The Ladies' Man (37 page)

“Let me check something,” her sister murmurs. She comes out from behind the counter and runs her hand across the woman's broad back. “Hmmm. I'd say a thirty-six. And your cup size may have changed. When was the last time you were fitted?”

“Not that long ago. Why?”

Kathleen returns to the counter. “Each manufacturer's sizing is different. This company cuts them on the skimpy side, so I'm giving you a … forty double-D.” She brings forth something giant and beige, and places it on the glass counter. It is a caricature of a bra, suitable for vaudeville or the Hasty Pudding Show.

“So unbeautiful,” sighs the woman.

“I know. It's exactly what I said to a designer yesterday: Why in God's name—if big breasts are considered so prized, and women are paying for breast augmentation—why are your D's and double D's so matronly?”

“And what did she say?”

“He
. He said they're trying.” Kathleen puts a stretchy lace bra on the counter. Midnight blue. “This is a Goddess—about as pretty as you're going to get. Unfortunately, it comes down to the physics of the thing.”

Adele doesn't understand why she has to hide. This woman appears to be safe; sympathetic even. It must be me, she thinks. I must have been acting strange, unfit for customer relations.

“Take these into the back room,” says Kathleen. “Someone's in the dressing room”—she lowers her voice—”not feeling well.”

Well, that does it, thinks Adele. I've got to pull myself together. She practices a firm smile, drapes the bras neatly over her left forearm, and parts the curtain. “I do like the Calvin Klein, very much,” she announces as she comes out.

The customer startles and turns.

Kathleen says, “Did you want me to check you?”

“No,” says Adele. “The thirty-four is perfect.”

Now the customer is smiling expectantly. Adele nods and says, like the gracious professional that she is, “Hello!”

“Why, Adele Dobbin.” The woman extends her hand. “I'd know you anywhere.”

“And you are?”

“Cynthia John.”

“Pleased to meet you,” says Adele.

“I've been
dying
to meet you,” this Cynthia gushes.

At first glance, it's too white and grand for Adele's taste, and ostentatious: A quick tour reveals a queen-sized bed that must have been hand-wrought by a blacksmith, its headboard depicting iron hummingbirds extracting nectar from morning glories; battery-operated window shades, the grandest of Steinway grands. Everything new: the Oriental rugs, the artwork, even the antiques. New money, Adele thinks, but immediately reproaches herself. That was Mother talking. I don't speak for Mother.

“Red or white?” asks her hostess, in her stockinged feet, her toenails shocking pink on her gleaming marble floor.

“Red,” says Adele.

“Your sister said ‘tea.' She said you were a little faint.”

“Nonsense,” says Adele. “Just a hot flash. The last thing I want is tea.”

Carrying a bottle of pinot noir and two glasses, Cynthia leads Adele to the living room and a curved white leather sofa. “Cleans off like oilcloth,” she says proudly. “Sometimes I take my dinner in here and watch the harbor like it was the
Nightly News
. And if I spill something—a swipe with a sponge and presto.”

“It's all lovely. You've done a wonderful job.”

“Not me,” says Cynthia. “My decorator. I paid her a fortune, and then invested it for her.” She laughs. “Put your feet up on the coffee table. Shoes and all—the glass is indestructible.” She blots her forehead with a Harvard Business School cocktail napkin, and fills their glasses to the rim. “Kathleen said you're recovering from some kind of injury?”

“Minor,” says Adele. “A broken rib, which they don't do anything for.” She smiles a fund-raising smile. “My sister tells me we've crossed paths?”

“Well, of
course
I've seen you on television about a million times. I'm a member, of course. I give at the hundred-twenty-dollar level and tell them to keep the whaddyacallits. The umbrellas and the tote bags.”

Imagine being this forthright, Adele thinks. This natural. This unconstrained. She raises her full glass carefully. “Well, here's to you, then—our grateful thanks. Is that where we've crossed paths? A 'GBH function?”

Cynthia takes a gulp of wine and shakes her head.

“No? Nothing to do with 'GBH?”

“I wish! No, nothing that clean. It's someone we know in common, an old friend of yours.”

Adele knows immediately; “old friend” mentioned with this much tact can mean only one thing.

“Nash Harvey,” says Cynthia, as Adele silently supplies, “Harvey Nash.” She feels relief: not Marty, not Richard. Not Lorenz.

“We were together until very recently,” Cynthia says.

“This year?”

“I kicked him out two days ago.”

“Now it's starting to make sense,” Adele says.

“What is?”

“Kathleen's behavior. When you came into the store, she signaled I should stay in the dressing room. Now I know what the potentially awkward situation was.”

“Me. Cynthia M. John and her volatile emotions and her big mouth.”

Adele puts her glass down. “Let me set the record straight, Cynthia: Despite my sister's view of this being a delicate matter, it's not. I have no feelings for Harvey Nash other than contempt, so I couldn't possibly be distressed over your seeing him.”

“ ‘Seeing' doesn't quite cover it,” says Cynthia. “He lived here for three weeks.”

“I haven't been keeping track of him,” Adele says. “I didn't know he'd been in Boston that long.”

“I can tell you exactly: April twenty-fourth. I was flying back from L.A.—”

“He came to my apartment on the twenty-fourth,” says Adele. “Quite late. We were all in bed.”

“The plane got in around five,” says Cynthia. “We came here for drinks, then dinner, then he seduced me, and I, like an old fool, let him. And then he got dressed and went to find you.”

Then he seduced me
, Adele imagines saying one day.
And then, immediately after intercourse … and then, after he fucked me …

“The moment the plane touched down,” Cynthia continues, “he said, ‘I have to go find Adele Dobbin and make things right.' ”

“And you believed him?”

“I had no reason not to! I wanted to believe he was sincere, and that he was an honorable man returning to right a wrong. I helped! I looked you up first, on the Internet—www-dot-switchboard-dot-com—over martinis.”

“How clever of you,” says Adele. “A modern woman who knows her way around the Internet
and
can tend bar.”

Cynthia cocks her head. “I beg your pardon?”

“That may have come out wrong. I just meant that making a martini is both a skill and an art—I certainly can't—and Nash would like that kind of … style.”

“Or maybe he likes a woman who knows how to make a martini in a million-dollar condominium.” Cynthia lowers her voice. “Today, that is. I certainly didn't pay anything close to that.”

“And then what happened?” asks Adele. “I mean, he left, but obviously came back here at some point.”

“Only because I called your apartment looking for him.”

“My
apartment?”

“I called your number and asked for Nash—”

“Whom did you speak with?”

“You! I said something to the effect that he'd failed to show up for an appointment and I was worried, and he'd left your number. You put him on, and that's when I found out about the mugging.”

“Mugging?”

“The black eye? The bruises on his face? Wallet stolen?”

“He wasn't
mugged!
One of my sisters lost her composure while holding a casserole dish, but she certainly didn't steal anything.”

Cynthia says, “Well, now I'm really furious.”

“He lies,” says Adele. “As easily as you and I say our prayers.”

“And I thought—you know what I thought? I was actually feeling guilty, like he was a runaway who stepped off the bus in the big city, and got picked up by a sugar daddy. Me! That I was taking advantage of his misfortune.”

“He's charming,” says Adele simply. “You'd have to be a mind reader or a former girlfriend to see through the lies.”

Cynthia refills both glasses, ignores Adele's signaling
Fine. Stop
.

“Can I ask you about that?” asks Cynthia.

“About what?”

“Closure. Did he ever give you a satisfactory explanation? I mean, all those years of waiting and not knowing, like wives whose husbands are missing in action or lost at sea and they need to get them pronounced dead so they can move on.”

“But I
did
know,” says Adele. “He didn't want to go through with it. And it didn't take too long to realize that a marriage to him would have been a terrible mistake.” She stops; wonders what she, a minor celebrity, is doing on the leather couch of a perfect stranger, opening up her private life for discussion. No more wine tonight.

“How long before you could function?” asks Cynthia. “A year? Two? Five?”

“Almost immediately. As soon as I knew he wasn't lying in a hospital bed somewhere, but had left town of his own free will, I realized it was for the best.”

“That
easily?”

“No,” says Adele.

“It never is.”

“It was so long ago that I barely remember the details. So to answer your question concisely, I quickly came to despise him, which allowed me to move on.”

“I'm not sure it works that way,” Cynthia murmurs.

“It did with me,” says Adele. “Without a doubt.” And then to be polite, to take a stab at being reciprocal and therapeutic, she asks, “What about you, Cynthia? Are things … what's the right word here?”

“ ‘Excruciating'?” Cynthia states calmly. “ ‘Raw'? ‘Unfinished'?”

“But I thought you had only contempt for him?”

“And for myself! I let my guard down. Every step along the way I was violating my oath to myself, which was ‘You don't need a man to be fulfilled. You make twice as much as any guy you've ever
dated.' I thought he was my reward for years of coping so beautifully with being single, for making my own way, for not dieting or going to aerobics classes or having liposuction, but accepting myself. And then as a cosmic joke, the gods throw a handsome, reasonably intelligent, age-appropriate, unmarried man with an interesting career into my path to say, Only kidding, Cyn! Forget all that crap about ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle,' because now we're saying, ‘A worm in a radish is happy because she's never had a taste of honey.' ”

To Adele's dismay, Cynthia's face crumples. She squeezes a clenched finger under her bottom lashes to wipe away a tear.

Adele doubts she is up to the task (her sisters don't need comforting; they cry in their respective rooms, if at all), so she pats Cynthia's free hand once, twice, then hands her a cocktail napkin. After a minute she tries, “He wasn't worthy of you. It wouldn't have worked out. He'll probably never marry anyone or find what he's looking for because there will always be another woman in his peripheral vision.”

“That's for sure.”

“And if that's what you want—a relationship, companionship, physical closeness—if that's the missing taste of honey, then you'll find it. Men have a sixth sense about it. I've seen this my whole life: the women who send out signals snag the men's attention.”

“I'm too fat for that,” says Cynthia. “I can send out signals from here, here, and here, until the cows come home, and they don't make it out the other side.”

“It's not a question of fat or thin,” says Adele. “I don't think I've ever sent out those signals.”

“I bet you have.” Cynthia blows her nose into another napkin. “You must have if Nash came howling at your door.”

Adele says, “Nash only came to my door because he saw dollar signs there.”

Cynthia shakes her head strenuously. “That's completely illogical. If he were marrying you for your money, he'd have gone through with it.”

“Unless …” says Adele.

“What?”

Adele hesitates, then shakes the thought off.

“What? He met someone else? Found his scruples? Decided to follow his true love to California?”

Adele says quietly, “Sometimes I wonder if my father bought the train ticket.”

“No,” says Cynthia. “Absolutely not. I never met the guy but I can tell you, no way.”

“Maybe not anything as blatant as a ticket. Maybe a promise of a job. He was a lawyer. He had a million contacts.”

“No,” says Cynthia. “No father would let it happen the night of the engagement party. Nobody would make their daughter go through that.”