“Vodka and red wine at my mother's house. And a shot of tequila when I got home.”
“That's really bad for you. Did you take aspirin?”
“Of course not, and believe me, brandy and champagne are worse.”
“I think you should take aspirin or a Tylenol or something.”
“I don't have any,” he said, lying in bed and feeling sorry for himself. But in a weird way, it was nice talking to her. She really was a nice person. If she weren't, she wouldn't have been listening to him complain about his parents, and tell her all his woes.
“How come you don't have Tylenol in the house?” And then she thought of something. “Are you a Christian Scientist?” She had known one once. He never took any medicine, or went to the doctor. He just prayed. It seemed strange to her, but it worked for him.
“No, of course not. Remember. Tonight is Yom Kippur. I'm Jewish. That's what started this whole mess. That's why I had dinner with my parents. Yom Kippur. And I don't have aspirin in the house because I'm not married. Married people have things like that. Wives buy all that stuff. My secretary buys me aspirin at the office. I always forget to buy any for here.”
“You should go out and buy some tomorrow, before you forget again.” She had a childlike voice, but it was soothing to listen to. In the end, she had given him just what he needed. Sympathy, and someone to talk to.
“I should get some sleep,” he reminded her. “And so should you. I'll call you tomorrow. And this time I really will.” If nothing else, to thank her.
“No, you won't,” she said sadly. “I'm not fancy enough for you, Adam. I saw the kind of places you went that night. You probably go out with some pretty jazzy women.” And she was only a waitress from Pier 92. It had been an accident of fate that they had met atall, and yet another that he had left a message on her machine that night. Accident number three: she had called him back, and woken him up.
“You're sounding like my mother again. That's the kind of thing she says. She doesn't approve. She thinks I should have found another nice Jewish girl years ago, and remarried. And now that you mention it, the women I go out with are no fancier than you.” Their clothes were a little more expensive maybe, but whenever that was the case, they had been paid for by someone else. In many ways, although his mother wouldn't have agreed with him, Maggie was more respectable than they were.
“Then how come you never remarried?”
“I don't want to. I got burned once, badly in fact. My ex-wife turned out to be just like my mother. And I have no desire to try the experiment again.”
“Do you have kids?” She had never asked him the night they met, there had been too much going on. She hadn't had time.
“Yes. Amanda and Jacob, respectively fourteen and thirteen.” He smiled as he said it, and Maggie could hear it in his voice.
“Where did you go to college?”
“I can't believe this,” he said, amazed at himself that he was continuing to answer her questions. It was addictive. “Harvard. Undergraduate and law school. I graduated from law school magna cum laude.” It was a pompous thing to say to her, but what the hell, he couldn't see her anyway, and anything they said on the phone was fair game.
“I knew it,” she said, sounding excited. “I just knew it. I knew you'd gone to Harvard! And you're a genius!” For once, the appropriate reaction. He lay in bed and grinned. “That's amazing!”
“No, it's not,” he said more modestly this time. “A lot of people do it. In fact, much as I hate to admit it to you, Rachel the Horrible graduated summa cum laude and passed the bar on the first try. I didn't.” He was confessing all his weaknesses and sins.
“Who cares, if she was a bitch?”
“That's a nice thing to say.” He sounded pleased. Without even intending to, he had found an ally.
“I'm sorry. I shouldn't say that about your children's mother.”
“Yes, you should. I say it all the time. She is. I hate her. Well,” he corrected himself, “I don't hate her, I dislike her strongly.” It was a religious holiday after all. But Maggie was Catholic presumably. She could say it. “You're Catholic, aren't you, by the way?”
“I used to be. I'm not much of anything these days. I go to church and light candles sometimes, but that's about it. I guess I'm nothing. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a nun.”
“That would have been a terrible waste of a beautiful face and a great body. Thank God you didn't.” He sounded as though he meant it.
“Thank you, Adam. That was a nice thing to say. I really think you should go to bed now, or you're going to have a worse headache tomorrow.” He hadn't thought about it for the past half hour, while talking to her, but he realized suddenly, as he glanced at the clock, that his headache had gone away. It was four A.M.
“What about breakfast tomorrow? What time do you get up?”
“Usually around nine o'clock. Tomorrow I was going to sleep in. I have the day off from work.”
“Me too. On both counts. I'll pick you up at noon. I'll take you somewhere nice for brunch.”
