The Plot

by Irving Wallace

  There was Doyle, across from her, lumpy and sodden from his gorging, asthmatically wheezing at the open menu, fat-larded eyes still glittering over La Tour d’Argent’s delights.

  “Now for the dessert,” he said.

  “I’ll skip it,” she said angrily.

  He peered over the menu. “Skip it? Aw, come on, Hazel. Have something.”

  “I said no.”

  “Oh, you must. Crêpes Suzette? Or at least petits fours?”

  “No. That’s spelled n-o-t-h-i-n-g.”

  “Well, all right. You don’t mind if I have a nibble.” He offered a boyish smile. “Chronic sweet tooth, you know. Needs a filling.” He looked up at the waiter. “Well, let’s make it a souffle Valtesse for one. And you might as well bring a plate of petits fours. And, oh yes, first a refill on the bread and rolls, and some more butter.”

  Watching him now, listening to him now, Hazel was more sad than angry. The menu had been another of the earlier deceptions. Two hours ago, when he had first taken it in hand, he had discoursed on the red legend imprinted upon it—“La grande cuisine demande beaucoup de temps”—and heeding its advice, he had taken considerable time to discuss the cuisine with her. When he ordered dinner, he had been alive, certain, assured, turning aside suggestions that they must have Caneton Tour d’Argent—two of the numbered pressed roast ducks—to insist, instead, on poularde en papillote.

  As Doyle went on, Hazel’s hopes had soared, but then, as he went on and on and on, her hopes had been dampened. To order the chicken baked with white wine sauce, in paper, for both of them, had been one thing. But to order yet another main course for himself—actually two more, filets of sole with aurora sauce, then a sirloin steak with port wine sauce, and potatoes—all that besides the chicken (“You know chicken, Hazel,” he had said. “It leaves you, like Chinese food, hungry”)—had been a major disenchantment for Hazel. For the authority he had exerted in ordering dinner had not been authority at all, only insatiable gluttony. After this, she had seen him clearly for what he was: not a man, as he had once been a man (in his fashion), but a sickeningly compulsive, helplessly weak, voraciously stuffing male mammal of the family Mustelidae.

  Throughout most of the dinner she had driven herself to dominate the conversation. There had been reasons for this. Before the meal, he had done most of the talking, and it had not pleased her, for his accounting of his recent years had been too self-denigrating, his pride in her achievements had been too servile. Among all the characters in literature that she remembered, she had detested Uriah Heep, with his cringing humility, the most. So she had forced herself to speak, to drown him out. During the dinner itself his mouth had always been full, and so she had continued to talk, if only to overcome the sounds of his constant chomping. Finally, with the meal almost finished, she had not ceased her chatter because she had feared testing him.

  She had invented the testing of Doyle, in her head, before their evening. She had told herself that Doyle had rudely discarded her in New York, rudely rejected her and insulted her in Vienna long ago. Only after Kennedy’s assassination had Doyle tried to resume their relationship through long-distance calls and voluminous letters. She had hoped against hope that he had grown up and had had second thoughts about her, that he had come to need her as a woman. Yet, she had suspected—actually had known, but anything that was known was too final—he had tried to reach her again only because she might have the solution to his lousy book. But, at least, in those days and months before, she had never been absolutely sure of his motive. When readying herself to meet him again in person, she knew she would now learn the truth of his feelings, and the decisiveness of the confrontation had frightened her.

  Yet, she had told herself, she must know the truth. And so she had invented her test. She would let him talk. She would listen. If he made no mention of his damn book or of the conspiracy information he had wanted from her for the book, if he confined his talk to the two of them and other matters, he would pass with flying colors. She would see him again. She might even trust him soon. There would be solid hope. But if he started in on her about the book, or made any direct references to the fact that she could save the book, he would fail the test, fail abysmally for trying to use and exploit her. Then she would never see him again. Yet, she had not possessed the courage to learn, once and for all, whether he would pass or fail. And so for this reason she would not let him speak. Instead, she had entered into a lone verbal marathon, a kind of lonely hearts filibuster, and only now, with the arrival of his desserts, was she giving up the floor.

  Sorrowfully, she watched him liquidating his souffle. There was no point in postponing the test further. She took a cigarette, lit it, and fell silent. It was his turn now.

  He finished the souffle with satisfaction, then seemed to become aware that he was not alone. “Well, now—well—” He wiped his mouth with the napkin, and reached for the plate of petits fours. “Well, it’s certainly wonderful, all those people you’ve been interviewing, and the ones you’ve got lined up. That’s great for a change of pace.”

  “Change of pace?”

  “Well, seeing a variety of people like that fashion designer or old man Earnshaw’s niece or the stripper over at the Club Lautrec. Something different, after years of nothing but Russians and more Russians.”

  “I see. Yes, it’s a welcome change.”

  “Although, your Russian stuff is awfully good, Hazel.” He was chewing two petits fours. “Sa-ay, that reminds me. I was poking through the ANA files up in the bureau this afternoon. Had to get up some background material for my Earnshaw stint.” He grabbed for the wine, to hold down a belch, then, breathing heavily, he resumed. “Anyway, I came across some unsigned background material someone just got up on each member of the delegation. Was that yours, Hazel?”

  “Yes, what there was of it. I didn’t have much time. But the chief wanted something on file about each delegate.”

  “Well, thanks from Matt Brennan.”

  “What?”

  “You remember Matt Brennan. He—

  “Of course, I do. I ran into that snooty bastard yesterday.”

  “He’s not snooty, Hazel. He’s shy, and besides, he’s taken an awful beating. Anyway, Brennan’s a friend of mine from way back. He’s here to try to contact someone in the Russian delegation who can clear him. Brennan’s always insisted that he was innocent. I believe he was. Anyway, there was only one man who could prove it. A Russian delegate that Brennan had worked with at Zurich before Varney defected.”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, I found the Russian delegate’s file—his name is Rostov—and your notes on him, and I gave a copy to Brennan. He helped me once, and I owed him a favor. Hope you don’t mind.”

  She continued to look at Doyle. “Why should I mind? Though, I can’t imagine why on earth that Brennan of yours would want those notes.”

  Doyle’s eyes rolled glassily, and he lost to the belch after all. “Sorry.” Absently, he began to open his belt buckle. “Brennan and those notes? Well, he’s been trying to meet up with this Rostov, and he’s failed. So he wanted information on Rostov’s habits, hoping maybe that would suggest a way to run into him. I think there was something about that Russian collecting rare books, and maybe buying some while in Paris, and Brennan was trying to find the store.”

  “Absolute juvenile idiocy,” said Hazel with more sharpness than she had intended. “What I can’t understand, Jay, is how you let yourself get mixed up with such losers. It just looks bad. Earnshaw, fine. I can understand that. Your working for him, I mean, although that must be like working in a molasses factory. But Brennan? That mush-headed pinko. Even as a traitor he was second-rate. No guttiness like the Rosenbergs’ or dignity like Hiss’s.”

  Doyle washed the last of the petits fours down with wine. “I don’t think Hiss was a traitor. And I don’t think Brennan was, either. Unfortunately, those two can’t prove their innocence, and neither can I prove it for them.” He shook his head. “T
here’s too much injustice in the world because of emotions, circumstantial evidence, the need for victims so everything will be tidy. It’s like Lee Harvey Os—”

  Hazel saw him make the effort to hold his tongue. He had bitten off the surname so as not to speak it. Hazel sat, heart thumping, because the truth was near, just as Vienna was near, and the conspiracy clue she had given him there was near, and the subject of her help on his damn book was near.

  The test. She waited to grade him F for Failure.

  He sat brooding, a Buddha who had overeaten at dinner, trying to sort wisdom out of the calories.

  “What the hell,” he said suddenly. “Who wants to talk about victims on a nice night like this?”

  Hazel almost whistled her relief. Still, it had been close, and she was not yet satisfied. She brought forth the test again, aggressively.

  “You still haven’t told me why you’re in Paris, Jay. Surely, not just to work for Earnshaw?”

  “No.”

  “Why, then?”

  He hesitated, then he said, “Okay. You want to know? All right. I’m writing a book. Maybe I can wind it up here.”

  Damn the test. “A book?” she echoed hollowly.

  “Yup. It embarrasses me to bring it up in front of you, but we know too much about each other to start hiding things now.” He paused. “It’s a cookbook, a gourmet’s cookbook.”

  Hazel’s elbows almost slipped off the table in the sudden grateful release of her tension. “A cookbook!” she exclaimed out of hysterical relief. “Why, that’s nothing to be ashamed of, Jay. I think it’s wonderful. I can’t wait to see it.”

  “Well, it’s not really what I’m interested in doing,” he said unhappily, drawing the refilled basket of bread and rolls toward him. “I’d still like to have the old column back. Politics and action. That’s the game.” He began to slap and smear butter on the crusty French bread. “Then—well—there’s another reason I came to Paris, Hazel. As I told you at the café, I read you were here, in a place where I could see you easily, and so I came here to see you. I’ve missed you and I—I wanted to see you.”

  “Don’t give me that. Save it for your other girls.”

  He waited to swallow the bread before protesting. “There are no other girls, Hazel. I’ve had that. Maybe it was good I had it, because it made me realize what a horse’s ass I was, letting you slip through my fingers. Je-sus, I was a horse’s ass. I don’t blame you if you never forgive me. But you know, it takes some people longer to grow up than others. It does, Hazel. And now I think I’ve about grown up.” He shoved another half roll into his mouth. “I wish we could have those good times over again.”

  He had passed, he had passed the test, and she glowed.

  “Jay—”

  About to shove the other half of the roll into his open mouth, he waited.

  “Stop eating, will you?”

  He lowered his chubby hand to the table and released the half roll. “I’m sorry, Hazel.”

  “I appreciate everything you’ve been saying. I’d like to talk about those good old times again, too. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Let’s get some fresh air. It’s late and I’ve got an early interview in the morning. But—if you like—you can come up to the apartment for one nightcap—maybe a little talk—one part reminiscing, two parts nostalgia—then I’d better get to bed. How’s that?”

  “Great.”

  “Where’s the little girls’ room? You pay up and I’ll be ready in a jiffy.”

  Fifteen minutes later, when they had emerged onto the Quai de la Tournelle, Hazel thought of suggesting a walk along the Seine in the cool night. But the three main courses, on top of countless other courses, appeared to have immobilized Doyle. He stood with his legs wide apart, trying to support his massive belly, while gasping for air like a vanquished Sumo wrestler.

  Hazel forgot about the walk along the Seine and summoned her rented Volkswagen. She allowed Doyle to help her behind the wheel, and she suffered seeing him double over and try to fold and squeeze himself into the seat beside her in the miniature car. Worrying that it would require a derrick to get him out again, she drove the Volkswagen across the bridge and toward the Boulevard Haussmann.

  Presently, they were parked in the Rue de Téhéran, and Hazel waited in suspense for Doyle to extricate himself from his seat. After he had succeeded, he waddled around the automobile, made a gallant effort to help her out, and this done, he groggily accompanied her into the building and up to the apartment.

  In the sitting room, Hazel insisted that he remove his suit coat and loosen his collar, and when he had done so, she steered him away from the fragile divan to the softer, deeper sofa across from it. After he had settled back among the pillows, muttering his thanks, she busied herself around the room, turning down all the light except that from the astral lamps, then turning on the shortwave radio to a music station, although leaving the volume low. At last, she went into the kitchen to mix the drinks, and to find some cocktail tidbits.

  He was watching her every move, as she re-entered the sitting room with her tray. He was breathing heavily, she could hear, as she placed the tray on the low shallow table. She wondered whether his breathing was passion—or overeating.

  She gave him his highball, took her own, and curled up on the sofa beside him.

  “To the good days past,” she said, toasting.

  He touched his glass to hers, too hard, so that some of her vodka spilled. “To the good days present,” he said hoarsely.

  They drank in silence. She determined to be forthright. “Jay, did you really mean what you said before?”

  “What I said?”

  “About missing me?”

  “Every word of it,” he said thickly. “Every word. No night since, all the years since, no night I haven’t thought about you, kind of remembered something, like the first time we met, and the first time we—”

  “Jay,” she said softly, “tell me about it.”

  From the recess of the sofa, from behind the multiplicity of chins resting on his chest, he recollected vignettes of their old affair: a night, a morning, a walk, a ride, a kitchenette, a supper club, a rondelet, a dance, a frankfurter, a steak, a soft drink, a hard drink, a tear, a fight, a kiss, a floor, a bed.

  His speech was cottony, his words slurring, but for Hazel, close to him, they were as the music of a bard.

  “You were the only one I ever loved,” he murmured, “only I didn’t know it until now.”

  “You know it now?”

  “Hazel,” he pleaded, “I want to see you again and again.”

  Impulsively, she leaned across him and touched his lips with her own. “You will,” she said, and she drew away, her mind made up. “Let me get into something comfortable. I’ll be right back, darling. Don’t you move.”

  Aroused, she hastened up the circular staircase to her bedroom. Even as she entered it, she was unfastening her beaded dress, freeing herself from it. Quickly, she disrobed, perfumed herself, combed out her red hair, and pulled on her sheerest, shortest pink nightgown. Then, wearing her matching negligee, loosely belted, she started out of the bedroom.

  She had once been a young fool. She would now be an old fool. But at least she would be something.

  Slowly and seductively, she descended the stairs. Slowly and seductively, she crossed the room toward the sofa.

  “Jay, darling,” she whispered out of the shadows.

  There was no reply. The vast lump did not stir.

  Perplexed, she was approaching him, advancing closer and closer, when suddenly, like the bursting rattle of machine-gun fire, Doyle’s snoring shattered the stillness of the room, Frightened, Hazel recoiled. At last, steadying herself, she returned to examine the heap on the sofa. His head was slumped to one side, his eyes shut tight in sleep, his nose snorting, as he inhaled, his mouth wheezing, as he exhaled.

  Incredulously, she took in the coffee table at his knees. The two highball
glasses had been emptied of drink. The two dishes had been emptied of peanuts and cheese tidbits. Not a drop, not a crumb, remained. All that was left was the ruin on the sofa.

  She stood over him, not knowing for how long, not knowing whether to laugh or to cry.

  How could she possibly fall in love again with this? But then, it was not love that finally moved her. It was pity. He needed someone, he needed someone desperately. It was pity, and it was deeper and more binding than love.

  Efficiently, but gently, she removed his necktie, opened another button of his shirt, undid his belt, and worked off his shoes. Carefully, she buttressed him about and behind with the soft throw pillows. She dragged an ottoman across the room and propped his feet upon it. After that, she located a blanket in the maid’s room, and she covered him with it. Then she wrote the note and placed it on the coffee table. She wound the clock, set the alarm, and placed the clock upon the note on the coffee table.

  She looked at him once more—fat baby, poor darling—then she kissed his forehead lightly, and then she went upstairs to bed.

  Sleep was not easy.

  She lay in bed, and her mind was full.

  This reunion was dangerous, she knew, extremely dangerous. She could destroy what little there was to her life by having Doyle here this night. She could destroy everything, everything that was sure and certain, should the key unexpectedly turn in the lock of the front door.

  It was madness, this risk; still, she was chancing it, so maybe it was worth it, this risk. For if Doyle really needed her for herself, and not as a means of leading him to the finger that had pulled the trigger in the Texas School Book Depository, then the gamble was worthwhile. If he honestly loved her, she would undertake greater risks than this one to see him, to be with him, to be absolutely certain of their future.

  Perhaps, she reflected, the Summit would be a turning point in her own private world, which could become a world of wondrous peace or, conversely, one of total devastation.