Chapter Six
THE ALAMO CHILE HOUSE, the only place I’ve ever come across where it is possible to get a really good plate of chile con carne, is situated on 47th Street between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue, directly across the street from the Hotel Rio. I left the chile house a few minutes after six, wandered across the street to exchange pleasant words with the clerk on duty at the Rio, and wandered back out to the street a few minutes later.
From there I wandered over to Sixth, glanced around balefully at throngs of tourists from Wisconsin, and headed uptown. The damnedest thing was that I kept passing bars. There are roughly four bars to a block in midtown Manhattan and you never notice them quite as inevitably as when you have decided to cut down on your drinking. I passed Lippy’s Bar and Hogan’s Bar and the Left Field Bar & Grill and the Goldfish Bowl. I passed Alcoholics Unanimous and Ye Olde Cornere Saloone and Raoul Dufy’s Tavern. I passed one dyke bar, three fag bars, and any number of heterosexual establishments. I passed posh bars and crud bars, patrician bars and plebian bars, bourgeois bars and proletarian bars.
Bar.
After bar.
After bar.
Each bar beckoned to me. Each bar murmured whorishly that one drink would make all the difference in the world.
I said to hell with it.
At 57th Street I made a right turn and walked east, figuring that if worse came to worst I could always go swimming in the East River. What the hell, I was having a nice walk. It was a nice evening after an essentially horrible day and I was just good old Jeff Flanders out for a stroll.
I crossed Fifth, sniffed appreciatively at the healthy smell of money that permeates the Avenue, and kept on walking. I looked at people and decided that they were all ugly. I looked in store windows and decided that there wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to buy for myself. I walked quickly past the bars and pretended they weren’t there.
I crossed Madison.
Nice Street, Madison.
I kept going.
I crossed Park.
Nice Street, Park.
And I kept going.
Another right at Lex, straight for a couple blocks, right again at 54th and back toward home.
Across Park.
Almost across Madison.
But not quite.
Because there she was.
I almost missed her. She didn’t look like Gibbsville anymore, didn’t look like nineteen years old or like the Hotel Somerville.
She looked like money.
A black jersey dress that fit her like a second skin. An ermine stole that dangled around her lovely throat like it belonged there. A braided leather leash that connected her hand with a simpy-looking brown dachshund.
Candy.
My first reaction was one of shock. I hadn’t forgotten her, of course. She was not the type of woman you’d forget any more than you’d forget you’re dying of cancer. Every day I remembered her, thought about her, ached physically and emotionally for her. But if someone had predicted that I would run into her on the street I would have laughed in his face.
Ha-ha.
Double ha-ha.
But the bit was this—I thought of her as something out of reach, something I would never get hold of again. Once I called her and all I got was an Annie-doesn’t-live-here-any-more answer. I figured from then on that wherever she was she was out of my world. Our two worlds collided.
She was walking toward me, her and her two-bit gold-plated puppy on a string, and I saw her before she saw me. I also saw her discover me, which was a rather interesting experience. Her eyes went wide for just the briefest fraction of an instant; then they turned away and she hurried on, hoping she could pass me without my seeing her.
I waited until she was next to me on the sidewalk; then I shot out a hand and caught hold of her elbow. I have to give her credit—she didn’t lose any of that perfect composure, didn’t jump or get startled or let out a scream or anything. She turned her head and looked at me and said in a very soft and very level tone: “Let go of me.”
I let go of her. But when she started to walk on I grabbed hold of her again.
“Look,” I said. “I’ve got to see you.”
“Why?”
The question caught me intellectually flat-footed. I didn’t say anything for a minute.
“Jeff,” she said softly, “you don’t have to see me. We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“But—”
“I have everything I want,” she said. “Without you.”
I looked at her clothes, her hair-do, her dumb little dog. It looked as though she was right.
“Land your millionaire?”
She nodded.
“What’s he like in bed?”
She smiled—a sick little Mona Lisa smile that said she knew more than she was telling.
“I’m happy,” she said. “I’m as happy as I could possibly be.”
“Don’t you ever want me?”
She thought that one over for all of three seconds. “I used to,” she said. “I told you that I’d rather get tossed by you than anybody else. But a girl has to make certain sacrifices.”
“You talk fancy,” I said. “You talk a lot more precisely.”
She smiled again. The same smile, the one that let me know I was in the dark on some salient point.
“Candy,” I said. “Baby, I need you. I need you more than I ever needed anything or anybody.”
“You have your wife, don’t you?”
I told her about that.
“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said, and she said it as though she meant it. “I really am, Jeff. But what do you expect me to do about it?”
I told her what I expected her to do about it.
“Jeff,” she said, sadly. “Jeff, you can’t possibly think I’m going to leave the person who’s supporting me and go back with you, do you? I’ve got exactly where I always wanted to get and you expect me to throw it all up? That just doesn’t make any sense.”
“You’ve got where you wanted to get, huh? Just where the hell are you?”
“In the lap of luxury.”
“You’re a kept woman,” I said. “You’re the same thing as a whore except a whore is more democratic. A whore does it for anybody and you do it for just one customer, but you’re still the same thing.”
She didn’t say anything. The words seemed to roll right off her.
“You think you’re happy, Candy? You’re not happy. You’re sick.”
“If I’m sick,” she said, “I can go to an analyst. I can afford it now.”
“Candy—”
“Do you realize that some analysts get fifty dollars an hour? If I went to one of those five days a week it would cost fifty dollars more than you earn. Think about it, Jeff. Think that part over.”
“Candy, a man who makes ten thousand dollars a year is hardly a poor man.”
