ROOM FOR MORE
Fresh from the shower, she tucked the terry robe under her and sat down at the table with the phone. She crossed her thick, scented ankles and uncrossed them. Why hadn’t the architect called?
He had talked about getting together Saturday night, tonight. “Maybe we’ll catch dinner,” he said. “When I’m through with work.”
She stirred honey in a cup of Earl Grey, the spoon clinking, and thought of the fully-paid silver BMW he had told her about; the owned, not rented, house he lived in and worked from in a funky part of Chicago; and his plans to renovate his house to make room for more. For a family, she hoped. He was thirty-five.
Trying to distract herself from recalling her meeting with him five weeks earlier, their
first and last — he’d worn a long-sleeved polo shirt, a dark blazer draped over one shoulder, and a gold watch — she took from the shelf, The Art and Architecture of India. She’d always been interested in architecture. This was why Wolfgang so intrigued her. She’d have to tell him about the book when she saw him. She turned on the radio to a talk show for more voices to fill the silence. But, still, she could hear the clock ticking between words, her homemade curtains blowing, a neighbor’s apartment door shutting, footsteps trailing off. She could feel her miniature rabbit, Karl Marx, deep gray with eyes bulging like a horse’s, rubbing against her bare toes. He’d been acting up all spring.
She blew on the tea and drank, chiding herself for tolerating last-minute plans; she would make herself unavailable if he called. But, no, that was a child’s game. She’d have to speak to him. She was a psychotherapist after all and if anyone should know how to communicate, it was she. Of course she could guess part of the reason he hesitated to become more involved: fear of competition from the other respondents to the personal ad she had placed in the community paper distributed to all the best cafes. “So, Doc, how am I checking out?” he’d even asked in one of their more than weekly phone conversations, completely giving himself away. Naturally she told him she had long stopped answering the messages the other men left. She took a chance and said, “I’ve already met and interviewed over a dozen people, but I know who I’m interested in, Wolfgang.”
She read the same description of the Hindu temple for the third time, too distracted to absorb any of it, then snapped the book shut. How could she be doing this? No feminist, especially a professional like her, ought to let herself wait for a man’s call. It made even less
sense because she had long mastered the art of independence, three years ago, after breaking up with her live-in boyfriend of nearly a decade. She enjoyed solitary bike rides on Sunday mornings in the spring, admiring the modern skyscrapers downtown, her hair rising like wings, a transistor radio and a gourmet picnic lunch for one tied to her bike rack. She did not need a man to be happy.
She finished up her tea and determined to forget him. She’d join a hiking or book club, placing a personal ad had not been a good approach, even if he was an architect, a profession which struck her as the perfect blend of artist and professional. She would not think of his straight shiny hair worn fashionably long, his black rectangular glasses that accentuated his angular jaw and fair German skin, this man with his own firm, whom she had interviewed over cappuccino in a wonderful little cafe of his own choice, who was so different from the other candidates who seemed as immature and unambitious as her old boyfriend.
She fed baby carrots to Karl Marx whose wet nose twitched under the table. He jerked side to side, then scrambled. A few days earlier he had swallowed a hairball, and thrown her into a pre-dawn panic in which she’d floored the car’s accelerator to the nearest all-night vet clinic. She picked him up now and, setting him on her lap, stroked his quivering fur.
Oh, what the hey, she thought finally, and dialed. After seven rings, she heard him answer with a dazed, “Hello?” A blues tune played in the background. He had excellent taste.
“Wolfgang? Hi, how’ve you been?”
“Erica?” he said after a pause. “Is that you?” Unmistaken cheer came into his voice. “I was just about to call.”
“Beat you to it!” she said, laughing lightly.
“No, I swear, I had my hand right on the receiver. Hey, I’m starving. How about you?”
“Maybe a little. Is my clock wrong or is it really nine-thirty? The evening sure has
flown!”
“I know!” He paused and made a dramatic sniffing sound. “Is that dinner you’ve made? I think I can smell it over the phone.”
“Well, no,” she said, confused. She hoped he didn’t have the impression she enjoyed cooking.
“Ah, just kidding. We can go out.” He told her about a great Indonesian place around the corner from where he lived. He said it would be a bit of a drive for her but wondered if that would be okay and, while she was at it, would she mind picking him up? “I want to squeeze in some more work before dinner. Another Monday deadline.”
“Why, sure,” she said, feeling a bit peeved about being turned into a servant of sorts.
She picked Wolfgang up in the ancient olive-colored clunker her grandmother had given her when Erica’s last car gave out. “It’s not much, but it gets me around,” she said when Wolfgang slid in. “I still have student loans to pay off,” she explained without knowing why she was divulging this, then she grew self-conscious.
“No, I like it,” he said expansively, touching the antique watch that dangled from her rear view mirror. “You’ve had to struggle a lot, haven’t you?” he said, which made the back of her throat ache because no one had ever acknowledged that to her before.
She took off down the road, the full moon giving off a halo on her side. As they talked
more, she sensed in Wolfgang’s voice a mixture of curiosity and distaste over her financial straits. Palms perspiring on the vinyl steering wheel, she opened her window and let the night sweep in. She realized now that it was not as easy to talk to him in person as on the phone.
“I put myself through school — undergrad, then, after a few years of work, grad school,” she found herself saying, despite her discomfort. “My parents didn’t help out. My brother got most of the attention in my family.” She threw a laugh over the comment to disguise the pain — no need to sound like a poor sport. “I guess that wasn’t a problem with you, being an only child.”
“No, can’t say it was. Mom taught art classes. Dad’s an architect, too. I grew up watching him make models downstairs. It was a wonderful environment to grow up in.”
“Hmm,” she said. “I bet.”
He put on an Ella Fitzgerald CD which Erica had left out remembering he liked Ella. “Hey, I’m crazy about her,” he said and smiled. “How’d you guess?” He rocked his head to the music.
At dinner, they talked more freely. He told her about a second house he had on Saint Lucia, and how they would have to go sometime; a cottage, too, in Wisconsin, which he had designed himself. He seemed to enjoy his order of fried pork and vegetables. When the bill came, he made a frown. “These trendy restaurants are really something. I hope you don’t mind going Dutch.” He flicked a fifty onto the table, as if bidding at poker. “It’s not easy running your own business.”
Since it was still early, they decided to go listen to jazz. She drove to a club he liked with no cover charge. The band was ferociously loud. She shouted an order for a whiskey sour but the
bartender added too much liquor and she ended up mostly leaving the glass on the counter, swirling the swizzle stick and smiling. She paid for the drink herself.
Why did she feel disappointed? she wondered. She no longer harbored fantasies of a man spending money on her – her old boyfriend had never had money. Ah, well. She smiled quickly again then felt the change crumpled in her pants pocket – the bartender had given her damaged bills.
Were patrons actually smoking inside the club? The nicotine from their neighbors’ cigarettes clung to her skin and her long hair and clothes. Everything would have to be aired out, then washed when she got home. Amazingly enough, Wolfgang did not notice the cloud engulfing them, though, like her, he was not a smoker – well, naturally he wouldn’t be with his love of sports. He stood beside her tapping his hands on the bar to the music. Secondhand smoke is just as dangerous as the real thing, that’s what laws are for, she could have said but feared being a bore. Ah, but it was hot inside the small dark room and her long-sleeved rayon blouse was not letting her pores breathe. She noticed the women mostly wore sleeveless dresses, but of course most of them could because, well, they were them, not her.
After the set finished, she drove him home, stopping in front of his house – the one he owned, not rented (that was something all right). Wolfgang smiled agreeably. “That was fun. We’ll talk sometime soon.”
The engine gave a soft purr when she turned it off.
He saw her looking out the window at the dimly-lit brick house. “I live there on the second floor. The first floor is where I work. The basement is still a total mess, but did I tell you
I’m renovating it? To make room for more,” he said, from his cadence, enjoying the sound of that.
“You did mention that,” she said and made her expression entirely blank so he’d have no reason to think she was counting on anything.
“Well, I’ve been wanting to start a family. Work is one thing, then there’s life,” he said, the corners of his mouth curling upward.
The CD ended and in the ensuing silence she worried he could hear the excited beat of her heart. She reached to press eject. “Well, I had fun too,” she said then he opened the door and was gone.
She shut her eyes and leaned back against the seat, ready to give herself the pep talk needed to drive home. But then her eyes popped open at the sound of him returning to the car and coming back inside. “Listen, it’s not all that late,” he said. He caught the tarnished watch on the rear view mirror in his hand. “It’s not even twelve. Come on up. Rest before the ride back?”
“I don’t think so.”
“You sure?” He gestured toward the house. “I’ll make you some tea. I see you’re not much of a drinker.”
She climbed the stairs after him, up to the second floor, listening to his hard Italian heels go clack, clack. It was a nice bohemian palace, she thought, while he went to make her tea. French fringed lamps cast a golden-orange glow onto lavender rugs. It reminded her a bit of a bordello, actually. The apartment was spotlessly clean and he had a display of masks on one wall from around the world — African warriors with hoops through their noses and others with red
faces and long noses.
“Those are Japanese,” he said, coming up behind her with a mug of tea. She could smell the mint flavoring.
She touched the long nose on one. “That’s a devil,” he said, smiling.
They sat in the living room and talked. He was swirling his ice and drinking steadily, something clear, at a surprising pace, and smiling, as if he found her prettier now that his eyes had adjusted and he could see her in the relaxed light of his home. He didn’t take her hand, but that didn’t really bother her; she was enjoying the feel of this new place. Owning so many things made him seem in her mind self-sufficient and strong, what she longed to be. She thought of her old boyfriend. No car, no profession, not even a Bachelor’s degree. Nine years wasted with him out of fear she would never meet anyone else. And here she had met Wolfgang.
When she returned her attention to him she heard him say how active his life was – he had started taking German to brush up on what he had acquired as a child. His free moments were always filled – planting flowers in the yard or playing soccer with a local team. At night, before bed, he wrote in his journal to keep track of his emotional development. He had managed to cut his workweek this year from seven days to five-and-a-half but still there were weeks when, like today, he had to work whole Saturdays. He covered his mouth and yawned.
“I should let you get some sleep,” she said, staying put. “You must be exhausted. After working all day.” She saw that it was already one o’clock.
“You’re sweet, that’s a sweetness only women have. No, really, I’m fine.” He leaned
forward and kissed her on the lips. “Look, why don’t you stay?”
She glanced down, and saw he’d taken her hand. He stood up. “Come.” He took her into the other room.
He stripped as if readying for a swim, then lay down on the bed, his elbows splayed behind his head as if doing a back float on a familiar lake. She sat down on the edge of the bed and untied her shoes. This would all be much easier, she thought, if she’d had more to drink. She regretted the years separating this night from those in college, when she had a better appetite for drink and a night away from her own soft sheets. Every movement and thought now felt too clear, as if outlined in black magic marker. Some kissing should precede this, they should undress each other, the awkwardness should be diminished by passion.
The room was warm so she didn’t really need the blanket, yet she held it close for cover, and wished a pleasant haze would somehow fall over the room and the bed and the stranger beside her, and she would be spared seeing the truth. He had a second house on Saint Lucia, she repeated to herself; a cottage, too, in Wisconsin, which he had designed himself. Then of course there was this house which he was renovating. To make room for more.
Karen Regen Tuero is a Pushcart-nominated writer whose work has appeared in two dozen literary journals including The North American Review. Read more of her work at: https://linktr.ee/kregentuero?utm_source=linktree_profile_share