“I feel sorry for her,” I said, defending myself against nothing.
She was still in a teasing mood. “Don’t feel too sorry.” She turned the switch on under the coffee. “Don’t forget you have a wife and two children to take care of.”
“I won’t forget,” I said seriously.
Something in my voice made her look up at me and the laughter faded from her eyes. She came over to me and looked up into my face. “I know you won’t, Brad,” she said quietly. Her lips brushed my cheek quickly. “That’s why I love you.” She rubbed my thigh and let her hand linger close to my cock. Marge was never the aggressor; she was subtle, never pushing, also never risking rejection. I could feel my penis getting hard. Nothing like guilt to make you perform. I held her close to me and walked with her into the bedroom. She took off her robe and I lifted her nightgown as she lay across the bed. I caressed her ample, warm breasts, and with my thumb I manipulated her hardening nipple. She began to gasp, closing her eyes.
“Open your eyes, Marge,” I said hoarsely.
She shook her head. “I can’t, Brad.”
I leaned down and put the nipple between my teeth, using my tongue to manipulate the tiny round orb. And then, partly because of frustration, partly because of guilt and partly because I was angry, I rammed myself into her with all the might I had. I came like there was no tomorrow and she held me like a baby.
When I woke up sometime during the night, I could feel tears. I didn’t know what to do.
The bright morning sun flooding into the bedroom woke me up. I stared vaguely at the ceiling. The room seemed somehow wrong to me, as if it were subtly out of place. Then I knew what it was. I was in Marge’s bed.
I turned my head slowly. Her face was on the pillow next to me, her eyes open, looking into mine. She smiled.
I smiled back at her.
She whispered something.
I didn’t hear her. “What?” I asked, my voice shattering the morning quiet in the room.
“Young lover,” she whispered. “I’d almost forgotten.”
I began to remember the night.
She put her arm up around my neck and drew my head down to her breasts. “You’re a wonderful man, Brad,” she breathed into my ear. “Do you know that?”
A pain began to choke my throat. I couldn’t speak. How many men have made love to their wives because of the fires started by another woman?
Her hand was stroking my hair, her voice was still whispering in my ear. “We must do that more often, darling.” She laughed quietly.
I tried to smile, to joke. “Don’t forget I’m not as young as I used to be.”
She laughed again. “That’s what I love about you, Brad,” she whispered. “You’re so much better now. You were such a clumsy boy.” I could feel the silent laughter shaking through her body. “And you tried so hard not to be.”
I climbed into the car next to Jeanie. Marge looked down at us from the open doorway. “Try to get home early, Brad,” she called. “Dad’s coming up for dinner tonight.”
“I’ll be early,” I promised. Dad came up every Tuesday night.
Jeanie put the car into gear and we rolled down the driveway. We just skimmed the corner post and shot out into the street. I let out a sigh. “Someday you’re gonna hit that,” I said.
She looked over at me and grinned. “Take it easy, Dad.”
“You take it easy,” I said.
She jammed on the brakes and stopped short for a traffic light. She turned toward me. “Have you thought about what I said?”
“About what?” I asked, deliberately playing dumb.
“About an anniversary present for Mamma,” she said patiently.
“Oh, sure,” I said casually.
She was immediately excited. “You did, Dad? Really? What are you getting her?”
“The light changed,” I said, deliberately ignoring her questions.
“Forget the light, Dad,” she said, starting the car. “What did you get her?”
“You’ll see,” I said. “When she gets it. It’s a surprise and I’m not going to have you blab it out.”
“I’ll keep the secret, Dad. Honest.” Her voice had lowered to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“A mink coat.”
“Golly! Dad, that’s terrif!”
“Take your foot off the accelerator or neither of us will be here to give it to her,” I said quickly.
She slammed on the brakes again. We were at her school. She opened the door, then she changed her mind and leaned across the seat and kissed my cheek. “Dad, you’re the greatest!”
I watched her running across the street and then slid over under the wheel. Something bright on the floor of the car caught my eye. I bent over and picked it up.
It shone brightly in the sunlight. It was a thin gold cigarette case. I turned it over slowly in my hands. There was a small block monogram up in the corner. One word.
Elaine.
8
Matt Brady was a little man and I never saw him smile. His eyes were wide blue and unwinking. They looked right at you and through you. I didn’t like him. I don’t know why, but the minute I saw him I knew I wouldn’t like him.
Maybe it was the suggestion of power that draped around his shoulders like an invisible cloak. Maybe it was the way all the other members of the committee acted toward him. Each was a big man in the business. Each headed a company that was worth many millions of dollars. Yet they bowed and scraped before him and called him Mister as if he were God. And he treated them as if they were his lowliest slaves.
I glanced quickly at Chris to see how I was doing. His face was impassive. I cursed him silently for being right so righteously and turned back to Matt Brady.
His voice was as cold as the rest of him. “Young man,” he said, “I don’t have time to waste in idle conversation. I’m a blunt man and I come right to the point. Nowhere in your exposition have I been assured that we can reach the people with the type of campaign you are suggesting. That they would even understand what we’re trying to say.”
I stared back at him steadily. I was damned if I could see how Elaine could call him sweet. “Mr. Brady,” I answered, “I’m a public relations counselor. You know what that is? A fancy name for the guy who comes to town ahead of the circus and puts up signs. Only I don’t tell them to go to the circus. I tell them how much fun there is in living because of the circus.”
You couldn’t sidetrack the old buzzard. Words meant nothing to him. His mind worked like a machine. I was beginning to understand how he’d got where he did. “I don’t doubt your abilities, young man,” he said. “I just question your campaign. It seems sketchy and poorly thought out to me, as if your main concern is getting the account for yourself rather than perform a service for your client.”
You can go far with faking, then you got to throw the whole hog. “Mr. Brady,” I smiled gently. “If I may have the same privilege of bluntness that you claim for yourself I would like to say that you haven’t the faintest idea of what I’ve been talking about. Because you are thinking selfishly of how this campaign would personally benefit Matt Brady’s interests rather than the industry.”
I felt rather than heard the vague shock that stirred around the table. Chris stared disapprovingly at me.
Matt Brady’s voice was deceptively smooth. “Go on, young man.”
I stared into his eyes. Maybe I was crazy but I thought there was a twinkle of smile lurking in its depths. “Mr. Brady,” I said quietly. “You make steel and I make opinions. I assume you know your business and when I buy anything made of your product—a car or a refrigerator—I rely on the fact that you have supplied the proper kind of metal in it to do the job. The fact that you do keeps me buying.”
I turned from him and looked down the long table at his confreres. “Gentlemen,” I continued, “on the books of each of your companies you carry an item called good will. Some of you carry that it
em at a dollar, some of you may carry it at a million dollars or more. I don’t know the accounting method used to determine the value of that intangible. I’m not a bookkeeper. I sell intangibles. You can’t hold what I give you in your hands, you can’t put it on a scale and weigh it, you can’t count it and put it into inventory.”
They were interested now. I could tell from the looks on their faces. “I deal in that item you call good will. If I may be permitted to recall for a moment some things people were saying about your business just a little while ago, I would like to remind you of them. They are not pleasant reminders but, unfortunately, necessary to my argument.
“After the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a common saying here in New York that the Japanese had returned the Ninth Avenue El to us. And rightly or wrongly, they blamed you, the steel industry, for selling it to them. It didn’t matter that the truth was greatly different from the rumor; what did matter was that for a long time you were resented for it.
“It didn’t bother you then. You were not concerned with selling your product to the public, you were engaged in an all-out war effort. But it would have mattered if you had been dependent on the consumer for your livelihood at that time. I know. For in 1942 I was called down to Washington to help get the scrap metals drive out of its doldrums. And one of the main reasons it had not been doing as well as it should was because the people did not trust what you would do with that metal. We set up an educational campaign that the public accepted. Result: with the public’s faith in you restored and the use for the metal clearly set forth—the flow of scrap to your rolling mills was most successful.”
I paused to catch my breath and take a sip of water from the tumbler in front of me. From the corner of my eye I could see that even Matt Brady had been interested in what I had said.
“Good will, gentlemen,” I began again. “That’s my business. I try to help people think kindly of you. I probably won’t sell a ten-cent can opener for you.
“But if I’m successful people will think more highly of you than they do today. And chances are that if they like you more, the many things you sell will be sold more easily. Whether you gentlemen realize it or not, it is just as important for you to have your customers like you as it is for the man in the candy store on your corner.
“And, like it or not, gentlemen, as far as I’m concerned you’re nothing but the guys in business in the biggest candy store on the biggest corner in the world.” I picked up the papers in front of me and began stuffing them into my briefcase. As far as I was concerned the meeting was over.
I didn’t have to look down the table at Chris to confirm what I already felt. This was half a million bucks that would never show on our books….
Chris hadn’t said a word all the way down in the elevator. The air in the street seemed suddenly chill in spite of the bright sunshine. I pushed my collar up against my neck.
A cab pulled up to the curb at his gesture. I was about to step into it when I changed my mind. I turned and gave him my briefcase. “Go back to the office, Chris,” I said. “I’m gonna walk around a bit.”
He nodded, taking the briefcase from me, and stepped into the cab. I watched it pull away from the curb and stepped back into the crowds on Fifth Avenue. I put my head down, my hands in my coat pockets and started to walk uptown.
I was the biggest dope of all. I should have known better. But I still might’ve had it if not for Matt Brady, with his cold eyes and skeptical mouth. “Beware of little men,” my father had once said. A little man had to be smarter to survive. Dad was right. Matt Brady was a little man. And smart. He saw right through to the phony that I was. A hatred for him began to build up in me. He knew everything, he had all the answers. At least that’s what he thought. But he was wrong. Nobody had all the answers.
I don’t know how long I’d been walking or where, but when I stopped, I was standing in front of her hotel. I looked up at it. The gold cigarette case in my pocket since the morning was cold against my fingers.
She was waiting at the door as I came down the hall from the elevator. As soon as I saw her face I knew she had been expecting me.
I followed her into the room, the cigarette case in my hand. “You left it in the car on purpose,” I said.
She took it from my hand silently, neither confirming nor denying. She didn’t meet my eyes. “Thanks, Brad,” she said.
“Why?”
Slowly she looked up at me. Again I could feel the strange loneliness in them. Her lips parted as if to speak, but then her eyes filled with tears.
I held out my arms to her and she came into them as if she belonged there. Her face was against my chest and her tears were salty against my mouth.
I held her for a long time like that and at last the tears stopped. Her voice was very low. “I’m sorry, Brad; I’ll be okay now.”
I watched her cross the room. She disappeared into the bedroom and a few seconds later I could hear the sounds of running water. I threw my coat across a chair and picked up the phone.
Room service in this hotel was good. I just finished pouring some Scotch into the glasses when she came back.
Her face was scrubbed and clean and her eyes held no trace of the tears that had reddened them. I held a glass to her. “You need a drink.”
“I’m sorry, Brad,” she apologized again. “I didn’t mean to cry.”
“Forget it,” I said quickly.
She shook her head vehemently. “I hate crying,” she insisted. “It’s not fair to you.”
I sank into the chair beside my coat. “All’s fair in love and—” I started, but the expression on her face stopped me.
Silently I sipped at my drink. My nerves stopped jumping as the whiskey hit my stomach and ricocheted through my system. She sat in a chair opposite me.
How long we sat there I’ll never know. We didn’t speak until I had refilled my glass and peace and contentment began to steal into me. The world and business were far away now, even the disappointment of a little while ago was gone.
Dusk had begun to shade the windows behind her, my voice echoed in the room. I had held up my glass and looked into it. The words had come from my lips and I hadn’t expected them.
“I love you, Elaine.”
I lowered the glass and looked at her.
She was nodding her head. “And I love you,” she answered.
Then I knew why she had nodded. It was as if we had both known all the time. I didn’t move from the chair. “I don’t know how it happened, or why.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she interrupted. “But from the moment I saw you, I began to live again. I was alone.”
“You’re not alone any more,” I said.
“No?” she questioned softly.
We came together in the center of the room; there was a fire inside me.
I could feel the muscles in my body straining with an almost forgotten beat. My arms had a strength all their own and held her close to me, and still, while my fingers searched the secrets of her dress. Her breasts sprang free to me, the nipples burning, hard against my fingers. I knelt and pressed my lips between their tightened swell.
Her hand tightened in my hair and the pain ran from its roots down to my cheeks. I turned my face up to her.
Her eyes stared down at me, vague, unseeing; only her lips were moving. “No, Brad, no. Please stop. They have a terrible cheap word for it.” She put her hands over her face. “I can’t bring any hurt into your life… I can’t stand any more hurt in mine… It’s so wrong, but I do love you… I do want you.” She looked deep into my eyes, and in that moment I felt all the pain, all the love, and all the life that there was in the world.
I rose quickly to my feet and picked her up in my arms. Her breasts gleamed as they rose and fell with her gasping breath. My voice was husky as I looked down at her. “There is no word for it. This never happened before.” I pressed my lips to her mouth and carried her into the bedroom. “Only to us.”
Her lips were warm and tr
embling, and slowly the trembling stopped and nothing but the warmth remained. She was a figurine in old ivory and the orange flush of the fading sun turned her flesh into a delicate gold.
Again, her body was like a fire that had been too long without a spark. It was like touching a virgin for the first time and seeing her respond in lust and want. In a precious moment we were in a world all our own, on a cloud stretched across the moon, racing faster than light.
I found her mouth with my lips, and her teeth brought the taste of blood to mine. A comet caught me in its grip, then burst inside me like a shooting star. There was a startling moment of stillness and then I was tumbling into a bottomless void, a crazy thought trailing through my mind.
What a way to get even with Matt Brady for costing me half a million bucks!
9
The sound of running water woke me up. I lay there quietly, letting my eyes get used to the strange darkness. Instinctively I reached for my cigarettes. They were not in their usual place. It wasn’t until that moment that I realized where I was.
I rolled over to the edge of the bed and sat up. I turned on the lamp on the night table and looked at my watch. Nine o’clock. Marge would be worried. I picked up the phone and gave the operator the number.
I could hear the dial clicking as the bathroom door opened and Elaine came out. She stood there a moment looking down at me, framed by the light in the doorway behind her. There was a small towel around her head and a large Turkish towel wrapped around her body.
“Calling home?” It was more a statement than a question.
I nodded.
She didn’t answer. Just then Marge’s voice came on the phone. “Brad?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “Everything okay, baby?”
“Yes, Brad. Where are you? I was worried.”
“I’m okay,” I said into the phone, looking up at Elaine, still in the doorway. “I been out drinking.”
“You sure you’re all right?” she insisted. “You sound funny.”
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