“She has a much better figure, too. Do you want me to put this on? It’s not too pink for your taste? Oh, I’ve got a black lace corset, too. I always wanted a corset, and I finally bought one. But I didn’t feel like wearing it. It seemed too racy somehow.”
She brushed her hair. Her hand found the brush without her having to look for it. The mirror was exactly where it had to be. She held a pin in her mouth.
“Would you zip me up?”
That was the first time. What an amazing number of things they were doing for the first time that morning, including, for him, kissing her delicately on the neck, without greediness, breathing on the down on her nape, then sensibly sitting on the foot of the bed.
“Like the dress?”
“It’s pretty.”
“I bought it on Fifty-second Street. It was very expensive, you know. At least it was for me.”
She gave him a pleading look.
“Do you want to go out together one night? I could wear this, and you could dress up …”
Without a transition, just when he least expected it, or maybe when she herself least expected it, great tears filled her eyes. Her smile hadn’t yet had time to vanish from her face.
She turned her head away and said, “You’ve never asked me what I do.”
She was still in her evening gown, her feet bare in the golden pumps.
“And I didn’t want to talk about it because I was ashamed. I preferred, stupidly, to let you imagine things. There were times I did it on purpose.”
“Did what on purpose?”
“You know very well! When I knew Jessie, we were working in the same building. That’s how we met. We used to eat lunch at the same drugstore. I’ll show it to you, too—it’s on the corner of Madison Avenue. Since I speak several languages, I was hired as a translator.
“Only there’s something you don’t know, something very silly. I told you a little about my life with my mother. When she began to get famous, I spent most of the time traveling with her, since she didn’t want to leave me alone, and I pretty much stopped going to school.
“Whatever you do, don’t laugh at me. There was one thing I never learned: how to spell. Larski used say, in a cold voice that still makes me feel ashamed, that I wrote like a scullery maid.
“Now do you understand? Unzip me, will you?”
She came over and offered him her back, white, milky, a bit bony where it showed between the half-open black dress.
When he caressed her, she begged: “No, not just yet, okay? I’d like so much to talk a bit more.”
In just her panties and bra, she got out her cigarettes and lighter and sat cross-legged on Jessie’s bed, an ashtray within reach.
“They transferred me to the mailroom. It was way in back, in a windowless room with no light, and three of us stuffed envelopes there all day long. The two other girls were cows. We had nothing to talk about. They hated me. We wore rough cotton aprons because of the glue. I did everything to keep mine clean. But I’m boring you. It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Not at all.”
“You’re just saying that … Well, you asked for it. Every morning, I’d find my apron already glue-stained. They even put glue inside so it would get on my dress. Once I fought with one of them, a squat little Irish girl with a face like an Eskimo. She was stronger than me. She made sure she ruined the brand-new pair of stockings I had on.”
He said, with a tenderness that felt deep and light at the same time, “My poor Kay.”
“You think I was acting like Mrs. First Secretary at the Embassy? I absolutely wasn’t, I swear it. If Jessie were here, she’d tell you.”
“I believe you, darling.”
“I admit I couldn’t face staying there. Because of the two girls, you understand? I thought it would be easy to find another job. I was out of work for three weeks. That’s when Jessie suggested I sleep at her place, because I couldn’t pay my rent. She was living in the Bronx then, as I said, in a sort of huge barracks with iron fire escapes running up and down the brick front. The whole building smelled of cabbages, I don’t know why. For months we lived with the taste of cabbage in our throats.
“I finally found a job at a movie theater on Broadway. Remember when you were talking to me yesterday about theaters?”
Her eyes welled up again.
“I was an usherette. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? I know I’m not particularly strong, since I spent two years in a sanatorium. But the others were no better off than me. At night we were all ready to drop. Other times, because of the endless bumping through crowds, hours and hours of it with that constant music and those loud, unreal voices coming out of the walls, our heads would start spinning.
“I’ve seen girls faint dozens of times. If they fainted in the theater itself, they were out of a job. Looks bad, you know …
“Am I boring you?”
“No. Come here.”
She edged closer, but they stayed on their separate beds. He lifted his hand and caressed her, surprised that her skin was so soft. Between her panties and her bra, he discovered alluring contours and shadows he’d never noticed before.
“I was very sick. Once, four months ago, I spent seven weeks in the hospital, and only Jessie came to see me. They wanted to send me to a sanatorium again, but I refused. Jessie begged me to stop working for a while. When you met me, I’d been job-hunting for about a week.”
She smiled defiantly.
“I’ll find one, too.”
Then, abruptly, “Wouldn’t you like a drink? There must be a bottle of whiskey in the cupboard. Unless Ronald drank it, which would surprise me.”
She came back from the other room with a nearly empty bottle. She went to the refrigerator. He couldn’t see her. He heard himself cry out, “What’s the matter?”
“You’ll laugh. Ronald even thought to unplug the refrigerator. That wouldn’t have crossed Enrico’s mind yesterday. It’s just like Ronald. You heard what Jessie wrote. He didn’t get mad. He didn’t say anything. He sorted out her things. And you’ll notice that he didn’t leave anything lying around, like someone else would have done in his place. When we got here everything was tidy; my dresses were where I’d left them. Everything put back except Enrico’s dressing gown and pajamas. Don’t you think that’s funny?”
No. He didn’t think anything. He was happy. It was a new kind of happiness. If, the day before, or even that morning, someone had said that he’d be lying around lazily, voluptuously, in this bedroom, he never would have believed it. He lay stretched out, a ray of sunlight shining on him, on this bed that had been Kay’s, his hands clasped behind his head, letting his surroundings sink in, detail by detail, like a painter filling in a canvas.
He was doing the same with Kay, slowly, calmly filling in her personality, bit by bit.
In a while, when he had the strength, he’d get up and glance in at the kitchenette, even into the refrigerator she’d just mentioned, since he was curious about what little things might have been left there.
There were photographs scattered around the apartment, probably Jessie’s, among them one of a very dignified old woman who was probably her mother.
He’d ask Kay all about it. She could talk without worrying he’d be bored.
“Drink.”
And she drank, after he did, from the same glass.
“You see, François, that it’s not so glittery after all. You were wrong.”
Wrong about what? The words were too vague. But he understood.
“You see, now that I’ve known you …”
Softly, so softly that he had to make out the words, she said, “Move over a little, will you?”
And she slid down beside him. She was almost naked and he was fully clothed, but she didn’t mind—it was no less intimate.
Her lips at his ear, she whispered, “You know, nothing has ever happened here. I swear it.”
He was without passion and without desire. He would have had to go a long way back, perh
aps to his boyhood, to recapture a sensation as sweet and pure as the one he experienced now.
He was caressing her, and it wasn’t her flesh he was caressing, it was all of her, a Kay he felt he was gradually absorbing into him even as he was being absorbed into her.
They stayed like that, lying together, eyes half closed, motionless, for a long time. They seemed to melt together, looking into the pupils of each other’s eyes, and reading there a bliss they wouldn’t forget.
For the first time, too, he wasn’t worried about any consequences. Her pupils grew wide, her lips parted slightly, he felt her breath on his mouth, and he heard her voice say, “Thank you.”
Their bodies disentangled. This time there was no fear that passion would be followed by recrimination. They could lie next to each other without shame or regret.
They moved in slow motion in sunlight so golden that it seemed to shine just for them, their bodies full of a marvelous heaviness.
“Where are you going, François?”
“To look in the refrigerator.”
“Are you hungry?”
“No.”
For half an hour or more he had been promising himself he’d look around the kitchenette. It was neat and freshly painted. In the refrigerator there was a slice of cold meat, some grapefruit, lemons, several overripe tomatoes, and a stick of butter in wax paper.
He ate the slice of meat with his fingers, like a boy chewing on an apple he’d stolen from an orchard.
He was still chewing when he joined Kay in the bathroom, and she said, “You see? You were hungry.”
He shook his head stubbornly, grinning and chewing.
“No,” he said. Then he burst out laughing. She didn’t understand.
7
TWO DAYS later he went to the radio studio for the broadcast; he was playing a Frenchman again, a pretty ridiculous role. Hourvitch didn’t shake his hand. He looked very much the important director, sleeves rolled up, red hair on end, his secretary running after him, notebook in hand.
“What do you want me to say, old man? At least get a telephone. Leave your number with my people. Unbelievable that there are still people in New York without a phone.”
It didn’t matter. He’d kept calm, serene. He’d left Kay for the first time in—how many days? Seven? Eight? But the number was meaningless because it felt like forever.
He had wanted to bring her to the studio, hoping she’d wait for him in the anteroom.
“No, darling, you should go, now.”
He remembered that now, which had made them laugh and meant so much to both of them.
And yet here he was betraying her again—or so it seemed to him: from Sixty-sixth Street he should have taken the bus to Sixth Avenue. Instead, though night was falling, he decided to walk.
He had promised, “I’ll be home at six.”
“Don’t worry about it, François. Come back whenever you want.”
Why had he repeated, needlessly, “Six at the latest”?
At six, or close to it, he walked into the bar at the Ritz. He knew what he was hoping to find, and he wasn’t proud of it. Every evening around this time Laugier was there, most often with other Frenchmen or foreigners living in New York or else passing through.
The atmosphere at the Ritz was a little like Fouquet’s, and when he had first arrived in the United States, and didn’t yet know where he was going to stay or how he was going to make a living, reporters had shown up there to take his picture.
Did he know why he’d come that day? Perhaps from some need to betray her, to make room for all the bad things fermenting inside him to freely expand in, because he wanted to get back at Kay—more than anything, that was why.
But get back at her for what? For all the days and nights they’d spent together alone, in a solitude that he wanted to be still more absolute, more intense, so much so that he’d even gone shopping with her over the last few days, had helped her set the table, had assisted her with her bath … He had done everything, done it of his own free will, hunting for anything that might serve to create a total intimacy between the two of them, obliterating every last remaining trace of shame or self-consciousness, even the kind that soldiers living in barracks continue to feel.
He wanted her more than anything. So why, when she was waiting for him, when he had told her to wait—why was he going to the Ritz instead of catching a bus or taking a taxi?
“Hello, old man!”
He wasn’t looking for casual company, which he’d always hated. Perhaps he wanted to prove to himself that the leash wasn’t too short, that he was still free and, in spite of everything, still François Combe?
There were four of them there, maybe six or eight, around two low tables. There was a lot of superficial friendliness, so it was hard to tell who had known each other for ages and who was there for the first time, who was paying for the latest round, or how, leaving, anybody found his hat in the teetering pile on the coat rack.
“May I introduce …”
An American girl, pretty, with lipstick on her cigarette and the looks of a model.
Introductions were going around, and he heard, from time to time, “One of our greatest French actors, I’m sure you know his name, François Combe.”
Some rat-faced Frenchman, an industrialist or speculator— Combe didn’t know why he disliked him so much at first sight—was staring his way.
“I had the pleasure of meeting your wife a few weeks ago … Wait. It was at a party at the Lido. I happen to have in my pocket …”
A French newspaper that had just reached New York. Combe hadn’t bought a French newspaper in months. There was a photograph of his wife on the front page: “Marie Clairois, the charming and talented star of …”
Combe wasn’t upset. Laugier, who didn’t understand, cast him a glance to calm down. No, he wasn’t upset at all. And this was the proof: after everyone had left, many drinks later, when he was alone with Laugier, he brought up Kay.
“I want you to do me a favor. I want you to find a job for a girl I know.”
“How old is ‘this girl you know’?”
“I’m not sure. Thirty, maybe thirty-three.”
“In New York, old man, that’s no longer what you’d call a girl.”
“Which means?”
“She’s played out. Sorry for putting it so crudely, but I think I’ve got the picture. Is she good-looking?”
“That depends what you mean by good-looking.”
“The old story. She started out as a showgirl fourteen or fifteen years ago, right? Yes, she grabbed the brass ring and then dropped it.”
Scowling, Combe fell silent. Maybe Laugier was feeling sorry for him, but Laugier couldn’t see the world except through his own eyes.
“What can this charming maiden of yours do?”
“Nothing.”
“Now don’t get all worked up, dear boy. I’m saying this for your own good, and for hers, too. Here, in this country, you know, there’s no time for games. I’m asking you, seriously, what can she do?”
“Seriously, nothing.”
“Could she be a secretary, a receptionist, a model? Anything?”
Combe had been wrong. It was his fault. He was already paying the price of betrayal.
“Listen, old man … Waiter, another round!”
“Not for me.”
“Shut up! Listen, I’m going to tell it to you straight. Understand? I saw you come in just now, and you looked like hell. It was the same thing last time I saw you with Hourvitch. And you don’t think I have a clue, do you? Your girl says she’s thirty, thirty-three. In the real world, that means thirty-five. You want some good advice, even though you won’t take it? Well, here it is: leave her. And since we’re on the subject, let me ask: Do you have some sort of understanding with this girl?”
He was furious at himself, furious at being made to feel small in front of Laugier, who wasn’t half the man he was. He answered stupidly, “None.”
“So what’s the
big deal? There’s no brother, no husband, no lover to blackmail you, is there? You didn’t kidnap her, did you? There aren’t any charges against you like the kind they worry a fellow to death with over here? You didn’t transport her across state lines to sleep with her, did you? I hope not—then you’d really be in trouble.”
Why didn’t he just get up and go? What was wrong with him? Was it the manhattans? If their love hung in the balance because of a few drinks…
“Can’t you be serious for once?”
“I am serious, old man. Okay, I’m joking, but it’s when I’m joking that I’m most serious. This thirty-three-year-old girl of yours has no profession, no job, no money in the bank—let’s face it, she’s nothing. Do you understand? I don’t have to take you to the Waldorf to prove my point. We’re in a bar for men. But just step through the door, go down the hall, and you’ll see fifty girls, each prettier than the last, all between eighteen and twenty, some of them even virgins, and every single one of them in exactly the same position as your thirty-three-year-old. And yet in a few hours forty-eight of them will go home, God knows where, wearing a thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry, after having stopped for a ketchup sandwich at a cafeteria on the way. Did you come here to work, or what?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, if you don’t know, go back to France and sign the first contract they offer you at the Port-Saint-Martin or the Renaissance. I know you’ll do what you like anyway, and that you’ll never forgive me for saying it, but you’re not the first friend I’ve seen come here and get into trouble. You want to keep going the way you’re going? Fine. You want to play Romeo and Juliet? Fine. In that case, good night, old man. Waiter!”
“No, I’ll—”
“I’ve yelled at you enough that I should pick up the tab. What has she told you, your girl? She’s divorced, of course. At that age here, they’ve all been divorced at least once.”
Why, exactly, was Kay divorced?
“She’s been around, hasn’t she? Now she’s looking for a little stability.”
“That’s not it, not really.”
And he surrendered all self-respect, because he didn’t have the strength to betray her any further.
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