Of course I denied it. She was in her early thirties and looked maybe twenty-five.
“I feel as if life is passing me by,” she continued as if she hadn’t heard me. “I am wasting my life.”
This was a new Dorsey, introspective. I’ve always believed that the idle rich should avoid introspection. “What do you want out of life?” I asked politely, trying to guess where this gambit was going.
“I want to be happy,” she said flatly. “I want a man who loves me, and I want kids.”
This was the first I’d heard about kids. That comment jarred me. Dorsey wasn’t my idea of the maternal type.
“What is happiness?” I offered, just to keep her talking.
“I’m not sure,” she mused. She began playing with that idea and was still chattering when our drinks came. The wine was cool and delicious. As I sipped it and listened to Dorsey the thought occurred to me that maybe I should have ordered something stronger. I was beginning to suspect that Dorsey was on her way to a destination I wasn’t going to like.
And by God, damn if she didn’t go there!
“Tommy, you’re the only man I ever met who didn’t want something from me.”
“I don’t do platonic relationships,” I muttered.
“I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about money. Every single man and half the married men who meet me have dollar signs in their eyes. I’ve heard every investment opportunity and charitable scheme you can imagine. I hear a new one almost every day.”
“You need to find a better class of people to hang with.”
“I need a man who wants me, not my checkbook.”
“They’re out there. You’ll meet one.”
“Why not the two of us, Tommy? You and me. Is that so crazy?”
So there it was. I was being proposed to. And I had no idea how to handle it.
The waitress arrived with our food, which gave me a few seconds to think. When she disappeared I sat watching Dorsey toy with a little tomato with her fork. Finally she put the fork down.
“Dorsey, I don’t think you’re in love with me.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps I am. But I think we could love each other. I like you so much… Oh, Tommy, can’t you see us together? We could travel all we wanted, see the world, enjoy the people and places and find a perfect spot for us. And we could have children. Two, I think, a boy and a girl. You and I living life together could be so perfect.”
Wandering aimlessly through life on an eternal vacation was not my idea of how I wanted to spend my days. “I’m not going through life with a woman paying the bills,” I said as gently as I could.
“We could do a prenuptial agreement,” she said earnestly. “I’ll give you half of everything I have when we’re married. Then you can pay the bills.”
I took a healthy gulp of wine. I was right — I should have ordered whiskey.
“If we were married we couldn’t have any secrets from each other,” I stated, trying to turn this ship to a different heading.
“That’s true.” She was watching me like a hawk, her salad and wine untouched.
I took a bite of my sandwich, chewed it and washed it down with wine while I waited in vain for her to take another step on the subject of secrets. She wasn’t going to, I concluded.
“Dorsey, I’m flattered. I have never been proposed to before. I’ve never had a woman care that much for me. I don’t know what to say. I care very much for you and don’t want to hurt your feelings. Yet I doubt that we would work as a couple. We tried dating regularly once, and that didn’t work so well. You are you and I’m me, and that’s sort of an unchangeable fact. Maybe we should accept that. Make love when it suits us, go to dinner when we can fit it in, now and then a play or party, and each of us go on with our lives.
Her eyes were glued on me. I had never seen her so intense. “Tommy, I’m offering you me and half of everything I own. I want you as a husband. And a friend who trusts me. I am trying to do the right thing for both of us. Do you trust me?”
Oh, boy! “I believe you are trying to do what you think best. But I am not convinced it would work.”
“If we want it badly enough, we can make it work.”
The divorce courts were full of people who once thought that. I did not make this comment to Dorsey O’Shea. What I said was this: “I need time to think. I confess, I haven’t been thinking of marriage. I need some time to get a handle on where I’m at.”
She reached for my hand. “Spend the night with me. Let’s go up to my room. I need you now, this evening.”
A roll in the hay with hot, wanton Dorsey pulling out all the stops while Willie Varner listened to the action was the last thing on earth I needed that night. I told her I had to go back to work. I signaled for the check, stood, and dropped money on the table.
“I’ll put the tab on my room,” she said distractedly.
Truthfully, she was a very beautiful woman. And she wasn’t the woman for me.
“No, Dorsey. You won’t.” I bent, kissed her on the lips, and headed for the door.
It was raining when I came out of the hotel. I was in no mood for Willie Varner, so I went walking. Bought another umbrella and I didn’t even have an expense account. There was a little bar on Ninth Avenue at about Fifty- seventh, and I dropped in. Quiet. Two drunks at a little table in the back of the room. Tending bar was a defrocked priest or a disbarred lawyer — I didn’t ask which. The place reeked of old wood and wasted lives. High at one end of the bar was a television with a Yankees game going, with no sound. They were playing someplace with sunshine. I wished I were there.
I ordered a double Scotch, the oldest stuff they had, and sat at the end of the bar by the window and watched the rain and the traffic and the people hurrying by.
Dorsey wasn’t a bad person. Oh, she was a poor little rich girl, and I believed her when she said every man in her life wanted money. Still, I wasn’t the guy to rescue her. I didn’t want her money. I didn’t want the frantic indolence, the eternal vacation, the doomed-to-failure effort to stay young and trendy and with it. I wanted to look my age, to keep busy with things worth doing, and to find a woman who loved me.
Dorsey didn’t.
At least, I didn’t think she did.
So why in hell did she ask me to marry her?
Didn’t she know that wasn’t done in middle-class circles? Any woman worth her salt could maneuver the object of her affections into getting on his knee and popping the question. Or maybe, being a hip young modern, Dorsey didn’t give a damn.
Wonder if I was the first man Dorsey ever asked to wed.
Can a husband testify against a wife in New York? Maryland? Why did I have this suspicion eating on me that she was somehow involved in this mess with Royston? She knew everyone in Washington; she admitted she’d been to the White House. Why not Royston? Or the president?
Naw — she was no Monica.
I sipped the Scotch as slowly as I could, but it went down way too fast, so I ordered another.
I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and laid it on the bar beside my drink. After a while I picked it up and dialed a number I had memorized.
He got it on the second ring. “Grafton.”
“Tommy. Been a hell of an evening. Dorsey proposed.”
“Proposed what?”
“What the hell you think? Marriage, goddamn it!”
“How much is she worth, anyway?”
“My guess is about four hundred million. Give or take.”
“Why didn’t you get the number?”
“She was proposing marriage, not a merger.” That wasn’t strictly true, but I was in no mood to get into the messy details with Jake Grafton. I had all the respect in the world for him, but there is a limit.
“Girls that rich don’t come along every day,” he observed tactlessly. “My old man always told me that I should marry the first time for love, the second time for money.”
“If you and Callie ever split the blanket, I’ll give you Dorsey’s telephone number.”
