“No thanks, they’re clean.” She tittered, and he thought of asking for her phone number.
Marty, dressed immaculately in a midnight blue suit, a white silk tie, and a white-on-white shirt with a pattern that made Jay dizzy, greeted him with an affectionate hug. He touched Jay’s suit.
“Klein’s had a fire sale?”
“No, handmade by Jewish peasants. You didn’t tell me it was formal. I would have worn my jock strap with luminous nailheads.”
“Tonight we’re on good behavior. My father-in-law’s here.”
“Never met him, but I don’t like him already.”
“By the way, why didn’t you bring Rhoda?”
Jay reddened slightly and lit a cigarette.
“I don’t take a salami sandwich to a banquet.”
Marty pulled Jay by his sleeve into the living room as though he were an entertainer. A small man with an enormous head and sparse grains of red hair sutured onto his scalp was playing “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” at a concert Steinway and a woman was leaning on the piano gazing at him like Proserpina en route to the underworld. Her elbow slipped, and Jay said:
“Who’s the squiffed dame? She looks unconscious.”
“My wife.”
“Oh?”
“She’s supporting a quart of scotch.” A colored barman behind a small but elegant mahogany bar in the corner of the circular room was crushing ice, and two people whom Jay recognized as a manufacturer of expensive dresses and a model who worked in his showroom some of the time seemed to be plotting the death of his wife. About five people stood in the center of the room, all dressed to kill, sipping long highballs and munching cashew nuts. It was the largest room Jay had ever seen outside of a movie set. Marty’s wife approached them; she was carrying two drinks, both of them hers. She had raven black hair, a nose that had formerly been a chicken wing and which now, through the miracle of modern science, looked a shiny pearl onion. She wore a red evening gown with a slit down the side, revealing eight inches of suntanned calf. The gown had enormous square fullback shoulders, and she reminded Jay of a courtesan he had seen in a recent French Revolution epic that he had never for a moment pretended to understand. She looked the sort of woman who spent most of her time in league with bishops, planning to murder the king.
“You forgot to introduce us?” she said, screwing her face up into a perfect tomahawk. She peered at Jay’s speckled tie as though it were a curtain fabric she wouldn’t even consider for the bathroom. “And he’s the best-looking guy in this whole dump.”
This whole dump had an authentic Dresden chandelier lit by about two hundred candles, two elaborately fluted French settees that looked as though they were made from lobster skeletons and were covered in a kind of minstrel-playing-lute-to-milkmaid tapestry that he had once seen in a Viennese museum during his electrical days with Uncle Klotz. Three spindly tables supported Meissen lamps, and the walls were covered with a satin fabric and a number of paintings showing bearded men on horseback, which probably cost more than he would earn in five years.
“Jay Blackman, my wife Paula,” Marty said through the haze of her breath.
“You look like a bookmaker, Jay. Are you a bookmaker?”
“I’m a bookmaker like you’re Sylvia Sydney.”
She stared at him sullenly and took a sip of her drink.
“I’ll bet it’s the chaser that gets you,” Jay said.
“Hey, tha’s good,” she said downing four ounces of chaser.
“Paula, tell that guy to play ‘Hatikvah’ or something. He’s falling asleep.”
Two funeral attendants marched through the room bearing trays of drinks and bull’s-eye and sandwiches.
“I’ll have a scotch and water,” Jay said. He swallowed some and refrained from spitting it out because Marty was watching. His rye days, he thought, unhappily, were over. An enormous blonde and a little man who had probably been her patient attempted a foxtrot in the corner of the room. A saxophonist and a colored bass player appeared on the scene and tried “Stomping at the Waldorf” with the pianist who gulped down a drink and began bouncing on his rump. Everywhere people chattered excitedly and there was a tension and electricity in the air that Jay had never before experienced at a party; the type he was accustomed to usually started at seven o’clock with everyone fighting to get at the food, drinking suspiciously from his own bottle, and then taking a ride to Canarsie in someone’s jalopy with three girls: sex and heartburn in the backseat squashed between another couple who were trying to move up and down when he was moving sideways, and the girl invariably winding up with mild concussion because her head had been banged so regularly on the roof of the car. He succeeded in banishing Rhoda from his mind. She didn’t fit in with people like this, and he resented her now even more.
Paula shoved a plate of sandwiches under his nose.
“Here, have some.”
“No thanks, I never eat on an empty stomach.”
“Whaaaaaaa . . . gee, you’re a funny man.” She stretched out an arm that looked as though it had been designed to be a coat hanger. “Daddy, say hello to a funny man.”
A pudgy balding man with concentric groups of freckles on his scalp undid her arm from his jacket and wheeled around. Jay wondered how he got his tan and who sculpted his mustache, which was so carefully penciled that he must have kept a make-up artist. The man adjusted his horn-rimmed glasses and tried to pick Jay out of the line-up. Yes, officer, he’s the one who had the gun, his eyes seemed to say. He wore a black mohair suit that matched his brooding eyes.
“You all right, Paula dear?” paternally solicitous.
“Oh, marvelous. Never better,” she said, collapsing on the edge of a table.
“Don’t let her have any more to drink, Marty,” he said in a commanding, low voice, that impressed Jay by the authority behind it.
“Yes, sir,” Marty replied. “Better get her something to eat.”
“Good idea. She likes the white meat on the turkey.”
Jay found himself standing with Paula’s father and unable to make up his mind what to say. When he had made his buying raid Harry Lee had not condescended to come out of his office to meet him; one of his assistants had dealt with Jay, and when he had asked about Mr. Lee the assistant had laughed in his face and said that the boss couldn’t care less about peanut orders. If he had been Sears Roebuck, Montgomery Ward or Saks, Jay would have been sure to get theater tickets, dinner at Twenty-One, and the best looking call girl money could buy, but the boss didn’t waste his time on peasants who spent a few thousand for the old stock. It was rumored that Harry Lee had ten million dollars, most of it in cash. He had got out of the stock market in time, ignoring, in 1928, the advice of his brokers, lawyers, and investment counsels. He had new brokers now and six large factories that were never idle. Every big store in America carried his dresses and indeed so great was the demand that he could not fill all of the orders.
“You a friend of Marty’s?” he asked, as though it were a criminal act.
“I do a bit of business with him.”
“What do you call your outfit?”
“J-R. I’ve got a store on Fourteenth Street, near Klein’s.”
“Good spot. You doing business?”
“I can’t kick.”
“What do you push out a week?”
“I think that’s my business.”
Lee gave him a surprised smile and moved his head reprovingly from side to side. His fingers had that well-cared-for look that five thousand manicures tend to give a hand. His tie had cost more than Jay’s suit - wild silk or something - and Jay suspected now he had been born with that suntan. He jiggled the ice cubes in his glass, then lit a thick Havana cigar whose odor almost floored Jay.
“A small guy doesn’t like to talk numbers, but a big man always.”
“I’ll carve that on my heart.”
“Pretty cute, aren’t you?”
“You wouldn’t be impressed with any numbers I could mention.�
�
“Try me.”
“Fifteen hundred a week.”
Lee puffed his cigar pensively and blew some smoke over Jay’s shoulder.
“One store?”
“That’s right.”
“See, you’re wrong, I am impressed. If I’d asked you how much profit you were making or what the mark-up was, that would be personal, unless you were so big that it didn’t matter.” He flicked some ash on the carpet. He must’ve bought it, Jay thought. “That’s department store figures. How many girls on the floor?”
“Six. Me and my assistant make eight.”
“Big store?”
“Narrow but deep.”
“Where else are you opening up?”
Jay pondered the question. It hadn’t occurred to him that he should be hunting for new stores. He had been so amazed at his rapid success that he thought he would consolidate for several years.
“Where do you suggest?”
“I don’t know a thing about the retail trade. But if you’re selling cheap, then a Sunday street wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
“I’ve moved pretty fast and I thought of taking it easy for a while.”
“Bad thinking. Now’s the time to open up all over the place. Cheap rents. In two or three years, the way Roosevelt’s going, the rents will’ve tripled. There’s going to be a war and people’ll have money again.”
“You think I ought to look out of New York?”
“Every place is good. The more stores you’ve got, the greater your buying power. You can dictate price to a manufacturer. That’s the thing of the future - big organizations, volume sales. People aren’t going to want to pay high prices when they’ve got money. That’s a mistake a lot of people make. You’ve got to get the masses to buy - that’s business. When you sell expensive stuff, you’ve got to contend with fickle customers.”
Jay blinked with astonishment when Lee took his empty glass out of his hand and said: “I’ll get you a refill.”
He surveyed the room for the first time since he had come in. People were coming and going, and the festive, abandoned quality of the evening seemed more like New Year’s Eve than an ordinary Saturday night. People simply gave parties; they didn’t, he realized, have to have a definite reason for them. A low anguished moan came from behind him, and he moved up to see what had happened. Harry Lee’s even suntan appeared to have been swabbed with calamine lotion. His hands shook, and he put his drink and lit cigar down on the end of a table. He lifted Paula off the sofa where she was sprawled like a trussed chicken and began anxiously trying to undo her red evening gown. Finally with Marty’s assistance they got her to her feet and marched her court-martial style down a long corridor that led to the bathroom. The band played on, and no one appeared to be unduly concerned by the collapse of the hostess.
A familiar face emerged from a group of people who were in a huddle in the corner listening to someone’s jokes. The face was connected to a body he was unable to see. It was a beautiful face with red hair done in a upsweep with a crown of curls. The lips were a trifle thickish, and the nose was tilted up slightly. He couldn’t tell what color her eyes were because she was too far away, but then one of them winked at him and he smiled, hoping she hadn’t made a mistake. He had prickles under his skin, and his temples pulsated so that the whole room became hazy and gray. He finished his drink quickly and moved towards the face, asking with his glass if she wanted a drink. The face nodded and now he saw her body. She was wearing a startlingly simple high-necked black dress and a large pearl clip just at the right point on the bodice, and her red hair acted like a shock on the black dress. She had smallish well-shaped teeth, and her tongue flicked out when she spoke to him.
“You were very rude to me once.”
“My mother should punish me then.” He handed her a scotch highball. She had a small waist and a full bosom that was out of fashion that year and the dress was doing a poor job of concealing it.
“We met at the elevator in Marty’s showroom, and you said . . .”
“Don’t go on. It’s all come back to me. Let’s go to the bathroom and you can wash my mouth with soap. I deserve it. I’m sorry.”
“I got the job.”
“When?”
“Marty called me last week. The girl he hired originally didn’t work out.”
“He’s kept it a secret from me.”
“Well, I’m there now.”
“I don’t want to put my foot in it again, but please tell me why a girl who looks like you would want to get into this lousy business?”
“I went to Cooper Union.”
“What’s that, a railroad?”
She laughed very warmly, and her eyes caught the light from the chandelier and he could see that they were a fine shade of blue like a cornflower. He could hardly believe that anyone could have eyes that were so clear and so alive.
“It’s an art school,” she said. She touched him on the shoulder with her index finger. “And remember it for future reference.”
“Do you accept my apology?”
“You’re so serious,” she teased him. “I’ll bet you don’t apologize very often.”
“That’s a fact.”
“All forgiven, Jay.”
“Eva . . . Eva Meyers. I won’t forget it again.”
“That a promise?”
“An oath. Where do you live?”
“Brooklyn.”
Not again, he thought to himself. Geographically undesirable.
“On Ocean Avenue.”
The gateway to Canarsie and Plum Beach.
“Why did you get a job with Marty?”
“Have you tried looking for a job lately?”
“You’ve looked around?”
“Everywhere. Nobody wants untried designers, so I’m starting in the showroom and Marty promised to let me do a bit of designing.”
“I’ll bet. On couches.”
“You’ve got a one-track mind. And Marty’s as safe as they come.”
“I’d get that in writing if I were you.”
“You worry too much. Let’s dance.”
Jay led her to where a few couples were lazily keeping up with a lisping rendition of “Blue Moon.” He couldn’t dance, except for a shuffling two-step picked up from Barney Green. She led him easily without his being conscious of what she was doing. He pressed close to her, and she put her hand on the back of his neck. Her fingers were warm, and she wore a faint scent that excited him because it continually eluded him. He wanted to press his cheek against hers, but he was frightened that she would resist and make him feel awkward. She spared him the ordeal of testing his luck by pressing her cheek against his mouth, but he was uncertain whether this came under normal dancing procedure or represented interest on her part. He had a strong urge to kiss her, but feared that she would object. He wondered what it would be like to be at ease with her. She moved well and gracefully on the floor and he put both arms round her and swayed with the music.
“Your store’s doing very well,” she said. “Everybody talks about it.”
“When I start talking about it, I’ll be on my way to the bankruptcy court.”
“Do you like the business?”
“I like what it can buy. For my part, I could be selling nails. Same difference.”
“That’s honest enough. The wise guy doesn’t really become you.” She tightened her lips. “I’m sorry I said that. It’s none of my business, is it?”
“It could be if you wanted it to.”
She drew away from him and dropped her arm, and her mouth half opened in surprise.
“But you’re married, aren’t you?”
It was not really a question and Jay’s hand went limp, the lights spinning round him as fast as a mechanical top. He was overwhelmed by the sadness of the situation and almost walked off the floor leaving her there. A sense of outrage made him tremble, and she watched him anxiously and with sympathy.
“You weren’t trying to conceal it from me?”
she asked.
“I suppose not, you would have found out. It’s just that . . . dancing with you and this is going to sound stupid - I don’t feel married. I don’t feel anything except that I’m holding you.”
She led him to the settee, and he fell heavily on a smiling minstrel’s forehead.
“I’ll get us something to eat. Turkey okay?”
“Fine.” While she was fetching it, he became distracted and confused, got to his feet and decided to leave. He fished in his pocket for his car key and held it tightly in his fist. A barrage of guests had arrived, and Marty and a resuscitated but deathly green Paula stood at the entranceway and he lost his nerve. He returned slowly to the room, and Eva met him before he got inside.
“You forget something?” She was carrying two plates, and he took one from her. She waved some smoke out of her face with her free hand, then intertwined her arm with his, A couple brushed by them and the man touched Eva’s dress and said: “Oh, la-la, it’s a living doll.” The woman said: “If you make one more pass, I’ll cut it off.”
“Well, were you going to walk out?”
“I think I was.”
“Do you want me to make believe I didn’t see you?”
“I really don’t know what I want.”
He followed her to the window that overlooked the park. The cars looked as small as Macy’s toy fair exhibition at Christmas. They picked at their food, and someone handed them glasses of wine.
“There’s a restaurant that I like to go to in the park,” she said.
“In the park?”
“Yes, Tavern on the Green. You can dance outside in the summer, and they have a long sweeping bar that makes me dizzy just to sit at.”
“I’ll have to” - he stopped and sipped his wine. It wasn’t sweet, and he thought it must be Chianti.
“This isn’t meant to shock you or to console you. But I’m married also.”
“Christ, that’s the joke of the year.” He became confident and at the same time miserable.
Seventh Avenue Page 14