Let Me Call You Sweetheart

59

Dr. Smith took Barbara Tompkins to Le Cirque, a very chic, very expensive restaurant in midtown Manhattan. “Some women enjoy quiet little out-of-the-way places, but I suspect you enjoy the high-profile spots where one can see and be seen,” he said to the beautiful young woman.

He had picked her up at her apartment and did not miss the fact that she had been ready to leave immediately. Her coat was on a chair in the small foyer, her purse on the table beside it. She did not offer him an aperitif.

She doesn’t want to be alone with me, he had thought.

But at the restaurant, with so many people around them and the attentive maŒtre d’ hovering nearby, Barbara visibly relaxed. “It’s a lot different from Albany,” she said. “I’m still like a kid having a daily birthday.”

He was stunned for a moment by her words. So similar to Suzanne, who had compared herself to a kid with an ever-present Christmas tree and gifts always waiting to be opened. But from being an enchanted child, Suzanne had changed into an ungrateful adult. I asked so little of her, he thought. Shouldn’t an artist be allowed to take pleasure in his creation? Why should the creation be wasted among leering dregs of humanity while the artist suffers for a glimpse of it?

Warmth filled him as he noticed that in this room filled with attractive, elegant women, sidelong glances rested on Barbara. He pointed that out to her.

She shook her head slightly as though dismissing the suggestion.

“It’s true,” Smith persisted. His eyes became cold. “Don’t take it for granted, Suzanne. That would be insulting to me.”

It was only later, after the quiet meal was over and he had seen her back to her apartment, that he asked himself if he had called her Suzanne. And if so, how many times had he slipped?

He sighed and leaned back, closing his eyes. As the cab jostled downtown, Charles Smith reflected how easy it had been to drive past Suzanne’s house when he was starved for a glimpse of her. When she wasn’t out playing golf, she invariably sat in front of the television and never bothered to draw the drapes over the large picture window in her recreation room.

He would see her curled up in her favorite chair, or sometimes he would be forced to witness her sitting side by side on the couch with Skip Reardon, shoulders touching, legs stretched out on the cocktail table, in the casual intimacy he could not share.

Barbara wasn’t married. From what he could tell there wasn’t anyone special in her life. Tonight he had asked her to call him Charles. He thought about the bracelet Suzanne had been wearing when she died. Should he give it to Barbara? Would it endear him to her?

He had given Suzanne several pieces of jewelry. Fine jewelry. But then she had started accepting other pieces from other men, and demanding that he lie for her.

Smith felt the glow from being with Barbara ooze away. A moment later he realized that for the second time the cabbie’s impatient voice was saying, “Hey, mister, you asleep? You’re home.”