When the evening did come to an end and neither of them could drink any more coffee, they left Allen’s and Richard looked for a taxi, but they were all taken or off duty.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“Fifty-seventh Street,” she said, not thinking about her reply.
“Then let’s walk,” said Richard, taking Florentyna’s hand.
She smiled her agreement. They started walking, stopping and looking in shop windows, laughing and talking. Neither of them noticed the empty taxis that now rushed past. It took them almost an hour to cover the sixteen blocks and Florentyna nearly told him the truth. When they reached Fifty-seventh Street she stopped outside a small old apartment house, some hundred yards from her own building.
“This is where my parents live,” she said.
He seemed to hesitate; then he let go of her hand.
“I hope you will see me again,” said Richard.
“I’d like that,” replied Florentyna in a polite, dismissive way.
“Tomorrow?” Richard asked diffidently.
“Tomorrow?” asked Florentyna.
“Yes. Why don’t we go to the Blue Angel and see Bobby Short?” He took her hand again. “It’s a little more romantic than Allen’s.”
Florentyna was momentarily taken aback. Her plans for Richard had not included any provisions for tomorrows.
“Not if you don’t want to,” he added before she could recover.
“I’d love to,” she said quietly.
“I’m having dinner with my father, so why don’t I pick you up at ten o’clock?”
“No, no,” said Florentyna, “I’ll meet you there. It’s only two blocks away.”
“Ten o’clock then.” He bent forward and kissed her gently on the cheek. “Good night, Jessie,” he said, and disappeared into the night.
Florentyna walked slowly to her apartment, wishing she hadn’t told so many lies about herself. Still it might be over in a few days. She couldn’t help feeling that she hoped it wouldn’t.
Maisie, who had not yet forgiven her, spent a considerable part of the next day asking all about Richard. Florentyna kept trying unsuccessfully to change the subject.
Florentyna left Bloomingdale’s the moment the store closed, the first time in nearly two years that she had left before Maisie. She had a long bath, put on the prettiest dress she thought she could get away with and walked to the Blue Angel. When she arrived, Richard was waiting for her outside the checkroom. He held her hand as they walked into the lounge, where the voice of Bobby Short came floating through the air: “‘Are you telling me the truth, or am I just another lie?’”
As Florentyna walked in, Short raised his arm in acknowledgment. Florentyna pretended not to notice. Mr. Short had been a guest performer at the Baron on two or three occasions and it never occurred to Florentyna that he would remember her. Richard had seen the gesture and looked puzzled, then assumed that Short had been greeting someone else. When they took a table in the dimly lit room, Florentyna sat with her back to the piano to be certain it couldn’t happen again.
Richard ordered a bottle of wine without letting go of her hand and then asked about her day. She didn’t want to tell him about her day; she wanted to tell him the truth. “Richard, there is something I must——”
“Hi, Richard.” A tall, handsome man stood at Richard’s side.
“Hi, Steve. May I introduce Jessie Kovats—Steve Mellon. Steve and I were at Harvard together.”
Florentyna listened to them chat about the New York Yankees, Eisenhower’s golf handicap and why Yale was going from bad to worse. Steve eventually left with a gracious “Nice to have met you, Jessie.”
Florentyna’s moment had passed.
Richard began to tell her of his plans once he had left business school. He hoped to come to New York and join his father’s bank, Lester’s. She had heard the name before but couldn’t remember in what connection. For some reason, this worried her.
They spent a long evening together, laughing, eating, talking, and just sitting holding hands listening to Bobby Short. When they walked home, Richard stopped on the corner of Fifty-seventh and kissed her for the first time. She couldn’t recall any other occasion when she was so aware of a first kiss. When he left her in the shadows of Fifty-seventh Street, she was aware that this time he had not mentioned tomorrow. She felt slightly wistful about the whole nonaffair.
She was taken aback by how pleased she felt when Richard phoned her at Bloomingdale’s on Monday, asking if she would go out with him on Friday.
They spent most of that weekend together: a concert, a film—even the New York Knicks did not escape them. When the weekend was over Florentyna realized that she had told so many white lies about her background that she had become inconsistent and had puzzled Richard more than once by contradicting herself. It seemed to make it all the more impossible to tell him now another entirely different albeit true story. When Richard returned to Harvard on Sunday night she persuaded herself that the deception would seem unimportant with the relationship ended. But Richard phoned every day during the week and spent the next two weekends in her company, and she began to realize it wasn’t going to end easily because she was falling in love with him. Once she had admitted this to herself, she realized she had to tell him the truth the following weekend.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Richard daydreamed through his morning lecture. He was so much in love with that girl that he could not even concentrate on the “twenty-nine crash.” How could he tell his father he intended to marry a Polish girl who worked behind the scarf, glove and woolly hats counter at Bloomingdale’s? Richard was unable to fathom why she was so unambitious for herself when she was obviously very bright; he was certain that if she had had the chances he had been given, she would not have ended up in Bloomingdale’s. Richard decided that his parents would have to learn to live with his choice, because that weekend he was going to ask Jessie to be his wife.
Whenever Richard returned to his parents’ home in New York on a Friday evening, he would always leave the house on East Sixty-eighth Street to go to pick up something from Bloomingdale’s, normally a little-wanted item, simply so that Jessie would see that he was back in town (over the past ten weeks he had already given a pair of gloves to every relative he possessed). That Friday he told his mother that he was going out to buy razor blades.
“Don’t bother, darling, you can use your father’s,” she said.
“No, no, it’s all right,” Richard said. “I’ll go and get some of my own. We don’t use the same brand in any case,” he added feebly. “I’ll only be a few minutes.”
He almost ran the eight blocks to Bloomingdale’s and managed to rush in just as they were closing the doors. He knew he would be seeing Jessie at seven-thirty, but he could never resist a chance just to look at her. Steve Mellon had told him once that love was for suckers and Richard had written on his steamed-up shaving mirror that morning, “I am a sucker.”
But when Richard reached Bloomingdale’s this Friday, Jessie was nowhere to be seen. Maisie was standing in a corner filing her fingernails, and he asked her if Jessie was still around. Maisie looked up as if she had been interrupted from the one important task of her day.
“No, she’s already gone home, Richard. Left a few seconds early. She can’t have gone far. I thought you were meeting her later.”
Richard ran out onto Lexington Avenue. He searched for Jessie’s among the faces hurrying home, then spotted her on the other side of the street, walking toward Fifth Avenue. She obviously wasn’t headed home and he somewhat guiltily decided to follow her. When she reached Scribner’s at Forty-eighth Street, he stopped and watched her go into the bookshop. If she wanted something to read, surely she could have got it at Bloomingdale’s. He was puzzled. He peered through the window as Jessie talked to a salesclerk, who left her for a few moments and then returned with two books. He could just make out their titles: The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
and Inside Russia Today by John Gunther. Jessie signed for them—which surprised Richard—and left as he ducked around the corner.
“Who is she?” said Richard out loud as he watched her enter Bendel’s. The doorman saluted respectfully, leaving a distinct impression of recognition. Once again Richard peered through the window to see salesladies fluttering around Florentyna with more than casual respect. An older lady appeared with a package, which Jessie had obviously been expecting. She opened it, to reveal a simple yet stunning evening dress. Florentyna smiled and nodded as the saleslady placed the dress in a brown-and-white box. Florentyna mouthed the words “Thank you” and turned toward the door without even signing for her purchase. Richard was mesmerized by the scene and barely managed to avoid colliding with her as she ran out of the shop and jumped into a cab.
He grabbed one himself, telling the driver to follow her. When the cab passed the small apartment house outside of which they normally parted, he began to feel queasy. No wonder she had never asked him in. The cab in front of him continued for another hundred yards and stopped in front of a spanking-new apartment house complete with a uniformed doorman, who opened the door for her. With astonishment and anger, Richard jumped out of his cab and started to march up to the door through which she had disappeared.
“That’ll be ninety-five cents, fella,” said a voice behind him.
“Oh, sorry,” said Richard, and thrust five dollars at the cab-driver, forgetting his change.
“Thanks, buddy,” said the driver. “Someone sure is happy today.”
Richard hurried through the door of the building and managed to catch Florentyna at the elevator. Florentyna stared at him speechlessly.
“Who are you?” demanded Richard as the elevator door closed.
“Richard,” she stammered. “I was going to tell you everything this evening. I never seemed to find the right opportunity.”
“Like hell you were going to tell me,” he said, following Florentyna out of the elevator to her apartment. “Stringing me along with a pack of lies for nearly three months. Well, now the time has come for the truth.”
Florentyna had never seen Richard angry before and suspected that it was very rare. He pushed his way past her brusquely and she opened the door. He looked over the apartment. At the end of the entrance hall, there was a large living room with a fine Oriental rug. A superb grandfather clock stood opposite a side table on which there was a bowl of fresh flowers. The room was beautiful, even by the standards of Richard’s own home.
“Nice place you’ve got yourself for a salesgirl,” said Richard. “I wonder which of your lovers pays for this.”
Florentyna slapped him so hard that her own palm stung. “How dare you?” she said. “Get out of my home.”
As she heard herself saying the words, she started to cry. She didn’t want him to leave—ever. Richard took her in his arms.
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” he said. “That was a terrible thing to say. Please forgive me. It’s just that I love you so much and thought I knew you so well, and now I find I don’t know anything about you.”
“Richard, I love you too and I’m sorry I hit you. I didn’t want to deceive you, but there’s no one else—I promise you that.” Her voice cracked.
“I deserved it,” he said as he kissed her.
Clasped tightly in one another’s arms, they sank onto the couch and remained almost motionless for some moments. Gently, he stroked her hair until her tears subsided. Help me take my clothes off, she wanted to say, but remained silent, slipping her fingers through the gap between his two top shirt buttons. Richard seemed unwilling to make the next move.
“Do you want to sleep with me?” she asked quietly.
“No,” he replied. “I want to stay awake with you all night.”
Without speaking further, they undressed and made love, gently and shyly afraid to hurt each other, desperately trying to please. Finally, with her head on his shoulder, they talked.
“I love you,” said Richard. “I have since the first moment I saw you. Will you marry me? Because I don’t give a damn who you are, Jessie, or what you do, but I know I must spend the rest of my life with you.”
“I want to marry you too, Richard, but first I have to tell you the truth.”
Florentyna pulled Richard’s jacket over their naked bodies and told him all about herself, ending by explaining her job at Bloomingdale’s. When she had completed her story, Richard did not speak.
“Have you stopped loving me already?” she said. “Now that you know who I really am?”
“Darling,” said Richard very quietly, “my father hates your father.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just that the only time I ever heard your father’s name mentioned in his presence, he flew completely off the handle, saying your father’s sole purpose in life seemed to be a desire to ruin the Kane family.”
“What? Why?” said Florentyna, shocked. “I’ve never heard of your father. How do they even know each other?”
It was Richard’s turn to tell Florentyna everything his mother had told him about the quarrel with her father.
“Oh, my God. That must have been the ‘Judas’ my father referred to when he changed banks after twenty-five years,” she said. “What shall we do?”
“Tell them the truth,” said Richard. “That we met innocently, fell in love and now we’re going to be married, and nothing they can do will stop us.”
“Let’s wait for a few weeks,” said Florentyna.
“Why?” asked Richard. “Do you think your father can talk you out of marrying me?”
“No, Richard,” she said, touching him gently as she placed her head back on his shoulder. “Never, my darling, but let’s find out if we can do anything to break it gently before we present them both with a fait accompli. Anyway, maybe they won’t feel as strongly as you imagine. After all, you said the affair with the airline company was nearly five years ago.”
“They still feel every bit as strongly, I promise you that. My father would be outraged if he saw us together, let alone thought we were considering marriage.”
“All the more reason to leave it for a little before we break the news to them. That will give us time to consider the best way to go about it.”
He kissed her again. “I love you, Jessie.”
“Florentyna.”
“That’s something else I’m going to have to get used to,” he said. “I love you, Florentyna.”
During the next four weeks, Florentyna and Richard found out as much as they possibly could about their fathers’ feud: Florentyna, by traveling to Chicago to ask her mother, who was surprisingly informative on the subject, and then quizzing George Novak with a set of carefully worded questions that revealed George’s personal despair with what he described as “your father’s obsession”; Richard from his father’s filing cabinet and another talk with his mother, which only emphasized more graphically that the hatred was mutual. It became more obvious with each discovery that there was no gentle way to break the news of their love.
Richard was always attentive and kind and nothing was too much trouble. He went to extremes to take Florentyna’s mind off the problem that they knew they would eventually have to face. They went to the theater, spent an afternoon skating and on Sundays took long walks through Central Park, always ending up in bed long before it was dark. Florentyna even accompanied Richard to a New York Yankees game, which she “couldn’t understand,” and they attended the New York Philharmonic, which she “adored.” She refused to believe that Richard could play the cello until he gave her a private recital in her apartment. She applauded enthusiastically when he had finished his favorite Brahms sonata, without noticing that he was staring into her gray eyes.
“We have got to tell them soon,” he said, placing his bow on a table and taking her into his arms.
“I know we must. I just don’t want to hurt my father.”
It was his turn to say “I know.”
; She avoided his eyes. “Next Friday Daddy will be back from Washington.”
“Then it’s next Friday,” said Richard, holding her so close she could hardly breathe.
Richard returned to Harvard on Monday morning and they spoke to each other on the phone every night, never weakening, determined that nothing would stop them now.
On Friday, Richard arrived in New York earlier than usual and spent an hour alone with Florentyna, who had asked for a half-day off. As they walked to the corner of Fifty-seventh and Park, they stopped at the red “Don’t Walk” sign and Richard turned to Florentyna and asked her once again to marry him. He took a small red leather box out of his pocket, opened it and placed a ring on the third finger of her left hand, a sapphire set with diamonds, so beautiful that tears came to Florentyna’s eyes. It was a perfect fit. Passersby looked at them strangely as they stood on the corner, clinging to each other, ignoring the green “Walk” sign. When eventually they did notice its command, they kissed before parting and walked in opposite directions to confront their parents. They had agreed to meet again at Florentyna’s apartment as soon as the ordeal was over. She tried to smile through her tears.
Florentyna walked toward the Baron Hotel, occasionally looking at her ring. It felt new and strange on her finger and she imagined that the eyes of all who passed by would be drawn to the magnificent sapphire, and to her, it looked so beautiful next to the antique ring that was her favorite from the past. She had been astonished when Richard placed the sapphire on her finger. She touched the ring and found that it gave her courage, although she was aware that she was walking more and more slowly as she came nearer and nearer the hotel.
Kane and Abel/Sons of Fortune Page 48