Cash McCall

by Cameron Hawley

  4

  There was no telephone extension in Lory Austen’s studio. Her father had often suggested that one be installed but refusal had always seemed a necessary reiteration of her desire for inviolate privacy. She had, however, consented to a buzzer system—privately defensible since it eliminated the necessity of anyone ever entering the studio to call her to the house—and her mother, inspired by something she had seen or heard at one of her Civil Defense meetings, had arranged an elaborate code of signals and typed them neatly on a card that Lory, dutifully, had thumbtacked to the window frame.

  One long buzz was the call to a meal and, when she heard it this morning, Lory wished that there was an arranged code to signal back that she wasn’t coming. Her desire to keep working was far more compelling than hunger. Going in to breakfast would mean not only the loss of the time that eating would take but also the waste of at least an extra half hour while she sat and listened to her father’s pointless and rambling conversation, all the more difficult to terminate now that he had stopped going to the plant. But there would be only two more weeks of it. She would be sailing on the twelfth … yes, less than two weeks … only twelve days!

  She was seized again by the fear that she might not be able to complete the illustrations and, suddenly needing reassurance, began a hurried recheck of progress, matching drawings and tissue sketches against the dummy of the book. The black and white key drawings for the four major illustrations were completed, the color separations made and registered to cross-marked circles, all securely rubber-cemented together under their protective flaps. Three of the chapter headings were finished and there were tissues on four of the remaining five. It was only the frontispiece that concerned her.

  She found the last of the half dozen sketches that she had made and spread the tissue over a sheet of illustration board, the whiteness coming through to sharpen the contrast of the lines. It still wasn’t right … dead, lifeless, frozen … but it was Tony’s fault, really … the mental block of those crazy instructions … “Do what you want with the rest of it, Lory, but gimme a sizzler for the opener—the boy and the girl in a big clinch. We’ve got to sell those teen-agers, Lory, and that means hitting ’em where they live. You know what I want—something like the one you did for the Knight—only maybe a little more so, huh?”

  There had been no need for him to identify the drawing he meant. It was the one that had been used to face the last chapter, the Princess of Darkness in the arms of the Knight of the Hawk, intended as only a marginal sketch but blown up by Jefferson Clark into full-page size. It was only after she had seen it enlarged and in the printed book that she had realized that her too-facile pen, using memory for a model, had tricked her into giving Cash McCall’s face to the Knight and her own body to the Princess in his arms. Then, burning with the embarrassment of having nakedly paraded an inviolate privacy, she had sworn never again to do anything like it. But that was silly … of course it was! Men and women did kiss each other … and she was an artist … and Tony wanted it. Anyway, she was free now of those insane hallucinations. These last few days had proved that … she had done more work than in any week in her life … and it was good work, the best ever. If she could only make that frontispiece come. The thing to do, probably, was to get a couple of models … stop trying to pull everything out of her own mind …

  The buzzer sounded again, insistently, and she ran for the staircase, her body buoyant and weightless as she flew down the steps and out into the cool blaze of the April sun, down the flagged path between the bordering tulip beds, past the harshly artificial blueness of the empty swimming pool, into the patchwork of liquid shadow and glass-hard sunlight, stopped suddenly by the scream of orange-yellow.

  A taxi stood in the drive. Her eyes flashed to the house, to the opening door at the back of the center hall where her mother stood strangely waiting. In the open-shuttered split second when her mind groped for an explanation, she caught a glimpse of movement inside the hall, not the full-seen image of a man, only a blurred impression of partial form, but as if her brain were fed by some extrasensory perception over and above the power of seeing, she knew that it was Cash McCall.

  The sound of his voice, responding to her mother’s introduction, was anticlimactic, proving nothing, only disproving the momentary suspicion that this was another hallucination, induced by the fact that she had, unavoidably, thought of him when she had thought of the Knight of the Hawk.

  “Oh, but you two have met each other, haven’t you?” Miriam Austen said, her voice admitting a minor embarrassment. “In Philadelphia. Of course. I’d forgotten.”

  “I’ve already offered my apologies to your mother for such an early call,” Cash McCall said. “Will you accept them, too?”

  His hand reached out and she took it, pleased that she could do it so calmly, without the anticipation of inner explosion at the instant of contact. He was, as she had discovered at the Hotel Ivanhoe, only another married man. The world was full of married men.

  “Mr. McCall has brought out the papers that have to be signed,” Miriam Austen said, not to her but to him. “So we won’t have to be bothered with the trip downtown. We do appreciate it, Mr. McCall. Grant was so afraid that you weren’t going to come yourself, just the attorneys, and I did so want a chance to meet you.”

  “And I you, Mrs. Austen,” he said, adroitly gracious.

  Miriam Austen murmured her thanks, poise restored as she regained the practiced mannerisms of the clubwoman. “I do hope that one of these days you’ll be able to slip up and have dinner with us, Mr. McCall. After all, Philadelphia isn’t so far, you know. And I was just saying to Grant last evening how nice it would be to have a chance to get to know you and Mrs. McCall. Now that you’re going to be one of us—in a way—Suffolk folks, I mean.”

  Cash McCall smiled. “As for myself, I’d be delighted. As for a Mrs. McCall, I’m afraid she’s nonexistent.”

  “Oh, dear!” Miriam Austen’s fingers went to her lips in a gesture of apology. “Now where in the world did I ever get that idea? Lory, I’m sure you—but, of course, it doesn’t matter, does it? Goodness, I wonder what can be keeping Grant so long.” Her quick start up the staircase was too obviously an escape from embarrassment.

  “Don’t hurry him, Mrs. Austen, please,” Cash McCall said. “There’s no great rush about it.” But his protest lacked validity and when he turned back to her, Lory saw from his face that he was boldly conscious of her shattered composure.

  “You thought that I was married?” His face lighted with discovery. “That day in my apartment, wasn’t it? You saw a woman. That was Mrs. Kennard, the assistant manager of the hotel.”

  The explanation only added fuel to the fire that seemed to be burning in her cheeks but, both fortunately and surprisingly, she found herself able to say, “I’m sure Mother would still be happy to have you come to dinner.”

  He bowed, mocking formality, “And you, Miss Austen—may I hope that you are equally unprejudiced?”

  “I’m leaving very soon—for Europe.”

  “Paris?”

  “No. Italy.”

  “To paint?” he asked, solidly serious.

  She lifted her eyes affirmatively, encouraged by the change in his tone, so quickly made that she judged it to be purposeful.

  “Or only a trial pilgrimage of the free spirit?” he added, his smile entirely in his eyes, like the play of heat lightning in a midnight blue sky.

  “Perhaps a little of both,” she said, surprised at her poise, starting through the door of the library. “Won’t you come in and sit down, Mr. McCall?”

  She led the way, not waiting for acceptance, and when she glanced back she saw that he had not followed her. Her breath caught, a heartbeat missed, and then he appeared in the doorway carrying a file of legal papers that he tossed unceremoniously on the edge of the desk. She sat down on the red leather sofa, but he walked past the chair that faced her, his eyes on the grouping of framed photographs that flanked the windows,
pictures of convention banquets that her father had attended.

  “How soon are you leaving?” he asked unexpectedly.

  “On the twelfth, I hope.”

  “Sailing or flying?”

  “Sailing—if I can finish the job I’m doing.”

  “Another book?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where does the space ship go this time?”

  The quick thrust of surprise tricked her lips. “How did you know about those?”

  There was a purse-string puckering around his eyes. “Oh, I’m a member in good standing of the Lory Austen fan club—in fact, I believe, a charter member.”

  Charter … that meant the beginning … he was remembering …

  She hurled words into the breach to bolster the threatened crumbling of her composure. “No, I’m back to earth again. This new book is more like—” She stopped short at the brink of error, having barely escaped mention of the Knight of the Hawk.

  “And you’re sailing on the twelfth?” he asked, saving her with what seemed a sensitively understanding change of subject. “Rome?”

  “No, the Ligurian Coast. Fiascherino. A friend of mine is teaching there. Eric Linksman. I studied with him—” She was stopped again, seemingly lost in a tortured maze that brought her back, terrifyingly, no matter what path she chose, to that summer in Maine.

  Again he seemed to sense her difficulty, turning to the wall and looking at the photographs, obviously feigning interest, asking, “Mr. Conway told me that your father was considering a trip around the world.”

  “I don’t know,” she answered, cautious now of anything said too quickly. “I wish he would—for Mother’s sake, too—but I don’t know.”

  He gestured toward the photographs. “He’s been quite active in this sort of thing, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes, he’ll probably miss that as much as anything. He was planning to leave for the convention tomorrow but now, of course—”

  There was the sound of footsteps from the stairway, her mother’s, and Lory grasped at the chance for diversion, rising quickly from the sofa and going to the door to greet her.

  Her mother acknowledged her presence with a fingertip touch on her shoulder, but her eyes were totally for Cash McCall. “He’ll be here in a moment,” she said, and then in a lowered voice, “I do hope there isn’t anything wrong?”

  “Wrong?” Cash McCall asked.

  “He was so pleased with the way things were settled last night. I hope you haven’t found something that has to be changed.” Her fear was clearly the relaying of her husband’s, only secondarily her own.

  “There’s nothing I want changed, Mrs. Austen.”

  “Oh, that’s wonderful,” Miriam Austen said, plainly honest in her relief.

  Lory, still standing in the doorway, looked up and saw her father at the head of the staircase, his hands on his hips, the stubby fingers pressed nervously into the out-bulge of his Little belly, poised like an apprehensive pouter pigeon about to be forced from its perch. She called, “Good morning,” trying to reassure him with the brightness of her voice.

  His on-guard expression softened ever so slightly as he came down the steps and, passing her, he patted her hand as if he were attempting to gain courage by pretending that it was she, not he, who needed reassurance. She followed him into the room, staying behind and a little to one side.

  But there was no deflection of Cash McCall’s eyes in her direction. He came straight toward her father, hand extended. “Good morning, sir. My apology for barging in like this, but since everything was settled last night I saw no reason for delaying the formalities.”

  “Sure—sure, you bet—might as well get it over with, Mr. McCall,” Grant Austen said, his voice strengthening as he gained comprehension. “I guess you met everyone?”

  “We introduced ourselves,” Lory heard Cash McCall say, aware that he was looking only at her mother, pointedly failing to include her.

  Miriam Austen said, a little too gaily, “Grant, I was saying to Mr. McCall when he first came in—doesn’t he look like someone we know? I can’t for the life of me think who—but don’t you see it, Grant?”

  Lory felt the light brush of Cash McCall’s glance, surely unnoticed by anyone else, but it was the same look he had given her after she had seen the framed drawing from the Knight of the Hawk in his apartment, the quick pledge of a conspiracy of silence, and she felt half-realized regret that her reaction had been too slow to permit acknowledgment.

  “Maybe so,” Grant Austen said without interest, and then to Cash McCall, “I guess you saw Mr. Conway this morning?”

  “Yes, I saw him.” He moved to the corner of the desk, his hand on the pile of stacked documents. “He tells me that you’re satisfied with the agreement.”

  “Satisfied? You bet, Mr. McCall, more than satisfied. Matter of fact, I’m grateful to you—damned grateful. Your men have all been just fine—especially Mr. Conway.”

  “He’s a good lawyer, isn’t he?”

  “I’ll just say he’s about the best I ever came across,” Grant Austen said. “Yes sir, he set up a couple of things for me that are really going to help out on the tax situation. Did more for me than my own lawyer and that’s a fact. There’s really one fine man. Sure appreciate the way this whole thing has been handled.” And then as an afterthought he added, “We all do—all of us.”

  “Delighted that it worked out so well,” Cash McCall said, sorting papers. “I believe from what Mr. Conway told me that you brought home copies of everything here, so I take it that you’ve had a chance to check them through. But if you haven’t—if you need more time—?”

  “No, no,” Grant Austen said impatiently. “Everything’s all right. No worry about that. Say, is that a taxi you’ve got waiting out there? No need of that. I’ll run you back downtown. Might as well let him go.”

  “I’m going to the airport from here so—”

  “That’s easy enough,” Grant Austen said. “Just over the hill.”

  Miriam Austen broke in, “I was about to ask Mr. McCall if he wouldn’t have a bite of breakfast with us. At least a cup of coffee?”

  “In that case, I will let the cab go,” Cash said, starting for the door.

  Grant Austen stopped him, “Here, here, let me take care of that. I’ll tell him—or Lory if you’d want to—”

  She took the bill that he’d dug from his pocket and ran out in the sunlight, savoring the sound of the interrupted protest that had come from Cash McCall’s lips, started and then suspended without end, waiting. She paid the driver and, the change clutched in her hand, stood for a moment watching with unseeing eyes as the taxi backed out of the drive and into the street. The sunlight was a glittering dazzle, alive with scintillating images and half-images, Cash McCall’s face in all the bewildering complexity of its ever-changing liquidity of expression, not one smile but a thousand, not a single line of his face that could be frozen in tight-drawn portraiture … but that’s all it was … an artist’s fascination with a face …

  And she ran back up the flagged walk to the house.

  Anna had been brought in from the kitchen to witness the signatures and stood now beside the desk, red-faced, nervously tucking the slack of her blouse under the tight band of her apron. Grant Austen dipped his pen and Lory saw that his hand trembled as the point touched paper. He made a false start, the ink sputtering, then resolutely retraced the beginning and boldly completed his signature, repeated again and again as Cash McCall placed one paper after another in front of him.

  “And now Mrs. Austen,” Cash McCall directed.

  “Oh!” her mother said, the single word expressing both surprise and pleasure at inclusion. “I didn’t know you’d need me.” She signed her name, the t crossed positively and then a circled period for finality, moving aside so that Anna could inscribe her cautiously drawn witnessing signature again.

  Lory saw that Cash McCall was offering her the pen now and the expression on his face was still another of t
he endless variations of his smile. Accidentally, their fingers touched in the passing of the pen, only the infinitely small and infinitely momentary contact of flesh with flesh, but the coins that she had received from the taxi driver, forgotten, spilled from her hand in a clattering cascade on the desk top. He retrieved a rolling quarter, but she dared not thank him, and when she looked down at what the pen had written she saw that it was not her name as she usually wrote it, but the signature that she used on her drawings. The only escape from further embarrassment was to make all the others the same.

  Behind her, Cash McCall said, “There you are, sir,” and, laying down the pen, she looked up to see her father accepting a check.

  “And this, I believe, is yours.”

  She stared at the check Cash offered her, unprepared for this moment of climax, never having thought of her money as something she would receive from his hands. She looked at her father.

  “Sure, go ahead and take it,” he said with an off-key laugh. “It’s yours. You bet, that’s the way I wanted it.”

  She felt the need for some expression of gratitude to her father, if only as a correction of the error into which her mind had tricked her, but he was looking at Cash McCall and they were shaking hands. “Sure want to thank you, Mr. McCall, for the way everything’s been handled. Been fine, sure has. Well now, how about a little breakfast?” He looked around and saw that Anna and his wife had disappeared. “Guess they’ll be ready in a minute. Sit down, Mr. McCall, sit down.”

  Lory was trapped beside the desk, the way to the door blocked by the two men, her father straight-backed on a chair, Cash McCall on the sofa, and she shrank from the necessity of walking between them. Their conversation excluded her and, habit-driven, her mind picked up an imaginary sketching pencil and began to draw, searching out the key line of Cash’s relaxed body, finding it in the long arc of his back, sweeping into the half-circling turn at his hip, then down the top profile of his thigh. It was a clean line, sharp as drypoint, but her fingertips felt the life-class knowledge of bone and muscle underneath, and there was the modeling of light and shade in the line she drew, the line alive with life, breathing, and she breathed to the breathing of the line, more slowly now, tension slackening, apprehension fading, finding in his body the reserve of strength and confidence that had been so lacking in her own.