Happy All the Time by Laurie Colwin Page A

business as usual.”
    Betty Helen stood before him with her hands on her hips. Her glasses glittered at him. It was impossible to imagine that face smiling.
    â€œBusiness will not be as usual tomorrow,” said Betty Helen. “There is not one usual thing about this place. I’m not complaining. I find it very interesting. It just isn’t usual. I hope you don’t mind me saying this. I like working in an unusual atmosphere. I find it very stimulating. However, I am a very organized person. I have not typed all my letters and if I left work early, I would have nothing planned to do. I like to do what I plan to do. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll stay here and finish those letters. Now, I would like to say something to you which I hope you won’t mind. I am a teetotaler myself, but if I were you, I would go home and make myself a drink. You look terrible.”
    Guido had never heard Betty Helen say more than a sentence or two. Now she had given him what was almost a lecture. And did he look so awful that it was visible even to Betty Helen? He peered back at her. Behind her glasses was yet another person he did not understand.
    Guido did not entertain himself. He had no interest in zoos, shopping, or museums. The thought of going home upset him. Instead he went walking with the collar of his coat turned up. He bought a pack of cigarettes and smoked as he walked. Then he sat on a bench by the river and let the cold wind make his eyes tear.
    Holly had him by the short hairs. She might know if the pictures on the wall were just a fraction crooked, but she was Genghis Khan in emotional matters. Was she one of those orderly people who wanted some form of disorder from time to time? Whatever she was, she certainly knew what she was doing. Guido might sit in his office every day and long for her, but not as ferociously as he did now. Maybe he had taken his marriage for granted after all. This infuriated him. How could he be angry with Holly for going away if she had been right to go away? The smooth surface of Guido’s life now looked more risky, more uneven. Tranquillity was not a given of life—that was Holly’s message. Guido tossed the pack of cigarettes into the river and pulled a cigar out of his pocket. Fairness of judgment certainly got in the way of temperament. Had he been able to work himself up to a real fury, he might have gone out and had one of those brief not unjolly affairs. He could have prowled around the Frick Collection looking for an adventuresome girl. Without that capability, he was condemned to living in that Holly-less apartment, forced to confront the light, sweet smell of her part of the closet, to grit his teeth over a lonely dinner, and write his Foundation report at the empty dining room table. He would see a few movies he had no desire to see. He would get drunk with Vincent and listen to him babble about his unpleasant girlfriend. There was no one he wanted to have an affair with but Holly. Each day brought him a postcard from her—a gorgeous postcard of some gorgeous place. Today’s had been from a castle in Normandy. It read: “Am thinking all the time. Won’t write a letter as would rather talk. Instructive to miss you.”
    Misty had told Vincent to come to dinner at eight. That gave him three hours in which to be nervous and to rid himself of the last remnants of the hangover he had gotten on Guido’s behalf. He scribbled Guido a note on office stationery. “Sorry to have wrecked your liver,” it read. He went home, changed his shirt, watched the evening news, read the paper, and paced around his apartment. Two blocks from Misty’s apartment he realized he was fifteen minutes early. This led him around the corner where he found an open florist’s shop.
    â€œGive me something that looks like the things they hang on prize-winning horses,” he said.
    The florist, a stooped old Greek, gave him an expressionless