Cheapskate in Love

chapter 3

By the time he reached his apartment, Bill had already forgotten Helen and her questions about going dancing or having brunch. As he closed and locked his apartment door, he was remembering the failure of the evening with Linda. His train of thought inevitably reached back to all the other failures and unhappy relationships that he had had before. This night, as on almost every other night he spent in his apartment, Bill wallowed in reflections of his miserable personal past. There had been so many women, and the string of them had grown so confused and tangled in his head. Most of the time he could not recall with certainty what had happened with what woman, or how long he had been with whom, or even the names of them all. His mind drifted aimlessly amidst the disappointments, like someone hopelessly lost. From time to time, he would flinch with the memory of the humiliations and hurts he had received.

His bachelor pad was the perfect setting for such reveries. The good-sized studio was dirty, littered with junk, cheaply furnished, and dominated by a queen-sized bed, which was rarely ever made. It had been a long time since a woman had put a foot in his den.

On top of a beat-up Formica desk against one wall, there was an outdated desktop computer that worked sometimes. Bill occasionally thought of replacing it, until he calculated the cost. Near the desk, a sagging pleather sofa sunk toward the floor, opposite a faux wood console cabinet. On top of that piece of plastic sat an old television set that gave any program, even a news show with live coverage, the appearance of a documentary, because the screen quality was so poor. The fanciest furniture in the apartment was a dining set, a table with four chairs, which was a gift from his ex-wife, because she hated it and wanted it out of her home. Bill never used the dining set for eating, since he ate sitting on the couch. The table and chairs were covered with papers, unopened mail, pens, pencils, scissors, dirty laundry, things he had bought which had yet to be put away, and many other miscellaneous items of dubious value. Near the bed was a rickety wood dresser, another gift from his ex-wife. Its top was a general storage area for the overflow from the dining table, and its drawers were never fully closed. Clothing was bunched, scrunched, shoved into drawers, and hung over edges, as if it were trying to escape and flee the apartment.

After he locked the door, Bill dropped his briefcase on the floor, careless of where it landed. He then slung his overnight bag on top of the pile that was on the dining table. On the couch, he gently set down the box of chocolates.

Going to the one large window, he closed the blinds. His apartment was on the first floor of the two-story building, and it had a view of the swimming pool, which was about three hundred feet away. Bill never went swimming in the pool or sunbathing, although he sometimes thought about doing so, when he saw good-looking, young women out there. At those times, he made sure his blinds were open all the way, so they might see how much admiration he had for them, if they ever looked in his apartment’s direction. No woman ever did. The reputation he had built for himself, talking as freely as he did with some of the staff and tenants, discouraged most women from wishing to make any acquaintance with him.

After turning on the television, he took off his tie and threw it over a chair on top of other clothes. He tossed his Blackberry on the couch, away from the chocolates. Taking off his jacket, he took a couple of steps toward his closet to hang it up, but the dining chair was closer, so he placed the jacket on that, too. He then went into the short, double-sided galley kitchen, which was as dirty and disorganized as the rest of his apartment, and took out a small tumbler. After a moment’s thought, he put it back and began looking through cupboards, until he found a large glass, which he dropped some ice in. He poured the glass full of scotch and took a swig from the bottle before putting it away.

Returning with his scotch to the small living section of the apartment, he plopped down on the sagging couch, setting his drink on the floor. He put one of the cheap chocolate morsels in his mouth, changed the television channel, and made himself as comfortable as he could. Because he had to rise early in the morning for his commute, he could only spend a couple of hours trying to dull and deaden his irritating memories by watching TV.

Unexpectedly, his Blackberry rang. He picked it up from the couch, checked the number of the caller, and muted the television.

“Hi, Marie,” he said, answering the call.

Marie, his married sister, the one who was fond of trees and birds, as long as she could see them from her window or car, was calling him from her house in a part of Long Island even further away from Manhattan than where he lived. She was a few years younger than Bill, but in poorer health, because unlike him she had not been able to kick the cigarette habit. Her heavy weight, greater lack of physical exercise, and greyish complexion made her look older. She sat chain-smoking in her kitchen.

“Can you talk?” she asked with her raspy voice.

“I have nothing better to do,” he replied. “Linda and I broke up again.”

“How many times is it now?” she asked in disbelief and exasperation.

Bill was trying to watch the television show and escape his thoughts more than he was trying to listen to her. He replied distractedly, “Thirty, thirty-four, maybe thirty-five. Some breakups only lasted a few hours. It’s hard to remember.”

As siblings sometimes do, Marie launched into a full-scale criticism of her brother, without any hesitation. “Why do you date crazy women? Your ex-wife wasn’t one. She knew what she was doing in the divorce. She cleaned you out.”

“I don’t always date crazy women,” Bill replied, trying to think of one. “Susan wasn’t crazy.”

“What was she then?” Marie asked, remembering the woman in question.

“Confused. She couldn’t make up her mind.” Bill could see a clear distinction between Susan’s wavering uncertainty about him and Linda’s harsh rejections.

“Sounds crazy to me,” Marie stated decisively.

“If it’s so easy to make up your mind, why don’t you stop smoking? You’ve already had one stroke.”

Bill spoke without meaning to offend his sister. As the eldest child, he had a habit of passing advice to Marie, even though it was seldom wanted, and he seldom accepted any in return. If he had not been trying to watch the television, perhaps he would have perceived that she was in an unusually nervous, agitated state and been more guarded in what he said. But the honest words were out, and Marie began to cry. She extinguished the cigarette she was smoking in an ashtray, adding to the many cigarette butts already there. As tears trickled from her eyes, she whimpered and quivered like a miniature dog.

Annoyed that his television time was spoiled by an outburst of tears, Bill was no longer distracted and said gruffly, “OK, OK, we can talk about something else. What did you call for?”

After wiping her eyes and sniffling, she asked, “Has uncle Joe called you?”

“No, I haven’t heard from him,” Bill said.

Marie sniffled again and tried to shake off any lingering tearfulness. “I wonder how he’s doing.”

“If you’re concerned, call him up. He’s your uncle, too.” After a slight pause, in a more pleasant tone, Bill added, “By the way, I think I’ll come over Sunday for dinner. Is that all right? Linda and I probably won’t be back together again by then.”

“There won’t be anything special,” she responded, without sounding in the least delighted at his coming. She sat up straighter, brushing away any sign of moisture on her cheeks. She took another cigarette out of the pack and lit it.

“I know,” Bill said. “You’ve probably never watched a cooking show in your life.”

“I have, too,” Marie insisted. “Every Tuesday at seven o’clock...”

Before she could recite all the occasions on which she had seen cooking shows and what she had learned, Bill cut in, “Well, I have to go. Have to get up early for my commute. It’s a two-hour trip, you know. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” she said, deciding that she was not going to exert herself at all for the Sunday meal. In fact, she would wait a day and tell him that he had to bring some side dishes, if he wanted anything to go with the baked chicken she would pick up at the grocery store. That would stop him from taking her for granted, she thought.

Bill put his Blackberry down, relieved to be back in the privacy of his own reflections, as depressed as they were. Why were women so unreasonable, he thought. Why was it so hard for his sister to simply pick up the phone and call their uncle, rather than work herself into an emotional frenzy and call him? And what sense was there in her crying, when she knows she ought to quit smoking? Can’t they think, he wondered. He concluded that they couldn’t. That’s why they can be such nuisances, he said to himself. With that question settled, he unmuted the television’s sound, drank some scotch, and picked out two more chocolates from the box to chomp on. He was sure that he, being a man, could think.

When the box was picked clean and the scotch finished, Bill drifted away from the blare and blaze of the television, away from the haunting memories of his past, into a troubled sleep, stretched out on the couch. Stirred into consciousness by the television at one point during the night, he turned it off and continued to sleep on the couch, still fully clothed.

At five in the morning on Friday, when he should have started to dress for work, he was startled awake by the arrival of a text message on his Blackberry. He sat up, groggy from a poor night’s rest on the flimsy couch. Checking the message, he saw it was from Linda. It read: “Lets hike Saturday. Yesterday was bad. Linda.”

She’s crazy, Bill thought, just like his sister had said. She must have the most severe form of schizophrenia, he swore, to be able to belittle what had happened yesterday, as if she wasn’t responsible. And she must be completely delusional to think that overnight he could forget what she had done to him. Adamantly, he declared that he was surely not going to go hiking with Linda on Saturday, nor any other day. Nothing and no one could convince him to do that. Indeed, he was never going to speak to her again. Never ever was he going to see her. He wasn’t crazy after all.

With that rousing resolution that ignited every fiber in his body and hardened his will into steel, or at least a more solid substance than his usual, weak flesh, Bill was fully prepared to face another day. He deleted Linda’s message. After checking to see if any chocolate remained in the box or any watery scotch lingered in the glass, he went to shower and dress for work.