Berkshire Bright Focus...

From The International Book of Quotations;

Profligacy: "Not joy but joylessness is the mother of debauchery."

                          Nietzche, Miscellaneous Maxims and Opinions (1879)

          It isn’t how long you wait for your life to improve that matters. It’s what happens during the waiting time, the waking hours and the dream-filled ones as well. It’s where the mind goes during that time. After Tooie’s death I wasn’t really sure where my life was any longer. Or what it was about. Or even why it was still a life. I only knew that my dreams were filled with her, with Lainie and Max, with the boys at the home and with a woman named Suzanne Aurelia Pitts.

          Lainie, Tooie, Max, even the boys, were real. Suzanne Aurelia Pitts was a dream. I had invented her out of whole cloth, cut away the incidentals and left on the table the shape, the form, the concept of a woman who could be all of the people I loved, all rolled into one special person. I had dreamed her up one of those nights when I thought everything was going well for me. My work was satisfying,; I had stopped missing Lainie and Max was on his own and doing well; Tooie was inventing new bows and wraps and I couldn’t have asked for more. But for some reason, I did. I wanted that perfect something, someone, in my life.

          Suzanne Aurelia Pitts was the woman I created in my imagination and made into something wonderful, real and attainable. She was thirty-seven, a widow with money, had a great figure, dark blonde hair, not brassy or yellow, but dark, nearly brown but not ever brown really. She was my height, exactly, so in heels she was just a bit taller than me. She had long slender legs, almost a shade too thin, really, her only flaw. Her mouth was a natural red with an equally natural upturn into a subtle smile. Her eyes were green with flecks of brown and red in them. Her fingers were long and slender too, but they were perfect. Her breasts were cuppable in my hands and felt warm and solid and fleshy. Her hips were their match. So was her ass.

          I loved Suzanne Aurelia Pitts. That was all there was to that. I loved her. I wanted her. She just wasn’t real. So I dreamed of her all the time, awake or asleep. And after Tooie died, I cried for both of them, for the double loss I felt for the woman I’d lived with in reality and the woman I’d lived with in my imagination. They were both lost to me somehow.

          Until I opened the book and found her. I’m speaking now of the telephone directory book. I opened it up and looked for her name and there she was. At least I thought there she was. S.A. Pitts was how the listing read. I knew that many women wouldn’t put their first name in the phone book for fear of being discovered to be single women. They used initials only. There was no address given either, but just a telephone number. I closed the book.

          I tried to forget that I’d found an S.A. Pitts in the local directory. I didn’t want to think she might be real, that I might have met her once, not invented her, but just remembered her somehow. I needed to talk to someone about this, but there wasn’t anyone I could call or meet and drink a cup of coffee with and chat about all this. I just didn’t know anyone I could trust with this stuff. And then I thought about Max’s father. If there was anyone who might be able to handle such stuff it could be him.

          When I phoned him at home he sounded surprised. I suppose that was due to the fact that I had never called him before. Usually it was Lana I talked with. Not Rob.

          "Rob, it’s Vinnie Compton."

          "Vinnie, yeah, how are you doing, man?"

          "Thanks for asking. I’m going to be fine."

          "That’s great. I know how fond Lana is of you."

          "Yeah, she’s been a good friend to us."

          "So, hold on, let me get her for you."

          I had to speak quickly. "No, Rob, actually, I was calling you." There was a silence at the other end and I was sure I’d not spoken fast enough to catch him. Then I heard his voice again.

          "Me? Really?"

          "Yeah, yeah." I paused a second. "I need your help...your advice, I guess."

          "My advice? Well, sure, okay. What do you need?"

          "Rob, there’s a...a woman..."

          "Oh, I see. You need a room."

          "No. Not that. I need to know... well, how to go about..." I just couldn’t say it all at once. It felt so strange to be talking about Suzanne.

          "Surely by now, Vinnie, you’ve had a woman."

          "Oh, yeah, it’s not that. I know how...I mean I know what to do."

          "Okay." He sounded a trifle impatient suddenly, so I just blurted out the whole sordid tale about inventing this woman and finding her in the phone book. He laughed. I mean he laughed out loud and I blushed. Halfway across town I blushed.

          "So what’s your problem, Vinnie. Call her up and see if she is this Suzanne Aurelia Pitts or if the initials don’t even come close. If they don’t it’s over. Simple."

          "But what if they do, Rob?"

          "Then, maybe, you didn’t invent the woman. Maybe you met her somewhere once and remembered her and later on you thought you made her up."

          "And then what?"

          "Hell, I don’t know. Ask her out?"

          "What good would that do? I’m an old man and she’s a beautiful young woman."

          "Well, you don’t know that for sure, do you? You haven’t met the real one, at least not for a while."

          "I don’t know. Rob"

          "Call her." He sounded so sure of himself. "Call her and ask if she’s the woman you met...maybe even through Tooie."

          "I don’t know."

          But he was right and I knew it. It was the only way to find out who she might be. I thanked him and he asked me to let him know if there was anything "practical" he could do to help me out. I promised to let him know.

          I waited about a week before I tried the number. I was nervous as I dialed it. I had poured myself a pretty stiff drink and put it down on the telephone table in the front hallway. I seated myself and took a sip, then put it down, picked up the receiver and dialed her number. I waited, listening, as it rang. On the fifth ring I was about to hang up when I heard someone pick up the handset on the other end of the line.

          "Hello?" said a female voice. It was sensual, quiet and almost whispered.

          "Miss Pitts?" I said, asking the question that I knew would get an affirmative answer.

          "Who is this, please?"

          "Suzanne Pitts?" I asked without answering her question.

          "Yes, who is this?"

          "Well, I...,my name is Vincent Compton and I...."

          "Really? Vinnie Compton?"

          I took a deep breath. This was going much better than I’d imagined it could.

          "Yes," I said, "Vinnie Compton."

          "I can’t believe you’re calling me," she said.

          "This is Suzanne Aurelia Pitts, right?" I muttered.

          "Vinnie, you know I hate that awful middle name."

          My mind was raging over the blank pages of memory that had no real remembrance of this woman. Nothing was imprinted there.

          "I didn’t know that," I said blankly.

          "Yes, you did. We talked about it."

          "I don’t remember that," I said.

          "Shall I tell you all the details?" she asked me. I gulped and said yes. "We were in my father’s car and you pushed and pushed and pushed me to tell you my middle name. You were guessing at it and coming up miles away from it, things like Alice and Annie and Arabella. When I wouldn’t tell you, you started to tickle me and when I couldn’t stand that any longer, I blurted it out. Boy, it took you by surprise. I practically had to deny it to get you to look at me again."

          I didn’t remember this at all.

          "Oh sure," I said. "I remember it now." I didn’t, but it was easier and more polite to just say I did.

          "Good." I could hear her smiling through the wires. "So how are you?"

          "My wife died recently. I’m okay, though."

          "Your wife? Oh, God, I’m sorry."

          "It’s okay."

          "Are you doing all right, Vinnie?"

          "I’ll be okay. I’ve been thinking about you, though."

          "About me? Why?"

          "I’m not really sure. I just was."

          "How did you find me? It’s been years, Vinnie."

          "I...I looked you up in the phone book and there you were. Real."

          "Well, of course I’m real."

          "I just thought...I wondered if maybe I made you up in my head sometime."

          "Well, it has been years since I saw you."

          "Suzanne, it’s been eons."

          "Okay. Eons."

          "And you’re not...married?"

          "Me? Vinnie, come on. Who’d marry me?"

          That set me back. Maybe I’d remembered her name somehow but not who or what she was. Maybe she was ugly, or something worse.

          "I’m sure you’ve had your chances, Suzanne."

          "Well, I wouldn’t say no one ever asked me, Vinnie."

          That was good. That was better.

          "So why didn’t you?"

          "Maybe I was waiting for the right guy. Some ticklish guy, maybe, to call me up and ask me."

          "Okay."

          "Was that a question, Vinnie?"

          "No, no. A statement. Just a statement."

          "So, tell me about you," she invited, so I told her about me and Tooie and about my work and about a lot of other things too. It ended with me inviting her for a cup of coffee the next morning and with her accepting. When we hung up I felt okay about it all, but worried. I didn’t know what she looked like or what to expect. I didn’t know how to handle a date. I called Rob back and told him how it all went.

          "So, man, what can I do for you now?"

          "Come with me," I said immediately.

          "On your date? I don’t think so."

          "Please, Rob, come with me as a friend."

          "She’ll think you’re into orgies or something."

          "No, no. I’ll say I just ran into you and while waiting we got to talking. That’s all. She’ll buy that, won’t she?"

          "I don’t know. I don’t think I would."

          "Rob, please do this. I don’t want to be alone with her."

          "You’re scared she won’t be the girl of your dreams," he said.

          "I’m scared, sure, but not of that exactly. I’m scared she will be the girl in my dreams. I’m not sure I could handle that."

          I described the girl, Suzanne Aurelia Pitts, that I dreamt about. I had given him the details before, and now I repeated them all.

          "She sounds like a dish."

          "I know. That’s what scares me. How am I supposed to handle all that?"

           "Like in your dreams, Man."

          "I don’t think so."

          "Look. Here’s the deal, Vinnie. I’ll come with you, have a cup and then leave. I’ll leave no matter what she looks like. Unless you ask me for a place to go. Then I’ll do what I do, okay? No charge for you."

          "That’s not going to happen, Rob. After this coffee I have to get to work."

          "Yeah, that’s what men always say before they book the room." He laughed again. Then he hung up. I was more confident, knowing that I wouldn’t have to start out alone with this strange woman who had memories of me that I didn’t share.

          The next morning Rob met me near the Schraffts on Central Park South about nine in the morning. We went in, got a corner table and ordered some coffee. A few other folks drifted in and sat in pairs at tables or at the counter. Then, at 20 minutes after the hour, the door opened and a woman came in. I looked at her and I knew she was Suzanne Aurelia Pitts. She had to be.

          She had dark blonde hair, not brassy or yellow, but dark, nearly brown but not ever brown really, just the way she did in my dreams. Her mouth was a natural red with an equally natural upturn into a subtle smile. Again it was the smile I knew so well. Her eyes were green with flecks of brown and red in them, but they had small, gray bags under them where the skin was too tender, too soft. She was sixty or so, not a young woman at all. I waved at her until she spotted me, than I put my hand down and watched her walk over to the table.

          She had long slender legs, almost a shade too thin. Her skirt was short and the coat she wore missed hitting her hemline by about an inch. The colors weren’t a good match. She sat down and looked at me.

          "You got old, Vinnie," she said. "I never thought of you as old."

          "You’re not the same young girl you were, Suzanne," I said, knew it was not gallant, and hated myself for it. "This is my friend. Rob. I bumped into him outside and asked him to join me while I waited for you."

          She gave him a smile and a nod, then turned back to me.

          "Did you always look like that?" she said. "Weren’t you much handsomer?"

          "Probably. Death takes its toll."

          "Yeah. It does."

          "So you’ve lost someone too." I said simply.

          "I’ve lost everyone. My husband divorced me and I went back to my old name, so I even lost the name I acquired. My son died young. My parents are gone. I’m alone, now."

          "Wow." I bit my lip after saying that. I felt so stupid.

          "Yeah, wow. I have no friends any more. My husband took the ones we had together and I’m not easy with people like I used to be with you."

          I was wracking my brain trying to remember something about her other than how she looked. Nothing was there.

          "So, how did you and Vinnie know each other?" Rob asked her, coming to my rescue. I breathed a sigh.

          "He didn’t tell you?" she asked Rob who shook his head, then punched me in the shoulder gently.

          "He never says anything, this one. He’s Mister Discretion, he is."

          I smiled wanly and looked away from him.

          "Okay," she said, "if he won’t tell you I will."

          "Nice," said Rob.

          "You don’t mind if I skip a few details, Vinnie, do you?"

          I nodded, than shook my head, then nodded again.

          "I’ll call that a yes," she said. "It was in bed we met," she said next, like a lyric from a song in a Julius Monk revue I’d seen at the Upstairs at the Downstairs not long before this, maybe eight or nine years earlier.

          "That’s a funny thing," Rob said.

          "Yeah, I guess it was. His wife, Tooie, did you ever know her?" I could hear Rob nodding. "Well, Tooie met me at a party and invited me over to her place for a party, so I went and Vinnie was there and we had a fun little time and then he took me home. It was a sweet gesture, I thought at the time. I mean it was an orgy and then he took me home. I was still living at home with my folks and I had my dad’s car that night, so I didn’t really need an escort, but he insisted. I figured he just wanted to get into my pants again, without Tooie watching, but no. He just wanted to be a gentleman and see me home."

          I turned to look at her again. This time, the story on the table, she looked instantly familiar and I remembered her. Every word she said was absolutely true. I smiled again, but this time I felt warm when I smiled and not at all uncertain about things. She returned my smile.

          "I should get going, I think," Rob said, and he stood up and held out his hand to her. "Nice to meet you, Suzanne." He bent over and kissed the back of her hand and then he turned to me, smiled, nodded and moved off. I was alone with the girl of my dreams.

          "I’ve been dreaming about you," I said without meaning to say it.

          "So, you looked me up?"

          "Yeah. So you got married? You said yesterday, ‘who’d marry me?’ What did you mean by that?"

          "I meant, now. I was married for a few years to a guy I never really got to know well. He ignored me most of the time and I ignored him."

          "How could he possibly ignore a looker like you?" I asked her.

          "Well, he wasn’t much on looks and I’m not much of an intellect, I guess."

          "I don’t see that."

          "And after the kid died, he had a bad attack of influenza when he was ten and they lost him in the hospital, Mike and me just drifted."

          "Tooie and I never had kids."

          "Yeah, well, I’m not surprised."

           I wanted to be hurt by that, but I wasn’t. She was just being honest and I knew it.

           "So, what do you do now?" I asked her.

           "I wait."

           I took a breath. I shut my eyes. I saw the girl I remembered, I dreamt. I opened my eyes and looked at the real flesh and blood woman in front me.

          "I know what you mean."