3 Quarters by Denis Hamill Page A

took her home, we drank half a glass each, skipped the pasta, made love all night, and she never left. I gave her my keys when I went to work in the morning, and when I came home, she had unpacked two of her suitcases. She said she had been staying with Sandy, was taking courses at the School of Visual Arts in photography a few days a week. Other than that, she was vague about her life, her background, family, friends. Said Sandy was her only friend in New York. I liked the idea that she was a loner. I was needy. Greedy. Possessive. I didn’t want to let her out of my sight. I was afraid someone was going to kidnap her, take her away from me. Not only did I fall in love with her right away, I wanted to. I needed to replace Connie. I didn’t ask questions about who Dorothea was—until later. It didn’t seem to matter. She was beautiful, sweet, smarter than me, better educated, better read . . .”
    â€œDidn’t you bother, between rolls in the hay, to ask her who the hell she was?” Gleason asked. “At least proof her for age?”
    Bobby paused and stared at Gleason, shook his head, and climbed back into the Jeep, which was parked over by a rank of public telephones. Venus sat in the backseat mouthing the new English words. “Baby, bottle, bird . . .” Gleason handed her a plain salad and water. “Here’s your shrubbery, hon, mangia,” Gleason said.
    â€œGracias ,” said Venus, who began picking at the salad.
    â€œYour welcome-o,” Gleason said.
    Bobby looked from one to the other, shaking his head, then started the car and pulled back out onto the highway.
    â€œWhenever I did ask Dorothea her background, she’d change the subject—politics, law, history, literature, art, music, fashion, dance, movies, theater, opera, cities, countries I never even heard of,” Bobby continued as they moved back into southbound traffic. “Dorothea spoke flawless English and French, some Italian and Spanish, and her native Ukrainian, Russian, Polish, and a few others. She said her mother had been brilliant and taught her all the languages and about world politics and the arts. But she also said her mother had lived a terrible, sad life. As an outcast. That she had died the year before. I guessed the mother was some kind of political dissident back in the old country. I could never get Dorothea to elaborate.”
    â€œYou were too busy hiding the salami,” Gleason said.
    â€œShe was too busy pleasing me, in a lot of ways,” Bobby said, shooting Gleason a disgusted glance. “Dorothea even sat down and read a baseball rulebook because she knew I was a fan. What woman does that? She read through all my old copies of Ring magazine because I liked boxing. She even knew how to fix a car, Gleason. A car! I can just about change a friggin’ flat, and she can get under the hood, elbow deep in grease. She was the most complete woman of the world I’d ever met. She could put together a gourmet meal in twenty minutes, with veal and mushrooms and pasta and a salad of greens that I didn’t even know grew on planet earth but she found growing wild in Prospect Park on some nature walk she read about on the Key Food bulletin board! The second day she was with me, I went to work, came home, and she had her hair in a babushka, was wearing one of my shirts tied at the waist—a woman in a man’s shirt drives me crazy—”
    â€œOh, yeah!” shouted Gleason, interrupting Bobby. “Especially if they wear red heels and thong panties and they bend over to pick up forty-seven cents you just happen to drop on the floor.”
    â€œÂ . . . She came in and she’d redecorated my entire apartment. It looked like something out of a magazine. My bachelor stuff, same eclectic clutter, rearranged and presented like one of her perfect meals. She took me over to little restaurants in Little Kiev in Alphabet City and