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:
Her mother, she was certain, would think she was crazy. Literally crazy. Mark would want to talk things out, work things out, settle things in bed. And Robin — no, no matter how many times she tried to imagine herself telling Robin, she couldn’t make herself believe for one moment that the child would understand. It was not something a child could possibly understand, and not something she herself could properly explain.
It would be hard enough to leave. It would be impossible to stay, but still it would be hard enough to leave, and talking about it first would only make it harder.
One day in October she was ready. Robin was in school and Mark was at work. Andrea packed a large suitcase and a small suitcase. She drove to the bank and withdrew precisely half of the money from the joint savings account. She drove from there to a used car dealer on Delaware and Hertel and sold her car, accepting what he offered her. From the dealer’s office she called a taxi which drove her to the airport.
By two-thirty she was in a phone booth in La Guardia with a few dollars in change on the shelf in front of her. They could fail to understand her. They could hate her. Mark could make it difficult for her to get Robin.
But they couldn’t make her go back there. Nobody could make her go back. Nobody.
At four o’clock Cal gave the mail orders to the boy from the messenger service and sent him on his way to the Post Office. Then he looked at his watch and sighed. “Extraordinary,” he said.
“What is?”
“We’re all of a week away from the shortest day of the year. And today, paradoxically, is shaping up as one of the longest days of the year.”
“It hasn’t been so bad, has it?”
“Well, when they dwindle down to a precious few, as old Walter Huston used to sing. And Friday’s always a long day. Are you staying in town this weekend?”
“Where would I go?”
“Where indeed. I’m staying here and I wish I weren’t. I was hoping someone would invite me somewhere. On Friday I always get itchy feet. Speaking of which, Thank God it’s Friday, and let’s have a drink to that effect when we get out of here, what say?”
“I have a date for dinner.”
“Lucky you. I wish I did. Find out if he’s got a friend, why don’t you.”
“Oh, fun-nee.”
“But you’ve got time for a quick drink, don’t you? Of course you do.”
They went to a place on Forty-seventh and Madison. The bar was already mobbed with advertising types when they got there. Cal led her through the crowd to a small table in the back. They ordered drinks. She took out a cigarette and he had a match burning just as the cigarette reached her mouth.
When their drinks arrived he raised his glass. “To Friday,” he said, “and everything it represents. Namely the liberation of the human spirit from the shackles of voluntary servitude. To freedom, Andrea pet, even if only for a weekend.”
Her drink was a vodka martini, very cold and very dry and very large. “One of these is going to be plenty,” she said.
“Two will be magical.”
“Two would take the top of my head off and I might need it later tonight. Plus I don’t really have the time.”
“Heavy date?”
“Well, a date.”
“Somebody who promises to play an important role in the life of Our Girl Andrea?”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I met him at a party a couple of weeks ago. No, wait a minute. It was just last weekend.”
“The photographer?”
“It was the photographer’s party. How did you remember that? I hardly remember.”
“I may take more of an interest in your life than you do, pet. Who’s this one? Not another camera pest.”
“No, he’s a school teacher. High school. I think he teaches history. Something like that, anyway.”
“What else is like history?”
“I don’t know. Social studies, civics, whatever.”
“He single?”
“Divorced. Well, separated.”
“Uh-huh.”
“What’s with the knowing uh-huh?”
“Just that the official definition of separated is that his wife wasn’t at the party.”
“Well, he said he was separated. I didn’t ask if he had a legal separation. I don’t, anyway. And I don’t care if he does, or if he’s cheating on his wifie-poo, or much of anything. The last thing I want right now is a relationship with a future, Cal.”
“Everybody says that. Constantly.”
“I happen to mean it. I’m serious.”
“Oh, I know. I’m just making maternal noises, that’s all. It’s a tendency of mine. You’ve remarked on it in the past, you know.”
“True. And I suppose I’m glad you care. I know I’m glad you care. But I’m a big girl now, baby.”
“Oh, I know you are.” His hand covered hers. “And I’m proud of you, if you care to know. The number I do on you, part of it is just teasing, you know.”
“I know.”
“And the part that isn’t, well, you do inspire concern, Andrea. You just seem so fucking vulnerable.”
“Well, that’s a hell of a thing.”
“Andrea, what’s the matter? Baby, sit down, please sit down. What’s wrong?”
“Just because I’m standing on my own two feet—”
“Well, don’t stand on them now. Sit on your charmingly boyish behind, won’t you? That’s better. Darling, are we being terribly touchy this evening or did I say something awful? Because I certainly didn’t mean to.”
She picked up her glass, took a long drink of the clear cold liquid. She felt a little steadier now. It was funny how his words had rocked her, how abruptly and dramatically she had reacted. Oh, she understood what had prompted her reaction, but it still was surprising.
“What did I say, Andrea?”
“Something just went down the wrong way, okay? Let’s just forget it.”
“All right.”
“If we could just change the subject.”
“Excellent. Let’s talk about shoplifting.”
“Oh?”
“Shoplifting,” he said. “I was thinking about it just this afternoon. It’s one thing I’ve been missing at the store. Now every bookstore I’ve ever worked for is positively plagued by boosters. That’s the underworld term for them, you know. Boosters. Some of them are devout lovers of literature who can’t afford to buy as many books as they’d care to own, while others are frankly in it for the money. I remember I was working at the Bookmasters store on Eighth Street and this one dude the size of the Flatiron Building came in with one of those canvas airlines bags, opened it up and began filling it with copies of the number-one bestseller, whichever it happened to be at the time. I think it was Death of a President. A big expensive book, anyway, and he took eight or ten copies easily, and do you know no one even considered stopping him? An intimidating presence. Junkies’ll steal the current books, you see, and then they can sell them to one of the used book stores as review copies for a fourth of the cover price. Now I would always tend to distinguish between the lovers of literature and the professional rip-off artists, you know, and I’d let the student types get away with murder. I didn’t own the store, after all, but I tended to come down a little hard on the junkies just to discourage their custom, because they were not at all the sort of people one cared to pal around with.
“But at our sweatshop I haven’t seen a book thief yet, and it’s the damnedest thing. The professionals won’t steal what they can’t sell, so that keeps them out, and I guess the various wogs who amble in looking for a good read just weren’t raised in a culture where books were made to be stolen. It makes me a little anxious, to tell you the truth. Maybe I’ve lost my old sharpness working here. Maybe I’ll find myself letting shoplifters walk all over me.”