“I think I owe you a drink—or a meal,” said Dudley Hall with his handsome smile. “Can’t make it tonight, but how is tomorrow? There’s The Brewery right downstairs. Good steaks there, I’ve tried ’em. Want to make it around six or whenever you get off? Or is that too early?”
Isabel suggested half past six, if that was all right with him.
She felt in the clouds, really in another world, yet one in which she was a principal character. She didn’t mention her date to Valerie or Prissy, both of whom had commented on her “devotion” to Dudley Hall in the last days. Isabel had made the date for 6:30 so she would have time to get home and change before appearing at The Brewery.
She did go home, and fussed so long over her make-up, that she had to take a taxi to The Brewery. She had rather expected to see Dudley Hall standing near the door inside, or maybe at the bar, but she didn’t see him. At one of the tables? She looked around. No. After checking her light coat, Isabel moved towards the bar, and obtained a seat only because a man got up and gave her his, saying he didn’t mind standing up. He was talking to a friend on an adjacent stool. Isabel told the barman she was waiting for someone, and would be only a minute. She kept glancing at the door whenever it opened, which was every fifteen seconds. At twenty to seven, she ordered a scotch and soda. Dudley was probably working a bit late or had had difficulty getting a taxi. He’d be full of apologies, which Isabel would say were quite unnecessary. She had tidied her apartment, and the coffeemaker was clean and ready, in case he would accept her invitation to come up for a final coffee at the end of the evening. She had brandy also, though she was not fond of it.
The music, gentle from the walls, was old Cole Porter songs. The voices and laughter around her gave her cheer, and the aroma of freshly broiled steaks began to make her hungry. The décor was old brown wood and polished brass, masculine but romantic, Isabel thought. She checked her appearance in the mirror above the row of closely set bottles. She was wearing her best “little black frock” with a V-neck, a slender gold chain that she had inherited from her mother, earrings of jade. She had washed her hair early that morning, and she was looking her best. In a moment, she thought, glancing again at the door, Dudley would walk in hurriedly, looking around for her, spotting her and smiling when she raised her hand.
When Isabel next looked at her watch, she saw that it was a couple of minutes past 7:30. A painful shock went through her, making her almost shudder. Up to then, she had been able to believe he was just a little late, that a waiter would page her, calling out “Miss Crane?” to tell her that Mr. Hall would be arriving at any minute, but now Isabel realized that he might not be arriving. She was on her second scotch, which she had been sipping slowly so it would last, and she still had half of it.
“Waiting for somebody?—Buy you a drink in the meantime?” asked a heavy-set man on her left, the opposite side from the door side, whom Isabel had noticed observing her for several minutes.
“No, thanks,” Isabel said with a quick smile, and looked away from him. She knew his type, just another lone wolf looking for a pick-up and maybe an easy, unimportant roll in the hay later. Hello and good-bye. Not her dish at all.
At about five minutes to eight, Isabel paid for her drinks and departed. She thought she had waited long enough. Either Dudley Hall didn’t want to see her, or he had had a mishap. Isabel imagined a broken leg from a fall down some stairs, a mugging on the street which had left him unconscious. She knew these possibilities were most unlikely.
The next day Dudley Hall did telephone to make his excuses. He had been stuck at a meeting with his partner plus two other colleagues from six o’clock until nearly eight, he said, and it had been impossible to get away for two minutes to make a phone call, and he was terribly sorry.
“Oh—not so important. I understand,” said Isabel pleasantly. She had rehearsed her words, in case he telephoned.
“I thought by seven-thirty or so you’d surely have left, so I didn’t try to call The Brewery.”
“Yes, I had left. Don’t worry about it.”
“Well—another time, maybe. Sorry about last night, Isabel.”
They hung up, leaving Isabel with a sense of shock, not knowing how the last few seconds had passed, causing them both to hang up so quickly.
The following Sunday morning, Isabel went to the Metropolitan Museum to browse for an hour or so, then she took a leisurely stroll in Central Park. It was a sunny spring morning. People were airing their dogs, and mothers and nurses—women in uniforms, nannies of wealthy families—pushed baby carriages or sat on benches chatting, with the carriages turned so the babies would get the most sun. Isabel’s eyes drifted often from the trees, which she loved to gaze at, to the babies and toddlers learning to walk, their hands held by their fathers and mothers.
It had occurred to her that Dudley Hall was not going to call her again. She could telephone him easily, and invite him for a Sunday brunch or simply for a drink at her apartment. But she was afraid that might look too forward, as if she were trying too hard.
Dudley Hall did not come again to the office, because he had no need to, Isabel realized. Nevertheless, meeting him had been exciting, she couldn’t deny that. Those few hours when she had thought she had a date with him—well, she’d had one—had been more than happy, she’d been ecstatic as she’d never been in her life that she could remember. She had felt a little the way she did when reading a good romance novel, but her date had been real. Dudley had meant to keep it, she was sure. He could have done better about phoning, but Isabel believed that he had been tied up.
In her evenings alone, doing some chore like washing drip-dry blouses and hanging them on the rack over the tub, Isabel relived those minutes in The Brewery, when she had been looking so well, and had been expecting Dudley to walk through the door at any second. That had been enchantment. Black magic. If she concentrated, or sometimes if she didn’t, a thrill went over her as she imagined his tall figure, his eyes finding her after he came through the big brown door of The Brewery.
Eva Rosenau, a good friend of her mother’s, called her up one evening and insisted on popping over, as she had just made a sauerbraten and wanted to give Isabel some. Isabel could hardly decline, as Eva lived nearby and could walk to Isabel’s building, and besides, Eva had been so helpful with her mother, Isabel felt rather in her debt.
Eva arrived, bearing a heavy iron casserole. “I know you always loved sauerbraten, Isabel. Are you eating enough, my child? You look a little pale.”
“Really?—I don’t feel pale.” Isabel smiled. The sauerbraten was still a bit warm and gave off a delicious smell of ginger gravy and well-cooked beef. “This does look divine, Eva,” said Isabel, meaning it.
They put the meat and gravy into another pot so Eva could take her casserole home. Isabel washed the big pot at the sink. Then she offered Eva a glass of wine, which Eva always enjoyed.
Eva was about sixty and had three grown children, none of whom lived with her. She had never had a job, but she could do a lot of things—fix faulty plumbing, knit, make electrical repairs, and she even knew something about nursing and could give injections. She was also motherly, or so Isabel had always felt. She had dark curly hair, now half gray, was a bit stocky, and dressed as if she didn’t care how she looked as long as she was covered. Now she complimented Isabel on how neat the apartment looked.
“Bet you’re glad to see the last of those bedpans!” Eva said, laughing.
Isabel rolled her eyes upwards and tried to smile, not wanting to think about bedpans. She had chucked the two of them long ago.
“Are you going out enough?” asked Eva, in an armchair now with her glass of wine. “Not too lonely?”
Isabel assured her that she wasn’t.
“Theo’s coming for Sunday dinner, bringing a man friend from his office. Come have dinner with us, Isabel! Around one. Not sauerbraten.
Something different. Do you good, dear, and it’s just two steps from here.”
Theo was one of Eva’s sons. “I’ll—That’s nice of you, Eva.”
“Nice?” Eva frowned. “We’ll expect you,” she said firmly.
Isabel didn’t go. She got up the courage to call Eva around ten on Sunday morning and to tell a small lie, which she disliked doing. She said she had extra work for the office to do at home, and though it wasn’t a lot of work, she thought she should not interrupt it by going out at midday. It would have been easier to say she wasn’t feeling well or had a cold, but in that case, Eva would have been over with some kind of medicine or hot soup.
Sunday afternoon Isabel tackled the apartment with a new, calmer determination. There were more of her mother’s odds and ends to throw away, little things like old scarves that Isabel knew she would never wear. She moved the sofa to the other side of the room, nearer a front window, and put a settle between window and sofa to serve as an end table, a much better role for that object, and Isabel was sorry she hadn’t thought of it before. “Settle” was not even the right word for these chair-tables, Isabel had found by accident when looking into the dictionary for something else. A settle had a back to it and was longer. Another, one of many, odd usage of her mother’s. The sofa rearrangement caused a change in the position of the coffee table and an armchair, transforming the living room, making it look bigger and more cheerful. Isabel realized that she was lucky with her three-room apartment. It was in an old building, and the rent had gone up only slightly in the fifteen years since her family had had it. She could hardly have found a one-room-and-kitchenette these days for the rent she was paying now. Isabel was happy also because she had a plan for that Sunday evening.
Her plan, her intention, kept her in a good mood all the afternoon, even though she deliberately did not think hard about it. Play it cool, she told herself. Around five, she put a favorite Sinatra cassette on, and danced by herself.
By seven, she was in a large but rather cozy bar on Sixth Avenue in the upper 50s. Again she wore her pretty black dress with the V-neck, a jade or at least green-bead necklace, and no earrings. She pretended she had a date around 7:30, not with Dudley Hall necessarily, but with somebody. Again she sat at the bar and ordered a scotch and soda, sipped it slowly while she cast, from time to time, a glance at the door. And she looked at her watch calmly every once in a while. She knew no one was going to walk in who had a date with her, but she could look around at the mostly jolly crowd with a different feeling now, quite without anxiety, as if she were one of them. She could even chat with the businessman-type on the stool next to hers (though she didn’t accept his invitation to have a drink on him), saying to him that she was waiting for someone. She did not feel in the least awkward or alone, as she had finally felt at The Brewery. During her second drink, she imagined her date: a blond man this time, around thirty-four, tall and athletic with a face just slightly creased from the cold winds he had braved when skiing. He’d have large hands and be rather the Scandinavian type. She looked for such a man when she next lifted her head and sought the faces of three or four men who were coming in the door. Isabel was aware that a couple of people around her had noticed, without interest, that she was awaiting someone. This made her feel infinitely more at ease than if she had been at the bar all by herself, as it were.
At a quarter to eight, she departed cheerfully, yet with an air of slight impatience which she affected for any observer, as if she had given up hope that the person she was waiting for would arrive.
Once at home, she put on more comfortable clothes and switched on the TV for a few minutes, feeling relaxed and happy, as if she’d had a pleasant drinks-hour out somewhere. She prepared some dinner for herself, then mended a loose hook at the waist of one of her skirts, and then it was still early enough to read a few pages in her current romance novel, A Caged Heart, before she went to bed, taking the book with her.
Valerie remarked that she was looking happier. Isabel hadn’t realized this, but she was glad to hear it. She was happier lately. Now she was going out—dressing up nicely of course—twice a week on her fantasy dates, as she liked to think of them. What was the harm? And she never ordered more than two drinks, so it was even an inexpensive way of entertaining herself, never more than six or seven dollars an evening. She had a hazy collection of men with whom she had had imaginary dates in the past weeks, as hazy as the faces of girls she had known in high school, whose faces she was beginning to have trouble identifying when she looked into her graduation book, because most of the girls had been only a part of the coming and going and dropping-out landscape of the overcrowded school. The Scandinavian type and a dark man a bit like Dudley Hall did stand out to Isabel, because she had imagined that they had gone on from drinks to dinner, and then perhaps she had asked them back to her apartment. There could be a second date with the same man, of course. Isabel never imagined them in bed with her, though the men might have proposed this.
Isabel invited Eva Rosenau one Saturday for lunch, and served cold ham and potato salad and a good chilled white wine. Eva was pleased, appreciative, and she said she was glad Isabel was perking up, by which Isabel knew she meant that she no longer looked under the shadow of her mother’s death. Isabel had finally thrown out the old curtains, not even wanting to use them for rags lest she be reminded of drearier days, and she had run up new light green curtains on her mother’s sewing machine.
“Good huntin’!” Valerie said to Isabel, Valerie was off on her vacation. “Maybe you’ve got a secret heart interest now. Have you?”
Isabel was staying on at the office, taking her vacation last. “Is that all you think makes the world go round?” Isabel replied, but she felt the color rise to her cheeks as if she had a secret boyfriend whose identity she would spring on the girls when she invited them to her engagement party. “You and Roger have a ball!” Valerie was going off with her steady boyfriend with whom she was now living.
Four days before Isabel was to get her two weeks’ vacation, she was called to the telephone by Prissy who was at the reception desk. Isabel took it in another office.
“Willy,” the voice said. “Remember me? Wilbur Miller from Nebraska?” He laughed.
Isabel suddenly remembered a man of about thirty, not very tall, not very handsome, who had come to the office a few days ago and had found some office space. She remembered that he had said, when he had given his name for her to write down, “Really Wilbur. Nobody’s named Wilbur anymore and nobody comes from Nebraska, but I do.” Isabel said finally into the telephone, “Yes.”
“Well—got any objections if I ask you out for dinner? Say Friday night? Just to say thanks, you know—Isabel.”
“N-no. That’s very nice of you, Mr. Miller.”
“Willy. I was thinking of a restaurant downtown. Greenwich Street. It’s called the Imperial Fish. You like fish? Lobster?” Before she could answer, he went on. Should he pick her up at the office Friday, or would she prefer to meet him at the restaurant?
“I can meet you—where you said, if you give me the address.”
He had the address for her. They agreed upon seven.
Isabel looked at the address and telephone number of the Imperial Fish, which she had written down. Now she remembered Wilbur Miller very well. He had an openness and informality that was unlike most New Yorkers, she recalled, and at the same time he had looked full of self-confidence. He had wanted a two-room office, something to do with distribution of parts. Electronic parts? That didn’t matter. She also remembered that she had felt an unusual awareness of him, something like friendliness and excitement at the same time. Funny. But she hadn’t put herself out for him. She had smothered her feelings and even affected a little formality. Could Willy Miller of Nebraska be Mister Right? The knight on a white horse, as they said jokingly in some of the romances she read, with whom she was destined to spend the rest of her life
?
Between then and Friday evening, Isabel’s mind or memory shied away from what Willy Miller looked like, what his voice was like, though she well remembered. She was aware that her knees trembled, maybe her hands also, a couple of times on Friday.
Friday around six, Isabel dressed for her date with Willy Miller. She was not taking so much trouble with her appearance as she had for Dudley Hall, she thought, and it was true. A sleeveless dress of pale blue, because it was a warm evening, a raincoat of nearly transparent plastic, since rain was forecast, nice white sandals, and that was it.
She was in front of the Imperial Fish’s blue-and-white striped awning at five past seven, and she glanced around for Willy among the people on the sidewalk, but he was probably in the restaurant, waiting for her. Isabel walked several paces in the uptown direction, then turned and strolled back, under the awning and past it. She wondered why she was hesitating. To make herself more interesting by being late? No. This evening with Willy could be just a nice evening, with dinner and conversation, and maybe coffee back at her apartment, maybe not.
What if she stood him up? She looked again at the awning and repressed a nervous laugh. He’d order a second drink, and keep glancing at the door, as she always did. He’d learn to know what it felt like. However, she had nothing whatsoever against Willy Miller. She simply realized that she didn’t want to spend the evening with him, didn’t want to make better acquaintance with him. She sensed that she could start an affair with him, which because she was older and wiser would be more important than the silly experience—She didn’t know what to call that one-night affair with the second of her loves, who hadn’t been even as important as the first, with whom she’d never been to bed. The second had been the married man.
She wanted to go back home. Or did she? Frowning, she stared at the door of the Imperial Fish. Should she go in and say, “Hello, Willy. Sorry I’m late”? Or “I’m sorry, Willy, but I don’t want to keep this date.”