The End of the Night

by John D. MacDonald

  Gabe sounded cordial but preoccupied. I told him the hotel problem. He said I had caught him on the way out, but come on over. I could bunk on the couch. He’d phone the apartment later on, and I should wait there for the call.

  It was on 77th, near Second Avenue. I pushed random buttons until somebody buzzed the front door open. I went up to 3B and Gabe had left it unlocked as he said he would. It was a smaller, dingier place than I expected.

  Gabe had been a fraternity brother. He had graduated a year ago last June, and had worked with CBS for a while and then gone with an advertising agency. He looks like an underfed Lincoln without the beard. He is highly nervous and ambitious, and always has a dozen projects going at once.

  After I’d gotten organized and built a drink, I called home long distance and got hold of Ernie. I could tell from the background noise they were having a big cocktail party. She sounded slightly loaded.

  “What are you doing in New York? Darling, I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Hang on while I go take this in the bedroom.” I heard her ordering somebody to take the phone and hang up after she got on the other extension.

  “Kirby? Now what’s this all about, dear?”

  I told her I’d quit. She didn’t like it. It didn’t fit her maternal ideas of how my life should be regimented. She kept pounding at me to get at some reason that would make sense to her. Was it because of a girl? I kept telling her I was tired of it, and so I’d quit. What was I going to do? Look around and find something to do. She said the old man could line up people for me to see in New York. I said the hell with that. I didn’t want any part of that routine, thanks. She asked me about money. I said a check would help, and I gave her Gabe’s address. She had me hang on while she went and got the old man. From the time it took, I guessed she was briefing him.

  I was right. He came on big and ugly. “What kind of goddam childish nonsense is this, son?”

  “I felt like quitting so I quit.”

  “You felt like it. That’s great!”

  All I could do was let him rave. I was spoiling the big plans he had for me. I was letting him down. I was letting the Executive Training Program down. I was going to be a bum. Well, by God, no more gravy for me. No more feather-bed. I wasn’t going to get one dime from him. A fool who quits four months before his degree doesn’t deserve any kind of a break. Now what did I have to say for myself?

  “Goodbye,” I said, and hung up.

  Incidentally, the check came from Ernie two days later, on Thursday. Airmail. Five hundred, accompanied by a rambling letter in her angular backhand, telling me how hard this was on the old man. They didn’t know what to tell people, and so on, and so on. One reading was all I could give it.

  Gabe phoned at eighty-thirty and asked me to come right along and join them at an Italian restaurant in the sixties. When I got there he was pacing back and forth in front of the hat check booth.

  After we shook hands I started to thank him and brief him on why I was in New York, but he broke in and said, “Time for that later, Stass. I can use you. There’s three at the table. The guy is John Pinelli. The blonde is Kathy Keats, an actress—Pinelli’s wife. The little brunette is Betsy Kipp. She’s a special friend of mine. I had to stab Pinelli in the heart tonight. He’ll want to cling to me like a Bandaid. I want to peel off alone with Betsy, so when any chance comes, you help out.”

  I agreed. He gave me an extra key to the apartment and said we could talk later, maybe tomorrow. We went to the table. It was a corner table, not far from the bar. A place had been made ready for me. Gabe introduced me around. Pinelli was a big, soft, pink-and-white man who looked more like a Swede than an Italian or a Spaniard or whatever he was. The two women were gorgeous. Betsy was younger and had a special glow. I knew I’d seen Kathy Keats before and heard her name before. I knew I’d seen her in the movies and on television. Her hair was dyed a beautiful silverblond, and done up in a regal and intricate way. She was on my left. Her shoulders were smooth and bare.

  She has a Dietrich face, long, slightly Slavic, a long throat, erect carriage, so that at a distance she looks tall. But close up you realize she is a small woman, about five four, a hundred and ten. I never found out how old she is. On that first night I would have guessed twenty-five. Since then I have guessed as high as thirty-seven. She gives an impression of terrible control. Every movement is slow and graceful. When her smile comes, it is slow in coming, and it flowers to great brilliance, but you feel she is back there behind that smile, watching you, watching everybody.

  John Pinelli was stupidly drunk, and drinking steadily. But there was more than that wrong with him. He was lie an ox who had been clubbed on the head. He kept shaking his big head in a bewildered way. Two conversations went on at once. One was between Gabe, Betsy and Kathy, bright talk about people I didn’t know, none of whom seemed to have last names. John Pinelli carried on a monologue, most of it so slurred you couldn’t understand it, all of it ignored by the other three, as thoroughly as they ignored me. From the little I heard of Pinelli’s ramblings, he was telling himself about the great, important, sensitive, significant things he had directed.

  The food that came was wonderful. Betsy Kipp and I were the only ones who ate it. Pinelli ignored his. Kathy Keats ate a few small bites with slow precision. Gabe has always been too jittery to eat much.

  The whole evening was unreal. At about eleven Gabe said, “I’m sorry, but we have to be running along.”

  Pinelli fixed him with a heavy, bleared eye and said, “Got to talk to you, my boy. Got to explain why you need me …”

  I felt a touch on my right knee. I reached down and took folded bills from Gabe.

  Gabe stood up and took hold of Betsy’s chair and said, “Settle with you later, Stass. Have fun, kids.” And they were gone.

  I paid the check. It was over sixty dollars. Gabe had passed me two fifties.

  I said to the Pinellis, feeling awkwardly out of my depth, “I guess I’ll say good night and …”

  “Stay with us,” she said. It was an order.

  “Flamenco guitars,” Pinelli rumbled. “Flamenco guitars, darling.”

  She knew where he wanted to go. She gave the name to the cab driver. It was a dark place. The three of us sat at one side of a round table, and looked at the small stage where a man sat in a kitchen chair under a very bright spotlight and played intricate Spanish music on the gaudiest guitar I have ever seen. He had fingernails longer than any woman’s. Under the music I could hear Pinelli muttering to his wife. We drank white wine there, a lot of it.

  At two-thirty, when there was no more guitar, and Pinelli was slumped with his eyes closed, she worked his wallet out of his pocket, took two twenties out of it, wedged the wallet into her small gold evening bag, handed me the forty dollars and said, “I’ll have the cab wait for you.”

  I helped her get him up. Once he was on his feet he walked well enough. The cab was waiting. We went back up to the seventies, this time off Fifth. The little elevator was just big enough for the three of us. It climbed very slowly. Just as it stopped at their floor, Pinelli slid slowly down the elevator wall and sat on the floor like a fat child, his chin on his chest. We couldn’t waken him. She held his head up and slapped his face until the corner of his mouth started to bleed. He was too big to carry. I took him by the wrists and dragged him. She went ahead and opened the door, shut it when I had dragged him inside, and then went ahead, leading the way to the bedroom.

  She turned the bed down. We undressed him on the floor, down to his shorts. He breathed little pink bubbles of blood out of the corner of his mouth. I sat him up against the side of the bed and then, kneeling, got my shoulder under his flexed knees and with one great heave, got him up onto the bed.

  “I’ll do the rest,” she said. I went out to the living room. It was a spacious apartment, high enough so that the big windows looked toward the lights of downtown. The apartment had a hotel flavor about it, as though nobody ever lived in it very long.
/>   I was looking at the lights when she said, “Oh, I’d thought you’d left.”

  I turned. She looked exactly the same as when I had first met her. Glamorous, chic, controlled. Nobody could have guessed she had just put a drunk to bed. “I’ve got your change, Kathy.”

  “Put it on the table.”

  “You’ve got a beautiful place here.”

  “Have we? It’s borrowed, for Chrissake. Every goddam place we live is borrowed. What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Kirby Stassen.”

  She gave me a tilted look of a special insolence. “All this courtesy, motivated by guilt. Get used to it, Stassen. You did well tonight. You might even be human enough to feel sorry for John. But I didn’t know that son of a bitch Shevlan ever hired anybody human.”

  “I don’t work for Gabe.”

  “So did he borrow you from Stud Browning? Don’t crap me about a technicality, darling. It doesn’t make you any cleaner.”

  “I don’t know what this is all about, Mrs. Pinelli. Yesterday I was a senior in college. Today—I guess I should say yesterday—I quit. I drove to New York. I knew Gabe in school. The hotels are full. I’m staying with him. I’ve hardly had a chance to say hello to him.”

  She stared at me. “For the love of God, he’s telling the truth!”

  “I haven’t understood very much of what’s been going on this evening. I’m sorry, but nobody has explained anything.”

  “Sit down, darling, and hear the facts of life.” She took my hand and led me to a long, low couch. “Gabe is on leave of absence from the agency. He’s been assembling a package for a great big television series. Stud Browning is the producer. Gabe calls himself the unit manager. Gabe came after John to direct. I told John not to trust the mealy little bastard, but John went ahead with it on spec, getting everything lined up for the two pilots they’re going to shoot. My God, he’s been in on the casting and the story editing, everything. It’s a big deal for John. He’s had bad luck. I was going to be in it. They claim they still want me. Tonight, Gabe, after using John all these months for free, kicked him off the team. Stud is going to be producer-director and Gabe Shevlan is going to be assistant director. That cuts the nut. And Gabe has milked John for all the ideas he’ll need. You’re in bad company, Stassen. You have a reasonably clean look. Do you want to be an actor?”

  “God, no!”

  “You don’t know how refreshing that is, sweetie.”

  She smiled at me. She was close to me. I was full of wine. I felt very loose and sophisticated. So I took hold of her and kissed her. Her back felt lean and fragile under my hands. It was like kissing a corpse. When I released her she yawned and said, “Go the hell home, will you, before you really begin to bore me, Stassen.”

  I walked home. It was a clear night. There was a light on. The bedroom door was closed. The daybed had been made up for me. I was touched. I hadn’t thought Gabe would go to the trouble.

  I heard him leave in the morning. I looked at my watch. Twenty to ten. When I opened my eyes again it was noon. I padded, naked, through the bedroom and stopped with a grunt of shock and surprise in the doorway. Betsy Kipp, in bra and panties, was leaning toward the mirror over the basin, painting herself a new mouth with a small brush.

  “I’ll be out in one minute, Kirby,” she said sweetly. “Gabe has some robes in the closet there.”

  I put on a robe and sat on the double bed. She had a fresh outfit laid out on the bed, a pale blouse and a tweedy green suit.

  “Sleep well?” she called to me.

  “Pretty good.”

  “That couch is lumpy. I’ve slept there a few times. I made it up for you.”

  “Thanks.”

  She came out of the bathroom. “All yours. Eggs, toast and coffee okay by you?”

  “Fine.”

  “They’ll be ready in a hurry because I’ve got a rehearsal at two, so don’t stay in there forever.”

  When I came out, breakfast was ready. From the tiny table for two you could reach the small sink, stove and icebox.

  “Sit down, Kirby. There’s sugar but no milk for the coffee. How did you like Kathy? Isn’t she a miraculous old broad?”

  “She’s unusual, I guess.”

  “Oh, I don’t know as she’s unusual. She’s got a nice little talent. And, of course, those marvelous looks. She’s fading now, of course. But I’d say she’s done as much as she can with what she’s got. People wonder why she didn’t dump John ages ago. There’s a word he has a hold over her or something. But Kathy never says much about herself. And when she does live it up, she never gets conspicuous.”

  “She’s pretty sore at Gabe, apparently.”

  “That’s stupid! Gabe does what he has to do. His job isn’t easy. He takes horrible abuse. And they give him the dirty jobs to do, like last night. Lord, I’ve got to run! Kirby, dear, would you mind cleaning the joint up? No maid service. We’re all meeting at the Absinthe on West 48th at six-thirty tonight. I’m bringing a girl for you. Doxie Weese. She’s lovely, and she’s a very sensitive little actress, and she’s been terribly hurt, and she hasn’t been out with anyone in ages. So be tender with her, will you? Thank you, darling.”

  After she left, the apartment seemed exceptionally empty. I cleaned the place. Some of her clothes hung in the closet. I killed what was left of the afternoon. I got to the Absinthe early and was on my second drink when the three of them came in. Gabe looked weary. Doxie had brown hair, sleepwalking mannerisms, and looked about thirteen years old. Betsy was in a bad mood, something about the stupidity of some new choreographer.

  Late that evening I got a chance to ask Gabe about John Pinelli.

  “We tried to give him a break,” he said. “Old John just hasn’t got it any more. Too bad. He was eager, but we couldn’t take the risk. We’re playing with other people’s money.”

  “What will he do?”

  “Are you in a sweat about John, or about Kathy?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Maybe he’ll find something and maybe he won’t. Don’t mess with them, Stass. Kathy is a thousand years older and a thousand times rougher than you are.”

  “I keep wondering how they’ll make out.”

  “And I keep wondering if you had any change left from last night, buddy. Come up with it.”

  Three days later I got a job, through Gabe. Office boy at the agency. I sorted and delivered mail and memos, and ran errands. Because of Gabe’s relationship with Betsy, I got stuck with the chore of squiring Doxie Weese around. She was a zombie. She could cry oftener and harder and for less reason than any girl I ever met. Betsy was very concerned about her. Betsy suggested to me that it might help Doxie if I slept with her. I said I was willing, but I couldn’t even take her arm to cross a street without she started crying her heart out. Betsy said try, so I tried, and I did. It didn’t help Doxie, and it wasn’t worth it.

  I began to get restless again, so restless that I said the wrong thing to the wrong man at the agency, and was out on the street ten minutes later, with a pay check in my pocket. I looked for work in a halfhearted way. All of a sudden Gabe went off to Portugal with the unit to shoot the pilots. Doxie went along with the unit. Betsy, two days later, went out to the Coast. Gabe said I could use his apartment while he was gone.

  And I kept thinking of Kathy Keats and how her back had felt under my hands, as if I could snap it like a stick. I looked in the phone book. They weren’t listed. I found the apartment house. The card under the right button had Pinelli written on it. I didn’t have the guts to push the button. She came out at four o’clock the next day, and she was trying to look through me and beyond me, trying to spot a cab.

  “Hello!” I said.

  She focused on me, and frowned. “Oh, it’s the schoolboy. What’s your name again, dear?”

  “Kirby Stassen.”

  “Get me a cab, dear.”

  I hailed one and got into it with her. She looked slightly startled. “What in the world are you doing?�
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  “Nothing at the moment. I wanted to know how … your husband is doing.”

  “That’s sweet of you, Stassen,” she said, “but I’m going to have my hair done.” She gave the driver the address.

  “I’ll go along and buy you a drink afterward,” I said.

  “I won’t be out until six anyway.”

  “I can wait.”

  “Suit yourself, dear.”

  We both got out at the hairdresser’s. She pointed out a hotel diagonally across the street and told me to wait there, in the lobby or the bar. I waited in the bar and then in the lobby. I wanted courage but not too much. When she came in, she spotted me and gave me that smile when she was forty feet away. She came, walking tall, giving me that smile, and I knew as she did it that it wasn’t for me. It was for the people watching her come to me.

  The bar didn’t get much trade. We had a banquette table, very alone.

  “Why do you give a goddam about John?” she asked me.

  “I don’t really know. But I do.”

  “Are you working for Gabe now?”

  “He left for Portugal. I’m living in his apartment. I’m looking for work. I had a job for a while. It wasn’t something I’d want to do forever, but I shouldn’t have gotten fired. Is John working?”

  “No. I’ve been doing some commercials, for some nasty goo that takes hair off your legs. My legs are still good, thank God.”

  “All of you is good, Kathy.”

  “You’re a brave child, Stassen, aren’t you?”

  “I’m dauntless. Do you have any plans?”

  “Oh, we always have plans.”

  “Your eyes are just the color of violets.”

  “A deathless line, indeed! We’re going to Mexico, Stassen. To another borrowed place to live. A beach place at Acapulco. John has some old friends who are setting up a company to make movies down there. He thinks he can get into the act.”

  “I’d like to go to Mexico.”

  “Why do you keep reminding me of a cocker spaniel?”

  “When are you going?”

  “It will have to be soon. The Burmans are coming back from Italy this month. They’ll want the apartment. And I think it’s time to get John out of this town. All the goddam doors are closed. All the secretaries have the word to give him the brush job. Show biz, darling. Kick the wounded. Direct forty pictures that pay off, and you can crush people under your wheels. Add two turkeys and you’re dead.”