We stared at each other for what seemed like an indecorous interval. “Well,” I said, “the pride you take in your work, while not excessive, is certainly contagious, Max,” I said. “I’ll take it. With whom should I speak to arrange the delivery?”
“You’re speaking with him,” he said.
“Really?” I said. “The head buyer also flies around with the magic carpets?”
“Not generally,” he said. “But you just bought the rug of a lifetime, which I know is not something you’re likely to do every week. So I can’t just let you walk out of here—I have to see you again. Beauty and humor have intruded upon the path of duty.”
“Is that a fact?” I said, unable to conceal my enchantment.
“It may be forward of me,” he said. “But when something feels right, it’s right. And it feels right to ask: Are you seeing anyone?”
“No, I’m not.”
“Would tonight be all right to schedule the delivery?” he said. “And then would you do me the honor of letting me take you to dinner after?”
I was just as astonished as Chester, my boss, would be later, saying this had to be the first time a rug buyer was given away free with the purchase of an R.H. Macy’s rug.
Max was my favorite type of person: He was funny, and he had character. He was also something else, which was a type of person I never encountered, or maybe never encountered anymore, not since my ways had become—if I admitted it—rather set. In an instant I’d caught myself imagining what my circle of friends might make of him, which prompted me to realize how small that circle had become: small and getting smaller with each wedding invitation and birth announcement. And now here was Max, a living reminder of the city I once knew or never knew, a city of accidents, a city that gathered the world to itself.
So what else could I do but say:
“Yes, that would be wonderful. I’m at 25 Fifth Avenue. In the Village. Top floor. See you at seven?”
*
We had one of those Friday dates that turned into an entire weekend, and by the end of it I loved him so much my larynx ached. Vulnerable love, incorrigible love. Love in which he was both the nausea and the sodium bicarbonate.
I arrived home at six and stripped to my slip so as not to get my dress dirty as I moved my furniture to the living room’s perimeter, the better for Max to lay down the carpet.
Then I dressed again, reapplied my Fleurs de Rocaille, and fixed my hair so it was, as Helen always put it, as shiny and tidy as my bank account. And then I waited. I sat on the davenport shoved against the wall and tried to read a book of poems I had picked up in the stacks at the Strand. It was Harmonium by Wallace Stevens, and I had been relishing it.
But my mind was like a puppy that wouldn’t remain on the sidewalk, and I got tired of tugging the leash to bring it back. I closed the book and looked out the window at the sky, now clear, washed by the rain, and let the breeze through the screen rush against my face. I resisted getting up and pacing.
Lucky for me he was punctual, and the buzzer sang out at seven o’clock sharp. Lucky for him the building had an elevator—the first such one I’d lived in—so getting the rug up all the way to my floor was not so horrible.
“Lillian,” he said. “You look lovely. And smell like a garden of exotic flowers. I hate to seem a brute on this occasion, just having met you and all. But would you mind awfully if I took off my suit jacket and dress shirt? Just so I can work.”
“Mind? I’d be sadder if you didn’t,” I said, and he laughed and set about the task in his bright white undershirt.
He was quick but not reckless, controlled but not deliberate. He was decisive—a man who didn’t doubt himself. His prowess came from grace as much as brawn; he had a boxer’s build, not a strongman’s. His doffed shirt revealed at his chest and armpits what I judged to be an entirely reasonable quantity of hair.
He saw me looking; he meant for me to watch him, and I didn’t turn away. I just bided my time with a few mildly provocative and entirely unnecessary adjustments to my makeup and wardrobe, returning the favor by giving him something to look at—and reminding him that while it might have been his rug, it was still my apartment.
“There we are,” he said, looking down at his handiwork. “Rolled out flat in no time flat. Want me to put the furniture back?”
“Sure,” I said, preferring an orderly room to a disorderly one, and also preferring to watch his muscular arms moving the pieces into their places rather than doing it myself. “I’ve always written ads about R.H. Macy’s’ outstanding customer service, but I had no idea how right I was.”
Afterwards he took me out for Italian food in Little Italy. He knew a place. Of course he knew a place—all our time together he knew a place for everything, and I adored that about him.
I told him what I wanted and he did the ordering.