Starting Over (15 page)

“May I sit down?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Would you like a drink?”

“Thanks. I have one.”

The girl's coat was folded on a chair, and a pile of books, along with a notebook, sat on top of it. She didn't look like a student, though; a little too old, a little too carefully dressed. She wore tiny pearl earrings, a fashionable pants suit, and hornrimmed glasses.

“Are you a student?” Potter asked. He figured if she wasn't, the mistaken assumption would be flattering.

“I take some courses. Twice a week, I come in to town.”

“You live out of town?”

“In Framingham.”

“Oh—that's sort of a suburb, isn't it?”

“I guess.”

“Isn't that kind of—inconvenient? Unless you're married?”

“My husband's dead,” she said quickly.

“Oh. I'm sorry.”

“I'm taking a course in poetry writing.”

“Oh? That must be—uh, interesting.”

“I just started. But I like it. I like to be able to express myself.”

After two drinks she agreed to have a drink at Potter's apartment. She wouldn't go in his car, though, but insisted on following him, in her own. It was a station wagon. Potter feared she might just lose herself in traffic, on purpose, but she stuck on his tail, and pulled up behind him across from his apartment.

He put on classical guitar, and got them drinks. She took off the coat to her pants suit, and Potter saw that she had enormous breasts. He found it hard to believe his good fortune. Going to a bar and picking up a woman who seemed to be reasonably intelligent and pleasant, and also was blessed with unusual physical endowments. He was beginning to feel a warm glow of good feeling, when the woman said suddenly, “There's something I have to tell you.”

Potter braced himself.

“I'm a terrible liar,” she confessed.

“Oh?”

“Yes. For instance, I've lied to you already.”

“You have?”

Potter mulled over the possibilities. She had said she was twenty-eight; maybe she was really thirty-one. Maybe it was something as silly as that.

“You remember I told you my husband was dead?”

“Yes,” Potter said, “you did mention that.”

My God
, he thought,
did I bring home a murderer? The Suburban Strangler?

“Well, that was a lie,” she said. She paused, fixing her gaze intently on Potter, and said, “My husband's not dead—I just wish he was dead.”

“Oh,” Potter said. “Well, that's quite a difference.”

“Yes,”

Potter lit a cigarette. “Well, I'm awfully sorry,” he said. “I mean, I'm not sorry that your husband's not dead—I don't even know him. I'm sorry you
wish
he was dead. Since he's not.”

Potter was aware his response was complicated, but he doubted there was any graceful way for commenting on this particular situation. “Maybe you could get a divorce?” he suggested.

“He'd never do that. He'd kill me first. He swore he would.”

“Oh.”

“He's very violent.”

“I see.”

Potter became more sober as the information began to sink in. It occurred to him that if this lady's husband would kill her for trying to get a divorce he might easily kill her for sleeping with another man. Or in fact, while he was at it, might just as well kill the other man.

“Under the circumstances,” Potter said, “maybe the wisest course—I mean, for now—uh, would be for you to just, uh, go back to your husband.”

She shrugged. “Mind if I finish my drink?”

“No, not at all. Take your time.”

The woman who wished her husband was dead left around ten, and Potter poured himself a drink—he had waited to make a new one until she was gone, fearing if he got too sloshed the allure of the lady's beautiful body might overcome the rational fear of her killer husband.

Marilyn called around ten-thirty.

“What happened?” Potter asked.

“It was awful,” she said. “You'll never believe it.”

“I'll believe it,” Potter assured her.

He went to her place to hear all about it, sorry her latest hope had been blitzed, but glad he had somewhere to go and someone to talk to.

Marilyn was huddled up on the couch with a drink.

“Is that a martini you're having?” Potter asked.

“Just gin.”

“Oh. What happened?”

“He wanted to dress up.”

“Dress up? You mean in a tux or something.”

“No. In
my
clothes.”

“Oh.”

“And I thought he was a regular guy.”

“Well, it takes all kinds.”

“Yeah. And I find 'em.”

“Well, buddy, maybe a class in Existentialism isn't the best place to look. Maybe you should switch to American Government. Or Business Administration. Something solid.”

“Fuck.”

Potter told her about the woman who wished her husband was dead.

“We're just not meeting the right people,” Marilyn said.

“Yeah. But maybe it'll change. Maybe we'll meet a whole new group of terrific people.”

They both started laughing. It wasn't a light or happy sound. It was the laughter of comrades who are fighting together in a long and wearing campaign that has come to seem hopeless, like a misguided medieval crusade that has gone too far to turn back.

Despite the way things had been going, Marilyn had high hopes for the party she and Potter went to that Saturday night out in one of the Boston suburbs. Potter couldn't keep the goddamn suburbs straight, either by name or geography. There was Lincoln and Sudbury, Lexington and Concord, Newton and Weston and Marlboro. Potter had no idea of the relative position of any of them to Boston or to one another. He was accustomed to the basic grid of Manhattan, and was utterly confused by the complex sworls of roads and streets, expressways and turnpikes, routes and highways and bypasses that twisted and curled out of Boston in all directions.

Marilyn drove.

“Why is it you think this one's going to be so good?” Potter asked as Marilyn gunned his car along the twisting country roads.

“Well, I only know the hostess, I don't know any of her friends. Or her husband's. She just got married a few months ago, so they must still know a lot of single people. Since I don't know any of the people, the odds are better, that's all. You know. It might be a whole new group of terrific people.”

“It's possible, I guess.”

The people at the party were “new” but not different. Potter and Marilyn agreed about that when they got back to her place.

“Driving all that way for nothing,” Potter said.

He had loosened his tie, unbuttoned his collar, and was sprawled on the couch with a drink and a cigarette. Marilyn had kicked off her shoes, and was rolling down her pantyhose. “What about that redhead you had in a corner?” she asked.

“Oh. Her.”

“What was wrong with her?”

“Nothing, I guess. She's a nurse at Mass General. She wishes they would bring back
Dr. Zhivago
. She thinks it's the most beautiful movie she ever saw.”

“So?”

“So nothing. I got her number, just in case.”

“In case you feel like fucking her.”

“In case they bring back
Dr. Zhivago
. Shit. I don't know.”

“You bastards.”

“What?”

Marilyn picked up her shoes and pantyhose, went into the bedroom and came back wrapped in her old blue terry-cloth bathrobe and a pair of red wool socks. When they were lovers, she wore a Japanese mini-kimono. Potter belched, and rubbed his stomach. He felt as if he and Marilyn had been married twenty years.

“What's this ‘bastard' shit?” he asked.

“You guys. You can always get laid.”

“
What?
You mean you can't—as easy as I can?”

“Yeah, sure. To some married man.”

“So?”

“So what's in it for me?”

“So what's in it for me fucking that redhead to the theme music of
Dr. Zhivago?
”

“Fuck. At least you can take her out in public, go to a restaurant, have a good time. You don't have to sneak around like a fucking criminal.”

“Shit, Marilyn, every man in the world isn't married.”

“Every good one is.”

“Thanks a lot, buddy.”

“Oh, I don't mean that. I don't mean you. I mean every good one's married, or divorced and bitter, or divorced and looking for some fucking nymphet teen-age bride.”

“Not every man is.”

“Yeah? Well tell me how many are looking for someone their own age when they're thirty-five or so. Huh?”

“Well, I don't know.”

“Don't know, my ass. You and Dr. Shamleigh.”

“What have I got to do with your goddamn shrink?”

“I'll tell you what. You're both men, that's what, and you won't admit the truth. And I'm not talking any Women's Lib bullshit, either, the stuff about who opens the door for who and whether you wear a bra and how you should light your own cigarette. I don't want to run for President, either. All that's very well and good, but it's not the part where we really get screwed.”

“What part is that?”

“You guys can keep getting older, and keep getting younger women. But we can't keep getting younger men, or even men our own age after a while. We're like cars—we go out of style. The year of our make becomes obsolete, outdated, undesirable. And it's even worse than cars, because there's more new women coming onto the market every year than there are new cars.”

“Maybe—uh—you have a point.”

“You're goddamn right I have a point. And that goddamn Dr. Shamleigh keeps asking me why I keep messing around with married men, like it's some neurotic, sick compulsion or something, when the fact is I rarely
meet
any others. And when I do rarely meet them, either they have a twenty-year-old girlie, or they—well—they—”

“They turn out like me,” Potter offered.

“They don't last, is all. Mostly they don't even start.”

“Yeah. Well, shit. What can I say?”

“Nothing.”

They both sat for a while in silence, drinking and smoking.

“I've got to get some sleep,” said Marilyn. “I'm going to take a Phenobarb.”

“When did you start on those?”

“Week or so ago. At least the shrink's good for that. Prescriptions.”

“Yeah.”

“Listen, are you going to stay tonight?”

“Well, I'd like to, but I know I can't go to sleep for a while.”

“Well, OK. But listen, it's hard enough getting to sleep—will you try not to wake me up when you get in bed?”

“Sure, but—you know, I can't help it if I toss and turn.”

“Well—maybe if you concentrate—”

“No, hey, why don't I just sleep on the couch? I don't want to wake you or anything. But I hate to drive back home. I don't much want to be alone tonight.”

“I know.”

Marilyn got sheets and a blanket and pillow, and made up the couch.

“Thanks,” Potter said.

She gave him a good night kiss on the forehead. Potter stayed up drinking, chainsmoking, and flipping through old magazines whose articles and stories failed to hold his attention very long. When the windows began to fade from black into grey, he slipped out of his trousers, folded them over the back of a chair, hung his jacket over it, and shoved himself into the bedding, still wearing his shirt and shorts and socks. He mashed the pillow over his head, hoping to muffle light, and noise, and memory.

Potter sat in his office hoping no students would come. He'd drunk himself to sleep again the night before, and he felt as if he'd been stomped by a street gang. He sipped at a cup of coffee and tried to immerse himself in the box score of a Celtics game. Concentrating on the details, the names and numbers, helped him forget about the ache in his back, the throbbing in his forehead.

Both sensations were brought back sharply by a sudden rap on the door.

“Come in!” he said sourly.

“Did I disturb you?”

Miss Linnett's dreamy grey eyes looked moist and innocent.

“No, no,” said Potter, “sit down.”

She did, crossing her long, lovely legs and tugging her leather miniskirt the four or five inches that it reached down her thighs. She wore the mini-est miniskirts of any Potter had seen, and her twisting around in them and tugging at them during class often made him forget what he was saying, had said, and wanted to say.

“What can I do for you, Miss Linnett?”

Miss Linnett twisted a strand of her long, yellow hair, and launched into a long explanation of why she wouldn't be able to hand her paper in on time. Potter didn't really hear the details. He wondered if she had a boyfriend. A lover. Maybe many lovers. Maybe she was a real swinger. Maybe she had a crush on Potter.

Maybe she just wanted more time to do her paper. Or have it done for her. Maybe she wanted an A.

Potter gave her the extension she asked for. He would probably give her the A, too. After all, if she distracted him in class she also inspired him.

But, once again, he determined to stick to his hands-off-students policy. He was proud of this principle, but it was getting increasingly difficult, in fantasy if not yet in practice.

Potter did not stand up to walk Miss Linnett to the door when she left his office. He feared she might notice his embarrassingly noticeable hard-on.

3

As he watched the number of shopping days till Christmas dwindle, Potter found himself dreading the end of school. It was not just the specter of Christmas itself that he feared in his present condition, but the space of empty time, the two weeks of days without classes or office hours, opening before him like a deep and treacherous pit through which he must fall in order to land at the start of another new year and the relieving resumption of duties.