Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [70]
When Julie got home around five, Harry said he had something to tell her and she said great, but could he hold on for a minute while she settled in. He said fine and did his best to bide his time while she went to the john, checked the mail, and popped open an Amstel Light. Then she lit a Nat Sherman cigarello and plopped down in a living room chair, with one leg slung over the armrest, and told him to fire away. She did not like to listen to Harry’s stories on the fly. Or at least his old ones.
Harry told her about Sybil and the letter and didn’t she think he ought to meet her at the Plaza and play it out. Julie didn’t agree wholeheartedly, but she did agree a little bit and said that if Harry wanted to meet her he should go ahead and do so. Instead of letting it rest, Harry said it would give the experience some closure, a new term he had picked up from the psychiatrist he had been seeing on and off for several years. Julie said she understood the concept and could see that it would be important for him to have some closure.
“But what if she’s gorgeous?” she asked.
Harry had never seen anyone with eyes like Julie’s. They could be warm and playful and kind, all at the same time. That and the work boots and the carpentry. Sometimes it was too much for him.
“It’s beside the point,” said Harry. “That was twenty-five years ago.”
“I don’t care,” said Julie. “And what if she sees your shoulders and tush?”
Harry said she had already seen them, and decided he had to have Julie.
“Now?” she said, in mock panic. “When I haven’t even read the Post? And I haven’t come down from my carpentry?”
“Right now,” said Harry.
“Okay,” she said with a sigh, and took off her sweatshirt. “But let’s not get into a whole big thing.”
Harry was understandably jumpy on the day he was scheduled to meet Sybil. Normally, on his trips to the city, he stayed over at a hotel, since he didn’t relish the idea of driving back and forth in one day. But on this occasion, he made sure not to book a room, probably as a safeguard against things getting out of hand. Another reason Harry was edgy was that he feared he would see a record of his own aging in Sybil’s face. That had happened to a character in an Isaac Bashevis Singer story, who had run into a childhood friend in a railway station, and Harry did not need it happening to him.
As he walked through the lobby, Harry wondered if he would be able to recognize Sybil. He had reserved a table in a dark corner of Trader Vic’s, just in case she had gotten fat. Call him a swine if you like, but he was not anxious to be caught having lunch with a fat, older woman. There were several middle-aged women in the lobby who were clearly not her. After fifteen minutes of looking around, Harry started to get irritated and wondered if she had changed her mind and decided not to show up at all. That would put him in the position of having to think about her for another twenty-five years. With no closure. And then she walked up to him—or marched up to him, more accurately—and Harry literally received the shock of his life. She was all furs and pearls and white skin and fragrance and she was far more beautiful than Julie—or Harry, for that matter—had