Continuing Education

September 2000

"It's a crying shame," Gus said. "She's the most beautiful woman in the bar, and she won't let anybody near."

"Do you know anything about her?" Bob asked.

"I think her name is Diana, but that's all I know."

The two 50-year-old men were watching a woman whose coal-black hair waved and curled like rapids all the way down to her waist, whose ivory skin shone though lit up only by a dim light, whose green eyes flashed with deep, invincible, anger as she drank her Jenny Lite.

"Let me try," Bob said. "She looks about 45, the age I like."

He ambled over to the woman, cool and confident. He had done this many times before.

"Hi! Mind if I join you?"

The woman looked at him, freezing his blood with her gaze. She didn't have to say a word. Bob got the message.

May 2000

Diana Connell-Williams had loved Gene Williams with everything she had had, been faithful to him, raised their two children to adulthood and independence, and grieved for him for an aching two years after his fatal heart attack. Now it was time to re-enter life. She hadn't much of a sex drive any more, but she badly missed male companionship. She picked up a flyer, "The Over-Forty Club for Buffalo, New York Singles", found the number, and dialed it.

The following Sunday, as Diana pasted a frightened smile onto her face and walked into the suburban church building where the singles club convened, it was raining. Entering the building saved her from the premature darkness and flashing thunder of the storm while pushing her toward a more menacing danger.

She met Charlene, a divorced administrative assistant, Noreen, a retired bookkeeper, and Krista, a sales clerk. All were smiling; all were friendly. She became intent on making friends with these sweet women. She paid her dues and joined the club.

Eventually, Diana started to meet the male members of the club. Roger Bittner was a thin, white-haired man whose nose began to bleed while Diana was being introduced to him. Richard, long since claimed by Charlene as her private property, stood his ground next to Roger, with whom he had been conversing. Sensing Charlene's hot glare on her back, Diana thought it best to ignore Richard and focus on Roger.

"You have allergies, don't you? My niece has allergies."

Roger smiled, silent, as he dabbed at his upper lip.

After a lecture that Diana pretended to listen to, the night owls of the club adjourned to Joe's, known for good jazz and exotic drinks. As a man named Tony talked to her, Diana impaled her Maraschino cherry on her toothpick and watched rum and coke drip from it back into the chalice-shaped glass. She forced her eyes back to his face, trying to give him the look of awe he unconsciously expected.

"I came here from Lithuania ten years ago," Tony said. Diana was not surprised; he still had a noticeable accent.

"English is a hard language to learn."

"It's a hard one to teach, too. I used to teach English as a Second Language. Not 'lin' but 'lean'. Not 'shit' but 'sheet'."

Tony laughed and took Diana's hand under the table. "Would you like to come to dinner tomorrow night?" he asked. "I am a very good cook."

And he was. He lightly sauteed breast of chicken in butter, smothered it in a creamy Florentine sauce, and served it over a bed of steaming rice.

After dinner, Tony talked ceaselessly. He sat in his armchair, lit a cigarette, told Diana about his two offspring, one successful, one in prison, about the cooking club he ruled over, a "Polish lady" he once had had an affair with, why he owned two dogs.

Diana lived to regret attending the next Sunday's singles club meeting; before it started, Tony introduced her to a woman he had brought with him.

"Diana, I want you to meet June, the minister of the Dankville Presbyterian Church."

He sat next to June, not Diana, during the meeting. As the lecture ended, she saw him place his hand on June's leg.

Roger came up to Diana afterward. He was wiping his nose with a tissue. For some reason, this habit was starting to repulse Diana. She edged away from Roger.

A woman named Jenny, chubby but cute for a woman about 50 years old, came up to Diana. "This is my first time," she said.

Diana was beginning to feel disappointed with the long-time members of this club. No symphony of friendship had followed their friendly overtures. She resolved to give Jenny a more sincere welcome than she, herself, had received. As a result, it took only three weeks for Diana and Jenny to become close friends. One day, Diana told Jenny what Tony had done to her.

"He doesn't sound so bad to me," Jenny said. "He probably just did it to make the sex with you better. Some men get off on making their lovers jealous."

Jenny said this like an anthropologist sharing her observations on a strange species she had studied. Diana heard it like the sullied victim of a forced indignity.

"Don't you have a boyfriend yourself?" Diana asked in an attempt to change the topic.

"No. I've been celibate since my husband died. It's hard sometimes."

"Tell me about it!"

But eventually Diana's indignation faded, or at least was clouded over, by Tony's repeated smiles and jokes. She let him apologize. She let him talk her into another gourmet meal. But the second meal, somehow, didn't taste as good as the first one had.

"I thought you had a cooking club," she said. "How come you've never invited me to it?"

"Can you cook?" Tony asked.

"Yes, I can cook!" Diana said.

Not long after, as Diana was talking to Jenny on the phone, the truth came out. 

Jenny had asked Diana how it was going with Tony. "He's been good since I forgave him for placing his hand on the leg of the minister of the Darkville Presbyterian Church," Diana had said. "You wouldn't believe the message he left on my machine while I was out last night. I'll play it for you."

Diana had held the receiver to the speaker and pushed the button. The machine had rendered Tony's endearing Lithuanian accent with mechanical accuracy.

"Hi, Diana," the machine had said. Tony had paused. When Diana had not picked up, he had continued, "You know what I'd like to do next time you come over? I'd like to take you out on my sun porch and cover your body with strawberries and eat them all off you."

Diana had put the phone back to her ear, laughing. Jenny had gasped, then started sobbing.

"I spent seven years babysitting for that bastard's kids," Jenny had said between sobs. "I practically raised them, and I never asked for a penny. He's never wanted for sex as long as I've known him. And what do I get for all that? He tells you he wants to eat strawberries off your scrawny body."

As soon as she learned the truth about Jenny, Diana called Tony.

"Is Jenny the Polish lady?" she asked.

"Yes," Tony said, smug as only a man who is wanted by two women can be.

"You told her about me, didn't you?" Diana said. "And that I go to the singles club. She joined the club and pretended to be my friend only because I was involved with you."

Diana went back to the singles club the following Sunday to try to start over. She met Keith Massik. A tall man. Perfectly cut white hair. Might have been quite good-looking when he was younger.

Two days later, Keith did Diana a favor: he drove her to a local bar after she had left her car to be detailed.

"You're the first woman I've ever given a ride to who hasn't used the vanity mirror," Keith said after he had had one drink. Diana smiled.

After two drinks, he casually mentioned a well-known woman, a TV personality, who had just ended a six-year affair with him.

The following Friday, Keith showed up at Diana's place early and waited while she finished a conversation with a guy named Dennis Piedmont in a computer chat room.

Once he and Diana were seated in a five-star restaurant, Keith casually said, "I'm good at anything I try. I once swindled a bank out of 400 dollars just to prove I could do it."

"And you love to tell people about it," Diana said.

"You'll never find the bank," Keith said, paying the tab with a hundred-dollar bill.

Jenny was not at the next singles club meeting; she had not been there since the strawberry revelation. But Charlene was friendlier now.

"I hear you've been going out with Tony," Charlene said, her voice sweeter than New York maple syrup.

"Not any more. I dumped that scumbag. For good this time."

Diana sat down at a long table where much of the club sat, divided along the table into groups of four for the purpose of playing bridge. Diana did not play bridge, but she was not ready to go home yet either.

Noreen and Charlene sat near Diana. "How well do you know Roger Bittner?" Noreen asked Charlene, aware that Charlene was the club's wellspring of information.

"I know he lives with a man and a woman," Charlene said. "They have a nice little threesome going. Are you interested in making it a foursome?" She smiled to make the catty remark forgivable.

"You should," Krista said, dealing out a new hand. "Three's an odd number."

"Give me a break," Noreen said. "That sniveling -- he does snivel. He's always wiping his nose."

"You know why he does that, don't you?" Charlene said.

"No. Why?"

"Nosebleeds, sniffling. Don't you know a coke addict when you see one?"

"No!" Noreen and Krista said in inadvertent unison.

The picture of calm, Charlene added, "He buys it from Tony."

At the next singles club meeting, another new woman joined the club. Diana did not extend a welcome to this one. But the woman didn't seem to need one; she incurred everyone's favor by letting it be known that she was quite wealthy. As Diana, upstaged, headed for her car, she heard voices behind a large van.

"You were too!" a woman said. Was it Charlene?

"You're paranoid," a man said.

"You think I'm blind and deaf?"

"I was listening to her jokes. She's funny. If that bothers you, try learning a few jokes yourself some time."

"I'll learn some jokes. About your performance."

Diana heard the smack of skin on skin. She went home, logged onto the chat line, and told Dennis Piedmont what was going on in the singles club.

"There's even a guy in there who's a coke addict," Diana finished.

"You sure are a self-righteous little bitch," Dennis typed.

Diana could not move for a moment. How did he know that she was little?

"I'm a member of that club," he went on. "But I use a different name there. Bittner. Roger Bittner."

Diana was relieved when Keith called.

"Those over-40 singles are all sick," she said. "I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have a normal guy like you for a friend."

"I've decided to go back to my ex-girlfriend," Keith said.

Diana forced herself to return to the club. There must be at least one decent man there. A man named Cliff asked her out. Bald, tank top, well-developed biceps. A tanned body that tapered from broad shoulders to a firm little butt.

"I thought you were Krista's boyfriend," Diana said, unwilling to risk another crisis.

"I was," Cliff said. "But we're through."

"Let me make sure."

Diana approached Krista. "Are you and Cliff going out?"

"No," Krista said quickly. "Why?"

"He's hitting on me. But if he's yours, I won't touch him."

"Take him," Krista said. "I don't want him."

Diana was relieved; she was very attracted to Cliff. She invited him to dinner.

Before they ate, Cliff moved an old-fashioned metal wardrobe for her. Balancing the huge cabinet on his back, he carried it up a full flight of stairs and set it down in the bedroom. Diana noticed neither panting nor signs of fatigue.

She had baked a plump chicken for him, whipped potatoes until they were fluffy, poured rich gravy over them, steamed fresh broccoli and mushrooms on the side. The salad was Caesar, topped with red cherry tomatoes.

"How long's it been since your divorce?" Cliff asked her.

"I'm not divorced; I'm widowed. It's been two years since my husband died."

Cliff stood up. "He didn't kill himself, did he?"

"No, of course not."

Cliff burst into tears. "My wife killed herself."

"Cliff, I'm so sorry."

"I never saw it coming, and I have no idea why. She didn't leave a note. She got the gun we hid in the bedroom in case of burglars. She did it in the den. Stuck the gun right in her mouth. I heard the shot, ran upstairs. There was blood on all the bills, the papers, the rug, everywhere."

"For several weeks, I couldn't sleep at all," he went on. "As soon as I'd start to drift off, I'd see her body, draped backward over the desk chair, the bloody guts that used to be her head. I still can't go in that room. I'm thinking of buying a new house just to get away from that room. The worst thing about it is, I keep wondering if maybe I'd been a little nicer to her, been a better lover or something, maybe she'd still be alive."

"Or something?"

Cliff looked at his hands as if they were guilty of some crime.

"I was fooling around. I can't help thinking maybe she found out, and maybe that's why she shot herself."

Diana tried to compensate Cliff for his pain by being constantly and irrevocably good to him. Until she found out that he was fooling around on her.

"I couldn't help it," Cliff said. "My head is all messed up."

Diana, refusing to believe that having a messed-up head absolves people of responsibility for their actions, broke up with Cliff. The next Sunday, she forced herself to go back to the singles club. Krista came up to her as soon as she came in the door.

"You whore!" she said.

"But you gave him to me," Diana said. She couldn't win in this place; she had lost both the man and the friend.

She decided that she had had enough. She sat down next to Tony at the multiple-bridge-game table.

"You want me again?" Tony said, a sickening leer on his face.

Charlene asked in a loud voice, "So you two are getting back together?"

The whole table quieted down to hear Diana's answer.

"I'm thinking of it," Diana said. Tony's leer turned into a delighted smile.

"After all," Diana said, "he is rich, if only because he sells coke to Roger Bittner."

Charlene gasped.

"Oh, that's not the worst of it," Diana said.

"Tell me," Charlene said, breathless.

"He actually has the gall to invite ladies over for dinner -- and serve them leftovers."

September 2000

The bartender gave Bob another beer.

"I didn't order this," Bob said.

The bartender smiled. "It's from the dark-haired woman in the corner. She says she owes one apology to you and another to herself."

"Apology for what?" Bob asked.

"For not giving you a chance."

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