Glass Mountain Page 4

  She arrived at the last minute. My smile of greeting was dying a natural death before she had stumbled apologetically over the legs between us to sit down and finally meet my eyes. She’d altered her hair: straightened, it was brushed back from her face except for the long bangs, which wisped down as if left there by a wind. It still looked like somebody else’s hair, or maybe a wig, the right haircut for somebody else’s face, a face with a ready smile, confidently flirtatious eyes, an upturned nose, and a plump, kissable mouth. Not her face. Her face was narrow, oval, her nose had more boniness to it, and her mouth, while not ungenerous, was solemn. She must have left her coat at the cloakroom; she carried only a purse, blue like her schoolgirl jumper. Her nails were unpainted and the only makeup she wore was a pale lipstick. Her skin glowed like pearls.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she murmured. After that first glance she wouldn’t look at me.

  “You’re not late, you’re right on time.” The musicians proved my words, entering as if on cue. They bowed, seated themselves, arranged music on stands. She bent to put her purse on the floor.

  When the concerto started, she fell still. I watched her surreptitiously for the opening bars, but I needn’t have bothered with stealth. She seemed to have forgotten me entirely, and forgotten her discomfiture too. She sat quietly, legs crossed at the ankles, skirt spread over her knees, hands resting in one another’s gentle clasp in her lap. But her face responded to the music, to Mozart, eyes and mouth, unselfconscious as a child. Until the melody and harmony took me, I watched her listen.

  There was no intermission, just a brief period of applause between concertos, the audience impatient to return to its interrupted pleasure. Whether the horn was leading the other instruments on a chase like Puck mocking the Athenian lovers, or singing its siren’s song to lure them onto immolating rocks, the music played around us, played with us, and I felt as if I were myself one of the horn’s attendant instruments. I forgot everything, and listened.

  The real applause came at the end, and she was smiling without any thought of where she was or who she was with. “Let’s wait until the crowd clears a little,” I suggested, and she nodded her agreement, clapping. When the stage was emptied and conversation rose around us, I remarked, “That was worth listening to.”

  “Yes,” she said, still watching the now-empty stage. Then she made herself face me. “That was nice of you. Do you often do that? Deliver concert tickets to damsels in distress?”

  “Are you still in distress?”

  It was the wrong question, the wrong topic. Quickly, I tried another. “I didn’t know if you’d come. I didn’t know if you have a sister.”

  “No sister. What if I hadn’t? What would you have thought?”

  “That you didn’t like concerts. Or you didn’t like Mozart. Or you didn’t like me. Or that you had a previous engagement.” At least I had amused her. “You changed your hair.”

  She nodded. “I remembered you darker,” she said.

  “That was the suit.” For Sunday afternoon I wore light gray.

  “If you wanted to seem safe, a safe person? A concert would be a good cover,” she said.

  “I’m glad to see you have some sense,” was the response I chose to that.

  “It’s not very nice of you to remind me.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I’m not as bad as you think.” Before I could tell her I didn’t think she was bad at all, she informed me, “I’m being met. Out front.” Then she heard the connotation. “I don’t mean to insult you.”

  “I’m not insulted.” A little disappointed, yes, but it was no more than I expected.

  “I don’t know what you planned—”

  “I didn’t plan anything. A concert, with you. You listen so intently—It’s revealing, how a person listens to music.”

  The thought alarmed her at first and then interested her. She had a face that gave away what she was thinking, that she was thinking. “There’s a kind of intimacy, isn’t there?”

  “Much more dangerous than the usual kind,” I pronounced. “I think that might be true,” I added. “I think I might believe that.”

  “Like, if two people are reading together, it’s personal?”

  “Intensely personal. Reading together in bed, now that must be the most intimate thing I can think of.”

  She laughed, relaxed now. Most of the audience had left but we weren’t the only ones sitting, talking. “Do you do this often?” she asked again.

  “I think maybe not often enough.” It had gone well, I thought. It had been the right move. We were turned to face one another in our seats.

  “All right,” she said, “don’t tell me anything,” bringing me up short. It wouldn’t do to underestimate her. “I can’t think what to talk about. I don’t even know what business you’re in.”

  “If business is all we can find to talk about, then we won’t be friends.” I selected the word carefully.

  “Or family? Your family? You must have a family.” She waited, unable to read my face. “You know, a mother and a father.”

  “I have a mother and a father.”

  “You don’t want to talk about them?”

  I shook my head but picked up her cue. “You also must have a family, parents.”

  She shook her head, and her mouth was serious although her eyes had mischief in them. “Well,” she said, retrieving her purse, “thank you for a lovely concert.”

  I half rose in my seat, just as I had done to greet her, to let her know that I wouldn’t importune her but that she could count on my desire to see her again as well as my good manners. “It was my pleasure. Thank you for coming, for risking it.”

  That pleased her, which was my intention. She moved down the row and then up the aisle, trying not to show that she was aware I was watching, the little purse bobbing at her side. I waited for several minutes before I followed.

  The next afternoon I got myself togged out and went down to Ludovic’s Ticket Agency, where Mrs. Wallace was, as always, stoutly ensconced behind the desk in the cubbyhole office. There was no Ludovic, Mrs. Wallace being the sole proprietor and sole employee. When I’d explained what I wanted, Mrs. Wallace made a phone call. Mrs. Wallace seldom had to make more than one phone call to get what she was looking for.

  If I wanted an entire box for a Sunday matinee, I would have to wait three weeks. A long time, I thought, then, perhaps just the right length of time. “You could have All for Love next week,” Mrs. Wallace told me, while the box office waited at the other end of the line.

  “No, it’s Twelfth Night I want.” I took out my checkbook while she completed arrangements.

  She wrote out the bill, at ninety dollars a seat plus her ten percent commission. I wrote out the check. “The tickets will be here by tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Rostov,” she said. “The reviews have been quite favorable.” Mrs. Wallace, I had learned, rode home to Queens by subway and preferred TV to live theater. She had never seen a Broadway show, or an Off-Broadway, she confided once; but she studied the reviews, so she could advise a client who didn’t know his own mind. Or hers.

  When I returned the next day to pick up the envelope, I waited until I was back on the street to take out four of the tickets and rip them into little pieces. I didn’t want to offend Mrs. Wallace’s sensibilities, or sense of propriety, or self-image. One of the two remaining tickets I returned to the little envelope. I waited two days before I delivered it to 1195 Park, for the young lady, accompanied by a nosegay of white violets.

  I had, I thought, some reason to hope.

  6

  The Winds of March

  On the first Monday in March, Mr. Theo arrived home an hour early. “A foul day.”

  I looked on the bright side. “It’s not sleet.”

  “What is it, the third day of this? I get stir-crazy, like a rat in a cage.” Rain gusted against the kitchen windows, beating gray against glass before sliding dismally down it. “I’ve invited some people in for drinks
, no more than a dozen, but what about dinner?”

  “Dinner won’t stretch to twelve, sir.”

  He wasn’t surprised. “We can eat out.”

  I put the lamb chops away and brought out cheeses. I had spicy meatballs in the freezer—they could be microwaved—and vegetables to cut up with dip; there were nuts.

  “Maybe I’ll take a week off, go to the islands. Would you like a week in the islands, Gregor?”

  “You wouldn’t want my company.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” He laughed. “Not that I find you an inhibiting presence.”

  “I would hope not.”

  The rain hammered at the glass.

  “Although,” he turned around to look at me, “you don’t encourage me either. Neutral, that’s what you are. I couldn’t do that, I couldn’t be so neutral.”

  “A euphemism,” I suggested.

  “Not in the bad sense,” Mr. Theo said. “I’ll get the bar set up in the living room. Is there a fire laid? When I’ve changed, and don’t worry about the door, I’ll get it. You just go ahead with whatever.”

  Mr. Theo served the first round of drinks, then stood beside the fire. I passed platters of food, offered refills for drinks, and waited beside the bar, ready and invisible. Five women and six men were scattered standing and sitting around the room. The men wore woolen slacks, Aran or Scandinavian or Icelandic sweaters, and duck shoes. They laid claim to individuality in their drinks: one dark German beer, one light Dutch, one Canadian, one vodka martini, and one sipping whiskey. Mr. Theo drank scotch.

  The women all held glasses of wine but varied in their dress. One was a female counterpart of the men, in brown slacks and an Aran sweater of the cardigan type; another wore a long skirt and gypsy blouse; there was a jeweled lady whose ears and fingers, arms and chest were spotted with a mix of fine and junk-store gems; one woman wore a severely tailored suit. And one woman—One woman was beautiful, a scrotum-tightening beauty, out of place in that room, gleaming like the barrel of a gun. A model, I thought, almost sure I’d seen her on a magazine cover. Her facial bones were so delicate that I thought if you kissed her soundly, with a hand at the back of her head, you might crush her skull. You might want to.

  Not unaware that they were in the presence of beauty, the men discussed the question of the real national sport, a contest between baseball (the historical argument), football (the argument by profitability), and basketball (the underdog). The women took no part but leaned forward with interest, except for the model, whose blue-green eyes made no pretense of enjoyment or thought.

  Then they got down to the serious business of the evening’s entertainment, and conversation became more general. I carried around offerings of meatballs, vegetables, cheese; I poured glasses of wine, beer, liquor. They considered their options, questing for the inspiration that would lead them to delight. As always with a group, they moved toward consensus, the trail marked by predictable turns.

  Dinner: “We’re not dressed for Le Cirque; they’d never let us in.”

  “Yes, they would, but anyway, I hate being allowed into places.”

  A show: “We’ll never be able to get eleven tickets, not at this hour.”

  An exotic dinner: “I know an Indian restaurant, down on First Avenue, there’s almost an Indian district there, that might be fun.”

  Activities of the sporting kind: “Nobody wants to play round-robin tennis tonight, Kyle.”

  “Or watch football, and especially not in a bar,” one of the women announced. “Besides, I have to go to work tomorrow morning.”

  “Well, so do I.”

  “Yeah, but the place where I work isn’t named after my grandfather.”

  An eccentricity: “Anybody else here like jazz?”

  A film: “Not another foreign movie.”

  And a consensus: “It should be sleazy. No, I’m serious, listen. This is the perfect weather for sleazy, right? We could go down to Forty-Second Street and have kielbasas on rolls and catch an X-rater. I bet that’s something some of us haven’t done.”

  “That’s not exactly a safe part of town, Teddy.”

  “But there are so many of us, and besides, you told me you’ve never seen one, and you wished you could. This way, you’d get the full ambience of the occasion, much realer than renting one and watching it at home. Kyle and I did it lots, didn’t we, Kyle? When we were at New Haven.”

  “I don’t know if I want to. But if I chicken out, I’ll probably hate myself in the morning.”

  The men leaned toward one another, conferring. “We’ll need cash. Leave the credit cards here; how much cash do we have?”

  The women leaned toward one another, conferring, “Are you OK with this?” “I guess if all of us…”

  The men emptied their wallets and pockets onto the coffee table. The fire crackled.

  “In that case I’ll say good night,” the model announced. She stood and brushed her long hair back over her shoulder. “Thanks for the drink, Teddy.”

  “Wait, Mako.” Mr. Theo put a hand on her naked arm. “You don’t want to see a porno flick?”

  She smiled. “Got it in one, sonny. I like my men turned on over me, not…That is, if I want to turn them on. I like to get the credit.” She looked around the room. “And the fun.”

  It was a showstopper. The men froze in place. You could almost see them licking their lips. My own lips could have used moistening. Neither were the women immune to the sudden thickening of the air: each shifted away from the others, isolating herself, eyes gleaming.

  It took a few seconds for everyone to return to life.

  “Wait, I don’t care about a skin flick. What would you like to do?” they asked her.

  7

  Twelfth Night

  From a box seat you get an overhead view of the audience, much as you do of the stage. It is almost as if there are two stages on view from a box seat, one which thinks it is real and the other which knows it is artificial. We lingered, leaning our elbows on the railing, watching first the stage empty and then the theater.

  She wore a Liberty dress, a print of tiny flowers in various shades of pink, with a touch of lace at the collar and smocking at the wrists. I wore smoky gray and my tie was quietly opulent. “Maybe,” she said, picking up a conversation we had left at the end of the last intermission, “we accept Viola and Sebastian as indistinguishable twins—no matter how different they look—because we want to believe it.”

  “Willing suspension of disbelief?”

  “But doesn’t it feel as if Shakespeare wants to force us to understand what we’re doing? Force us to do it, then to know we’re doing it because we want the story. Otherwise”—her light-brown eyes were troubled—“why does he put them together on stage in that last scene? Face to face like that. When you have to see that they never could have been mistaken for one another. But you have to accept that they have been if you want the story to happen.” She looked at me. “I’m sorry.”

  Sorry for ignoring my attempt to enter the conversation, sorry for talking so much, sorry for choosing her own ideas over mine: I didn’t know which, and I suspected those options barely scratched the surface of some general apology, her letter to the world which read in its entirety “I’m sorry.” I ignored the apology and addressed her thoughts.

  “Maybe he did it because he could. I mean, he could pull it off. It shouldn’t work, and it does. It’s implausible and we believe it. Can you imagine how it would feel to be able to do that?” I could, and it made me smile.

  She shook her head; my answer wasn’t good enough. “The play begins with music and love—”

  “Ends with a song,” I offered.

  “But not a love song. And all the couples, at the end, at the happy ending, they’re all based on misapprehensions. Or deceptions.”

  “The fool has the envoi,” I said, in case that helped.

  She shook her head again. “Well.”

  She was getting ready to leave, reaching for her purse, preparing her
thanks and farewells. I made no move.

  She looked around the box, at the four empty chairs. “You don’t cut corners, do you?”

  “Not for you.” I gave it a little time, very little, just a beat, then said, “I don’t know your name.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “That’s all right,” I assured her at the same time that she said, “It’s not that—” and stopped. I should have kept my mouth shut, I thought. I should have been more patient. I wondered how she might have ended her sentence but couldn’t ask now, and it was now too late for waiting to hear what lead she might have given me. I fetched our coats from the anteroom.

  “I’ve enjoyed your company,” I told her, holding the mink out for her arms. “Once again.”

  “And I thank you once again.” She fastened up the frogs.

  “You’re being met?” If I seemed to be trying to pin her down, I’d lose whatever ground I’d gained by not trying to pin her down. “Because I’d like to have dinner with you. Or tea—it’s about the right time for high tea. Tea’s a respectable occasion, safe.”

  “I can’t,” she said.

  “Or a cup of coffee, somewhere close by.”

  “I’m being met. It’s just…I don’t know anything about you,” she apologized.

  “So you have to take me on faith.”

  “Yes,” she said, serious. “Or not at all.”

  “Or not at all.”

  Then her mood lifted. “But you can’t know, this has been—a respite, Twelfth Night, seeing it. Seeing it with you, that too. You don’t know, but it’s just what I needed.”

  “That’s good news,” I said, and meant it. I sat down again so she could leave. She didn’t hurry, she didn’t delay, and before she let the door close behind her she smiled at me, uncertainly.