in the living room of their small apartment on Chapel Street, sipping at a gin and tonic in the dust-amber heat of a Saturday evening. Emily, who worked as an assistant at a furniture importing firm and had lunchtime trysts with the married man who managed the place. She was wearing one of his dress shirts, open to her navel, and she was giggling as Nicole described the night before. Then she resumed her usual air of lassitude. How bad was it?
It wasn’t bad at all, said Nicole. Which is not to say that I actually enjoyed it.
Did he enjoy it?—She took another sip of her drink. As long as he enjoyed it, darling. We do what we can.
Nicole frowned. I don’t know. I didn’t ask.
Oh, I’m sure he enjoyed it, said Emily. They usually do.
Speaking of which, how did you get that shirt? said Nicole. Did you send him back to the office bare-chested?
That’s one of those secret tricks we kept women have. How to build up your wardrobe, without his wife being any the wiser. I wonder if I could write that up for one of the magazines. Tips for a Fallen Angel, by Anonymous. She sipped at her drink again. So. My little Nicole has a lover.
I suppose I do, said Nicole.
Hurrah, said Emily. Another wicked girl.
I suppose I am.
Then we’ll have each other to talk to in hell. Bring along a parasol: I hear it’s hot down there.
Well, I may pay for it on Judgment Day, but I’m going to get as much from him as I can in the meantime.
Nicole! Emily laughed.
Jezebel, if you please. Jezebel, harlot, hussy, trollop, any of those will do.
Slut, said Emily, and was immediately sorry she’d said it.
But no,—Slut, said Nicole emphatically, even as she reddened at the word, and wondered if it was right.
On the way home one night, John Brice confessed to a future he’d obviously worked out in detail, so much so that it was more real to him than the car he was driving and the road it was on. We’re going to go out west, we two, he said. We can go to Los Angeles, get out of here. I’m going to put together a band, get a house gig at a big fancy nightclub. Get rich, live in a house up in the hills, with a hundred rooms and picture windows that look out on the lights. We’ll go to parties every night, drive down Sunset Boulevard in a big silver convertible, we’ll know the names of all the important people, and they’ll know ours.
But the whole of his speech was an opposite to her. Everything he said, when he was in that kind of mood, told her in forfeiting terms that he wasn’t the man she had been waiting for. Because she didn’t want any of that: really, not at all. He frowned a little when she failed to answer, but he didn’t say anything more. What did he care if she was silent? His will was all he needed. How did he do that? she wondered. She sometimes thought that he wanted to kill her, or at the very least, that he didn’t care whether he killed her or not.
Over the course of the following few weeks she spent almost half her nights at his house, conscious each time that she shouldn’t be there, she was opening up for something to go wrong. At first she kept forgetting to plan ahead, and she had to wear the same clothes to Clarkson’s the next day and worry that some busybody matron would notice, and know at once what she’d been doing. Then she wised up and left a dress or two at his house; her wanton clothes, they called them. Gin bottles in the liquor cabinet, red moon in the sky, songs on the radio. She had just started to get used to it, sex and all the setup it required, she had just started to enjoy it, when he tested her reach again.
He made another dinner one night in early November, a big ham, greens, cornbread, and she had only been able to eat a little of the mountain he piled on her plate. Afterward, he stood from the table, fixed her a drink, and then began to pace. Here’s what I’m thinking, he said. I have to, if I want to do…. She didn’t give him any look that helped him. It’s time, he said. It’s past time. I’ve been here, I stayed here longer, because I wanted to be with you. And I still want to be with you, but I have to go. So I’m going to go, up to New York. And I think you should come with me.
She frowned, she didn’t think he was all that serious. New York? The words meant nothing to her. I’m not going to New York, she said. I’ve never been and I’m not ready to go now. Why do you want to do that? I don’t. What do you want to go up there for?
He said, Everything I need is up there, all the people I want to meet.
People? Meet?
Other musicians, songwriters, arrangers. I can’t stay around here forever, I’ve been here too long already, I can’t stand it. It’s time for me to go.
She thought she was everyone he’d ever want to know, and she went cold, inside and out. Well, you go to New York if you want, she said. I’m not going. You go make yourself into a big man.—She made a mockery of the last two words. If he noticed he ignored it.
I want you to come with me, he said. I’m asking you to come. Nicole. Nicole. I have enough money to keep us for a while.
She shook her head. You’re crazy. Go if you want, but I’m staying here.
She thought that was the end of it; either he would go immediately and leave her to childlike Charleston, or he would stay for a while and change his mind. But she was wrong: they talked about it all through the following days; always he said he had to go, always she said she wouldn’t, and always there was the next day, the next discussion, dissection, dissension, another day of putting off disaster.
It’ll be so easy, he said, on the drive back to his house one night.
It’s not easy at all, said Nicole. My family, my friends are here. You and I are here. She waited a moment, gazing at a cream-colored quarter moon out the window on her side of the car, but he said nothing in response, and when she looked over at him his stony face was illuminated in the glare of an oncoming car.
That was December 1st, and she felt the ends of things overhanging. Three days later he disappeared, just like that. He didn’t warn her, he didn’t explain. His calls stopped coming, and she waited, she thought it was because they’d fought. But a week went by and still no word, so she borrowed a friend’s car and drove out to his house, only to find it empty and dark. Then she realized he’d left for good and without a good-bye. He’d gone to New York.
She imagined that the city had swallowed him as soon as he set his first foot down on the sidewalk. In her head New York was hell, and he was innocent but there he was. Hell, because there were so many, many people, none of them had faces, and there was no escape, and no way for them to love each other. She couldn’t imagine what kind of experiences he might be having. She tried to picture it, but all she could see was his back as he walked down the street, because he, too, had lost his features. She worried and wept; she’d never realized she was capable of such misery.
She would be tempted to ask the women who shopped in Clarkson’s: Should a woman travel to hell in order to be with a man she loves? Seven dollars and fifty cents for a girdle. Three dollars for nylon hose, beige, package of three.
