The Last Lovely City (9 page)

I’m trying my best to call the shots with you, she thought, but did not say. And I like writing this piece; I like these women.

It was Burt’s mouth that gave his face its severity, she
decided. A small mouth, set and firm, made smaller-seeming by the surrounding beard. Had someone long ago said that small mouths were a bad sign, that they meant an ungiving, stingy nature? Actually, Burt was somewhat stingy, she had come to see; “careful” would be the kinder word, but he was super-careful, hyperconcerned with prices, costs, and he was surprised and somewhat annoyed by her ignorance of these things.

“It’s not that I don’t care what things cost,” she tried to explain. “It’s just that I get confused. I’m not good with numbers.”

She tried going to bed with him a few more times, deeply knowing this to be a mistake but saying to herself that this time it might work; she might feel the pleasure she pretended (and she knew her pretense to be a serious error, politically incorrect). But, because of what he referred to as his “problem,” Lucretia found it hard to put him off entirely; she understood how much his pride was involved, and she was reluctant to hurt that pride, and his feelings.

When he said, as he sometimes gloomily did, that if they broke up she would be the last woman in his life, she also understood that this had less to do with the great love that he professed for her than with his secret, his “problem.” Lucretia, the only person privy to that secret, had to be the last in line.

In the women’s shelter Lucretia felt herself stretched between extreme emotions: between pity and fear, admiration, sometimes disgust. And occasionally sheer boredom: encouraged by her questions, some of these women would have talked for hours, not always coherently. But many of them were coherent, many interesting, some even funny. A marvelous elderly black woman—from Montana, of all places. A shriveled Mexican-Jewish woman from L.A., with raucous, horrifying tales of endless boyfriends.

Lucretia’s story in four installments ran in the Sunday paper, and most of her friends called to say how good it was, congratulations. Edwin, the editor and her old friend (the donor of the white-framed mirror), was highly pleased. Lucretia noted with interest that Burt was among those who did not call.

But Simon did call. Simon Coyne, at that time a voice from her remote past, from Jim and Cambridge days, law school. Although Simon had not been in law school. Eccentrically, everyone felt at the time, he was getting his doctorate in philosophy. Lucretia had heard that he married a Boston girl, and that broke up, and he married someone else. He taught in several small schools around the South. She had not really heard of him for years now, although when he called she realized that he had remained a romantic image in her mind: so tall and fair, with his pipe and tweeds and slightly odd way of speech. He was from Toronto, originally, Lucretia remembered, but he seemed rather “English” than Canadian. More distant than Canadians generally were. More impeccably, remotely courteous.

He was teaching in Berkeley now, Simon said, and yes, he liked it very much. He had found a nice house up on Euclid. His cats liked it, too; he had three. No, he was not married, but two of his three sons were living close by, as it happened.

Why didn’t you call me before? Lucretia wanted to ask him. And, When can we see each other? Are you busy tonight? But she managed simply to say, “I’d love to see you; could you come over for supper sometime soon?”

He was terribly busy, as he was sure that she was, too, and besides, he insisted on taking her out to dinner. He would call.

And then she didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks, during which she saw Burt more than she had meant to. She did manage at last to say, “Look, Burt, we can have dinner sometimes if you’d like to, but we can’t, uh, go to bed.”

His whole face tightened. “I can hardly blame you for that. With my problem.”

“It’s not that. Honestly.” And honestly it was not, not his impotence but his whole severe, self-centered, somewhat hostile character. She would have liked to say, I just don’t like you very much, but she said instead, “My heart just isn’t in it. I’m sorry.”

She should have been rewarded, Lucretia believed, by a phone call from Simon, asking her out to dinner at last. But she was not. Burt called several times, still wanting to see her, and each time the phone rang she imagined that it would be Simon, but it was not. After some time of this she thought, I am much too old to wait for phone calls. And so she called him.

As she had more or less known that he would be, Simon was gallantly contrite. He had meant to call her, he had looked forward to seeing her, but had been stuck with crazy busyness. Department politics, plus high-level university trouble.

She reassured him. Perfectly all right—she had been busy, too. She invited him to dinner.

Oh, no, he said, they must go out, and he named a place that he wanted to try. On the waterfront. Supposed to be excellent food, and also attractive. Hard to get reservations, but he would try, and call her back. They settled on a night. He did call back, to say that he could get a table only at seven, too early, but worth a try. He would pick her up at six-thirty; he would very much look forward to seeing her.

Like a nervous girl, Lucretia wondered what to wear. She was tempted to buy something new and wonderful, but she did not like the styles of that year. She settled on her best old black dress that everyone liked.

At about six her phone rang, and Lucretia’s heart sank as she thought, It must be Burt, or worse, it’s Simon, canceling.

It was Simon, not canceling but apologizing: A meeting was holding him up, could they possibly meet at the restaurant?

Driving down Broadway, through all the mess of lights and traffic, it occurred to Lucretia that she should have taken a cab; this way they would have to part publicly in some parking lot.

The restaurant was in an old wharf building, remodeled: low, dark ceilings, low lights, a long, rich bar and spectacular view of the bay and the Bay Bridge, Oakland. Black water and huge, dim, looming boats.

At first, coming in, Lucretia could not see Simon, but then she said his name, and she was directed: there, he could have been no one else—tall, lean, fair Simon, with his narrow face, long nose, sardonic mouth. He was standing, smiling, and then coming toward her, hands outstretched to her.

They both said, “Oh, I’m so glad—” and stopped, and laughed.

Their dinner was much in that key, enthusiastically friendly, with good laughs. And relatively impersonal. Simon gracefully deflected anything verging on the personal, did not discuss his two marriages. Instantly sensitive to his mood and needs (this was one of her major skills), Lucretia was amusing. She told funny stories about the paper, about people she had interviewed. And they exchanged travel notes; they both loved the South of France, the North of Italy, and they laughed at the unoriginality of their tastes.

Simon’s hair, though still thick, was actually white, not blond, as Lucretia had remembered. But, as she sat with him there, she was seeing not the elderly man whom another person might have described as distinguished but rather a young, blond, athletic Simon, with his fair hair and dark-brown eyes, his high, white intellectual brow, and his clever, sensual mouth. She was seeing and responding to a very young man, but also to an aging man, with white hair, whom she hardly knew. With whom she had an animated, no-depth conversation. But to whom she responded, deeply.

As she had imagined, and feared, they parted at her car,
though, bending down to her, Simon asked anxiously, “Should I follow you home? See that you get there safely?”

“Oh no, I drive around all the time. I’ll be fine.”

A brush of mouths on cheeks. Good night.

Lucretia
knew
that she was much too old to wait for the phone to ring, and yet the next day, a Saturday, she found that that was what she was doing. Despite the fact that her answering machine was functioning, she kept herself within range of her telephone, postponing the small weekend tasks that would make enough noise to drown it out. Postponing neighborhood errands.

Until she thought, This is absolutely, utterly ridiculous. And she went out for an extended walk, doing errands, and even appreciating the beautiful day.

Coming home, though, and noting her machine’s nonflashing light, no messages, she experienced a sinking of her spirits: he had not called.

This was crazy, she knew that; she thought, I cannot let myself do this. I will simply have to take charge. I’ll call him. This is the nineties, no matter how old we are.

“Simon, it’s Lucretia. I just wanted to thank you for dinner. It was really terrific. I had a marvelous time, so lovely to see you, really. I wondered, could you come here for dinner, do you think? Maybe next Friday? Well, actually Saturday’s fine. Even better. Great! See you then.”

Rack of lamb? Steak
au poivre?
Or were those too show-offy, obvious? Maybe just cracked crab and a salad? But that showed off nothing at all, no cooking. And then she thought, Dear God, it doesn’t matter. I’ll make something good. Whatever.

But she spent the next week in elaborate fantasies of the possible evening with Simon. In which, sometimes, they went from passionate kissing at the door directly to bed, where things went well.

So obsessed was she that she wondered, Have I fallen in love with Simon? At my age? Is that what this is all about?

She noted that in her dreams several other men appeared whom she had not thought of for years. She dreamed of Jim and of Tommy, of poor dead Jason, of beautiful Silvio. And of several others.

By the actual night on which the actual Simon came to her house for dinner, Lucretia was exhausted, emotionally, so drained that preparing the rack of lamb, God knows an easy dish, had taken great effort. Not to mention blow-drying her hair, brushing it.

It was partly from fatigue, then, that later, in her pretty living room, a familiar and perfect backdrop for love, Lucretia found herself regarding Simon with the most terrible sadness. She was not in love with Simon, she really was not—although he was perfectly nice and in his way quite handsome, still, and interesting. It was simply that he reminded her of love. Some hint of all the men she had ever loved was in his aura, like a scent. One sniff of it and she thought, Ah, love!

That knowledge, or insight, though sad, was relaxing to Lucretia, and she said, “I hope you won’t mind if we eat unfashionably early? I’m sort of tired.”

“Not at all. It’s a terrible thing about age,” he said, with his attractive, crooked smile. “I find that I’m tired a lot.”

“Oh, I am, too!” and she flashed her answering bright smile, as she thought, Oh good, I won’t have to pretend anymore. And I won’t even think about falling in love.

But of course she did.

A few weeks ago, somewhat against my better judgment, I went to a Sunday-lunch party in Sausalito, at which I was deeply bored by the guest of honor, an actor whom I had not especially wanted to meet, and at which I ate very little lunch. But where I met a very nice black dog, an aging Lab, slightly grizzled around the jaw, with large, kind, gentle, and hopeful dark-brown eyes. There he was, lying out in the sun in a corner of my friend Patrick’s deck, in the ravishingly beautiful and warm late-October sunlight.

Patrick and I are old, old friends; a very long time ago we were undergraduates together, in Charlottesville, and now we like to say (sometimes we like it) that we are aging together, transported out here to California. I live by myself in San Francisco, and Patrick lives with his friend Oliver in the dark-shingled old Sausalito house, with its newly added cantilevered deck, and its stunning view of the bay and boats, and Alcatraz and Belvedere.

Because of Oliver’s allergies they have no pets, although before Oliver entered his life Patrick had Burmese cats, and sometimes a handsome poodle as well. I have three cats. This new dog was not Patrick’s, then. “He lives across the street,”
Oliver explained, when I asked, surprised at finding a dog there. That day Oliver was serving, since Patrick had chosen to cook, and they both seemed a little harassed by this change of roles, Oliver being the better and more usual cook. They had little patience for pet conversations—at first.

Patrick is an architect, talented and energetic when he has a project going, depressed when he does not. Genuinely witty, often kind, and sometimes mean, he retains friendships with many old clients. And makes new ones: he had just done a house for this actor, Tom Something, in the Napa Valley. He truly loves his friends, all of them, although he is capable of some manipulation, a little mischief. On the lunch-party day he had clearly enjoyed my discomfort when he would not tell me who was stopping by to pick me up; since I don’t drive, some friends and especially Patrick insist on arranging my transportation, when I would really rather do it myself; there are buses to Sausalito, and even a cab is not all that expensive.

At this point I must go back and introduce an element new to this story: a man whom for quite a while I had wanted to know. Just that: he looked interesting, and the little I knew of him was appealing. The appeal was not sexy; he looked to be at least ten years older than I am, and I am too old to be turned on by older men. We had met at some large gathering or other, some time ago, and now when our paths literally crossed on city walks—we both are walkers, we live in the same neighborhood—we would exchange a few words. But he gave an impression of chosen solitude, of great reserve. Justin Solomon, a small dark man with a shock of white hair, and a very slight limp, although he still walked even faster than I did, and I walk fast. He had been a civil rights lawyer, not flamboyant but quietly, wisely effective, and was rumored to give most of his money, earned and inherited from a family brokerage, to those causes. His wife of many years had recently died; she had been a distant friend-connection of Patrick’s; thus Patrick knew Justin much better
than I did. I thought Justin looked lonely, as well as wryly intelligent—and too thin.