Young Jane Young(8)

“Come on,” I said. “She’s just a mixed-up kid.”

“Because she’s a slut,” she said, “and you’re a coward.”

“Yes.”

“Because you want it to end and you thought I would know what to do.”

“Yes.”

“Because you look at my husband and you look at me and you suspect I’ve been through this before. Is that right?”

“I really am sorry.”

“Sure you are. I’ll take care of it,” Embeth said. “And I’ll let Jorge know there isn’t going to be a fund-raiser. A Night of Jewish Goddamn Leaders! Next time you want to ruin someone’s marriage, do it over the effing phone.”

I felt guilty, but lighter. I had turned my problem into someone else’s. I went back inside the restaurant and had a vodka tonic with Jorge. I asked him what it was like to work for the Levins.

“They’re wonderful people,” he said. “Beautiful people. The best. We all think they’re a rocket ship. You see it, don’t you?”





FIVE





A

fter Louis the asshole, I decide I’m done with online dating for a while and it’s fine to be a third wheel with Roz and Tony the glass guy. The glass guy says he likes having two women, and honestly, he’s the third wheel because Roz and I have a friendship that predates their relationship.

Roz and Tony decide to subscribe to the Broadway series at the Kravis Center, and Roz wants me to subscribe with them. Three seats together? I say. That’ll make me an institutional third wheel. And she says, Why not? Tony says he’ll sit in the middle.

So once a month, on theater nights, Tony and Roz pick me up, and we have early bird somewhere, and then we go to the theater. Tony starts calling me “Legs” after the first show, A Chorus Line. He says I’ve got dancer legs. I tell him I’ve got Pilates legs. Roz says she has turkey legs and a turkey neck, too. We have a good laugh over this. And that’s how it is with the three of us. Maybe it’s not particularly deep, but it’s pleasant and it passes the hours.

The third show in the series is Camelot, and Roz gets a cough, so she can’t go. Roz says she doesn’t want to be coughing through the whole show. I tell her this is South Florida and a musical in South Florida is more coughs than notes anyway. Be that as it may, Roz says, she’d rather not be in the South Florida Senior Citizens’ Cough Chorus.

Tony and I end up going alone, and at dinner, what we talk about is Roz. He says how lucky he was to find her, how she fixed his whole life. And I say there isn’t a better person in the world than Roz Horowitz. And he says he feels grateful to have made friends with Roz’s friends.

During the show, during Guinevere’s number “The Lusty Month of May,” his elbow makes its way across our shared armrest, and I nudge it back to his side. The elbow returns during Guinevere’s act 2 number, “I Loved You Once in Silence.” This time, I push it into his seat. He smiles at me. “Sorry,” he whispers. “Guess I’m too big for the theater.”

On the walk back to his car, he says, “Did anyone ever tell you, you’re a ringer for Yvonne De Carlo?”

“You mean Mrs. Munster?” I say. “Is she still alive?”

He says she was in a lot of things before that. “Wasn’t she Gomorrah in The Ten Commandments?”

“Gomorrah’s not a character,” I say. “It’s a city.”

“I’m pretty sure she was Gomorrah,” he says. “I’ve seen that movie a thousand times.”

“It’s a city,” I say. “It’s a disgusting, violent city where people are terrible to strangers and have all kinds of crazy sex.”

“What kinds of crazy sex?” he says.

I’m not going to get into that with him. “Fine,” I say. “Have it your way.”

“Why can’t you be nice to me, Rachel?” he says. “I like it when you’re nice to me.”

When he drops me off at my apartment, the glass guy makes a big show of walking me to my door. “This is unnecessary,” I say. “I know how to get to my door.”

“You deserve full-service treatment,” he says.

“I’m fine,” I say.

“I promised Roz I’d see you home,” he says.

We walk to my front door, and when we get there I say, “Good night, Tony. Give my love to Roz.”

He puts his hand on my wrist and he pulls me toward him. His red, corpulent lips leech on to my own. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

“No,” I say, pulling my lips and my wrist away. “You’ve got the wrong idea. Roz is my best friend.”

“Come on,” he says. “You’ve been flirting with me for months. Don’t deny it.”

“I strenuously deny it!”

“I think I know when a woman is flirting with me. I’m not usually wrong about these things.”

“You’re dead wrong this time, Tony.” I dig out my keys from my purse, but my hands are shaking – anger, not fear – and I have trouble opening my door.

“What was all that talk about ‘teaching Pilates’?” he says.

“It’s my job,” I say. “And I do think strengthening your core would help with your sciatica.”