The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing - Melissa Bank [57]
"I know," you say.
You walk down to St. Germain to the café where Simone de Beauvoir wrote her letters to Sartre—the café your boyfriend disdained, saying it was full of tourists.
You love it. You order wine. You smoke cigarettes. You play worthy Simone to his unworthy Jean-Paul.
On your second glass of wine, you notice a man staring at you. He's fleshy and balding and has long, straggly hair. You don't realize how short he is until he stands up, hardly rising at all, and comes over to your table.
"Hello," he says, and you see that he's missing one of his front teeth.
He stands before you, and begins to talk. His missing tooth gives him a slight lisp, and you enjoy listening to him. He speaks rapidly, mentioning famous Americans who regularly cross his path. He, himself, is an expatriate from New York; he tells you he's a lawyer, a screenwriter, an entrepreneur, very successful, very rich, and you think, Hey, why not devote an afternoon and a little cash to getting a new tooth? But you only smile. He smokes your cigarettes, and you smoke his.
He's entertaining you more than your boyfriend has all week and asking nothing of you, not even to sit down. For a long time, you don't even realize that he's standing, and when you do, you invite him to join you.
You make up a name for yourself, Deena. He is Wallace.
Once seated, he gets personal: "I see you're not wearing a ring, Tina—you've argued with your boyfriend, then?"
"Deena," you say. "I couldn't sleep." You wonder if this sounds credible.
"It's fine if you don't want to talk about it, Deena," he said. "That's fine."
You can tell he has met many women in circumstances like yours, because he speaks in generalities, about freedom and love, passion and fidelity; he's circling above, waiting for a sign from you—yes, that's it, that's my story—so he can land. You remain impassive, though, and finally, he says, "Listen, Tina, this guy has no idea what a remarkable woman you are."
"Deena," you say, adding that if he's going to give personal advice, he should at least get your name right.
"Deena, Tina, Nina," he said, "you know what I'm saying here."
"Yes," you say. "I know what you're saying."
You put some bills on the table for your wine and say you think you can sleep now, not caring if it sounds stagy.
"Listen, Deena . . ." he says, standing as you do.
You thank him for his advice, and before walking out, you bend down and kiss him on both cheeks.
You're a little drunk, but you feel fine. In Motown spirit, you say, "Girl, you can still bring a long-haired shortie with a missing tooth to his feet." You walk several blocks in the wrong direction.
As soon as you enter your hotel room, you're sober and sad again. You undress in the dark and brush your teeth and get into bed.
He says, "I went out looking for you."
You lie there, side by side, in the dark.
You need to tell him that you found the ring, but you hesitate. Telling all is his code. Not telling, however, complies with the code of the Wily Woman.
You say, "I found the ring."
"Fuck," he says.
You say, "You changed your mind about me."
"It isn't you," he says, as though you're to be comforted by the irrelevant role you play in your own life.
He says, "Please tell me how you feel."
You say, "I'm crestfallen," a word you have never used.
"I want to marry you," he says. "I know I do."
He turns on his side and moves closer, and tries to hold you. But you're conscious of his head and his chest and his arms just as hair and skin and bones.
—•—
The ring stays there, between you.
Sometimes you take it out of his sock drawer and look at it, and try it on. It makes you think of an ad on the back of your old Seventeen magazines—a couple in fisherman sweaters with the words, "A Diamond Is Forever."
Even so, you make love before anything else. The few nights you spend apart, he calls to say good night; the next morning he wakes you up by reading Langston Hughes poems on your answering machine.
At Christmas- and Hanukkah- and Kwanza-time, you're blue, because you don't