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July 8, 2001
“There
are but two basic stories of all times—Cinderella
and Jack the Giant Killer—the
charm of women and the courage of men.”
--F. Scott Fitzgerald
Leslie M. Kincaid was simply elegant.
Absolutely beautiful. Classically
beautiful. Effortlessly
beautiful. So beautiful that I
was a nervous wreck the moment I first saw her.
My accumulated confidence built over the past few years of dating and
mating crumbled in the presence of this girl.
My heart pounded and my throat tightened so that I could hardly speak. And when I did, I sounded as stiff as Dan Quayle on an
episode of Soul Train. It
would’ve been funny had it not been happening to me.
We’d met on the roof-deck bar of a floating
restaurant in the East River called The Water Club.
She wore a backless gown that looked so good I had to order another
vodka tonic. I was hosting one of my regular Thursday night parties and
she’d heard about it from a friend of friend.
I wasn’t the only guy who noticed her, but, to my great surprise, I
was the only one from whom she’d accepted the offer of drinks the next day.
Chumley’s was roaring the night we went.
And Leslie was the most beautiful mad brunette in a bar full of
lookers. A hidden hang-out for
the literary luminaries of the last century, Chumley’s is adorned with black
and white photos of its famous patrons. Kerouac,
Hemingway, Miller (both Arthur and Henry), Steinbeck, O’Neill, Mailer,
Fitzgerald. All of them were
straining their necks to get a look at Leslie.
Well, maybe not Fitzgerald.
He really loved his wife. Zelda
was her name. The portrait of the
two of them that hangs in the corner is my favorite.
They are both smiling serenely. The
permanent hosts of the Big Party that is Greenwich Village. They’d had their wedding reception at Chumley’s.
She would break his heart one day, but in that photo, they were forever
happy.
I must have worshipped at Chumley’s fifty times in
the past three years. “Jim!”
the owner shouted from across the bar as we walked in.
I smiled at him and nodded. Leslie
looked at me with pleasant surprise and what can only be called respect.
My heart swelled with pride as he told his bartender, “Drinks for my
friend and his lady.” I couldn’t have scripted that better. Scotty and Zelda smiled down on us. Wet glasses and swing music.
Cigarettes and seduction. Flickering
lights and hearty laughter. “Drinks
for my friend and his lady,” he’d said.
How sweet was that?
Those drinks started to work their magic
and I started to relax around this very neat girl.
Leslie wrote stories, too. But,
unlike me, she’d already enjoyed commercial success. She was smart and fun and never boring. We talked for hours about everything and with each sentence
my interest in this remarkable young woman deepened.
Four years ago.
Columbia, Maryland. The
perfect American suburb. Clean
streets, manicured lawns, properly spaced new apartment buildings.
Bennigan’s, Olive Garden, Appleby’s.
Repeat.
Four years ago.
Married. Wake up. Fight.
Drive to work. Sit in front of a blue screen all day. Drive home. Fight.
Sleep. Repeat.
Fighting, wounding, crying.
Sitting, staring, dying.
“I never imagined back then that I’d be living
any of this,” I said to Leslie as I finished my story and gestured to her
and to our intimate New York surroundings.
She looked down and tapped her ash into the tray.
“It’s reassuring and sad,” she said as the candlelight softly
held her cheek, “just how resilient the heart is.”
The gin had hit her now and her eyes and face looked a bit dimmed.
Still beautiful, but more real. “Today
is his birthday,” she said suddenly, lifting her head.
“I can’t believe that just dawned on me.”
I didn’t have to guess who “he” was.
Every girl has a “he” somewhere in the past.
Just as I had my “she.” I
only hoped this particular “he” was more distant than recent.
We were silent for a moment.
“What is past is prologue,” I said quietly as I
raised my drink.
Leslie clinked glasses gently.
“Where’s that from?”
“It’s carved into the front of the National
Archives in Washington,” I replied. Leslie
laughed.
“It was the best I could come up with under the
circumstances,” I added.
“It’s nice,” she smiled.
Then she leaned across the table and gave me the sweetest kiss.
I squeezed her hand as she did.
Bacardi at Boom.
Mohitos at Metronome. Vodka
at The Viceroy.
Dancing, kissing, smiling.
Laughing, loving, living.
At six a.m. we greeted the quiet, clear dawn on the
rooftop of her building overlooking Manhattan’s lower east side.
The spaghetti strap hung loosely off her shoulder as she rocked her
vodka tonic gently back and forth between her middle finger and thumb.
She was trying to share a closely held thought and I was trying to
understand it, but the night had finally caught up with us and we were both
less than successful. So she lit
the last two cigarettes, handed me one, and turned her face towards the sun.
She closed her eyes, but I kept mine on her beauty which looked so pure
in the light. I leaned over and
kissed her on the cheek, held it, then backed away to see a sleepy smile
rising from the corners of her mouth.
I made it home two hours later, exhausted, yet
exhilarated. Before crashing on
the futon, I got on my computer and sent Leslie an email telling her what a
great time I’d had and that this is exactly why I moved to New York and that
basically I loved her and wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.
The exact details of the email I can’t remember, but that was about
the gist of it. Pretty low-key,
appropriate, post-first-date kind of stuff.
A receipt of my email bearing her address arrived in
my inbox the next day. No reply.
Just an automatic acknowledgement that she had opened the letter.
And that was the last I ever heard from Leslie M.
Kincaid.
The next day, I sat at the bar at Chumley’s with a
friend of a dozen years.
“Well, you sure blew that one,” he smiled as he
sipped his beer.
“Thanks.”
“No, you really did.”
“Thanks again,” I said through the rim of my
glass.
“Oh come on, man.
Don’t be a wuss. They’ll
be others.”
“Yep,” I replied quietly, feeling both reassured
and sad.
Broadway Jim Sosnicky
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