Short Story: Close Friends

Short Story: Close Friends

I recognized her at once. She walked across the lobby of The Double Tree Hotel with the same look, a lack of concern. The look she had worn as a girl — well, what you could see of her face, that is, given the huge owl-like glasses that she had come to favor in those years, when we were close friends growing up in the sad, run down neighborhood of Philadelphia known as Moon Alley. We had palled around with one another during our teens and twenties; memorable days of long hot summers in which the two of us hanged out in the shade and shadows beneath the elevated train tracks, the city’s signature that she would characterize in her novel as, “a blue twisting scar zigzagging across the city.” Her name was Margaret Duffy. I called her ‘Duff.’

“I recognized you at once, “I said, offering my hand, and putting a quick kiss on her cheek, and feeling dumb for having said that, as if the three years were fifty and we had disappeared into old age.

She pulled her glasses from her face.

“How dare you kiss me like that?” she said with a frown. And then she threw her arms around me and kissed me on the mouth. “There,” she said, her finger touching away a trace of her lipstick from the corner of my mouth, “you’ll take that and like it, too.”

We embraced for the longest moment. And when we moved apart we continued to hold one another, and examine one another’s face, three years meaning little, actually nothing at all.

I had always found Duff to be more than merely pretty, to be ‘nice-looking’ in fact, for that means more than pretty to me; the phrase carries, a delicate demeanor, an attention to manners, a respectability and clear sense of refinements that merely pretty girls—so enamored with their prettiness as they often are, frequently lack. And besides, that additional sub-total of nice-looking—eyes, hair, bright facial expressions—is anchored by character. And that’s what I always saw in Duff, not merely the parts, but the prize sum total of those parts, character.

She was tall and thin, and had happy eyes, ‘water blue’, she had insisted one day while I was flirting with her. I told her that her light blue eyes were hidden by her oversized glasses. I had always reveled in the little sparkle that emanated from her expressive eyes, alive always, and watched her blush at the smallest compliment. She had flaxen hair that fell to her shoulders, bangs that were scissor-sharp across her forehead, cut just above her eyebrows.

‘They’re not bangs,’ she once reprimanded me. ‘That’s called, a fringe’, you fool’ she said, asserting her Irish heritage.

‘Ok, fringes,’ I answered.

‘No. It’s a fringe. Singular,’ she had laughed back then.

Years later, when I reminded her of that moment, she asked with some astonishment ‘You remember that?’ I recall that I merely smiled as an answer, for the truth was, I remembered everything about her, everything we talked about. We were in our early twenties then, she in college; me banging on the admissions door; she encouraging me to kick the door in. Which I ultimately did; I received my degree two years after her; and then we each received our doctorates one year apart. But, close friends or not, we had lost one another for those several years. Until the other day, when out of the blue, she phoned me to say she was in town.

We walked across Rittenhouse Square Park to Spruce Street and then west in the direction of Fitler Square. The softest breeze lifted from the Schuylkill River and carried toward us a slightly acrid odor. But the trees lining Spruce Street soon took care of what the river gave up as leafy elms fanned above us; a stretch of early evening light slipped through the branches, creating a lightly washed out lens on the brownstones flanking us. At each frequent intersection of narrow side streets, the full evening sun turned the three story houses to a burnt sienna, and I felt that this moment of sun and breeze, of sentinel elms and stately architectures, all this with Duff by my side, a precious evening.

She shifted her shoulder bag and moved closer to me.

“You didn’t want to talk all that much yesterday did you?” she asked. She draped her arm around my shoulder; I reached around her waist, held her just above her hip, but my fingers slid from her rib cage to her hip bone. She looked at me, her eyes hidden behind her huge sunglasses, but her smile was varnished with joy, “You don’t have much to hang on to there, do you? Unless,” she nuzzled her nose against my face like a puppy, and finished her thought with a light-hearted “oh, unless you’re into bones, of course.” At this we both laughed.

“You know me,” I said, “never one for telephones. I can’t think of a worse way to flatten a conversation. That perfect instrument for non-communication.”

“Ah, yes, my man, and his collection of quirks.”

“Look, I didn’t want to lose a word on the phone that I could use in person with you. It’s been a long time between drinks, know what I mean.”

Duff looked up, and answered, “If you plan to flatter me, or be extra kind to me, your miserable clichés won’t get you far. I’m a big deal novelist, you know.”

“Soon to become a major motion picture by Phoenix Studios’,” I prefaced this with a flourishing whistle, for those were the exact words on the dust jacket of her best selling novel.

“That’s right, Bub. You got a problem with that?” Duff said, putting her fist to my jaw, wrinkling her nose.

We approached the restaurant and paused before the wide sweep of steps that led to the front door. There was no sign, no indication that a restaurant was located here, only the address on a polished brass plate, 2442 Fitler Sq. The windows were too high from the sidewalk to look in, but when we stepped back to the curbstone we could see a crisp white table cloth, fresh flowers in a small white milk vase, two chairs, and the tear-shape lights suitably, romantically dim.

“This must be it,” I said.

“We’ll make this it,” Duff said. She took my hand and together we climbed the wide brownstone steps to the front doors. She pointed to the bright brass address plate, smiled at me, and opened the door. From the vestibule forward to the rear of the house the oak flooring was adorned with an oriental runner that covered the length of the narrow hallway. The walls greeted us in explosions of colors in what were doubtlessly museum copies of well-known German Expressionist paintings; a Gabriele Muenter, then a Berlin street scene, obviously by Kirchner; and finally an unmistakable Pechstein that we paused before. It was of three nudes in an umber and rust landscape, their burnt umber flesh melding with the landscape, and yet apart from it in color only by the thick and bold brown curvatures of line that highlighted the torsos and limbs of each nude.

“You know this, don’t you?” Duff asked, seeing my smile broaden as I moved closer to the painting.

“Yes.”

“Ah, you like them, sir?” A gentleman standing behind us had spoken softly.

“I do,“I answered. The man presented himself as elegantly as the paintings had been presented. “The Pechstein is extraordinary. Who copied it?”

He adjusted his silk tie before he answered. “And if I told you it was an original?” he smiled.

“Don’t do that.” Duff had answered for me.

He bowed slightly. “No, they are copies, of course. I had them done in Munich. A painter I know. Quite good aren’t they?”

“Yes, they are that. Quite good,” I said, as I continued to examine the Pechstein.

“Copies, yes. But I paid handsomely for them,” he spoke from behind my back, then moved to my side and looked at the painting with me.

“They were worth it,” I said. I moved closer to Duff to allow him space so that he was directly in front of the painting. She slipped her hand in mine. A moment later he asked us to follow him to the garden door. He opened the door and with his arm fully extended invited us to proceed before him. Duff gasped as we walked past the open French doors and into the garden.

The gentleman smiled at Duff, introduced himself as the owner, and said to her, quietly, “Yes, yours is the usual reaction.”

“It’s magnificent,” Duff said in a hushed voice, respectful of the elegant and serene setting that lay before us. We were led to our table in a slow deliberate manner that allowed us to take in the idyllic interior of this oasis. Our host seated us and bid us goodbye.

The courtyard—it was that, not merely a garden—restaurant had bluestone flooring trimmed with Philadelphia’s traditional deep-red bricks that had been smoothly mortared with ochre-colored cement. Genteel magnolias and huge holly bushes shaded the spacious areas between the tables—the wrought-iron legs of the tables and chairs had been tastefully painted in colonial blue, affecting a perfect, delicate contrast to the bluestone floor. Urns of waving petunias encircled a Victorian era fountain that offered the soft sound of water trickling from the fountain’s upper bowl and into the lower catch basin. Neither of us spoke; it was as if we were enclosed in a fantasy that fell beyond our imagination.

“Is there a scent of apple in this garden?” I asked.

“Well,” Duff said, ignoring my question, “can I pick ‘em, or can I pick ‘em? This is positively beautiful," she sighed.

She had removed her sunglasses while examining the paintings, and had replaced them with her prescription lenses; the huge round pale frames with narrow temple arms were identical to her sunglasses. Her hair fell to her shoulders, and with her sharply cut fringe and unusual glasses, and her late summer tan, I saw the face of the nineteen year old girl that I had secretly loved during the years we had been close friends. She had named us Mr. and Mrs. Plato, ‘masters of the Platonic relationship,’ she would say jokingly to the others who hanged out with us in Moon Alley during those years, years in which we knew little of love, and even less why we were not encumbered with the occasional cascade of feelings that had puzzled our contemporaries.

“We love books, you and I,” she had said back then. “That is our love.”

Duff lifted her face and took a deep breath. I smiled and then took a deep breath of my own. An air full of the warm bluestone that had been slaked with water from the fountain; the fading sunlight bruising the sky; candle light flickering; bright buttercups in a small milk-white vase in the center of the table, and Duff in her summer dress. Duff with her water-blue eyes, eyes smiling and now fixed on mine. All this in a sequence of silences, save the trickle of water.

We ordered Goulash Suppe and extra brown bread, German Weiss Beer, and in advance, coffee and a slice of Klimt Chocolate Torte. She saw that I was pleased.

“I welcome us both to Vienna,” she said, after the waiter brought us our tall glasses of beer. We touched glasses and drank. “Half of this is head,” she said pointing to the golden tinged crest that topped the beer.

“Schaum,” I said. “It’s Schaum, in German.

“I promise to remember that for the rest of my life, Hans,” she laughed. “Sorry, I’m being fresh,” Duff said, still snickering.

“What’s so funny?”

“German names. German names are funny. ‘Kunegunde’ You don’t think, ‘Kunegunde’ is a funny name?”

“You’re looking for the funny names. How about….”

“How about, Wiltraud?” she said quickly, as if she had prepared for this. “You don’t think that’s funny?” And as she laughed she took my hand in hers. She lowered her face and turned to the fountain. She increased the pressure on my hand and slid her other hand across the table so that both our hands were joined. When she turned to me I saw that her eyes had filled with tears, her face suddenly forlorn.

“What is it, Duff? What’s this all about?”

She turned from me again. I saw a single tear fall. She released my hand and touched her face with the napkin. She looked at me and attempted a smile, but worked to hold back her tears. “Duff. Please tell me. What is it?”

She moved her beer glass closer and leaned toward me. “What happened to us ‘back in the day’, growing up? I’ve been thinking so hard about us lately. Why were we exempt from the raging hormones common to teenagers, to kids in their twenties? I mean, let’s face it, you know as well as I do that everybody in Moon Alley was on fire…bunch of exploring nymphs and satyrs looking for dark places behind the railroad cars….And us? We were galloping to the main library to borrow books! How did we allow it to happen that we never really had the love affair we should have had? It’s driving me mad, Bobby.”

I looked at her, stunned at first instant. And then I laughed.

“Oh, what the hell are you laughing about? Here I am embarrassing myself and worse, I don’t even care that I am. Oh, brother! How pathetic a person I’ve become.”

“No, you simply sound like the old Duff, the Duff I knew ‘back in the day.’”

“I was waiting for you to say, “The Duff I fell in love with,” she said, forcing a smile onto her sad expression.

We touched beer glasses to that, and drank more of the beer. And then we drained what was left in the glass. I wanted to answer her remark, but I didn’t know how.

“Get a load of this! Remember the day that we were alone in the apartment? My mother was out for some reason, and it had started to rain while we were on the el? We had been in town and grabbed some books at the library and got caught in the downpour. I knew my mother wasn’t home, so we ran in and bolted up the stairs. My cot was open in the kitchen, and I flopped on it, and you sat on it at the other end. I was thinking of this last week. Ok, I thought of it every day of last week, because, you see, this is so indicative of ….Oh, anyway, I’m on the cot reading Moll Flanders, for God sakes, and you’re reading a Lady Chatterley’s Lover, and we’re practically kicking one another for space on the cot! I asked myself just last week, ‘why weren’t we in one another’s arms?’ Why didn’t we kiss? Moll Flanders, Bobby! And you with Lady Chatterley’s Lover! Just by reading those two, we should have been ravishing one another.”

We both laughed heartily, her tears reappeared, but this time they were tears of good memories, tears of joy.

“Would you excuse me? Only for a moment. Seriously, not more.” I got out of my chair and walked to her chair. I took her face in my hands, looked into her wet eyes, and kissed her. And then I took my seat.

“See? Only a moment.”

“My hero!”

The waiter arrived with our goulash soup and bread. Duff readjusted her napkin and sighed. “Sorry for pouncing on you with all of this. But it was worth the kiss.” And then she threw her head back and smiled, and pushed her glasses over the bump on her nose. Her eyes glistened with tears. ‘There,” she announced. And then, “Let’s eat.”

“Slowly,” I cautioned, eyeing the large bowl of goulash, the stack of thickly sliced German bread.

We spoke of Moon Alley. We spoke of graduate school. We spoke of teaching. We spoke of writing, she now writer-in-residence across the river at the University of Pennsylvania, and I acting head of the art history department at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art, both us with book in the book store windows, and both of us with prestigious appointments in prestigious institutions.

“We’ve come a long way from Moon Alley; she said with a seriousness that I matched.

“A long way up the ladder,” I agreed.

And when the dessert cart arrived, and we saw the four inch high wedge of chocolate named after the famous—as well as infamous Austrian painter, Gustav Klimt—I asked that our dessert and coffee be served later. “Fur jetzt, eine Flasche Mineralwasser, bitte.”

The waiter grinned and nodded and returned only a minute later to open the bottle and fill our glasses; he left the bottle of water on the table. Duff looked at me.

“Do you miss Munich?”

“No.”

“Do you miss me?”

“Yes.”

“I like that. A man of two words,” she said, drinking her water, but not taking her eyes off me.

“Do you think I haven’t thought about all of this?” I asked her. "Do you think I didn’t wake up one day, and rehash our life growing up in Moon Alley? Just listen to this. Do you remember the night I borrowed that used car that got swapped around among the guys, that….”

“….Oh, my God, Bobby, how ‘bout that pile of junk!” she interrupted excitedly.

“Listen a minute, Duff. I had the car and we drove to the airport. We parked in the very back to watch the planes take off and land. That’s where everyone else parked to make out. But we? No, we were trying to figure out a way to get me into the university. You had your full scholarship to Ursinus College at that time, and we spent a couple of hours trying to come up with some essay points for me; you made a list a mile long….”

Her water-blue eyes. Her long arms, slender, tanned. Her summer dress, her sandals. I hoped at that moment that we both understood that something had existed back then, something more than just close friends, and that anything was possible now that our hidden feelings had been revealed.

I took her hand in mine. “I had often wished in these past years Duff, that you had been a bit less clever, less quick-thinking, and that as a kid you had never thought up the Mr. and Mrs. Plato line that we crazily lived up to.”

She locked her eyes on mine. “I’ve thought of us as being fearful of what might happen had we allowed it to happen. Sure, if only we had become romantic instead of me being so clever. I believe that we avoided any hint of romance for fear of ultimately losing one another when the romance ebbed…or died the natural death that we saw all around us. We would have ceased being friends—I reasoned all of this just recently, as you can guess. I know now how horrible that would have been for both of us, considering that we had truly only one another as friends.” she paused, head down she fingered her glass for a moment, and then continued.

“The way we grew up….scratching for every dime; food-bank kids on welfare. No one wanted us, but us.”

“’Love wears many faces,’” I said, quoting from her novel.

“Didn’t I read that somewhere?” And then she spoke in the most direct and natural voice. I was stunned by her nonchalance for she could not have surprised me more if she had said that she had become an astronaut, and that tomorrow morning she was blasting off into space on a journey to Mars.

She said, “I love you, Bobby. And I’ve come back to Philly because I know in my heart that you love me, too.”

And then she put her finger to her lips to still me; “Don’t,” she said quickly, though without the harshness the word could have carried. “I know that you are not married, not engaged to be married and not otherwise involved in any relationship with another woman,” she informed me in the same matter-of-fact manner, but with the formality of an attorney.

“And how do you know all of this?” I asked.

“Bobby, I asked around before I accepted Penn’s offer. I spoke to your buddy, Twardzik, and also—don’t get angry, your sister. I told her I was just catching up, that I’d be in Philly on the book tour and wanted to ring you…and I begged her not to tell you so that I might surprise you. Told her I’d be speaking and reading at Temple University.”

“Jesus, Duff!”

“I was discreet and persuasive. You’d be surprised how being ‘semi-famous’ can get people to do favors for you, and without them thinking about the end result. Twardzik was easy, your sister, easier.” Duff, a bit softer with her tender tone, added, “I would not be here if you were involved with someone else.”

The waiter rolled the dessert cart to our table. He moved the candle to the side of the table along with the milk-white vase of buttercups. He served us the torte and coffee-Viennese, refilled our water glasses, and slowly moved the cart to another table.

We nibbled away at the cake, each of us alternately slicing bit-sized pieces, and each of us releasing our forks and pausing longer and longer between pieces to sip the coffee. As we ate our way toward the huge three-tiered crescent of shaved dark chocolate and mousse filling, I thought of how she had always written the rules, how she had set the directions that we should follow. And follow we did, and did without turning back.

Suddenly the lights inside the brownstone dinning rooms were turned up to create a radiant illumination of the interior of the three story brownstone. The strong white lights behind the windows and French doors that opened onto the courtyard fell onto the bluestone flooring where it sent forth numerous shadows of blue and gray, shadows that moved across the floor in shifting shapes that, in the bath of this light, magically reformed the two complementary colors into one.

I held her eyes for the longest moment. She pushed her disc like glasses to the bridge of her nose as if to give me a better look at her water-blue eyes dancing behind those owl-like glasses.

I waved the waiter over and ordered more coffee Viennese.

The softest breeze swished through the magnolia trees. August’s crickets could be heard in the darkness beneath the holly bushes, and the water trickling from the fountain became evident again; the air still tinged with the alluring scent of apple. For the longest time neither of us spoke. And then Duff unfolded her arms and took both my hands, and closed her eyes.

“I smell apple. Do you?”

“I love you,” I said.

“I know,” Duff answered, slipping her fingers into mine. “I know.”