OUTSIDE, Matthew sees Robert and his friend walking ahead of him, still talking and waving their arms.  A short, heavy woman in a green coat is walking toward them.  She looks like a gumdrop.  As she approaches them, Matthew sees that she’s saying something, almost shouting.  They stop and put their hands on their hips; for a moment, they are a pantomime of homosexual umbrage.  The gumdrop woman is really shouting now.  They shout back, and the exchange escalates in volume until finally Matthew can make out what the woman’s saying; in the singsong voice children use to taunt one another, she’s saying, “Animals suffered agony to make your coat.”
    “Your mother suffered agony to make you, sweetheart,” Robert’s date shouts.  Matthew laughs.  The whole scene strikes him as funny, these people in various stages of coming unglued.  Liz used to think he had no sense of humor, and at the time she may have been right, but he has a sense of humor now—he’s sure he does, it’s one of the many ways he’s changed, as she would be amazed to see if she would take the trouble to look.  He’s learned this: a sense of humor is the best defense.  He spent a whole childhood moping because he didn’t have the defensive shield of a sense of humor.  He has cultivated this sense of humor that he has now, and he believes that he mopes for only a small part of the average day.

HE GETS A CAB at the corner, gives the driver Belinda’s address, and then sits in silence.  Whenever he’s alone in a cab, it seems to him that he should talk to the cabdriver, but he never does unless the driver speaks to him first.  Cabdrivers, he knows, are supposed to have a wealth of information, a repertoire of amazing stories, but they rarely speak to him, and he never knows what to say to them.  This behavior isn’t really a reluctance to talk to cabdrivers as such—he has the same problem with anyone he doesn’t know well—but he’s not usually riding alone in a car with other people he doesn’t know well, so it’s most apparent with cabdrivers.
    He rides to Belinda’s without saying a word, and by the time they arrive he’s sure that the driver thinks he’s the kind of supercilious shithead who wouldn’t deign to talk to a cabdriver, so he overtips.  This makes him feel like a sap.
    He rings Belinda’s bell.

BELINDA is not her real name.  Her real name is Linda.  Almost a year ago, not long after she and Matthew began having dinner together a couple of nights a week, she decided that Linda, as a name, had had its day.  She said to him, “Try calling me Belinda for a while.”  He tried it that evening, and an amazing transformation occurred.  He had known Linda for years.  She was married to a friend of his, and Liz was a friend of hers.  He and Linda were friends by extension.  When they began going out to dinner together, he still thought of her as his old friend Linda.  When he began calling her Belinda, he found that this woman Belinda seemed a lot sexier than his old friend Linda, and at the end of the evening they went nuts, making love on the sofa and rug in Matthew’s living room until they were exhausted.  After all those years, they were suddenly lovers—well, not lovers, to tell the truth—something more like sex fiends.  It didn’t last.  Perhaps friendship is stronger than sex.  They are back to being friends, friends who have sex once or twice a week, after dinner or the movies or the theater—still on the couch or the rug, but with something missing.  Matthew keeps hoping that she’ll decide to change her name again.

SNOW HAS BEGUN TO FALL, a pretty sight in the warm yellow light that spills from Belinda’s windows.  It’s a charming place, two floors of a town house on Marlborough Street, a very desirable location, very pretty in the snow, and it should seem inviting, yet Matthew hesitates before ringing the bell.  Why?  He finds Belinda’s daughter unsettling.  Her name is Leila.  She and Belinda say “Lay-la.”  He would say “Lie-la,” but he supposes people should be able to decide how they want their own names pronounced.
    Leila is fifteen.  She’s a girl of heart-stopping sexiness, with brand-new breasts that erupted from her chest as if overnight not long ago.  Matthew can’t seem to pin down just when they appeared.  He remembers her as a girl without breasts, but he can’t recall any slow blossoming of the disconcertingly assertive, boastful, taunting, teasing things that she’s equipped with now.  Whenever he sees her he has to work to keep himself from staring at them.  With the addition of breasts, Leila now looks much more like her mother, and Belinda somehow looks much more like her daughter.  This makes Matthew feel like a pervert, a highly specialized pervert: a seducer of the mothers of young girls.  He suspects that Leila thinks he’s exploiting her mother.  She might be right, but she might be completely wrong—her mother might be exploiting him.  He has wondered whether Leila regards him as a potential stepfather, and he has often wondered what she says to Belinda about him, constructing imaginary conversations, like this one:

    “So, now that you changed your name, what’s next?  Are you going to marry Matthew?  ‘Belinda Barber,’ won’t that be great.”
    “No, I am not going to marry him.  Matthew and I just go out together now and then.  We’re very happy with that arrangement.  We have a good time together, and that is that.”
    “Do you fuck?”

Reservations Recommended is published in paperback by Picador, a division of St. Martin’s Press, at $12.00.

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Reservations Recommended is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, dialogues, settings, and businesses portrayed in it are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

First published by Crown Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022. Member of the Crown Publishing Group.

Now available in paperback from Picador USA, a division of St. Martin’s Press.

For information about publication rights outside the U. S. A., audio rights, serial rights, screen rights, and so on, e-mail Alec “Nick” Rafter, the author’s earnest agent.

The illustration at the top of the page is an adaptation of an illustration by Stewart Rouse that first appeared on the cover of the August 1931 issue of Modern Mechanics and Inventions. The boy at the controls of the aerocycle doesn’t particularly resemble Peter Leroy—except, perhaps, for the smile.