Barney's Version - Mordecai Richler [173]
I nodded.
“I had a part in a McIver episode a couple of months ago. I played the investigating reporter from the Toronto Globe. Do you remember?”
“Sure.”
“They said it might be a continuing role, but I haven’t heard from your people since.”
That’s when I should have left Dink’s. Or when I should have had myself tied to the mast like Ulysses, not that she had anything on Circe or the Sirens, whichever it was.77 But when Zack got up to pee, she slid onto the stool next to me, and the street boy in me was roused. Hotcha hotcha. Zack may be fifteen years younger than me, and better-looking, but I’ll show him I’ve still got the moves. Not that I was interested. Or intended to take it any further. I know I had a good deal more to drink, and so did she, but I still don’t remember how come I got to her apartment, wherever it was, or how we ended up in bed. But I do recall I never meant for it to happen. I merely wanted to outshine Zack. Honestly.
It must have been three o’clock, possibly later, when I got home, filled with self-disgust, undressed, and staggered into the shower.
Miriam wakened me at eight. “Thank God you’re there,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what got into me, but I was up at five a.m. here, worried sick about you, I don’t know why, and I rang and I rang and I rang and there was no answer.”
“I was out late drinking with Zack.”
“You don’t sound right, darling. Are you sure you’re okay?”
“Hung over, that’s all.”
“You’re not keeping anything from me? You haven’t been in a fight at your age? There hasn’t been an accident.”
“I’m all right.”
“Something’s wrong, Barney. I can tell.”
“There is nothing wrong.”
“I’m not sure I believe you.”
“Come home, Miriam.”
“Thursday.”
“Come home tomorrow. Please, Miriam.”
“I’m going to the theatre with Virginia tomorrow night. The new Pinter. But I’m glad that you’re missing me. I miss you too. I keep edging over to your side of the bed and you’re not there.”
That afternoon, having showered twice more, I started out for Dink’s, as was my habit, and then stopped short. What if that bimbo was lying in wait for me there? What if she thought we were into something more than a drunken one-night stand? I made a U-turn and stopped at the Ritz for a drink instead. Shedding years, I sat once again on the terrace of the Colombe d’Or with Boogie and Hymie, the sun sinking behind those olive-green hills, seemingly setting them alight. A donkey-drawn wagon, led by a grizzly old geezer wearing a blue smock, passed clippity-clop below the terrace’s stone retaining wall, and we caught the scent of its cargo of roses on the evening breeze. The roses were bound for the perfumeries in Grasse. A fat baker’s boy puffed past our table, one of those huge wicker baskets of freshly baked baguettes strapped to his back, and we could smell that too. Then one of those truly obnoxious Frenchmen, obviously past it, his belly sunken, pranced onto the terrace to claim the woman young enough to be his daughter who sat two tables to our left. Madame Bovary, c’est moi, that Frenchman who had the parrot78 once wrote, and I had become that odious Frenchman of unblessed memory. Feeling tears of self-pity coming on, I called for my bill and was about to go home when I stopped short again, troubled by second thoughts. I headed for Dink’s, entering cautiously. The bimbo wasn’t there. I pulled Zack into a quiet corner. “You are never, never, never to joke with me, or anybody else, about that girl last night, or we are no longer friends. Do you understand?”
“Easy does it, Barney.”
Then Betty said, “Somebody called Lorraine phoned for you.” And handing me a piece of paper, she added, “She left her phone number.”
“If she ever calls again, I’m not here. What do you know about her?”
“I think she’s a model or an actress. She did that sexy bank commercial that used to be on TV. You know, the Canadiens take a penalty, Dick Irwin says we’ll be right back after