Wagner sighed in relief. “Oh, good. I’m sure you can explain it all.” He was not sure in the least, but he wished this whole matter could be concluded without delay. He had to give himself to the really important issue: namely, what he would now do with his life. Surely it was all to the good that he finally had no alternative to sitting down and writing that novel. It was no longer the thing he would eventually do when the time came. The moment was here; he no longer had a source of income.
He went on. “And when you’ve got that straightened out, we’d better think about returning to the office, unpleasant as that might seem. But you left your coat there, I believe. And I have to pick up my check.”
“I’m never going back to that shit hole,” Mary Alice said, plucking away and dropping to the counter the little blue plastic bird from the spout of the teakettle. Wagner had always found its whistle useful as well as homey, but, not wanting to be provocative, made no complaint now. “They can mail my check. And they can keep the coat. I’m sick of it. It’s the kind of clothes you wear as one of the jerks who have to go to work at an office every day.”
Wagner moved quickly to make the coffee as soon as it seemed sufficient time had gone by for the water to have heated, but no doubt owing to his impatience he miscalculated.
Mary Alice made a face and lowered the mug. “This is cold.”
“Sorry,” said Wagner. “But that’s why the bird was there.”
“I can’t stand cute kitchens,” Mary Alice said. “At least you don’t have twine coming out of a ceramic French chef’s lips or a duck’s-head towel rack.”
“Better call Mom,” Wagner advised.
She grimaced at him. “She’s my mother and not yours.”
“What I meant was she’ll be worried.”
Mary Alice went to the wall phone, where she turned and asked, “Do you mind?”
“Oh, sure.” He left the kitchen and went into the bedroom. That’s where his real library was: one whole wall of it. Babe had not been too happy about giving up that much picture space, but it was the only wall he claimed of the many. The bed was impeccable: he had to admit that Polly Todvik and Glen had made it up tightly before they departed. He reminded himself that he must have the locks changed. After a long while he went out into the living room, expecting to find that Mary Alice had concluded her phone call, but he could still hear her remotely speaking from time to time. He could not distinguish the words, but the tone seemed calm enough. After all, she was no longer a minor. She even had a BA. Staying away all night should not be an occasion for parental outrage.
It turned out to be fortunate that she was so longwinded. A susurrus was heard at the door. As he looked there a pink envelope came sliding through the slit at the threshold. He went hastily to take and—to pocket it, for out in the kitchen Mary Alice had suddenly raised her voice.
“All right then,” she cried. “You’ll never see me again!”
Immediately she came marching out. “Bad luck,” said she. “My dad was home, refused to go to work with me missing. We tangled, as I was afraid we would. I don’t know if you heard just now.”
Wagner nodded lugubriously. “I’m sure you’ll both settle down, though, before long. My sister and I have always fought a lot, but we always soon make peace.” He gave a hollow laugh. “We have to. We don’t have anybody else.”
“Don’t minimize this,” said Mary Alice. “I’m a stubborn cookie. If I say I’ll do or not do something, I don’t back down, whatever the consequences.”
Wagner kept nodding, like a certain kind of spring-necked toy figure. “Gosh,” he said eventually, for she was staring fixedly at him, “friendship with me hasn’t helped, has it?”
“Fred,” said Mary Alice, “I just intended to stay with you till this thing blew over. I didn’t spell that out because I didn’t want you to be disappointed. But now it looks a whole lot like I’ll be moving in for good. My father is as stubborn as I am.” She looked around. “Now where’s your bathroom? I need a good hot tubbing.”
Wagner believed the time to discuss the matter would be after her belated bath, so he politely found a clean towel for her and a thicker piece of soap than that snottily deliquescing in the niche above the tub.
Once Mary Alice closed the door behind her, he read the pink letter.
DEAR FREDO—
I admit I was darn mad when you stood me up. I still am some. But I’m getting a little scared by now. It doesn’t seem like you at all to not get in touch all this time. You wouldn’t be likely to stay out all night without informing me of all people. I’m going to try to find where you work—I bet Glen can tell me—and call there. But if I don’t find you by noon, I’ll bring the cops in. So please if you come back meantime, let me know.
Your devoted but worried
SANDO
The affectionate diminutives were new since he had last seen Sandra. Unless the one assigned him were to be pronounced “Fraydo,” shouldn’t it be rather spelled with two d’s?
10
WHILE MARY ALICE WAS bathing was a good time to get straight with Sandra, and therefore he called the latter on the bedroom phone.
“Thank God,” Sandra said. “I’ll be right over.”
Wagner had been sprawling across the bed. He sat up now. “Please, listen,” he said. “I’m calling you from a public booth, downtown. I’m sorry about last night, but on leaving work yesterday I was seized by two husky men and pulled into the back of a limo, bound and gagged and held hostage in a secret place. Apparently they believed me a spy or agent of some group with whom they are adversaries. It was morning before they were convinced they got the wrong guy, and let me go.”
“Miles told me every cock ’n’ bull story in the book,” said Sandra, “so I wouldn’t bother if I were you. I just talked to your boss, one Jacqueline Rinsing. She told me you were seen leaving a hotbed hotel this morning with some little tramp.”
“Does that sound like me?” Wagner asked. “Jackie’s nursing a grudge, Sandra. Anyway, I quit my job yesterday, and she’s just being vindictive.”
“Wish you’d have discussed that move with me first,” Sandra said. “Sounds as if it wasn’t as well planned as it might have been. But come on home now. I’m not gunning for you.”
For wont of a better response, Wagner said, “You’re not?”
“Listen,” Sandra said, “a little sowing of wild oats before making a change in your life is not a crime in my book, as long as hygienic procedures are observed, of course.” She chuckled. “But that doesn’t mean you can keep getting away with it. Next time I lower the boom.”
He wondered why this woman was so attached to him, and he could not think of any reason except convenience. He was the nearest male neighbor of a suitable age and seemingly suitable situation.
Mary Alice, wrapped in an outsized towel, came into the bedroom, having cut the bath short for some reason. Wagner hated himself for feeling guilty towards both women.
Meanwhile Sandra was saying, “You certainly owe me one tonight. Name an expensive restaurant.”
“I’ll call you back,” said Wagner. Mary Alice was advancing on him with an odd smile. “Someone has been waiting for the use of this telephone.”
“You just get back up here on the double, Freddo,” said Sandra. “I’m off all day.”
Mary Alice bent and began to unfasten his fly.
“OK, Sandra.”
“And Fred?”
“Yes?” Mary Alice’s hand was in his trousers up to her wristbone.
“You should know you really had me worried. I even got Glen to let me into your apartment, on the chance you had passed out and were laying helpless there. ... Fred?”
“Yes.”
“You know what? I had to bribe him,” Sandra said indignantly. “I guess he was just being responsible, though. But suppose something would have been wrong with you?”
“I’m all right,” Wagner said dully.
With her free hand Mary Alice took the p
hone from him and hung it up.
“It’s funny,” she said. “As soon as I sat down in that warm water I got full of love.” The big towel was tied across her breasts, but it was loose at the bottom, and she opened it now and straddled him. “If I had known it wouldn’t hurt that much, I wouldn’t have waited so long.”
“I understand,” said Wagner. He would have preferred to have his pants off or at least down farther.
“I read all about it,” said Mary Alice, who looked from below as if she were riding a trotter. “God, how I read about it!” She was pink and damp from the bath.
Wagner wished he had gone to the front door and turned the knob that operated the deadbolt for which there was no outside keyhole. Sandra might barge in again on some pretext, or hearing that he was missing, Glen might even bring back his harlot.
“But nothing you read,” Mary Alice continued, “really prepares you for the way it feels.” She was beaming down on him. “There’s something words can’t do, Fred! So you see they have their limitations.”
Wagner nodded. He could easily grant the point. He had never before copulated during a partner’s monologue.
Mary Alice seemed to have recovered fully from her abhorrence of him on awakening. He saw no sense in bringing up that matter now and providing even more pretext for talk. Though she needed none.
She was shouting down at him. “I could go on forever.”
Wagner was performing adequately, but to have matched her energy he would have had to simulate a glee he did not feel.
He answered, “Yeah. I know what you mean.” This was the second and more serious occasion on which his marriage bed had been recently profaned. He could hardly be blamed for Polly Todvik’s incursion, but here he was as Mary Alice’s unresisting victim. Being in sudden sexual demand by both her and Sandra should have improved his morale more than it had. Instead he seemed to have more doubts about himself, not sexually but as to what might be called existential substance: was he really an independent entity? If he fell in a remote forest with no one about to hear the crash, would there be one?
He was summoned from this sentimental inquiry by the realization of his proximate fear: namely that someone was about to enter the apartment. That he heard the distant sound of the key was remarkable, for Mary Alice now was singing and in fact not badly: her voice was deeper and more supple than when speaking. Also she had an almost professional command of the lyrics of what Wagner recalled as a popular song of a season or two back. But with the turning of the lock he was out from under her and on his feet in one flowing movement that made her gasp, it appeared, with pleasure: she probably took it for a highly skilled sexual maneuver. She fell back on the pillow as if satiated.
In another efficient sequence Wagner seized his robe from the closet and donned it while closing the bedroom door behind him. However, rising from even a licit bed is never a firm foundation for a display of self-righteous indignation, even though it should have as good a claim as any, and in this case it was not quite that. Also, he was certain it was Sandra, on some pushy mission. Perhaps, for she seemed capable of it, with an idea of surprising him by being in bed when he returned from his supposed jaunt downtown: again she had suborned the corrupt Glen. Wagner had time to give this supposition some detail because whoever it was at the door was lingering there, with bumping noises.
It was Babe.
She had her back to him at the moment. She was fooling with a bulky object on a little flat truck whose rollers were being detained at and by the threshold. Surely its load was a stack of her personal possessions, which she had brought along because she was returning to him. This of course meant that he would have to get to the bedroom, hurl Mary Alice out the window, and get it closed again before Babe penetrated that far. The alternative was to activate the old joke, “Do you believe me or your own eyes?” Wagner’s fancy could be as ruthless as it wished: it was utterly harmless to all living things. The reality of the coming moment would be the worst he had ever experienced, and there was no means of escaping it.
But then he had a wondrous inspiration. Babe had not seen or heard him: the truck had stuck a wheel, and she was bending to free it. He went quickly back to the bedroom and fell onto Mary Alice, who looked as though she were already asleep, carrying out the traditional role of the man to the limit.
“Mary Alice,” Wagner said into her ear. “I’m going to roll you over on top of me so that you are not in contact with the bed at any point. There’s someone in the living room whom I don’t want to see at this moment: a person who’s making a delivery. If we stay perfectly quiet, they won’t know we’re here! Won’t that be fun?”
Mary Alice acquiesced. She was still in a mood in which she welcomed new experiences. When her body was separated altogether from the bed by that of Wagner, he was able to turn them both invisible. Mary Alice made no suggestion that she was aware of her new state. He was hugging her so fiercely she had probably closed her eyes.
He had left the bedroom door ajar, so that he could hear Babe’s noises. He could not imagine what she was doing or why she was pulling the truck. That she had retained her doorkey was gratifying to him. However minor, it was a positive fact. Thus far Mary Alice was behaving well: staying quiet and only wriggling a little, which indeed had a friendly feeling. Wagner loved it when everything went right and everybody got along with one another, asking only what it was possible to provide. He didn’t know what he’d do if Babe came into the room and sat down on the bed to take a pebble from her shoe.
... Or simply entered and glanced at the bed, for it occurred to him that the weight of two bodies would be making a visible impress in and of the bedclothes and mattress.
“Let’s try another thing,” he whispered into Mary Alice’s ear. “Keep your eyes closed: this is fun!” He climbed out, then bent and, with an effort, managed to pick her up in his arms. She was no heavyweight, but even so he might not have had the strength to move while holding her, had she not relieved his arms of half the burden by swinging around to clamp her legs about his waist. Mary Alice was behaving better than he had a right to expect.
He was able, if awkwardly, to move to the door, to edge it farther open with an elbow, and peep down the little hallway into the living room. He now viewed Babe in profile. She was staring at something beyond his line of vision. Being invisible, he could have gone all the way out there to stand alongside his estranged wife, but that was taking quite a chance while giving Mary Alice a ride: the girl faced backwards at the moment, but who could say when the novelty of the game would wear thin for her and normal curiosity would return?
It soon appeared that such a change was not imminent: Mary Alice was utterly distracted by the opportunities afforded by their new situation. He was both helped and hindered by her avid belief that his purpose in holding her so was to make possible another genital connection, and now she was groping for him importunately.
In no time at all it became impracticable for him to move except in place. Despite his impatience, Babe had turned and left the apartment before Mary Alice lowered her feet to the floor, stepped back, and said, “Wow. I love it when you’re kinky.”
Seeing her blink, he materialized.
“Wow,” she repeated, hugging him. “For an instant there, I thought screwing had made me go blind.” She staggered back and exhaustedly spread-eagled herself on the rumpled sheets.
“Excuse me for a moment, Mary Alice,” Wagner said politely, and he finally went out into the living room.
Babe had delivered to him a large television set. Singlehandedly she had hoisted it to the top shelf of the bookcase, where her geranium, coleus, and potted ivy had once sat. Scotch-taped to the screen was an envelope. Wagner peeled it away and found the doorkey and a typewritten note inside.
FREDDY,
When Cleve really thought about my leaving to open a gallery of my own, he decided to make me a full partner in his. Anyway he wants to spend more time in Marrakesh. So, for a while anyhow, it will be t
he Guillaume-Morgat Gallery. Maybe eventually I can buy him out.
Replacement plants would have been nice, but I know you’re no gardener and didn’t want to give you a new chore. I think the time has come for you to relent and look at some TV. There are live operas and concerts and foreign films and book-talks and nature shows. One really can’t stay contemptuous forever.
You’ll be hearing from my lawyer soon. Please don’t take it amiss. The terms won’t be hostile. Nor am I.
Your old friend,
C.
Morgat was Babe’s maiden name. It was the only thing about her he had never liked: something, from a different terminal consonant to perhaps an entire syllable, seemed to be missing from it.
But was it not typical of her to attempt at least to soften the blow of a formal filing for divorce? Perhaps he would, in the same spirit, look at some television. Babe had taken with her the tiny set on which he had sometimes watched routine news reports. This set looked gargantuan by contrast. The irony was that while living with him Babe would have thought it unspeakably vulgar. Still, it was darned sweet of her, so kind that he was almost moved to tears.
Mary Alice was sleeping soundly. After showering he put on some clothes and slipped down the hall to ring Sandra’s bell.
She wore a fancy housecoat, frilly-trimmed, and quite as much makeup as she habitually used after dark.
“I can’t stay,” said he, stepping inside. “A lot of things have come up. I no longer work where I used to. Everything’s in the air. I’ll just have to take a raincheck for tonight.”
“Now, now, calm down, Freddo: that’s what I’m here for.” She led him to the couch. “I want to hear all about it, and then we’ll work everything out, I promise you.”
He sat down, but he said, “I’m afraid it’s not that simple, Sandra. There are complications in my life that I haven’t revealed to you. Believe me, you’ve seen only one phase of my existence. You’d be surprised at some of the others, maybe even appalled.”
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