October.
Every city wears its history. Some, being newer, have few adornments; others wear the jewels of their years like dowagers. Julia considers this as she hurries with the crowd along Sixty-Seventh Street. She is not a native New Yorker, but from Connecticut--close enough. Her two years in Manhattan, two years of chasing auditions and working part-time as a secretary at Julliard (Lady Julia of Julliard, her friends say), have made her a wiser but no less fervent lover of the city.
She loves New York in the way only those from somewhere else do. She rarely takes it for granted. "Maybe it's because of the acting thing," she thinks, that Woody's quote about Manhattan being a stage set resonates with her.
She feels this everywhere she goes. From a bench in Lower Manhattan, looking across the river and the span of bridge to the fairy-lit trees of Brooklyn Heights, to coffee for one at the Astral Plain in the West Village where a beautiful young redhead and her tall attentive lover brew tea and serve warm blueberry crumb pie, where an old woman dozes in a rocker with a cat at her feet, to the haute mannequins on Fifth Avenue and the Harlem jukes.
But if Julia McGuinn loves all of Manhattan, she adores the Upper West Side. It's exciting culturally, it buzzes her intellect, but it's sedate with dignified old brownstones, almost rural in spots where Central Park meanders away from the avenue or Riverside meets Drive.
Julia sees so many metaphors in the city, but tonight in the bright blink of this cool October Wednesday, the glitz of Lincoln Center seems subsumed by the gargoyles peering from their pre-war perches.
Like they're watching me. Like something might happen.
Maybe they're benevolent spirits protecting the old architecture. Maybe they'll give her luck. Julia worked until four today, then sat in a cattle call for an Ain't Misbehavin' revival . She sang eight bars of Mean to Me and, who knows, she might get a callback. She's pretty sure she looks good in cashmere and a fitted skirt, her thick black hair brushing her waist. And she thinks she can sing--her voice is husky but on tune. Years of private lessons have taught her to breathe right and sing out. The song lingers in her like fog.
You're mean to me Why must you be mean to me? Gee, honey, it seems to me You love to see me cryin'
I don't know why
I stay home each night when you say you'll phone You don't and I'm left alone. Singin' the blues and sighin'....
The piano player smiled at her. Nodded encouragement.
Julia pauses in front of One West Sixty-Seventh: the Café des Artistes. She can't really afford it, but what a night for a drink in the venerable haunt of Marcel Duchamp, Fiorello LaGuardia, Isadora Duncan. She enters the warmth and clink, marveling at the murals, and, amazingly, is seated at an empty window table near the bar.
Nineteen dollars and a half glass of tawny port later, Julia is relaxed, half-listening to half conversations around her--a film revival, someone's flagrante delicto , the playoffs--when her waiter walks to the table. He's handsome and disarming. An actor, she thinks. Look. He's watching himself approach. He smiles perfectly.
"The gentleman would like to offer you another glass of port."
He nods toward the bar at a man half in shadow who looks older, no not older, experienced? No, not that so much either, but supremely confident, secure. He's wearing a short wool cape over his suit. Oh God, how affected, but it has slid partway off one shoulder, which looks a bit silly and somehow makes him seem safe.
His hair is full black like hers. It's combed straight back and curls over the cape's collar. She sees he is pale and his features are thin though he has a sensual mouth. He looks at her then, across the room, and his eyes stop her cold. They're large and dark brown, knowing, perhaps sad, but she always reads too much into everything. He's hitting on her, of course, but she's a pretty confident soul herself, so she smiles at him and nods to the waiter that, yes, she'll take the drink.
More amazement. Capeman does not get up and try to join her, only gives her a faint smile, a brief lift of a glass of something dark before turning back to the bar.
Julia is miffed. She wasn't going to do anything, after all, maybe some harmless flirting. He seems eccentric and interesting, a dangerous combination in a man and she'd probably regret...
He's leaving!
He passes her table and smiles again, slightly, a beautiful small smile, says "You're as lovely as the night," which would be trite if he stayed, but he leaves. He doesn't look back.
He had a low clear voice.
Oh well.
The port warms her. It's a sophisticated taste, delicious. She's not much of a drinker and walks home a little tipsy to her studio on Eighty-Fourth Street, and her ordinary tabby cat, Miss Otis. They share tuna salad, Miss Otis delicately nosing aside the celery and onion.
The moon is large above the buildings. Not full, but big and silvery, an almost November moon.
