50 THENEWYORKER, APRIL 18, 2022
she had never stopped feeling that An-
gela was the name of a fish.
“Thank you, Pearl,” he said, and a
little smile came over his face, and then
a smile came over her face, and they
started to like each other equally. When
the waiter came to their table, he saw
a beautiful older man with an ordi-
nary-looking woman who was prob-
ably around thirty, and when he left,
Thomas, who had seen the waiter’s look,
asked her, “How old are you, anyway?”
“I’m thirty-one,” she said, “and I’ve
never been married and I have never
had any children.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t like a lot of men. They seem
so picky.”
“That’s true, they are.”
“Do you have a lot of girlfriends,
then?”
“Some.”
“Would you like me to be one of
them?”
“All right,” he said, “but don’t ask me
to be exclusive. I’m seeing a few other
women right now, and I don’t want to
choose.”
“It must be very hard to choose. How
does one choose, anyway? Each woman
is so different, and each has her good
qualities, and each has her bad, and
there can be so many kinds of beauty.
Not to say I’m beautiful—I know I’m
not—but I think I dress well, and I ap-
preciate how other people dress.”
She was wearing a loose purple
blouse that didn’t flatter her.
“All right,” he said, “let’s go.”
T
he next morning she woke up and
remembered her date with Tom.
He had been one of the more interest-
ing men she’d gone out with, mainly
because he didn’t seem to want any-
thing from her. But was that a reason
to think someone was a good person,
or to find a man interesting—just be-
cause he wasn’t salivating all over you?
Yes, she decided, it gave a man a cer-
tain mystique. Of course, she was used
to it: most men her age weren’t sali-
vating all over her, either, but they did
seem to have a kind of urgency in their
blood which she found off-putting,
she now realized, and she was in the
mood for a more patient, more settled
kind of person, someone who didn’t
give her a jumpy feeling. Actually, ev-
eryone her age gave her a jumpy feel-
ing. All of them were trying to figure
out their lives, all of them were fail-
ing at it, all of them were aware that
they were failing and had the feeling
that if they didn’t secure a good life for
themselves first, someone else might
jump in and secure that good life for
themselves and they would forever
be left with nothing. This was how
they all behaved: like there was very
little good left for any of them. So
she saw the benefits of spending time
with Tom, who had already settled a
good enough life, and wasn’t jumpy,
and wasn’t desperately looking for its
parts, and evaluating her and asking
himself whether she was one of those
parts, and whether she was a central
one. It would be good to spend time
with him. He would be a good influ-
ence. She looked in the mirror and
saw that her face was flushed beauti-
fully. She took this to mean she was
falling in love.
That night, after work, she met him
again, but this time at a lamppost, and
they walked toward the same restaurant,
but then they went into the one next
door. It was a Korean place. She loved
the little side dishes. She always felt
she was getting more than her money’s
worth. He told her that he was not a
rich man, so she offered to pay, to show
him that she was not after his money.
“I have enough money to pay for thisdinner,” he said, but she brushed this off,
saying, “Tell me what you do, anyway.”
“I owned a rug store. Now my son
owns it.”
“What’s your son’s name?”
“Thomas.”
“I never understood naming a child
after yourself.”
“A person without children couldn’t
possibly understand.”
Naturally, she was curious to meet
Tom, Jr., and asked if it would be pos-
sible, and ten days later the three ofthem were sitting on a wooden bench
in the park. It was chilly. She was wear-
ing pantyhose and the little half-shaved
hairs were sticking painfully through her
hose, but she felt that probably the men
couldn’t see this. The wind was blow-
ing terribly. It blew Thomas’s hat off his
head, and Tom, Jr., went running for it.
She liked the way he looked when he was
running, and she suddenly wondered if
it wouldn’t make more sense to be with
Tom, Jr., who was closer to her age, and
who would be more acceptable for her
to date. Tom, Jr., looked like his father,
but probably also like his mother: his
face was wider than Thomas’s, and his
neck was longer and thinner. He didn’t
have his father’s clear eyes, and he had
a sour expression, whereas his father’s
expression was very calm and bright.
Tom, Jr., on the other hand, looked like
someone with a chip on his shoulder.
But he was more sexy for being young;
she couldn’t help feeling this way.
When he returned with his father’s
hat, he gave Angela a sly and hungry
look. “It’s not every day that my father
appears with a young woman on his
arm,” he said.
Angela didn’t like this. She wasn’t “on
his arm” and she very quickly decided
that she liked the father better than
the son. It was true that each genera-
tion was worse than the one that came
before; that every generation since the
Fall had lost something of humani-
ty’s initial purity, beauty, and nearness
to God. This was abundantly clear in
the case of the two Toms. She said, in a
prudish way, “I am not on his arm, and
I wouldn’t expect him to appear with a
young woman every day, and even if he
did I certainly shouldn’t think it would
be your place to tell me!”
Now she sat back and Tom, Jr., gave
her a dull and hateful look. Tom, Sr.,
didn’t seem to care. He seemed very
relaxed about his son’s behavior, not
thinking it reflected on him in any way,
as if the boy were not his own son but
a stranger. Angela took this as a sign
that Thomas felt she could take care of
herself, and she liked this—it was like
the exercise thing. She was fine, was his
fundamental feeling about her, and she
could feel it: he wasn’t worried about her,
and this made her not so worried about
herself, either. If he wasn’t worried, per-
haps there was nothing to worry over.