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:
“Nothing.”
“And Joel Lieberman recommended a French restaurant around the corner from the theater and insisted I make reservations, which I did. And which we can cancel if you don’t feel like French.”
“It sounds fine.”
“So if you’d like to call your mother and find out how our pride and joy is behaving, and then we can get the show on the road.”
She placed the call and established that Robin was doing fine. They walked to the restaurant, a small and intimate room on West Fifty-first Street called Trompe l’Oeil. He talked at length about how he had spent his day and she tried her best to pay attention. It was difficult, because she could not really follow what he was saying. But she had long since learned to keep an alert attentive expression on her face, to nod at the right time, to show interest. And it was not really hypocritical, was it? Because she was interested in anything that concerned him. She simply had trouble paying attention.
The dinner was good enough. Mark’s menu French was quite competent and he had developed an enviable facility with a wine list. They skipped dessert and had ponies of cognac with their espresso.
“We’ve got to come here more often,” he said.
“This restaurant?”
“I wouldn’t mind, but I’d hate to drive this far just for dinner. No, I meant we have to come to New York more often. It’s what, seven hours on the Thruway? We should make it a point to get here twice a year. Hit some restaurants, see a couple of shows.”
“Well, it’s fine with me.”
They lit cigarettes and he asked her how her day had gone. She covered most of it. Shopping, the museum, the Village. She avoided mentioning the man in the museum, and of course she did not mention John Riordan. She was prepared to elaborate on some Village art galleries she could claim to have visited, but it wasn’t necessary; he looked at his watch and announced it was time they headed over toward the theater. He signaled for the check and caught the waiter’s eye almost instantly. He was very good at that sort of thing.
The show, Fiddler on the Roof, was the hardest ticket on Broadway. The New York lawyers with whom Mark had had business had managed to obtain a good pair of seats in the center section of the orchestra. There were other shows Andrea would have, preferred to see had she been consulted, but by the time the house lights dimmed and the orchestra was playing the familiar music of the overture, she decided she was just as glad they were seeing Fiddler.
Because it would demand nothing of her. Mark had owned the album for months and she couldn’t begin to estimate how many times he had played it. The action on stage, while colorful enough, did not require that much attention to be paid to it. She could sit in the theater as if in a concert hall, letting the music wash over her, sending her thoughts wherever they wanted to go...
After the act in John Riordan’s apartment they had both reached out at once, she for a cigarette — one of her own this time — and he for the wedge-shaped Glenfiddich bottle. He filled his glass while she scratched a match and lit her cigarette. He took a long drink, put the glass down, and smothered a burp with the back of his hand.
She said, “I’d better be on my way, Jack.”
“Just like that.”
“Pardon me?”
“It’s the fucking American dream, isn’t it?”
“I don’t understand.”
“The disposable girl. As convenient as a TV dinner and about as nourishing.” He rearranged his clothing, worked his zipper. “You fall out of my life for a few years, then fall back in for an hour. No muss, no fuss, no bother. A man doesn’t even have to take off his clothes. Just put his head back and close his eyes and get his tubes cleaned, then put the whole tab on his Diner’s Club card.”
“I thought you enjoyed what we just did.”
“What we did? I don’t remember doing anything myself. What you did, you mean.”
She looked at him.
“Of course I enjoyed it. You’ve got a definite talent there, kid. If you ever want a testimonial in writing you can have it. I could even write you up in the Voice.”
She was on her feet now, looking down at him. “I don’t understand you at all,” she said.
“No?”
“You’re acting as though I took advantage of you. You’re like a girl who just lost her virginity. I swear that’s what you’re acting like.”
He drank whiskey and looked at her over the brim of the glass. “We keep losing our virginities,” he said. “We shed our virginities like peeling onions until we find they’re all we ever had.”
“The Celtic Poet number’s wearing a little thin, don’t you think?”
“The hell of it is I’m going to get drunk tonight and I hadn’t planned to. I don’t every night, you know.”
“How would I know that?”
“How indeed.”
“Jack?” She paused until he raised his eyes to meet hers. “Jack, do we have to be cruel to each other?”
His face softened and for a moment she thought he was on the verge of tears. “No, of course we don’t,” he said, his rasp of a voice thickened now.
“I’m glad.”
“Quite the reverse. We have to be very gentle with each other.” He stood up and reached to take her hand. “I wish you the very best, Andrea. You know that.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“I’ve always wished you the best, the very best. And I’m sorry for, well, for all the things I’m sorry for.”
“Don’t be sorry for anything. And neither will I.”
“That’s fair enough.” He walked her to the door. “By God, Andrea. It has been good seeing you, you know.”
“For me, too.”
“Drop in next time you’re in the neighborhood.”
“Oh, we’ll see.”
“Or don’t, but we’ll keep on running into each other down through the years. I’m afraid we’re in the same karass.” When she looked puzzled he said, “Cat’s Cradle. Don’t you people read Vonnegut up in Buffalo?”
“I only read the Book-of-the-Month. And of course the Reader’s Digest condensed books, we never miss those.”
“Now it’s you who’s putting me on. You might enjoy Vonnegut, though. He’s got an interesting head. Have you got my book?”
“Yes, right here.”
“It’s a failure. That’s not modesty talking, just a realistic appraisal. I found out it was harder to write a novel than I thought. But I did a lot of the things I set out to do in the sense of getting things out of my guts and onto the page. And found things out about myself in the course of writing it.” He shrugged elaborately. “Maybe you’ll find it an interesting read, anyway.”
On the way back to her hotel she had stopped to read the inscription on the flyleaf.
To Andrea/With every good wish/from an old-timey friend/John Riordan
What he had written seemed to her to be almost deliberately remote and innocent, as if written to be read by someone else and passed over as the scrawl of a casual acquaintance. The signature — not Jack but his full name.
Had he written it that way out of consideration for her? Or was there something snide about the words he’d chosen?
Or was she overanalyzing things, as she had always done in her relationship with John Riordan?
The book would pose no real problems. It could be shown to Mark easily enough. But did she really want to have that conversation? For that matter, did she really want to read his novel? How awkward if it turned out to be a staggeringly bad book. And how disconcerting if it had things to say to her that she did not want to hear.