Chapter 11C

Wednesday morning I didn't open my eyes until I heard Martha getting dressed on the other side of the room. I turned onto my side and saw her slipping a belt through the loops of her skirt.

She smiled at me, a little sleepy but happy. "Did I wear you out?"

I groaned, "Yes."

"We can rest tonight." She fetched shoes from the closet and set them on the floor by the bed, then she sat on the bed, embracing me and snuggling into my neck. "You certainly have me in a great mood for doing combat with the bureaucrats this morning. At least I can escape for a while later today and do some serious tutoring before I come home. I'd much rather struggle with the kids than with the grownups."

"Martha," I said into her shoulder.

"Mm-hm?"

"Do you have any idea how good you are in bed?"

She nodded against my cheek.

I said, "Then I don't have to tell you."

"Tell me anyway."

"I just did."

"Tell me anyway."

I kissed her neck. "Martha," I whispered, "you're so good in bed."

She sighed. "Oh, well... For you, it's a start."

She finished dressing and gathered her things into her purse and her briefcase. In my whole life in Memphis, Tennessee, I had never seen a woman carry a briefcase.

Martha reminded me that I had Fiore at ten, I had to take my vitamins and the yeast, and I could meet Ronnie for lunch again if I wanted. Later that night we were due at an Artur Rubenstein concert. "Then we'll rest," she said. "Maybe we can just sit around later and get some of our Fire Island stuff ready for later."

I yawned. "I thought Ronnie worked."

"She does, but not everybody in New York works nine to five. This isn't Memphis, Steven, people here get time off when they need it."

She blew a kiss as she rushed out the front door, leaving me standing in my underwear in the living room. I listened to the traffic bustling outside. I could like New York, I thought. I started laying out my vitamins on the kitchen table. I could like this hustle and bustle, this constant stimulation, this variety, this surfeit of possibility.

There was a knock at the door. "Steven?" Ronnie called.

I stood near the door. "Sugar?" I called back. "Coffee?"

She laughed. "No, no. Wanna meet for lunch?"

"Okay."

"Remember where?"

"Same as yesterday."

"Right. 'Byyye, y'aaall... Did I do that right?"

"... We'll work on it."

She laughed again. "All right. See ya!" I heard her clatter down the stairs in her heels.

I could like this place, I thought. I poured water for a cup of berry tea. I could even like brewer's yeast.

Fiore worked me to a frazzle. He set up a coordination and aerobics exercise in which I had to race around a small room and catch handballs that he kept pitching to me. He began pitching more balls, faster and farther from wherever I stood -- until, finally, I had enough. Snatching one ball that he pitched into a corner far from where I stood panting and recovering from the previous pitch, I squeezed the ball and grimaced and threw him a hot, angry stare, and then slammed the ball into the wall as hard I could.

Fiore grinned, his hands on his hips, while the ball bounced away and I stood gasping and glowering. "Good!" he said, nodding. "Good, my friend! I was wondering how long it would take you to speak up for yourself! Iss feel good, hah? Good! Know your limits! Admit them!" He strode toward me, his grin softening. "If you don' learn your own limits, THEY control YOU. As you build your body, build your awareness. As you develop awareness, develop the body. Mind and body, my friend! They work together! Hah? Good!" He slapped me on the back, and I managed to stay on my feet. "You rest a minute! Then... More of this, hah? Good!"

Later, as I was walking downtown on Lexington Avenue, I thought: I'm surrounded by geniuses. Surrounded by artists, writers, thinkers, doers, teachers, seers, makers, strivers. Every store front, every skyscraper, every crowded street corner offered new possibilities, new freedom -- and new crises, with little room for the laxity or purposelessness I knew in Memphis. New York was swift, extreme. People seemed to have a certain cunning, a toughness, that came from being forced to look deeper and try harder. I felt intimidated, but that in itself incited me to look more deeply into myself, to listen to my impressions. As I strolled, I began observing everything more meticulously. New York struck me at first as simply a chaotic puzzle, a violent offhandedness. But taken separately, some pieces seemed studied, calculated, learned and honed to the point where they leapt out with an ease that seemed spontaneous, innate. Merged, everything merely seemed disordered. People seemed to know where they were going and how to get there; those who didn't wandered at grave risk. The few who stopped to read a street sign were shoved by unpausing others, honked at by speeding and careening traffic, glowered at by those who suddenly found a lost soul impeding their own progress.

I somehow managed to express this to Ronnie during her lunch hour as we sat looking out the window in a Chinese restaurant on Seventh Avenue.

She stared at me as I related my impressions and she said, "Jeez, you do need to live here. Did you really come from Memphis, Tennessee? I wish I had a brain. I have such a hard time getting down to the guts of life. I guess I'm too busy trying to remember where I put my laundry ticket. But it's true: in Manhattan, if you don't learn life well, you either get stepped on or you miss out on everything. In my case, both."

She told me about the small Michigan town where she grew up. "It seemed so nice when I was very young. Very serene. But then I made a terrible mistake: I became twelve years old. And the land wasn't serene anymore, it was just flat. The trees didn't seem to grow. People just walked in and out of my life as if I weren't there, while I wasn't going anywhere or doing anything. I kept saying, hey, there has to be a next moment somewhere. Y'know? There has to be a rest of me. So what do I do? I move to Manhattan and get stepped on and honked at like everybody else."

"But it doesn't stop you," I said, smiling at her.

She blushed. "Steven, there really aren't that many thinkers around here. Most people think you're supposed to be clever and slick... like, there's this formula they get down pat -- and they're good at it, too. They think they're all supposed to act like a guest on the Tonight show or something. But it's another thing to want to be a knower. A seeker." She flicked her cigarette against the ashtray and leaned forward on her elbows. "You're a seeker, aren't you? You don't want to know the formula, you want to know where the formula came from. You don't want to find the ocean, you want to find out how it got there, and why, and what's under it."

"I guess that's me, yes."

"What the hell are you living in Memphis for? I know you have family there and you have to get some schooling before you do anything else. But eventually you need to move up here and start looking for life -- like the rest of us, who haven't found it yet." She gazed out the window, her chin in her hand. "Aw, it's out there somewhere. I know it is. It steps on my feet all day, so I know it's there. I keep thinking, if I'm in the right place at the right time, I can just -- " She lifted her hand and made a fist in the air, holding tight. "-- catch it. Like that."

I asked, "That's a little chancy, isn't it? Like trying all the formulas until you get the right one?"

"Isn't that what everybody does?"

I thought for a second. "I don't trust formulas. I don't trust them because... so far, the formula isn't the answer, it's a replacement for answers. It's like self help books. Like religion. You read somebody else's answers and they work for a while, but you never look deeper for your own. And sometimes... you have to find your own answers."

She gave me her easy smile. "You sound just like the type who'd move to New York just so you could hang around in the Village with the other rebels. No wonder Martha likes you. I always told her she was too picky sometimes. Maybe she just has taste."

I blushed and said, "Are you sure you're talking to me?"

She said, "Sure I am. Why?"

I blushed again, and said, "Well, I'm not used to so much -- you know..."

She looked at me, her eyes gently probing. I thought that if one could ignore Ronnie's eyes and consider only her narrow, fine-boned face and slim lips, she would seem somewhat plain, with a placid, indefinite expression; but the problem was that her less obvious features rendered her eyes remarkably unavoidable. They struck me as irresistible, but in a subtle, non-disruptive way.

She said good-naturedly, "You blush too much."

I blushed, shifting my gaze out the window.

She asked, sounding surprised, "Do I make you uncomfortable?"

I answered offhandedly, still gazing out the window. "Mmm, No."

She said, "Sometimes I think there's something about me that makes some people a little... uneasy, I guess."

I said, "I don't see how that would be possible. I mean, you're bright, you're friendly..."

She said, "So are you."

"Well, you don't make *me* feel uneasy."

She chuckled and insisted, with playful impatience, "Then why do you blush so much?"

I looked at her, shrugging, and straightened in my chair so that I faced her fully again across the table and said, "It's just something I do, I guess. You don't make me uncomfortable."

She gave me a teasing little grin. "Well, it's cute." Then she straightened her face and said, leveling her eyes at me with mock seriousness, "You just blushed again," and then she chuckled, and when I covered my face bashfully with one hand she laughed aloud, and said, "Well, it *is* cute. And you do it so well!"

She settled down after a moment and I let my hand drop from my face and just shook my head ruefully.

She said calmly, "Well, I'm glad you're not uneasy with me, because your Martha's buddy from Memphis and I'll probably be in your hair all the time while you're here. So I'm glad you're comfortable." She sipped from her glass and folded her hands on the table. Then her eyes gave me that steady, studying gaze again. She said, "Say, I lost my longtime lunch buddy a few months ago. She transferred to Denver. We didn't have lunch every day, that would have made it boring. You know, just a couple of times a week."

I said, "Yeah? Well, uh, you in the market for a new lunch buddy?" I was surprised that I made the offer, and I tried to keep from blushing. But she didn't answer me; she gazed at me steadily, and I gazed back at her, waiting, and she gazed back, and then I saw that she was playing with me with her gaze, and I finally gave up and turned my face away and blushed, and she started laughing again, saying, "See? I knew you would. I knew it."

We both worked on suppressing our laughter and we calmed down again. I watched her looking down absently at her hands folded on the table.

She paused, and then she said, "Well, Steven, I'm glad you'd like to be lunch buddies. That'll make my lunch hour fun again. And it's okay if you blush, it really is." She looked up at me, calm again. She said, "Anyway, it's so cute it's kinda sexy."

I gazed at her steadily for a second, and then I arched my eyebrows at her meaningfully and said, "Yeah? Sexy?"

She gazed back at me, refusing to respond, and while we gazed momentarily we waited to see who would give up first, and her steady gaze suddenly dissolved into a blush. She turned her face away, toward the window, putting one wrist over her mouth and suppressing her laughter, and she muttered with her mouth against her wrist, "Now you've got me doing it." I had to suppress my own laughter, her response getting me really tickled. She continued looking out the window and her torso spasmed mildly as she choked down her laugh. She muttered sarcastically against her wrist, "It's a virus. Steven, we really have to stop meeting like this. It can't go on." Then the hidden giggling started again, and she held it back, her trim shoulders shaking, and I thought her shoulders and arms and slender wrists seemed delicately feminine and attractive. She sighed again, and looked back at me with a smirk, and said, "C'mon, let's pick up the tab and get outta here."