Freedom [190]
“Patty,” he said in a voice she could have heard if she’d been awake.
He listened carefully, enveloped in tinnitus.
“Patty,” he said again.
His dick didn’t believe for one second that she was sleeping, but it was possible that the door was closed on an empty room, and he had a curious reluctance to open it and see. He needed some small breath of encouragement or confirmation of his instincts. He went back down to the kitchen, finished the pasta, and read the Post and the Times. At two o’clock, still buzzing with nicotine, and beginning to be pissed off with her, he went back to her room, tapped on the door, and opened it.
She was sitting on the sofa in the dark, still wearing her black gym uniform, staring straight ahead, her hands clutching each other on her lap.
“Sorry,” Katz said. “Is this OK?”
“Yes,” she said, not looking at him. “But we should go downstairs.”
There was an unfamiliar tightness in his chest as he descended the back staircase again, an intensity of sexual anticipation that he didn’t think he’d felt since high school. Following him into the kitchen, Patty closed the door to the staircase behind her. She was wearing very soft-looking socks, the socks of somebody whose feet weren’t so young and well-padded anymore. Even without the boost of shoes, her height was the same agreeable surprise it had always been to him. One of his own song lyrics popped into his head, the one about her body being the body for him. It had come to this for old Katz: he was being moved by his own lyrics. And the body for him was still very nice, not actively displeasing in any way: the product, surely, of many hours of sweating at her gym. In white block letters on the front of her black T-shirt was the word lift.
“I’m going to have some chamomile tea,” she said. “Do you want some?”
“Sure. I don’t think I’ve ever had chamomile tea.”
“Ah, what a sheltered life you’ve lived.”
She went out to the office and came back with two mugs of instantly hot water with tea-bag labels dangling.
“Why didn’t you answer me when I went up the first time?” he said. “I’ve been sitting down here for two hours.”
“I guess I was lost in thought.”
“Did you think I was just going to go to bed?”
“I don’t know. I was sort of thinking without thinking, if you know what I mean. But I understood that you would want to talk to me, and I knew I had to do it. And so here I am.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
“No, it’s good, we should talk.” She sat down across the farmer’s table from him. “Did you guys have a good time? Jessie said you went to a concert.”
“Us and about eight hundred twenty-one-year-olds.”
“Ha-ha-ha! You poor thing.”
“Walter enjoyed himself.”
“Oh, I’m sure he did. He’s quite the enthusiast about young people these days.”
Katz was encouraged by the note of discontent. “I take it you’re not?”
“Me? Safe to say no. I mean, my own children excepted. I do still like my own children. But the rest of them? Ha-ha-ha!”
Her thrilling, lifting laugh hadn’t changed. Underneath her new haircut, though, underneath her eye makeup, she was looking older. It only went in one direction, aging, and the self-protective core of him, seeing it, was telling him to run while he still could. He’d followed an instinct in coming down here, but there was a big difference, he was realizing, between an instinct and a plan.
“What don’t you like about them?” he said.
“Oh, well, where to begin?” Patty said. “How about the flipflop thing? I have some issues with their flipflops. It’s like the world is their bedroom. And they can’t even hear their own flap-flap-flapping, because they’ve all got their gadgets, they’ve all got their earbuds in. Every time I start hating my neighbors around here, I run into some G.U. kid on the sidewalk and suddenly forgive the neighbors, because at least they’re adults. At least they’re not running around in flipflops, advertising how much more laidback and reasonable they are than us adults.