Things I've Learned From Women Who've Dumped Me - Ben Karlin [72]
Harry said that under normal circumstances, he would love to join her, but he had promised Julie he would be home in time for dinner.
She pressed him on it, but he held his ground. And then he paid the check and walked her to the elevator, which took a long time to get there. While they were waiting, she tilted her head up to be kissed, in the sorority style, and Harry took her up on it, not quite getting all of her mouth, no doubt because he was torn twenty different ways. But he felt the length of her, the long legs and the spare chest. Then his hands dropped to the substantial, maybe oversubstantial bottom that didn’t quite go with the rest of it—and Harry saw for the first time that it wasn’t his youth and inexperience and fear that had kept him from taking her into the woods many years back. The fit wasn’t quite right, and it wasn’t quite right now. He had probably known it then too, but had preferred to blank it out so that he could hold on to his sweet agony in the years that followed. Still, he enjoyed her fragrance, the freshness of her mouth, the rich feel of her fur coat against his cheek. Harry had been leading a quiet, pleasant life, but there had been something missing, and now he thought he knew what it was.
“Would you like to come up for a drink?” she asked.
He looked at his watch and said he’d love to, but that he had better not.
“I have to get moving if I want to miss the rush hour.”
“Well,” she said, clearly disappointed, “if you ever get to Charlotte . . . ”
He thought about her house and the twins and the way she lived, but he knew he was never going to see any of it. All the same, he told her that if he was ever in the area of Charlotte he would be sure to look her up.
They shook hands, and with her fragrance still trailing after him, Harry headed straight for the gift shop. Because of the kiss he felt he had better pick up something for Julie. He had been struggling with a project that had to do with wood nymphs and, as luck would have it, he found a vanity table mirror that had a wood nymph for a handle. Harry picked it up and was about to bring it over to the sales clerk when he spotted a gossip columnist he knew at the magazine rack. He was all filled up with his recent experience and decided to tell the gossip columnist about it, even though he didn’t know her very well.
“You’ll never guess what just happened,” he said. And then it all came pouring out in a rush, starting with the college romance and his broken heart, the passage of time and then, years later, the letter, all of it culminating in the lunch he’d just had at Trader Vic’s. She listened without comment and when he had finished, she pointed to the mirror and said, “That is the tackiest piece of shit I have ever seen.”
There was still some daylight remaining when he got home. He went straight up to the bedroom and found Julie curled up on the bed, with a lapful of mysteries, puffing on a Nat Sherman cigarello and working her way through a six-pack of Amstel Lights. In other words, all of her favorite things to do. He wondered how one person could read so many mysteries until one day he caught her skipping ahead and unconscionably peeking at the last page of one.
“So how’d it go, stud?” she asked, not quite taking her eyes off the book she was working on.
“Just fine,” he said.
The casual tone made her look up.
“What do you mean by that?”
“What I said,” he answered, slinging his coat on top of the jumble of clothing piled up on a chair. “It went just fine.”
Harry gave her the gift and when she had unwrapped it she said it was very nice. The lack of enthusiasm didn’t bother Harry. It took her a while to warm up to gifts. In another month or so, she would go around saying it was one of the best things she had ever owned.
“Was she gorgeous?”
“In a way,” said Harry, popping open one of her precious Amstels.
“In what way was that?” she asked, her interest picking up. And then, with a playful kind