“You haven’t heard from him, either?”
“He called today, but he didn’t say how he was. I guess I didn’t ask.”
“He was O.K. He looked good. You can hardly see the scar above his eyebrow where they took the stitches. I imagine in a few weeks when it fades you won’t notice it at all.”
“You think he’s done with dining in Harlem?”
“Doubt it. It could have happened anywhere, you know. People get mugged all over the place.”
I hear the phone ringing and don’t get up. Ray squeezes my shoulder again. “Well,” he says. “I’m going to bring some food out here.”
“If there’s anything in there that isn’t the way it ought to be, just take care of it, will you?”
“What?” he says.
“I mean—If there’s anything wrong, just fix it.”
He smiles. “Don’t tell me. You painted a room what you thought was a nice pastel color and it came out electric pink. Or the chairs—you didn’t have them reupholstered again, did you?” Ray comes back to where I’m sitting. “Oh, God,” he says. “I was thinking the other night about how you’d had that horrible chintz you bought on Madison Avenue put onto the chairs and when John and I got back here you were afraid to let him into the house. God—that awful striped material. Remember John standing in back of the chair and putting his chin over the back and screaming, ‘I’m innocent!’ Remember him doing that?” Ray’s eyes are about to water, the way they watered because he laughed so hard the day John did that. “That was about a year ago this month,” he says.
I nod yes.
“Well,” Ray says. “Everything’s going to be all right, and I don’t say that just because I want to believe in one nice thing. Bobby thinks the same thing. We agree about this. I keep talking about this, don’t I? I keep coming out to the house, like you’ve cracked up or something. You don’t want to keep hearing my sermons.” Ray opens the screen door. “Anybody can take a trip,” he says.
I stare at him.
“I’m getting lunch,” he says. He is holding the door open with his foot. He moves his foot and goes into the house. The door slams behind him.
“Hey!” he calls out. “Want iced tea or something?”
The phone begins to ring.
“Want me to get it?” he says.
“No. Let it ring.”
“Let it ring?” he hollers.
The cardinal flies out of the peach tree and onto the sweeping branch of a tall fir tree that borders the lawn —so many trees so close together that you can’t see the house on the other side. The bird becomes a speck of red and disappears.
“Hey, pretty lady!” Ray calls. “Where’s your mutt?”
Over the noise of the telephone, I can hear him knocking around in the kitchen. The stuck drawer opening.
“You
I look back at the house. Ray, balancing a tray, opens the door with one hand, and Hugo is beside him—not rushing out, the way he usually does to get through the door, but padding slowly, shaking himself out of sleep. He comes over and lies down next to me, blinking because his eyes are not yet accustomed to the sunlight.
Ray sits down with his plate of crackers and cheese and a beer. He looks at the tears streaming down my cheeks and shoves over close to me. He takes a big drink and puts the beer on the grass. He pushes the tray next to the beer can.
“Hey,” Ray says. “Everything’s cool, O.K.? No right and no wrong. People do what they do. A neutral observer, and friend to all. Same easy advice from Ray all around. Our discretion assured.” He pushes my hair gently off my wet cheeks. “It’s O.K.,” he says softly, turning and cupping his hands over my forehead. “Just tell me what you’ve done.”
Greenwich Time
“I’m thinking about frogs,” Tom said to his secretary on the phone. “Tell them I’ll be in when I’ve come up with a serious approach to frogs.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.
“Doesn’t matter. I’m the idea man, you’re the message taker. Lucky you.”
“Lucky you,” his secretary said. “I’ve got to have two wisdom teeth pulled this afternoon.”
“That’s awful,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
“Sorry enough to go with me?”
“I’ve got to think about frogs,” he said. “Tell Metcalf I’m taking the day off to think about them, if he asks.”
“The health plan here doesn’t cover dental work,” she said.
Tom worked at an ad agency on Madison Avenue. This week, he was trying to think of a way to market soap shaped like frogs—soap imported from France. He had other things on his mind. He hung up and turned to the man who was waiting behind him to use the phone.
“Did you hear that?” Tom said.
