50 by Avery Corman Page A

him, or the eligibility of him. He asked questions about her work, how did she find the pieces she sold, were the new craftsmen markedly different from the old craftsmen? He even cringed at the quality of his questions, which he also found to be boring, and she answered succinctly, letting him do the talking, and he filled the spaces with more inane chatter about the newspaper and market research. She looked interested in what he had to say. I am a boring man tonight. How can you be interested? What I am looking for is someone who wouldn’t be interested. Who would have asked to go home an hour ago. Someone I’d have to show up for with a marching band for her ever to see me again.
    “I apologize for tonight,” he said, as they walked to her apartment. “I’ve been too preoccupied with work lately.”
    “What do you mean?” she said, the hysteria at the corners of her eyes. The evening didn’t go well, you won’t call again, we won’t get married within a year? What do I mean? he thought, pained for her. That’s what I mean.
    “I probably get hysterical myself sometimes,” Jeannie said to him. They had gone to see a revival of The Seventh Seal and were having hamburgers at the Blarney. “You’re at a cocktail party, you look around the room and you think, it’s over. There is not one more surviving healthy single male in the world. As of this minute the species is extinct. But the one who’s crazy is that Merrill Lynch girl who went to bed with you. To just pick up a guy—”
    “Not just a guy. Me.”
    “You could be anybody. I do it myself. Crazy stuff. I was at a bar a while back with some women from business and I went home with the bartender. Big, good-looking Irish guy. Why do men think they’re so fascinating?
    “There are off nights.”
    “They really should just have their mothers listen to them.”
    “Sexism, Jeannie?”
    “Right. All those consciousness-raising sessions and all that intensity. I’m forty-four. Maybe I made some progress in my career, but I’m not in a relationship and I screw a bartender whose idea of a deep discussion is to tell me how he makes a perfect Kir Royale.”
    “Maybe you made some progress?”
    “So I have my own business. Sometimes it’s hard to pinpoint the gains. I got rid of Buddy. I never should have married him. But once I married him, maybe I shouldn’t have divorced him. They say it’s lonely at the top. I’m here to tell you it’s lonely in the middle, too.”
    They were quiet for a few moments, then she said, “I had lunch with Susan the other day.”
    “You did?”
    “She asked if I’d get together with her. It felt peculiar. Basically, I got you in the settlement. She wants me to do PR for her, get her into Women’s Wear, do what I can, and she’d pay me. I didn’t want to give her an answer until I talked to you.”
    “I don’t have any objections. Anything that can help.”
    “She really is Miss Driftwood, isn’t she? But this new business has possibilities. She has a retainer from Filene’s.”
    “Take the account. It’s in the public interest.”
    “She was wearing a great outfit, all put together from odds and ends. A waiter’s jacket over a lacy blouse, silk pants, and she had on a skimmer. She has style.”
    “So I recall.”
    On the way home he thought about Susan and her style. Sometimes I’m in a store and I can’t make up my mind about a jacket or a tie and I want to turn to you and say, “Susan, what do you think?” Susan …
    On a Friday night Doug was watching a Knicks basketball game on the television set in his bedroom. Karen, who sometimes watched weekend sports programs with Doug, looked in intermittently. Andy came and sat next to Doug and asked a few questions about the game, which was unusual for him. A few nights later the Knicks were playing again and Andy watched with his father. Over the succeeding weeks Andy became a Knicks fan and started following the team’s progress in the newspapers. Doug