“Now listen, Mike. We can’t just walk out like that. Now, please. Everybody’s watching us.”
“All right, so everybody’s watching...” He didn’t mean to raise his voice, but he found himself shouting. Someone said behind him, “What a disgusting spectacle, really.”
Nora stood before him, her eyes glittering with humiliated rage. “Stop all this this minute,” she said in a hissing voice. “You’re making a fool of yourself and of me!”
“Please, Nora. Let’s get out of here. Shall I get your coat?”
“No.” She turned her back on him and walked to the edge of the terrace. She walked as gracefully, he thought, as though she were doing a part in a picture. Cut from two-shot to high angle of Nora Ames—Fury shook him. The voices behind him were chattering hysterically. He turned around and said, “Shut that goddam door!”
“Mike, in the name of heaven—” Nora was facing him with her face pale and bloodless. “There are people in there who are going to pay your salary.”
He took her by the shoulders and said pleadingly, hating himself for begging, “Nora, let’s get out—”
She twisted away from him. “You’re drunk,” she said.
Anger bubbled up like hot lava in his throat. “Little Nora,” he said, “Nora the V-girl and Nora the beach girl and Nora Goddam Ames, the big personality—”
He felt the stinging crack of her palm against his cheek. “Thanks,” he said. “I needed that.” He wheeled and brushed against Victor.
“What’s the matter here,” Ziegler asked, wide-eyed.
“Next week East Lynne,” Miguel said, and pushed by.
Nora caught him. “Where do you think you’re going?”
He threw off her hand and walked swiftly through the murmuring crowd.
It was ten-fifteen when he reached the Plaza. He went to his room and threw his clothes into his bag. He called the desk and told the clerk he was checking out. Then he called the travel desk.
“I want space on an airplane to San Francisco. Tonight. I don’t care how you get it—just do.”
“We have a cancellation on Continental Flight 666 departing from Newark at eleven-twenty-five, sir. Shall I confirm that?”
“Yes. Make it fast.”
“One moment, sir.”
There was a short wait that seemed an eternity to Miguel. His hands were still trembling with anger. He lit a cigarette and then almost immediately crushed it as the voice on the telephone said, “Yes, sir. We can confirm that space for you. Will you pick up your ticket at the Will Call Desk? And will you require limousine service, sir?”
“No.” A cab would be quicker.
“Very well, sir. If you will be at the terminal fifteen minutes before departure time.”
Miguel hung up. Almost immediately, the telephone rang. He let it ring. Presently it stopped.
He called for a bellman and went downstairs into the lobby.
He settled his bill and walked out into the night. Fifth Avenue was heavy with traffic and across Central Park South he could see the lineup of hansom cabs waiting for customers.
Overhead, the winking lights of an airliner circled and headed west.
TWELVE
Miguel sat in the restaurant with an untouched sandwich and a cup of steaming coffee in front of him. He was trying not to think about Nora, but there was still a bitter fusel-oil taste in his mouth that grew stronger when he thought about the fight.
He remembered one night, long ago, when he and Nora had planned on a weekend together and had stopped for a drink somewhere along the line and Nora had grown suddenly reluctant to go on with him. They had fought bitterly, but in the end she had gone along. But that was another Nora, the old Nora. The new was flintier than that.
That phone call just before he left the hotel room, Nora, of course. Or, if she were too proud to do it herself, she would have gone to Victor to call. Or even, Miguel thought wryly, Tony. Poor Tony with his mashed lips and loose front teeth. Unconsciously, he rubbed his skinned knuckles.
The clock on the wall stood at eleven-ten. Fifteen minutes to wait before boarding the San Francisco flight. He lit a cigarette and smoked slowly, drinking his coffee.
It occurred to him that he seemed condemned to an eternity of sitting in terminals, waiting for flying machines to carry him from one place to another. He felt a deep weariness that was more than physical.
He was undecided about what to do now. The Hollywood thing looked very tenuous and uncertain and he could not force himself to care. First things must come first and instinct seemed to be guiding him. If he belonged anywhere in the world right now, it must be somewhere on that fingerlike dollop of land between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific.
He paid for his coffee and walked through the rotunda and into the concourse where the passengers for Continental’s westbound 666 were gathering in the tiny lounge. He took a paperback copy of A Farewell to Arms from the newsstand rack and fumbled in his pocket for change. Then he sat down on the hard leatherette seats to wait for the gate to open.
He felt incredibly alone in the cold, harshly lit waiting room. It made him wonder if he had the kind of courage he had pretended to have back at that monstrous cocktail party. Nora loved him, in her way. It simply depended on what you meant by love.
He had a sudden panicky impulse to go to a phone and call her. But the gateman had opened the sliding doors and was collecting the boarding passes now as passengers filed out toward the waiting airplane. There was no time. He stood up mechanically and walked into the chill September night.
Miguel’s Christmas present in 1937 was a new ‘38 Chevy convertible. He had been saving his money for more than a year toward the purchase of a Model A Ford like Tom’s but when the time came to go look for the car, Raoul decided that he didn’t want Miguel riding about in a rattletrap and he had presented him with the red convertible.
Miguel, who had been looking forward to hopping up the Model A with Winfield carburetors and a Rajo head the way Tom had done with Horace Greeley, was rather deflated.
Oliver had given Horace to Tom when he came down to Roslyn, and there had been so many warnings about “going west” in the car—“going west” being an expression World War pilots seemed to use often—that Miguel had immediately given the car the great editor’s name and it had stuck.
Miguel had helped Tom with the work on Horace and they both took a great deal of pride in the fact that when Horace ran at all it could outrun almost any make of automobile. There was no contest between the Ford and Miguel’s car, but Tom had promised to help Miguel work over the Chevy, too. There were plenty of speed-increasing modifications that could be made. The only thing was that it would have to be done without Raoul finding out. Two weeks after giving Miguel the car Raoul had begun to say that he was reckless and that he had made a mistake in giving Miguel the car before he was sixteen and there was endless talk of taking it away from him.
Luis had a Chevrolet, too, a new one that Raoul had suggested he buy at the same time he bought Miguel’s car. The suggestion was in the nature of a royal command, and Luis complied, though he didn’t seem happy about it.
Luis was still working for Raoul, but their relationship didn’t seem to be as friendly as it should have been. It was shot through with a kind of rivalry Miguel found hard to understand.
One Saturday, shortly before the end of the year, Miguel stopped in to see Luis at the apartment in Palo Alto. He found him alone, a tall drink in his hand, and music playing on the big Farnsworth he had bought for Becky over Raoul’s objections.
“Hi, Luis. I’m not disturbing you?” Miguel asked.
“Come in, glad of the company.” He closed the door. “Have you had lunch? Want something to drink?”
“Coffee, maybe,” Miguel said, eyeing the highball.
Luis grinned. “Some other time for a drink of this, jóven. I don’t want the patriarch on my neck for teaching you to like this stuff too early.”
“Where’s Becky?”
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“Shopping, I suppose,” Luis said. Miguel noticed the odd stressing of the last word. It was strange Luis wouldn’t know where Becky was on a Saturday, but he didn’t feel he should comment. He took his cup of coffee into the living room and sat down.
“I like that music,” Miguel said. “What’s it called?”
“Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.”
Miguel listened quietly until the end of the record.
“I appreciate that,” Luis said. “You keeping still, I mean. You have no idea how many people tell you they like music and then try to drown out the melody with jabbering.” He picked up another record and put it on the machine. “This is one of the Brandenburg concerti,” he said.
When the record ended, Luis went into the kitchen and refilled his glass. The rain pattered against the windows.
Miguel said, “I guess Becky doesn’t like this kind of music much, does she?”
“No,” he said shortly. “You can’t appeal to the intellect with a woman like Becky. She responds to much more basic stimuli “ He seemed to be talking to himself rather than to Miguel. “If I hear that goddam thing about the music going around and around once more, I’m going to throw it out in the street.” He sat down without putting anything else on the record player. “How’s the car?” he asked.
“It’s fine,” Miguel said.
“You don’t sound exactly enthusiastic.”
“Oh, I like it, Luis. Tom thinks it’s great and so do all the rest of the guys. No one at school has anything near as good.”
“Only?”
Miguel studied the inside of his coffee cup. “Well,” he said after a time, “it’s just that the Model A I wanted would have been more fun. Tom was going to help me work on it—Oh, I don’t know. We are going to do some things to the Chevy, too. But we have to kind of sneak—you know what I mean? It’s like the car wasn’t really mine.”
“Yes,” Luis said. “I know that feeling.”
“Allie thinks the car is swell, though.”
“It’s a great little machine for the money—lots of car for what you pay.” There was a real edge of sarcasm in Luis’s voice and
Miguel remembered his father using exactly the same words, often.
“Well, it is a good car,” Miguel said defensively.
“Sure it is. Only it wasn’t what you wanted, was it? It was more. It was what Raoul wanted you to have. There’s a difference there. Think about it.”
“I have thought about it. Old Tom tells me I have rocks in my head.”
“We are brothers after all,” Luis said cryptically.
Miguel asked, “Do you like what you’re doing, Luis? The copra business, I mean?”
Luis was suddenly wary, somehow, and concerned. “Why do you ask me that? Has Dad said anything about my leaving the office?”
“Leaving? You aren’t, are you?”
“Has Becky been talking out of turn? God damn it, that woman has the intelligence of a full-grown Chihuahua.”
“Nobody has said anything as far as I know,” Miguel said. “Not to me, anyway. I was just wondering if you liked the business, that’s all. I guess I ought to start thinking about it now that I’m in prep school.”
Luis seemed to relax. Some of the tension went out of the thin, handsome face. “It’s a way to make a dollar,” he said.
“But do you like it?”
“I like it,” Luis said flatly.
“I don’t think I would,” Miguel said thoughtfully. “What I want to do is write. Books, I mean.”
“Ay, chamaco,” Luis exclaimed laughingly. “So you haven’t outgrown that?”
“No. I don’t think I’m going to, either.”
“Have you talked with Dad about this?”
“In a way. He always says I can do anything I want. But that’s not really so, is it, Luis? I mean, for instance, I wanted to go to Sacramento on that Scout Jamboree and he said I couldn’t. And the time Tom and I wanted to go down to Carmel and camp on the beach? I couldn’t do that, either....Tom had to go with Guth Guthrie instead. I get the feeling Dad just says I can do what I want, but he thinks I’ll end by doing what he wants instead. And he wants me to go into the business, I think. He says he wants to keep me with him.”
“And you want to write books.”
“Yes. Only I don’t want to be a disappointment to him.”
“You think you can write? I understand it isn’t easy.”
“I don’t know about that. But I have to try. Not right away, maybe. There are things I have to learn about first. Oh, I do write. All the time. You saw that story in the Ramblings, didn’t you? Most of my stories aren’t very good, but Mr. Olinder say’s it proves something that I know when they aren’t very good. And I’m getting better, too, all the time. But I still have to make plans about it and figure out what I’m going to take in school. Mr. Olinder says the creative writing school at Stanford is the best in the West. Dad would be pleased if I went to Stanford.”
“That’s true,” Luis said with a touch of irony. “He could keep an eye on you there.”
He lit a cigarette and studied the burned-out match in his hand. “I don’t think I can help you much, Miguel. I’d like to. But I’m not good at giving advice about these things. And I have my own mind to make up.”
“How do you mean?”
Luis rattled the ice cubes in his glass thoughtfully. “I guess I can tell you. Becky will probably spill the beans before long, anyway, damn her beady little eyes. But keep it to yourself until the bubble bursts, anyway.”
“Sure. I will, Luis.”
“I’ve been offered a job with the State Department. Latin-American information specialist of some sort. It’s a fine opportunity to do something worthwhile. Things have been happening since the war in Spain. It looks as though Europe is going to hell in a basket, and Latin America is going to get much more attention from us.”
Miguel thought sadly of Anson Wilbur. It seemed impossible that he was dead, that there would be no more post cards in his mangled Spanish. He wondered how Essie felt now. Was she sorry she had sent Anson away?
“Well, golly, Luis,” Miguel said doubtfully, “that sounds fine. Only it would mean going away, wouldn’t it?”
“It would mean that, all right. South America probably. The Argentine or maybe Chile or Peru. I can’t be sure, of course. Dad doesn’t really need me any longer. Dr. Winthrop says he can work. Anyone who can climb around mountains like he did the last two summers can’t be very sick, that’s certain.”
“What does Becky think?”
“She hates it. Doesn’t want to leave the Peninsula. She’s found a home here, she says.”
“Well,” Miguel said, “I hope it works out all right.”
“It will work out,” Luis said. “I’ll see that it does. But remember, boca cerrada. Dad wouldn’t like it if he found out and I’m not ready yet to have him tie the can to my tail.”
“Dad wouldn’t do that.”
“Your faith is refreshing,” Luis said dryly. “Remember, I’ve known him longer than you have.” He went out into the kitchen and refilled his glass again. He glanced at the kitchen clock and muttered, “What the hell is keeping that bitch anyway?”
“Can we hear some more music?” Miguel asked.
“Help yourself. Be careful of the needle.”
Miguel selected the “Polovtsian Dances” from Prince Igor and sat back to listen. But Luis was restless and wanted to talk.
“What does your pretty little blonde think of you being a writer?”
“Allie? She says I should do what I want. Her father is always trying to talk me into studying law, but Allie says to pay no attention to him.”
“She’s a clever girl.”
“She’s—well, I don’t know. Just about perfect, I guess.”
Luis laughed. “What is this, love?”
Miguel flushed. “I don’t know.”
Luis regarded him steadily. “You’re about that age, Miguel. Has anyone taught
you to be careful?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ve been going steady with this girl for two years, haven’t you?”
“Just about. Of course, we don’t see each other much in the summertime since Dad always wants to go away for the whole vacation.”
“What I mean by careful is just exactly that. Consideration, too. You don’t want to get her in trouble.”
“You mean by going the limit? Honestly, Luis, we’ve never done anything like that.”
“Don’t be so scandalized, little brother. There’s nothing dirty about it, you know. But you should always do a woman you sleep with the courtesy of loving her. Even if it can’t last long. That’s worth remembering, I think. We’d all be better off if we kept it in mind.” He smiled thinly at Miguel. “Have you any idea of what I’m talking about?”
“Yes,” Miguel said in a low voice. “And I guess you could say I’m in love with Allie.” It embarrassed him to talk of these things and use words like love. It made him think of those silly upside-down clinches they used to use at the Chimes Theater to advertise John Gilbert and Greta Garbo.
“Well, if it ends,” Luis said, “I should say ‘when it ends,’ but you don’t think it ever will right now so I won’t—if it ends, be kind enough to tell her so. Before she finds it out for herself and starts figuring ways to make you love her again. People do that, you know. Even girls who aren’t anything more than just children.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Luis.”
“I don’t suppose you do. But take my word for it. If she ever loses you she’ll try to get you back. It won’t be smooth or smart because she’s just a child. But the thing shell offer won’t be silly or kid stuff, either. It’s the same for any age past puberty. Every one wants to be loved, Miguel. A person will do foolish things to make someone love them. So be careful. If you need anything, and you don’t want to talk to Raoul, you can always come to me. I’ll do my best for you.”
Miguel squirmed uncomfortably, thinking that he would rather die than do anything nasty to Allie. She wasn’t to be thought of in the same way that Ella Eubanks was, or even some of the other girls like Flossie O’Connor who had mugged with him and let him feel her breasts at Midge Kimball’s party.
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