Part 14 (1/2)

”How many times we split and come back together?”

I looked into his eyes. Maybe I was about to be dumped. But that's not what the eyes were saying.

”Too many to count,” I said. ”Five-maybe six.”

”Gets kind of old, don't it? I mean, we must belong together or something, or we wouldn't keep doing it. Right?”

I didn't know how to answer that.

”Why'd I have to put a dress on, Walter?” I asked softly.

”Because I didn't want to ask you to marry me while you were wearing overalls.”

Lord!

”Can I have another drink, Walter?”

”So what do you think about it?” he said as he signalled the bartender.

”s.h.i.+t, man. I don't know. What do you want to get married for?”

Not the world's most gracious response to a proposal, is it? I was sorry the minute the words came out of my mouth. But he went on, undaunted.

”I'm tired of f.u.c.king around, Nan. I want us to have a house. I want us to have kids. It's just ... time.”

Kids? Kids? I'd never told Walter my thoughts, fears, about having children. I guess, like a lot of other women, or at least I a.s.sumed there were many others like me, having children had never been a desire of mine, though I'd always a.s.sumed that if I were to hook up with a man who really wanted them, I'd be able to do my part.

Truth was, I was sure I wouldn't make much of a mom. And I'd always counted myself lucky for having a mother who was so unlike me. I'm self involved, mercurial, emotionally unstable, don't get any gold stars for patience, something of a loner, apt to take off for ports unknown at a moment's notice, if that, and really don't appreciate people I can't reason with. In short, a child's nightmare. Poor thing would be logging hours on the school counselor's couch before it turned seven, all because of me. But if this theoretical man insisted on babies, at least I could tell him what the deal was going in. h.e.l.l, I was better about it than Aubrey. She hated children-with a pure, unalloyed hatred-and would say so to just about anybody.

But I said none of that to Walter. Instead, I took his hand and held it for a long moment.

”Here's what we do,” he said eagerly. ”I'm renting a car in the morning. Driving to Philly for the meeting. You catch the train at Penn Station and wait for me at Thirtieth Street Station. I'll pick you up at twelve. We drive up to Bucks County. I know this inn you're gonna love. Matter fact, we might spend a few days there once we get married. Anyway, we drive up there, just you and me, have lunch, take it easy, stay the night, just talk about things. Doesn't it sound good?”

Yes, it did. Looked at as nothing more than a little respite from the city, or as a romantic getaway during which we'd plan our wedding (ha ha), it did sound good.

Wild Bill was dead. Henry Valokus had vanished, probably for good. And the trail of Rhode Island Red was dead cold. I'd been played for a fool, pushed around, threatened, a.s.saulted, f.u.c.ked and abandoned. And so what was the big issue in my life? Getting married. To quote Fats Waller, ”One never knows, do one?”

Walter's proposal had genuinely knocked me on my a.s.s. I had never really known whether I loved him. And I suppose I had never believed he loved me.

So why did we keep coming back together? He'd asked a good question.

I tried to visualize myself dusting the living room of some two-bedroomer upstate. Waiting by the garden gate for the little one to come home from school.

Not.

I tried to be a little more realistic: Walt's at work, I'm still in my nightgown at three in the afternoon, listening to Monk records while the pork roast defrosts, maybe noodling a little on the sax or with some spiral bound notebook full of over-ripe verse.

Would Walter want to go to the Loire and sample wines on our vacation? No. We'd wind up in some pricey time share in Jamaica.

”So you gonna marry me or what, girl?” He kissed me again.

I was glad Mom couldn't see me now. She'd have a heart attack from the suspense. I kind of smiled at the image-not the image of her clawing at her chest but the one of her rising off her barstool with the girl, are you crazy? look on her face.

”Walter, Walter, Walter,” I said, feeling at one and the same time aroused and sad. ”I'll tell you what. I'm not going to marry you-tomorrow-but I am going on that honeymoon. And we can talk about it, as you said.”

Yeah, ”talk” was right. There was an awful lot I hadn't told my little fiance.

I took the nine-thirty to Philadelphia the next morning. I'd brought four paperbacks along to read on the 90-minute run: a novel by an expatriate American writer with whom I'd spent about ten minutes in bed the last time I saw Paris; a couple of poetry anthologies; and the same unread Gertrude Stein volume I'd been toting on and off trains for most of my life. I didn't crack one of those books. I was much too distracted.

I saw a sign just outside Trenton that seemed to tap on some long buried memory. TRENTON MAKES/THE WORLD TAKES, it read. It made me wonder if perhaps my parents had taken me to Philly when I was a kid. Where could we have been going? Probably someplace exciting, like an interstate spelling bee.

The train stalled just past Trenton and pulled into Thirtieth Street Station at eleven-thirty, a half hour late. Even so, I was still early. Walter had told me to wait for him on one of the benches near the geographical center of the station because he didn't know at what entrance he would find parking for his rented car. I sat down and went a couple of rounds with Gertrude.

At eleven fifty-five Walter had not yet arrived. We were supposed to meet at noon, but Walt is notoriously early. Meaning that five minutes before the appointed time is late for him. He wasn't there at noon either. And he wasn't there at twelve-thirty.

I tried to remember where he was going in Philly. He was trying to corral a client, he'd said. Clients for Walter were magazine publishers. That's what he did-sell s.p.a.ce in magazines to advertisers. But he didn't mention any specific magazine. He just said he and his new partner were going together. What was his partner's name? Mitch.e.l.l? Mariachi? I didn't remember, and what did it matter? I wouldn't know where to reach them anyway. I couldn't call Walt's New York office-they probably didn't even know he was in Philadelphia. After all, Walter and his partner were on a sort of secret mission to help them start their new firm.

I got up and made a circuit around the station. I sat down again. I bought the Enquirer and read it. I bought a New York paper and read that. I bought a coffee, keeping watch on the two ends of the station as I sipped it.

It was one-thirty. No Walter. Under my breath I began to curse him in the kinds of terms you don't expect one affianced to use when referring to the other.

I searched out the phones and tried calling Walter's New York apartment. No answer there. And no answer at my own place just my own voice on the machine.

At one fifty-five I heard the announcement that a train was boarding for New York ... Last call! It was all I could do to keep my seat. But I managed.

When they made the same announcement forty-five minutes or so later, I succ.u.mbed.

I hadn't bought a return ticket. I paid the conductor in cash.

As the train rolled along, my anger dissipated. And in its place came guilt and chagrin and an almighty embarra.s.sment. Why the h.e.l.l had I gotten so angry at him? Why hadn't I waited? I'd a.s.sumed his failure to show up had been volitional, malicious in fact. But any one of a hundred things could have prevented him from being on time. G.o.d, he might even have been in an auto accident-or something worse.

Why hadn't I waited longer? Why hadn't I done something else instead of just fleeing? Because I was still Lady Fly Off the Handle; that was part of the answer. I knew another part of the answer, too: I knew I wasn't going to marry Walter Moore.

By the time we got to Newark I had myself a little more in hand. The disaster scenarios were receding from my mind. Surely something had gone awry with Walter's potential client and he was in the station now making frantic calls to me in New York. He'd come back to the city and tell me what happened and I'd make him a nice dinner, or something. And as for the honeymoon, well, one has just got to be philosophical about that kind of thing.

Darn that dream-right, Mom?

CHAPTER 13.

Friday the 13th I was in no mood for the subway. I took a cab home.

The afternoon sun fell dustily into the lobby as I stood fumbling through my overnight bag and all my pockets for my keys. Finally, burrowing at the bottom of my bag, I felt them through a wad of Kleenex. Relieved, I slipped the key into the lobby door and stepped inside.

A meaty black hand covered my mouth so powerfully and so completely that my whole face went numb, my vision blurring.

”Just stay calm, college girl,” I heard. ”Stay calm and quiet. Somebody's in your apartment and I'm going up to get him. Understand?”