Free Heartburn by Nora Ephron Page B

looks pretty good,” I said.
    “You think so?” he said.
    “Yes,” I said.
    “I’m just telling you that so you know something about me, and since I know something about you, we’re even.”
    “I don’t think you need therapy,” I said. “You might be the only person in America who doesn’t.”
    I finished being interviewed by Detective Nolan, and gave him my father’s telephone number and my number at home in Washington just in case. It wasn’t until I was past the newspaper photographers and on the subway that I wondered whether Detective Nolan was single. He wasn’t exactly my type, but look where my type had gotten me. Then I wondered if he was uncircumcised. Then I wondered if I could be happily married to a policeman. Then I wondered why I was so hopelessly bourgeois that I couldn’t even have a fantasy about a man without moving on to marriage. Then I stoppedwondering. For one thing, the subway arrived at my stop and I got off. For another, it seemed clear to me that it would never matter. When I got to my father’s apartment, I was sure, Mark would be there.
    And he was.

six
    I met Mark Feldman at a party in Washington at my friend Betty’s. Betty Searle and I went to college together, and we always used to talk about living together afterward; but one day Betty said that I was a brunette and belonged in New York and she was a blonde and belonged in Washington, and she was right. Betty went off to Washington and became famous for her local television show, her dinner parties, and her affairs with a first-rate cross section of the American left wing. Every Christmas she had a party that everyone in Washington came to, and there, one Christmas, was Mark. I recognized him the minute he walked in because I’d seen him on
Meet the Press
, and once you see that beard you never forget it. He has a black beard, but the part of it that’s on the left side of his chin has a little white stripe in it, where the skin underneath has no pigment. Just like a skunk is what you’re thinking, and you’re right, but it can look very odd and interesting. I’ve always liked odd and interesting-looking men because I’m odd and interesting-looking myself, and I always figured I had a bettershot at them than at the conventionally good-looking ones. (Water seeks its own level, et cetera.) My mother would have loved Mark Feldman’s beard. “A scar but not” is what she would have called it.
    Mark is a syndicated columnist, that’s why I’d seen him on television. He writes about Washington as if it’s a city like any other (it’s not), filled with rich and interesting characters (it’s not). He’s known for being chronically perverse about politics. For instance, some people think it’s terrible that Washington doesn’t work, but Mark thinks it’s wonderful, because if it worked, something might actually be accomplished and then we’d really be in bad shape. This is a very clever way of being cynical, but never mind.
    “Stay away from him,” Betty said, when she saw me looking over at him.
    “Why?” I said.
    “He’s trouble,” she said.
    “Please don’t throw me in the brier patch,” I said.
    So Mark Feldman and I went out to dinner. He told me the story of his first day in the newspaper business. I told him the story of wanting to play the ukulele in the school orchestra. And then we went to bed. We stayed there for about three weeks. Every so often he got up to write a column, and I got up to call my answering machine in New York to see if there was any reason not to be in Washington for a while longer. There wasn’t.
    At some point in those three weeks, we had gotten out of bed for some reason or other, and we were taking a walk near the Pension Building. It’s a huge, block-square structure with a frieze of Civil War soldiers, thousands of soldiers moving cannons and guns and wagons and horses slowly around theperimeter of the building. We went up the stairs to the entrance, and the guard