When it was over, Lulu and I worked our way through the opening night mob backstage to tell her. She was in her dressing room, surrounded by admirers and backers, laughing, giddy. I watched her from across the room until she spotted me. Her smile dropped. Her green eyes widened. We stared at each other for what seemed like hours. Then I smiled, and she smiled. And the other people in the room and the years and the bad times melted away.
“How was I?” she asked, accepting the dozen long-stemmed roses I’d brought her.
“It wasn’t the worst thing you’ve ever done.”
“Thank you, darling.”
“And you’ve never looked lovelier, but I suppose you already know that.”
“A gal only knows it if her guy says so.”
“Am I your guy?”
“Could be. I forgot how nice you look in a tux.”
“Careful, my head turns easily.”
She dabbed at my upper lip with her finger. “You shaved off your mustache.”
“Like it?”
“It reminds me of how you looked when we met.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“I gave it as a yes.”
Slowly, each of us became aware of this moaning sound originating from floor level. Lulu, ears back and tail thumping, was desperately trying to scale Mount Merilee.
“Oh, Lulu, sweetness! No, you’ll tear my costume!”
Merilee bent over and held Lulu down with her hands. These Lulu nuzzled and licked, all the while circling Merilee in a frenzy.
“You’d best take her out, darling,” Merilee said. “I’ll change.”
“Not too much,” I cautioned.
She laughed. It was one of our corny old jokes from back when we were falling madly in love, and I’d meet her backstage every evening.
She emerged a half hour later dressed in a Laura Biagiotti skirt and sweater of mocha brown cashmere, a blouse of white silk and Tanino Crisci boots. There was a trench coat over her arm and a first-class Worth & Worth Statler fedora on her head. The Statler had been mine, until she convinced me it was too small for me.
She liked the mini. Lulu liked sitting in her lap.
We went to the Hungry Horse, which is on Fulham Road in what was a hip South Ken neighborhood twenty years ago. Now there seemed to be a lot of places there offering American cheeseburgers and televised NFL football games. Certainly, this was not my idea of hip, but then neither is Pee-wee Herman.
They serve old-fashioned English food at the Hungry Horse. The dining room is a few steps down, and small, and you go in the back way through the kitchen. The tables are set against little settees. I let Merilee have the settee. I sat across from her, or I should say them. Lulu went right for her lap again. She had not paid me the slightest attention since we’d met up with Merilee.
“I’ve missed her,” said Merilee, scratching Lulu’s ears.
“I see it’s mutual,” I noted drily.
“She reminds me of us. The good part.”
“You like to be reminded?”
“From time to time.” Merilee flushed slightly, looked away. “When I’m feeling as if something is missing from my life. When I’m feeling … ordinary.”
“That’s one thing you’ll never be.”
We ordered blood-rare roast beef, Yorkshire pudding and a bottle of Medoc. And two martinis, very dry.
“Nothing to start with?” asked the waiter.
“Just extra olives in our martinis,” I replied.
He frowned. “How many would you like?”
“Bring the jar,” Merilee said. “Please.”
For Merilee Nash he’d gladly have tangoed with a sheep. He returned a moment later with our martinis, very dry, an ornate bowl brimming with cocktail olives, and an autograph book, which he held before her shyly. She signed it.
I held my glass up. “To a successful run.”
“To then.” She clicked my glass with hers. “The good part.”
We drank.
“How are the parents?” she asked, dunking an olive in her drink and devouring it.
I come from one of those families where no one speaks to each other. Merilee they loved. “Alive, last I heard. Yours?”
Merilee comes from one of those families where everyone speaks to each other. Me they never liked. “Well.”
I dunked an olive in my drink. I was about to swallow it when I saw her gazing at it longingly. She’d always insisted mine tasted better than hers. I let her have it. Then I had one of my own. “And Zack?”
She looked down into her drink. “Zack is having serious problems with his second play.”
It had been several years now since Zack had made his Broadway splash. He was overdue. “What’s it about?”
“Us, apparently. Him and me. It’s caused him to withdraw from me. And to get churlish.” She sipped her martini. “Also to drink too much.”
“Say, this sounds mighty familiar.”
She smiled ruefully. “Doesn’t it?”
“It’s so unlike you. Truly. I mean, you’re such a perfect person except for this one teeny little flaw of yours.”
She stiffened. “Flaw? What flaw?”
“I hate to be the one to break it to you, Merilee, but you have terrible taste in husbands.”
She covered my hand with hers and looked dreamily into my eyes. “You noticed.”
We tore into our food when it came. Merilee eats like a sophomore nose tackle and never gains an ounce. It drives her friends crazy. Her women friends.
“So is it over?” I asked. “You and Zack?”
“It’s acrid.”
“Acrid?”
“Tell me about T. S.,” she said, gently but firmly steering us elsewhere. I let her do so.
“Haven’t figured him out yet. He’s moody. Self-centered. Cooperative, but evasive when he wants to be. A tough nut, no question.”
She helped herself to some of my roast beef. “And the novel? What’s it about?”
I cleared my throat. “The last couple of years.”
“I see,” she said, the weather on her side of the table getting noticeably chillier. “And I’ll play a featured role in it?”
“I’m trying to deal with what happened.”
“From your point of view.”
“It’s my book.”
“That’s right, it is,” she agreed, sharply. “I’m going to write a book myself. I’ll call it I Keep Marrying Men Who Blame Me For Their Problems.”
“Not true, Merilee.”
“Not fair! I do the best I can! Why do I deserve this?”
“Look, I don’t blame you. But I do have to write about us. That’s how I work things out. The thing that drove us apart was I couldn’t write.”
“All of which makes it okay—even if I get trashed in print.”
“You won’t get trashed.”
“But I will get undressed!”
“If you insist. Shall I blindfold the waiter?”
“Not funny,” she snapped, glaring at me.
Lulu shifted restlessly in Merilee’s lap and looked from Merilee to me, then from me to Merilee.
“It appears,” I said, “as if this isn’t going to work out very well. I suppose it was unrealistic to expect it would.” I looked around for our waiter.
“No,” she said, placing her knife and fork down on her plate. “Wait, Hoagy. Let’s not do this, okay? Let’s not talk about the past, the future, any of it. Can’t we just enjoy now? Enjoy each other?”
I got lost in her green eyes for a second. “We can sure try.”
“Good. But first I have something very serious to ask you.”
“Yes, Merilee?”
“What are we having for dessert?”
We had a positively immoral concoction of cake topped with whipped fresh cream, and finished it off with coffee and port.
Then we walked, Merilee’s hand on my arm, her gait as long and loping as my own. Lulu ambled happily a few feet ahead of us, so busy showing us off
to the passersby that she didn’t notice we were being followed. Nor did Merilee. I wasn’t absolutely sure myself—I’m not exactly what you’d call an expert on trench-coat surveillance—but I swore I sensed somebody walking a careful half block or so behind us, staying stride for stride with us, measuring us.
“Hoagy, are we one of those awful couples who can’t get along together but can’t get along apart either?”
That one caught me flat-footed—pleasantly so. I hadn’t known we were anything to her anymore, except dead.
“We’ve never not gotten along in London,” I pointed out.
“That’s right,” she exclaimed, squeezing my arm. “Get me drunk?”
“With pleasure.”
She thought we’d be pulling in at the Anglesea, a fine old pub on Selwood Terrace with rough wooden floors and Ruddle’s on tap. We’d had fun there on our honeymoon. But I steered us past it to a fairly undistinguished looking family pub on Old Brompton Road.
It was crowded and smoky in there, and it smelled of beer and fried fish. The working-class clientele gave us the eye as we worked our way through them toward the bar—me for the tux, Merilee for being Merilee. I ordered pints of heavy Guinness draft for us and a piece of finnan haddie for Lulu. The meaty Hungry Horse menu hadn’t much appealed to her. When our mugs were set before us we clinked them and drank deeply. Merilee then swiped delicately at the creamy foam on her upper lip and made a little noise akin to a discreet hiccough. Among her many gifts she happens to possess the world’s most elegant belch.
The barman treated us to our second round in exchange for an autograph, which Merilee happily signed. As she handed the prized napkin back to him, she pointed to a sign prominently displayed over the bar.
“Tell me,” she said, “why is tonight called Poultry Night?”
The barman flushed with embarrassment. “Well, miss, it’s because … uh …”
“Because?” she pressed.
“Every woman … she gets a free …”
Merilee yelped.
“… goose.”
“Splendid custom,” I declared, raising my mug to the quick-fingered drinkers behind us, as well as glancing about for a familiar face, or a shifty-eyed face, or for anyone who looked like he didn’t want me to spot him. No one.
Three pale, knobby-knuckled workmen at the end of the bar bought us our third round. We returned the favor. Then I decided it was time to test those tapping feet.
“Shall we?” I asked, indicating the two square feet of vacant floor beside the jukebox.
“I thought you’d never ask, darling.”
I made my song selection and gathered her in my arms. A little shudder went through her when Ray Charles’s version of “Georgia on My Mind” came on. It was our song—the one we danced to over and over again that first night, at a Polish seaman’s club on First Avenue and Ninth Street, where we drank up peppery vodka and each other, and then went home and didn’t leave the bed for six weeks.
She was gazing at me now, her eyes brimming. “How did you know they had it?”
“Easy—I checked out every jukebox within a ten-block radius.”
“You romantic fool.”
“You got that half right.”
“Which half?”
“Ssh.”
We swayed slowly, cheek to cheek. She smelled of Crabtree and Evelyn avocado oil soap. Her smell. Also her secret—she won’t tell anyone she bathes in it for fear a beauty magazine will reveal it and she’ll end up smelling like every other woman in America.
When it was over Nat Cole sang us “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore.” Joe Williams did “In the Evening,” Mel Torme “Blue and Sentimental.” It was an uncommon juke.
“I don’t mean to be indelicate, darling,” Merilee murmured in my ear, “but are you rising to the occasion these days?”
“Try me.”
She sighed. “I have.”
“Try me again.”
“I’m not so sure.”
“Then why did you bring it up? So to speak.”
Her green eyes twinkled. “A gal just likes to know these things.”
We pulled up at her place on Cromwell Road a little after three. It was hidden from the road. To get there we turned in at a driveway, then passed under an archway, jogged around and found ourselves in a wonderfully private little cobbled mews of precious dolls’ houses. Hers was a cheery blue number with flowers growing in the window boxes. If she had mice they were doubtless singing ones.
Our tail followed us in, then backed out onto Cromwell Road when he saw we were staying. He was in a taxicab now. Picked us up the second we left the pub.
We sat there not talking for a while with the engine running and Lulu asleep in her lap.
I broke the silence. “Going to invite us in?”
She didn’t answer me right away. When she did she said, “No, I’m not.”
“Okay.”
“That’s it? You’re not going to argue with me? Paw me? Pant?”
“Too old.”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “It isn’t simple, darling. There’s Zack …”
“I know.”
“There’s also the fact that you and I failed once before, and there’s no reason to believe we’ll do any differently now. I don’t want to live through the same pain all over again. I’m too old, too.”
“I don’t come with a warranty,” I said. “I’m not a Hyundai Excel.”
“And I’m not Donna Reed.”
“Neither was Donna Reed.”
“Good night, darling.”
“Sleep tight, Merilee.”
She woke Lulu up, kissed her on top of the head and got out. I watched her go inside of her house. So did Lulu, who scratched at the window and whimpered. I told her to shut up.
The taxi was still there, double-parked on Cromwell Road about a hundred feet from the driveway, lights on, engine running. Waiting. There were two people inside of it. One was the driver. I couldn’t tell if the person in back was a man or a woman. Didn’t know what he or she wanted. Sure as hell didn’t feel like finding out just now, either.
I floored it. Took the first right turn on two wheels, then took a left, then a right. I kept checking the rearview mirror but I really didn’t need to. I’d lost the taxi in two blocks. No way it could stay with the souped-up mini. By the time I reached the A-23 I was the only one on the road. Just me and the fog.
It was the eleventh consecutive gloomy day since I’d arrived in England, and it suited me just fine.
A click woke me.
It was the sound of the door to my suite being closed. From the inside. The floor creaked in the sitting room. Someone was moving around in there in the darkness. Lulu growled softly from her perch atop my head. I muzzled her.
A match was struck. I could see its wavering yellow glow through the open bedroom door. And hear a shuffling sound—the papers on my desk were being examined. The match went out. More footsteps in the darkness. Closer. Lulu tensed. Another match was struck. The things on my dressing table were being pored over now—the contents of my wallet, my money clip.
I turned on my bedside lamp. “Can I help?”
Violet stood at my dressing table. She wore a black Chicago Bears T-shirt and absolutely nothing else. Her breasts strained against the T-shirt.
“A match,” she said, with admirable calm. She showed me the unlit cigarette that was between her fingers. In her other hand was a book of matches. “I was looking for a match, you see. Couldn’t find one anywhere. Very sorry if I woke you.”
“That’s okay. Only, you didn’t find those matches in here. I don’t smoke.”
“They were over by the fireplace.”
“And you’re not,” I pointed out.
“I wasn’t stealing!”
“I didn’t say you were. Want to tell me what you were doing in my things?”
She lit her cigarette, came over to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Lulu sniffed disagreeably
at her, jumped down and waddled into the sitting room.
“I don’t think she likes me,” Violet said, watching her go.
“Nothing personal. She just gets possessive.”
“I couldn’t sleep, y’know? And I was a bit curious about you.”
I smiled. “Okay.”
“May I have a drink?”
“Help yourself.”
“You?”
“Had plenty tonight, thanks.”
I watched her pad into the sitting room in her nondecent T-shirt. I watched her come back, too, stirring a whiskey and soda with her index finger, which she sucked on when she was finished using it. She sat back down on the bed and took a sip of her drink. She took another sip. Then she leaned back on her elbows, crossed her bare, impossibly long legs and admired her naked foot. It was a lovely foot, slender and high-arched. She began to swing it up and down, up and …
“What would you like to know about me?” I asked.
“Whether you like me,” she replied, looking me straight in the eye.
“You’re right out of my moistest fantasies. Such as they are.”
She tasted the whiskey on her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I could get in there with you.”
“Are you always this shy?”
“Tris wouldn’t mind y’know. Really.”
“I’m married,” I said. “Somewhat.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “We wouldn’t have to do anything, actually, except sleep. It’s so much nicer sleeping with someone else, isn’t it?”
She wasn’t wrong. Or difficult or demanding. Or Merilee. Always, it came back to Merilee.
“Thanks, anyway. Why don’t you sleep with Tris? He should be turning in soon—it’s nearly dawn.”
Her eyes widened. “There’s a naughty name for that, isn’t there?”
“Statutory rape?”
“Incest, silly. You did know he’s m’daddy, didn’t you?”
CHAPTER FIVE
(Tape #4 with Tristam Scarr. Recorded in his chamber Nov. 24. Wears same clothes as three days before. Does not appear to have bathed, shaved or slept since then. Room is considerably darker than before. Has turned off several lamps. Wears dark glasses.)
HOAG: I MET YOUR daughter, Violet. She’s lovely.
Scarr: Careful of her, mate.
Hoag: Oh?
The Man Who Lived by Night Page 6