Apartment 2024

Sitting across from Mr. Saltzman, all Ellen could think about was his tiny penis. Though she had turned 21 several months earlier, this was the first time she had ever stepped into a bar.  Mr. Saltzman was more than 30 years older and she had known him since she was seven.  She knew his wife and had often played dress up with his daughter Judy.  The Saltzmans lived a block from her house for most of her childhood.  Her parents were friends with the Saltzmans, and they had been at countless cocktail parties together over the years.

In his early fifties, Mr. Saltzman was still good looking.  He had all his hair, which was a striking silvery blond that women often paid large sums to achieve.  He had been known around the neighborhood as a sharp dresser and today wore an expensively cut wool crepe suit, silk tie and gold pinkie ring.  He smelled of a soapy-scented cologne and cigarettes, and the combination filled her throat and made her want to cough.  While still slim, he had put on a few pounds, which had thickened his middle and added a slight wattle to his chin.  It came to her as a surprise when Ellen suspected that he was holding his stomach in.

Ellen was fashionably dressed in a black crew sweater, a suede miniskirt she had made herself and white knee socks.   Her long brown hair hung loose down her back and every few minutes she unconsciously anchored a few stray strands behind an ear.  Her skin still had a tint of summer tan she had picked up at the Jersey shore   She hardly wore any makeup except for a little mascara to articulate her wide hazel eyes.  Her plaid school bag rested on the floor, its strap looped over the top of her chunky heeled loafers.  It felt like a safety line, a physical link reminding her that this was not where she belonged.

Not five minutes earlier, she had been striding down the street finishing a fall apple, feeling cute, young and fresh, as if the light around her was a little brighter and more clean than anyplace else in the city.  Standing at the corner of 15th and Chestnut, waiting for the light, Herb Saltzman came up behind her and put his hand on her shoulder.

“Ellen, I haven’t seen you in a long time” he said in the direction of her breasts.

“Oh, hi Mr. Saltzman!  I was just on my way home from school.”

“That’s right, your mother told me you had transferred to Temple after your dad passed away.”  His hand lingered on her shoulder as he spoke, keeping her closer to him than felt comfortable.  She worried that it would appear rude if she took a step back and so stayed where she was, realizing that what she had thought was a healthy pink glow on his cheeks were actually tangles of tiny broken blood vessels.

“So, do you have a boyfriend?”  His question pulled her out of her thoughts and she replied,

“We broke up about six months ago.”  Once the words were out of her mouth, she wished she could take them back, because they had turned on a light in Mr. Saltzman’s eyes that made her stomach twist nervously.

“How old are you now, Ellen?”

“I turned 21 a couple of weeks ago.”

“Twenty-one!  That is cause for celebration.  How about you let me buy you a drink?”   Not knowing what else to say, she mumbled,

“OK, I guess.”

He slid the hand that had been resting on her shoulder down to her upper arm, half embracing her now, and guided her towards a place that she had never noticed in all her trips up and down Chestnut Street.  He opened the heavy door, the smell of thousands of cigarettes and spilled lager rolled out to meet her.  She felt like she was stepping into a foreign province as she walked in and took a seat at the bar.

He took out a gold-plated lighter and pack of Camels and offered one to Ellen.  Although she did smoke, she didn’t want to with him, as it seemed too intimate.  He lit one for himself and inhaled deeply.  The bartender came over,

“What can I get you?”  Mr. Saltzman ordered a Tanqueray and tonic and then they both turned to look at Ellen.

“Um, do you have ginger-ale?” she stammered.  The bartender replied that they did, but before he could take a step away, Mr. Saltzman held up a finger and said coolly,

“Why don’t you get a big girl drink instead?”

Ellen’s face turned red.

She had only been drunk once in her life, at a party in high school.  She hadn’t realized that the orange-colored punch her boyfriend kept bringing her had been mostly vodka and so had drunk four full cups before her head started to fill with cotton and her stomach shifted off its axis.  It had taken her three days to recover and she’d hated the feeling so much that she swore to herself that she wouldn’t do it again.  And she hadn’t.

“I have homework to do tonight.  And I don’t really like the taste of liquor.”  The bartender nodded and turned to get the drinks.  When he brought them over, the bottom half of Ellen’s glass glowed pink, tinted by a maraschino cherry.  It was homage to the Shirley Temple she had been too embarrassed to ask for.

Mr. Saltzman lit a fresh cigarette off the butt of his first one, as he talked about how unsatisfying it was to date since the death of his wife two years earlier.  How there weren’t any fun, attractive woman his age out there.  His late wife never seemed to fit him.  She was an artist type with paint dappled fingers and untamable curly hair who wore colorful ethnic tunics.  There was nothing smooth or suave about her.
Ellen thought back to the time when he had dated her mother.  It had only been four or five dates, nearly a year ago.  Her mother had told her that she had slept with him, information she had not wanted to hear.  At the end of their conversation her mom had laughingly added that his penis was so small it was almost impossible to find.  Ellen had wanted to run from the room at this totally embarrassing and disgusting revelation.  But at this moment, feeling like an alien in this bar, she could think of nothing else.  She shivered, an involuntary effort to throw this thought out of her brain.

She tried to change the subject by asking how his kids were.  He answered briefly and then continued on about his difficulties with finding women.  It was beginning to sink in that he was looking outside his age group for women and that he was making hints at dating women her age.  She started to fill with an unease that was marching toward dread.  He was considering her as date material.

She was not a virgin and had always thought that sex was fun but had never considered old men in this context.  She had never really thought much about people over the age of 35 even having sex or being very interested in it.  Ellen figured that sex was primarily the domain of young, attractive adults, her source of information being TV, movies, books and friends.  Until her mother had told her about sex with Mr. Saltzman, no one had ever mentioned that people continued to have sex for their entire lives.

This was not the first time that something like this had happened to her.  When she was nine years old she went up to the lake with the Levys, her next-door neighbors.  Mr. Levy came over to her in the water and offered to teach her the breaststroke.  After about a minute she realized that he was touching her bottom under the water, where no one could see.  She instinctively knew that it wasn’t right, even though no one talked about such things in the 1950’s.  Guided by her discomfort, she twisted away from him and said,

“No thanks, I want to go play” and swam towards the other kids.  She did this wholly without connecting his actions to her feelings.  She managed to stay away from him for the next eight years, until the Levy’s moved.  Years later Ellen and her mother were reminiscing about growing up in Elkins Park and she casually mentioned Mr. Levy at the lake.  Her mom said,

“Oh, he was always a weird man.  He frequently carried a pack of playing cards around with him that showed pictures of people having intercourse and delighted at displaying them at parties.”

And there was the last day of 9th grade, when her science teacher Mr. Bauers asked her to come into the supply closet, to show her something.  He shut the door after her, put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her.  Ellen had showed no reaction.  It was as if she was hanging in the air on a windless day.  He pulled his head back for a second and kissed her again.  She regained control of her limbs and took a step back.  He said,

“I don’t know what to do.  I can’t stop thinking about you.  I dream about you at night.  I’m afraid I’m going to talk in my sleep and my wife will hear me say your name.”

She stood there, feeling simultaneously guilty and numb, her adolescent brain searching sluggishly for a response.  Mimicking the advice her parents had given her over the years she said,

“Don’t worry about it.  It’s just a phase you’re going through.  You’ll get over it.

Mr. Bauers threw his head back, laughing at naivety of her words.  She turned and walked out of the closet, feeling stupid and humiliated.  She had been sincere in her desire to help him with this problem.

On her way home, she realized that he really was a good kisser.  His lips were soft.  He wasn’t sloppy like Billy Cohen, Ellen’s boyfriend at the time.  These thoughts compounded her guilt and so she put them out of her mind.

“I’ve been thinking of selling my house and moving into town.  There are so many more opportunities for fun in Center City.”  Ellen forced her focus back to Mr. Saltzman’s words.

“I’m only 52.  I’ve still got a lot of life left in me.”  In the dimness of the bar, she felt warmth on her leg.  It took her three heartbeats to grasp that Mr. Saltzman was resting his hand on her exposed thigh.  A flush slowly rose from her collarbone, up her neck, past her cheeks and to her scalp, leaving a prickly sensation behind.

Ellen put down her half-drunk ginger ale, looked longingly at the maraschino cherry, and stood up.  She picked up her school bag and held it to her chest like a shield.  From years of reinforced manners, she automatically responded,

“Thank you for the drink, my mother is expecting me for dinner.  It was very nice to see you, Mr. Saltzman.”

A sneer of amused disappointment rolled across his face.

“Tell your mother I send my regards.”

He turned back to the bar to light another cigarette as Ellen walked towards the exit.

Swinging the door open, she was taken aback by the bright sameness of the day and the purity of the air.