(1961) The Chapman Report

by Irving Wallace

  “I didn’t know that happened to men.”

  “Of course it does. Even to men who are married.”

  “You know, I never thought of that.”

  He continued to turn the empty glass in his hand. “I’ve been talking too much.”

  “Only fair,” she said. “You’ve had the advantage of learning all about me.”

  “That was business. This is pleasure.”

  “You mean you don’t enjoy all that vicarious sex talk with assorted women?”

  He saw that she was chiding him, but he remained serious. “It’s meaningless after a while. The vicarious part. I enjoy it as a … an investigator. It’s gratifying to see the statistics develop. But as a person-” He shook his head. “There’s an inevitable sadness about everyone.”

  She stared at her drink. “Does that include me?”

  “And me.” He studied her sweet, melancholy face. “Your husband-I was wondering-was he the Ballard who was so famous?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve often thought about the widows of famous men. Presidents’ widows, for instance. It must be different from having just a man removed. It must be like a planet gone, a planet thickly peopled and buzzing with activity, suddenly taken away.”

  He waited. Her face was noncommittal.

  She thought, Not like a planet removed, but like an army of occupation gone home at last.

  “Something like that,” she said.

  “Have you adjusted to being alone?”

  “You have to be very interested in yourself to adjust to being alone. I’m not sure that I am.”

  He had some stake in her that he did not understand, and he could not know enough. “How do you spend your time now? What do you do?”

  “I do what most women do, not just widows, married ones, too.” She paused. “I wait.”

  “For someone?”

  “For something … for life to explain itself to me.”

  The waiter had returned. Suddenly, they both realized that the restaurant was filled. Kathleen ordered carefully, selecting what she thought he would expect her to like-a bouillabaisse and toasted French bread. Paul ordered exactly what she had ordered, because he wanted her to know he liked what she liked. As the waiter marked the order, Paul decided that later, when they were leaving, he would ask to see her again. He wondered if she would say yes.

  Benita Selby’s journal. Saturday, May 30: “… eating together at the other end of the conference room, and talking about Cass. When Cass didn’t appear at breakfast, Dr. Chapman found him ill with an upset stomach. Dr. Chapman thought it sounded like ptomaine and insisted on Cass resting. He has taken over Cass’s interviews today. I had a short letter from Mom. She wants to change doctors because she feels Dr. Rubinfeer doesn’t give her enough time and charges too much, and he hasn’t improved the arthritis one bit. I wrote her this morning not to make any move until I get home. You start out being taken care of by your mother and always wind up taking care of her. Although, the poor thing is absolutely crippled. Mr. Borden Bush just telephoned from the network to confirm the lunch with Dr. Chapman for Monday. Mr. Bush said to remind Dr. Chapman to bring a list of the questions

  he wants to be asked when he appears with the panel on ‘The Hot Seat.’ The television show will be coast to coast a week from tomorrow. It was arranged in New York three months ago, to celebrate the end of Dr. Chapman’s female survey. I’m most excited, though Dr. Chapman seems to take it in stride. There are still fifteen minutes before we resume. I think I’ll read the new Houseday and find out what it’s like being an artificial-insemination baby and why that actress gave up career and drugs for God.”

  Ursula Palmer kneeled before the magazine rack in the hotel lobby, removed the dozen remaining copies of the latest Houseday from behind a rival periodical that partially covered it, and placed Houseday in a prominent position on top. This habit of rearranging Houseday was a task of long standing, one she had assumed the day that she had been hired by Bertram Foster. It comforted her to do this, for she felt that every copy of her magazine sold was one more guarantee of her future.

  Rising, she glanced about to see if she had been noticed, but there were only several groups of men in the lobby, wearing the celluloid lapel buttons that indicated another convention had occupied the city. She looked toward the elevators, nervously waiting for Foster, but the elevators were all still airborne.

  She wandered restlessly through the spacious lobby, wondering what she would tell him, and then stood beside a huge potted rubber plant, trying to think it out. Her original date with Foster had been for last night, when he was to have driven in from Palm Springs, to see her alone and read her notes. When she realized that she would not have the notes, she had telephoned him in Palm Springs to explain the delay. Alma had answered the phone. Ursula had asked Alma Foster if she were having a good time, had learned she was not having a good time, and Ursula had then inquired for Mr. Foster. He was on the golf course, it turned out, and then he had some special business in Los Angeles. “That’s just it,” Ursula had blurted, “he mustn’t come-I’m not ready for him yet. I hope you can catch him.” There had been a forbidding silence, and Ursula had realized her blunder. “Don’t worry,” Alma had said tightly. “I’ll catch him.” Ursula had tried desperately to repair the unmeasurable damage. “It’s about a series of articles, Mrs. Foster. Would you tell him I don’t have the notes ready yet. I’ll call him when I do.”

  That tactical error had been committed early yesterday morning. Early this morning, the telephone had rung, and it was Foster, -and it was not long distance. “Alma and I are back in the hotel,” he said-stiffly, Ursula thought. “I have only some garbled message from her about your not being ready. I think you better come and explain it straight. I’ll be in around noon.”

  She sat in the chair beside the potted rubber plant and weighed truth against white lie. Could she tell him that the notes on her interview were only one third typed? Could she tell him that she got stuck every time she tried to go on with them, reading and rereading them, thinking about the past and about her life with Harold? Could she explain that she was up against the first writing block in her entire career? Would he understand? How could he, if she didn’t? Wouldn’t it be better to shift the blame to Harold-the flu was all over the place, she had read-and keep herself efficient and uncomplicated?

  ‘Well, here you are.” It was Foster speaking, as he waddled toward her, and she literally leaped to her feet.

  “Oh, Mr. Foster-I’m sorry if I inconvenienced you. I hope you didn’t come into town because of me.”

  He emitted a deep nasal snort. “I did. And Alma did, too.” “I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind that. With me, life never is a picnic. I want to know only one thing-what did you tell her on the phone?”

  “It was nothing. I told her I had to speak to you, and she said you were playing golf and then going to Los Angeles, and I said that’s what I was calling about, that the work we were to go over had been delayed, and that you should not come in until I phoned you back.” She showed her bewilderment. “I don’t see anything wrong.”

  “Naturally. Because you’re not Alma. I said I had special business. I didn’t say with who. The minute she found out-a-ha-anyone in skirts is poison-she began following me like a guilty conscience. So what’s the use? Here we are.” He studied her, his tiny eyes even tinier. “What’s this about no notes? You went in and gave them your whole sex life, didn’t you?” “Oh, yes, Mr. Foster.”

  “More than an hour, wasn’t it?” She nodded. He lifted his shoulders. “So-where’s the notes?”

  “I have them, but-” She saw that a group of men nearby, attracted undoubtedly by Foster’s loud reference to sex, were watching them. She felt uncomfortable. “May we sit down for a minute? I’ll explain.”

  “Suits me.” He took her arm, walked her across the thickly carpeted lobby to a love seat near the window. “Right here.”

  They both sat. “I t
ook complete notes at the interview,” she went on hastily. “Every question, every one of my answers. It was very thorough.”

  “It was, eh? You blushed?”

  “Believe me, I felt like it. But I told the truth, the whole truth-“

  “So help you God?”

  “Oh, yes. But I had them down in a sort of shorthand I use. I started transcribing them for you, and suddenly Harold was sick last Monday night-a hundred and two fever-and I’ve had my hands full with him ever since. But he’s better today. I can get on it soon.”

  ‘You couldn’t hire someone to dictate to?”

  “Mr. Foster, I wouldn’t let anyone on earth hear or see those notes-except you. Why, it’d be like undressing in front of a stranger.”

  “I suppose.” His eyes were bright again and his fat lips moist. “So I have only a week more here. Give me a date.”

  ‘What’s today? Saturday. Ill still be busy nursing Harold tomorrow, but I’ll start Monday and work right through. I should have them by next Wednesday or Thursday. I’d say Thursday, to be absolutely certain.”

  “No sooner?”

  “I’ll try, but-“

  “All right; we’ll make it definite-definite Thursday night, here in my room. I’ll work out something with Alma. You come at seven and plan to have drinks and dinner and put in a long sesson.” He looked at her a moment. “I hope it’s good.”

  “It will be.”

  “I already called Irving Pinkert and told him the whole thing about the three-parter. He’s impressed, like I promised. So see that it’s juicy.”

  “I hope it is, Mr. Foster. I’m not Madame Du Barry.”

  He placed his pudgy hand on her knee and rubbed it. “All women are Madame Du Barry,” he said sententiously, and Ursula nodded, half believing it, and thought of New York.

  But, soon after, driving westward on Wilshire Boulevard, her preoccupation with New York dimmed as the distance she put between Foster and herself grew. New York was winning every battle but the last one, and the last one was Harold. He was finally fixed fully in her mind, and when she reached Roxbury Drive in Beverly Hills, she turned off toward his new office, determined to surprise him by settling the decoration of his suite once and for all.

  The white building, with its colonnades, was one of the few in the block that housed neither analysts nor internists. The black directory with white lettering, beside the elevator, was populated by public-relations counsels, business managers, and several enigmatic corporations. Not having visited the building since the week Harold had moved in, Ursula had forgotten the floor. She found Harold sandwiched between an importer and a talent agency, and took the self-service elevator to the second floor.

  The office was the third from the elevator. On the frosted glass-impressively, she had to admit-was the black lettering: “Harold Palmer and Co., Certified Public Accountants.” The “Co.,” she knew, was merely a sop to proper status. Harold would have preferred “Ltd.” had he not felt it too ostentatious. Except for a tax student who came in to help two months of the year, Harold’s operation was one-man.

  Feeling all benevolence, like those massive clubwomen who delivered baskets to the hundred most needy each Christmas day, Ursula opened the door and went into the reception room of “Harold Palmer and Co.” What met her eye stunned her. When last she had visited the office, the once she had done so, there had been a sagging maroon sofa, a faded slip-covered chair, and a nightmarish Orozco reproduction askew on the wall, all furnished by the landlord until his tenant could become settled. But now, by some magical transformation, the landlord’s pieces had disappeared, and what replaced them might have graced an interior decorator’s window on Robertson Boulevard. The room sparkled with youth and newness and lightness, like a Scandinavian starlet devoted to outdoor living. The two low-slung sofas, the chairs, and desk, were Danish modern, the wood bleached walnut and the fabric gray print. A single deep red rose, in a long-necked Swedish-glass vase, stood on the coffee table between copies of Realite and Verve. On the walls were fragile lithographs, signed in pencil, by Dufy, Matisse, and Degas. Ursula stood speechless. Whatever had happened proved but one thing-here, at least, she was expendable.

  Still in small shock, she crossed to the private office door and rapped sharply. “Yes?”

  “It’s Ursula.”

  “Come in!”

  Ursula opened the door and went in. The first sight that met her eyes was the young lady’s behind, large, ungirdled, wanton, disgusting. The young lady was bent across Harold’s desk, lifting the lid from the carton of coffee on a tray that also contained wrapped sandwiches smelling of hot beef and gravy.

  Harold appeared less gray and concave than usual. He waved his arm. “Hi!” He seemed as pleased and afraid as a schoolboy caught smoking. “This is a surprise.”

  “I’ll bet,” said Ursula frostily.

  The young lady, unhurried by the intrusion, straightened at last, and her buttocks were no less large. She turned slowly, smiling. Her healthy, polished-apple face, like the light-walnut modern furniture in the office, assaulted Ursula with its unused freshness. Her hair was straw yellow, and braided too cutely, and her blue eyes were startled saucers. Her mammary development, beneath the lemon sweater, was indecent, and Ursula was pleased to see that she had thick legs. She looked like a hundred Helgas, a prize Aryan cow, and one of the Hitler Yugend in white middy blouse and navy skirt doing gymnastics in a Nuremberg stadium.

  “… my secretary, Marelda Zigner,” the hateful goat was saying. “This is Mrs. Palmer.”

  “How do you do, Mrs. Palmer,” said Marelda Zigner, offering two vivid dimples. Her accent was faintly Teutonic, and Ursula knew that she would not let go of it for years. Marelda turned back to the goat. “Is the lunch enough, Mr. Palmer?”

  ‘Tine, Marelda, fine. You better go out and have yours.”

  “I will, please.” She smiled at Ursula. “Excuse me.”

  Ursula’s eyes followed the swaying mammaries out of the office, and Ursula glared at the goat.

  “Who in the hell was that?” asked Ursula.

  “My new secretary,” Harold appeared surprised. “I told you

  about her last week.”

  “Don’t tell me she also types?”

  “Marelda’s worth any three I ever had. Those German girls are remarkable-meticulous, neat, efficient-“

  “And size forty-two.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” She waved her hand at the furniture. “When did all this happen?”

  “The furniture? Delivered yesterday. You were so busy, with the Fosters here and all, and it was making me nervous, especially since I landed the Berrey account. I didn’t want him to come up here and think I was a bum-so Marelda and I went out-“

  “Marelda?”

  “Yes. It was my good fortune that she’d taken a course in interior decoration at a school in Stuttgart-“

  “So she fixed you up all Nordic? Well, we’ll see-“

  “I thought you’d like it, Ursula. I’ve had a dozen compliments this morning.”

  “It’s utterly incongruous. It doesn’t go with you. It looks like a honeymoon cottage, not a dignified business office.”

  Harold’s left eye jumped nervously. “I kept waiting for you.” He indicated one of the sandwiches. “Will you have something?”

  “I’m not hungry.” She scanned the furniture again. “This must have cost a fortune.”

  “Not really. You know those Germans. Very frugal. And … and now that I have Berrey-well, we don’t have to draw on your savings.”

  “So now you feel independent.”

  Harold stared at her quietly. “Don’t you want me to?”

  She felt nervous and confused. “Of course I do. I just don’t want you to act foolishly. Well, I’d better be going.”

  “What made you come by? It’s the first time-“

  “The second time. I just wanted to see how my husband spends his day. Like any wife. Is that wrong?” />
  “No. I’m pleased.”

  She had reached the door. Some instinct, long dormant, came alive. She turned, and tried to smile. “I almost forgot, Harold-I’m going shopping; is there anything special you’d like for dinner?”

  The novelty of the question, the importance it gave to his reply and to himself, disconcerted him. “I … I haven’t thought.”

  “Never mind. I’ll dream up something good.” She pointed to his tray. “Eat before it gets cold. And chew it well. You know your stomach. I’ll see you later.”

  She opened the door and went out, very erect, bosom high, so that Marelda would know the formidable nature of the democratic opposition.

  Benita Selby’s journal. Sunday, May 31: “I’m sitting by the pool of the Villa Neapolis. I finished a five-page letter to Mom. I felt guilty about my abrupt note of yesterday, and I know what these letters mean to her. She has only a son and a daughter to hear from, not counting her sisters, and Howie hasn’t time to write, so if I don’t who will? I told her we are all expecting a short vacation when we get back, and then I will find out about a specialist and take her to Chicago for X rays and examination. It’s very hot by the pool, but the heat is not like the Midwest but drier. You don’t perspire as much. There are half a dozen people in the pool. I have on the halter and shorts I bought in Milwaukee, and sun lotion all over. There’s a young man across the pool sitting and reading, and a couple of times I caught him looking at me. I must look a sight with this lotion. Dr. Chapman is at the umbrella table behind me with Cass and Horace. Cass is feeling better today. Dr. Chapman is still talking about Dr. Jonas. At breakfast, he saw an article and architect’s drawing about an enormous new marriage-counseling clinic being built near the ocean, which Dr. Jonas is going to manage, and Dr. Chapman was furious. I don’t blame him for the way he feels about Dr. Jonas, which is only human, because I read some of the reviews that Dr. Jonas wrote. Dr. Chapman asked me if I had seen Paul, and I told him I saw Paul go out early carrying a tennis racket and tin of balls. It occurs to me you can’t play tennis by yourself. Who is Paul playing with? The young man across the pool is looking at me again. I think I’ll take off my sun glasses and finish this later …”