Frances and Bernard - By Carlene Bauer Page 0,60

from behind. “Everybody out!” she shouted. “Out! Out! Thank you for coming!” Thank God the place had been loud enough that no one could detect where the offense had come from. She left us standing where we were and began shoving people in the direction of her bedroom, where the coats were. She pulled two people up from the chairs they were chatting on. A glass shattered. “No, I’m not kidding! Get your things! It is finished! Thank you for coming!”

“Whoops,” said Frances as we followed the crowd to the back of the apartment to get our coats. I have to admit that even though I was angry with Frances, the scene was amusing.

Frances waited until we got a few blocks away from the dispersed partiers, until we were standing at the corner of Lexington and Sixty-Third, to speak.

“Why didn’t you tell me they were sleeping together?” she said. Her voice was soggy with remorse.

“That was very row home stoop of you,” I said. I wanted to punish her for having made an insufficient show of wanting to belong to me.

She grabbed my arm and turned me around to face her, stumbling a little from the effort of trying to force me, losing a shoe in the process. The city, hanging blackly cavernous about her, and this man who loves her turning on her. She bent down, picked up the shoe, and threw it at me. Then she hailed a cab. “We don’t even have a stoop, you bastard,” she said, and got in. I fell in love with her again.

The next day, at the end of the day, I showed up at her office with the shoe in a paper bag and a red scratch down my right temple where the heel had scraped me. I stood in her doorway, manifesting the air of a penitent thief. She was not manifesting the air of clemency. Without saying a word, she got up from her desk and walked out the door, her skirts brushing against my knees. After five minutes she came back, grabbed her purse and coat, shut the lights off with me standing there, and left. I followed her out to the elevators.

She would not look at me once we were down on the street. “I know you didn’t mean what you said,” she said as we walked. “You couldn’t possibly.” And then: “If you are excited by me throwing a shoe at you, please know that it does not excite me.”

She was lying about that.

The subject was dropped.

I am finding it hard not to insult her in other ways.

October 10, 1960

Dear Claire—

Bernard and I have had what I suppose you would call a fight. Well, we have had two fights. I will not tell you about the one that ended in me throwing my shoe at him.

We were at a party, two nights ago. It was crowded, and dark, and loud, and when he got tired of shouting over the crowd, Bernard started to kiss me. I stopped him. I didn’t want him to kiss me in public. Bernard argued that no one would care what we did; I argued that he should care about what I thought. We argued some more—I think he may have told me to grow up. I have been feeling that he is trying to make a request of me in these two fights but he will not name it. I walked away from him in the middle of something he was saying. I put my coat on and walked out on the street and got a cab. The second time in a month. I heard him call my name. That is one of the things I love about New York. If you wish to get away from an unpleasant situation immediately, there are cabs everywhere, ready to make you feel, at least for five minutes, that you are having the last word, by way of the very satisfying sound of a slammed car door.

Bernard followed me home. He must have taken a cab too, because he got there shortly after I arrived. I was sitting on the couch reading and waiting for the kettle blow for tea when I heard a whistle from down on the street. About thirty seconds passed. Then I heard what I thought was a coin thrown at the window. And then another. And another. I opened the window. Bernard was standing there, hands in his pockets. He was wearing the face of a child looking up