“How did you manage to beat them down on the percentage they wanted?”
Jay laughed contemptuously.
“They sent three or four college boys to deal with a crook. They’re crooks too, but they like to think they’re gentlemen or rather they want you to think they’re gentlemen. I’m honest about it. I admit that I’m a thief. Hey, this’ll kill you: one of them wanted to fix me up with a call girl to soften me up.”
“You’re kidding.”
“So I said: ‘Schmuck O’Brien, it’s my invention. Call girls. I was fixing people up with call girls when the best part of you was running down your father’s leg.’ So I gave them two and a half percent. Which they didn’t like, but they took it, and no stock options either. I told them they could get stock options with a company that needed them, not with an organization that’s a blue chip the minute it goes on the Board. While I was fighting with them, I kept wondering to myself: ‘Who am I doing this for?’ You, Marty, myself, our eighteen thousand employees, but in my heart I knew that it was for Neal, so that when he’s old enough he won’t have to kill himself. It’ll all be there for him, and he’ll be the gentleman, the human being, the college graduate. And then I go back to Brooklyn and find him laying in the apartment alone, with nobody, like a little gutter rat.”
Through the crowd of early drinkers, a woman’s arm emerged and thrust itself between Jay and Harry. She was caught in the crush at the bar and Jay nudged a man by his side who was gargling an old-fashioned and said:
“This lady’s going to be minus an arm if you don’t move.”
The man shifted his weight uneasily, and the woman came into view.
“I saw you from across the room.”
“I don’t believe it,” Jay said.
“I’m still fighting to get near you.”
“Terry . . . This is Harry Lee.”
“Lawson’s my married name. God, Jay, it’s been years and years and years.”
“An old friend,” Jay explained to Harry.
She ignored Harry and pushed up close to Jay.
“I’m having lunch here with my partner and my wife,” Jay said.
“Are you back with Rhoda?”
He flushed, unaccustomed to the question, and the memory of his short furtive experience with her.
“No, I’ve remarried.”
“Really? When, for heaven’s sake?”
She sounded a bit too interested, Jay thought.
Harry finished his drink quickly and said:
“Nice to have met you, Mrs. Lawson. I’ll just see about our table.”
She had filled out, Jay thought. Her body had lost its lanky, girlish shape; a suppleness, a firmness of limb, had removed that high nascent pubescence that had first attracted him. She was a young woman, with limpid uneasy eyes that flicked from one face to another in the room. Too many late nights and too much booze, he surmised. She was the only woman wearing a dress, a khaki green paisley print with a high neck, and open-toed leather sandals - Cape Cod vintage. Her voice had altered slightly, it was a bit deeper and the harsh Boston twang had a mixture of New York in it - not normally an improvement, but it was in her case. Her nails were chewed down to the skin, and she reminded him of about ten thousand other mixed-up women whose lives he had fleetingly entered and left, not unlike a bee who pollinates, then moves on, instinctively. He had a predilection, or was it a weakness, for unhappy dissatisfied women. He wished they’d leave him alone.
“. . . It was about a year ago, on a Sunday morning with the papers in bed. We thought he was reading, and Mother screamed. Mitch and I were spending the weekend with them. Mitch rushed in. Too late. Nothing worked. Digitalis. Well, a chapter ends. Or maybe a book.”
“You’re happy . . . ?”
“Happy?”
“Ask a stupid question . . .”
“You get a stupid answer. I’ve got two little girls now.”
“It happens to everybody.”
“Louise and Pamela. I’m not much of a mother though. I mean I like buying them frilly underwear and pretty dresses, but it’s all surface affection. I don’t worry about them unless they’re sick in bed. I guess I take them for granted.” She pointed to her chest. “I’ve got a hole in here.”
“Not T.B.”
“Could be T.B., but it’s not. Just a hole. A cavity.”
“And Mitch is the doctor you once told me about?”
She hummed something to herself under her breath.
“The same. He’s got an appointment at the Presbyterian Hospital. We left Boston a year ago. Been in Great Neck now for about nine months. It’s the same wherever you go. Hungry people looking for somebody to eat. You join a country club, and you dine in company. Are you a member?”
“No, don’t really want to join, but my wife insists, so I’ll give in.”
“Tell me about your wife.”
“I’ll tell you myself,” Eva said, taking Jay’s arm, as though it were a trophy brought back from a safari. “Short and sweet.”
“This is my wife Eva,” Jay said stiffly, “Terry Lawson.”
“One thing about Jay: if there’s an attractive woman in the room, I know where she’ll be. Holding Jay’s elbow. Did you know, Miss Lawson . . .”
“Mrs. Lawson. Terry . . .”
“Terry, if I must. Jay sleeps with more women accidentally than most men do on purpose.”
“Oh, shut up,” Jay said, slamming his drink down.
“Good-bye, Mrs. Blackman,” Terry said, moving away . . . “Jay . . .” she waved.
“Wherever we go you have to open your goddamn mouth.”
“Am I wrong? Just tell me!”
“She’s married to a doctor. They have two kids, and we knew each other a long time ago, and there’s nothing between us, never has been. She was a kid when I met her, sixteen or something.”
A blush of embarrassment broke through the milk-white powder on Eva’s face. She never knew when to believe Jay. She had accused him unjustly in the past and been proven wrong, but there were other times when she had not remotely suspected him, only to learn later that he had betrayed her. The petty infidelities were not important, meaningless in the long run; it was the chain of muted half-truths, impossible to verify or disprove that represented the ultimate in subtle treachery. She remembered meeting Hiram Gilbert at the Plaza, where she had gone to have lunch with a friend. Gil had strode across the lobby, with great gawping steps and taken her hand. His face had been familiar, but she could not place him until he said: “Havana, your honeymoon.” And then she had recalled. Suddenly in the lobby he began pawing her familiarly, and she had tried to escape and he kept up a flurry of half-hearted, half-understood words that bounced off her brain. “Poetic justice. You an’ me. That’d teach him a lesson he wouldn’t forget in a hurry. You still with the sonova-bitch? Mah wife, she run off with a nigger, but afore she left, she tole me that yoh husbin slep with her in Havana, on yoh honeymoon. You get shot of that bastard, then you give ole Gil a ring, heah.” She had run from the lobby in a panic. Down Fifth Avenue. Knocking into people. Into Radio City Music Hall, where she watched the stage show in the empty balcony for an hour. Then home. The slow, deadening journey on the L.I.R.R. through the symmetrical suburbs and the slums of Brooklyn. A man on the train had bought her a drink. What was his name? In advertising or public relations. In Garden City she got off the train with him and they drove to a motel but the man got too drunk and passed out and she took a taxi back to Great Neck alone and waited for Jay to come home. And when he did, she could not bring herself to mention the incident because she was too drunk to say a word.
“Harry’s got a table for us,” Jay said.
“I don’t want to join unless you really do.”
“Aw, Christ, Eva, make up your mind. What’s the Hollywood production for? What’s the big deal? Be an executive, make a fast decision. Yes, or no. I couldn’t care less. If you’re having such a problem, it must be because you think it’s important. So l
et’s join and end the discussion, which is one goddamn bore.”
He telephoned Terry two days later, ostensibly to apologize for Eva’s insulting behavior. She sounded distracted and far away, and he was almost sorry that he had called when she said:
“I probably would’ve reacted in the same way, if I’d’ve been her. It might’ve been,” she added regretfully.
On the strength of this, he invited her to dinner. She accepted.
“God, you’re brave, with that wife.”
“What about the doctor?”
“He’s gone to Baltimore for the week. Johns Hopkins has a lecture course in his field. I won’t tell you about it because you’re probably not interested.”
“Are you?”
“Touché.”
“What?”
“You’ve scored a point.”
“Good, I’ll see you at six.”
She lived in a large gabled house about a mile from him. It was the sort of house that no one lived in for very long, and had changed hands a dozen times in twenty years. It rambled and had a weather-beaten appearance that, with the ivy that undulated like a pack of snakes on the façade, made it like one of those overgrown residences universities convert into library annexes. It was well-furnished though, by Eva’s standards. A lot of antique crap that she would’ve swooned over. Terry seemed ill at ease in the house. The studio apartment in Boston had been more in keeping with her character. Marriage had made her taste drearily respectable. She mixed the drinks competently, Jay thought. It was difficult to find a woman who did not know how to mix drinks competently. The times, he reflected. Everybody’s grown up, with too much time, too much money that they hadn’t earned, and life becomes something they hope to escape from, using good scotch and eighteenth-century beds. He was grateful to have Neal, for Neal gave his existence a meaning that none of the people he knew either wanted or needed.
“Did you know my father was very disappointed that nothing came of our meeting?”
The information staggered him, particularly the flippant manner in which she tossed it off as if it were mere cocktail party small talk.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Here’s your drink. Test it.” He sipped it. It was cold and tasteless: a vodka martini. “It leaves gin standing still.”
“There’s that to say for it.”
“Why would I lie? It’s over and done with. And I couldn’t lie about the dead.”
“I can’t think why you would.”
“It’s the truth. He admired you, and when he learned that your marriage was breaking up, he wanted to give me first crack.”
“But I remember him insisting that I should go back to my wife. A lot of bull about divorces holding men back.”
“The test.”
Jay sank back into the soft cushions of the club chair she had forced him to sit in.
“The business partnership was a gambit to get you there. To involve you two in something binding.”
“I’ll have another drink. Make it scotch.”
“Bad idea to mix your liquors.”
“You sound like an expert. I’ve been playing this game a little longer than you.”
She poured him a large scotch on the rocks. He let the ice chill it for a minute, then took a long drink, and as she was standing with the bottle by his side, he reached out for her arm.
“C’mon, hit me again. Fine,” he said when she had filled it up. “What I can’t understand is why he didn’t come right out with it. Everybody would’ve been a lot happier.”
“You wouldn’ve run for your life.”
“I suppose I would’ve. Did you ever tell him about us?”
“I gave him an edited version.”
“I’d love to hear it.” The drink had gone to his head, and he felt a bit woozy. It was a momentary sensation of being high that he experienced from time to time when he was excited, and that hit a plateau after he had half a dozen drinks. A leveling off followed that invariably gave him the illusion that people were nicer and cleverer than they usually were, and women inevitably assumed a grace and desirability that made his infidelities seem natural fulfillments, adorned with romantic accoutrements, instead of drunken sex with strangers.
“Have another drink,” she said anxiously. They were on their fifth.
“Well . . . ?”
“I had to protect myself.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to do less.”
“I said that you were only interested in having an affair with me.”
“So he wrote me off like a bum check.”
“I’m afraid he did.”
“And our Boston adventure. Did you leave that out?”
“No, I put it in a different light.”
“This is marvelous. Please go on. I feel like the good guy for once.”
“He knew you were in Boston. I called to say that you’d come up. And after our disagreement . . .”
“That’s nice: ‘disagreement.’ What was that all about?”
“That I refused to go to bed with you, and you walked out.”
“Now I know what an edited version is. Thanks.” He rose from the armchair.
“You’re not going?” she said, alarmed.
“My foot’s fallen asleep. Just shaking it.”
“So what’re we going to do?”
“That sounds like big drama. We’re gonna eat a steak at the Little Neck, and then we’re gonna do what we intended to do.”
“Which is . . . ?”
“Cheat.”
“Uh-huh,” she said with a leering smile. “You always buy your girls a steak?”
“It depends on how much I care.”
“I’m flattered.” She had begun to drag her consonants and slur.
“After I’ve had a few drinks and a steak, if I’m still interested in knocking the broad off, I figure I’m interested. And if I’m not, I give her cab fare.”
“Jay.” She threw her arms around him and kissed him with such urgency that he was almost touched. “Jay, I’m sorry. Genuinely. I’ve messed up my life.”
“We all have, so don’t feel bad. I’m president of the organization. We’ve got chapters from coast to coast.”
She threaded her hands through the hollow of his arm and leaned her head on his shoulder. “It should’ve been you and me. We loved each other.”
“For a while.”
“I’ve never loved anybody but you, Jay,” she intoned his name mournfully, and his heart began to palpitate.
“What, Terry?”
“It’s a tragedy. I’ve had two children by a man I never cared for. Maybe that’s why I’m a lousy mother.”
“The kids shouldn’t have taken the rap.”
“It’s awful. I wanted your children.”
“What about Neal?”
“I would’ve loved him. I said some stupid things. I was very young.”
“And I was too old.”
“You still as crazy about him?”
“It’ll always be Neal. You see, he’s me, and I’m him, and there aren’t divorces in that kind of marriage.”
At the Little Neck, Charlie fawned on them as though they were royalty. He set out a fresh platter of hors d’oeuvres, and wiped the bar as they sat down.
“You straighten out that little matter, Mr. Blackman?”
Other bars, other places, but the same faces, Jay thought. The same bored, restless little people in search of excitement, change, new circumstances, and old experiences.
“Yeah, I straightened it out. Say hello to Mrs. Lawson.” Charlie said hello. “If she comes in on her own, you look after her and keep the dancing teachers away.”
“Sure will,” Charlie replied. He’d do anything for money.
“We’re old friends, Mr. Blackman and I. He used to squire me about when I was a child.”
“Yeah, squire her about, hear that, Charlie? A lady!”
She couldn’t explain why she had bothered to mention the fact that she and Jay had
known each other before, and of all people, to a bartender she had only just met. There was no making it respectable, so why should she try? She had thought about Jay incessantly over the years, at first with anguish and then with a sense of loss so profound that she had reached a state of indifference about what happened to her. What she particularly regretted was the fact that she had acted totally out of character. She had tried to bring herself down to his level, only to learn - too late for it to help - that he was above her. He was decent, and she indecent. He had principles, she had none; he cared about other people, she only about herself. His roughness and lack of education she had assumed were commensurate with a lack of character. If anything, he had too much character and too much innate decency to put up with her behavior. Perhaps her father had understood this, and perhaps that was why he had singled Jay out as the son-in-law he would have preferred.
“Jay, would you marry me?”
He scooped up some lettuce with his fork and chewed it.
“The salad’s terrific. I love roquefort cheese dressing.”
“Your breath will smell from it.”
“Don’t let it worry you. Why don’t you eat something? I promised to buy you a steak, and I’m a man of my word. They won’t run out of booze. You can drink more on a full stomach.”
She pecked at her steak glumly, and he studied her long fingers out of the corner of his eye. She attracted him, and he wanted her to repulse him. She hadn’t aged much; her type never did. They had a permanent youthful freshness and vivacity that took them right up to fifty. Eva would turn old overnight. He should have married Terry. Perhaps that would have prevented him from making one mistake after another. But now the situation was impossible, or was it? He mustn’t hope for too much. When she put down her knife and fork and stared listlessly through space, he picked up her hand and kissed it.
“That was sweet,” she said. “I like to have you touch me. It means something.
“What does it mean?”
“That what I’ve made of things . . . me . . . it’s not completely hopeless. To have the man you love . . . well, it’s different. Nothing else matters. I love you and I always will.”
“That’s nice.”
“A lot of women have been in love with you.”
“Too many. One would’ve been enough.”
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