The Last Lovely City by Alice Adams

his pride was involved, and she was reluctant to hurt that pride, and his feelings.
    When he said, as he sometimes gloomily did, that if they broke up she would be the last woman in his life, she also understood that this had less to do with the great love that he professed for her than with his secret, his “problem.” Lucretia, the only person privy to that secret, had to be the last in line.
    In the women’s shelter Lucretia felt herself stretched between extreme emotions: between pity and fear, admiration, sometimes disgust. And occasionally sheer boredom: encouraged by her questions, some of these women would have talked for hours, not always coherently. But many of them were coherent, many interesting, some even funny. A marvelous elderly black woman—from Montana, of all places. A shriveled Mexican-Jewish woman from L.A., with raucous, horrifying tales of endless boyfriends.
    Lucretia’s story in four installments ran in the Sunday paper, and most of her friends called to say how good it was, congratulations. Edwin, the editor and her old friend (the donor of the white-framed mirror), was highly pleased. Lucretia noted with interest that Burt was among those who did not call.
    But Simon did call. Simon Coyne, at that time a voice from her remote past, from Jim and Cambridge days, law school. Although Simon had not been in law school. Eccentrically, everyone felt at the time, he was getting his doctorate in philosophy. Lucretia had heard that he married a Boston girl, and that broke up, and he married someone else. He taught in several small schools around the South. She had not really heard of him for years now, although when he called she realized that he had remained a romantic image in her mind: so tall and fair, with his pipe and tweeds and slightly odd way of speech. He was from Toronto, originally, Lucretia remembered, but he seemed rather “English” than Canadian. More distant than Canadians generally were. More impeccably, remotely courteous.
    He was teaching in Berkeley now, Simon said, and yes, he liked it very much. He had found a nice house up on Euclid. His cats liked it, too; he had three. No, he was not married, but two of his three sons were living close by, as it happened.
    Why didn’t you call me before? Lucretia wanted to ask him. And, When can we see each other? Are you busy tonight? But she managed simply to say, “I’d love to see you; could you come over for supper sometime soon?”
    He was terribly busy, as he was sure that she was, too, and besides, he insisted on taking her out to dinner. He would call.
    And then she didn’t hear from him for a couple of weeks, during which she saw Burt more than she had meant to. She did manage at last to say, “Look, Burt, we can have dinner sometimes if you’d like to, but we can’t, uh, go to bed.”
    His whole face tightened. “I can hardly blame you for that. With my problem.”
    “It’s not that. Honestly.” And honestly it was not, not his impotence but his whole severe, self-centered, somewhat hostile character. She would have liked to say, I just don’t like you very much, but she said instead, “My heart just isn’t in it. I’m sorry.”
    She should have been rewarded, Lucretia believed, by a phone call from Simon, asking her out to dinner at last. But she was not. Burt called several times, still wanting to see her, and each time the phone rang she imagined that it would be Simon, but it was not. After some time of this she thought, I am much too old to wait for phone calls. And so she called him.
    As she had more or less known that he would be, Simon was gallantly contrite. He had meant to call her, he had looked forward to seeing her, but had been stuck with crazy busyness. Department politics, plus high-level university trouble.
    She reassured him. Perfectly all right—she had been busy, too. She invited him to dinner.
    Oh, no, he said, they must go out, and he named a place that he wanted to try. On the waterfront.