“You mean he’d be killed.”
“Yes.”
“What kind of world do you people live in?” asked Swanson softly.
“It’s complicated,” said Pace.
15
DECEMBER 29, 1943, NEW YORK CITY
Spaulding watched the traffic below from the hotel window overlooking Fifth Avenue and Central Park. The Montgomery was one of those small, elegant hotels his parents had used while in New York, and there was a pleasant sense of nostalgia in his being there again. The old desk clerk had actually wept discreet tears while registering him. Spaulding had forgotten—fortunately he remembered before his signature was dry—that the old man years ago had taken him for walks in the park. Over a quarter of a century ago!
Walks in the park. Governesses. Chauffeurs standing in foyers, prepared to whisk his parents away to a train, a concert, a rehearsal. Music critics. Record company executives. Endless dinner parties where he’d make his usual “appearance” before bedtime and be prompted by his father to tell some guest at what age Mozart composed the Fortieth; dates and facts he was forced to memorize and which he gave not one goddamn about. Arguments. Hysterics over an inadequate conductor or a bad performance or a worse review.
Madness.
And always the figure of Aaron Mandel, soothing, placating—so often fatherly to his overbearing father while his mother faded, waiting in a secondary status that belied her natural strength.
And the quiet times. The Sundays—except for concert Sundays—when his parents would suddenly remember his existence and try to make up in one day the attention they thought they had allocated improperly to governesses, chauffeurs and nice, polite hotel managements. At these times, the quiet times, he had felt his father’s honest yet artificial attempts; had wanted to tell him it was all right, he wasn’t deprived. They didn’t have to spend autumn days wandering around zoos and museums; the zoos and museums were much better in Europe, anyway. It wasn’t necessary that he be taken to Coney Island or the beaches of New Jersey in summer. What were they, compared to the Lido or Costa del Santiago? But whenever they were in America, there was this parental compulsion to fit into a mold labeled “An American Father and Mother.”
Sad, funny, inconsistent; impossible, really.
And for some buried reason, he had never come back to this small, elegant hotel during the later years. There was rarely a need, of course, but he could have made the effort; the management was genuinely fond of the Spaulding family. Now it seemed right, somehow. After the years away he wanted a secure base in a strange land, secure at least in memories.
Spaulding walked away from the window to the bed where the bellboy had placed his new suitcase with the new civilian clothes he had purchased at Rogers Peet. Everything, including the suitcase. Pace had had the foresight to send money with the major who had brought him duplicates of the papers destroyed in Terceira. He had to sing for the money, not for the papers; that amused him.
The major who met him at Mitchell Field—on the field—had escorted him to the base infirmary, where a bored army doctor pronounced him fit but “run down”; had professionally criticized the sutures implanted by the British doctor in the Azores but saw no reason to change them; and suggested that David take two APCs every four hours and rest.
Caveat patient.
The courier-major had played a tune on the Fairfax piano and told him Field Division was still analyzing the Lajes sabotage; it could have been aimed at him for misdeeds out of Lisbon. He should be careful and report any unusual incidents directly to Colonel Pace at Fairfax. Further, Spaulding was to commit the name of Brigadier General Alan Swanson, DW. Swanson was his source control and would make contact in a matter of days, ten at the outside.
Why call Pace, then? Regarding any “incidents.” Why not get in touch directly with this Swanson? Since he was the SC.
Pace’s instructions, replied the major—until the brigadier took over; just simpler that way.
Or further concealment, thought David, remembering the clouded eyes of Paul Hollander, the Az-Am agent in Terceira.
Something was happening. The source control transfer was being handled in a very unorthodox manner. From the unsigned, high-priority codes received in Lisbon to the extraordinary command: out of strategy. From the midocean delivery of papers from Az-Am agents who said they had to question him first, to the strange orders that had him reporting to two civilians in New York without prior briefing.
It was all like a hesitation waltz. It was either very professional or terribly amateur; really, he suspected, a combination of both. It would be interesting to meet this General Swanson. He had never heard of him.
He lay down on the hotel bed. He would rest for an hour and then shower and shave and see New York at night for the first time in over three years. See what the war had done to a Manhattan evening; it had done little or nothing to the daylight hours, from what he’d seen—only the posters. It would be good to have a woman tonight. But if it happened, he’d want it to be comfortable, without struggle or urgency. A happy coincidence would be just right; a likable, really likable interlude. On the other hand, he wasn’t about to browse through a telephone directory to create one. Three years and nine months had passed since he last picked up a telephone in New York City. During that time he had learned to be wary of the changes taking place over a matter of days, to say nothing of three years and nine months.
And he recalled pleasantly how the Stateside transfers to the embassy in Lisbon often spoke of the easy accessibility of the women back home. Especially in Washington and New York, where the numbers and the absence of permanency worked in favor of one-night stands. Then he remembered, with a touch of amused resignation, that these same reports usually spoke of the irresistible magnetism of an officer’s uniform, especially captain and over.
He had worn a uniform exactly three times in the past four years: at the Mayflower Hotel lounge with Ed Pace, the day he arrived in Portugal and the day he left Portugal.
He didn’t even own one now.
His telephone rang and it startled him. Only Fairfax and, he assumed, this brigadier, Swanson, knew where he was. He had called the Montgomery from the Mitchell Field infirmary and secured the reservation; the major had said to take seventy-two hours. He needed the rest; no one would bother him. Now someone was bothering him.
“Hello?”
“David!” It was a girl’s voice; low, cultivated at the Plaza. “David Spaulding!”
“Who is this?” He wondered for a second if his just-released fantasies were playing tricks on reality.
“Leslie, darling! Leslie Jenner! My God, it must be nearly five years!”
Spaulding’s mind raced. Leslie Jenner was part of the New York scene but not the radio world; she was the up-from-college crowd. Meeting under the clock at the Biltmore; late nights at LaRue; the cotillions—which he’d been invited to, not so much from social bloodlines as for the fact that he was the son of the concert Spauldings. Leslie was Miss Porter’s, Finch and the Junior League.
Only her name had been changed to something else. She had married a boy from Yale. He didn’t remember the name.
“Leslie, this is … well, Jesus, a surprise. How did you know I was here?” Spaulding wasn’t engaging in idle small talk.
“Nothing happens in New York that I don’t know about! I have eyes and ears everywhere, darling! A veritable spy network!”
David Spaulding could feel the blood draining from his face; he didn’t like the girl’s joke. “I’m serious, Leslie.… Only because I haven’t called anyone. Not even Aaron. How did you find out?”
“If you must know, Cindy Bonner—she was Cindy Tottle, married Paul Bonner—Cindy was exchanging some dreary Christmas gifts for Paul at Rogers Peet and she swore she saw you trying on a suit. Well, you know Cindy! Just too shy for words …”
David didn’t know Cindy. He couldn’t even recall the name, much less a face. Leslie Jenner went on as he thought about that.
> “… and so she ran to the nearest phone and called me. After all, darling, we were a major item!”
If a “major item” described a couple of summer months of weekending at East Hampton and bedding the daughter of the house, then David had to agree. But he didn’t subscribe to the definition; it had been damned transient, discreet and before the girl’s very social marriage.
“I’d just as soon you kept that information from your husband.…”
“Oh, God, you poor lamb! It’s Jenner, darling, not Hawkwood! Didn’t even keep the name. Damned if I would.”
That was it, thought David. She’d married a man named Hawkwood: Roger or Ralph; something like that. A football player, or was it tennis?
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.…”
“Richard and I called it quits simply centuries ago. It was a disaster. The son of a bitch couldn’t even keep his hands off my best friends! He’s in London now; air corps, but very hush-hush, I think. I’m sure the English girls are getting their fill of him … and I do mean fill! I know!”
There was a slight stirring in David’s groin. Leslie Jenner was proffering an invitation.
“Well, they’re allies,” said Spaulding humorously. “But you didn’t tell me, how did you find me here?”
“It took exactly four telephone calls, my lamb. I tried the usual: Commodore, Biltmore and the Waldorf; and then I remembered that your dad and mum always stopped off at the Montgomery. Very Old World, darling.… I thought, with reservations simply hell, you might have thought of it.”
“You’d make a good detective, Leslie.”
“Only when the object of my detecting is worthwhile, lamb.… We did have fun.”
“Yes, we did,” said Spaulding, his thoughts on an entirely different subject. “And we can’t let your memory prowess go to waste. Dinner?”
“If you hadn’t asked, I would have screamed.”
“Shall I pick you up at your apartment? What’s the address?”
Leslie hesitated a fraction of a moment. “Let’s meet at a restaurant. We’d never get out of here.”
An invitation, indeed.
David named a small Fifty-first Street cafe he remembered. It was on Park. “At seven thirty? Eight?”
“Seven thirty’s lovely, but not there, darling. It closed simply years ago. Why not the Gallery? It’s on Forty-sixth. I’ll make reservations; they know me.”
“Fine.”
“You poor lamb, you’ve been away so long. You don’t know anything. I’ll take you in tow.”
“I’d like that. Seven thirty then.”
“Can’t wait. And I promise not to cry.”
Spaulding replaced the telephone; he was bewildered—on several levels. To begin with, a girl didn’t call a former lover after nearly four war years without asking—especially in these times—where he’d been, how he was; at least the length of his stay in town. It wasn’t natural, it denied curiosity in these curiosity-prone days.
Another reason was profoundly disturbing.
The last time his parents had been at the Montgomery was in 1934. And he had not returned since then. He’d met the girl in 1936; in October of 1936 in New Haven at the Yale Bowl. He remembered distinctly.
Leslie Jenner couldn’t possibly know about the Montgomery Hotel. Not as it was related to his parents.
She was lying.
16
DECEMBER 29, 1943, NEW YORK CITY
The Gallery was exactly as David thought it would be: a lot of deep-red velvet with a generous sprinkling of palms in varying shapes and sizes, reflecting the soft-yellow pools of light from dozens of wall sconces far enough above the tables to make the menus unreadable. The clientele was equally predictable: young, rich, deliberately casual; a profusion of wrinkled eyebrows and crooked smiles and very bright teeth. The voices rose and subsided, words running together, the diction glossy.
Leslie Jenner was there when he arrived. She ran into his arms in front of the cloak room; she held him fiercely, in silence, for several minutes—or it seemed like minutes to Spaulding; at any rate, too long a time. When she tilted her head back, the tears had formed rivulets on her cheeks. The tears were genuine, but there was something—was it the tautness of her full mouth? the eyes themselves?—something artificial about the girl. Or was it him? The years away from places like the Gallery and girls like Leslie Jenner.
In all other respects she was as he remembered her. Perhaps older, certainly more sensual—the unmistakable look of experience. Her dark blonde hair was more a light brown now, her wide brown eyes had added subtlety to her innate provocativeness, her face was a touch lined but still sculptured, aristocratic. And he could feel her body against his; the memories were sharpened by it. Lithe, strong, full breasted; a body that centered on sex. Shaped by it and for it.
“God, God, God! Oh, David!” She pressed her lips against his ear.
They went to their table; she held his hand firmly, releasing it only to light a cigarette, taking it back again. They talked rapidly. He wasn’t sure she listened, but she nodded incessantly and wouldn’t take her eyes off him. He repeated the simple outlines of his cover: Italy, minor wounds; they were letting him out to go back into an essential industry where he’d do more good than carrying a rifle. He wasn’t sure how long he’d be in New York. (He was honest about that, he thought to himself. He had no idea how long he’d be in town; he wished he did know.) He was glad to see her again.
The dinner was a prelude to bed. They both knew it; neither bothered to conceal the excitement of reviving the most pleasant of experiences: young sex that was taken in shadows, beyond the reprimands of elders. Enjoyed more because it was prohibited, dangerous.
“Your apartment?” he asked.
“No, lamb. I share it with my aunt, mum’s younger sister. It’s very chic these days to share an apartment; very patriotic.”
The reasoning escaped David. “Then my place,” he said firmly.
“David?” Leslie squeezed his hand and paused before speaking. “Those old family retainers who run the Montgomery, they know so many in our crowd. For instance, the Allcotts have a suite there, so do the Dewhursts.… I have a key to Peggy Webster’s place in the Village. Remember Peggy? You were at their wedding. Jack Webster? You know Jack. He’s in the navy; she went out to see him in San Diego. Let’s go to Peggy’s place.”
Spaulding watched the girl closely. He hadn’t forgotten her odd behavior on the telephone, her lie about the old hotel and his parents. Yet it was possible that his imagination was overworking—the years in Lisbon made one cautious. There could be explanations, memory lapses on his part; but now he was as curious as he was stimulated.
He was very curious. Very stimulated.
“Peggy’s place,” he said.
If there was anything beyond the sexual objective, it escaped him.
Their coats off, Leslie made drinks in the kitchen while David bunched newspapers beneath the fireplace grill and watched the kindling catch.
Leslie stood in the kitchen doorway looking down at him separating the logs, creating an airflow. She held their drinks and smiled. “In two days it’s New Year’s Eve. We’ll jump and call this ours. Our New Year’s. The start of many, I hope.”
“Of many,” he replied, standing up and going to her. He took both glasses, not the one extended. “I’ll put them over here.” He carried them to the coffee table in front of the small couch that faced the fireplace. He turned rapidly, politely to watch her eyes. She wasn’t looking at the glasses. Or his placement of them.
Instead, she approached the fire and removed her blouse. She dropped it on the floor and turned around, her large breasts accentuated by a tight, transparent brassiere that had webbed stitching at the tips.
“Take off your shirt, David.”
He did so and came to her. She winced at his bandages and gently touched them with her fingers. She pressed herself against him, her pelvis firm against his thighs, moving laterally, expertly. He reached aroun
d her back and undid the hasps of the brassiere; she hunched slightly as he pulled it away; then she turned, arching her breasts upward into his flesh. He cupped her left breast with his right hand; she reached down, stepping partially away, and undid his trousers.
“The drinks can wait, David. It’s New Year’s Eve. Ours, anyway.”
Still holding her breast, he put his lips to her eyes, her ears. She felt him and moaned.
“Here, David,” she said. “Right here on the floor.” She sank to her knees, her skirt pulled up to her thighs, the tops of her stockings visible.
He lay down beside her and they kissed.
“I remember,” he whispered with a gentle laugh. “The first time; the cottage by the boathouse. The floor. I remember.”
“I wondered if you would. I’ve never forgotten.”
It was only one forty-five in the morning when he took her home. They had made love twice, drunk a great deal of Jack and Peggy Webster’s good whisky and spoken of the “old days” mostly. Leslie had no inhibitions regarding her marriage. Richard Hawkwood, ex-husband, was simply not a man who could sustain a permanent relationship. He was a sexual glutton as long as the sex was spread around; not much otherwise. He was also a failure—as much as his family would allow—in the business world. Hawkwood was a man brought up to enjoy fifty thousand a year with the ability to make, perhaps, six.
The war was created, she felt, for men like Richard. They would excel in it, as her ex-husband had done. He should “go down in flames” somewhere, exiting brilliantly rather than return to the frustrations of civilian inadequacy. Spaulding thought that was harsh; she claimed she was being considerate. And they laughed and made love.
Throughout the evening David kept alert, waiting for her to say something, reveal something, ask something unusual. Anything to clarify—if nothing else—the reasons behind her earlier lies about finding him. There was nothing.
He asked her again, claiming incredulity that she would remember his parents and the Montgomery. She stuck to her infallible memory, adding only that “love makes any search more thorough.”
The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel Page 17