It was an established ritual-one of the few outings she allowed herself-for them to have Sunday brunch at the American Cafe on the Hill, but Janet half expected Harriet to call off, pleading the previous night’s party but she didn’t. She was late, though, as usual. She flustered in fast enough to create a breeze in her wake, not pausing to be shown her seat because she was confident Janet would have gotten their customary table, close to the wall at the back. Harriet was wearing button-fly 501 jeans and loafers and a poncho, and her hair was still bubbled as it had been the previous night. Her face was scrubbed completely clean of makeup. Harrriet was talking before she actually sat down, a breathless litany of who’d screwed whom and who hadn’t screwed whom and who’d been caught and who’d got away with it. She complained that someone called Jake or Geoff, she wasn’t sure which, had been a disaster and couldn’t get it up and tried to blame the booze but said she didn’t think it was booze at all but that he’d been a momentarily reluctant gay trying to pretend that he wasn’t.
“Can you imagine it, an experiment to prove his fucking manhood! Literally! At my own party!”
“I think you’re silly, taking the risks you do.”
They both ordered eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys and Harriet said: “I don’t.”
“Too many,” insisted Janet. “You don’t even know his name, for Christ’s sake! What if he is gay? Or bisexual?”
“Believe me, darling,” said Harriet. “The only thing I risked catching last night was a cold, hanging around waiting for something to happen that never did.”
“I still think you’re mad.”
“You should see the house! It looks like the Red Army went through in a hurry, without saying excuse me.”
“Would you like me to come back to help this afternoon?” asked Janet. The lecture was still only half-written, she remembered.
“Forget it,” Harriet said. “Mrs. Barrett comes in tomorrow: I’ll slip her an extra ten dollars.”
Harriet worked as a senior administrative assistant for a Virginia senator who thought an Englishwoman on his staff conveyed the impression of European culture and indicated an awareness of international affairs. Janet wondered if her friend’s brittleness were necessary for the job. Politely she said: “I thought it was a great party.”
They held back for the drinks to be replaced and Harriet said: “You ducked it, without saying goodbye!”
“I didn’t think you’d miss me. And I didn’t duck it. I was there for over an hour.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“What happened, that’s well what?”
Janet was conscious of blushing, positively red-faced. She hadn’t thought Harriet had seen her leave. “We had a drink, that’s all.”
Harriet reached across the table, covering Janet’s hand with hers. “Darling!” she said. “This isn’t headmistress’s question time. I think it’s wonderful you found a guy and had a drink. It’s about time. There’s no reason to get embarrassed.”
Janet smiled and said: “I just don’t find it easy.”
“You’re going to have to learn, my love. Life goes on. But yours hasn’t, for far too long. You’re so vulnerable-so innocent-it almost hurts. You’re like a virgin in a whorehouse: I worry about you crossing roads!”
How recently would remarks like that have irritated her, wondered Janet, unperturbed. She said: “How well do you know him?”
“Not at all. He mean anything to you?”
“Of course not!” said Janet.
“OK, so I can be honest. I thought he was a boring asshole. He spent all night propping up the wall with one drink in his hand, talking to no one.”
Like me, thought Janet: did Harriet Andrew secretly think she was a boring asshole, too? Janet said: “His name’s John Sheridan.”
“That much I know.”
“And he’s not really boring,” Janet added, defensively.
“Sorry!” said Harriet, archly, stretching the word like elastic.
“Why did you invite him, if you don’t like him?”
“A research assistant on the senator’s staff knows him: they belong to some racquet club or something,” said Harriet, staring into her glass as if she were surprised to find its contents gone. “I wanted to make the numbers match and told this guy to bring another man. His choice was Sheridan: a mistake that won’t be repeated.” She smiled. “Celibate women like us need alternatives: I’m going to have another. How about you?”
Janet shook her head. “I’ll pass. He said he worked in State.”
Harriet was screwed around in her seat, trying to catch the waitress’s eye. “Something like that,” she said, succeeding in her attempt and turning back to the table. “And don’t ask because I don’t know if he’s married or not.”
“He said he’s not,” Janet remembered. “But it doesn’t matter whether he is or he isn’t, does it?”
“That’s what they all say, darling,” Harriet said cynically. “But no, if it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter. Cheers.”
Janet consciously let the conversation move away from John Sheridan. Harriet was organizing part of the senator’s staff to visit NATO headquarters in Brussels, and she gabbled on about the clothes she was having to buy and of the hoped-for sideways trip to Paris and said wouldn’t it be terrific if they could meet up in London when Janet made her twice-yearly visit to her parents and Janet agreed it would but warned she had not made any definite travel plans at the moment. She joined Harriet with another Bloody Mary and offered again to help clean up the Dumbarton Street house and Harriet waved away the suggestion as she had before.
It was almost three o’clock before they got up to leave, Harriet snatching up the bill and refusing any contribution from Janet. Outside they walked without any intentional direction towards the Capitol Building.
“What are you going to do for the rest of the day?” asked Harriet.
“I’ve got a lecture to finish off for tomorrow.”
“Much?”
“An hour or two, maybe.”
“You can always make up a couple of hours,” urged Harriet. “Why don’t we take in a movie? Maybe a drink afterwards? You can work later.”
Janet shook her head. “You know how it is.”
Her friend sighed in reply. “The dedicated Janet Stone, pillar of Washington academia!”
“I like always being on top of things,” said Janet, defensive again. “You know that.”
“You sure you get sufficient recognition for all you do at that damned university?”
“Yes,” said Janet. “And it isn’t a damned university. It’s got very high standards.” She’d worked as determinedly when Hank was alive-anxious then for the promotion and extra money that was so important for their plans-and now she needed the time-consuming, after-hours preparation work and the difficulty with students and being imposed upon for opinions by other Middle East lecturers to block out the sterility of the other parts of her life.
The Capitol dome was very clear now, starkly white and almost artificial in its perfection, more like a decoration than the seat of the most powerful legislature in the world.
“With your ability and qualifications you could get a hell of a job there,” Harriet said, gesturing towards the administration building. “Ever thought about it?”
“No,” said Janet.
“Why don’t you? You’d probably double your salary.”
“I’m happy enough where I am,” said Janet. And safe, she thought. No longer being safe-no longer having someone she could completely rely on to protect and take care of her-had been one of Janet’s worst and most persistent fears after Hank’s death. And secretly-so secretly that she’d admitted it to no one-it still was. She kept the Rosslyn apartment despite its painful memories because she felt safe and cocooned in it and it was the need for such a feeling that had been her major reason for resisting her parents’ demands that she return to England. She wanted always now to be with things and in places that were familiar. Safe: like hideaway holes.
Harriet smiled sideways. “You want me to ask around?”
“Ask about what?”
“John Sheridan, who props up walls and nurses one drink.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!” Janet said as forcefully as she could. “I had a drink with a shy man, a lonely man… lonely like me. OK? No drama. No nothing. Just that.”
“What happened after the drink?”
“Less than happened with your starch-free gay.”
“He didn’t make a pass?”
“No.”
“Ask for your number?”
“No.”
“Ask if he could see you again?”
“No.”
Harriet sighed, heavily. “Isn’t life sometimes a bucket of shit?”
“Yes,” Janet agreed. “More often than not life is a bucket of shit.”
They stopped by the side of the enormous building, able from the top of the hill to gaze out over Washington and its orderly patterns of grassed malls and reflecting pools and museums and monolithic monuments to past presidents.
“I really could get you fixed up with a terrific job,” Harriet said.
“I’ll stay where I am.” For how long? Janet wondered. Forever? Why not? There was nothing else for her to do.
“You sure about that movie?”
“Positive.”
“Call me during the week?”
“You know I will.”
It took Janet little over an hour to complete the Lebanese lecture, and she was pleased with the way it went the following day. A teaching assistant named Barnett who’d come close to making a pass several times asked her to go over his master’s thesis, which she agreed to do although she knew it was a ploy giving them time together. The thesis was weak and badly argued-he actually predicted the Israelis might agree to surrender the occupied bank and the Gaza Strip, which Janet dismissed as ridiculously naive-and she told him so, hoping the rejection would go beyond the academic paper.
That week a letter arrived from her parents, who lived in Sussex, asking when she intended to visit. They planned to take a long tour through Egypt and the Sudan and Saudi Arabia, in each of which her father had served, and they did not want the dates to clash. She replied that she wasn’t sure yet so why didn’t they make their arrangements and she would fit in, whenever.
She had dinner with Harriet one night and brunch with her as usual the following Sunday, and the week after that went with Harriet to Garfinkels and to the Georgetown Mall, setting up for Harriet’s trip to Europe. Prompted by the shopping expedition, she thought about buying a winter coat in the sales but decided against it, because it was too soon in the year and she’d be gettting the previous autumn’s style anyway. Her cat, George, developed a dry cough and she had to take it to the vet, who said it was easily treated this time but warned her that it was six years old. Sundays were lonely, like all the other days in the week, with Harriet away. She got cards from Bonn (“dullsville”) and Berlin (“super”).
Janet was marking papers in the Rosslyn apartment on a Wednesday evening when the telephone rang and momentarily she frowned at it, curiously, because she got so few calls.
“I don’t know if you remember me,” the voice said. “It’s John Sheridan.”
“I remember,” Janet said.