Tolstoy Lied : A Love Story (9780547527307) (5 page)

He steps toward us.
Not my type,
I think reflexively. Though in truth, he's not bad-looking; he's got a pleasantly lean face and, now that he's engaged, a comfortable, lived-in smile. He looks as if he's just woken up, and glad of it.

“Hey there, Nance,” he says. Nancy kisses him hello, and Victor thumps him on the back, positively grateful to be interrupted.

He turns to me. “Hi,” he says. Then, before I have a chance to respond, he gives me a look that catches me off-guard. It's a look of quiet mischief, as though reminding me of a subversive joke we
share. It's also unmistakably, gently sexy . . . right here in the heart of a professional reception.

“This is Tracy,” says Nancy.

“Hi, Tracy.” He inclines his head. “I'm George.”

Without warning the plate in my hands, already soggy from Hannah's food and mine, buckles. Grabbing absurdly at the flying mushroom caps, I fail to keep the food from sailing or a short bark of hilarity from escaping me. The hors d'oeuvres splash my blouse and make a dramatic mess on the carpet, which has been, until this moment, beige. Conversation between Nancy and Victor stops.

George looks solemnly into my eyes, which, to my surprise, have gone watery with embarrassment. Then he lofts his own paper plate like a coat-and-tails waiter, tosses it into the air, and lets it spin to the ground, scattering tabouli.

“Happens to the best of us,” he says.

I look at the mess. I look at him. For an impish, stunning instant I imagine grabbing his hand and whispering
Let's go.
Then Nancy hands me a wad of napkins. And we are down on our hands and knees, cleaning.

“Thanks,” I say.

He doesn't answer, only laughs and accepts the napkins I proffer.

“Nice move,” I say.

We work the mess out of the carpet.

“Didn't cover the area I'd hoped for.” He has a nice voice—low and friendly. “I'll have to practice my throw.” He stops cleaning for a second. “I don't often get that response when I introduce myself to women. It's very flattering.”

“Well.” Surveying the remaining crumbs, I consider explaining that the plate was soaked, but decide that's protesting too much. Is he going to leave me out on a limb, playing this as though he wasn't flirting? “Nice move,” I repeat, but with less warmth. His angular frame looks suddenly less sexy. Attraction de-soufflé. Blinking, I turn my attention to the carpet.

“You work here?” he says.

“No, just visiting.”

“Same.” He surveys the room. “I didn't think a nonprofit could be so stiff. I would have worn my clown nose and fright wig.”

I can't help chuckling. I glance at him. “You should see the people I work with.”

“Stiff?”

“Embalmed.”

“I'm sorry to hear that.”

“It's not all bad.” I apply myself once more to the carpet, which is almost clean. “In fact I love it most days. I'm an English professor. But academics aren't the most easygoing crowd.”

“So I hear.” George sits back and settles his arms loosely around his knees as he watches me. His eyes are a bright brown and wonderfully still. It's perhaps the most open gaze I've ever seen on an adult: taking in every detail, interrogating the world thoughtfully and without cynicism.

Above and around us the reception buzzes. A waiter sidesteps George with a worried cluck. George doesn't budge.

Unsure how to respond to his silence, I gesture at the crowd. “At least these folks aren't all flagrant egotists. Some of them ask a question with the intent to actually listen to the answer.”

He considers this.

I work a piece of tabouli out of the rug with my fingernails. Almost without meaning to, I continue: “I've always thought you can diagnose a workplace the minute people open their mouths.”

“How?” he says.

Resting on his forearms, his hands are wide and strong-looking. Knobby in the right places. What hands ought to look like. Along the back of one is a faint scar.

A red-business-suited woman utters an irritable “Oh!” as she nearly walks into George. He gives her a genial salute, then turns his focus back to me.

“Just listen for the verbal tics.” I pick several flakes of pastry off the carpet, delay meeting his gaze. He waits, attentive. My eyes drop to my blouse, which is splashed with tabouli and dressing. Rising, I indicate the kitchenette at the rear of the reception hall. Without a word he stands and follows me.

“Verbal tics,” he says.

At the sink, I wet a paper towel and attend to the dark fabric of my blouse. He settles opposite me, one hip against the counter. I give my blouse more attention than it requires. When I speak it's
with a sense of unplanned acceleration: an uncontrolled surge like a car shifting into higher gear than expected. “Did you ever notice,” I say, “the people who start every sentence with
No
—even when they're agreeing with you? You say, ‘Seems like the Yankees are having a bad streak,' and they say, ‘No, it's just that they can't get together a game strategy.'” I wipe my fingers on the damp towel. “Which I've always thought tells you you're dealing with a critical person. Somebody who's going to be unhappy with himself and—by extension—with you.”

He's silent for a moment. “Interesting,” he says. “I've met a few of those.”

I wet and wring a fresh set of paper towels, for the carpet. “We've got a heaping serving of them in my department. Which makes for a hard-driven lot.”

“Who else have you got,” he says, “in that department of yours?” As he speaks he extends his hand.

I stare at it, my own hand poised indecisively; did he read my mind earlier? Then, understanding, I quickly hand him what he's asking for: a damp paper towel. I say, “The Look-Listeners.”

He folds the paper towel.

“You know, the ones who start every statement with a directive. ‘Look, the Yankees aren't always strong at the season's start. Listen, they just need a better coach.' These are the people who consider themselves weary bearers of unpopular truths.” I'm not sure what I'm doing. Daring him, perhaps, to lose interest? “Cassandras . . .” I glance. He's listening. “. . . who speak their consciences though they expect to be ignored. They're more pleasant than the No types. But prone to lecturing.” He follows me out of the kitchenette, back to where we started. “Then you've got the armies of Yes-ers: ‘Yes, though I think the Yankees have maybe done better than people realize, but, yes, you're right.'” Stopping, I enunciate in my most professorial voice. “Sycophants. So conflict-averse they feel compelled to sneak their opinions under the radar.”

He's smiling softly.

Trouble. Delight.

I crouch down on the carpet, then look at it dumbly. There's nothing left to clear. “Add the slight British lilt among the graduate students,” I say. “And the all-black wardrobes. And that's my department in a nutshell.”

He doesn't say anything.

“Which makes us, I guess . . .” my voice drifting to a lame finish, “typical.”

Beside me he surveys the carpet, no trace remaining of the reckless mess we made together.

“And you?” he says. I can't read his face.

“Where do I fit in?” I echo.

A man with a heaped plate of hors d'oeuvres almost stumbles as he comes upon us. As he pivots he lets out a disapproving grunt that unaccountably emboldens me.

“Into the Look-Listener category, I'm afraid. Hence”—I conclude with a flourish of a paper towel—“this lecture.”

“I'm taking notes,” he says after a minute.

Quietly our eyes meet.

Yolanda is furious. We are striding down Eighth Avenue—me in slacks and a cream-colored blouse, she in a purple leotard and translucent purple skirt, black leggings, and chunky heels. Ignoring most of the men who stare at her, nodding curt acknowledgment to a few, Yolanda races toward her verbal destination with fearsome momentum. She's been going for at least ten blocks. It's obvious, though, that she's still ramping up to the worst bits.

The problem: Bill will not eat cauliflower.

“He's like a little boy who doesn't want his cauliflower, and you have to keep jollying him into it. And Tracy,
I'm
the cauliflower.” Abruptly Yolanda stops and faces me. “The man cannot commit to an adult relationship.”

“But we know that.
He
knows that. He told you so the first day you met.”

“Well, you're not going to believe
this.
” She starts walking again.

Given the romantic implosion that's already consumed Yolanda's month, I find it hard to imagine anything Bill might have done that I wouldn't believe. Possibly he's had a sex change operation; possibly he's renounced gravity and is floating over Manhattan taunting physicists; probably nothing that interesting. Probably he's been a jerk, which has lost its novelty for everyone except Yolanda, who is still astonished. But foreseeable though this may have been, I feel for Yolanda, who has been earnestly updating me
on the details of this particular debacle from the start. The morning Yolanda first heard about the casting call she phoned me in a froth. She was auditioning to play a poet, she could really use this part, did I know anything about someone called H.D.? Five times that day Yolanda called me with questions about Hilda Doolittle—tacitly acknowledging, for the first time in our nineteen-year friendship and despite her long-expressed wish that I jettison my latest paper/grading/reading and join her for disco night at Hot Rocks, that I am indeed a professor. The play, the work of a recent Women's Literature M.A. from N.Y.U., was a dramatization of H.D.'s analysis with Freud. Yolanda showed me the script. It was a well-meant script; that's the best one could say for it. In fact, though I didn't let on to Yolanda, it seemed to me that the author's signature accomplishment was shaping such rich material into something so insipid and politically heavy-handed. But Yolanda took her audition preparation in unprecedented earnest, meditating, doing vocal exercises that made her sound like a gossipy swan, fretting over her suitability. Dozens of women wanted the role—it might have been off-off-off-Broadway, but it was a serious part.

Yolanda needn't have worried. The playwright was adamant that her H.D. have a certain indefinable physical energy—and one look at Yolanda's statuesque figure and no longer fresh face evidently persuaded her that she'd found Hilda Doolittle.

No sooner was Yolanda cast than she phoned with another news flash: Freud was an utter hottie. She and Bill began sleeping together the night of their joint audition. The onstage chemistry, according to Yolanda, was second only to the offstage. Never mind the tiny theater and unknown playwright; this show was the best thing, professionally and romantically, to happen to her in a decade.

Like most of Yolanda's affairs, this one burned bright and blew fast. Now there are two more weeks of rehearsal plus a four-week performance run to get through, and Yolanda can hardly bear to look at Bill . . . which is where Yolanda and H.D. part ways. H.D. trusts Freud with her innermost secrets. Which the brilliant H.D. obviously never would have done had she known Freud was such a big fucking flirt.

“I saw him,” Yolanda says. “
With
someone.”

“Didn't you say you expected him to go right out and find someone else?” In hourlong sessions earlier this week Yolanda has expressed boundless sympathy for Bill's future lovers, as well as a battle-hardened solidarity with the man's previous girlfriends (until recently viewed with disdain—The Ex-Girlfriend Formerly Known as Snoozan, The Ex-Girlfriend Formerly Known as Mary Queen of Scotch: all now rehabilitated). There is a general amnesty out for all the unwitting females who have ever known or will ever know Bill. Only one woman is excluded.

“The costumer?” I say.

Yolanda looks teary. “I saw them yesterday. Walking on Hudson. Holding
hands.
”

I blow out a long breath. “I'm sorry.”

“She is, and I hate to say it but it has to be said, a slut.” Yolanda glares at the sidewalk as if she detests every gray inch of it. For the next six weeks she'll have to profess admiration for Freud even as she argues against his sexism. She'll have to refer to him as Professor, Papa, and—endearingly—Owl. It's intolerable. Yolanda believes in vehemence. People she approves of are saints. People she hates are bastards. Other people cry—Yolanda weeps. She does not weigh and reason, which I find, after a long day in academe, a relief. In her midriff shirts and spandex she pronounces gorgeous judgment on the world, and along the way keeps me from taking my professorial self too seriously. Now and then she even gets me out of the library on a Saturday night to join her at a dance club, where I sway simply but contentedly alongside her rubberized friends. I'm glad to have Yolanda in my life. But beneath her rants this month, beneath the obvious agony of having to smile into her costar's romantic indifference onstage, is a fury that has little to do with Bill and more to do with Yolanda still getting blind-sided, now that we're thirty-three. Yolanda is the sort of woman people stare at on the street—high-strung, blond, curvaceous. In addition to dance and theater, she studies Pilates, which means she can wiggle her ears using only her abdominal muscles; according to Yolanda, guys find flexibility excruciatingly sexy. Despite being more regally endowed than I in several dimensions, Yolanda wears a small to my medium. But none of this adds up to what she wants. On her twenty-third birthday, Yolanda swore she wouldn't compromise in her search for true love until she was thirty-three.
Now she's thirty-three and can't find a man to compromise with. In the four years she's lived in Manhattan, no man has lasted more than three months. The last serious guy, the one she dumped after she finished her theater degree in Boston, was a rabid Red Sox fan; cute, boisterous, and boring. He cried like a kid when she broke up with him. She moved to New York, traded him in for Yankees fans, and hasn't kept a guy since. The Curse of the Bambino.