A Time to Scatter Stones Read online

  She must have heard the shower, because she had breakfast ready by the time I got to the kitchen. An omelet and a toasted English muffin. I was working on my morning cup of coffee when she said, “Did the phone wake you? I’m sorry, I had my hands full, and it was on its third ring by the time I could pick it up.”

  “I wouldn’t have slept much longer anyway.”

  “How’s your knee this morning?”

  “I never thought about it until you just now mentioned it. So I guess it’s fine.”

  She’d made tea for herself in the little Wedgwood teapot. She filled a cup and took a sip, and she said, “That was Ellen Lipscomb.”

  “On the phone?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Is she the one I met? Ellen the Tart?”

  A week or so earlier I’d passed the Morning Star, on the northwest corner of Fifty-seventh and Ninth, when I caught a glimpse of Elaine at a table by the far wall. I thought she was by herself, but by the time I’d entered the diner I could see she had company. The woman across the table from her was perhaps half her age, with a pleasing figure and honey-blond hair that fell to her shoulders. I crossed the room and Elaine introduced us, and I said it was nice to meet her.

  “Ellen and Elaine,” the young woman said. Her face was pretty, her blue eyes alert. “Just a couple of Ellies, except nobody ever called me that.”

  “Or me either,” Elaine said.

  That was about as much conversation as the occasion required, and I said again that it was nice to have met her, and went on to do whatever I’d been on my way to do. When I caught up with Elaine later in the day, I said her friend was attractive and seemed nice.

  “Very nice,” she said. And after a beat she said, “I know her from meetings.”

  “You’re sure I can’t go to those meetings?”

  “She’s pretty, isn’t she? I’m sort of her sponsor.”

  “Sort of?”

  “Well, I haven’t heard the term at any of our meetings. But she seems to have picked me out as the more experienced member to seek advice from, and I like her, so I guess you could call that sponsorship.”

  A fellow named Jim Faber had been my sponsor. We had dinner, just the two of us, every Sunday night for years, always at one or another of the neighborhood’s Chinese restaurants. Sometimes but not always we’d cap the evening with a meeting. He was the man I called when I wanted a drink, and after that ceased to be a problem he was the man I turned to when something else in my life was troubling me.

  Then one Sunday night twenty years ago he got killed, shot dead by a man who’d mistaken him for me. I blamed myself for his death, until his voice in my ear finally got through to me and told me all I was guilty of was having to go to the bathroom, and that my guilt was just another form of self-pity. The thought was as annoying as if he’d been standing there and spoken the words aloud, but it got through to me.

  The standard recommendation, when your sponsor dies or drinks or moves to New Orleans, is that you find someone appropriate and ask him to take over the role. That’s more important and more easily done if you haven’t been sober all that long, but when Jim died I had fifteen years, and that made it more difficult to find someone suitable, and less urgent that I do so.

  You generally want your sponsor to have more sober time than yourself, and probably to be your age or older. There weren’t many men in my home group who emerged as logical candidates, and I told myself I’d get a sponsor when I felt the need, and that never happened. If I had something on my mind that needed discussion, I’d ask somebody or other to join me for a cup of coffee, and we’d have the sort of conversation I might have had with a sponsor. But it was far less formal, and it wasn’t the same man each time.

  Now, across the breakfast table a few weeks later, I said, “So you’re her sponsor.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Ellen and Elaine,” I said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What was it she said? ‘Just a couple of Ellies.’ ”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “You know,” I said, “not that I wish her anything but the best, but if she happens to have a slip, could you let me know?”

  “And I’m sure you already know you’re a terrible man.”

  “I do.”

  “I figured you’d like the looks of her. She’s cute, isn’t she?”

  “Very.”

  “I could go for her myself,” she said, and showed me the tip of her tongue. “But you were already thinking that, weren’t you?”

  “It may have entered my mind.”

  “You were imagining yourself in bed with both of us at once,” she said. “The old threesome fantasy, except it wouldn’t be a fantasy, would it? It would be real, and she’d be right there in our bed between the two of us. And we could do whatever we wanted to her.” She ran her tongue around the circle of her lips. Her eyes sparkled, and she put a hand on my thigh. “We could go back to bed,” she said, “and talk about it. Do you think that might be something you’d enjoy?”

  AFTERWARDS I GUESS I must have dozed off for a few minutes, and when I opened my eyes Elaine was standing beside the bed with a cup of coffee. “It cooled off,” she said, “but I’m happy to see we haven’t.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Up for breakfast and then back to bed. Well, a nap’s a good idea at our age, isn’t that what they say?”

  “That was some nap.”

  “It was almost as if we really had her in bed with us,” she said, “except it was actually much better, because this way it all turned out the way we wanted it to. They say you should never act out a fantasy because the reality never matches up.”

  “Is that what they say?”

  “It would have to be, don’t you think?” She stretched out alongside me, laid a hand on my flank. “Did you have a good time?”

  “Do you have to ask?”

  “No, and I was right there with you. I think it’s marvelous that we’re still hot for each other.”

  “Every once in a while.”

  “Which is probably about as often as either of us can stand. But we can never ever do this again. You realize that, don’t you?”

  “Can’t do what? Go back to bed? Share an innocent fantasy?”

  “We can do both those things,” she said. “But we’ll have to find other imaginary friends.”

  “Because she’s your sponsee.”

  “Whatever. What do they call it when a basketball player turns pro after his first year in college?”

  “One and done.”

  “That’s Ellen,” she said. “As far as we’re concerned, she’s one and done.”

  She left the room, and I heard the shower running. Before I knew it she’d hurried back to the bedroom, towel in hand, drying herself frantically. “Oh, shit,” she said. “How’d it get to be a quarter to eleven?”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “She’ll be here in fifteen minutes.”

  “Who will?”

  “Who do you think? Ellen.”

  “As in one and done? She’s coming here?”

  “That’s why she called.” She scurried around the room, picking up garments, putting them on. It can take her a couple of hours to get dressed, or it can take her five minutes.

  “If she’d come over a little while ago—”

  “Don’t even think it. In fact don’t think anything, get under the shower and then put some clothes on.”

  “You know,” I said, “it’s probably just as well if I don’t see her today. Can’t you just take her across the street for coffee?”

  “No.”

  “Or if she’s tired of the Morning Star, the Flame’s just one block away.” She was shaking her head. “Why not?”

  “Because she needs to see you.”

  “Me?”

  “That why she called, that’s why I told her to come over around eleven. She’s got a problem but you’ll have to wait for her to tell you about it. I know you already took a shower but—�
��

  “I need another.”

  I showered, and had the shave I hadn’t bothered with earlier. I got dressed, more for comfort than for style, in a pair of jeans and a plaid flannel shirt from L.L. Bean, the one Elaine says makes me look like a lesbian. Maybe if I wore it they’d let me join the Tarts.

  I changed it for a blue button-down from Lands’ End, tucked it in, and wondered why I was stalling for time. Then I took myself to the living room, where a fresh pot of tea sat on a tray in the coffee table. Elaine and her sponsee sat a few feet apart on the couch, each with a cup of tea. There was a third cup waiting for me, and I filled it and walked over to the recliner. When it wasn’t reclining it was just a chair, and I sat in it and took a sip of tea.

  Elaine said, “Matt, you remember Ellen.”

  All too well, I thought.

  “From the Morning Star,” I said.

  “That’s right,” she said.

  “We have a problem,” Elaine said, “that’s more in your area of expertise than mine.”

  Which had to mean young Ellen had come to realize she was an alcoholic, so could I take her to a meeting? And maybe introduce her to some women whose company she might find agreeable? Which would retroactively make her unwitting role in our fantasy equally inappropriate for both of us.

  “You were a policeman,” Ellen said. “And then a private detective? Did I get that right?”

  And a remarkably skilled one at that, I thought, quick to mistake a police problem for alcoholism.

  She started to say something, then looked over at Elaine, as if hoping for assistance. The only help she got was a nod, but evidently that was enough.

  “There’s this man,” she said.

  “Not a pimp,” Elaine said for clarification.

  “No, nothing like that. A client.”

  I waited.

  “He doesn’t want to take no for an answer,” she said. “I told him I wasn’t seeing guys anymore, and he said he was glad to hear it. I thought he’d be saying what a lot of my johns, my clients—”

  “Matt knows the terminology,” Elaine said.

  “What a lot of them said, when I told them I was out of the life, was they thought that was good. Oh, they might miss me, but I was too nice a person to earn my living by fucking strangers. Um, they didn’t put it that way, but—”

  “But that was what it amounted to.”

  “Uh-huh. Anyway, I was ready for that conversation, or some version of it, but what he went on to say was that it had always bothered him a little that I was seeing other men, and how glad he was that I would be seeing him exclusively.”

  “What gave him that idea?”

  “Nothing. I mean, he pretended that was his understanding of what I’d told him. But what he was doing, he was saying that I could clean up my act all I wanted, just so he could keep coming over and going to bed with me.”

  “Did you straighten him out?”

  “He didn’t give me the chance. ‘Look, just having this conversation is getting me all hot and bothered, Ell. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, and anything you’ve got to tell me can wait until then.’ ”

  “ ‘Ell,’ ” Elaine said.

  “One of the first dates we had, he asked what people called me. I said Ellen, everybody calls me Ellen. ‘Well, I’m gonna call you Ell.’ And that’s what he’s called me ever since.”

  I said, “Staking a claim.”

  “I guess. Calling me something nobody else called me, so he wasn’t just another John. But it’s not like what he wanted was the Girlfriend Experience.”

  Elaine: “That’s really a thing, huh?”

  “Uh-huh, but mostly with men under thirty.” I must have looked lost, because she explained it for me. “The guy’s a client, and in fact the fee’s payable in advance, so it won’t spoil the end of the evening. And you go out and have dinner, and maybe hit a couple of clubs, and you’re both putting on an act, like you’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”

  “Putting on an act,” I said. “For whose benefit?”

  “His, mostly. Or if you go places where they know him, he gets to be seen with this hot-looking chick who’s obviously crazy about him. He’ll introduce you, because why not, you’re boyfriend and girlfriend. But being seen isn’t necessarily a part of it. He may just want you to be his girlfriend and relate to him that way for the evening.”

  “And at the end of the evening?”

  “You take him home and fuck him. But it’s, you know, romantic, with a lot of kissing along the way, and maybe part of the act is he’s got to work a little to seduce you.”

  “But somehow he always manages,” Elaine said.

  “Well, duh, of course. I think part of the appeal is he gets to pretend you’re on a date but he doesn’t have to worry about how the evening’s gonna end. He won’t wind up going home and jerking off to PornHub. He’s a cinch to get laid.”

  “The Girlfriend Experience,” I said.

  “A new wrinkle in the world’s oldest profession,” Elaine said. “I never even heard the phrase until somebody said it at a meeting. I got the impression that it’s mostly something everybody knows about and nobody’s actually done.”

  “It’s not that rare,” Ellen said. “I mean, I’ve done it.”

  “Oh?”

  “A young guy. I think it’s mostly young guys. Unattached, and probably not all that self-confident with women. This one lived in Williamsburg but he was more of a geek than a hipster. Computers, tech stuff. I guess he did okay at it because I told him I’d really love to be his girlfriend but for all those hours I’d need to have a thousand dollars.”

  “And he paid it?”

  “Without a whimper. And it was fine, really, and he took me to the Gramercy Tavern for a great dinner and bought a nice bottle of wine, and it didn’t bother him when neither of us had a second glass of it. Then we walked a few blocks and talked, and then we got a cab to my place and made out all the way home.”

  “Made out,” Elaine said.

  “Like kids. And he paid the cab and walked me up the stoop, and I think we held hands on the way, and while I’m getting the key in the door he’s like, ‘You know, Ellen, I’ve had a wonderful time. And if you want the evening to end right here, I want you to know I’m all right with that.’ ”

  “And you said, ‘The part of the evening you paid for is over. And now what I want is for you to come upstairs and have sex with me.’ ”

  “I don’t think I said ‘paid’. More like ‘the part of the evening we arranged.’ But the rest is just about word for word.”

  I asked Elaine how she’d known that.

  “Because that’s what I would have done,” she said. “Might as well give the guy the full Girlfriend Experience.”

  “If I said I had a great time but I’d prefer it if he left, he’d have gone. I’m pretty sure of it. He’d have been disappointed, but I don’t think he’d have kicked up a fuss. But, you know, he was a nice guy and it was a nice evening, so why ruin it for him? And do you want to know something?”

  “By this time you really wanted to fuck him.”

  “Yes! Not for the sex, but because it was the right way for the evening to end. And because it was nice being his girlfriend.”

  All of this was interesting, even fascinating, but we’d wandered a long way from the real subject. I said, “But this fellow on the phone, he never wanted you to be his girlfriend.”

  “No, he wanted a working girl. ‘Do this, do that.’ What he wanted us to do was mostly vanilla, but I was getting paid and he wanted me to earn my money.”

  “And what did he want now?”

  “To come over. To have sex with me.”

  Elaine: “I don’t suppose you told him to shit in his hat.”

  Ellen grinned. “I don’t think I’ve ever told anybody that,” she said, “although I have to admit I like the way it sounds.” She turned to me. “I didn’t tell him anything. He didn’t give me the chance. ‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.’
Click! End of conversation.”

  “And he was there fifteen minutes later?”

  “Downstairs with his finger on the buzzer. One long and two short, so I would know it was him. Believe me, I already knew it was him.”

  “And?”

  “I buzzed him in. And when he knocked on my door I opened it, and I made him the cup of coffee he asked for, and when he said, ‘C’mon, sweetie. I want to fuck you—’ ”

  “You let him,” Elaine said.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. At every stage, I never knew what else to do. On the phone, and when he buzzed, and when he knocked on my door, and when he asked for the coffee. Every step along the way I heard No in my mind, and I kept on saying Yes.”

  “All the way into the bedroom.”

  “And onto the bed.” She looked at me, as if it was important that I understand. “It was easier,” she said, “to go along than to say no to him. And he was so confident, so sure we were going to do things his way. And, you know, he’s a big man, and I don’t know if he’s strong but he looks strong. If he really wanted for us to have sex, what could I do about it?”

  “Fucking him,” Elaine said, “was playing it safe.”

  “Was it? That’s what I thought at the time, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe a firm No would have sent him home.”

  “And maybe it would have got you raped, with a beating thrown in.”

  I said, “What happened when he was done? Did he pay you?”

  “He was a regular two hundred dollar trick. He got his wallet from his pants and very deliberately put three hundred-dollar bills on the bedside table. And waited for me to be surprised. I guess my reaction wasn’t good enough, because he said, ‘A little extra, Ell.’ ”

  “ ‘Ell,’ ” Elaine said.

  “ ‘A little extra, because you’re not seeing other men anymore.’ I said that was very nice of him.”

  “You were still scared.”

  A nod. “I didn’t know what he would do. From the phone call on, I didn’t know what he might do.” She took a breath. “What he did was finish dressing. I pulled on my jeans and a blouse, and he said, all matter-of-fact, that next time he was going to do me in, uh, you know.”

  Elaine: “Macy’s window?”

  That surprised Ellen, and she laughed a little more than the line deserved. “Oh, God, that’s funny! In my, you know.”