Karen . . .
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It was ten-thirty the next morning when Dee decided she should go into the office, hangover or not. Jerry had taken her to his apartment and let her sleep it off there. Just before he’d left in the morning for an early appointment, he had explained that he thought it was better than risking the scene she’d have had to face at home for the Algonquin fiasco last night. Also, he’d decided to go to his farm for a month—strongly urging her to come with him.
But he’d kissed her before he left, so Dee knew he had already forgiven her. She had wandered around his Park Avenue apartment carrying a cup of coffee with her. She began to get her bearings again, and called the office to say she’d be late. Dee liked Jerry’s apartment, but she was glad she didn’t have to live in it. It was so terribly ornate, with gilt-edged furniture, purple velvet settees, and statues on pedestals. Heavy, embroidered drapes lined one whole wall and continued across the ceiling in waves. It made her feel as if she had just been purchased and brought to the sheik’s tent for a test run or whatever you’d call it.
The whole atmosphere made her nervous after a while, especially now, with a hangover. “So,” she muttered aloud, “guess I’ll go home and change and go to work.”
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to face her right now. She went into the compact kitchen and started to wash out her cup until she remembered Jerry had a maid come in every afternoon.
Dee found herself staring at the faucet for a moment and realized she wasn’t thinking about anything—just a blank moment in her mind. She smiled foolishly to herself, went back into the living room, and, picking up her coat and purse, left the apartment.
The doorman hailed a cab for her, tipping his hat politely, and the ride home was fast and without incident. She paused before her front door, trying to decide what she would say if Karen should be home.
“I’ll just play it by ear,” she said helplessly, and opened the door.
There was something wrong immediately. The place had that abandoned feeling: stale cigarette smoke and closed windows.
Then she heard Cho-Cho downstairs, meowing to herself.
Dee went into the bedroom. It seemed quite evident that Karen hadn’t been home last night, either.
She was too numb to have any immediate reaction. Instead, she went downstairs and stood staring at Cho-Cho who was leaning against the refrigerator now and purring.
Mechanically she fed the cat and made herself some breakfast.
She wasn’t really hungry, but she had to do something to keep her hands busy. In her mind, Dee kept thinking of where Karen could be, or perhaps that she had had an accident on the way home . . .
probably in some hospital, unconscious. “But . . . if she was with Seth last night . . .” Dee said aloud and amazed herself with the vehemence in her voice.
Christ! Dee thought, her anger and jealousy mounting, so what if I didn’t come home last night. She knows damn well I’m not having an affair with Jerry! What a spiteful goddamn bitch of a thing to do. . . . So I made a stupid but human mistake, and she goes running off with Seth like an anxious puppy! And I suppose she thinks I’m just going to sit back and take it . . . just be grateful for the fact that she comes back home at all. . . .
But what if she doesn’t come home . . . ?
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or didn’t happen. It’s a good thing you’re not a lawyer, she argued silently.
Dee walked over to the telephone and lifted the receiver slowly, her right index finger poised over the dial. “I’ll have to talk to her eventually,” she rationalized.
“Harper and Barron,” a cheerful voice announced as soon as the second ring finished.
“Uh, yes,” Dee said, trying to sound businesslike. “Miss Lundquist, please.”
“One moment, please.”
Dee fought the contradictory panic and jealousy raging inside her.
If Karen was there, what would she say? And if Karen wasn’t . . .
then?
“Mr. Barron’s office,” Karen’s voice said efficiently.
Dee hung up. She hated herself afterward. In fact, she didn’t even really know why she had hung up. Why hadn’t she gone through with the call . . . ?
The phone rang seconds later, and Dee automatically answered it.
“Why did you hang up?” Karen’s voice said in a weary tone.
“How the hell’d you know it was me?” Dee asked before she remembered she was jealous or embarrassed.
A short silence ensued before Karen replied, “I don’t know that many people who ask for me by name at the switchboard, then hang up. Dee . . . what’s the matter with you?”
“With me! It’s you, not me. But . . . it was stupid of me to call.
I—I wanted to apologize,” she lied, and again hated herself for not being able to come out and ask, Just where the hell were you last night?
“I won’t kid you, Dee, I was plenty mad. First, that idiotic argument the night before, and then that juvenile trick you pulled at the Algonquin, and then not coming home all night . . .”
“How would you know!” Her anger was taking over again now.
She didn’t feel quite so inept.
“Oh, Dee, for God’s sake! I waited up until three-thirty for you . . .
and only half slept on the couch the rest of the time, ready to give you hell when you walked in that door. You never did.”
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“You what?”
“You heard me. What are you trying to pull?”
Dee felt like a first-class idiot.
Karen sounded as if she was working up into a full-size rage now,
“Do you mean to tell me you thought I wasn’t home all night, so you were going to pull a martyr scene? Listen here, Dee, I think you’d better see a head-shrinker; you’re really cracking up!”
“No. It wasn’t that.” Dee tried to keep her voice from showing how relieved she was. “It’s just that the place looked so, so unlived in when I got in this morning. You knew where I was. . . . I just didn’t know . . .”
“Dee,” Karen interrupted patiently, “I don’t mind if you want to build up a jealousy case, but why not come out and say it? That’s what you’re always telling me to do! How do you think I feel when your old girlfriends call up in the middle of the night?”
“What old girlfriend?” Dee blurted.
Karen snickered. “Not Rita,” she held on to the “i” in mimicry.
“She’s done her bit for the season.”
“Then who?”
“That singer, you know . . . Martie Thornton. Gave me some song-and-dance about having run into you in Paris and that you had taken some pictures or something.” Karen sighed. “I wrote down the number she left and put it on the nightstand in the bedroom—be sure you call her. I wouldn’t want you to miss out on anything. . . .”
“Now who’s jealous?”
“Frankly, Dee, at this point I really no longer care.”
Dee wondered just how she really meant that. Perhaps she would come to her decision alone. But then, she always had about everything else—why shouldn’t she now?
“Dee, I’ve got to go now. Do you suppose you could manage to be home this evening? I’d like to have a talk with you.”
“I suppose I had that coming. . . .”
“Oh, Dee,” Karen said tiredly, “I don’t care anymore who has what coming—just answer me.”
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until Karen had hung up. “Yes, damn it! I’ll be here. Don’t let your personal life interfere with the office, Karen, by all means.”
Well, Dee thought, that does that! She was su
rprised that she didn’t feel the need to cry anymore. It was as if she had been purged already with Karen’s “I no longer care” in that tight, barely civil voice.
It was true that Dee had behaved badly . . . but Karen had some growing up of her own to do, also. Only, now as Dee knew with certainty, it was not going to be with her. In spite of her anger, she experienced a strange kind of relief. . . . She could feel guilt falling off her the way bark cracks, then falls off a tree. The responsibility for Karen’s life was no longer hanging over her, pulling at her in opposite directions . . . no more of the wrenching confusion of wanting her and knowing she would have to let her go.
Dee didn’t go into the office at all that day. She’d puttered around the apartment, and when she came across Martie’s phone number written in Karen’s neat writing, she had even taken it downstairs and placed it by the telephone as a reminder to call. Several times she’d meant to call “right then and there,” but each time she became busy with something else.
She went into the shower about five o’clock and wondered what she should wear for their “talk” tonight. Black, of course. Black slacks and a black blouse. Despite the emotional strain of the past two days, she looked exceptionally well tonight. She was careful to put on makeup and to look like a friend expecting another friend to come by for dinner.
She was chilling the martinis when Karen came in. For some reason, Dee felt completely in control of the situation—devoid of any personal involvement.
“Martini?” Dee asked calmly when Karen came downstairs.
She nodded.
“You look tired,” Dee offered, knowing it was the wrong thing to say. She brought the drink over to her.
“I should. . . .” Karen answered sarcastically but without enthusiasm.
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They raised their glasses to each other almost in silent understanding of what was to come.
“Um . . . good,” Karen sighed. “It’s a little chilly; how about some atmosphere?”
She’s made up her mind, all right, Dee decided by the tone of Karen’s voice, but said instead, “I’m getting a bit superstitious about the fireplace.”
Karen smiled. “Life goes on one way or another.”
Not exactly brilliant repartee, Dee smiled inwardly, but logical.
She crossed over and lit it, waited for the flames to spread, then scratched Cho-Cho absently.
“I’d become very fond of Cho-Cho,” Karen said at last.
“That sounds ominous,” Dee answered. “Planning to do the old girl in?”
“Dee, please . . . I don’t feel much like jolly jokes.”
Dee shrugged her shoulders and crossed over to the bar and refilled her glass. “More?” she asked indifferently.
“I suppose so . . . may as well.”
There was a long silence. “For someone who was so insistent that I be home for a talk, you’re not saying much.”
Karen looked at her quizzically. “I don’t understand you, Dee. I really don’t. . . . I’m just beginning to realize it.”
Dee laughed lightly. “You will . . . in time. Or maybe not. It doesn’t matter.”
“Are you really so indifferent to what happened last night? Are you proud of yourself for the trick you pulled with Seth?” Karen paused a moment, lighting a cigarette. “At least, if Seth noticed anything, he was gentleman enough not to say it.”
“Are you implying,” Dee said levelly, “that you are more concerned with Seth’s reaction than you are about what motivated me in the first place?”
“Oh, stop it!” Karen replied in that same tired tone she’d used earlier. “It was unforgivable. . . .”
“So is murder unless it’s self-defense. You do allow for self-defense in your orderly little world, don’t you?”
“The comparison is too idiotic to answer. I think you need a long vacation. . . . I think I do, too.”
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Dee watched Cho-Cho wash herself in front of the fireplace. “Is this the point of our little ‘talk’? A vacation from each other?”
“Something like that . . .” Karen said defensively.
Dee grinned sardonically. “We’ve not even been together six months—a vacation? What kind of a punch-drunk fool do you take me for, Karen? Are you trying to spare my feelings . . . be civilized about the whole thing?”
Karen didn’t answer—she couldn’t even look at Dee.
“Look, baby . . .”
“Don’t call me that!” Karen snapped.
Dee laughed. “I’ll call you any damn thing I please, and you’ll listen to me.” She had trouble believing she was really saying all these things. She felt positively giddy with control and power.
“Why are you acting this way?” Karen pleaded.
“Because I think you’re making a big thing out of a . . . very small thing.” Dee quavered a moment, but it didn’t last. “You were at loose ends . . . you developed a crush which was both forbidden and exciting . . .”
“You know, then?” Karen asked, taken by surprise.
“I always knew, baby. I tried and tried to make you understand, but you wouldn’t. And, forgive the expression, I’m just human. I’ve got desires, too.”
“Didn’t this mean anything to you?” Karen cried. “Were you just laughing at me behind my back?”
Dee sat down next to her on the couch but didn’t touch her. She took a deep breath, then said, “How can I explain it to you . . . ?”
she looked intently into Karen’s eyes.
“It’s like when you’ve been to an emotionally exhausting movie—
when you’ve lived the part of the heroine, felt all her hurts and joys.
For the duration of the movie, you are the heroine.”
Karen placed her hand in Dee’s, and they both knew it was simply a gesture of understanding and friendship.
“But now,” Dee continued with a tender smile on her lips, “the movie is over and everybody’s picking up their purses, umbrellas, hats, and coats and going home—to where they belong. To their real lives.”
“It’s too pat, too corny,” Karen whispered.
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“That’s the biggest lesson to learn in life, Karen. It is corny—
everything we all yearn for has been so over-commercialized that it’s almost embarrassing to admit love, or the spring in your step on a beautiful day. Name me something that makes you feel good that the world doesn’t consider corny today.”
“But then, what was all this we had?”
“For you?” Dee carefully avoided her own emotions, “For you it was a crutch till you got well, or something to hold on to during the hurricane. . . . It was, well, just a phase.”
“But I thought you’d be crushed . . . hurt . . .”
“I’d be hurt if I thought you’d taken me for a ride, or if you had been playing both ends against the middle—but I already told you, I expected this to happen. I’m only glad it was now, before too much damage could be done.”
“And you don’t hate me?”
“What for? Sure, I’ll be lonely for a while, and I’ll miss you. . . .”
“Couldn’t we stay friends, though?” Karen asked. Gone was the determined, bitter young woman.
Dee winced at the question. “Not for a while,” she said quickly.
“Get back on your own two feet . . . begin a real life for yourself.
Once you’re on your way . . . well, then we’ll see.”
The phone rang suddenly, and Dee felt as if she had never had so many phone calls in her life. She stood up and answered it.
“Martie!” she answered with genuine pleasure, turning her back to Karen.
“No . . . I’ve just not had the time—honest—to develop them. I didn’t know you’d be back so soon. But now, I’ll simply make the time.”
She heard Karen fidget in her seat, then walk over
to get them both a refill.
“Tonight?” she paused dramatically. “I don’t know . . .” Dee glanced over at Karen. She was biting her lip lightly but met Dee’s glance evenly. Karen nodded slowly.
“I’ll tell you, Martie, why I hesitated. I’ve a very good friend here right now and we’re having a few martinis—no . . . not a party. But my friend just said she couldn’t stay very late. Why not come by for a late supper . . . like around nine?”
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Dee was beginning to lose her control again but held on with everything in her. “Sure, sure. And listen, bring the pictures you took. . . . I’d like to see how you’ve improved.” She laughed a little too falsely but hoped Martie hadn’t noticed. “All right, nine o’clock, then. S’long.”
She replaced the receiver and stood still a moment, not wanting to turn around.
Karen’s voice broke through her thoughts, and she was reminded that she wasn’t the only one with problems.
“I . . . I don’t know why it should be,” Karen said, “but I feel like crying and running over to you to hold me close.”
Dee felt herself just sag inside. “Then do,” she said, turning around slowly.
Karen stood for a second, then ran to her, sobbing.
Dee stroked her hair gently, felt Karen’s body against hers, and knew this would be the last time. “You’re crying because you’re both relieved and guilty about leaving me, that’s all. But if you didn’t, we’d have grown to despise each other and then the destruction would have begun. . . . Even very good friends cry when they know they won’t see each other for a long time. . . .”
“I feel,” Karen said now that her crying was subsiding, “like the person I was six months ago no longer exists.”
Dee nodded. “She doesn’t. At least, not in an emotional sense—
she’s evolved, to be disgustingly clinical about the whole thing.”
Karen laughed.
Dee could feel her body tense up again and knew that Karen wanted to be let go, knew that Karen needed to be on her own. She released her slowly . . . regretfully. Dee went cold all over as Karen smiled nervously at her, took a step back, then handed Dee her drink.
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