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Page 11.

Chapter 5

He awoke because a sunbeam dazzled the orbits of his eyes, because a hand brushed against his shoulder, because a droplet fell on his bare chest. He opened his eyes and sat up but she had left the room in a rustle of skirts. “I have breakfast for you,” she said in the kitchen. The apartment was endowed with the aroma of coffee, the essence of a light perfume, the stirring of a fresh breeze from some half-open window amid the stale odors of sleep.

Twisting aside to get out of the direct sunlight, he remembered that he must get off to work. He buried his head in the pillow. Bird twitter and consciousness that it was Monday made him swing upright into a sitting position. He awoke fully when his soles touched the cool wood floor and he heard the crackling of bacon in a pan.

The bedroom where he had intruded and borrowed time and love was a study in white. The house was undoubtedly very old, one of those rambling, turreted wood structures built in New Haven during the last century and remodeled every generation for transient use by faculty or business families.

He saw the source of the breeze. While he was asleep, Merile had slightly opened a glass-paned door leading to a wood porch palisaded with flower boxes. White and red blossoms stirred in sun and wind. A delivery truck hummed through the quiet street outside; cowboyed to an impatient stop at the corner with crashing contents.

A broad picture window overlooked the porch. Yellow curtains hung pinned back by heavy brocade cord, revealing banked and newly green elm trees outside. Jon Harney rose, belching, and staggered, stretching and rubbing his head, yawning, past a wall covered in books (rousing creative jazz in Charles Egeny)—into the living room.

His clothes were neatly folded and stacked on an armrest of the couch. Daylight filtered in through a sea of tree crowns outside, in a rich and golden stream through a three-sided bay window overlooking a long, narrow backyard. Cross-streams of light from the bedroom and a window at the side of the house stirred millions of dust molecules dancing in a faint breeze. The days of sifting spring tea were over, he thought, sitting beside his clothes. Soon, spring rains would turn into drifting clouds of gray humidity. Colorful pleasure boat sails would criss-cross Long Island Sound.

Merile poked her hand and face around the doorway in which she’d twirled nakedly the night before. “Do you want to take a shower?”

He looked at her and nodded. It was then he learned something about her. Her long, elegant face fluttered with a white smile. Her cheekbones glistened and a tear fell from her chin. “You’ll have to make it quick because I still have to finish drying my hair,” she told him.

Puzzled, he gingerly entered the kitchen.

She handed him a towel but turned away. “Hurry, your eggs will be ready in five or ten minutes.”

He would normally have steamed up the bathroom, but he did not want to cloud the mirror.

Anyway, it was spring, finally, and he half-opened the window and stepped shivering into the cold tub behind plastic curtains fragrant with hundreds of past shampoos. He showered quickly, lathering himself, his hair, then rinsing away the sweat and sticky dried sediment of the night’s exploration. He marveled that a person could smile and cry both at the same time.

What is it about you?

“Your eggs and bacon are ready,” she said, opening but not closing the door and then fumbling in the sink.

“I’ll be right out.” He turned off the water and dried himself behind the shower curtains.

It was a small, ancient bathroom with tall ceiling, tiled walls, and separate sink spigots for hot and cold. Its milky-rippled window set in warped wood were rarely opened. She bent over, washing her face, as he sidled past wrapped in his damp towel. It was 7:15.

“I’ll drive you to work if you’d like,” he said.

She groped blindly for a towel. “No, thanks. I’d rather walk. Thanks anyway.”

Not to be seen. Not to have betrayed yourself. Or Bill.

Jon stood awkwardly as she dried her face and smiled at him with gleaming red cheeks.

I have never met this guy but I’m calling him Bill.

Her eyes radiated a glimmer of shame. He reached out to embrace her. She came a bit stiffly but unresistant into his arms.

“I slept well,” he said.

She pushed gently. Her brief glance told him she had not slept well. Her eyes glistened. “Your eggs are getting cold.”

Your eggs too.

He ate silently, and had to swallow every mouthful with difficulty. He relished only the electrically perked coffee which was aromatic, strong, and yet delicate.

Like her precious bush.

She hurried from the bathroom with her hair in a turban and a bath towel wrapped around her slender body.

“You could be in commercials, Merile.”

“Oh please, sweetie.” She came close and pecked him on the cheek. “You know how to flatter a girl.”

“Merrill,” he said, and she understood.

“I’m all about the cigar. I know. I can’t escape.”

She dressed quickly, bouncing with hurried motions on the living room couch. She emerged from the bedroom, restored to that formal, gamine, almost wounded, sultry prettiness as he’d first seen her. A delicately flowered skirt reached from her neck to her knees. High heels made the calf muscles of her long legs tense in an accentuated stalkiness. Her carefully trimmed blonde mane bounced about her shoulders and forehead as if she were trapped in a TV commercial landscape without time or cares.

She sat down beside him as he tied his shoelaces. She folded her hands in her lap. She had drawn fine mascara lines through the pale hairs on her eyelids. The mascara on both lower eyelids was faintly smudged.

She asked, “Do you have everything you need?” It was a preamble to saying goodbye.

He did not want to say anything glib, noting that could be mistaken for bluster or flattery. “I’m very content, and a little guilty,” he said.

She nodded, staring down into her tightly welded hands. “I am too.” She said quickly, “Look, I want to say thanks. It was swell, yesterday, the Beach Boys.”

“It was fun,” he agreed.

She laughed directly. “Guilt sort of adds spice.”

He finished tying his shoes and folded his hands between his knees. “I wasn’t looking for the guilt part. I supposed I deserve it.”

She leaned over, folding her arms so her elbows rested on her thighs. “It was a long time coming. It’s my fault, I’m sorry.”

He said, “How can you laugh and cry at the same time.”

She fumbled for a tissue. “Talent. I’m kind of silly.”

He laid his hand on her leg. “Do I cause that?”

She shook her head, dabbing her eyes.

He rose, feeling sweat break out at the back of his collar. “Look, Merile. Can we sort of…just treasure what happened? Can we sort of…say it was swell?”

She grinned. “I realize now that I really want you to love and leave. Go on, Lothario. Split, will you?” she nudged him. “Abandon ship.”

He stared at the telephone by the couch—a mistake, he suspected dimly then, and would later realize.

She put her hands on his shoulder and kissed him briefly but warmly behind the ear, a friendship gesture.

“Go, Charles Egeny, split. Write something in remembrance of me. A lovely silly and ultimately pointless poem in which you charge around in your Pontiac with flags flying and Beach Boys playing…”

He turned away. “Should Charles Egeny write that you were in distress? Did you hang your hair from the window? Did he slip in the ivy and sprain his ankle? Was there a pointlessness clause contractual and in writing? And what, pray, was the essence of this dragon you say you heard sneaking around the house, dear lady?”

“Let’s say the lady was undecided about the rescue.”

He tried to take her in his arms. She wriggled away. She smiled broadly. “Time ran out and the lady was still clueless. The call for help was premature. Charles Egeny rode off vowing to help—whenever, if ever, requested.”

Jon made a wry face, feeling pained. He remembered, “Charles Egeny had a pressing commitment which caused him to ride away without helping the lady. It was a prior commitment not to become committed.”

At the door she framed his cheeks between her hands and said, “Charles Egeny helped the lady very, very much by his mild manner and…oh, go will you? You’ll be late for work.”

He bounded down the stairs, into the green blossoming of true spring, unburdened, freed from the sudden tangle.

Putting the top down, he rode off hurriedly into the sunshine and stray dew droplets. The last tea leaves were gathered around street drains, waiting to be swept from their gravel and asphalt beaches down into the pipes and ultimately the sea.