Because his wife had been with him that night. Laugier had slipped her the script with a conspiratorial smile, and the next day sent her a fabulous box of chocolates.
“Coming down?”
They left. He waited for the elevator and slipped behind his friend, always with an absent air.
“You see, old bean, New York’s like that. One day you’re …”
Combe wanted to beg him, “Shut up, will you? Shut up, for God’s sake!”
He knew the litany by heart. He’d heard it many times before. New York wasn’t the point, he wasn’t thinking about it anymore. He’d think about it later.
Only one thing mattered, that there was a woman at his place, in his room, a woman he knew nothing about, a woman who filled him with suspicion, a woman he could observe with eyes as clear and cold as he had ever looked at anyone with, a woman he loathed but couldn’t do without.
“Hourvitch is a good fellow. A bit of a mixed bag, of course. He hasn’t forgotten that he started out with a mop in his hand at the Billancourt studios, and he has scores to settle. Aside from that, he’s okay, especially if you don’t need anything from him.”
Combe was on the point of stopping short, shaking his friend’s hand, and saying simply, “Good-bye.”
People talk about the living dead. Possibly he had, too—like anybody else. Today, right now, on the corner of Sixty-sixth Street and Madison Avenue, he really was one of the living dead. His thoughts, his life, were somewhere else.
“You shouldn’t take it so hard. A month from now, a month and a half, you’ll be the first to laugh about the state you’re in. You’ve got to be brave, if only to show those bastards who want to kick you when you’re down. Why, I remember after my second play opened at the Porte-Saint-Martin …”
Why had she allowed him to go? She always guessed everything, so she must have known it wasn’t the right moment yet. Unless she needed the freedom herself.
Was even the story about Jessie true? Those trunks locked up in an apartment with the key now slowly sailing to Panama …
“What’ll you have?”
Laugier had steered him into a place not unlike their little place. There was the same jukebox by the counter.
“A manhattan.”
His fingers fished for a nickel in his pocket. He looked at himself in the mirror behind the shelf of glasses, and he cut such a ridiculous figure that he smiled sarcastically.
“What are you doing after lunch?”
“I have to go back.”
“Back where? I would have taken you to a rehearsal.”
The word reminded Combe of the rehearsals he’d been to in New York, in a tiny studio twenty or twenty-five stories above Broadway. The room was rented for the minimum amount of time possible, maybe an hour or two, he forgot. They’d still be hard at it when people from another cast showed up and crowded into the wings, waiting their turn.
It seemed that people knew only their own lines, their own part. They weren’t aware of or interested in anything else. Especially not the other actors. No one said hello or good-bye.
Did anyone know his name? Maybe the ones he’d tried out with before. The director signaled to him. He came on, said his lines, and the only indication of human interest there’d been was the others laughing at his accent.
And he was frightened, terrified, at the thought of that loneliness, of going back to it, of standing between those painted canvas stage flats, where the loneliness was deeper than anywhere, even than in his room, even when, behind the thin walls, Winnie whoever-she-was and J.K.C. let themselves go on Friday night.
He was scarcely aware of walking to the jukebox, looking for a song, taking a nickel out of his pocket, putting it in the slot.
The song had just started when Laugier, nodding to the bartender to refill their glasses, said: “Do you know how much that song has earned in the United States alone? A hundred thousand dollars in royalties, old man, for both the music and lyrics, of course. And it’s just starting to make its way around the rest of the world. Right now there are two thousand jukeboxes just like that one playing it, not to mention bands, the radio, restaurants. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn’t write songs instead of plays. Cheers. You want to grab a bite?”
“Would you mind if I didn’t?”
He looked so serious when he replied that Laugier stared at him, surprised and, in spite of his usual irony, somehow awed.
“You really are in bad shape, aren’t you?”
“I’m sorry …”
“Of course, old … Listen …”
No. It was impossible. His nerves were on edge. Even the street, with its racket he usually didn’t notice, its stupid hustle-bustle, was maddening. He stood for a minute or two at the bus stand, and then, when a taxi stopped nearby, he ran over, jumped inside, and gave his address.
He wasn’t sure what he feared most, finding her there or not finding her there. He was mad at himself, and at Kay, without knowing exactly why. He felt humiliated, terribly humiliated.
The streets flashed by. He didn’t look at them or recognize them. He thought to himself, She grabbed her chance and ran, the bitch.
At almost the same time, he thought: Me or somebody else … It doesn’t matter who … Or the gigolo in Cannes …
Through the window he looked up and down his street as if expecting it to have changed somehow. He was pale and knew it. His hands were clammy, and his forehead was damp.
She wasn’t at the window. He didn’t see her there, as he had in the morning, when the sun was shining and the day was new and she slid her hand gently, lovingly against the glass.
He ran up the stairs and didn’t stop until the third floor. He was so furious that he was ashamed. For a moment, he could have laughed.
There, against the slightly sticky banister, that morning, just two hours earlier …
He couldn’t wait any longer. He had to know if she was gone. He jammed his key into the lock and was still fumbling when the door swung back.
Kay was there, smiling at him.
“Come on,” he said, not looking at her.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing. Come on.”
She was wearing her black silk dress. Obviously she had nothing else to wear. But she must have bought the little white embroidered collar. He didn’t recognize it, and it infuriated him.
“Come on.”
“But lunch is ready.”
He could see. He could see perfectly well that the room had been all tidied up, which it hadn’t been for a long time. He could also imagine the bearded tailor across the street, but he didn’t want to think about him.
He didn’t want to think about anything. Not Kay, who was bewildered, even more bewildered than Laugier had been just now. But in her eyes, too, he saw the same submission and respect.
He was at the end of his rope. Didn’t they realize that? If they didn’t, let them say so. He’d crawl off to die in a corner, all alone.
There!
As long as they didn’t make him wait, as long as they didn’t ask him any questions. Because he’d had enough of questions. The ones he asked himself, in any case, the ones that were turning him into a nervous wreck.
“Well?”
“I’m coming, François. I thought …”
Thought what! Thought she’d fix him a nice lunch—he could see, he wasn’t blind. And then? Was that how he loved her, with her blissful air of a new bride? Were the two of them already able to just stop?
Not him, at any rate.
“But the hot plate …”
To hell with the hot plate, which could burn away until someone had time to think about him. Hadn’t the light been on, too, for forty-eight hours? Had he worried about that?
“Come on.”
What was he so afraid of? Kay? Himself? Fate? All he knew for sure was that he needed them to plunge back into the crowd, to walk, to stop at little bars, to rub up against strangers, people you didn’t have to apologize to for b
umping into them or stepping on their toes, maybe he even needed Kay to drive him up the wall, leaving a smudge of lipstick on the tip of her so-called last cigarette.
Did she really understand?
They were on the sidewalk. He had no idea where to go anymore, and she wasn’t curious enough to ask.
She took his arm. “Come on,” he dully repeated, as if accepting once and for all whatever fate held in store.
The hours that followed were exhausting. He seemed almost sadistically determined to revisit all the places they’d been together.
At the Rockefeller Center cafeteria, for example, he ordered exactly what they’d had the first time. Scrutinizing her fiercely, he subjected her to a merciless interrogation.
“Who have you been here with before?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t ask questions. Answer me. When a woman answers a question with a question, she’s about to tell a lie.”
“I don’t understand, François.”
“You told me you came here often. Admit it would be unusual if you always came alone.”
“Sometimes I came with Jessie.”
“Who else?”
“I don’t remember.”
“With a man?”
“Possibly, yes, a long time ago, with a friend of Jessie’s …”
“A friend of Jessie’s who was also your lover.”
“But …”
“Admit it.”
“I mean … Yes, I think … Once, in a taxi.”
And he saw the inside of the cab, the driver’s shoulders, the milky blur of faces crowded in the darkness outside. He could feel those stolen kisses on his lips, he could taste them.
“Bitch!”
“It was so meaningless, Frank …”
Why was she calling him Frank all of a sudden?
It was him or anybody else, right? One man more or one man less?
Why didn’t she fight back? He resented her passivity, her humility. He dragged her outside. He kept dragging her around everywhere, as if driven to it by some obscure force.
“And this street, have you been here with a man?”
“No. I don’t know anymore.”
“New York is so big, isn’t it? Still, you’ve lived here for years. You don’t expect me to believe that you haven’t gone to little bars like ours with other men, and that you haven’t endlessly played other records that were at that moment your song.”
“I’ve never been in love, Frank.”
“You’re lying.”
“Think what you like. I’ve never been in love. Not the way I love you.”
“And you went to the movies. I know you’ve been at the movies with a man and done things in the dark. Admit it!”
“I don’t know anymore.”
“See! Was it on Broadway? Show me the cinema.”
“Maybe at the Capitol, once …”
They were less than a hundred yards away from it and saw the red-and-yellow letters blinking on and off.
“A young naval officer. A Frenchman.”
“You were lovers a long time?”
“A weekend. His ship was in Boston. He came to New York on leave with a friend.”
“And you had both of them!”
“When his friend saw how things were going, he left us.”
“I’ll bet you met them on the street.”
“That’s true. I recognized the uniform. I heard them speaking French. They didn’t know I understood them until I smiled. They spoke to me.”
“Which hotel did he take you to? Where did you sleep with him? Answer me!”
She remained silent.
“Answer me!”
“Why do you want to know? You’re torturing yourself for nothing, believe me. It was so unimportant, Frank.”
“Which hotel?”
As if resigned to fate, she said: “The Lotus.”
He burst out laughing and dropped her arm.
“Oh, God, that takes the prize! Talk about coincidences! So, on our first night, or first morning, rather, since it was nearly day, when I brought you to the—”
“François!”
“Yes. You’re right. I’m being stupid, aren’t I? As you say, it’s so unimportant.”
Then, after a few steps: “I’ll bet he was married, your officer, that he talked to you about his wife.”
“And he showed me pictures of his children.”
Staring straight ahead, he saw the pictures of his own children on his wall, and still he dragged her on. They reached their little bar. He shoved her inside.
“You’re sure, absolutely sure, that you haven’t come here before with someone else? You’d better admit it now.”
“I’ve never been here with anyone but you.”
“Maybe, after all, for once you’re telling the truth.”
She wasn’t resentful. She was doing her best not to be upset. She held out her hand for a nickel. She didn’t protest. As if performing a rite, she went to put on their record.
“Two scotches.”
He drank three or four. He pictured her in other bars with other men, dragging out the night, begging for a last drink, lighting a last cigarette, always the last. He pictured her waiting on the sidewalk for the man, walking awkwardly because her heels were too high and her feet hurt, taking his arm …
“Don’t you want to go home?”
“No.”
He wasn’t listening to the music. He seemed to be looking inside himself. Suddenly he paid the bill. Once again, he said: “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To look for other memories. Which is to say we could go pretty much anywhere, couldn’t we?”
The sight of a dance hall made him ask, “Do you dance?”
She misunderstood. She said, “Do you want to go dancing?”
“I only asked you if you dance.”
“Yes, François.”
“Where did you go those nights when you felt like dancing? Show me. Don’t you understand that I want to know? And listen. If we run into a man … Are you listening to me? A man you’ve slept with. It’s bound to happen one of these days, if it hasn’t already. When it happens, I want you to do me a favor, tell me, ‘That one.’”
Without meaning to, he turned back toward her, noting that her face was flushed and her eyes glistening. But he didn’t feel sorry for her, he was too unhappy for that.
“Tell me. Have we come across one?”
“Of course not.”
She was crying. She cried without crying, like a child hanging on to its mother’s hand while being dragged through a crowd.
“Taxi!”
He shoved her in. “This should stir some memories,” he said. “Who was he, this taxicab lover of yours? Assuming there was just the one. It’s quite the thing in New York, isn’t it, sex in a taxi? Who was he?”
“I already told you, a friend of Jessie’s. Of her husband, Ronald, I mean. We met him by accident.”
“Where?”
He needed to fix the images in his mind.
“In a little French restaurant on Forty-second Street.”
“And he bought you champagne. And then Jessie discreetly withdrew, like your sailor’s friend. How discreet people can be! They understand right away. Let’s get out here.”
It was the first time they had come back to the corner and the diner where they’d met.
“What do you want to do?”
“Nothing. Just a pilgrimage. And here?”
“What do you mean?”
“You know very well what I mean. It couldn’t have been the first time you came here to eat at night. It’s right near where you lived with your Jessie. I’m beginning to know both of you, and I’d be amazed if you hadn’t struck up a conversation with someone. You have quite a knack for engaging men in conversation, don’t you, Kay?”
He looked at her face, and it was drawn. He looked so hard that she didn’t have the courage to reply. He tightened his grip on her a
rm, his fingers cruel as pincers.
“Come on.”
Night had fallen. They passed Jessie’s building, and Kay stopped short, surprised to see a light on inside.
“François, look!”
“So what? Your girlfriend’s back home? Unless it’s Enrico. You’d like to go up, wouldn’t you? Say it! You’d like to go up?” His voice was threatening. “What are you waiting for? Are you scared I’ll go up with you and discover all the little secrets hidden away up there?”
But this time it was she who said, tearfully, “Come on.”
They walked on, once again along Fifth Avenue, heads down, in silence, blind to everything but the trouble and bitterness between them.
“I’m going to ask you a question, Kay.”
He seemed calmer, almost in control of himself. She whispered, waiting, even feeling a little hope, “I’m listening.”
“Promise me you’ll answer honestly.”
“Of course.”
“Promise.”
“I swear.”
“How many men have there been your life?”
“What do you mean?”
Aggressive again, he pressed, “You didn’t understand me?”
“It depends on what you mean by being in a woman’s life.”
“How many men have you slept with?” He prompted her sardonically, “A hundred? A hundred and fifty? More?”
“A lot less.”
“Which means?”
“I don’t know. Wait …”
She was searching her memory. Her lips moved as though she were reciting names or figures.
“Seventeen. No, eighteen …”
“You’re sure you’re not forgetting anyone?”
“I don’t think so. Yes, that’s all of them.”
“Including your husband?”
“Sorry. I didn’t count him. That makes nineteen, darling. But if only you knew how unimportant it is …”
“Come on.”
They turned around. They were exhausted, heads and bodies empty. They said nothing—they didn’t even try to think of things to say.
Washington Square … the deserted side streets of Greenwich Village … the basement-level laundry where the Chinese man ironed under a harsh light … the red-checked curtains of the Italian restaurant.
“Go on up.”
Three Bedrooms in Manhattan Page 8