Garret Moutain Blues

This is a sequel to the various stories about Holly Sykes (e.g., Queen of Diamonds), Tiffany Harris (Chastised By Mrs. Harris), and Catherine Coleman (Mrs. Coleman's Last Brooklyn Exit). I could have made this into a series but I never envisioned it as one. The narrator is twenty-one, and he met and had affairs with these three mature Manhattan divorcées while driving for a car service in mid-1976. The three knew each other before meeting him.

*******

Holly called me one day in October and said, "Paul, I need to take you someplace in my car." Need to take me someplace? I knew she kept her Volkswagen Rabbit convertible in a garage near her place, but I had never seen it, much less ridden in it.

"Sure, but where are we going?"

"Even I don't know yet." That seemed very odd, but I agreed to meet her on Saturday afternoon downtown. In fact, she was going to pick me up outside the subway station at 23rd Street and Park Avenue South.

When I got into her car, I said, "I used to think you'd take me to the Hamptons in this." I knew she had spent a week out there that summer.

"I'm sorry, that wouldn't have been realistic." It would have been awkward for me to be at wherever it was that she was staying. And it certainly wasn't affordable for me to rent my own place nearby.

"I'm not going to put the top down. For one thing, we're going through the Lincoln Tunnel."

"Why are we going to New Jersey?"

"It's just a destination." She seemed subdued, even abrupt on this day. She hadn't even kissed me as a greeting. For this journey, she was wearing casual clothes. That was the first time I had seen her in jeans. Of course, she still managed to look stylish anyway.

Once through the tunnel, she got onto Route 3 going northwest. That was a wide expressway, and we quickly ate up the miles. I was just getting concerned about how far we were going when she exited at Valley Road in Clifton and headed north.

"So now I'm really wondering where we are going."

"And as I said on the phone, even I don't know."

After a few miles, we saw signs for Lambert Castle and Garret Mountain. She said, "I've been here once. Let's go in." It was only a mountain by Passaic County standards. The entire hill was preserved as a park. We drove up a back road to the very top. There was a bench up there where we could sit facing east.

Holly patted one of her own hips. "I try, but as you can see, at thirty-seven, I'm getting some junk in the trunk."

"You say that as if it's a bad thing."

She seemed pleased that I had tried to make her feel okay. "Why, thank you! I appreciate that."

Just to have something to say, I asked, "So how is your job going?" She was a grant writer for the Ford Foundation in New York; she wrote proposals too.

"It's a living. 'Another day, another dollar.' "

"I know you want to do well for your daughter." This girl, named Geraldine, was thirteen and resided with Holly's sister in Connecticut so she could attend the Darien school system.

"Yes, I have to be strong for her."

Holly had once said that she was upper-middle-class, not truly upper class or wealthy. She had put it as: to be upper class, one had to be living off the interest only. And to be upper-upper class, one had to be living off the interest on the interest.

Then she said, "I know are seeing a girl at college right now."

How do women figure out these things so easily? "What makes you think that?"

"Little things, like it's hard to get a hold of you now."

I decided to admit it, "All right, but she's at Manhattan College, not City."

"So where did you meet her?"

"At a Labor Day party in Queens."

"Labor Day, huh? You move fast." Then, "I'm sorry, I meant that to be a joke."

I was understanding why Holly had brought me up here today. I tried to negotiate, "Just because I've met her doesn't mean that we can't still be, you know . . ."

"You don't get it, I see."

I decided to be blunt, "Well, you're not jealous of Tiffany and Cathy, apparently."

"That's entirely different. They're of my generation," She thought more about it. "With this girl, well, I know you. You can't think of anything as casual, even when it probably is."

I said, "Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, it's quite admirable. But it leads you to unrealistic expectations."

I decided to reveal something, "I've had four girlfriends before in college, and all of them dumped me."

She seemed genuinely concerned about me, "Wow, what happened?"

"In three of the cases, I'm sure -- they met older guys with good jobs and more money."

"You're learning the hard way. Girls -- women -- will do that kind of thing. It doesn't mean you should just give up."

"But they acted, in the end, like it was all a big nothing."

"I just told you, don't confuse sexuality with emotional connections."

"They did love me; I was there."

"I'm sure they did. But when they thought it was time to move on, they went."

After a moment, she said, "I really want you to keep in touch; let me know how you're doing. I'm serious." I was struck by the subtle way she had skipped the most painful part of this conversation.

"Sure, Holly, I'll do that." Actually, I probably wasn't going to do that. What would we talk about? Maybe we'd exchange Christmas cards.

I looked at Paterson down below to our left, and then at the distant New York skyline off to the right. Eight million stories in the latter, 150,000 stories in the former. What dramas were being played out in those places at that moment? I knew the one happening on Garret Mountain.

She seemed to quote something, " 'We sit and talk, quietly, with long lapses of silence, and I am aware of the stream that has no language, coursing beneath the quiet heaven of your eyes which has no speech.' "

I was impressed that she had memorized it. "What is that?"

"It's from a poem, a very long one, called Paterson, which, yes, is about the city right down there. William Carlos Williams; have you heard of him?"

"No, he doesn't sound familiar."

Our time as lovers had been a little over four months, but it seemed much longer. I thought,Holly, don't go. You're so incredibly cool; you can quote poems like that one. And I really love you.

But I had never said that to her before, and I knew now that I never would.

*****

Tiffany didn't even meet me in person. She did it over the phone.

"Holly told me what's happening." It wasn't surprising that Holly had been on the Manhattan matron grapevine.

I wasn't really in the mood to talk to Tiffany. "Well, you know how it is."

"Actually, I don't think you know how it is."

I felt impatient, "All right Tiff, tell me about it."

There was a pause. I wished I could see her face so that I could read her expression. "Look, it's been a fun, crazy summer, but we have to get on with our lives. I think you understand that."

I did, but I didn't want to think too much about it.

She said, "I'd knew you'd meet a nice girl up at your school. She is nice, isn't she?"

I briefly thought of something sarcastic like, actually she's a crazy slut, but of course I didn't say it. I repeated a bit of information, "She actually goes to Manhattan College, not City."

Tiffany, like Holly, had always been warm and kind to me. On top of that, they both had been very generous with their sexual favors as well as imaginative in inventing some kinky scenes in which I was the leading man.

I truth, I was going to miss them. I suddenly pictured my first day with Tiffany, and the wild time we had in Long Island City while parked in one of my company's cars. It had concluded with one of the best sessions of rear-entry sex I had ever had.

I remembered my witty conversation with them; I remembered they had the classiest clothes of any of the women I had met so far. Yet, underneath those garments, they had a fondness for garters and open-bottomed girdles. They often would forgo wearing panties under their skirts just for the sexy hell of it. In some ways, I could relax with them in a way I couldn't with women my own age.

And wow, their balling and their blowjobs had blasted me right out of the dating doldrums I had been in that year. Maybe I was grateful that they had restored some of my self-confidence.

Then I recalled the conversation I had with Tiffany on the ride back across the 59th Street Bridge. She knew all about singers like Vince Taylor, Buddy Holly, and Bob and Earl. That relaxed side of her was something else I would never know again.

I knew Tiffany wasn't going to prolong this conversation. "I want you to know, I think you're a great guy."

Despite myself, I was touched by that. "Well, Tiffany, I think you're a great gal."

She giggled, "That's because I am one!"

When she had hung up, I wished I could have seen her face one last time.

So, in the end, it was Holly and Tiffany who had pulled the trigger on me, not the other way around.

*****

As I had expected, Cathy called me a couple of days later. But what she said was unexpected. She had invited me to have a drink with her in her favorite West Side bar. Once in there, she said, "I have heard about what is going on with you, but I have a different take on it than Holly and Tiffany do."

I think I got what she meant, but I let her continue. Some of her shyness came out now, "I know what your priorities have to be, but I still want . . ." She was having trouble expressing this. "For the time being, I still want you in my life."

I tried to be matter-of-fact about it without seeming indifferent, "Sure Cathy, I can do that."

"I do understand the age difference between us. But yet, I want for myself . . ." She couldn't complete that thought either.

She was forty-two, and like the other two women, she was lonely. None of them talked much about their ex-husbands, although Holly told a couple of jokes at his expense.

I looked at Cathy and thought, she must have been a real bombshell back at Barnard. She was still attractive now. Yet I still wished I could see photos of what she had been like in those days. She had never offered to show me any, and it would have rude of me to ask.

It seemed to be my turn to talk, "All right, we'll just take things as they come." That seemed vague, but she still seemed pleased. She put both of her hands on one of mine.

So my third mature girlfriend was going to stay for a while. And, damn, those ladies were so sexy. They seemed to have lost whatever youthful inhibitions they may have once had. I suddenly recalled a story Holly had told me about her days at Bryn Mawr.

She had said, "You remember when I told you how I would cut a slit in my tights so I could be warm in a car during winter and yet, well, there still would access to my crotch."

"I couldn't forget that."

"So Tiffany and I would double date in some guy's car. One of us would be in the front and the other in the back. Our dates would lick us until we came, and then we would blow them until they came." 1959, I guessed. Just two chicks, as Bill Haley would have described them.

I was a bit taken aback, perhaps, but it got better. "She and I would have competitions to see which of us could get our guy to come first."

"So who usually won?"

"It was usually Tiff." She smiled, "We'd pull the guy out at the last moment so that the ejaculation was visible and there was no question of it being faked."

Jesus. "Didn't it get all over the seats?"

"That wasn't our problem." When I had first met Holly, I never imagined what she was capable of. She seemed so refined, haughty even. A good part of that was just an act. I pondered whether Cathy had ever heard that story. Since I knew how indiscreet Holly could be, I assumed she had.

I supposed I felt relieved but awkward. I was used to having the other two sort of backing me up, and now I would have to do it on my own. They were more assertive and would just roll with the flow. Cathy, on the other hand, had told me relatively little about herself.

I decided to talk more about myself. "I wish Donna could join the paper with me, but she's at another school." That was a student newspaper, one of five at the time, and it was called The Salient.

Cathy had seen some issues of the paper. "That is just the craziest student publication I have ever seen." We had published some stuff that was truly pornographic, but we had mixed some religious themes into it. Sex and religion: a potent but dangerous combination.

I said, "I think I told you about Italian Bobbie, didn't I?"

"Yes, the R. Crumb wannabe." I was the one who had introduced Cathy to Crumb's work and she found a lot of it intriguing.

"He had some grudge against his youthful experiences with the Catholic Church and he just had to get it out on someone else's dime."

I explained how the facility advisor was toothless -- I had never even met the guy -- how the student body had continued to fund us with their activity fees. As long as we had the money coming in, we felt invulnerable.

Cathy asked me, "So I assume that this new relationship with Donna is going pretty well?"

"Well, yes, but I wanted to ask you something about it." The fact that she was so much older than I was made me feel comfortable with asking her for opinions about romantic matters.

She must have picked up on that, because she said, "That's okay, you can ask your Auntie Cathy for advice."

"Wait a minute, I've never thought of you as an aunt or something. You've always been, to me . . ." I left the thought unfinished.

"I know, I was kidding you. You were going to say that I am your lover, which is how I see it too,"

"All right, the point is that I've been with these girls at college, and everything seemed to be going along fine, and then they suddenly dump me." I considered telling her a story about one of them, and I decided to do it. "Like my first one, she was a really great girlfriend, and then she suddenly cut me off and told me nothing. After about a week, I saw her getting out of her new boyfriend's sports car."

"He was older than you, I guess."

"In his late twenties, I suppose. I mean, if a student at CCNY has a car, it's usually something like a 1964 Dodge Dart."

That first girlfriend I was talking about -- her name was Nora -- had been a lot of fun but she also indulged in some strange behaviors at times. My time with her had lasted four months and then I saw her in that Triumph Stag. I realized I had brought up these same girlfriend issues with Holly on our last day, although I hadn't told her the Nora story.

Cathy said, "You have to realize that women are often looking for the next bigger, better deal with guys. It may not be fair, but that's the way it is. Look, you be graduating next June; that will help to put you in a better place."

I didn't have to figure out everything about Cathy on the spot that evening. For the moment, we had confirmed how things were going, and that was enough. We'd work out the details later.

Up at Manhattan College, Donna Azzato was my new, age-appropriate girlfriend. Cathy knew about her, but not the other way around. I knew my priorities had to be with Donna. I was beginning to understand why Holly and Tiffany had bailed on me. There just wasn't room for all of them to fit.

I still drove for Lioness Limousine for two or maybe three days per week, and even then it was for only a few hours. I never had Holly or Tiffany as passengers again. I suspected that they had requested that I not be their driver, and if no one else was available, they canceled the trip. That is just speculation, of course. I had no contact with either of them after our good-byes.

######

This is probably the last story for the moment about these three women. There may be one more that I'll add at a later date that backtracks to a couple of months earlier. And if I think of something more about Cathy, I will add that too.