As luck would have it, Jimmy McGary had wined and dined me for months. Jimmy was a charming Irishman from Boston who worked in the Washington office of a major multinational. He had the solution, but it involved a move to the West Coast. California was as good a place as any to get a divorce, maybe better, considering a 50/50 community property settlement. And, with the signing bonus, hell, I could dump my VW and buy a new car. Not having the judgement in the real world I carried in the news business, I only saw the veneer. What the hell, I was refugee from reason and always made career decisions without giving them much thought. California seemed way ahead of Washington; no politics, little depth…Hell, it just seemed an easy way out.
There was nothing to the California transfer. I left Washington and let Janet handle the movers, the house sale and the other details. At this point, it was impossible to look at her, experience her demeanor, hear her talk. Positioning myself for divorce meant anything to piss her off.
I flew out early was put up in the Beverly Wilshire compliments of my new employer, a perquisite I tried my best to abuse at least as much as my old newspaper expense account, with long drinking bouts with friends from the West Coast bureau of my old paper, but nothing seemed to faze big companies in those days.
It took my new employer a while to figure out that it was time for me to actually make an appearance and my wife to figure out where I was. She’d already moved into the new house in South Bay. The call came one morning from the Human Resources department, requesting that I show up to complete the requisite employment forms. It was a bad day, as I’d been playing both ends, telling Janet that I had to stay in the city to get acclimated and the company that I was still moving. A lot to juggle and it was pleasant while it lasted, no work, no wife. What the hell, it’d be a new adventure and if the expenses held up, it’d be fun for a while, I thought.
When I walked into my office that first day he was awed by the appointments I’d only experienced from the other side of the desk. I’d seen them a month earlier, of course, but couldn’t focus on the picture – a couch and a bookcase, a far cry from the open workstation with an old Royal 440 sitting on a metal desk in the newsroom. The furniture was rosewood and on the desk was a stack of credit cards an inch high. I knew I’d arrived when I heard I could sign my own expense vouchers. But the perks and the appointments were forgotten when Maggie walked into my office.
Remembering is something I’ve always done quite well. Good or bad, it didn’t matter, life holds in my head forever it seems. I like the ability to recall. Love it. I remember that every night at about 9:30, grandma would trundle down to the corner of 8th Street and Sixth Avenue to pick up the bulldog edition of The Daily News. Every day, grandpa would either play solitaire or translate Homer at the grand dining room table eating pepperocini.
I still revel in the smell of steam from the radiators at The Little Red School House in Washington Square when I was in 2nd grade. And the thought of seeing Mickey Mantle for the first time at Yankee Stadium, the smell of the grass, the smell of the dirt would…hell, what can you say about that.
But there is nothing I remember more vividly, physically or emotionally than the first time I saw Maggie. A madras blazer, tan slacks, brown hair and soft eyes that seemed to define truth . She had a summery look about her, a look of a woman who belonged on a bowsprit, windblown, squinting at the sun, charting the course. She seemed to carry her very soul to the surface of her skin.
It was her eyes that caught me first. They’d caught him a month earlier, he recalled when he felt that thin undermusic as he shook her hand. There was always something to that undermusic. It wasn’t pleasant, but not harsh either. It was there and over time, I would learn that it could never be played, never resolved. Her eyes had certain age and veracity. It wasn’t a withered, elderly age, but a venerable, experienced age with a look of absolute truth. They were highlighted by tiny crinkles at the edges.
She was the only woman I thought I would ever truly love. I knew it then.
And, I knew Maggie before I met her. I never knew how, or where, or why. But I knew Maggie from the first day I knew anything. She was the first poem I’d written years before he met her. She was every moment of my life and she scared the hell out of me. Hell, I didn’t know why, or maybe I did. Maybe it was karmic, but I’d passed those days of karma…or maybe it was just the reporter in me. Didn’t matter. I knew I loved her and I knew she scared me. Simple
When I first saw her, I felt it all. But “all” also meant mortality. There’ve been a few times when I’ve felt mortal, but the feeling was fleeting and with some good reason. Generally, I felt mortal when I figured I was going to die. Now, I wasn’t going to die here, and I was feeling mortal. Thirty fuckin’ years old and I was feeling mortal. When I met her it hit me that, as whoever they are who say it, the sun would rise and set for me with Maggie. It never stopped. Damn, I had no idea that the journey with her would be so long, so intense, so precipitous, so precarious, and in a peculiar way, so easy.
That first day in the office I was uncharacteristically nervous when Maggie walked in. I went through some perfunctory office issues with her, trying to maintain some sort of equanimity. I ran out my background, my home, where I’d been and how I worked. I was far beyond nervous in her presence. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. I always figured my as ordinary to occasionally, having little more than a sharp mind, a pretty good wit and a degree of charm. But this woman had me unwired, her beauty and that damned feeling of déjà vu. It was a condition I found extraordinary, as I’d spent virtually all of my working life interviewing people with immense power, people I didn’t know and peering into their lives. I was good at interviewing…barely have to ask a questions before all the answers would tumble out. Probably had that sort of sympathetic face, quiet eyes, ability to listen. Whatever it was, that process had always been easy for me. I had no questions for Maggie. Maggie was an “editorial assistant,” whatever the hell that meant. I thought she was bright, but I seemed to have lost any ability I had to engage in some sort of cogent conversation. I didn’t need to make any subtle probes, nothing seemed requisite. Somehow I had her pegged, I seemed to know what I needed to know about her, I felt like I had for years. I also thought she had a handle on me.
I wondered about love at first sight. It was usually lust, if you thought about it. Maybe there was stress from my planned divorce, the move, the new job. Things didn’t feel as easy as they did back in Washington. There were certainly different. I lean back in my chair and look out at the Pacific instead of an office building. People were different in a myriad of ways. Light drinkers, little care for politics, they’d drive 30 miles to a dinner party…different folks. But, I did feel something going on. It wasn’t overwhelming, but just itchy enough to make me slightly uncomfortable. I tried to put it away and figure out what I was supposed to do on my new job, which wasn’t much that first day
Shuffling papers and heading out early seemed the best shot, besides, I had that new yellow TR-6, my badge of affluence, at least for the moment, a moment or nanosecond as I soon came to realize I surrounded by Rolls Royces, Mercedes, Ferraris… so much for wealth.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help but wonder, driving up a winding road by the sea, what Maggie would look like next to him, hair blowing in the wind, eyes squinting in the sun. If it didn’t scare him, it sure as hell perplexed him. He’d never had that sort of reaction to a woman, never.
It wasn’t much of a drive from Westwood to South Bay in those days. Janet had selected a large house with pool; a departure from the pretty Georgian he’d owned back in Washington. Ben was never particularly comfortable in the California ranch affair that looked pretty much like everything around it. That was alright because he wasn’t comfortable with Janet. Why not be discomfited with everything, he figured.
About the only thing that was going well were the kids, Matt and Craig. They gave him a bit of pleasure at the time, but not nearly what a father should have had with sons. He knew he was going to blow up the marriage and the guilt was already seeping in.
He sat by the pool, drinking as the sun was setting. It was a far cry from the Press Club where he’d spent most of his evenings back east. California, public relations, no deadlines. It didn’t occur to him just how far away he was from everything he knew, except for Maggie. He knew her and it bothered him that he did. It wasn’t déjà vu. That would make the explanation too easy. He’d twist every convolution in his brain looking for it but it wouldn’t come, it was just there. A fuckin’ pimple on my mind, he thought, as he searched for the answer. It was uncomfortable for him, unlike most new experiences. It didn’t seem like an adventure, just a helluva discomfiture.
