Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker
Page 64
“You?” Mockery nicked her full-throated laugh. “What are you going to do about it?”
“This.” I snaked the rug out from under her and she went down in a swirl of silken ankles. The bullet whined by me into the ceiling as I vaulted over the desk, pinioned her against the wardrobe.
“Mike.” Suddenly all the hatred had drained away and her body yielded to mine. “Don’t turn me in. You cared for me—once.”
“It’s no good, Sigrid. You’d only double-time me again.”
“Try me.”
“O.K. The shirtmaker who designed your blouse—what’s his name?” A shudder of fear went over her; she averted her head. “He’s famous on two continents. Come on, Sigrid, they’re your dice.”
“I won’t tell you. I can’t. It’s a secret between this—this department store and me.”
“They wouldn’t be loyal to you. They’d sell you out fast enough.”
“Oh, Mike, you mustn’t. You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“For the last time.”
“Oh, sweetheart, don’t you see?” Her eyes were tragic pools, a cenotaph to lost illusions. “I’ve got so little. Don’t take that away from me. I—I’d never be able to hold up my head in Russeks again.”
“Well, if that’s the way you want to play it . . .” There was silence in the room, broken only by Sigrid’s choked sob. Then, with a strangely empty feeling, I uncradled the phone and dialed Spring 7-3100.
For an hour after they took her away, I sat alone in the taupe-colored dusk, watching lights come on and a woman in the hotel opposite adjusting a garter. Then I treated my tonsils to five fingers of firewater, jammed on my hat, and made for the anteroom. Birdie was still scowling over her crossword puzzle. She looked up crookedly at me.
“Need me any more tonight?”
“No.” I dropped a grand or two in her lap. “Here, buy yourself some stardust.”
“Thanks, I’ve got my quota.” For the first time I caught a shadow of pain behind her eyes. “Mike, would—would you tell me something?”
“As long as it isn’t clean,” I flipped to conceal my bitterness.
“What’s an eight-letter word meaning ‘sentimental’?”
“Flatfoot, darling,” I said, and went out into the rain.
[1944]
Table of Contents
Introduction by David Remnick
John Cheever - The Five-Forty-Eight
Ann Beattie - Distant Music
Irwin Shaw - Sailor off the Bremen
Tama Janowitz - Physics
Woody Allen - The Whore of Mensa
Deborah Eisenberg - What It Was Like, Seeing Chris
John O’Hara - Drawing Room B
Peter Taylor - A Sentimental Journey
Donald Barthelme - The Balloon
Philip Roth - Smart Money
Laurie Colwin - Another Marvellous Thing
Jonathan Franzen - The Failure
Sally Benson - Apartment Hotel
Frank Conroy - Midair
James Thurber - The Catbird Seat
John Updike - Snowing In Greenwich Village
Maeve Brennan - I See You, Bianca
Lorrie Moore - You’re Ugly, Too
Vladimir Nabokov - Symbols and Signs
Jamaica Kincaid - Poor Visitor
Hortense Calisher - In Greenwich, There Are Many Gravelled Walks
John McNulty - Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in This Place
J. D. Salinger - Slight Rebellion off Madison
Renata Adler - Brownstone
Isaac Bashevis Singer - The Cafeteria
Veronica Geng - Partners
Niccolo Tucci - The Evolution of Knowledge
Susan Sontag - The Way We Live Now
Julie Hecht - Do the Windows Open?
Edward Newhouse - The Mentocrats
Daniel Menaker - The Treatment
Dorothy Parker - Arrangement in Black and White
William Melvin Kelley - Carlyle Tries Polygamy
Jean Stafford - Children Are Bored on Sunday
James Stevenson - Notes from a Bottle
Daniel Fuchs - Man in the Middle of the Ocean
Ludwig Bemelmans - Mespoulets of the Splendide
William Maxwell - Over by the River
Jeffrey Eugenides - Baster
E. B. White - The Second Tree from the Corner
Bernard Malamud - Rembrandt’s Hat
Elizabeth Hardwick - Shot: A New York Story
Saul Bellow - A Father-to-Be
S. J. Perelman - Farewell, My Lovely Appetizer