A Week as Andrea Benstock
- Автор: Блок Лоуренс
- Год: 1975
- Язык: английский
- Год: Arbor House
- ISBN: 978-0-87795-100-1
- Жанр: Романы для взрослых
Электронная книга - «A Week as Andrea Benstock». Краткое содержание книги:
And then at some point the Lion’s Head became her particular place. She would tend to end her evenings there. Friends might call her there, and would leave a message if she was not there at the moment. And one evening Don smiled over the bar at her and said, “Missed you last night. I was gettin’ worried about you.”
“Well, it’s not as though I’m here every damn night,” she had said. And he smiled and shrugged and moved down the bar, and she realized that it was as though she was in there every night. Every damned night.
Now she hesitated at the entrance. It looked the same, unobtrusive enough. You almost had to know it was there in order to find it. She descended the half flight of steps, opened the door.
It seemed to be the same. It was unremarkable enough in appearance, a dark old New York saloon, one long room with a bar running the length of it, another room around the back with tables. But it was the same, the same as she remembered it, and she took a considerable degree of satisfaction in discovering this.
The bar was not crowded. Three men were at its far end, another man alone with a beer in the middle of the bar. The bartender had high Slavic cheekbones and a ragged Zapata moustache. His hair was as black as shoe polish. She had never seen him before.
But she did recognize one of the other drinkers. A man about forty, jowly, wearing a bulky sweater and corduroy trousers. She did not know his name or anything about him but she did know that she had seen him before, that he had spent time at this bar when it was her bar.
It surprised her that this pleased her quite so much, this recognition.
She took a stool at the near end of the bar and got her cigarettes out of her bag. She lit one and sat for a while, smoking, watching the smoke rise to the stamped tin ceiling. After a moment or two she became aware that the bartender was standing in front of her, waiting for her order.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I was lost in thought.”
“Sure. It’s that kind of day. Get you something?”
“A light beer, I think.”
“Sure.”
The beer tasted good. The bartender took her dollar, brought back her change, and left her alone. In the next twenty minutes the outside door opened three times, and each time she turned her head at the sound. But the people who walked in were all strangers to her.
When she had finished her beer she caught the bartender’s eye. He brought her another beer. She had learned his name from another conversation, and she used it now.
She said, “Frank, does John Riordan still come here?”
“Sure. Haven’t seen him yet today. You a friend of his?”
“Old-time friend.”
“Usually he’ll come in around this time. Little sooner or a little later. You couldn’t set your watch by him”
“You never could,” she said.
“How’s that?”
“Nothing,” she said.
“His book over there on the wall. The cover.”
“Oh?” Over beside the jukebox the wall was a montage of book jackets and photographs.
“The jacket, what they call it. You read it?”
“No.”
“Me neither. I don’t know how it’s doing. Selling, I mean.”
She hadn’t even known he’d had a book published. One had come out about a year after she was married and she’d read a review of it. It had been a collection of magazine and newspaper pieces. She’d stopped at Ulbrich’s to see if they had it in stock but they hadn’t. She could have had them order it, but hadn’t bothered.
She looked down at the beer glass. There was an expression her mother used frequently. Perhaps the phrase was not peculiar to her mother. It seemed to her that many of her mother’s friends used it. “He was beside himself.” It indicated that the subject of the sentence was enraged, taken aback, disconcerted, or any of a number of superlatives. It was a very useful expression, covering one’s reaction to all manner of outrages.
I am beside myself, she thought. And saw that the expression was a literal one, and that she’d had indeed been beside herself all day. One Andrea Kleinman was sitting there on that bar stool gazing down into that glass of beer and planning God knows what while another Andrea Kleinman, quite another Andrea Kleinman, was hovering somewhere in the middle distance, beside herself, watching and wondering, perhaps taking notes.
Andrea Benstock, idiot. You’re married, you have a house and a baby and two cars. Don’t you remember?
One or both of the Andreas saw a signature on an unread petition. “Andrea Beth Kleinman. 47 Jane Street. N.Y.C.”
She still had a third of a glass of beer in front of her when he came into the bar. She turned her head at the sound of the door, as she had been doing all along, but this time she really did know it would be him. She just knew it. She had been playing little doltish games with herself, giving herself two or three more door openings before she left, setting up little fail-safe devices either to permit their meeting or to foil it. But this time she knew it would be him, and she turned her head, and it was.
He looked very much as she remembered him. A tall man with a lumbering gait, broad in the shoulders, thick at the waist. Thicker indeed at the waist than when she’d seen him last.
His rust-brown hair was about the same length as it had been then. Before he’d worn it a little longer than was fashionable, and now it was a little shorter than fashion called for. And his beard, a little lighter than his hair, was a small and neatly trimmed affair confined to his chin and upper lip. It had been just like that when she’d first met him — at a party? at the White Horse? — and then shortly thereafter he’d let it grow in full. But now it was as it had been at that first meeting.
He had not noticed her. Someone had greeted him, and he was at the bar now, talking to someone she did not know. She was glad for a moment or two to observe him without being herself observed.
She recognized his jacket, a bulky tweed of no particular color. Had the elbows always been patched? And had he always worn glasses? He wore a little wire-rimmed pair now and they did not really suit him at all. They sat on his broad nose and looked like a pair of spectacles placed upon a statue in an attempt at humor.
She watched him, and sipped her beer, and then Frank went over to take a drink order, and leaned forward and evidently mentioned her, because a moment later John Riordan turned to glance very casually her way. His eyes brushed over her, stopped to take her measure, then widened.
“Well, I’m damned.”
“You always were, Jack.”
“It’s Andrea,” he said. He thumped his companion. “Do you know this lady?” he demanded. “No, you wouldn’t. Before your time. Well, I shouldn’t be surprised to see you here, should I?” Frank poured his drink, whiskey and soda, no ice, and John Riordan wrapped a large hand around the glass and carried it over to where Andrea was sitting. “Shouldn’t be surprised. Everything operates in cycles. Things go in and out of fashion and all things come to him who waits. Charlie Marx knew the whole story. Thesis and antithesis. His only mistake was hoping things would get better.” His eyes fixed thoughtfully upon her face. “You look well,” he said. He put meaning into the automatic phrase, and the words warmed her.
“Thank you. So do you.”
“You’re kind, but the hell I do. I’m getting just like my old man. The one thing on earth I fucking swore would never happen, and here I’m getting the same red nose and the same pot belly.” He slapped rhythmically at his abdomen. “He used to call it an alderman,” he said. “Did you ever hear that expression?”