manchester Hannonford,” Stephen Manischell joked. “Merrill Lynch,” said the one with the Princeton tie. “House of Morgan,” Harvard said, stopping the other two dead in their tracks. “Bragging, dear?” Harvard’s wife then asked, coming up behind him. “Stephanie told me that Wiley made over four hundred thousand at Salomon Brothers last year.”)
Had they intimidated Howard? No. They had terrified him. Round and round the floor they had danced, talking of mergers and acquisitions and what stocks would give the Stewarts a brighter future. “The publisher of my life,” Melissa kept introducing
