They managed to get out of the train and halfway through the crowd pressing to board. But as he was encumbered with more bags than she, she was out before him, at the empty side of the platform. So she was able to spot Daniel Halpirn among the stragglers trying to get into the next car.
He was back, as Jonathan said he would be. He was on his way to Sea Mist.
She couldn’t let him get on, not after the long, tiring airplane trip across the Atlantic already today. He would take this long trip by train and wait for the ferry to the island and still not find Jonathan there. That would be too awful for him. For all of them. She couldn’t let it happen.
Rushing, she stopped him by pulling his arm as he was stepping into the train.
He looked at her, without recognizing her; looked at her surprised, with irritation, as though to say, let go of me.
“Daniel!” she called into his ear, over the noise of the train and the loudspeakers and the people. “Don’t get on!” She tugged at him again.
He looked back again, then recognized her.
“Stevie?”
She nodded, and continued pulling at his arm. They were in the middle of a new rush of people trying to board the train behind them. She had to hold on to the side of the car to keep upright.
“Where’s Jonathan?” he asked her, having to shout it.
She nodded behind her. She could just make out Jonathan, stopped by a stairwell, looking around for her through the bobbing heads of the crowd.
“We came in,” she said, and managed to pull Dan out of the doorway, to a spot where they wouldn’t be buffeted by people.
Daniel looked confused.
‘‘I was just going out.’’
“Don’t have to now,” she said. She felt embarrassed. He looked over her shoulder at where she knew Jonathan was standing. Daniel’s face was tight, hard; he seemed very unsure of what to do, of what to say.
“Here,” she said, handing him one of Jonathan’s bags she’d been carrying.
Dan looked down at the bag, and recognizing it, took it, and slung it across his shoulder by the strap. But he was still confused.
“He’s already carrying too many,” she said.
He looked past her again, toward Jonathan, then back at her. The crowd was thinning out on the platform as people pressed to get into the train, rushing down the stairs.
“I don’t understand,” Daniel said to her.
She reached up to speak into his ear, and had to hold him by one shoulder to support herself, he was so tall. “Say good-bye to him, for me, will you,” she said. “Say Stevie thanks him.”
He stared at her.
“And please, don’t fight with him,” she said, “Please, don’t do anything bad to him, anything to make him unhappy.”
“Why are you doing this?” Daniel said, only half comprehending.
It was clear he would never do anything like it.
“Don’t ask me,” she said. “Just do it. And be happy.” He kissed her cheek lightly now; she smelled a cologne that had steeped Jonathan’s bedroom—as though Daniel were a tomcat who’d spread his scent everywhere on his territory. That persuaded her. She knew she was doing the right thing.
“Be happy,” she repeated. “Don’t fight with him.”
“I won’t! I won’t. I promise,” he said, and it was clear that he was overjoyed. “Good-bye. Good-bye. Thank you. Thank you.”
“Good-bye,” she said, and now her decision made, final, the tears she’d held back this morning started up again in her eyes. She turned away from the train and Daniel and walked away quickly, her vision slightly blurred, until she reached up and wiped her face.
Last-minute commuters raced down the stairs past her as she slowly ascended the steps.
At the top of the stairs, she turned around and looked back. Only a few latecomers were dashing madly into the cars. In the distance, by the next stairway, stood two figures with bags at their feet, staring at each other, not speaking, not touching.
“Good-bye,” she said. “Good-bye, lovers!” she said, finally. Then turned and went into the station to find a telephone and a taxicab.
Chapter Seventeen
Daniel was waiting for him in the Martinson’s coffee shop as he said he would be. He was sitting in a booth, facing out toward the station, a mostly empty cup of coffee on the table; he was reading Variety, intensely interested in some item. He looked so normal, in such an expected attitude, that for a moment Jonathan’s anger at him diminished. Vulnerable, he went and sat down. Daniel folded the paper and put it next to his seat, to give Jonathan his full attention. The expression on his face was unclear to Jonathan, who wasn’t certain he could trust it anyway.
“Any luck?” Dan asked.
So that was the tack he was going to take—the innocent bystander. Two could play that.
“I can’t find her anywhere,” Jonathan said. “What precisely did she say to you?”
“I told you before. There was so much noise down on the platform and it all happened so fast.”
“What were her words?” Jonathan insisted.
Dan didn’t waver. “She handed me your flight bag and wished me good luck or something. I thought she was talking about the films with the BBC. I wasn’t even sure who she was for a minute.”
Jonathan didn’t believe that. “Really?”
“I certainly wasn’t expecting to meet her. Or you either. I was on my way to beard you in your lair, remember?”
“And that’s all she said?”
“That’s all,” Dan said, relieved. Then, “No. Wait a minute. Of course that wasn’t all. She said to say good-bye to you.”
That was the key point. Jonathan’s entire body—stimulated into action looking for her the last three-quarters of an hour—suddenly sagged back, exhausted, into the booth.
“Just that? ‘Good-bye’?”
“No. ‘Good-bye, have a good life,’ or something like that. I’m afraid that’s what she said.” Dan’s face was a mask of sympathy and sincerity—feigned sincerity, Jonathan thought.
“Not call me later, or anything like that?”
“Why don’t you call her? If she left right after I saw her, she ought to be at home by now.”
“I couldn’t get her phone number. There were a dozen Lockes listed. None of the names seemed familiar. What is his name? Lord Bracknell?”
“Got me. Clifton? Paul?”
“No. That’s Lady Bracknell. Paula. No Paula Locke listed either.”
“Maybe we have it in the phone book at home,” Dan suggested. “We ought to have it somewhere, no? They’re our neighbors. What if their place went on fire at Sea Mist or something. I’m sure we can find it.”
Dan was right. Someone they knew must have the Lockes’ city home number. He’d get it and call Stevie and… What if Dan were telling the truth about her, though? What if she’d said what he told Jonathan, what if she had given him the flight bag and told him to relay her good-bye? Would she repeat that on the phone when he finally got through? Of course she would. Far more awkwardly. What could have prompted the sudden change? Seeing Dan at the station?
He looked at Dan, who was surreptitiously glancing down at Variety on the seat next to him.
“It’s some deal the two of you worked up,” Jonathan suddenly said, and as suddenly believed it.
“Me and your teenager?” Dan seemed amused. “When? When did we have the chance to?”
“I don’t know when.” Jonathan cast his thoughts back. Hadn’t she awakened him for Dan’s call last night? They could have talked then.
“What about when she picked up the phone?”
“Last night?” Dan said, sincerity galore.
Now Jonathan was convinced of it. “Sure, last night. I can just hear you two. I can hear you operating on her, she’d be half asleep, half frightened of you anyway.”
Dan lifted his coffee cup and tossed down the dregs grandly. “Do you think I actually expected to find some girl answering our phone? All
but six words we exchanged were an attempt to establish the fact that I hadn’t reached a wrong number.” He stood up. “Want a coffee? It clears up muddy thinking, you know.”
Jonathan felt defeated by Dan’s reasoning, which made far more sense than his own rather foolish accusation. Of course that must have happened. At first. But that still didn’t mean Dan hadn’t the opportunity to browbeat Stevie. Unless she got away as fast as she realized who was calling? Which made sense too.
“Well?” Dan asked. “Coffee?”
Jonathan looked around at the plastic tables and sordid customers. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be having this conversation either.
“Let’s go.”
When they had ascended to the street, Jonathan felt the oppressive warmth and incredible humidity. The air was so thick and heavy you could reach out and grab it—grab it, that is, if you wanted to get dirty, oily. Every car or bus that passed them on Eighth Avenue sent out exhaust fumes that were instantly assimilated into the already semigelatinous air, making him gag. This same weather had been a yellow fog at Sea Mist, so cool he and Stevie had to put on windbreakers at the train station only a few hours ago. It seemed so long ago, suddenly. In such another place.
Dan found them an air-conditioned cab and they rode in silence up to their apartment. Passersby seemed stunned by the heat, moving slowly, purposelessly, as though they were zombies. At the end of the ride, the cabbie and Dan spoke about the heat wave that had uncharacteristically struck the city in late September. For the first time since he’d returned, Dan’s speech had all of the British inflection Jonathan had heard increasingly in their telephone conversations. Even the driver thought so. When they got out and Dan paid him, the cabbie asked if they were Australian.
The apartment looked small—of course it would, after being in the outdoors for months, with the ocean and the bay’s seven miles to the horizon on either side, as the real walls to life in Sea Mist. Big as the apartment was, it seemed small, dark, oppressive.
Dan immediately went around turning on the air-conditioning outlets in each room; their soft humming filled up the place. Jonathan looked up the Lockes’ phone number in their address book, but only found the one for their Sea Mist home listed. He felt defeated again. He flipped the pages of the address book, hopping from page to page, trying to remember the names of some of their other neighbors. All he could recall was their former neighbor, Cass, who recently sold her house to a South American couple who had visited it once in July.
Dan was back in the living room by the time Jonathan had begun to dial.
“Why don’t you try the Sea Mist fire department? They must have all the residents’ phone numbers, no?”
Jonathan followed that suggestion. But he reached a recording that only gave him an emergency number. No one was at the fire house. It was a volunteer unit anyway, drawn by an elaborate fire alarm system in the community. Another little defeat. So, he dialed the police station, which also gave him an emergency number, plus the phone number of the main police force station on the mainland. No sense trying them.
It was dark outside when he tried to reach Cass for the third time without any success. Daniel was in the kitchen when Jonathan finally hung up the phone. He must have been talking to someone in London—his producer at the BBC. Daniel was being calm, firm, vaguely explanatory.
“What do we have to eat?” Jonathan brushed past where Dan sat astride a tall stool.
Dan said “Ta” and hung up. “Nothing, unless you can whip something gourmet out of ketchup, a box of poppers, and dead tonic water.”
Jonathan closed the refrigerator door. As he walked out of the kitchen, Dan spun on the stool and grabbed him around the waist. “Hey, babe, I’m sorry.”
Jonathan flinched at Dan’s touch, and Dan’s arms fell away. Embarrassment hung in the room between them as though it were tangible. Jonathan felt the first pang of guilt since he’d met Dan at the train station. He broke the silence first. “What did they say in London?”
“Nothing.” His advances rejected, Dan’s voice sounded chastened. “I’m to take however much time is needed, they told me. But no more than three days, or they’ll have my ass in court.”
“Three days for what?” And, as Dan didn’t answer, “You might as well go back tonight.”
“I want to take you back with me,” Dan said.
“What for? As proof that you aren’t just taking a sudden temperamental vacation?”
“I don’t need proof,” Dan said, with an edge of impatience, the first sign of any kind of crack in his role so far. He must have noticed it too, because he stood up and went to the bar. “How about a drink?”
“The tonic water is flat.”
“We’ll drink it neat. We could both use one.” He fixed them two vodkas and added ice cubes. They didn’t look at each other as they sipped. The strong liquor coursed through Jonathan’s chest and stomach. But it did calm him.
“So you’re just going to hang around for three days?”
‘‘I suppose.”
“What do you hope to accomplish?”
“Do you really want to know?” Dan asked.
Jonathan wasn’t completely certain he did want to know. “Sure,” he said.
“You’re expecting me to say that I’m staying here three days until you come to your senses, at which point, I’ll sweep you away on the Concorde.”
“Something like that,” Jonathan admitted.
“Well, that’s what I thought too, at first. But I see it’s not going to work. It’ll take longer before you come to your senses. You’re a mess, Jonathan, a seething, confused, emotional mess.”
“Thanks for the encouragement. I thought you were going to play Dr. Kildare, not the doctor in The Snake Pit.”
“The three days,” Dan went on, ignoring that statement, “are to give you time enough to contact your little teenager and to get your act straightened out between the two of you. With that settled, I’ll leave satisfied.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning you get hold of her, and she confirms what she told me at Penn Station.”
“Or she doesn’t confirm it.”
“Whatever,” Dan said airily.
“And you want to wait around for that?” Jonathan asked. “Even if you are missing three days of shooting?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Dan said smugly.
“You planned this. I don’t know how. But you did.”
“Wrong! For once, Jonathan, it’s your show. I’m just the audience. Now let’s be civilized and go have dinner somewhere. I’m starving what with all the suspense of boy meets girl, boys loses girl, and all that running around Penn Station.”
It was as though Dan had struck his face, and thrown the glove down at Jonathan’s feet.
“Don’t be so sure of yourself,” he warned, “or you may go back to London a very unhappy man.”
“I’m unhappy now!”
“I’m going to take a shower,” Jonathan announced. “The air here is like an oil slick.”
In the shower, he turned on the massage nozzle to full blast and basked under its ministrations, letting it batter away the tension that knotted his neck and back. At one point, with his palms flat up against the tile wall he leaned against, he suddenly felt so released, he let out a grunt, a sigh, and what he thought might be a sob. He stifled it. But he knew he felt frustrated: angry at Dan, at Stevie, at himself. He turned around, dialed the massage for a softer setting, and rubbed his skin hard with the loofah.
Drying off, he had an idea. If he called the Lockes’ number at Sea Mist, the operator there might be able to give him their Manhattan number. He wrapped a towel around himself, and went to the bedroom to try it.
“Certainly, sir,” the operator said. “The number in Manhattan is…”
He couldn’t believe his luck. He hung up, and dialed the number. Busy.
Buoyed up by this, he got dressed. When he reached Stevie, he would immediate
ly ask her out to dinner, not discuss anything on the phone. She’d been upset when she saw Dan. Right now she was probably crying her eyes out for letting herself be bamboozled by him. Either that, or during the train trip, as he’d slept, she’d reached some absurd conclusion, and decided to nobly abandon him to Dan, à la Sidney Carton ascending the stairs to the guillotine in A Tale of Two Cities—“It’s a far, far better thing than I have ever done…”
Dressed, Jonathan tried the number again. This time a machine answered: Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Locke. Of course, that was Lord Bracknell’s name! No mention of Stevie on the tape. Did she have her own unlisted phone? Didn’t most teenagers who still lived at home? He couldn’t really leave a message on this line. What if she hadn’t told her parents about him? Would she? If not, they might think he was calling about some emergency situation concerning their house in Sea Mist. Even worse, what if he did leave his name for Stevie, and she didn’t answer? What if she were sitting by the machine right now, waiting for his call, a call she would never respond to? No. She must be out with her parents, reconciling. The busy signal before must have been another incoming call being answered by the machine. He would call back in an hour or two.
“Ready?” Jonathan asked brightly when he emerged from the bedroom. Half scowling, Dan led them out of the apartment.
They descended and had gone two blocks along Central Park West before Jonathan asked where they were going.
“Balzac’s,” Dan answered. “It’s a new restaurant Ronnie and Dorian opened up on Columbus Avenue. I promised we’d drop in and try it out.”
Jonathan hadn’t even heard of Ronnie and Dorian before.
Balzac’s was two large storefronts on the ground level with the walls between them taken down, revealing six large supporting pillars. Story-and-a-half glass windows fronted the street, with doors on either side. One of these led to a raised platform with a semicircular bar enclosing a waiting area. A balcony swept up along the longest side, the rear wall of the restaurant, covered with dark cloth and lucite-framed watercolors. Chrome railings ran along the balcony, up and down the pillars, around other built-in furniture, and all around the room in one form or another—accenting the industrial carpeting, subdued colors, and dark, practical fabrics. The tables were lacquered black, as were the small, dim lamps on the table. Even the bud vases—some holding an orchid, some a calla lily—were lacquered or burnished metal. Every touch attested that Balzac’s was the very latest in what Dan called “haute fag” decor, which had begun in discos and tiny apartments years before, and had since swept the city. Because it was located on the Upper West Side, Balzac’s clientele was more mixed than if it were in the Village. Still, it was mostly peopled tonight by young male couples in the Lacoste shirt, blue Levi’s jeans outfit of the New York gay man. The waiters, though more casually dressed, seemed equally gay. The maître d’ might have come right off the pages of the latest Gentleman’s Quarterly, and must have at least been an unemployed actor. He checked Dan’s reservation—made, Jonathan supposed, only a short while ago, when he was in the shower—pointed to the table on the balcony they would have, and asked them to wait in the lounge.
Late in the Season Page 17
