Terminal Grill (7 page)

Matthew came all the way to the bus terminal with me. I wondered how he could do that without telling anybody at the studio that he would be late. He never seemed to go near the telephone at my place.

As we neared the terminal, he seemed a little nervous. He told me that he was very bad at goodbyes. He said he'd take me to the terminal coffee shop and that I could order myself some lunch, but that after I ordered, he would just disappear.

I asked him, instead, to stand in line with me while I bought my ticket. “Then,” I said, “you can take off.”

All the time I'd been with Matthew, I had never seen him with any possessions except cash. No wallet. No ID. No keys. The night before, he'd mentioned keys in connection with the cockatiel, but I never saw them. And I never heard them, either, though there were many times I heard him take off his coat and his pants.

But he had keys now.

Because before we left for the bus terminal, I had given him my keys—an extra set to my place. He had not asked for these keys—nor ever mentioned staying at my place when I was away, but something compelled me to give him the keys. I had told this man that I loved him. I had said yes to his offers of marriage. I had trusted him with my heart—and the rest of my body, too.

But the real something that made me give him the keys was a feeling I would not allow myself to admit, though I knew I had it—the deep, certain, instinctive fear that without those keys, Matthew would have no place to sleep.

I bought my ticket. We said goodbye. It was a very shaky parting on Matthew's part. He seemed scared—more scared than loving. My last words to him were, “Don't worry about anything.” I don't know what I thought he might have to worry about.

Before he left me, he waited for me to put my wallet back in my purse. He seemed to study the purse, and he commented on the fact that it was as organized as the rest of me—very organized. “You sure have a lot of compartments in that thing,” he said.

We hugged. Some men feel solid when you hug them, like you're holding on. Others feel fragile, like you're holding them together. Mostly, Matthew felt like that.

He moved away. He said something I couldn't catch, but I didn't want to spoil the moment by asking him to repeat it. His smile as he said it was casual.

I turned and headed for the door to the platform. But instinct told me to turn around. Matthew was staring at me, raising his hand to wave goodbye.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

T
HE FIRST THING
I learned when I got to my brother's was that the book from which he'd learned “Matthew's” song credited it to someone else.

We called all my brother's friends who knew about this type of music, but nobody was home. The date of the song was exactly the year Matthew had said he'd written it, but the name on it was definitely somebody else's. My brother and I came to the uneasy conclusion that perhaps the credit had been mistakenly given, as sometimes does happen. But we came to the even uneasier conclusion that Matthew had lied about the song—and if about that—what else?

And he had the keys to my place!

It was a very distressing forty-eight hours. I was totally preoccupied with who or what this man was or wasn't.

My original plan had been to take a bus back on Sunday that would arrive in Toronto at midnight. Matthew was planning to meet that bus.

Instead, I took an earlier bus so that I could go back to my place and prepare myself for what I thought was the most likely scenario—that I had seen the last of my Black Irish, my strange songster, my demon. It is hundreds of miles from Utica, New York to Toronto, Ontario. For part of them I worried, for part, I prayed. For a few minutes—on the border—I wept. Mostly I sat immobile, stunned at my own desperate weakness.

I had known Matthew for exactly one week. But it seemed as if I'd known him forever.

By the time I got to Toronto, I was a wreck. Somehow I made it from the bus terminal home.

As soon as I got in, I could see that he'd been there. The bed was made—but not in my usual way. There were matches and a few coins on the dresser that hadn't been there when we'd left.

But little else seemed disturbed. As I looked around, though, I noticed a couple of things—that someone had used the phone, that someone had apparently gone through a file of my income tax papers that I'd left lying on top of my desk. Whoever had gone through the papers had left out a T-form from my bank that had on it my name and address and also, of course, the number of the account and the amount of interest it had accrued during the previous year.

Two drawers containing papers and odds and ends showed definite signs of having been rifled through.

And in the sink was a single coffee mug with a lipstick stain on it.

I panicked, sure Matthew had slept in my apartment with another woman and sure he had been looking for some paper that would allow him to steal from me in some clever, complicated way.

Frantic, I pulled the sheets from the bed and stuck them in the washer. I called Ruth, my girlfriend, and also my brother—both of whom could hear the terror in my voice and each of whom tried to calm me down, assuring me that it was quite possible that there were other explanations for what I'd found. To them, the evidence that Matthew had done something wrong seemed slight.

But still, Ruth offered to remove my valuables to her place and to let me stay there for the night, and she agreed to come with me to the bus terminal in case Matthew should, in fact, show up. All three of us seemed quite convinced that he would not.

I finished the wash and put the sheets back on the bed. I threw away the roses Matthew had given me. Of course, they were dead now, anyway. I threw out the black paper and the spiky bow. I tossed the bottle from the rare wine.

But when it came to the yellow sweatshirt and the black lace panties—I couldn't. I took a better look at the panties, which I had thought were silk and saw that they were not. But still, they were very fine and the label said they'd been made in France.

In the hours in which I sat there waiting for my girlfriend to pick me up, I felt first paralyzing fear, then self-disgust, then something I didn't realize would be more long-lasting than fear or disgust. I felt that Matthew was gone and that I would miss him for a good long time.

During the course of these hours, my landlady came down and told me she'd had a bad scare when she'd seen a man leave my apartment. I'd totally forgotten to tell her that there'd be somebody there while I was away—only that I'd be gone myself.

As I apologized, she said that the man had appeared to be dazed because, he claimed, he'd just bumped his head. She said he'd been alone as far as she knew and that he'd been very quiet.

The hours slowly crawled away and finally Ruth came and we took off, headed downtown to meet—or not to meet—Matthew.

We got there before midnight, so we went into the terminal coffee shop. I was so nervous, I chattered compulsively about how I'd surely seen the last of my strange lover. It seems to me now that I never stopped to think why we were so very sure that that should be so.

Calmly, Ruth told me that should he not arrive, she'd do her best to get me through the night, but that if he did come, she'd check him out and if she didn't like what she saw, she'd demand the keys back from him and ask him to leave me alone.

“But on the other hand,” she said, “if it looks like he's no axe murderer or anything and if he's obviously expecting a sweet romantic reunion, I'll drive the two of you home.”

We sat perched on stools at the high, busy counter. A waiter who'd heard so many stories that not even mine would sound odd took our orders for coffee and tea. Around us the crowd ebbed and flowed. Between me and the door to the station lobby was the rack of refrigerated shelves holding the long day's remaining wedges of pie and pedestalled glasses of rice pudding. Partly through the dim glass windows of this unit and partly through plain air, I could see people coming and going in the lobby.

Dozens went by. Ruth and I watched the clock. Or rather, I watched the clock and she watched me.

It was not yet midnight when I looked up and saw Matthew—only the barest glimpse of him passing the door.

“He came!” I nearly shouted, hopping down from the stool and went dashing after him. I must have been remarkably quick, for he was only a few yards from the door when I caught him.

He turned. In the fluorescent light of the bus terminal lobby, the planes of his handsome face were harshly exaggerated, but he was smiling at me, and his hair shone like polished ebony.

He still had not changed his clothes.

With nervous haste, I explained that my girlfriend had come with me because I'd come into town early. Perhaps he seemed a little nervous, too, or annoyed at this news, but it was hardly noticeable. I led him into the coffee shop and made the introduction.

It seemed fine. Matthew's smooth, intelligent, lively talk was exactly right. He told me at once how he'd accidentally scared the landlady and how he couldn't even respond to her questions articulately because he'd been in a daze after bumping his head on the low door out of my place.

Ruth asked him about the video he was working on, and he began to answer, but then he skittered off the subject and on to the topic of her job. Since the video was now supposed to be done, I interrupted him to ask whether they'd finished. “The end of the month,” he answered with cheerful offhandedness, “a couple more days …”

We walked to Ruth's car, and she offered us a ride home. Matthew, learning that she worked for a film company, launched into such a shower of name-dropping that Ruth was quite stunned.

All the way back to my place, his deep, smooth voice went on and on about the people he knew where she worked, the experiences he'd had at various studios …

It wasn't arrogant, just aggressive—nervous—as one might be when trying to impress the best friend of a beloved.

When we got home, Matthew lost his slickness. We sat facing each other, and he, laughing and boyish, asked me whether my brother had told me to “slow down, you're going too fast …” quoting the old sixties song.

I didn't really answer, and he launched into a little speech about how all his friends were warning him that he had taken a very long time to get over his failed first marriage and that he should be more careful about me.

“What friends? Where do they live? When did you speak with them?” I wanted to ask. But I didn't.

I showed him presents I'd brought to him from my brother, a bookseller. The first was a beautiful calendar about angling. Matthew turned the coloured pages over one by one and said, “Oh, this is for people who fly-fish …” in an odd tone of voice, just as if he'd never spent a good deal of time on two separate occasions telling me how much he loved this sport.

My other gift for him was a big photo book of New England scenes. This he smiled at appreciatively, almost laughingly. “I know it's a bulky present to give somebody who has to carry their stuff home soon, but …”

He became agitated, childlike. “What do you mean carry home?” he demanded. “It sounds like you're not coming with me!” He reached for my hands as we sat there face to face.

“Matthew,” I began, “I really care for you, but …”

But what?

Immediately, he jumped in to stop whatever it was I was going to say. “This sounds like confrontation politics,” he said, shakily, as though he were scared.

“No!” I swore, uneasy at his growing distress. I stood and took his head in my hands, holding it against my stomach, a gesture of comfort that never failed to soothe men before. “No …”

“Please,” he said, standing and leading me toward the bed, “please. I want everything to be exactly the way it was before …”

We lay down. Soon, Matthew was fast asleep. But I lay in the darkness beside him for a long time. It was as I lay there that I noticed how strange he smelled—there was a strong chemical odor emanating from him as though it were breathing out of the pores of his lean body.

Out of the pores of my own body seeped the sweat of fear.

But, as on every other night on which I'd lain with Matthew, fear gave way to the comfort of his body, hard and warm along the planes of my own, and I fell asleep.

Fell asleep with the sickening realization that I was going to somehow have to begin to reclaim my ordinary life.

CHAPTER TWELVE

T
HE NEXT MORNING WE
were as intimate as ever, in fact, more so.

But after we loved, I was again gripped with the terror that had rocked me to sleep the night before. Fearing Matthew might sense the subtle change in feeling between us, I casually mentioned that I was nervous, and when he said, “About what?” I answered, “About us …”

As he had often asked me, I now asked him to hold me tight.

And it occurred to me why a person afraid of cancer will light a cigarette to allay his fears, or a junkie jab himself with a needleful to get away from his terror of junk.

In a little while, we dressed and left my place. We had time, so I suggested we go out for a coffee. I was so shaky it was hard for me to hide it, and hard for me to talk.

“I'm sorry to be this way …”

“The problem is,” Matthew answered with a patient smile, “the nervousness is catchy.”

The comment made me try harder, and before long, our conversation was as natural and warm and friendly and funny as it had always been. As we left the coffee shop and headed for the subway, Matthew mentioned that he was afraid he'd
bowled Ruth over by dropping too many names. I couldn't think of anything to say.

As if mention of show business stirred memories, he began to talk about his youth, and about his “one hit song.” He told me again how it had affected his life, giving him a taste of fame that was irresistible. I asked him again how old he'd been when this happened, and he said—as he had before— “nineteen,” which put the date at exactly what it was in the book my brother had showed me. I wanted to mention what I'd discovered about the song, but I wasn't ready for the sort of confrontation I thought would result.