November 18, 2006--Saturday Story: Ludavicio et al.--Part Three

In Part Two, Lloyd returned home a day earlier than expected from a great academic triumph at UCLA; and rather than being greeted by Lydia, his recent bride, he found Ludavicio, a bruiser of very few words, draped, in just his briefs, on their reproduction Spanish sofa. Lydia, wearing not very much more, was as always nonplussed. She made the introductions and over tea in the attic dance studio showed Lloyd the piece of choreography she claimed she and Ludavicio had been working on when he arrived on the scene. It was a very brief snippet of a work, and Lloyd wondered if they had quickly needed to come up with and rehearse something in the kitchen after sending him, on his own, up to the studio with the Delft tea set. Jet-lagged and caffeinated from the tea, Lloyd uncharacteristically confronted Lorenzo or Ludavicio, whomever, about his life in New York and discovered he was more being supported by his Milanese parents than from modeling for artists. Becoming exasperated from Lloyd’s suspicious probing, Lydia declared Ludavicio to be “gay,” as if that would explain everything, and stormed out leaving the two men alone together. At the very end of Part Two, Ludavicio spoke his only two words of the evening or this chapter, “I’m not.”

Therefore, in Part Three, we will most likely find Lloyd eager to . . .

And so, from that awkward evening with Ludavicio, as the implications became clear to me—that I was a cuckold!--you will I feel certain understand and sympathize that I quickly moved to gain retribution of an admittedly self-indulgent and even pleasurable sort—as Lydia had taken Aunt Madeline’s advice to “get” herself a man, or a man-child as she had in Lorenzo’s or Ludavicio’s case, I too began my search for a women who would find my capacities, whatever Lydia thought of their inadequacies, quite sufficient, thank you very much.
.
And I am pleased to report that it did not take very long—incredibly, just one day! And I did not have to search very far—just in the office cubicle next door to mine at Brooklyn College, where a young research associate, freshly minted at Sarah Lawrence College, greeted me with, “I know it’s your birthday on Thursday, Mr. Zazlo; and I was wondering how you might be planning to celebrate.”

I was so flattered and frankly stunned that she knew this about me, I was hardly well enough known for my birthday to be noted by anyone beyond my family and a few friends, that I did not even think to inquire why on earth she was aware of such a thing, much less of me. But, in my current state of being, about to launch myself, so to speak, I was confessedly doubly flattered by her question, especially its somewhat wicked tone which suggested that perhaps she had ideas of her own about how that celebration might best occur. And, then, as I am in a confessional mood, I could not help but notice that she would have made an ideal candidate to be featured in her former college’s catalogue as personifying the stereotypically brainy, artsy, sultry, “Sarah Lawrence Girl”—they were not in that era yet referred to as “women.”

In other words, Kim Drake (that was what was printed on the cardboard name-tent on her desk) was exactly the kind of women my Aunt Madeleine, if she were advising me rather than Lydia, would have suggested I “get.”

And so I said, in as snappy a manner as my rusty self was capable of mustering, “That’s my father’s name, ‘Mr. Zazlo.’ Please, Kim is it, I’m ‘Lloyd.’” I felt that I was performing so well that I added, “Can you believe it, my father wanted to name me ‘Lord,’” she was smiling up at me as if that was the most amusing thing she had ever heard, her perfect teeth in glorious chiaroscuro to her brown skin—she was, in addition to all of her other obvious endowments, which were apparent even though she was seated hunched over her typewriter, a Negress. Gloriously and to me exotically so. “I’m being serious. He thought it would help me get restaurant reservations—you know, if I were ‘Lord Zazlo.’”

“He thought back then, when you were just a new born, about restaurants? He must be an unusual and remarkable man.” She had a slight lisp which made her perfection, by contrast, even more astonishing.

“About that yes, but in other ways he is less imaginative.”

“So where did your imagination come from? I read one of your stories, ‘Under Mother’s Bed,’ in Black Sun.” She arched her back to release the tension from her shoulder muscles. It was difficult not to lower my eyes to take in her body, but I did in an act of great restraint manage to keep them fixed on hers. “It was a very poignant story. And very chilling, almost Kafkaesque, especially that part where the young boy hides under her bed while the police question his mother about a crime that was committed in the neighborhood, one that you never describe.”

That had in fact been my story, the only one I had up to that time been able to publish, albeit in a magazine that was mimeographed rather than printed and had a stapled binding. “It’s remarkable that you saw it. I had thought no one ever noticed it. It’s published out of someone’s apartment on the Lower Eastside.”

“I did find it tucked away on the lowest shelf of the ‘Little Magazine’ corner in the Eighth Street Bookstore. It’s my favorite place to rummage. Perhaps I was attracted to the name of the magazine—Black Sun.” She paused to allow me to wonder why that title among so many might have attracted her beyond what was obvious. She got up out of the chair and, though she was wearing flats, she uncoiled to reach to almost my height—she was perhaps a bit more than six feet. Still smiling, now standing close enough so I could almost taste her musky scent, she said, almost in a whisper, “It is fate, isn’t it, that I found your story in that issue just as I found you right here in an adjoining office.” She added, leaning even closer, this time in an actual whisper, “I want to learn more about that little boy and have you tell me about the crime that I suspect he committed.”

I could feel myself melting. Would she, would Kim Drake turn out to be my Ludavicio?

In fact, she did. And it all unfolded quickly and effortlessly because, in addition to being exactly the kind of twenty-something woman who would ignite my prematurely moribund glands, she intuitively knew that this kind of visceral attraction was a necessary yet insufficient precondition to draw me into a liaison—I was too self-righteously inhibited for that in itself to work—she knew that I needed to “fall in love,” or at least convince myself that I was, before becoming a philanderer. I was that kind of husband. In spite of Ludavicio!

“So we should talk then, shouldn’t we, about how to make Thursday special. So memorable that you will feel compelled to tell me about that naughty boy’s secrets.”

I was, thankfully, beginning to feel inklings of love—it’s first tremor. “Ah,” I was not good or practiced at this, “Ah, I do have plans for the evening. At least I assume there are plans. My, ah, Lydia,” I could not utter the word wife, “Lydia, she I’m sure will make something special for dinner. Maybe, ah,” I had averted my eyes, embarrassed by my pathetic stammerings, “perhaps she even made a reservation for dinner somewhere.”

“You mean,” Kim sparkled, “for Lord and Lady Zazlo?” I felt the heat of her smile even as I was still unable to lift my head to look directly at her.

I was from that filled with, yes, love for her. The inklings had by that playful gesture been sufficiently metamorphosed into the requisite amount of love that I required to proceed. Here I had been launched, in the spirit of my fabled aunt and the need to even the score with Lydia, here I was determined to begin to roam about in order to get a woman; but in the short space of less than ten minutes I had been completely and totally captured. Gotten.

“That means, unless you have a class on Thursday, that your day might be free. Yes?” She stood there glowing at me in expectation.

One of my freshman Comp and Lit sections did meet Thursdays from 10-11:30; but I quickly said, “No, in fact,” I lied, “I spend Thursdays in the library up at Columbia. I have two more chapters to complete for my thesis. It’s on Blake’s Prophetic works. You know, the Four Zoas. I need to do more research about the Book of Ezekiel.” I had no ideal why I was rattling on that way. Things had been going so well when we were talking about my “Lord” and my Black Sun story.

“But that is just perfect.” I must have looked puzzled, how could my needing to be in Butler Library all day be “perfect” when Kim seemed to want to help me celebrate my birthday? “I have to pick up my father’s car. I need it to help move the last of my things to my new apartment on the Lower Eastside. I think it might even be right next to where that magazine of yours is published,” did she wink at me? “The car’s in Westchester so I can pick you up at Columbia and maybe from there we can go to a wonderful clam shack I know on City Island where we can have lobster rolls and a glass of champagne. I’ll bring that too. That is unless you can’t leave your Zoas for the day.” She paused to let that have its effect, and then said, “That would make me so jealous.”

“I wouldn’t want you to be. Of course I can jilt them. Actually, I very much want to. I need a break from them. From those four nagging creatures who pull the chariot of God’s spirit.” Again, I found myself pathetically reverting to the pedantic when I should have been guided by my aunt’s spirit and answered Kim with some genuine poetry. I promised myself I would work on some before Thursday.

But she was happily not turned off by my awkwardness and said, “So we agree, on Thursday it will be me instead of your Zoa Luvah!” I was impressed that even at a college noted for its progressivism, she would have learned about Blake’s late works, “And I will scoop you up at precisely 11:00 on Amsterdam and 116th Street and whisk you off to a barefoot birthday walk along the beach before toasting you with nectar. How does that sound?” She hardly needed to ask since she had reached out to touch my arm just where the leather patch had been affixed to the elbow of my tweed jacket and could feel my trembling.

“Better than anything I might have imagined,” I managed to say with a hint of a smile, “And I promise, no Blake talk.”

At that she smiled back more radiantly and said, blowing what I thought to be a kiss as she darted out, “Until them, my little lamb.”

* * *

Lydia had not in fact made any special plans for Thursday evening nor had she noticed that I left for my morning class, which I had been careful to cancel, in unusually casual clothes, wearing shoes but no socks. She was so preoccupied by rehearsals with Merce Cunningham’s junior company, he had “adored” the choreography she had previewed for me with Ludavicio, that I suspect if I had left for “college” that day in my pajamas, or even less, she would have given them scant notice.

“I’m not sure when I’ll be home tonight,” she hollered down to me as I gulped some tepid coffee in the kitchen before racing toward the city. “I know it’s your birthday, but you know Merce. I’ll leave some lasagna for you. I know how much you love that. Just heat it up in the microwave. We’ll find some time, I’m sure, over the weekend. Maybe we’ll go to Chinatown. OK?” I didn’t even bother to respond. She would not have heard me in any case and I was eager to get to the subway and then on to meet my golden Luvah!

I got out of the subway at 10:30 and with a half hour to ill drifted along Broadway where I had prowled as an undergraduate. I poked my head into the West End Bar where Johnny the bartender was still ensconced. He nodded at me as nonchalantly as if I had been there just the night before; and then I darted across the two lanes of traffic and onto the grounds of Columbia, taking note of the new Ferris Booth Student Center, an ugly modern glass and brick pile that had recently been completed and now stood there dumbly defiling the stoic faux-classicism of the other buildings silently squeezed onto that huge rectangle of a campus.

I made my way east on College Walk by the Alma Mater statue riveted to her throne, immobily facing south toward Butler Library where I claimed I carried out my arcane research whereas, in truth, I had abandoned my thesis two years ago and was in dread of what that would soon mean to my faltering academic career. Thus every aspect of the day was built on lies and self-deception. Both perfect preparation, in that era of thwarted desire, to betrayal.

Just as that dark Dostoyevskyian thought crossed my mind, right as the bells in Saint Paul’s Chapel tolled eleven times, precisely as I reached Amsterdam Avenue, Kim pulled up, startling me out of my mordant reverie in a squeal of braking tires. She sang out in my direction, “Oh Lord, it’s me, Luvah.”

I could hear her clearly even as traffic roared by because she was, could it have been more perfect for transgression, seated with the top down in her father’s red Fiat convertible! Of course she was wearing a silk scarf. Intoxicating echoes of Isadora Duncan.

Danger was lurking in the air; and without hesitation, eagerly, I breathed it deeply in as I vaulted into the seat beside her. Without, of course, opening the door. I did it quite well, I am pleased to be able to report, even with some flair, managing thankfully not to catch my foot and thereby shatter the illusion. In that spirit, Un Homme et une Femme, at least images of their sexy Fiat, also came to mind as Kim roared away from the curb, north toward what I imagined would be a sun-bleached, half-abandoned clam shack leaning into the wind whipping off Long Island Sound. With Kim, for support, leaning against me. My sepia Anouk Aimee.

On that campus I was uncontrollable flooded with such references and was thus doubly thrilled to be speeding away from it and them.

* * *

City Island was not quite what I had been imagining. What through the week of waiting I anticipated, a close-in Cape Cod, turned out to be more like familiar south-Brooklyn Canarsie. There were more rows of two-family attached houses with asbestos siding embossed to look like fieldstone than shingled cottages cantilevered into dunes. And what beach there was, squeezed between the dingy boatyards, had more broken glass than white sand so there was no possibility, another deflated fantasy, of tossing my loafers into the back seat and running off toward the light, holding hands with Kim. It would be necessary to reign in what had been my soaring expectations since I had to be careful not to cut my feet since I had not gotten a Tetanus shot since elementary school.

Perhaps sensing my deflation, Kim, still attempting to be upbeat, said, “This is not at all how I remember the Island from my childhood. When I came here with my parents, to escape the heat of the Hudson Valley, none of these houses existed. It was all very unspoiled and I thought romantic. That I would come back one day, when I was grown, to experience that romance.”

With that she clutched my arm and pressed her breasts into my chest. “Let’s go right over to the Clam Bar. I’m sure it hasn’t changed and we can sit out on the deck and eat. I have the champagne right here in the cooler.” She pulled, shaking me to revive my spirits and to direct me toward an unpaved cul-de-sac that led toward the water. But it was in truth more her body’s closeness and its heat than thoughts of food that roused me. That occurred quite instantly, and I was already thinking about what she had arranged for us to do after the lobster rolls.

Anticipating that and excited again, this time with me tugging on her, we literally skipped down the lane, as she might have done a dozen years ago, but now with a man on her arm!

Thus we bounded along like giddy children until the restaurant loomed before us and, at that, Lydia let go of me and stood there, fixed in place while staring wistfully at it And for the first time, with sadness in her voice, sighed, “Oh Lloyd, it’s not at all how I remember it. So much time has passed. Look what they’ve done to it.” She sagged beside me and let her head come to rest on my shoulder. “It used to be so magical,” she said as if to herself, “Now it has that garish sign and all the weathered benches have been replaced with plastic. I hate them!” I could feel her beginning to weep for lost time, she all of twenty-two, and the inexorable debasement that that brings.

“It’s your special day and I so wanted everything to be perfect.” She by then was sobbing and punched her fist in frustration into her hip. But in spite of her unhappiness, as I attempted to comfort her as best I could, I also felt myself further aroused by her desperation. I did not pause to think what that might say about me. The sensation was too exciting.

“There, there, Kim,” I said, stroking her coarse hair, “I’m fine. The best present of all is being here with you in a place that has so many memories.” I was feeling enough of a sense of arousal and love for her at that vulnerable moment to allow myself to continue to imagine the real celebration that I hoped was waiting.

“I know what you’re feeling,” I continued, “but I think we should have lunch here. It was such a sweet plan, and I’m sure the lobster rolls are still wonderful. In spite of the plastic benches.” With that she perked up and began again to bubble with renewed enthusiasm. I did find these quick shifts in emotion to be attractive. As one was allowed to think at that time--so intoxicatingly, irresistibly female!

“Yes, yes,” Kim cried as she broke away from me and ran up onto the deserted deck of the Clam Bar and plopped down at a picnic table nearest the water’s edge, waving to me to join her.

By the time I got there she had already set out the champagne and the normal full radiance had returned to her black eyes. “Look, look,” she said pointing at the board on which the menu was chalked, “Just as you said they would, they still have them. Let’s order two and extra-crisp French fries. I love those too. And get two empty glasses. You need to go inside to order and then they’ll bring everything to us. How does that sound?” She was the old Kim who I knew from that brief encounter at the college and our hour-long drive from the city.

When I returned to the table, Kim had already removed the wire and gold foil from the champagne and was slowly, with her thumbs, working the cork up the neck of the bottle. “It bounced around in the car so I have to do this very carefully or everything will explode.” But in spite of her care, just as she said that, the cork rocketed out and then out toward the Sound where it fell among the broken glass and rotting seaweed. And following that there was a geyser of Piper-Heidsieck that ran down Kim’s hand and arm and onto the table.

She giggled as she licked the dripping champagne from her fingers and wrist, all the while keeping a sultry eye on me. “This of course is not quite the right way to make a proper birthday toast,” she purred, “One should use a crystal flute. But happy birthday anyway my Lord!” And with that she bowed to me, reached out, and put those perfect, still-wet fingers into my mouth where, by sucking on them, I drained the last of the Piper and thereby joined her ribald toast.

* * *

On the drive back to the city, with me this time at the wheel and Kim nestled and humming contentedly in the crook of the arm I needed to negotiate the gear shift, which, in spite of this I somehow managed to accomplish, she talked in a lazy stream-of-consciousness about the day (“Can you believe it that they now use lobster that comes frozen from South Africa? How the world has changed.”) and about that little boy in my Black Sun story (“Tell me the truth, Lloyd, what bad thing did you do to deserve to be punished that way by your mother—to be made to stay under her bed?” She did not wait for an answer—in truth I had none that would serve the purpose of what the rest of the day, I hoped, promised).

We were on our way to Avenue B on the Lower Eastside to her new apartment. “It’s a third-floor walkup,” she alerted me, “I hope you will have something left for me when we get there!” She laughed so joyously at her own joke that her entire body shook and I almost lost control of the Fiat as we careened across the Willis Avenue Bridge and back into Manhattan).

When we got to her building at the corner of Avenue B and 5th Street, it was not hard for me to imagine my immigrant grandparents, newly arrived from Poland via Ellis Island, living on Kim’s very-same apartment. Nothing much appeared to have changed--it was still very much a tenement; and the streets were still filled with many bent and elderly people from that generation, mainly Ukrainians, with a sprinkling of adventurous NYU students, aging hippies, and anarchists.

She asked me to park by the police station around the corner since she was certain the top would be cut if we left such a conspicuous car in front of her building. She reminded me with a smile, not that I needed it, that we were no longer on the set of a Claude Lelouch film. But even if we found a spot by the precinct house, which I was somehow able to do, she still was concerned that the police would not have the time to protect her father’s car since they were otherwise so fully occupied chasing the dope dealers out of Tompkins Square Park and into the neighboring streets and racing shooting victims up to Bellevue’s emergency room. And with the excitement that I sensed was stirred in her by this nearby threat, she told me that the area wasn’t called Alphabet City for nothing.

I must admit that like the danger I felt as we speed away from Columbia earlier in the day--palpitations of anticipation and fear that were incited by the beginning of a libidinous adventure—though downtown the threats were of a much different sort—they were to life itself; and though the tabloids of the day were full of lurid stories about innocent victims caught in drug dealers’ and gang-banger’s crossfire, I perversely felt from this additionally stimulated and could not wait to get to the sanctuary of Kim’s apartment where this heightened lust would find release. So I took the steps two at a time.

The hallways reeked of rancid cooking fat; there were rat droppings on every landing; a cacophony of crying babies and music blared through steel doors (hers had three latches, including an iron-bar Police Lock)--all stark testimony that Kim was seeking a very different kind of life for herself here than that provided by her parents up in Westchester or from the textureless security of her old place near her college in Bronxville. I felt certain from all of this visceral evidence—the noise, the smells, the filth, and especially the dangers--that I was somehow part of that new, still inchoate, elicit plan of hers.

And I was loving every moment of it and could not wait for her to get her front door opened!

What was taking so long?

* * *

Even before I was able to rejigger the Police Lock, they were not needed in Flatbush and so they were unfamiliar to me, she had Miles Davis emitting his mellow chords from the stereo, was it Witches Brew, and she had her top off. Though she was heading toward the bedroom and I could only see her back, and because the light was failing as the sun set, I could still tell that Kim had also disposed of her bra. My entire body began to throb.

She called out to me from the bathroom, where I could already hear the tub filling with water, “Above the sink, Lloyd, in the cabinet, you will find the Tanguery; and in the Fridge there is some Schweps, a lime, and of course some ice. Look around for glasses and make two gin and tonics and bring them here.”

Steam from the bathwater began to seep into her still unfurnished living room. I thought I heard a gunshot from the street followed by a siren. But I did not allow myself to be distrtacted—it was still my birthday, an empty house and cold lasagna waited back in Brooklyn, a magnificent naked woman was waiting in her tub for her gin and tonic, and I was determined to get it to her before the water cooled.

Thus with two crystal cocktail glasses held outstretched before me, both filled to the top with the Tanguery, Schweps, and a twist of lime; with the ice cubes rattling from my tremors of anticipation, I marched through Kim’s bedroom, taking notice, as I passed, of the queen-size mattress with its ruby silk sheets sprawled on the floor, without pause I hooked sharply to the right and, as both hands were full, with the top of my head pushed open the etched glass bathroom door and found there, as I had hoped and expected, shrouded in vapor, my own Luvah.

She had put bath oil in the water and I could see that it had added a polish to her already burnished skin. Her breasts, her perfect breast bobbed in the water as she stirred it about herself. “Come here, come closer,” she whispered when she saw me gazing motionless down at her. At her command, as I took a tentative step toward the tub, she pulled herself up into a sitting position so that her breast, her breasts again, sprang free from the soapy water, her nipples erecting as they hit the cooler air.

Grasping one of the offered glasses, before taking a deep draft from it, she held its frosted surface to her brow to cool herself. All the while, not for an instant did she take her eyes from mine. “This was how I imagined this day would end,” she cooed, I could hear the liquid sound of Miles seeping through the apartment. “But now, to make it perfect, I want you to go back out there,” she pointed to the bedroom, “and wait for me.” I turned to do as she directed as if in a trance. “I need to do one more thing and then I will join you.” She added, “And while you are waiting, please make yourself ready for me.”

That direction I understood; and before I reached the mattress, I was completely naked, my clothes scattered about as if they had been torn from me. But not sure what to do beyond that, I huddled near the corner of the room, awkwardly attempting to cover myself as she came into the room in a shimmering ivory silk gown. She stood there for a moment, taking me in, and I let my hands drop to my side, letting her see me unashamed and waiting, ready for her in all the necessary ways.

She glided toward me, allowing the gown to part and reveal with each step a different part of her glistening body. When she reached me she took hold of my penis and began to stroke it with some of the oil that remained on her hand.

“You are being such a good boy now,” she murmured, “No need then to punish you. Which is good since, as you have noticed, there is no room for you under my bed.”

Still with her hand on me, allowing her robe to open fully, Kim then knelt before me, stroking me in rhythm to the pensive music from the stereo. “It is still your birthday, is it not? You have been telling me the truth?” The stroking continued and I decided not to interrupt her to remind her that it was she and not I who had made note of the date. “And since it is, unless you are again being bad, this is the present that I have spent all week preparing for you . . . .”

With that she took me, all of me into her mouth. We both moaned simultaneously. But the ecstasy was short lived. Before she had a chance to run her lips over me more than once I fell out of her mouth, unreleased. Completely flaccid.

* * *

Lydia did not give up on it, or me. But neither her silken hands nor eager mouth could reawaken me. “Do not worry, my sweet,” she intoned, still kneeling before me, “As you know, with little boys, this is frequent. They are always so eager.”

She smiled up at me, still holding me, but I turned away, feeling humiliated and unmanned. And immediately began to think about what was happening. Everything had been in place for the perfect liaison—I had carefully covered for myself at the college; Lydia was so preoccupied that she hardly noticed that I seemed more eager than usual to leave for work, failing even to notice how inappropriately I was dressed; she was going to be at rehearsal well into the evening so there was no pressure on me to reappear in the early evening; Kim had provided the ideal sexy car for our getaway and had chilled a special champagne; and although City Island had proven to be disappointing, ironically that helped turn our time there into something unpredictable and exciting. All the ingredients were present, as I understood them from books and films, to assure an ideal illicit afternoon.

And then there was the intensifying effect of being so surrounded by danger—this too was well suited to bringing out male animal passions. But in my case, clearly just the opposite had occurred.

I was indeed a little boy. And a very little one at that!

Maybe, I reasoned, it was the champagne and the gin—from my pre-med studies hadn’t I learned about the effects of alcohol on the male libido? Or was it on erections? But I wasn’t sure—that was ten years ago. Or was I over-estimating the erotic stimulation engendered by danger? I seemed to recall some readings about the dampening effects on sexual capacities during the bombing raids on London during the Second World War. But then again, I also knew about the power of guilt—I was after all the Jewish son of a Jewish mother! Maybe, then, that was the source of my problem?

But as Kim continued to touch me, I felt with less motivation and optimism as I was not responding, I caught myself doing what I always tended to do when faced with a daunting dilemma—intellectualize it, search my memory for literary or scientific references or experimental data, deflect my thoughts and feeling from the immediate existential reality. That usually worked quite well, but in the current humiliating circumstance this technique was making matters worse, and so I took a step back. Literally.

Without acknowledging Kim still on her knees, or the collapsed trajectory that the day had taken, I silently gathered my clothes, turned and took them into the living room where the Miles Davis LP had ended and was now soundlessly turning, I dressed quickly and, as I struggled to release the Police Lock, turned back toward Kim, now standing in the bedroom doorway, and nodded and shrugged a brief unspoken “I’m sorry.”

What little light there was lighting her from behind I could still see her sad smile, sad for me, and heard her say, I think without wryness or even disappointment, “It’s all right my Mr. Zazlo.”

* * *

It was nearly 7:00 p.m. when I dragged myself onto the D Train, heading south back across the East River to Brooklyn. All I could think about, in addition to continuously replaying in my head the loop of tape that contained the images and feelings of what had turned out to be a truly miserable day, still frustrated and unable to gain any clear insight about the meaning of any of it, none of my usual tools of analysis being helpful, and though realizing I would soon be made even more miserable, inevitably finding myself rattling around in our big empty house, alone on my birthday with a limp hunk of lasagna, I managed to salvage at least some small consolation from the debris—I concluded that in my effort to get a woman I had at least made a start.

That house seemed especially cold and empty as I hauled my tired, hung-over body up the front steps and onto the porch. In its lonely, chilled aspect it appeared a perfect metaphor for all that had transpired and for what I was feeling. Still trembling from earlier, I could barely get my key into the only lock that was required to secure our door in the leafy enclave. Though we were not far from Brooklyn’s Avenue B, the house stood on the corner of East 15th Street and Avenue H, it was such a different reality there that it could have been located on the other side of the world from that other alphabet avenue. I stood there for a moment with the door finally unlatched and wondered, since it had grown quite dark, if the gangs on Kim’s side of the earth were already marauding outside her windows.

I pushed my way in, pressing my hand against our etched glass door as I had used my head to do very much the same thing just an hour ago; but before I could get to the switch to turn on the light in the entrance hall, which Lydia a week ago had so gracefully vaulted across when she presented herself to Ludavicio, all the lights in the downstairs rooms snapped on at once and I stood there transfixed and rigid in their glare. Everyone I knew was there—cousins, Brooklyn College colleagues, a couple of school chums with whom I still maintained relationships, some mutual friends that Lydia and I had acquired during the past five years—and they all, as one, shouted “SURPRIZE!”

I continued to stand there as if frozen in place. And from the crowd of grinning friends, wearing her signature leotard and tights, but this time for the occasion, augmented by a full length black warp-around dancer’s skirt, from among the assembled emerged a widely smiling Lydia, who with arms akimbo, said for me and for all to hear, “You knew I wouldn’t forget your thirtieth or leave you by yourself with left-overs. While you were away at the college all day” (did she suspect anything?), “I prepared all your favorite dishes. We’ll be having a Moroccan feast. Lamb Tagine, Vegetable Couscous, everything. And of course champagne to toast you.” (Did she know about the sultry toast at the Clam Bar?) “I bought six bottles of champagne.” (I shuddered to think which vintage it might be.) “This is such a special day.” (That was not the first time this week or this day that this day had been called “special.”)

I shook as she spoke, truly surprised and confused, but in fact found that I rather enjoyed being celebrated, and thus on the spot decided to let it all wash over me. To actually attempt to have fun. So now with smiles of my own I moved into the embrace of family and friends and, thus enfolded, allowed myself to be drawn into the living room where, this time in leather pants and shirt, was Ludavicio, again draped on the Spanish sofa.

It was obvious, that after everyone had left, after everything was cleaned and put away, I had more work to do.

To be continued in two weeks . . . .