Don't Rely on Gemini

by Packer, Vin

  “… made up my mind that I’m going to have the baby whether you marry me or not, Neal,” she was saying, “because I have to live with my conscience, and I’ve got enough on my conscience already. I’ve done enough!”

  “What have you done?” he said. “You didn’t hurt anyone. Someone got hurt in your presence, but you didn’t do it.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Did you?”

  “Neal, I told you! I didn’t touch her! I remember it like it happened this morning.”

  While she recalled it again in detail, Neal remembered something that seemed so long ago, in such another time, that it became like an old man’s memory of the boy he had been, viewed as though he were a stranger whose reasons for doing things and feeling them were no longer quite clear, and what had happened was unreal. Unreal—an afternoon when she had run toward him through the tall elephant grass, and the scent of sun in her hair when he caught her to him, and her fingers held on to his shirt, both of them laughing so hard until he told her solemnly, “I love you. Pen, I want you, because I love you.”

  “… believe me, Neal?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  She started to cry, and as he left his desk and went across to sit beside her on the leather couch he felt a prick of irritation at the fact her mascara was running again, as it had the last time he had been with her.

  “You mustn’t keep going over the same old ground,” he told her, taking one of her hands in both of his.

  “Then why did you say ‘did you?’ “ she said. “Why did you say ‘you didn’t do it, did you?’ “

  “Honey,” he said. “You weren’t listening. I said, ‘You know you didn’t hurt her, don’t you?’ “

  “I’m all mixed up, I guess.”

  “And no wonder,” he said brushing his lips against her hair. “It’s been a bad day for you.” “For you, too, darling.”

  “Don’t worry about me. What we’re concerned about is you, Pen.”

  “You don’t have to marry me, Neal.”

  “That isn’t why I want to marry you,” he said, kissing her fingers, “because I have to.”

  “You want to marry me, Neal?” Her shoulders shook as she began to cry all the harder, and she threw her arms around him. He felt the dampness of her tears on his shirt with a twinge of revulsion.

  “I want to marry you, Pen, of course I do.” “Oh, God, Neal! Oh, thank God, Neal! I thought I’d lost you.”

  “Shhh. Hush, honey … Now, of course I’m going to marry you. I have to figure everything out, so we do it just right, but of course I’m going to marry you.”

  “And you don’t want me to have an abortion?”

  “You said you wouldn’t.”

  “I won’t. But that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

  “I want what you want,” he said.

  “I want to get married.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do. But we’ll have to keep it secret for a while. You’ll have to go away to have the baby. We won’t be able to live here.”

  “I know, I know,” she kept murmuring.

  “The only advantage to an abortion,” he said, “is that it would make it so much easier for us to marry … You see, if I move away, if I suddenly acquire a wife and baby, I’ll be giving them good reason to suspect that I had something to do with Margaret’s disappearance.”

  “Neal,” she said. “Can we stretch out on the couch for a few minutes? Just stretch out and put our arms around each other?”

  “Oh, honey—”

  “The door’s locked. Just for a few minutes?” “All right,” he said.

  As she fixed herself against him, he remembered something he had read once: the heaviest thing in the world is the body of someone you have ceased to love.

  “Doesn’t this feel good, darling?”

  “Yes.”

  “We needed this, Neal. To be close. Even if we don’t do anything, we need to have our bodies close. Like married people.”

  “Ummm hmmm.”

  “I felt funny lying to the doctor about being married. I don’t think he believed me.”

  “You’ll never have to see him again.”

  “But I felt funny lying. He’s a doctor, you know? An M.D. I hate to lie to a real doctor.”

  “How about lying to a Ph.D.? Do you hate to do that, too?” He smiled.

  She clung hard to him, with a strength that belied her size. Once, years ago when Margaret and he had owned several cats, Neal had had to drown the runt in one of their litters. It had amazed him how hard the little animal had died, how much power it had summoned forth in the effort to survive.

  “I didn’t really lie to you, Neal,” Penny answered his question. “I just didn’t tell you why Daddy went to Spring Valley that Friday.”

  “That’s lying by omission, sweetheart,” he said softly.

  “I didn’t want to tell you he’d gone over there to get bail for Forrest. I didn’t want you to know Forrest was in trouble again.”

  “But why? I know your brother pretty well by now.”

  “I thought it would reflect on me, and if we’re going to have a baby, I don’t want you thinking things like what kind of relatives he’ll have on my side.”

  A dart of hope shot through Neal at the “if.” He brought his hand down to her breasts, caressing them lightly. “Pen? Did you hear what I said about the advantage to an abortion?”

  “You haven’t done that in a long time, Neal. Like, I thought you forgot all about them, darling.”

  “I didn’t, though, not for a moment … Pen, did you hear what I said?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “And there’s your father to consider, how we’ll handle him, what we’ll tell him. Do you see how complicated it is?” “You can figure it out, Neal. I know you can.”

  “But we have to look at all the angles, sweetheart,” he said. “Uh huh.”

  “Before it’s too late for you to have an abortion.” “You can think what you want about Forrest,” she said, “but that’s one thing he’s dead set against. He says it’s murder.” “Forrest?” He gave a derisive chuckle. “Yes, Forrest … Neal, please don’t hate him.” “I don’t hate him. I pity him.”

  “You’re not mad because of what the police think about your wife and him?”

  “I told you, Penny, they’re wrong. And you know they’re wrong. Because you know Margaret’s whereabouts, don’t you?” “But maybe Forrest was seeing her!”

  “You saw Margaret,” said Neal. “Do you think a woman like Margaret would have anything to do with your brother?”

  “You shouldn’t say things like that, Neal.” She took his hands away from her breasts. “I don’t like it.”

  “Well, do you?” he said. He placed his hands back where they were, smiling down at her. “You saw her,” he said.

  “He’s still my brother.” She tried to jerk away from his touch. He held her fast.

  “And Margaret was my wife.”

  “A lot of people like Forrest.”

  “Ask your aunt in Spring Valley what she thinks of him, now that she’s out five hundred dollars bail money.”

  “She’s crazy about Forrest. He gave her one of those astrology pins, too.”

  Neal said, “But he let her five hundred dollars go down the drain, didn’t he?”

  “It’s not like him. I don’t know why he did. He gave her one of those pins. Her and I are the same sign.”

  “She and I.”

  “She and I. We’re both Pisces like Elizabeth Taylor.” “Really?” Neal said with exaggerated enthusiasm. “Let me up, Neal.”

  “We need this, Pen,” he said. “Even if we don’t do anything.

  Even if we do,” he said, pushing his hand up under her sweater.

  “Don’t act so superior then, Neal. Your own wife was interested in astrology. She could have said the exact same thing I just said.”

  “You think that?”

  “Yes … Neal, don’t. You’re too rough wi
th me there.”

  “That Margaret would bother to link herself with some movie actress. You think that?”

  “Neal, don’t treat me this way. I’ve just been to the doctor.”

  “You don’t know anything about Margaret, do you, except that she’s in a hole in the woods.”

  “Neal!”

  “Do you? Do you know anything about her?”

  “No,” she said in a frightened voice. “What’s the matter with you, Neal?”

  “So don’t talk about Margaret, do you hear?”

  “You’re hurting me, Neal. Those are new stockings.”

  “Or Margaret and Forrest, do you hear?”

  And he remembered the runt cat again as she worked her arms free from his weight and punched his chest with her fists. “Don’t you talk about Forrest the way you do, either,” she said angrily. “Because a lot of stuff isn’t our fault!” She spit out the words. “We had bad childhoods, and you of all people ought to know that!”

  With one hand he pinned her arms around her back.

  “That’s why I’d never do anything to hurt my baby!” she said.

  There was black mascara smudged down her cheeks, as there had been last Friday when he had sat beside her in the kitchen and believed that he could never touch her again.

  “What are you doing, Neal? Why are you doing it this way?”

  And he was fascinated by the fight in her, the look in her eyes, as though she feared for her life, and he rode hard on this, until ultimately she moved in rhythm with him at the moment he came; then the illusion went.

  CHAPTER 19

  The night before when Archie had called his service, there was a message that Ken Granger from CBS wanted to see him. Since Archie was going into New York today anyway, he called Ken’s secretary and set up an eleven-thirty appointment. He had spoken with the producer on Monday and Ken had told Archie that an angry Mrs. Muckermann had been waiting in his office when he arrived that morning, and that the astrology special was being shelved.

  Archie clung to a feather of hope that Ken might have something else in mind. Archie badly needed work. He was outlining the thing on symbiotic relations to give his agent, and he had an afternoon appointment with George Walsh at Cosmopolitan to discuss article ideas, but no project lined up yet that wasn’t speculative. CBS still had to pay him another twenty-five hundred despite the fact the show wasn’t going on, but he had counted on considerably more that that, and the first-of-the-month bills, which were beginning to roll in, showed it. His nerves were on edge as a result, and Dru was reacting to his moodiness, half-convinced that all the Mrs. Muckermann propaganda about his being badly aspected was true. They had been able to kid about it before, but more and more it started out light and ended up heavy … More and more everything between them did.

  Archie’s Triumph was finally ready at the garage in Nyack, and he picked it up at nine that morning, put the top down, and plugged along in commuter traffic, arriving in New York at ten-twenty. He left the car at the Hippodrome on 44th Street, and went across to the Algonquin to phone Liddy.

  When he was down, Liddy always had a soothing effect on him. She had known him way back in the days when he had been happy to receive a hundred dollars from Reader’s Digest for a filler, and when he could paper their apartment walls with his rejection slips. Dru took his free-lance career for granted, but Liddy had lived through the birth pangs and experienced the oscillations—then, being no fool, Liddy had reacted by becoming a fortune-hunter. Like a father who had raised his child in the slums, Archie didn’t blame her for “aspiring,” for wanting to be free of the endless, inevitable worry over money. In fact, Archie no longer blamed Liddy for anything, nor looked for anything from her but a laugh, amity, and the sharing of a lot of old memories. So he told himself. And hadn’t it been confirmed by their last meeting? No strings, any more, and no regrets: just a good feeling … Why not flowers for his birthday?

  “Thanks for the flowers,” he said when she answered.

  “Did I have the date right?”

  “You were early. What’s all the noise in the background?” “I’m moving out. My things are going in storage.” “You just moved in.”

  “A woman’s privilege, Archie. I’ve got so much to tell you.”

  “Do you want to have lunch? I’m in town.”

  “I’d love it! I’ve got wonderful news. I’ll tell you at lunch. I hope you’ll think it’s wonderful.”

  He said, “Just don’t bubble too much when you tell me. My news is all low tide … I’ve got an appointment on the West Side at CBS, so how about the Italian Pavilion around quarter to one?”

  “I can’t wait that long to tell you this much,” she said. “Either we’re finally legally divorced, or I’m a bigamist.” “Congratulations!” he barked out too heartily. “Wonderful!” “I’m so happy, Archie!”

  “You’re bubbling, Liddy,” he warned her, still accommodating the punch of shock inside him. “And I’m taking you to lunch,” she said. “Is he rich? Silly question.” “As a matter of fact, he isn’t.” “I thought I had you trained.”

  “This time I’m really in love, Archie. I want you to remember that when you meet him.”

  “Why? Did you marry Rap Brown? Spiro Agnew? J. Edgar Hoover? Mayor Daley?”

  “Just remember,” Liddy said. “I love him, Archie.”

  It was unlikely that he would forget that.

  Ken Granger was talking on the telephone when Archie arrived. He was listening more than he was talking, and he waved Archie to a seat and passed him a sheet of paper, motioning for him to look it over.

  It was a memo from a CBS researcher re: ONE WORD DESCRIPTIONS OF ZODIAC TYPES.

  ARIES dynamic

  TAURUS stable

  GEMINI vascillating

  CANCER protective

  LEO dominating

  VIRGO efficient

  LIBRA compromising

  SCORPIO passionate

  SAGITTARIUS adventuresome

  CAPRICORN scheming

  AQUARIUS humanitarian

  PISCES mystic

  When Ken finally hung up, he said, “That was Herself giving me the business.” “Mrs. Muckermann?”

  Ken nodded. “She says we’re going to be slapped with a lawsuit if we do the show without her.” “Is it on again?”

  “I think so, Archie. But not with her. The woman’s insane.” “Tell me,” Archie said.

  “She told me you’re going to do something violent, if you haven’t already done it, and I’m the way I am because I was born with the Sun in Leo, same as Mussolini, Huey Long and Napoleon … all of whom, she added, came to a bad end.”

  Archie laughed and said, “I wondered what was wrong with you, Ken. So you’re a Leo. She left out Cesare Borgia and Fidel Castro.”

  “She’s colorful,” said Ken, “and she’d come across as a real character, but I didn’t realize she was all the way around the bend. If we used her, it’d be like we were giving her an endorsement.”

  “Who are you going to get?”

  “No one, for that very reason. We can’t give anyone an endorsement. I see that now.” He reached for a cigarette, saying: “Still interested in writing it, or have you had it?”

  “Still interested.”

  He lit the cigarette. “Good … I want to send that memo down to publicity. Do you agree with it? We want to work out some teasers—nothing profound. Simple stuff like that.”

  “It looks reasonable,” Archie said. Then he chuckled.

  “What’s funny?”

  “Libra. Compromising. Mrs. Muckermann’s a Libra.”

  “Okay, cross it out and substitute ‘maniacal.’ ”

  “I wouldn’t quarrel with any of it,” Archie said. “It’s about as close as you can come with one word.”

  Ken said, “We’ll run one teaser with the one-word description, and then another one with a famous person after each sign. Research is going to work on that next.”

  “I can
pencil them in right away, if you want.”

  “Fine. Call them out. I don’t want any Mussolinis or Cesare Borgias.”

  “Let’s see,” said Archie, “Aries, Charlie Chaplin.”

  “Hold it! Nobody controversial.”

  “Charlie Chaplin?”

  “Give me another.”

  “How’s Marlon Brando?”

  “Okay.”

  “Taurus, Harry Truman … Gemini, John Kennedy.”

  “Kennedy’s out,” said Ken. “It’ll just call up the assassination. We don’t want any bad omens.”

  “All right, Gemini: the Duchess of Windsor.”

  “Good … Can you come up with a Negro now?”

  “I can’t think of one who’s Cancer,” Archie said. “I’ll keep it in mind. For Cancer, how about Nelson Rockefeller?”

  “Okay,” Ken said. “But let’s not have all WASPs.”

  “Bernard Baruch for Leo.”

  “Right.”

  “Virgo, Leonard Bernstein.” “We’ve got a Jew.” “How’s Grandma Moses then?” “That’s it.”

  “Libra … Mahatma Gandhi?”

  “Someone younger, Archie; you just threw in Grandma Moses.” “Brigitte Bardot?” “She’ll do … What’s next?” “Scorpio; how about Katharine Hepburn?”

  “I don’t think of her as passionate,” said Ken.

  “Do you think of Brigitte Bardot as compromising?”

  Ken smiled. “I can see her meeting someone halfway.”

  “All right. Scorpio, Mata Hari.”

  “Great.”

  “Sagittarius, Frank Sinatra.” Ken nodded.

  “Capricorn, Aristotle Onassis.”

  Ken said, “What’s her sign?”

  “Jackie? She’s a Leo. Capricorns and Leos aren’t good together, according to Mrs. Muckermann. Leo’s supposedly too strong and quick for Capricorn.”

  “I’ll bet on him anyway,” Ken said. “Aquarius is next.”

  “Here’s your Negro, Ken: Marian Anderson.”

  “We’ve got a lot of women, haven’t we?”

  “Where’s your biggest appeal going to be?”

  “Yes. The ladies, I suppose.”

  “Pisces, Jackie Gleason.”

  “A mystic? Gleason?”

  “How’s Albert Einstein?”

  “Fine,” said Ken. He asked his secretary to run the memo down to Publicity; then he tipped back in his swivel chair, stuck his feet up on the desk, and asked Archie how things had worked out with his “astro-twin.”