Cheapskate in Love (27 page)

Bill considered Stan’s mocking suggestion seriously. “I’ll
just need clothes. The rest I could toss. None of it’s worth much. I’m sure her
house has everything.”

“When you awake from this teenage fantasy, tell me,”
demanded Stan, tired of the silliness. “I’m advising you to drop Donna. Throw
yourself at Helen, grovel for her forgiveness, and ask her out. How you can be
so blind to your unbelievable good luck, is beyond me.”

That was not the sort of advice that Bill wanted to hear or
consider, so he sulked for a few moments, scraping his plate to gather any
grains of rice he had missed. Stan had to finish a good-sized portion of his
food still, so he was content to let the conversation lapse. Besides, he thought
his silence might persuade Bill to set a new priority; peer pressure can have a
beneficial effect sometimes.

Stan’s well-meaning interference in Bill’s affairs, however,
failed to make any difference. When Bill finally spoke, he asked him where he
should go to buy chocolates and flowers. “I need good ones,” Bill said. “Not
super expensive, but nice enough to impress someone. I don’t know where to go.
Linda didn’t like what I gave her.” Although Bill didn’t say who might be the
recipient of these gifts, he didn’t have to. It was clear that he still had the
same plans for Saturday.

Stan’s response was quick, brutal, and ruthless. He supplied
his friend with information about the most costly and exclusive places he could
think of for those gifts.

That evening, as Bill was walking up to the entrance of his
apartment building with his briefcase in hand, Helen, accompanied by Tom, came
out of the front doors. They were attractively attired in fine, informal summer
clothes. Helen wore a dress and Tom a blazer. It was their first date. They
were absorbed in conversation and didn’t notice Bill, although the distance
between them was only about sixty feet.

Bill noticed them, however. Although he had vowed never to
speak to Helen again after what she had done to him on Sunday, he had not
counted on seeing her in the company of another man, especially a man like Tom,
who was handsome, well-dressed, and seemed to be of some importance. This was
an unexpected development, a complete surprise. Bill was accustomed to Helen
running after him, trying to talk to him, dote on him,
entrap
him. But she wasn’t doing that now. She was talking to another man, entirely
unaware of his presence.

When the couple had come close, Bill startled them by
saying, “Hi, Helen.”

Helen looked at him. A wave of disgust washed over her face.
She wanted to pass him in silence, but the recollection of a feeling, not yet
extinguished, forced her to say a cold “Hi, Bill.”

When Bill saw that she intended to walk past without saying
anything more, he asked, “Where are you going?”

The two stopped. Helen was shocked by Bill’s polite inquiry.
This was the first time he had ever shown an interest in what she was doing.
Then a tinge of spite got in her, and she wanted him to know that she was no
longer pining after him. “Swing dancing,” she said. “Tom is willing to try.”

“I’ll be the slowest swing dancer ever,” Tom remarked, with
his usual conversational ease and good-natured friendliness. “Helen’s going to
have to teach me every step and watch out for my two left feet.”

“You’re a smart guy. You’ll catch on fast,” Helen said,
flattering him. “Tom, this is Bill, a neighbor.”

“You’re lucky to live so close to Helen,” Tom told Bill,
shaking his hand.

“I guess so,” Bill replied. Until that moment, he had never thought
that his apartment’s proximity to
her’s
was
an advantage.

“Tom is a new friend of mine,” Helen said. Tom’s congenial,
nice-guy character was already overcoming her natural reservation. The more
daring, adventurous behavior of her friends and their encouragement was also
helping her to accept Tom more quickly, than if she had met him on her own.
“I’m so glad he’s willing to give swing dancing a try. I’m excited to hear
big-band music again. You still like to listen to it, don’t you?”

“Sometimes,” said Bill. “I have some records.”

“There’s nothing else quite like it, is there?” enthused
Helen. “Well, goodbye. We have to go.”

“So long,” added Tom, waving at him.

Bill bid them goodbye, feeling like he was missing
something. He trudged to his apartment, while Helen cheerily went away with
Tom.

Inside his apartment, in angry irritation, Bill threw down
his briefcase, which he had been gripping tightly, ever since encountering
Helen and Tom. “I can dance better than him,” he boasted.

Turning on big-band music to a louder volume than he had
ever done before, Bill showed what he could do. He began to swing dance like a
demon.

In his imagination, he and Donna were once again in a famous
hotel ballroom, this time the ballroom at the Plaza Hotel. They were a stunning
couple to look at, he in a tuxedo, she in a white, beaded, calf-length dress.
And they could dance. On the crowded ballroom floor, they were another Fred
Astaire and Ginger Rogers, except they were swinging, not tap dancing or waltzing.
They were like music on four feet, a symphony of style, so smooth, so fast, so
full of rhythm and motion, always stepping in harmony with each other.

The other couples perceived
their
dancing perfection, their dynamite charm and pulled back, forming a circle
around them, watching and clapping to the beat of the music.

Bill was happier than he had ever been. Donna was, too. She
came close to him and with her beautiful face beaming said, “You’re such a
great dancer.
And so good-looking.
Let’s spend the night
together, tonight and every night, forever.”

Bill couldn’t contain himself. Although it broke the
peerless unity and flow of their dance, he grabbed and kissed her. After a
long, melting kiss, they danced again with even greater brilliance than before,
both smiling deliriously. The crowd whooped and hollered, clapping harder and
harder.

The daydream suddenly dissolved into nothing. Bill sensed
that the occupant in the apartment next to him was pounding on the common wall
between them at the same tempo as the music. The pounding had been increasing
in volume, until Bill heard it.

“OK, OK, I’ll turn it down,” cried Bill, raising his voice
enough for his neighbor to hear a little. The walls in the building were rather
thin.

He lowered the volume of the music, but since the magical
vision had been interrupted, it would not return, and he lost his urge to
dance. He shut off the record player. Soon, when he was dancing with Donna in
the flesh, the vision would become a reality, he thought. As a result, his anticipation
and expectations for their date kept growing, although both were already
enormous.

Chapter 29

Bill’s big day finally arrived.

After showering, he put on his tatty, old bathrobe.
Since this was Saturday, he could enjoy a leisurely breakfast, a
luxury only for the weekends, when there was no two-hour commute to work.
On the small part of the table that was still clear of debris from Helen’s
thorough cleaning, he ate a couple of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with
his coffee. Half-way through his meal, he asked himself, “Shall I go dressy
casual or casually dressy?” In his mind, there was a difference.

Donna had told him that the barbecue party would be an
informal affair and everyone would be wearing casual clothes, but he didn’t
want to disappoint her by being underdressed for the occasion. He also wanted
people to see that they were together, a real couple. Since she was stunning
and would look good in anything—especially in no clothes at all, he mused
contentedly—more formal dress would make him a more fitting partner for
her, he thought, while they had to wear clothes. The memory of how Tom looked
in his jacket with Helen also flitted through his mind. It was another reason,
he thought, why he should exert himself and appear more of a dandy than he
needed to.

After a loud sip of coffee, he announced his verdict for the
most appropriate apparel style, “Casually dressy it should be.”

When he had finished his sandwiches, he began the task of
assembling an outfit in the chosen style. The first step was to find a pair of
boxer shorts with a springy elastic waistband. Although no one at the party
would notice if he was wearing one of his usual stretched-out pairs of
underwear, he was concerned about post-party events. He wanted to make a good
impression during intimate moments with Donna. He had rarely shown such concern
with other women on previous dates, but Donna was different. He sensed that she
would be less willing to tolerate saggy boxers.

“There won’t be anything drooping underneath them though,”
he thought to himself with confidence, “so she’ll be satisfied on that point.”

Pulling out the dresser drawer, which contained his
underwear, he picked up pair after pair. To test them, he stretched them a bit,
but none snapped back. Finally, digging around the bottom of the drawer, he
fished out a bright yellow pair. It looked like it had never been worn, and he
didn’t wonder why. He would have thrown it back in the drawer, but he had
tested the rest. He tried its elasticity, and it was all there.

“Hope it doesn’t glow in the dark,” he said, tossing it on
the bed. A witty thought suddenly came to him. “If she asks, I’ll say she has
brought a whole lot of sunshine into my life, and I’m bringing her some in
return. And then I’ll remind her what happens where the sun shines: Small
things and big things become bigger.” Elated with his cleverness, he chuckled
and continued compiling his outfit for the party.

“Black socks are sexy,” he said, as he pulled out another
dresser drawer.

His search for a nice pair of black socks or any other
color, however, was as difficult as his hunt for a decent pair of boxers.
Either the elastic was worn out at the tops of socks, or there were holes, or
one of the pair was missing. He realized that he hadn’t been shopping for socks
in a long time, but that realization didn’t motivate him to go out and spend
money. He simply looked harder. His determination was rewarded, for he
discovered in a bottom corner of the drawer, a brand new pair of light-colored
socks with teddy bears embroidered on them. They had been a bargain purchase,
like the sunny boxer shorts, both of which he had forgotten about. He held the
socks up in the air to examine them, thought they had a warm, fuzzy feel, which
would please Donna, and flung them on the bed, too.

“I wish I had a summer jacket,” he sighed, going to his
closet.

Opening the closet half where his formal wear hung, he
looked at the skimpy options with a slightly downcast look. Almost everything was
a medium- or dark-colored wool jacket or suit, in a fabric weight unsuitable
for warm weather. Suddenly, he snapped his fingers with mercurial inspiration.

“I’ll wear my seersucker suit. I haven’t worn that in a long
time.”

He took it out and placed it on the bed. The seersucker
fabric was the traditional one, with pale blue stripes next to white.

Sliding the closet doors, so that the other side was open,
he contemplated the best choice for a shirt. “A light color would be cool,” he
thought. “Donna is so hot, I’ll need all the cooling I can get.” But when he
took out the first shirt to look at, a white one, he noticed that the collar
was heavily sweat-stained. Pulling out each white or pastel-colored shirt from
his closet, one after the other, he saw that all the collars were similarly
dirty.

“Those cleaners should scrub harder,” he grumbled. “I’ve
been paying them. If Linda ran a cleaning business, she’d rub shirts spotless.
She’d rub so hard, she’d turn them into threadbare rags.”

He concluded that he wouldn’t want Linda cleaning his
shirts, but still he was distressed that he hadn’t noticed how stained the
collars were before. Apparently, in his customary morning rush, on the
infrequent days when he wore button-down shirts, he had never examined them. He
searched through all of his shirts to see if there was one with a clean collar.
He couldn’t find one, until he came to the last shirt, one that he rarely ever
wore. It was a garish tropical-print shirt with short sleeves, a riotous mix of
red, yellow, blue, and green, on a sickly teal background.

“Nothing wrong with this one,” he remarked, after checking
it. “It’s a perfect shirt for a party in June.”

He laid it on the bed with the other clothes and critically
appraised the ensemble. “Casual, yet dressy.
Summery, yet
cuddly.
I’ll look better than Tom.”

Pleased with what he had selected to wear for the
all-important occasion, he said, “It’s time to buy her gifts. Once she has
those, she won’t be able to resist me.” As soon as he had put on ordinary,
weekend clothes, he left his apartment to visit the shops that Stan had
recommended.

First, he went to get the chocolates. His frustration inside
the gourmet chocolate shop, which only offered imported filled chocolates,
handmade in Paris, quickly reached a simmering point and was in danger of
boiling over.