A Long Island Story by Rick Gekoski

Author:Rick Gekoski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canongate Books

He put the pen down, finished his martini, chewed the onions carefully so that the sour taste filled his mouth. He’d done version after version, and in the end it sounded that little bit equivocal. Well, why shouldn’t it? He was. The first draft had ‘can’t go on’ rather than the later ‘shouldn’t’. He had added the ‘Love’ at the end, reluctantly. It would have seemed unbearably cold otherwise. But surely she would get the message? He went to bed without brushing his teeth.

In the morning, groggy with sleeplessness, head throbbing, he arrived at the office half an hour early, before she would get in, and slipped the note under her door. That was all very well, but in twenty-five minutes she would enter her office across the hall, read the note, ignore him and his entire geographical location studiedly and keep clear of him for as much of the day as was possible, a strategy it was impossible to sustain. But what else could he have done? At least this way she could be allowed to end it once and for all.

It wasn’t his attractiveness that had drawn them together first for corridor chats, shared cigarettes in his office or sometimes (which was more intimate) hers, then coffee, then walks and long talks, then, well, it was inevitable. If it hadn’t have been him, it would have been one of the others.

Rhoda made a striking first impression, there were few enough women lawyers in the department, none so chic, so memorable. Unlike the many secretaries she didn’t wear dresses that looked like advertisements for flower shops, was slim and free enough to dispense with a girdle. She loathed them, the slick sweaty pressing confinement, the sense of being packaged. ‘My pussy has a right to breathe!’ she said to him, assuming it would shock, pleased that it didn’t. He loved that. If it had been allowed at work, she would have dressed much like the men, in dark suits and cotton shirts. Maybe even a tie. She sometimes went to parties dressed like that, which caused some comment, and insinuation that she was a lesbian, especially from the many men whose advances were summarily dismissed, hardly even noticed. Oh, were you flirting with me? Is that what it was?

Ben got lucky, his office was opposite hers, he saw her every coming and going. She saw his. And if he wasn’t Rock Hudson he was amiable and bright and funny, and his tongue wasn’t hanging out. Things progressed slowly but inexorably, until one day, over hoagies on a park bench, she tried to draw back from what was inevitable.

‘Look,’ she said, taking his arm, displacing a few onions and shreds of lettuce, ‘you need to know I don’t fool around with married men.’

‘Thank God for that!’ he said. ‘Neither do I.’ He started to giggle, and was immediately encouraged by her protracted guffaw – perhaps she was about to change her policy?

‘Where’d you say you’re from?’

‘Philadelphia!’ She knew that, he was miffed that she’d forgotten.

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