“Not independent honeymoons,” Barney said. “Look, Viv, I’ve been hanging around New York for over a year, just to be near you.”
“You were taking another degree at Columbia. Don’t blame that on me.”
“I’ve done more than that. I didn’t tell you about it, but I’ve followed up leads that Pen has given me, trying to fit myself into the picture. I even went to work for Tom Norfolk.”
“I know. For two weeks. That’s not very long, Barney.”
“It’s plenty long enough to find out I wasn’t any good for that kind of job. Do you know what Norfolk does?”
“He has a very cushy spot with Graingold Distillers. He’s vice-president, isn’t he?”
“He’s vice-president in charge of hang-overs,” Barney said. “He’s their public relations man. He’s their back-slapper and official host in their private skyscraper bar, where the firm pours Graingold Whiskies into large out-of-town delegations to convince them that Graingold Is Pure Gold. That sort of rot.”
“That rot gets Tom twenty thousand dollars a year, and he isn’t as old as you are, Barney. He hasn’t half your brains or your background.”
“But he has two things which I lack, Viv. He has a certain persuasive talent which apparently fills a great need in our complex social system. And he finds all the happiness he needs in money and the process of making it. I don’t.”
Vivian patted Barney’s hand wistfully. “Good old Barney,” she said. “Ambitious is no name for it. Struggling to reach sixty-five so you can be retired as professor emeritus like your father—if you don’t die of boredom before that. Struggling—but don’t let me talk like this, Barney. Slap my wrist and tell me I talk like Penelope.”
“I know you don’t really believe that,” Barney said. “You know very well I’m not going to putter around the Graingold Distillers’ laboratories all my life, signing reports asserting that Graingold Whiskies contain less isobutyl-carbinol than one hundred ninety-two other whiskies tested.”
He pushed back his plate, crossed his legs, knocked out his pipe against his heel, filled it again.
“There are other things you can do in New York, Barney.”
“Sure,” Barney replied. “But I can’t decide what I’d rather do—sell glass eyes for stuffed ducks like Roger Dunne, or expensive furs for ornamental females, like Henry Frye, or mailing-lists of one thousand rich widows and the birthdays of five thousand wealthy children like that other friend of Pen’s, or gamble in Wall Street on the price of wheat that isn’t even planted, the way Tony did before they sent him up.”
He paused to strike a match, but let it go out without touching it to his pipe, as he stared pensively at Vivian.
“You know, Viv, I know exactly why it is you don’t want to go home with me. You think all the old friends will snicker behind your back because you went to the big city to win fame and fortune and you came back with nothing but a husband who is a home-town boy that didn’t make good in the big city, either. You’re afraid they’ll think you failed. You and I know you didn’t, so why should you care what the rest of them think?”
“I don’t know why, Barney; unless it’s because I’m a Grove, and the other two Groves haven’t covered themselves with glory, exactly; Tony’s been in jail and Pen’s marriage is no bargain.” Vivian opened her compact and moved her head to bring the impertinent tip of her nose into line with the tiny mirror as she applied powder. She patted her lips with a paper napkin, and stood up. “Better go wire the dean, Barney,” she said. “I’ll come out and see you for Christmas.”
“I don’t believe in Santa Claus. Between now and Christmas I’ll be doing my best to make love to every coed in all my classes.”
“I’ll take a chance on that. I’ve seen the kind of girls who study biochemistry. Let’s go, Barney.”
Tony’s car was parked in a cross street. The license plates were gone, all right, and Vivian wondered if Tony hadn’t removed them himself for his own devious and sinister reasons. She hoped no policeman would stop the car without plates.
None did. Barney pulled up in front of the brownstone house where she had a high-ceilinged room and kitchenette, just a few doors from the house where he himself lived.
“Don’t get out,” she said. “We’ve already said good-by twice today.”
“I always say good-by three, times, for luck.” Barney shut off the motor. “It’ll have to be done properly this time—so it will last.”
He walked up the steps with her. The hall light shone through the frosted panel and colored-glass borders of the old-fashioned front door, so she could see the questions in his eyes. He took her in his arms, and she thought, I belong here. I’ll always belong here and I’m probably making a terrible mistake in not going with him tomorrow. No, it’s not a mistake, either, because his arms feel sure and comfortable and reliable, and that’s why I’m not going tomorrow—because I can always go to him and he’ll always want me. Then he kissed her, and she stopped thinking, because she could only feel.
She closed her eyes and tried to fight back the warmth and tenderness that flowed through her body and into his lips. She made an effort to think again. If he doesn’t stop kissing me, she told herself, I’ll never be able to let him go alone, and I do so want to stay here for another year, just one more year. She stiffened in his arms, and he stopped kissing her. She opened her eyes.
“Good-by, kid,” Barney said. “Lots of luck.”
“You won’t come over to say good-by again tomorrow?”
“I hope I won’t have to.”
“Then good-by.”
She watched him drive Tony Grove’s car fifty yards down the street and get out. She saw him amble toward the steps with that long, awkward stride she loved. Then the street was suddenly empty except for Tony’s car, glistening with the damp under the blurred halo of the street lamp, and the ranks of identical high brownstone stoops, like lonely old men sitting with their hands on their knees, waiting.
III
WHEN BARNEY WEAVER AWOKE with a start, he was surprised to find that it was past midmorning. Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he went immediately to the window and looked down. Tony Grove’s car was still at the curb. Then he looked at the litter of half-packed trunks and suitcases that stood on the floor and realized that he had work to do.
In the shower, he invented hearty phrases of damnation for Tony and all the Groves except Vivian, whose mother was a Grove. For Vivian he could devise only faint phrases, because he loved her even if she was a willful little brat. If only the Groves had stayed home in Academia where they belonged! They and Barney had grown up together in the little Midwestern town with old elms shading its red brick streets, a World War I howitzer in the courthouse square, and a fresh-water college that turned out a hundred sound, contented young Republicans every June.
Barney supposed it was inevitable that they should come to New York, since typical New Yorkers are rumored to come chiefly from within a three-hundred-mile radius of a point midway between Rising Sun, Indiana, and Felicity, Ohio. Vivian had been an orphan since 1928, when her parents went down with the Vestris en route to South America in search of some fabulous bonanza. She had been brought up by Aunt Helena Grove, mother of Pen and Tony, whose husband had quietly disappeared some years before with much less publicity, and, it was generally believed, much less regret. Anyhow, the fact that the surviving Groves, with the exception of Aunt Helena, were in New York, presented Barney with a problem. He couldn’t decide whether to wire his immediate acceptance to the dean, or to try first to find out how much of a mess Vivian had been maneuvered into by her Cousin Tony.
Barney went out for breakfast and read the tabloids carefully, scanning the crime news. He found nothing he could associate with Tony’s story of the stolen plates, with Vivian’s cryptic talk of white-haired boys, or with the missing suitcase. He went back upstairs to finish packing.
There was a telegram under the door. He ripped it open, snorted. It read: Phone me at home
immediately. Must see you at once. Important. Tony.
He tore up the message and went on packing. He would not telephone Tony. He would call in person-later.
It was several hours before he rang the bell of Penelope Dunne’s apartment on Riverside Drive. He was welcomed simultaneously by Penelope and her two elderly pop-eyed Pekinese dogs, which Pen whimsically called “Ping” and “Pong.” The dogs retired after a few challenging yaps.
“Barney! Where have you been keeping yourself?” Pen seemed really glad to see him. The flashing pendants of her earrings emphasized the luster of her long, dark, almost Oriental eyes. “I was just thinking about you and wishing you had a telephone. I wanted you to spend the week-end with me in Connecticut.”
“I came to see Tony,” Barney said. “Is he here?”
“I haven’t seen Tony since early this morning. I don’t know where he went. Do come in, Barney, darling. I want to talk to you.”
Pen’s slim white fingers clung to Barney’s hand in prolongation of her first greeting as she led him to the divan and arbitrarily took his hat. She seemed very tall as she stood before him.
“You will come to the country with me, Barney?” she pleaded. “I’ve invited myself to the Bensons’. Vivian won’t mind; she has to work. Julia Frye and Tom Norfolk will chaperon us. They’re driving me out. It would be so much fun if you’d come along.”
A smile that was half enigmatic, half promising, hovered about Penelope’s mouth. She had the lips of one who reveled in rich food and the silhouette of one who knew when to forego it—a silhouette that lent voluptuousness to the simplicity of the black gown she wore. She nearly always wore black, with a blaze of barbaric jewelry at the throat, as though to offer her vivid personality against a subdued background.
“Afraid I can’t make it,” Barney said.
“Don’t you like the Bensons, Barney? It’s true they have pre-Revolutionary plumbing out there, and they don’t usually have enough blankets to keep their guests warm at this time of year, but I’m sure you won’t mind that, darling.”
“I’m leaving for Academia tonight,” Barney said.
“Can’t you postpone it?”
“Not a chance, Pen. Are you sure Tony’s not here? I had a wire that he wanted to see me.”
“Oh.” Pen’s smile faded. A haunted look came into her eyes. “Just a moment, Barney. I want to phone the dog-walking service about feeding the Pekes over the weekend. The poor things can’t come because they don’t get along with the Bensons’ Kerry Blues. Don’t go. I want to talk to you about Tony.”
“I’ll wait,” Barney said. He strolled to the window. He could scarcely see the Jersey shore because of the luminous blue haze that blurred the river and softened the majestic outlines of the George Washington Bridge. He wasn’t looking at the scenery, anyhow. He was puzzling over this strange enthusiasm of Penelope Dunne’s for Connecticut week-ends. Pen hated the country even in summer, he knew, and it would take an act of God or at least a diplomatic incident to drag her from her favorite city at the beginning of her favorite season, fall.
It was at this time of year that apartments breathed the scorched-paint smell of radiators being turned on for the first time; that the subway flower stands were bright with pompom chrysanthemums and autumn leaves; that Saturday afternoons were a Babel of football broadcasts, and Sunday papers began to swell with the first signs of new plays, new symphonies, new ballets, new singers for the Met. These were the crisp days that were loud with rattling black streams cascading across the sidewalks in metal chutes from the coal trucks backed to the curb. These were the brisk evenings that were sweet with the fragrance of hot chestnuts from the street-corner roaster; the chilly nights when the city seemed to raise its voice, its confused roar breaking into staccato accents to call its most useless and ornamental citizens back from seaside and mountains to adorn its avenues; when people were hurrying in the streets, hurrying through the gentle nostalgia of autumn toward the promise of unknown excitement that lurked behind the early-lighted windows, toward a strange and greater future always promised by the sting of the first snowflake.
Autumn in the city, Barney thought, was well suited to Penelope Dunne’s aura—full of a sense of impending change, of stirring things about to happen, of mysterious forces at work unseen. Pen was at her best in autumn, which probably was the reason she finally decided upon separation from Roger Dunne at this time last year. No matter how seductive and mysterious Pen might feel when the leaves turned, Roger Dunne at all seasons was just a rather nice, ordinary sort of person who trafficked in artificial eyes for deceased or artificial animals. The breakup of the Dunne marriage, Barney had always thought, was merely Pen’s romantic nature severing relations with Roger’s unromantic calling.
“See, Barney dear. I wasn’t long, was I?”
Pen swept back into the room and put her hand lightly on Barney’s shoulder. It was a casual, friendly gesture, but like everything that Pen did, it set up disturbing overtones.
“You called me last night, didn’t you?” she said.
“Yes. I wanted to tell you good-by.”
“You didn’t leave some extraordinary message about my white-haired boy?”
“Good Lord! You, too?” Barney looked startled.
“Then it was you?”
“No, it wasn’t. Tell me about it.”
“It wasn’t anything, really,” Pen said uneasily. “Somebody left some silly message as a joke. Thought they’d frighten me. I’ve called up everyone who might have done it, but they all deny it, naturally.”
“Did you mention it to Tony?”
“Tony doesn’t know anything about it. It wouldn’t be Tony, anyhow. He’s not good at practical jokes.”
“You said just now you wanted to talk to me about Tony,” Barney said.
“I do. I’m worried about him. Sit down, Barney.” She perched on the wing of the divan and absently brushed a lock of hair back from Barney’s forehead. It seemed to be a preoccupied gesture. “Tony’s been very flush lately,” she continued. “Where does he get his money?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“He hasn’t asked me for money for three weeks. He’s got a new car. And the other day when I borrowed a dollar to pay the milkman, I saw big bills in his wallet. Where does it come from?”
“Why not ask Tony?”
“I have. But he only puts on that surly face of his and goes out. He doesn’t answer me.”
Before Barney could comment, the doorbell rang. Pen opened, and Barney could see Roger Dunne standing in the corridor.
“You!” Pen exclaimed. The inflection was not merely surprised annoyance. Barney thought he detected a note of alarm as she addressed her husband. “Roger, I’ve told you a dozen times that you must never come here without phoning. Why didn’t you phone?”
“Because I was extremely anxious to talk to you,” said Roger Dunne. “If I’d telephoned, you would have found an excuse to put me off.”
“But I can’t talk to you now, Roger. I was just on the point of going out, and—”
“Yes, I know. You’re always frightfully busy,” Roger said. “But this time whatever you were going to do can wait. I’m sure the dogs won’t mind.” He walked past Penelope and came into the room. “Hello, Barney. How are you?”
“I was just leaving,” Barney said.
“Please don’t go, Barney,” Pen begged. There was fear in her pleading, Barney thought.
“Maybe he’d better,” Roger said. “I came to see you.”
Barney started to get up, but Pen came over quickly and put her hands on his shoulders from behind. “Please stay,” she said. “I’ve known you much longer than I’ve known Roger. You’re like one of the family. There’s nothing that Roger has to say that you can’t hear.” Barney looked uncomfortable but said nothing.
Roger shrugged and sat down in one of the chrome-plated gaspipe chairs that abounded in Pen’s living-room. The underslung seat inclined backward at an angle determine
d by aesthetics without relation to the facts of human anatomy. Roger was a spare, angular-looking person anyhow, and the way the chair forced his sharp knees toward his chin made him look lankier and taller than he really was. He was not bad-looking, in a tweedy, out-of-doors manner, although his face was, perhaps, a little too ruddy and his chin a little too ample and his ears too large. He was about ten years older than Penelope, and his sandy hair was beginning to thin a little just above the forehead.
“Well?” said Pen, still hovering behind Barney.
“Better sit down, Pen,” said Roger quietly. “Sit all the way down. You’ve got quite a lot of listening to do.”
“What about?” Pen was defiant now.
Roger lowered his chin slowly while his eyes, only half the pupils visible, remained focused on his wife. Barney felt Pen’s hands tremble on his shoulders as Roger stared at her, his eyes in partial eclipse like dark half-moons looking out sullenly from under his heavy lids.
“You know very well what I’ve come for, Pen.” There was foreboding in the very calmness of Roger’s level voice.
Pen came over to sit on the sofa opposite her husband. Trying tensely to appear relaxed, she pushed buttons on a large and elaborate contraption of chrome and black marble that vaguely resembled the projector for a planetarium but which merely emitted a tiny flame for her cigarette. She surrounded herself with a heavy smoke screen before she finally said, “I haven’t the faintest idea, Roger. You always were a walking collection of conundrums, and I sometimes wonder why Simon and Schuster don’t publish you. Why are—”
“I warned you months ago, Pen, that as long as you continued to bear my name I was going to insist that you keep it moderately decent. Since you had no further use for the name, you said you would divest yourself of it as soon as possible. You even accepted a considerable sum of money for the expenses of a divorce. Why haven’t you gotten it?”
“I can’t go to Reno now, Roger; not at this time of year. I never leave town in the fall. You know that. And I know you wouldn’t want one of those messy New York divorces.”
See You at the Morgue Page 3