THEY RISE from their seats. Matthew’s astonished to find that he doesn’t feel in the least embarrassed. He doesn’t feel like a middle-aged man hiding a stain on his pants; he feels like a young scamp running out on the check. He laughs, in spite of everything, possibly at himself. The man he usually thinks of himself as would be mortified, but right now that man seems like a fool. Matthew even dares to draw attention to his predicament, tapping the menu against his front while he waits for Leila to slide out from behind the table, flaunting his coolness in the face of adversity.
“’Bye,” says the blonde. She’s looking at Matthew over her coffee.
“So long,” says Matthew. “Be careful of his toe next time you’re” — he pauses a worldly pause — “skiing.” She smiles, and Matthew wonders whether there’s any way he could get his phone number to her without alerting the young man. He can’t think of any. It interests him to note, however, that he abandons the notion because he can’t think of any way to put it into effect, not, as would have been the case on another evening, because he’s hit by the feeling that it would be stupid even to think about trying to start something with her because she wouldn’t be, couldn’t be, interested in him. She is interested in him. He can see that, and he knows that he has Leila to thank for it. Leila, meanwhile, is trying not to snicker. She squeezes between the tables, and Jasper, watching her, draws a long breath. The blonde looks again at Matthew, waits until she’s caught his eye, and smiles an intriguing smile.
Matthew, says BW, don’t you see it now? Don’t you see what Leila can do for you? Fuck her, and the legs of women all over Boston will open for you. The blonde wants to go to bed with you now, right now. She wants to prove that she’s a better lay than Leila. What an opportunity you’ve got here. Fuck that kid! I’m telling you, Matthew — fuck that kid and you’ll be a changed man.
Matthew gives Leila his right arm and holds the menu in front of him with his left hand. “What are we going to do about coats?” Leila asks.
“We’ll just carry them out. Put them on outside.”
“Got it,” she says as if she were in a spy movie.
Matthew picks up the routine at once. “Once we’re over the border, we’ll be safe.”
“Yes, my darling, I know.”
“Be brave.”
“I will. I will.”
As it happens, the maître d’ himself holds Leila’s coat for her while she slips into it and then offers to hold Matthew’s for him.
“No, thanks. I’ll just carry it,” says Matthew. He extends his arm, and the maître d’ drapes the coat over it. Matthew and Leila pass through one set of doors, nod to the flunkies there, and pass through the second. Everyone looks at Leila, not at Matthew. She’s much better camouflage than the menu.
“Free!” shouts Matthew, still in spy-movie character.
“My brave darling!” says Leila. She puts her arms around his neck, very much in mock-movie style, and kisses him. It seems to be a real kiss. Was it? Or is that just wishful thinking? She helps him into his coat. There’s a cab waiting just up the street. Matthew flags it, and the driver pulls up to them. They get in. Matthew gives his address.
“We’ll go to my place,” he says to Leila, “and I’ll change. Then we can go dancing.”
“Okay. Great.”
Matthew’s sure that going to his place to change must sound like a pretext. He’s also sure that the taxi driver heard him, even though he knows that he ordinarily has to shout to make himself heard through the plastic partition.
In front of the Ritz-Carlton, the cab comes to a stop in traffic. Matthew looks out and sees a couple standing under the canopy: a short, round, balding man of fifty something, wearing a brown suit composed primarily of unnatural fibers, accompanied by a long blond drink of water in the area of twenty, wearing a dress composed entirely of tiny reflective panels; it leaves one smooth shoulder bare and is gathered at the hem on one side to bring it a long, long way up her long left leg. Her hair is pulled to one side, caught in a clip. These two stand together, she talking animatedly but without facing him, he with his arm firmly around her waist, as if in fear that if he let her go she’d run screaming into the night, her dress scintillating. The cab moves on, and Matthew glances at Leila to see if she’s noticed this couple. She’s looking out the opposite window.
[to be continued]
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