So it had come to be that, on an evening in early spring, Peter had arrived at Charlotte’s door with the intention of asking her to marry him. She lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a brownstone on a handsome block uptown between Park and Madison avenues. Peter had come from work and, leaving the subway, he had passed a Korean market, where it had occurred to him to buy some flowers. He decided on daisies; they seemed winningly simple. The daisies smelled of earth and grass; water had dripped from their green stalks onto Peter’s hand when he took them out of their bucket. Daylight saving time had just returned, and the light at that hour, still so surprising, made Charlotte’s street look as if a lid had been lifted from it. The brownstone seemed softer, and the air, a little warm now, seemed to buoy him up gently.
No young man carrying flowers on an evening in early spring down a handsome street with the intention of asking a woman to marry him can be entirely immune to the romance of the occasion. And indeed Peter did feel romantic, nervous and eager. His jacket pocket held a small velvet box that contained a diamond ring whose stone was not ostentatious but still sizable.
He greeted Charlotte. She was wearing lighter clothes than she had worn in recent days. She had had her hair cut that day and looked especially young. She had known telepathically that something was up and greeted him with a longer and more than usually tender kiss. “How pretty. Let me put these in water,” she said, taking the flowers from him. “Lots of chances for me to play ‘He loves me, he loves me not.”’
They sat down on the love seat and chatted awhile. For the thousandth time, Peter looked at the framed engravings taken from an eighteenth-century French instruction book on dancing, at the painting above the fireplace that had been a gift from her father and her stepmother when Charlotte turned twenty-one.
Peter decided to be gay, as the occasion warranted. “Let’s have a glass of champagne,” he said. Charlotte usually kept a bottle in her tiny refrigerator. She looked at him, and their eyes met for a second. “Champagne? What are we celebrating?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Daylight saving time? Your haircut?” She gave a little hmm and went to the kitchen. As she walked away from him, she seemed self-conscious, as if she were thinking that he was looking at her, which he was, and he was reminded, with a trickle of lust, that the back of her neck was a good feature. She returned with the bottle and two wineglasses (champagne flutes were something you got as a wedding present). “Here,” she said, “you know how to do it.”
It was a little joke between them how her father had once pedantically demonstrated to Peter the best way to open a bottle of champagne. He gently prodded the cork with his thumbs while turning the bottle, as he had been taught, and the cork fell out, rather than rocketing, with a faint, hollow report and a wisp of smoke. The ceremony complete, he filled their glasses halfway; the bubbles tossed up their tiny hats.
Charlotte and Peter talked a little bit more.
“We have Moroccan agriculture people coming next week,” Charlotte said. “They’re going to meet with these Quebecois researchers who have done some interesting work on barley, which is about three percent of Morocco’s exports.” Charlotte’s expression became quizzical. “It’s odd that the Moroccans have asked for so much information about golf courses in the area. I don’t think that anyone is coming from the tourism ministry”
A breeze entered through the window, bringing a tarry smell from the street. There was a pause in the conversation. Peter refilled their glasses. As he did so, the image of Jonathan’s wife came into his mind, and he felt as if a trapdoor had opened under him. He tried to keep his hand steady as he poured. There she was. Well, never mind. What was not to be was not to be. He glanced over at Charlotte. Her eyes were pretty. The silence lasted a few seconds longer than a normal conversational gap. Peter sipped his champagne and looked over his glass at Charlotte. She looked away. She was nervous, and that made Peter feel warmly toward her.
“Charlotte.” Peter’s voice had an unusual resonance as he took her hands in his. “I have something I want to say, or to ask, actually. Um …” He swallowed. “You know, we’ve been talking about this. And so I was wondering … I mean I’d like to ask … I wanted to ask …” Here Peter paused. “Will you marry me?”
Charlotte had never received a marriage proposal before, not from her French lover and not even during free-play time at nursery school. In this instance, the man making the proposal was one whom Charlotte would quite like to marry. So she immediately began to cry and let out a large sob. She was reacting out of joy, and also from a release of tension, tension that it seemed had been building in her from the time of her birth.
“I know this is all rather sudden,” Peter said.
Charlotte laughed and gulped air. “Yes, why … sorry … just a second.” She dabbed her eyes with a handkerchief and tried to catch her breath. When she finished she looked at Peter and in her gray eyes there was the glow of love, an effect enhanced by their moistness.
“Well.” She cleared her throat. “Well, the answer to your question is yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Yes. Completely, totally yes.”
They embraced. The kiss lasted a long time. Peter’s first emotion was faint irritation with the way Charlotte kissed. She didn’t push her lips out enough, or something. Then he immediately began to think that he had made a tremendous mistake, and he wanted desperately to take back the words he had said a few moments before. Then he thought: It’ll be okay. It’ll be fine. I do love Charlotte, really. He felt the back of her hand press against the back of his neck, which produced a stirring of affection and desire within him. And then—and then he thought about Jonathan’s wife, Mrs. Speedwell. Since the wedding, he often addressed her that way. “Hello, Mrs. Speedwell.” “By all means, Mrs. Speedwell.” The bottom fell out of his stomach. And then, again, he recovered and thought: It’ll be fine. Charlotte will be happy enough and I will be happy enough. Parallel to his fundamental disappointment, he also felt a thrill. He had just made a marriage proposal, and he had held this woman unclothed in his arms countless times. He knew the flaws in her body, her bony hips. This accumulation of intimacy had its effect. Smiling, Peter pulled back from their embrace.
“Hey, wait a minute,” he said, reaching into his pocket, “there’s something that goes along with this.”
Peter finished his conversation with Frankfurt. Already, the departing tide of his day had taken him far from his betrothed and any thoughts of her. As usual, though, from time to time throughout the day’s voyage he saw in the distance the most beautiful mermaid, sunning herself on a rock, plashing into the sea and rising up again. Against the sun her smoothed head looked like a paper silhouette. It must be said that the creature did not resemble Charlotte, nor, however, was she mythical in her appearance. Even at a distance, Peter recognized her. He would be seeing her that evening, along with his despicable best friend, the