Styx & Stone

by James W. Ziskin

  God, how he’d changed, I thought, watching him from my seat. The last time I’d seen Billy Chalmers, he was in short pants running around Morningside Park ten years earlier. Now, about twenty-two, he had grown into a tall, angular kid, easy in his navy blue blazer, button-down shirt, and loafers. He looked like he belonged in a sculling clubhouse on the Schuylkill or trading chuckles at a fraternity mixer at Harvard. His vacant eyes suggested a lofty sense of superiority or perhaps a profound lack of interest.

  His sister, Ruth, younger by about two years, was seated next to him. She was fair-skinned, with fine, light-brown hair and hazel eyes. Unlike her brother, she would never be mistaken for a prep. She was apparently a sensitive soul, too, as she seemed more upset than I would have expected.

  I noticed Gualtieri Bruchner sitting in a corner by himself, plate balanced daintily on his knees as he broke apart some salmon with his fork. There were no knives. He was drinking water. Roger Purdy approached him in toadying fashion, no doubt to ask him which boot he wanted licked. Bruchner listened patiently, nodding from time to time and posturing as if about to speak, but I don’t believe any words ever left his mouth.

  Hildy Jaspers returned to join Saettano and me, bending from her standing position to speak to the venerable professor. He got a better view down her blouse than I did. A martini glass teetered in her right hand. She seemed oblivious to Bruchner across the room. Those rumors couldn’t be true. Gigi Lucchesi was more her type than the austere professor.

  “May I have a word, Miss Stone?” asked Hildy once she’d finished fawning over Saettano.

  I nodded yes, and she drew me over to the bar. After ordering another martini, she led me out of the lounge and into the graduate offices down the hall.

  “I need to talk to you,” she said, leaning close to me. A ringlet of shiny black hair fell over her right eye, and she almost stumbled into me. “It’s about Bernie. He’s saying dreadful things about me.”

  “Why tell me?”

  She drew back, frowned, then drank some of her gin. “I don’t want you to have the wrong idea about me. And I don’t want your father to know what Bernie’s saying.”

  “He has other worries right now.”

  “Don’t say that. I’m sure he’ll be all right.”

  Chancing an explosion, I lit a cigarette near her eighty-proof breath. “What is it you don’t want him to hear about you?” I asked.

  She appropriated my cigarette and turned her back to me. “Bernie said I was seeing Professor Bruchner, among others.” Blue smoke enveloped her in the semidark room. I lit myself another one.

  “Are you?”

  “God, no. He’s quite spooky, don’t you think? I mean, he’s handsome in an intense, existential kind of way, but not my type. Besides, he’s as old as Methuselah.”

  I circled around to look her in the eye as we spoke. “Why do you care if my father hears idle gossip?”

  She didn’t like me staring at her. “Your father is a well-respected scholar. I’ll need his support and recommendation someday. I have my comprehensive exams coming up soon, and I don’t need any more strikes against me. Being female is handicap enough. You know what I mean.” She looked me up and down, then added: “Attractive female. It’s even worse.”

  (Was that an insult or a compliment?) I told her I thought she had been playing that card to her best advantage. She shrugged indifferently.

  “Did you see my father last Friday?” I asked.

  Hildy inhaled a mouthful of smoke from the cigarette. “Of course. I ran into him in the office that afternoon.”

  I shook my head. “Sorry, I meant Friday night. Did you see Bernie Sanger or my father?”

  She tapped her ash into a wastebasket next to a desk and shook her head. “I had a date.”

  “Why did you bring me in here?” I asked. “You don’t really care what Bernie’s saying, do you? It wouldn’t be the first time he’s said something.”

  “You’re right about that,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette. “He has a crush on me, you know. Ever since he saw me in that play last spring. Don’t believe everything he tells you, Ellie. He’s a good egg, but ruled by self-interest. And he doesn’t want anyone near your father. He was very jealous when I helped your father redecorate his apartment.”

  “That was you?” I asked, a little alarmed. I didn’t like the idea of Hildy Jaspers spending time with my father any more than Bernie did.

  “Yes. Do you like the results? Your father was very appreciative.”

  By the time we returned to the gathering, the “throng” had begun to thin out. Bruchner, Purdy, and Bernie Sanger were gone, leaving Saettano at the mercy of the chairman. Helen Chalmers, eyes crossed somewhere between her nose and Joan Little (with whom she was talking), was struggling to stabilize her listing glass of sherry, some of which was now permanently part of her dress pattern. Ruth Chalmers sat alone near the buffet, staring miserably at a point on the floor. Billy Chalmers was nowhere in sight. Most important to my mind, however, was Gigi Lucchesi, who had vanished without a goodnight.

  In company once again, Hildy disappeared from my side, and I wondered if she was afraid to be seen with me. I took another look across the room at Victor Chalmers. Saettano, slumping next to him, appeared to have fallen asleep, but there was another man talking in hushed tones with the chairman. I asked Joan Little who he was.

  “That’s Professor Petronella,” she said. “Anthony Petronella. He was an assistant professor here until last year.” Then she lowered her voice: “He was denied tenure, and Professor Ercolano took his place. I think he’s teaching high school in the Bronx now.”

  A light snow was blowing through the evening air when I climbed out of the subway at Thirteenth Street and Seventh Avenue. I stopped at a gift shop and picked out the last wilted poinsettia left over from the holidays—it was the nearest thing to flowers that they had—before trudging over to Saint Vincent’s. I wiped my heels on the bristle mat in the entrance and headed down a linoleum corridor to the bank of elevators. As I waited for a car to arrive, the row of phone booths to the left caught my eye. Of the seven booths, only one was occupied, and hunched over the receiver, speaking with great animation and intensity, was Gigi Lucchesi. The elevator door opened, and Gigi looked up. He signed off and squeezed through the folding door.

  “Ellie,” he said, joining me at the elevator. “I wanted to see your father, but they wouldn’t let me in.”

  “They have strict rules about visitors.”

  “Yes, I suppose so.”

  We stepped inside the car.

  “Have you read my father’s book?” I asked as we rode the elevator.

  “No,” he blushed. “I’m a little more modern than Dante, and besides, he doesn’t show his works-in-progress to anybody.”

  “What about Bernie?”

  “To Bernie, of course, yes. I think he was helping to edit it. But why do you ask if I’ve read your father’s book?”

  “I just wondered if you could tell me what it was about.”

  Gigi shook his head no, then touched my shoulder to get my attention. He had my attention.

  “I realize this is not a good time to ask you this,” he began. “You don’t have to say yes, but may I wait for you and accompany you home?”

  “I was thinking of sticking around for a while,” I said, actually considering putting off my visit to take him up on his offer. I tamped down the urge.

  The elevator doors slid open. “I can wait for you in the lounge,” he said.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll just be twenty minutes.”

  A nurse confiscated the poinsettia with a disapproving wag of her head. I took a seat on the aluminum chair beside the bed and watched my father inflate and deflate. I distracted myself from the dreary vigil by observing the various machines dispatch their duties. That bought me about fifteen minutes. A slender, red oxygen tank along the wall beside the bed sprouted a rubber hose. The hose stretched to a bellows mounted on an adjusta
ble stand, and reemerged from the other side, running to my father’s face, into his open mouth, and down his throat. That the setup was uncomfortable was obvious; kind of like swallowing a garden hose. The bellows, encased in a glass jar, acted as a surrogate diaphragm, regulating my father’s respiration. Each breath seemed precarious to me, and I wondered how such a fragile mechanism could perform so reliably.

  I asked the duty nurse for news of my father’s condition, but she referred me to Dr. Mortonson, who wasn’t there.

  “As far as I know, there’s nothing to report,” she said.

  I drew a sigh.

  “Your father must be quite a fellow,” she told me, as if to cheer me. “So many people wanting to visit.”

  I cocked my head. “Visitors? Do you know who they were?”

  She shook her head. “A couple of men, two boys, and a young lady.” She frowned in thought. “Or maybe they visited that other patient. I can’t be sure.”

  “Strange. Did they all come together?”

  “No, I would have remembered that. I’m positive there was a lady this afternoon, but I couldn’t describe her for the life of me.”

  “Let’s go,” I said to Gigi, who was seated, relaxed, legs crossed, in the lounge, flipping through a worn copy of Reader’s Digest. He looked up and smiled. What was I getting myself into?

  It was dark and cold on Thirteenth Street. The wind was whistling across Manhattan from the Hudson, and Gigi took my arm, urging me toward Sixth Avenue. We pushed through the revolving door at 26 Fifth at about eight thirty.

  “Evening, Miss Eleonora,” said Rodney, eyeing Gigi with suspicion for several seconds before nodding an unfriendly hello.

  “I been racking my brain,” he said to me once we were in the elevator. “Trying to think of who came into the building that night, and I just can’t figure who it could have been.”

  “Didn’t Mrs. Farber have a visitor?” I asked. Gigi leaned a shoulder against the elevator wall and appeared to tune us out. Rodney glanced at him, pursed his lips, then turned back to me.

  “No, miss. I know her gentleman, but he didn’t stop in that night. Like I told you the other day, I came on duty at six, and nobody suspicious came in. And Mr. Walter—that’s Mrs. Farber’s gentleman—didn’t come in at all, unless it was after two. I would’ve called up to tell her he was here. We don’t allow visitors in without announcing them first.”

  The elevator eased to a stop on the fifteenth floor, and the door rolled open. Gigi waited for me to step outside first.

  “What about the stairs?” I asked Rodney. “Could Mr. Walter have taken the stairs, maybe while you were in the elevator?”

  “Not likely,” he said. “Walk up fifteen floors? Besides, those doors are locked from the inside. You can’t get in without a key, unless you’re going down to the air raid shelter in the basement.”

  Gigi was still waiting for me to move, but I hadn’t reconciled Mrs. Farber’s story with Rodney’s, and that bothered me.

  “Mrs. Farber told me she was expecting company that night,” I said.

  “Probably just imagining things. She’s been known to do some strange things.”

  The elevator buzzed, and Rodney had to go. I watched him as the doors slid closed. He looked at Gigi and frowned his disapproval without realizing it, and I felt the sting of reproof. I was used to it.

  Gigi and I made our way down the hall to number 1505. Was I imagining things, or did he seem to know the way already? Before letting him inside, I glanced to my left: 1504, Angela Farber’s place. I was about to buzz, when I felt Gigi’s hand on my arm, pulling me away.

  I shimmied out of my inhibitions when I dropped my coat to the floor in the foyer. My wool dress sparkled with static electricity in the dark, and Gigi kissed me full on the mouth. I left the lights out, finding no free hand to hit the switch, then Gigi proposed a drink.

  “I don’t usually drink spirits,” he said. “Do you have some dessert wine? Moscato or port?”

  “I think there’s some sherry in the study,” I said, somewhat breathless.

  “And let’s put on some music,” he said.

  Once in the study, Gigi made for the bar, while I looked for some appropriate music. I didn’t want to ruin the mood by accidentally cueing up “Flight of the Bumblebee.”

  “Rachmaninoff,” I thought, as Gigi fiddled with the sherry. “Where’s the Rachmaninoff?”

  If Rachmaninoff could knead me into a warm mass of putty in this man’s hands—and I was sure he could—I was game. My father’s burglar had scattered most of the records, but smashed only about twelve by my reckoning. In the low light, I sifted through the disks on the floor, ever more frenetic, as I searched in vain for the Rs.

  Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Chopin . . . Where was Rachmaninoff? Just one piano concerto, I thought, or better still, the Second Symphony. But in the jumble of records, the only R I could find was excerpts from Rossini’s William Tell, or to be more precise, Guglielmo Tell.

  “Why don’t you play a record from the shelf?” asked Gigi.

  And there, untouched by the burglar, wedged between Prokofiev and Ravel, was a row of LPs: the complete symphonies, “Vocalise,” the four piano concertos, Vespers . . . Enough to keep me intoxicated all night long.

  But once the music and sherry were flowing, once Gigi had removed my clothing, loving, gentle, deliciously naughty, I caught sight of a pair of my father’s reading glasses on the desk. I froze. Folded casually on the blotter, they were catching the lamp’s glow and mirroring it in both lenses, like a cat’s eyes reflecting light off the retina. I looked away, tried to think of something else, of Gigi’s warm breath on my skin, his lips brushing so nimbly over my neck, his hands stroking and caressing my thighs, his torso pinning me against the divan. But it was no good. I could only see the glasses glowing at me.

  “Ellie, tell me what’s wrong,” he whispered.

  “Let’s get out of this room,” I said, and slipped off the divan, out the door, and into my old room across the corridor.

  At midnight, there was a knocking at the door. I slipped into one of my father’s paisley robes and padded out to the foyer to see who was there. Through the peephole, I made out three hunched figures in overcoats. When one of them turned, I recognized Victor Chalmers’s needle nose.

  “Who is it?” came a whisper from behind me: Gigi, clutching a sheet around his waist to conceal his nudity.

  “Chalmers,” I said, and he dropped the sheet.

  “Oddio! Don’t let him in!”

  I shooed him away, telling him to wait in my bedroom. He took off on a run, and I watched him go, too distracted by the view to worry about the sheet he’d left behind.

  “Rather late to be calling,” I said to Chalmers after I’d opened the door. His wife, Helen, wrapped in a long fur, stood behind him, and son, Billy, the same patrician expression on his face as at the reception, slouched against the wall in the rear.

  “May we come in?” said Chalmers finally. “I hate to intrude at this hour, but I must speak to you about Ercolano.”

  “It can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  The professor shook his head, then Mrs. Farber’s door popped open a crack. It was one of those sudden noises, not loud but abrupt, and the four of us were startled. Angela Farber peered out tentatively.

  “Walter?” she asked. “Oh, Ellie,” she said, the disappointment obvious on her face. “I heard voices.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Chalmers, staring at the woman in the doorway. “We must have been too loud.”

  Her eyes shifted from me to the three figures in the hallway, inspecting each in turn. Victor Chalmers was ever more embarrassed by the scrutiny, his wife stared coolly ahead, ignoring the woman, and Billy yawned.

  “Good night, Ellie,” said Mrs. Farber. “Good night,” she said to the others. Chalmers nodded curtly, and she closed the door.

  “Do you know her?” I asked him once we were all inside my father’s apartment. Then I noticed the bedsheet and
bent over to gather it up. It must have looked strange to my visitors, but they didn’t ask.

  “She does look familiar,” said Chalmers. “But I can’t remember where I’ve seen her, other than this morning when I stopped by. Maybe on a visit to your father. Of course,” he said, touching his forehead. “She’s been to a couple of lectures at the department. Taking an interest in Italian culture, it seems. Your father introduced us at a symposium. Let’s see,” he wondered, tapping his chin. “Was it Verga or I promessi sposi?”

  He really was trying to remember.

  “How did you get up here?” I asked, wondering if Mrs. Farber and Victor Chalmers weren’t better acquainted than he admitted. “The elevator man is supposed to call.”

  My guests exchanged looks. “I must have asked for the wrong apartment. The man just let us up,” said Chalmers, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Who’s on duty?” I asked, piling the sheet onto one of the sofas.

  Again the shrug. “A middle-aged man. Stocky.”

  Raul, probably. I let it go for the time being, but I intended to find out.

  “Would it be too great an imposition to beg a drink?” asked Chalmers, heading toward the study without waiting for an answer.

  Billy, his mother, and I followed him down the hall, a few feet from the bedroom where Gigi was cowering naked. I knew he was still naked, because his clothes were on the floor behind my father’s desk where he had shed them a couple of hours earlier. Chalmers made for the liquor cabinet as if mounting a frontal attack, helping himself to a tumbler of vodka and two ice cubes in a trice. I stood by my father’s desk and toed a pair of men’s briefs out of view. Chalmers had downed half the glass before remembering his manners.

  “I’m sorry, Ellie. May I fix you something? You drink Scotch, don’t you?”

  Helen Chalmers sniffed.

  “Nothing for me,” I said, lighting a cigarette instead. Still no ashtray, so I used an empty paper clip box. “What about you, Mrs. Chalmers? Billy?”