The Wrong Kind of Money

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “I guess so,” Noah said. “But I used to think of doing something else.”

  “What sort of something else?”

  “I used to think about a career in the social sciences,” Noah said. “But now—”

  “My dear fellow, I don’t have any idea what the social sciences are,” Cyril said. “And please don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. But don’t worry. You’ll do fine wearing the golden mantle. You’ll get married to some nice girl. You’ll have children. You’ll live at a fine address. And I? Well, let me just say that I bear you no ill. You were always a good boy.”

  “Thanks, Cyril.”

  “It’s too late for me to try to turn back the clock. But, you know, I’ll always miss him.”

  “Who?”

  He nodded toward the chapel door. “The old bastard,” he said. “Our father.”

  “Look,” Noah said quickly, “let’s get together soon, Cyril. For lunch, or dinner. Or just for a drink. Let’s get to know each other better, Cyril. We really need to.”

  “I’d like that,” Cyril said with a little smile, and their eyes made contact again, and in that little smile Noah suddenly saw again the Cyril he remembered as a boy.

  “In fact—want to go somewhere for a drink right now?”

  “Not now,” Cyril said, glancing at his gold Cartier tank watch. “I must be on my way.”

  “But let’s get together soon, Cyril. Call me.”

  “I will,” Cyril said.

  They shook hands again and parted, Noah walking east and Cyril turning toward the west.

  But, as it turned out, they did not get together soon again. It was not, in fact, until Carol, in an attempt to draw this fractured family together, began having her little family dinners on New Year’s Eve at River House.

  9

  Choices

  Why is it that our lives can become polarized about some small, seemingly insignificant event? A call from a stranger, a knock on the door, entering a familiar room unannounced and hearing unfamiliar sounds, a scene of a father vilifying his older son in front of the rest of the family. Or a decision as to whether or not to pack a pair of swimming trunks for a business trip.

  At River House now, Noah Liebling, at a crossroads in his life, is faced with this decision.

  Noah has always been a careful packer. He is as meticulous about packing as he once was reckless on the wheels of his bike. He considers the swimming trunks he holds in his hand. Ingraham’s sales conference, which begins with a kickoff cocktail party tonight, is being held this year in Atlantic City. Atlantic City would not have been Noah’s choice as the venue for this annual event. But by tradition, the salesmen are given a choice of a half dozen possible locations, ballots are passed out, and Atlantic City received the majority vote this year. Why? A lot of the salesman, it seems, like to gamble. This should come as a surprise to no one. The distilling industry is a business designed for gamblers. Everything about it is high-risk. This is why, they say, it has become a predominantly Jewish industry.

  Back to the swimming trunks—green, with a white stripe down the side and a Polo logo. On the one hand, he thinks with his logical mind, in January it will obviously be too cold for the beach. On the other hand, the hotel where they will all be staying may have a heated indoor pool. A lot of hotels have those things nowadays—the pool, the spa, the health club. A swim would be pleasant at the end of a busy day. Or it may not have a pool. Noah can’t remember from the brochure, and the brochure is at the office. Tentatively, he places the trunks on the top of the open suitcase. Swim trunks always go on the top of the suitcase, just as shoes always go on the bottom, followed by socks, underwear, shirts, ties, etc., etc., because that is the order in which everything is unpacked when you get to the hotel. The trunks take up very little room, and they weigh next to nothing, so what the hell?

  But then, he thinks, indoor pools are unappetizing places, caustic with the smell of chlorine, and noisy with the screams of splashing children and their endless water games. And there will be no time for swimming or other relaxation, either. He will have too much to do, too many hands to shake, too many faces to try to remember. Thank God for name tags! He removes the trunks and replaces them in his dresser drawer.

  But then, Atlantic City is not the sort of place one visits with small children—not anymore. Atlantic City’s din is from the grownups at the tables and the slots. The pool, if there is a pool, will be peacefully empty, and he can swim a few laps before bedtime. He puts the trunks back on the top of his suitcase. And yet, if he packs the trunks and ends up never using them, he will feel the same impatience with himself that his mother feels when she has to let the space in front of her go “wasted” when entering a revolving door. Decisions, decisions! He removes the trunks again.

  In another open suitcase is the carousel of color transparencies that Noah will be using when he makes his major presentation to the entire conference on Friday afternoon, just before the wrap-up cocktail party of the week of meetings, along with his notes for the script he is still working on. So far these color slides and the content of the accompanying script are still Top Secret. Only a handful of others in the company knows about them. On the program for the day, the only clue as to the importance of this event is in the words: “Friday, 12:30 P.M., Luncheon in the Grand Ballroom to be followed by a Major Presentation by Mr. Noah Liebling.”

  And, seeing his notes for the script, Noah suddenly realizes that he has almost forgotten to pack another Very Important Thing. This is the President’s Message that he is to deliver at the kickoff party tonight. The President’s Message, triple-space-typed by Jonesy, Hannah Liebling’s secretary, is still on the top of his dresser. He quickly retrieves this and places it on the top of his suitcase, where the swimming trunks were, glancing at the opening words: “In our more than two-hundred-year history …” This is a lie, of course, and Hannah damn well knows it. Their history is not even a hundred years old, but does it really matter? He looks at his watch. It is two-fifteen.

  “I’ve got a car ordered for us both at two-thirty,” Frank Stokes said to him that morning. “If you finish packing in time, drop down to my place for a drink before we head off to the wilds of Atlantic City.”

  “Fine,” Noah said.

  Frank Stokes is Ingraham’s vice president for sales. Frank and Beryl Stokes have the apartment on the floor below the Lieblings’, on the same elevator stem. In fact, it was Noah who helped them get into River House, over the objections of some board members who said, “Don’t we have enough liquor people in the building? Are you trying to turn River House into the Ingraham Building?” Anyway, there will not be time for that drink now, and Noah is about to snap both cases closed when he realizes he is not alone in the room. He turns and sees her standing in the doorway.

  “Going out of town?” she asks him.

  “Oh, hi, Mellie,” he says. “Was I talking to myself?” He did not realize that he and Melody were alone in the apartment together.

  We should pause here to insert a word or two about the Bennington Plan. Those of you who know about the Bennington Plan can skip this section, but the Bennington Plan accounts for Melody’s somewhat awkward position.

  When Bennington College for Women was founded in the 1920s, it was something of an anomaly. To begin with, it was never really a college for women. There have always been men at Bennington—not many, but a few—and Bennington was established primarily for young people interested in careers in the arts: drama, dance, music, literature, film- and television-making, and so on.

  Part of the Bennington Plan is what is called the Winter Work Period. Every year the school closes for the months of January and February, and during these months students are expected to find work off the campus in their chosen fields. Cynics have pointed out that one of the world’s most costly colleges, situated on a hilltop in the mountains of southern Vermont, manages to save a great deal of money in heating bills by closing during the coldest winter months, but that is neit
her here nor there. In its woodsy setting, laid out to suggest a sprawling New England farm—with dormitories posing as farmhouses and studios disguised as barns—the campus atmosphere is intended to be conducive to artistic endeavor, and in many ways it is. Bennington students take their studies, and the winter work program, very seriously. Otherwise, rules are very few, and loosely enforced, if at all.

  Of course, not all Bennington students go to work during the winter work period. Some simply travel, visiting European museums and architectural wonders, taking notes on what they have observed, and this “work” will count for academic credit when they return to the school with the crocuses and daffodils. Some actually find jobs. Anne Liebling, as an art history major and using her mother’s museum connections, has found a winter job as a file clerk in the Catalogue Room of the Met. She started work there the first of the year. The pay isn’t much, of course, but at least she is working in her field.

  Melody, as a drama major, has been less fortunate, as anyone who has tried to work in the theater well knows. To her credit, she has been looking for something—answering casting calls, following the course of Broadway rehearsals, offering to do everything from painting flats for scenery to running out for coffee and doughnuts for the stagehands.

  “What I’d like,” Melody has said to Carol, “is to find something in the theater that would pay me enough so I could afford to share an efficiency, or a loft in SoHo.”

  “Nonsense,” Carol said. “You can always stay here. We love having you, and there’s plenty of room. Don’t worry about finding some other place to stay.”

  Still, though Melody has stayed with the Lieblings for shorter periods in the past, a two-month house guest is something else again. Melody realizes this, and so does Carol. Still, both the guest and the hosts are trying to make the best of the situation, at least for the time being.

  Meanwhile, the fact that Anne has been able to find employment while Melody has not has created a not imperceptible rift between the two best friends. We have not progressed very far into January, and Anne Liebling has already learned, at the end of a working day, not to ask her friend, “Well, how did job hunting go today?” She knows what the discouraged reply will be.

  And is Melody the slightest bit resentful of Anne for having found a job, however boring, so easily? If so, Melody has given no indication. (Anne does not know that Melody, writing home to her mother in Tokyo, said, “It’s funny, but it’s much easier to find a job when you don’t need one—if you’re rich already, that is.”)

  “Sales conference,” he says now. “We do this every year in January. This year it’s Atlantic City.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Just a week. Back Friday night.”

  She moves to the open suitcase and lifts the sheets of typewritten paper. “What’s this?” she asks him.

  “President’s Message,” he says. “I have to deliver it tonight at the kickoff party.”

  She reads, “‘In our more than two-hundred-year history …’ Not a very exciting opening line, is it?”

  “My mother’s words,” he says. “They’re carved in stone, I’m afraid.” He’s glad to see there’s no black eye, no swollen lip.

  She makes a face. “I could do better than that,” she says. “How about, ‘As we plunge fearlessly into our third century—’”

  “Okay, okay,” he says. “I’ll let you argue that one with Hannah Liebling.”

  She looks at him. “Is it hard working for your mother, Noah?” she asks him.

  He decides to give her an honest answer. “Yes, it is, as a matter of fact. But I consider it one of the challenges of my job.”

  Now she lifts the handwritten notes from the case containing the carousel of color slides. “And this?”

  “A script I’m working on.”

  “A script?”

  “To go with a slide show. I’m pitching a new Ingraham brand at the end of the week. Script still needs a lot of work.”

  “Want me to help you?”

  He glances at his watch. “No time, I’m afraid. I’ve got to be out of here in ten minutes.”

  “Take me with you,” she says.

  He tries to affect an easy laugh. “Sorry,” he says, “this trip is strictly business.” But this is not strictly true. To a lot of the salesmen this week in Atlantic City will be an outing, a holiday, a company-paid vacation.

  “I’m serious,” she says. “Take me with you, Noah. I’ll help you write your script. I’ve taken playwriting courses. I can type sixty words a minute. I won’t be in your way. I’ll make this part of my winter work program. What do you think of that?”

  “No, no …”

  “Please, Noah. It will give me something to do. I’ll write a report on it when I get back to school. ‘The Business Sales Conference as Theater.’ My adviser would like that! Because it is a form of theater, isn’t it? Meetings to get the sales staff excited about what’s coming up in the year ahead? Whipping them up—”

  “I think of it more as employee relations,” he says. “Making the people who work for you feel they’re appreciated.”

  “But that’s show business, too! So much of business is really show business. A girl in our class is working for some trial lawyers. She’s going to analyze trials as theater pieces. How many people will be at this conference?”

  “All together, about a thousand.”

  “Would one extra girl, sitting in the back of the room, taking notes, be even noticed?”

  “They’d think you were a spy from the competition, Melody.”

  “That’s just like the theater! In the theater everybody’s always spying on what everybody else is doing. And in between the meetings I’ll help you with your script. Oh, please, let me come, Noah.”

  “No, that sort of thing is strictly against the rules,” he says, and yet he knows that this is not strictly true. A lot of the salesmen, and in this business they are mostly men, use sales conference to leave their wives and families behind, and connect with girlfriends. And in the bars of Atlantic City, the girls will be lined up, waiting.… “Besides,” he says, “how would we explain this sort of arrangement to Carol—and Anne?”

  She looks at him. “Very simple,” she says. “We wouldn’t tell them. It would be our secret, like our secret from the other night. I’ll make up something. I’ll say I’ve found a week’s work in another city. You see, I’ve thought this through very carefully, Noah. You see how serious I am.”

  He feels his cheeks redden. “No, it wouldn’t work, Melody,” he says. “I’m sorry.” And yet why is he thinking that it could work? If only … If I were only still that boy on the Harley.

  She turns away from him. “It doesn’t have to be sex,” she says. “I didn’t say it had to be sex. I know that’s what you’re thinking. You’ve probably been thinking that all along. It’s true I like you—very much—but it doesn’t have to be that. Mostly, I want something to do—something exciting. I can’t just sit around this big apartment, day after day, doing nothing!”

  “Something will come along for you, Melody,” he says. “I’m sure of that.” Her mention of sex startles him. Had he been thinking of that, too?

  “Fat chance. I hang around the theaters, trying to sneak through stage doors, trying to interview performers, the production crew.… I’m treated like a trespasser, a nuisance … trying to watch rehearsals from backstage … being kicked out … it’s so humiliating … and meanwhile that asshole keeps telephoning all the time!”

  He is a also little surprised to hear her use the word asshole. “What asshole?” he says.

  “That asshole I brought here on New Year’s Eve. Bill Luckman!”

  “What’s he been doing?”

  “Calling me up. Three, four, five times a day. Sometimes he disguises his voice so I’ll think it’s a job offer. But then he calls me a tease. Tells me to stop holding out on him, to stop stringing him along. Sometimes, when I’m alone here and hear the phone ring, I feel li
ke I want to scream!” She stares at him defiantly now.

  “What do you say to him when he says things like that?”

  “Sometimes he says worse things! I just hang up on him.”

  “Good girl. That’s the only thing to do. He’ll get the message after a while.”

  “Will he? Sometimes, when I’m alone in this apartment, I think, what if he should come to the door?”

  “There’s no way he could get up here, Mellie. You’re in the most secure building in New York. But if anything should happen, just dial eight on the house phone for the security office.”

  “That’s another reason why I wanted to go with you.”

  “Look, if this—this asshole gives you any more trouble, I’ll be staying at Resorts International in Atlantic City. Just give me a call, okay? If I’m in a meeting, say it’s an emergency, and they’ll bring me out. Okay?” He starts to reach out to touch her arm, but then he checks himself.

  Just then the telephone rings, and both of them look quickly at the phone on the bedside table. “I’ll get it,” Noah says.

  “Hey, Noah.” It is Frank Stokes’s voice. “You about ready? The car’s waiting downstairs.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Noah says, and hangs up the phone. “I’ve got to go,” he says, and snaps his two suitcases closed.

  Grabbing the suitcases, he turns toward the bedroom door, then turns back to look at her. She is standing there, her arms crossed across her bosom, hugging her shoulders. Her chin is up, but there are tears in her eyes. “Don’t worry about me,” she says. “I can take care of myself. I always have. And I didn’t say there had to be sex. Remember that.”

  “I’m sorry, Mellie,” he says, and turns and heads out the door.

  Alone in the apartment, she walks down the long corridor to the living room, and parts the curtains to look down on the entrance courtyard below. She watches as Noah and Frank Stokes emerge from the building and walk to a waiting limousine. She watches as the driver loads their luggage into the open trunk. She watches as the driver opens the rear door of the car, as the two men climb inside, and as the door closes, concealing the passengers behind tinted glass. She watches as the car pulls out into the street and drives away.