The Cost of Lunch, Etc. (20 page)

Mid ’70s

Sheila had known Gill on and off for a decade in flashes since she was based in Chicago and he in Los Angeles. They had both been both active in the anti-war movement and met occasionally in mass demonstrations or events where one or the other was giving a speech. She had gone on into women’s liberation and a teaching job at a small liberal arts college, he to the media where he was a frequent commentator on political issues. He was good-looking and photographed well, came across on TV as roughly charming with a warm grin.

Gill wrote that he was coming east for a conference in Chicago in July, suggesting he visit her. Could he stay since the budget for hotels was adequate only for a Red Roof Inn out in the far suburbs? She said, sure. She had a floor-through in an old brownstone on the near north side—not yet upscale at that time—and a spare room. Friends not infrequently came through town and stayed. She generally made a pot of stew or soup that lasted her several days, but cooking for the occasional guest gave her an opportunity to try out something from the several cookbooks she had purchased for her kitchen.

Gill arrived at O’Hare and was picked up by someone
from the conference and dropped off at her apartment around seven. Sheila had prepared a chicken dish that could sit in the oven turned down to 175. He said he had eaten on the plane but chowed down as if it had been a week since he’d tasted food. She was pleased; if she went to the trouble of cooking, she wanted her food appreciated. “God, this is really good,” he said several times. “Perfectly cooked, well spiced.” During supper he regaled her with stories of his recent appearances and a book deal his agent had engineered with Random House. “Got a six-figure advance coming,” he said between mouthfuls. It wasn’t till she was serving ice cream and bakery pie for dessert that she realized he had asked her nothing about herself.

Gill did not volunteer to do dishes, but she asked him to wash and she would dry and put things away. He washed, but sloppily. She said nothing. He didn’t seem accustomed to doing his own dishes. That meant a compliant girlfriend back in L.A.

After coffee, he sat on the couch and patted a place beside him, but she took a chair across the room. She hadn’t imagined intimacy with him. After all, in the days of what they had called The Movement, people had crashed at any acquaintance’s place without expecting to get laid. People shared what they had: food, clothing, a place to sleep. He had asked and she had agreed—to sleeping quarters, not necessarily to sleeping together.

He took out his toke bag and rolled a joint. A little uneasy at crossing to him, she let him bring it to her. She was staying off that couch unless she decided otherwise.

He leaned back lazily, grinning at her. He was tall and solidly built, with long medium blond hair in a ponytail. He no longer wore aviator glasses—probably, like herself, onto contact lenses. He radiated confidence and pleasure in himself. Well, she chided herself, he had done well without obvious compromise and did she want every man as neurotic as
her ex-boyfriend Terry? Gill was even more attractive than he had been years ago.

“I have a gig at Madison starting in September,” he said, his eyes fixed on hers. “Be there for a year. It’s not that far, is it?”

Sheila shook her head. “Easy drive.”

“I figure I’ll be doing two classes and a seminar, so I could drive down weekends to Chicago …”

“It’s surely doable, but you might enjoy Madison.” She hoped he wasn’t about to quiz her on the University or the town. She hadn’t been there since the anti-war demonstrations.

“We’ve known each other for how many years?”

“Seven or eight, I’d say. Why?”

“And we’ve stayed in touch.”

Occasional letters, a phone call or two, drinks together at conferences. “Off and on.” Sheila forced a smile, wondering where this was leading. If he wanted to crash with her weekends, that would be a bit much. She wasn’t running a B & B.

“I think it’s inevitable … that we’ll get involved. It’s been moving that way for a long time.” He patted the couch beside him again. “Inevitable.”

She drew a sharp breath, flummoxed. It wasn’t that she didn’t have what she considered convenient sex. She still saw Terry sometimes. They had not broken up dramatically, just eased off and let it dwindle. But this guy lolling there on her couch telling her that she had no choice, it was just fate that she should have sex with him—she wanted to slug him. Choice was her bedrock belief about being a woman. She thought fast. “Gill, I have a boyfriend. A longtime thing. Pretty serious.”

“Then where is he?”

“Off seeing his sister. She just had a miscarriage.”

He looked around. “Does he live with you?”

She couldn’t fake that. No male clothes, no shaving
equipment in the john. “We’ve tried that. Right now we’re on different schedules so he has his own place.”

“Is it an open relationship?” Still hopeful.

“That doesn’t work for us. I don’t have the time or energy.”

He looked disgruntled. She understood he had thoroughly planned his coming academic year. Whoever was doing his dishes in L.A. was not accompanying him, so he had scheduled weekly bedtime with her in his photogenic head. Too bad.

In the morning, Gill took his stuff and left. Maybe he had a second somewhat less inevitable option on his to-do list.

Mid ’90s

Amy was celebrating the primary victory of their candidate with the rest of the staff and a good number of volunteers. If Robin won, she would be the first woman senator from their state—ever. Amy believed in Robin with fervor. After all, she had written two of Robin’s position papers prior to the debates, the one on abortion and contraception and the one on economic parity. Robin would fight for women and minorities and all the other causes Amy believed in.

There was Prosecco, beer, cookies, deviled eggs and an assortment of canapés donated from a restaurant that had quietly fed them several times during the campaign. Fortunately there were sodas, too. Amy didn’t touch alcohol. Her father was a drunk who had beaten their mother, her older brother and occasionally her before he drove the family car into an overpass, killing himself and one of his drinking buddies.

Hardly anyone else abstained, although Robin confined herself to soda and nibbled sparingly of the hors d’oeuvres. But one other staff member too stayed off the booze—Brian, who was the point man on gun control and the environment.

“You don’t drink. AA?”

“It’s poison,” he said. “I don’t willingly pollute myself. We take in enough every time we breathe.”

“Too true.” She smiled. It felt as if they were the only two staid and sensible people in the room as the evening got rowdier. The press had come and gone before the party got going.

They stood together watching the room. He cleared his throat. “I’ve had enough celebrating … Want to get a coffee? The fumes are getting to me.”

“The coffee shop on the corner stays open till ten.”

Quietly they slipped out into the mild September evening. Brian was a quiet sort, thin and trim with a bit of brown beard a shade lighter than his head hair, neatly trimmed. Everything about him was well kept—not fancy but clean, tidy. She liked that in a man. He wore button-down shirts and neat jeans. She knew he had some kind of job, so she asked them about it as they brought their cups to the table. He was drinking herb tea, she noticed. She had ordered decaf, in deference to the late hour she would get to bed this night.

“I’m a systems analyst.”

She drew a blank. “What kind of systems?”

“I work with programming languages.”

She guessed he didn’t mean English or French. She had no idea what a computer language actually was, so she asked him. He explained. He explained some more. After a while she was only noticing his mouth was rather nicely full and his eyes were a sparkly blue behind his glasses and his fingers were long and shapely.

“You’re a nurse practitioner.” It was not a question.

She was startled that he had bothered to find out. Was something happening? She couldn’t remember the last time she had been on a date. “Yes. I work in women’s health.”

“So how is that different from a regular nurse?”

“A couple of college degrees different.” She paused, never
certain how much to explain. “I’m one step down from a ‘real’ doctor. I like it. We can get closer to patients and we’re into prevention as much as cure.”

That seemed to satisfy him. “I never understood how people like doctors and nurses who work with sick people keep from catching all those diseases.”

“We wash our hands a lot.” She smiled and he changed the subject.

During the next month, they had coffee, pizza together. Between her job and the campaign, she had little time to think about Brian, but she was comfortable with him. Obviously he was interested in her, but in no hurry to push things. She liked that. That was how things poked along until Robin lost the election to a vastly better funded campaign that flooded TV with ads depicting her as a someone who would raise taxes on everything in sight and turn the Commonwealth socialist.

For two weeks she did not see him, a bit depressed in the wake of a campaign into which she had put so much of herself. Then he called, asking her out for supper at an Indian restaurant. It was a low-key evening but pleasant. For the first time, he kissed her. She apologized for not asking him in, but she had a seminar early Saturday morning on new HIV medications and combinations.

The next weekend they spent the night together. He was an efficient lover, for someone had taught him to find the clitoris and use it. He was not passionate, but careful, considerate, patient. She was pleased. She’d had enough in her adolescence of men ramming themselves into her and banging away. She appreciated a man who thought of her pleasure as well as his own.

Sunday morning they rose late. She always had the Sunday
Times
delivered, but she would forgo it this morning for his company. She liked the way he looked tousled
from bed, wearing her blue terry bathrobe after their mutual shower. I could get attached to him, she thought as she prepared French press coffee.

“None for me. I don’t use stimulants.”

She said mildly, “I doubt I could get through a day of patients without it. Medical personnel drink tons of coffee. It keeps us alert, and we have to be.”

“I rely on meditation. I clear out the detritus from my mind, the same way I cleanse my colon.”

She was not sure she wanted to know a great deal about his colon; in fact she was sure she did not. “Bacon and eggs? Or we could run out and get some croissants from the bakery in Davis Square.”

“As a nurse, you should know that disease comes from impurities in the diet. I don’t put anything you mentioned into my body. I avoid sugar, salt, animal fats and animal proteins of any kind. I’ll take some tofu and rice milk.”

“I don’t have any …”

“I’ll bring some next time I sleep over. I’ll bring enough for you.” He looked at her carefully. “I see your eyes are a bit bloodshot. Too much stimulant. You have to cut back.”

He rose, took her coffee cup and spilled her lovely French roast into the sink. She sat with her mouth slightly open in shock.

He beamed at her. “You need to be far more aware what you consume. I also recommend a juice fast every two weeks. I’m surprised you aren’t more careful and it makes me wonder what kind of prevention you recommend to your patients. I can help you.” He took her hand. “And I want to. You’re basically a good person, but you have bad habits.”

“Well, if you won’t eat anything I have, I hope you won’t mind if I …” she was about to say ‘fry’ but thought better, “poach myself a couple of eggs.”

“Please don’t. As a vegan, I grow ill if I have to inhale the scent of animal protein.”

She wanted to ask how he had endured the pizza parlor, then, or the campaign office where half the volunteers were chowing down on hamburgers or sandwiches. “What would you like to do this morning?”

“I brought my running shoes. Why don’t we go to Fresh Pond Reservoir?”

She poured herself a bowl of cereal. He picked up the cereal box and began reading out the ingredients. She interrupted the recital. “I don’t think I’m up for a run this morning. I may be coming down with a cold.” And if I’m near the reservoir, I might not be able to resist pushing you in. She ignored his lecture on the herbs she should be imbibing as she headed for the bathroom. Maybe when she came out, he would be gone. Permanently.

Mid Oughts

Jessie met Aidan at one of those flash dating lunches where she sat at a table and a bevy of men passed through one at a time for two minutes each. Her impression of him, fleeting certainly, was that Aidan was unusually polite and put together. He was one of only two of the prospective dates she filled out a card saying she’d see again. The other one never called.

Jessie had worked at a battered women’s shelter until she burned out. She could not even contemplate associating intimately with a man for a couple of years afterward, when she had gone back to school and gotten a Masters in social work. In her job for an agency that handled foster children, she worked in an office full of women of all ages and races. When she finally decided it was time to look for male companionship, she had no idea where to start till one of the married women in the office recommended this online site where she could sign up. It sounded benign enough, just two minutes with a guy and no dangerous contact or information given. She had to eat lunch anyhow.

Aiden and she met for their first date in a restaurant in midtown mostly popular with younger and more affluent customers. He was already waiting when she arrived, nicely got up in a navy blazer and neat khakis, a shirt checked in pale blue. He had short blond hair she remembered and attractive glasses. Behind them his eyes were hazel with rather long lashes for a man. His hands gripping the menu looked manicured. She felt conscious of her own that were not. She couldn’t remember ever having her nails done, although some of the younger women in her office sported multicolored talons.