Page 94 of Playworld

“You look nice,” I said.

“So do you.”

“Where’d you get that dress?” Miss West asked her.

“Dad bought it for me.”

“Well,” Miss West said, “there’s a first time for everything.”

The phone rang.

“I’ll get it,” Amanda said.

“Stay where you are,” her mother said, “smell the roses your friend brought me.”

Amanda froze as Miss West strode toward the kitchen. She smiled at me again but then turned her ear toward the hall.

“Oh,” Miss West said when she answered, a little grumpily, “hello.” A pause. “You too,” she said. And then: “She is, in fact, although she’s on her way to a dinner.” When Miss West reappeared, she said to Amanda, “It’s Rob.”

In a flash, Amanda was gone. The speed with which she hurried to answer hooked something deep in my gullet, dragging it with her. With Miss West, it registered with some embarrassment and, bless her, some sympathy.

“Ditching her at the last minute,” she said of Rob. “Notgentlemanly.” Then: “Not that it stops him.”

From where I stood, I turned to see Amanda lift the receiver from the counter, turn her back to us, and press it to her ear. At which point I noticed Miss West was standing close behind me.

“You’d think she’d learn,” she said, “with a father like hers, to pick the ones that don’t run. But the ones who run only teach their kids to chase. Cigarette?” she offered.

“No thanks,” I said.

“Or,” she muttered, catching fire, “maybe he has a ten-inch cock.”

Before I could even begin to react to this baffling statement, Amanda said, “Should we go?” She was awaiting me in the hall.

“Nice to meet you, Griffin,” Miss West said. Then, before she closed the door, said to her daughter, “No matter where your dad takes you. Get the steak.”

—

After we left the apartment, Amanda and I did not speak. We remained silent even after we turned north on Broadway. Amanda kept her arms crossed and her eyes to her shoes, as if by staring them down she mightsilence her heels against the pavement. When a passing stranger, seeing us so dressed and, inferring we were a couple, smiled, this only seemed to increase her inwardness. I was dim but no dummy. I knew that my presence deepened Amanda’s gloom, that my status as stand-in was a reminder she’d been stood up and burdened our stroll with a feeling of obligation. I realized my only currency was to provide comfort, and the only coins I had to play were changing the subject, so I asked where we were going. “To Columbia,” Amanda said. “My dad’s attending a reading there before we eat.” But then she turned quiet again, and her silence was intolerable.

“What does he do for a living?”

“He’s an English professor,” Amanda said. “At a boarding school in New Hampshire.”

“Which one?” I asked. As if I knew any.

“Brewster.”

I felt my lower lip cover my upper one as I nodded. “What’s the difference between a professor and a teacher?”

“A PhD and an ego,” Amanda said.

I waited. “What about your mom?”

“She’s a nurse. At Mount Sinai. Just a few blocks from here.” She brightened a bit. “That was sweet of you to get her roses,” she said. And then, she took my arm in both of hers. It was the charitableness of it that made it torture; it was the devotion that it so easily summoned in me that made it pleasant. And once I figured out how to walk normally and be held by her at the same time, I could nod at the passersby and enjoy that, for now, she was mine.

“Speaking of roses,” Amanda said, “she’s going to lash me with them if I don’t bring her home a doggie bag. Every time I go to dinner with my dad, that’s the rule.”

“My cousins get the belt. But only if they curse.”