Now and Forever (39 page)

"You should worry about how he behaves? Big as you are, you can always beat him up."

"I gave that up when I was nine."

"How come?"

"I met a kid who was bigger than I was, and it hurt." She grinned and propped her feet up on the desk.

"Want a ride home, Jessie?"

"No thanks, love. He's picking me up here. I thought I'd show him the action at Jerry's." Astrid nodded, but Jerry's wasn't her style. It was a local "in" bar, full of secretaries and ad men looking to get laid. It made her feel lonely. She was having dinner at L'Etoile. That was much more her style. It would have been Jessie's style too, if she'd let it. But she was still seeking her own level. A new level. Any level. Jessie knew Jerry's wasn't for her, but the action gave her something to watch as she listened to the hustles being carried on at the bar.

"See you tomorrow."

Jessie waved good night, and Astrid passed a young man on the steps. He was slightly taller than Jessie and had dark bushy hair. He was wearing a gray turtleneck sweater and jeans. Nice-looking, but too "fuzzy," Astrid decided, as she smiled and walked past. She wondered how Jessie stood them; they all looked the same, no matter what color their hair, or how they dressed, they looked hungry and horny and bored. Astrid was suddenly glad she was no longer thirty. Thirty-year-old men had so far to go. With a sigh, she slipped into the Jaguar and turned on the ignition. She wondered how Ian was doing. She had wanted to write to him for a month, but she hadn't dared. Jessica might have considered it treason. Astrid saw the letters torn in half before they were opened when she emptied the wastebasket in the office they now shared. Jessie could be unyielding when she decided to be. And she had decided to be. The door to the shop opened and Astrid saw the young man go inside.

"Hi, Mario. I'm Jessie." She assumed he was the young man she was waiting for, and offered him her hand. He ignored it with a casual smile.

"I take it you work here." No greeting, no introduction, no handshake, no hello. He was just looking the place over. And her with it. Okay, sweetheart, if that's how it is.

"Yes. I work here." She decided not to tell him she owned it.

"Yeah. I think I just passed your boss on the stairs. An old chick in a fur coat. Ready to go?" Jessie was already bristling. Astrid was not an "old chick," and she was her friend.

He seemed bored with the action at Jerry's, but he had four glasses of red wine anyway. He explained that he was a playwright, or was trying to be, and he tutored English, math, and Italian on the side. He had grown up in New York, in a tough neighborhood on the West Side. At least that's how he put it. But Jessie wondered. He looked more like middle-class West Side than tough anything. Or maybe even the suburbs. And now he had grown up to be unwashed, unfriendly, and rude. It made her wonder about the friends who'd given him her name. People she knew through business, but still ... how could they send her this?

"Well, how's New York? I haven't been back in a while."

"Yeah? How long?"

"Almost eight months."

"It's still there. I went to a great cocaine party last week in St. Mark's Place. How's the action out here?"

"Cocaine? I wouldn't know." She sipped her wine.

"Not your thing?" He continued to look bored while working hard at looking cynical. Big-city kid in the provinces. Jessie was wishing he would drop dead on the spot. Or disappear, at least.

"You don't dig cocaine?" He pursued the point.

"No. But this is a nice city. It's a good place to live."

"It looks dull as shit." She looked up and smiled brightly, hoping to disappoint him. Mario the playwright was turning out to be an A-l pain in the ass.

"Well, Mario, it's not as exciting as West Side New York, but we do have our fun spots."

"I hear it's an intellectual wasteland." So' are you, darling.

"Depends on who you talk to. There are some writers out here. Good ones. Very good ones." She was thinking of Ian and wanted to cram him down this jerk's throat. Ian was quality. Ian was charming. Ian was brilliant. Ian was beautiful. What was she doing out with this pig? This boor? This ...

"Yeah? Like who?"

"What?" Her mind had wandered away from Mario to Ian.

"You said there are some good writers out here. And I said like who. You mean science-fiction writers?" He said it with utter distaste and that cynical smile that made Jessica want to plant the wineglass in his teeth.

"No, not just science-fiction writers. I mean like fiction, straight fiction, nonfiction." She started reeling off names, and realized that they were all friends of Ian's. Mario listened, but offered no comment. Jessica was fuming.

"You know what knocks me out?" No. But tell me quick, I'll find one.

"What?"

"That a bright woman like you sells dresses in some shop. I don't know, I figured you were doing something creative."

"Like writing?"

"Writing, painting, sculpture, something meaningful. What kind of existence is that, selling dresses for old broads in fur coats?"

"Well, you know how it is. One does what one can." Jessie tried to keep her lip from curling as she smiled. "What sort of play are you writing?"

"New theater. An all-female cast, in the nude. There's a really great scene taking shape now for the second act. A homosexual love scene after a woman gives birth."

"Sounds like fun." Her tone went over his head. "Hungry yet?" And she still had dinner to look forward to with him. She was considering pleading a violent attack of bubonic plague. Anything to get away from him. But she'd live through it. She'd been through it before. More often than she wanted to admit.

"Yeah. I could dig a good meal." She made several suggestions and he settled on Mexican, because good Mexican food was rare in New York. At least he had that much sense. She took him to a small restaurant on Lombard Street. The company stank, but at least the food was good.

After dinner she yawned loudly several times and hoped he'd take the hint, but he didn't. He wanted to see some "night life," if there was any. There was, but she wasn't going for it. Not tonight and not with him. She suggested a coffeehouse on Union Street, close to home. She'd have a quick cappuccino and ditch him. She needed the coffee anyway. She had drunk three or four glasses of wine at dinner. But Mario had had at least twice that, after his earlier consumption at Jerry's. He was beginning to slur his words.

They settled down in the coffeehouse, he with an Irish coffee and she with a frothy cappuccino, and he eyed her squintingly over the top of his glass.

"You're not a bad-looking chick." He made it sound like a chemical analysis. Your blood type is O positive.

"Thank you."

"Where do you live, anyway?"

"Just up a hill or two from here." She drank the sweet milk foam on the top of her coffee and busied herself looking evasive. One thing she was not planning to share with Mario was her address. She'd had more than enough already.

"Big hills?"

"Medium. Why?"

"'Cause I don't want to walk any big motherfucking hills, sister, that's why. I'm piss-eyed tired. And just a wee bit drunk." He made a pinch with his fingers and smiled leeringly. It almost made Jessie sick to look at him.

"No problem, Mario. We can take a cab and I'll be happy to drop you off wherever you're staying."

"What do you mean 'wherever I'm staying'?" There was a small spark of anger in his eyes, smoldering in confusion.

"You're a smart boy. What did it sound like?"

"It sounded for a minute there like you were being a prissy pain in the ass. I assume that I'm staying with you." For a moment she wanted to tell him she was married, but she wouldn't solve it that way. Besides, then how could she explain going out to dinner with him?

"Mario--" she smiled sweetly at him--"you assumed wrong. We don't do things that way out in the provinces. Or I don't, anyway."

"What's that supposed to mean?" He sat slumped in his chair now, with a disagreeable expression on his face.

"It means thank you for a lovely evening." She started buttoning her jacket and stood up with a wistful look in her eyes. But he leaned across the table and grabbed her arm. His grip on her wrist was surprisingly painful.

"Listen, bitch, we had dinner, didn't we? I mean what the fuck do you think ..." There was a look on his face that she never wanted to see again, and suddenly the earlier conversation with Astrid flashed into her mind ... "If he misbehaves, you can hit him" ... and she wrenched her arm free, and something in the set of her face told him not to press the point.

"I don't know what you think, mister. But I know what I think. And I think you'll be extremely sorry if you touch me again. Good night." She was gone before he could react again, and it was the waiters who bore the brunt of his anger as he swept his arm across the table, knocking the cups and glasses to the floor. It took two waiters to convince him that what he wanted was some air.

Jessica was almost home by then. As she walked quietly up the last hill to the house, the night air was soft on her face, and she felt surprisingly peaceful. It had been a rotten evening, but she was rid of him. And she would never have to see him again. Men like that made her flesh crawl, but at least she knew how to handle them. And herself. At first, such evenings had terrified her. But she had dated all types by now--all the creeps in creepdom. The good ones were either married or off hiding somewhere. And what was left were all the same. They drank too much, they laughed too hard or not at all, they were pompous or neurotic or borderline gay, they were into drugs or group sex, or wanted to talk about how they hadn't had an erection in four years because of what their ex-wives had done to them. She was beginning to wonder if she wouldn't be happier staying home by herself. The libertine life wasn't much fun.

"How was last night?" Jessie asked Astrid first, as she came into the shop the next morning. She was hoping to quell Astrid's questions that way. She had no desire to talk about Mario.

"It was a nice evening, actually. I sort of liked it." She looked happy and relaxed and almost surprised. Unlike Jessie, she didn't really expect to have a good time on a date. It made her easier to please.

"How was your evening? I think I passed your young man on the steps on my way out."

"I think you did too. Damn shame you didn't trip him up on your way."

"That bad, huh?" Astrid looked sympathetic, which hurt more.

"Actually, considerably worse. He was the pits." In Astrid's opinion, he had looked it. "Well, back to the drawing board."

Jessie managed a thin smile as she sifted quickly through the mail, sorting out the letters from the bills. She paused only for a moment to look at a long plain white envelope before tearing it in half and dropping the pieces in the wastebasket. Another letter from Ian. It hurt Astrid every time she saw Jessie do that. It seemed so unkind, such a waste. She wondered if Ian knew, or suspected, that Jessie wasn't reading his letters. She wondered what he was saying in the letters.

"Don't look like that, Astrid." Jessica's voice broke into her thoughts.

"Like what?"

"Like I tear your heart out every time I throw out his letters." She had continued sorting the mail, looking almost indifferent. But not quite. Astrid saw her hands tremble just a trifle.

"But why do you do that?"

"Because we have nothing to say to each other anymore. I don't want to hear it, read it, or open any doors. It would be misleading. I don't want to get suckered into any kind of dialogue with him."

"But shouldn't you give him a chance to say what he thinks? This way seems so unfair." Astrid's eyes were almost pleading, and Jessica looked back at the mail as she answered.

"It doesn't matter. I don't give a damn what he says. I've made up my mind. He could only make things harder now. He couldn't change anything."

"You're that sure you want the divorce?"

Jessica looked up before she answered and fixed Astrid's eyes with her own. "Yes. I'm that sure." In spite of the Marios, in spite of the loneliness and the emptiness, she was still sure divorce was the right thing. But that didn't mean it didn't hurt.

Two customers walked into the shop at that moment and spared Jessica any further discussion. Katsuko was out, and Astrid had to offer to help. Jessica walked into her office and gently closed the door. Astrid knew what that meant. The subject was closed. It always was.

It was a busy day after that a busy week, a busy month. The shop was in fine shape now, and people were buying for summer.

They had occasional postcards from Zina, who was already pregnant, and Katsuko had decided to grow her hair long again. Life had returned to trivial details: who was going to Europe, what the new hemline would be, whether or not to paint the front of the shop, planting new geraniums in Katsuko's tiny garden apartment. Jessie never ceased to feel gratitude for the trivia. The orchestration in her life had been so somber for so long; now it was Mozart and Vivaldi again. Simple and easy and light. And having made the decision to get the divorce, there were no big decisions left.

It was almost as if the horror story had never happened. Her mother's emerald ring was safely back in the bank. The ownership on the house and the shop were free and clear again. The shop was back on its feet. But there had been changes. A lot more than she wanted to admit. And she had changed. She was more independent, less frightened, more mature. Life was moving along.

They were all having coffee in the boutique one morning when Jessie got to her feet and started going through some of the racks.

"Planning to knock five or ten inches off your height?" Astrid smiled as she watched Jessie go through the size eights.

"Oh, shut up." She looked over her shoulder with a grin, and then knit her brow. "Kat, what size does Zina usually wear?"

"Oh, Jesus. That's a tough one. A size four on the hips, and about a fourteen up top."

"Terrific. So in a smock shape, what size would you say?"

"An eight."

"That's what I was looking at." She cast a victorious glance at Astrid. "I thought maybe we should send her a present. That kid she married doesn't have much money, and she's going to be hard to fit now that she's pregnant. What do you think of these?" She pulled out three tent-shaped dresses from the spring line, in ice cream colors and easy shapes.