“Tommy’s a fine man,” Ruth said.
“Oh, I’m sure he’s swell,” Eileen said. “I have no way of knowing. He couldn’t sit still long enough to say two words to me. He spent the whole time making sure every back in the place got slapped.”
“Tommy has a lot of friends.”
“He bought everyone a round and said I didn’t know it yet, but he was my future husband. There was a big cheer. The nerve!”
The man with the newspaper got out of the cab. He was tall and handsome, with dark cropped hair and striking eyeglasses. She imagined he was a visiting professor, Italian or Greek. She took her eyes from him before he turned in her direction.
“He liked you. He wanted to make an impression.”
“An impression!”
“Look, this one is different,” Ruth said lamely. “He won’t be trying to win you over. He doesn’t want to be there any more than you do.”
“What’s the problem with him? Is he queer?”
Eileen didn’t know why she was still resisting. She would normally have done her friend Ruth this small favor, but she wasn’t in the mood for disappointment, not on New Year’s Eve. She watched the taxi launch off from the curb, only to stop again up the block to let a young couple pile in. The sun came back out from behind a cloud. Ruth unbuttoned her coat.
“He’s a grad student at NYU. A scientist. Frank’s in an anatomy class with him. He’s obsessed with his research. He never leaves the library. Frank is worried about him. He wants to get him out.”
Eileen didn’t say anything. She was trying not to believe in the promising picture she was forming in her mind, for fear of disappointment.
“So what Frank told him is that I was nagging him to find a date for my friend for New Year’s.”
“Absolutely not!” Eileen said. “I will not pretend to be somebody’s charity case.”
“He’s a gentleman. He couldn’t resist a woman in need. It’s the only thing that would have worked.”
“Ruth!”
A pair of girls pushed past them into the luncheonette. Eileen could see the counter seats filling up and could make out only one empty booth.
“Would it help if I told you he’s handsome? Frank even said it himself. He said all the girls they know think he’s very handsome.”
“Let them have him,” she said, not meaning it. She couldn’t believe she was feeling defensive about this man.
“Just do this for me and I’ll never bother you again,” Ruth said, putting her hand on the door to open it. “You can go become an old maid after this.”
“Fine. But I’m not going to pretend to be grateful he went out with me.”
In the interval between the setup and the date, she’d convinced herself that this was nothing more than a good deed she was doing. When the bell rang at Ruth’s, though, she was seized by nerves. She ran to the bedroom and locked the door.
“Come on! I have to answer the door.”
“I’m not going. Tell him I got sick or something.”
“Come out and say hello!” Ruth whispered forcefully as the bell rang again.
She heard Ruth invite them in. She liked his voice: it was soft, but there was strength in it. She decided to open the door, but not before resolving to give him the hardest time she could. She wasn’t going to have any man thinking she needed him there, certainly not some spastic recluse she’d have to lead around the room by the sleeve.
Before she had a chance to say anything sarcastic, Ed rose to his feet. He was indeed handsome, but not too pretty; neat and lean, with clean lines everywhere, including those in his face that gave him an appealing gravity when he smiled.
He leaned in and whispered in her ear. “I realize you didn’t have to do this, and I promise to try to make it worth your time.”
Her heart kicked once like an engine turning over on a wintry afternoon.
He could dance like a dream. When he pressed her close, his substantiality surprised her. The glasses, the neatly combed hair, the chivalry on the sidewalk and at doors made an impression, but the back and shoulders let her relax. The girls at their table thought him the most polite man they’d ever met. When she first heard him speak in his articulate way that was oddly devoid of accent, she thought he was like the movie version of a professor, but without the zaniness that emasculated those characters. Still, he was refined in a way that might have raised eyebrows among the men of her set. He could discuss things they didn’t understand. He didn’t so much drink a beer as warm it in his hand as an offering to the gods of conversation. She fretted over how he’d get along with her father, and so she brought him around earlier than she would have otherwise, in case she had to cut him loose, but something in Ed’s carriage disarmed the big man. Eventually she had to feign annoyance at how well they got along. She shouldn’t have been entirely surprised. He’d been a neighborhood kid, the kind who knew how to throw a punch when a friend was in trouble and could talk everybody’s way out of it before it started—the kind men listened to because the way he spoke suggested he wasn’t telling them anything he thought they didn’t know already.
He was a natural athlete. They went to the driving range with her old friend Cindy and her husband Jack, who was into golf. Ed teed up and smacked the ball so soundly that when she saw it next it was a tiny pea at the end of its parabolic journey.
They headed out to Forest Hills one weekend to see her friends Marie and Tom Cudahy. There was a tennis court near the Cudahys’ townhouse. They borrowed tennis whites from their hosts and the four of them hit the ball around in doubles, no keeping score or serving, just volleying. Ed returned shots he shouldn’t have been able to get to in time. At the end, Tom asked him to play him solo, and Eileen turned and saw the embarrassed look on Marie’s face. They both knew what was coming. Tom had been a letterman at Fordham and had a powerful serve, and though he mostly kept his competitiveness in check during mixed doubles, he liked to throttle his counterpart for a while afterward.
The two men took their positions and Tom fired a blistering smash. The ball raced up Ed’s body off the bounce, as if it was trying to hit him more than once. The second serve came in on Ed’s hands. He flicked his wrist at the last second and deposited the ball just over the net. Tom hustled but the ball died, bouncing again before he got to it. They traded points and games. Ed’s serve was careful and reliable, his returns determined and vigorous. She liked the way he whipped his racket across his chest, dismissing offerings with sudden ferocity. He tucked the ball into corners and moved it around the court. Tom won the set, but Ed made the contest closer than anyone in their circle had.
They walked back to the Cudahys’ to shower and change. She had one hand in Ed’s, while the other held down the hem of Marie’s mod minidress. On the court she’d felt protected by all the activity, but off the court she felt almost naked in it. Ed looked terrific in Tom’s spare whites, as if he was born to wear them.
“When did you get so good at tennis?”
“I’m not that good.”
“You looked pretty good to me.”
He bounced a ball as he walked. “I cleaned up trash one summer in Prospect Park. I stuck around after work a few times and played at the Tennis House. I was always running after shots, trying to catch up to them. There was a pro who gave me some free advice. ‘Go where you think the ball’s going,’ he said. ‘Beat it there.’”
“I have a good strategy too,” she said. “I don’t move at all. I let it go past me to you.”
He laughed. “I noticed.”