Foreign Affairs - Alison Lurie [109]
“Great. And what am I supposed to do next time it rains?”
“Well-uh.” Vinnie realized she was flushing. “I’ll buy you another one.”
“Okay; sure.” Chuck began laughing again. “You can just do that.”
“But not the same kind,” she insisted.
“Any kind you like.” Chuck gave a final whoop of laughter, then folded Vinnie in a generous hug.
As she accepted and then, relaxing, returned Chuck’s embrace, Vinnie said to herself that of course he wasn’t serious. He would, she hoped, take her advice on the purchase of a new raincoat. But he would hardly expect her to pay for it—or at least, to be fair, he wouldn’t expect her to pay more than the cost of the dead fish.
These were still her assumptions the following day in Harrods, when Chuck removed the very expensive trenchcoat she’d said she liked best and told the sales clerk that it would do fine.
“Shall I wrap it for you, sir?”
“No thanks, sir,” Chuck returned. “I’ll wear it. And the lady will pay,” he added. Then he stood there calmly, grinning, while Vinnie helplessly allowed nearly a hundred pounds to be charged to her Barclaycard, wondering meanwhile what on earth the man must think. That Chuck’s some sort of kept man, perhaps, she decided, signing the receipt as if under a bad spell. Or perhaps that I’m his bossy, money-managing wife. She hardly knew which would be worse.
But she couldn’t get up her nerve to protest; after all, she’d brought this on herself. Besides, if you added up all the lunches and dinners and theater tickets Chuck had bought her, she was probably still ahead. Nevertheless she felt tricked, cheated; she remembered that Chuck Mumpson was a former juvenile delinquent—an old con, as he put it.
“Wal, thanks a lot,” he said—to her or to the sales clerk? It was ambiguous—offering Vinnie his arm, which she pretended not to see. She was struggling to frame a graceful request for at least partial repayment, a tactful way of saying that it was all a good joke, of course, wasn’t it, but now . . . But no words came to her.
“I’m real glad we came here,” said Chuck as they waited for the elevator. “This is a damn good-looking coat, huh?”
“Yes,” Vinnie agreed helplessly.
“And you’re a real good sport, too.” Chuck grinned; it was at this moment that, clad in his new pale-tan Burberry, that he most resembled the polar bear. “The way you signed that receipt! Not a squeak out of you!”
“No,” Vinnie squeaked, smiling uncomfortably.
“Okay, we’re quits. Now I’ll buy you one.’”
“Me? But I don’t need a raincoat.”
“Sure you do.”
She protested, but Chuck was determined. “You want to make me feel like a creep, a moocher, a traveling salesman, is that it?”
“No, of course not,” Vinnie said; and the result was the coat she’s wearing now, with its romantic gathered hood and designer label—the most beautiful garment she’s owned in years.
Vinnie’s raincoat isn’t the only surprising thing Chuck has given her. He has turned out to be wonderful in bed; so wonderful that Vinnie had broken her promise to herself and allowed—no, rather welcomed—him back once, twice, three times—almost every day until he left for Wiltshire again. And to think that if it hadn’t been for Posy Billings’ watercress-and-avocado soup, she might never have known . . .
Sometimes Vinnie wonders why any woman ever gets into bed with any man. To take off all your clothes and lie down beside some unclothed larger person is a terribly risky business. The odds are stacked almost as heavily against you as in the New York state lottery. He could hurt you; he could laugh at you; he could take one look at your naked aging body and turn away in ill-concealed, embarrassed distaste. He could turn out to be awkward, selfish, inept—even totally incompetent. He could have some peculiar sexual hangup: a fixation on your underclothes to the exclusion of you, for instance, or on one sexual variation to the exclusion of all else. The risks are so high that really no woman in her right mind would take such a chance—except that when you do take such a chance you’re usually