Cheapskate in Love

chapter 13





Toward the end of the week, Bill was able to return to the office, although his mobility was still greatly impaired by the injury to his back.

He was careful to avoid any discussion of the hiking incident with his coworkers. He feared that, if he was drawn into a conversation about the event, he would soon slip and explicitly state that he had been with Linda, although he had told them that he was not going to see her again. He was afraid they might find out she had forced him to walk until exhaustion in the rain, and that she wouldn’t even carry his backpack after he fell. He did not want to say that he had had to abandon the backpack in the woods, because his injured back could not support the weight; it had been impossible for him to hold it, since the only way he was able to hobble to the car was by gripping a sturdy branch with both hands on which he could lean to stay upright. He did not want to mention that her refusal to shoulder the backpack was a second injury that he could never forgive; it was practically a new backpack, purchased within a year, and losing it was the main reason he was not speaking with her. He could not overlook such a deliberate waste of his money. That was a deep blow, causing more lasting pain than the fall. (To be fair to Linda, it must be admitted that the piece of luggage had been deeply discounted when he bought it, because it was poorly constructed and a hideous florescent green. Only someone like Bill, who cared most of all about the purchase price, would have thought the backpack worth buying in the first place.) To preserve his self-respect and, to a lesser extent, avoid remembering the lost backpack, he felt he had to maintain as much secrecy about the day as possible among his colleagues.

When anyone asked what had happened to him, and his coworkers were persistent in asking, especially Matt, who kept trying to trick answers out of him with leading questions, Bill would change the subject or respond vaguely about weather and terrain conditions that day. Soon he completely ignored sneaky queries from Matt, because Bill saw if he became hooked by one, like a fish caught nibbling a worm, he would never escape. Just like a fish, he’d be cut into a hundred little pieces and fried. His coworkers, like cats, would clean his bones.

With his friend Stan, Bill had no need to conceal what had happened, because they talked infrequently. By the time they met again, Bill had recovered enough that he could simply gloss over the incident. However, over the following months, Bill told Stan much more about that day in his usual, indirect, unexpected, piecemeal way. Eventually, Stan was able to put the pieces together. Through his long familiarity with Bill and a little detective skill, Stan could interpret what Bill told him with a good deal of precision.

Especially when the subject was dating, Stan was accustomed to doubting what Bill said, because he had learned that Bill rarely described events accurately, in which he had played a part. In Stan’s view, Bill left out more than he explained in order to brighten the impression he gave of himself. The hike, which at first in Bill’s bits of retelling, seemed to have been some kind of surreal event, like a landscape by Dali, with bizarre parts that didn’t belong together and a mad monster running everywhere, later shaped itself, in Stan’s mind, into an ordinary tale of human weakness. Although Bill made it seem like he was dragged against his will into an alien landscape and set upon by terror after terror, Stan eventually concluded that he was an equal participant. In fact, Bill was the necessary participant for what had transpired. Without him, there would have been no hike. In the unfolding of that day, he pictured Bill as a sort of apple-cheeked shepherd, in the manner of Boucher, chasing his cherubic shepherdess and taking a tumble through his own excessive cupidity.

On Bill’s first day back at work, the pain he suffered from performing his normal commuter travel to Manhattan was so great that he was forced to go home, after spending only the morning in the office. He had allotted extra time for his trip into the city and had walked slowly—that was the only way he could move. But since he had rarely moved from his bed, while he had been at home recuperating, and his back was still not fully healed, his usual commuting routine was unusually demanding and exceeded his endurance. Claire told him he should take a taxi home to prevent straining his back even more. “You could seriously disable yourself,” she warned, but the idea of paying for a taxi to his apartment building on Long Island had an instant salutary effect on his well-being. He walked out of the office with more vigor than he had shown even before the accident on some days.

When he left the office, Claire, Debbie, and Matt openly ridiculed what none of them had mentioned to Bill when he was there, although when they had first seen him, they had stared at it in amused amazement. Even Katie, who normally did not join in their discussions, had something to add. The irresistible subject of their ridicule was his hair. At one point, Debbie went so far as to call it something out of a horror movie.

The following day, a Friday, Bill worked until his usual finishing time. The energy and drive he had summoned the day before when leaving the office had deserted him and would not come back, as much as he wanted it to. He could only walk slowly, very slowly, to Penn Station to catch the train home. Commuters streamed past him on the sidewalk and in the underground passages to the Long Island Railroad track, where he needed to go. He had never walked so slowly in his life and felt like a seventy-year-old man, until a man, who looked like he was close to eighty years old, hurried by him with everyone else. Then he felt he had turned ninety years old. He tried to move a little faster, lest a centenarian race by him, too, leaving him to think he was the oldest person alive. Sadness settled upon him, as he wondered why he had fallen.

Due to his creeping pace, he missed his regular train and the one after that. The next one was already boarding passengers, when he arrived. He gently entered the first car and walked hesitatingly like someone unsure where to sit, although he wasn’t unsure at all. When he finally came to an empty row, he took the window seat. He had walked nearly to the end of the car, before coming to this empty row. He placed his briefcase in the aisle seat next to him. Normally, he set it on the floor near his feet, but today he wasn’t in the mood for company.

Moments before the train departed, his attention was arrested by the dazzling appearance of a tall, blonde woman boarding the front of the car. She seemed to be around thirty years old. Her exotic demeanor indicated that she came from somewhere in Eastern Europe, maybe the Ukraine or Russia. Bill couldn’t pull his eyes away from her. She was attractive, slim with a large bust, and dramatically dressed in a miniskirt with a low-cut, short-sleeved top and sleek, high-heeled shoes. She was stunning, except for a noticeable air of hardness and determination in her behavior, which, along with her rather big bones, took away from her feminine appearance. Bill couldn’t detect any flaw, however. To him, she was a perfect female specimen.

She walked through the car, looking intently at all of the male passengers, gazing like a cat in search of prey. Bill thought she was looking for a seat, so when she looked at him, still some rows away, he flashed her a big smile, which she returned after looking at him coldly for a few seconds, as if she was uncertain. He removed his briefcase from the aisle seat, and when she arrived at the row, she placed her small overnight bag in the overhead rack and sat down next to him.

“Thank you,” she said in heavily accented English.

“No, thank you,” Bill responded eagerly. After sitting alone at home for so many days, feeling sorry for himself, thinking of how he was going to find someone new to date, and worrying about how much it would cost to go back to the dating agency, he could barely contain his excitement. The answer to his prayers seemed to have arrived, and she wasn’t overdressed either. He was nearly trembling with anticipation. He was on the verge of throwing his arms around her. “It isn’t every day that I get to ride home with a beautiful, young woman next to me.” Looking at her long legs, which were almost completely visible, he said in admiration, “That must be the shortest skirt I’ve ever seen.”

“It’s warm today,” she replied, making a small attempt to pull her skirt down by the bottom hem.

“Yeah, it is warm,” Bill joked. “But you look more than warm. You look hot.” He smiled at her insanely.

She did not catch the joke and wondered why he was leering at her. She actually thought he was criticizing her. “I am a little hot,” she said. “I had to walk fast to catch this train. I walked fifteen blocks. There are so many people on the sidewalk. It’s hard to hurry.”

“Even if you walk slow, you’re still hot,” he said, grinning like a mad man. “You’re hot, because you’re hot. Other women could walk a hundred blocks. They could run a hundred blocks. And they would never be as hot as you. They might be panting like dogs, but they would never be hot. You’re hot, hot, hot.” Bill gestured with both hands, each time he said “hot.” “Do you see what I mean now?”

Laughing, she said, “I understand.” She began to relax, but only a little. She wondered if a rich man would act like Bill. In her country, a rich person would never act this way. A poor person wouldn’t act this way either. But Americans are different, she said to herself, sometimes very different.

“Since I’m feeling the heat, I’d better say my name is Bill. Hey, you know what? You and me together, we could be one hot bill. Get it?” He pointed at her, then at himself. “You, hot, me, Bill. Hot bill. A hot bill, that’s like a great show, a top ticket, an evening to remember. What do you say?”

“I’m Tanya,” she said, smiling at his corny joke. His ridiculous behavior was softening her social reserve. She extended her hand, and he gave it a hearty shake. “Pleased to meet you,” she said.

“Tanya,” Bill repeated, while happiness sparkled in his eyes. “What a lovely name. It goes really well with Bill, doesn’t it? Tanya and Bill. Bill and Tanya. Doesn’t that sound nice? Just like we were meant to be together. Don’t you think so?”

“Maybe,” she replied. Her eyes were busy scrutinizing him from head to toe. He wasn’t wearing any designer clothing that she could see. And she didn’t even want to look at his hair. It was badly botched. Only a man could go outside with hair like that, she thought. A woman would never allow herself to be seen in such an embarrassing state.

“Sure, it does,” he responded with exuberant cheerfulness. “It wasn’t any coincidence that you walked into this train car and sat down next to me. In this city of millions, where it’s so hard to find the person you should be with, fate was drawing us together. Fate is telling us that we should be together. I believe in fate. Don’t tell me that you don’t believe in fate. A beautiful, young woman like yourself should listen to what fate is saying. Fate is telling you...”

Tanya couldn’t see Bill’s wristwatch, which was covered by his sleeve cuff, so she interrupted his prophetic utterances regarding their fate. “Do you have the time,” she asked.

Bill raised his hand and pushed back his cuff. “It’s...”

“Is that a Rolex?” she asked, leaning closer to look. “Can I see?”

Gratified to feel her move closer, Bill raised his left arm for her to see the wristwatch. She pulled his wrist nearer to get a better view.

His head became rather light when she touched him, but he managed to say, “This thing? Nah. This isn’t a Rolex. I got it on the street. Talked the guy down ten dollars. Only had to pay forty.”

She let go of his wrist and sat back in her seat. Rich people can be eccentric, she thought, and they can take pride in wearing cheap clothes, bargain wristbands, and hair disasters. But to her, it seemed less and less likely that Bill was well-off. Yet he did seem rather eccentric, or maybe that was how poverty made him appear. She had to find out whether he was rich or poor. Rich and poor men could act the same, she had seen, but she had to know for sure. Her self-interest was at stake. “You must have lots of investments,” she suggested, encouragingly.

“No. Not really. The ex-wife got most of what I had,” he admitted. “The divorce judge liked her. Thought she was the victim. It didn’t matter what I said. Every time I opened my mouth, the judge just gave her more and more. I learned why people say justice is blind. I learned that very well. It’s blind, deaf, and dumb.” Bill was happy to tell Tanya all the details, because of the interest she was showing in him, which he thought flowed from her swelling affection for him and naïve understanding of how the world operated. He was going to tell the cuddly, little kitten all she wanted to know.

“Do you have a big house?” Tanya asked. Her interest in hearing what he had to say was noticeably waning.

“No, I live in an apartment.”

“Which you own?” she wondered.

“I rent. Nothing to worry about as a renter. The person above me comes in late at night, sometimes wakes me up with his stomping, but that’s the only problem. Maybe if I wrote the person a note, the noise would stop. Now, I throw my shoes at the ceiling, and nothing happens.”

“Is it a two- or three-bedroom?”

“It’s a studio, a big studio. There’s a lot of closet space and a full-size kitchen. It’s nice. Very clean, very tidy. The place feels very spacious. You would like it.” Because Bill was conscious that living in a studio was always viewed as a weak point, he felt compelled to embellish the truth a little. As he well knew, contrary to what he implied, the apartment was rarely in the state that it was at the moment. With time, it would return to its typical dirtiness and disorganization. However, what he said wasn’t a lie, only an embellishment of what he thought would please Tanya and help clinch his courtship of her.

She, however, had become quite disillusioned. In the catalog of his net worth, which she was recording in her mind, there were no assets yet. A clean and tidy studio didn’t even reckon into her accounting, except as a negative outflow. In her native country, such an apartment might be a prized place to live in, but she wasn’t in her native country, and she didn’t want to go back there. She had to find out if he had any income and what that amounted to. What other reason, she asked herself, did she have for talking to him?

Without blinking, she looked directly at him and bluntly asked, “How much do you make?”

Bill was bewildered by this question. He paused. His hands dropped to his lap, and he looked at her, as if he saw her for the first time. He thought he had been leading this beautiful, young woman into the wonderful land of romance, where men and women lose themselves in mists of enjoyment, leaving their petty cares behind. He had already been thinking of what gifts—economical, of course—he might buy her and what nice, semi-expensive restaurants they might go to. He was hoping that she would like to swing dance, because he wanted to go dancing with her. But all his thoughts and hopes were rudely halted by her sudden inquiry. In those five words, he heard echoes of Linda, his ex-wife, and many other women he had dated. How could Tanya, who surpassed them all in youth and beauty, be so crass as to say something so typical? It had never crossed his mind to ask her the same question. In his worldview, first came love and way after that came the financial details.

“Isn’t it a little soon to ask that?” he replied. “We just met.”

An awkwardness ensued, as the stark difference in their point of views and the conviction each had that the other’s position was false made retreating to a neutral subject of conversation difficult. Tanya thought Bill was a ridiculous simpleton, if he imagined she would be interested in any man without a lot of money. He thought her a voracious harpy, if love wasn’t enough to make her content. There were periods of silences and scattered bits of dialogue, before he was able to start their chat flowing steadily again. She never showed as much interest in him or what he had to say, as she had at first. But by the time the train arrived at his station stop—she had further to go—he had the impression that their acquaintance was as strong as ever, and she would be calling him soon. A little doubt nagged at him, telling him she would not call, but his hope and willingness to believe that she would were far greater. He drove home from the station parking lot, making plans for their next happy meeting.

When the train left his station, she, on the other hand, picked up her overnight bag and walked into the next car, looking for a more eligible suitor. She didn’t give Bill another thought. As she moved between the cars, she raised her skirt a little.