Free Picturing Will by Ann Beattie Page A

was it: two people who believed they knew each other so perfectly—who thought they could predict things about the other so well—that they didn’t even need to shake hands.

SEVEN
    O n an unusually warm April day, Jody took the bus from the airport to Grand Central, got on the subway, exited at Twenty-third Street, walked crosstown to Ninth Avenue, and continued to Mel’s street. Will was spending the weekend with the Vickerses. Jody was supposed to meet the man Mel was considering going to work for—a man whose last name made him sound like a character in a Henry Fielding novel, a name she could not remember, no matter how hard she tried. One of those men named Lord So-and-So, who would wear what they called drawers, and whose days would always be characterized by high propriety.
    She smiled to herself. Whenever she imagined people in excessive detail it made Mel nervous, as if she were really hallucinating and bound to bring trouble on herself. But the joking protected her; otherwise, a gallery owner whose name, she’d been told, was often mentioned in the society pages might be a formidable and intimidating figure.
    Mel lived across the street from General Theological Seminary, behind which stretched a long courtyard with grass so green it shocked you into remembering the country. Mel had befriended one of the seminarians and had in his possession a key that would open the big iron gate if you reached through the bars, inserted the key into the lock on the other side, and turned it counterclockwise. Some dexterity was needed for this, and some nerve—though the few times someone had spotted her and Mel sneaking in, the person had not batted an eye. Perhaps the seminarians thought there was nothing wrong with finding a way into the courtyard, which might be analogous, to them, to finding a way into heaven. The key could not be duplicated, though, and Mel had the key, so she would have to wait for Mel in his apartment. Also, SoHo Wine was delivering a case of chardonnay for dinner that night, and a woman named Angela, who had run away from Oklahoma to become a Rolfer and had a catering business on the side, was coming over around five to drop off the dinner Mel would serve that night. Jody had met Angela before, at a party she and Mel attended, when she went to get a drink of water in the kitchen. Angela had told her that she had lost her mother when she was a child and had grown up on a ranch in a family of four brothers who treated her like one of the horses. Jody did not ask exactly what this meant. By the time she left the kitchen, she had Angela’s card, and Angela’s boyfriend’s card. Jody could either get Rolfed or get legal advice. Angela had her own staff, which included the dishwasher, who was a teacher of the Alexander Technique and with whom she was two-timing her lawyer boyfriend, and a fleet of people who served the food, among them a dwarf who worked nights when he was between movie-stuntman jobs. He went around tapping people’s knees to see if they needed their wineglasses filled. Jody had wished that Will was with her. Why read fairy tales to your child when you can take him to a party in New York? If he understood that Rolfing and the Alexander Technique were similar to spanking in slow motion and to being made to stand in the corner, he might not have liked that, but he would have liked the dwarf in his blue cap, carrying a bottle of red wine in one hand and a bottle of white in the other. The dwarf was doing just what Will was not supposed to do: carry two drinks at once.
    What did Mel think about Jody’s being in his apartment while he was at work? Apparently, it was fine with him. She’d already seen the secrets (such as they were) in the medicine cabinet. Everything else had been put on display to show her how tempting life in New York could be, so she would move in with him. Did she like his crystal champagne flutes, hung upside down under the kitchen cabinet as if they were ordinary