For a brief, quite ridiculous moment, Edwee considers simply carrying the painting out of the apartment with him on its cord—it is rightfully his—down the elevator, out into the street, into a taxi, and home. But this he knows would be impossible. Lackeys such as Patrick and George might be bribable in terms of letting him into the apartment, but they would certainly draw the line at permitting him to remove anything, particularly a large oil painting. Even if Edwee could double-talk his, and the Goya’s, way past George and Patrick, its loss would be noticed immediately—that pale rectangle on the wall. The police would be summoned, the insurance company would be notified, the entire staff of the building would be questioned, and either Patrick or George would be forced to reveal that Mr. Edwin Myerson had been in the apartment on the day of the crime and had been seen carrying off a large, heavy, rectangular object. The jig would be up. Then would come the ghastly publicity, then the lie-detector test, then the search warrant for Edwee’s house. Next would come the trial, and the conviction—for grand theft, not even a white-collar crime—and the sentencing to the New York State Penitentiary at Ossining, and the years spent over a workbench making license plates. It would never work.
But, all at once, as he stares at those faint little squiggles of handwriting on the back of the canvas, the idea comes to him. Of course! Why had he never thought of it before? Simply because he had never thought of taking the picture off the wall and examining the back of it! Like all great notions, it was splendidly simple. Now, almost breathless with excitement over his plan, Edwee lifts the painting, mounts the steps again, and rehangs the Duchess of Osuna on her hook. Appropriate telephone calls must be made, just one or two. All the little details can be worked out later, though there isn’t much time. He strides toward the front door of the apartment.
The little dog tries to block his way, still barking noisily. Crouching on its forepaws, its rear end in the air, it snarls angrily at him. Suddenly it leaps forward, seizes his trouser leg between its teeth, and, with one sharp pull, succeeds in breaking the threads that secure the cuff to the trouser leg. Edwee gives the dog a sharp kick in the ribs, and the animal runs howling into its mistress’s bedroom.
Now Edwee knows what people mean when they say they feel as if they were walking on air. It is sheer euphoria, and Edwee marches—skips, floats, soars—out of the apartment, down the corridor to the elevators, where he jabs the button several times.
“Did you find everything in order, Mr. Myerson?” George asks him when he reaches the lobby.
“In quite perfect order, George,” he says warmly. “Yes, everything is quite perfect, thank you.”
“Taxi, Mr. Myerson?” Patrick asks him at the door.
“No, thank you, Patrick. It’s such a fine afternoon, I think I’ll walk.”
But this is a lie. Edwee is simply too impatient to wait for Patrick to whistle for a cab. He will find an east-bound taxi on 70th Street. Loping down Madison Avenue, one trouser cuff flapping in the breeze, Edwee Myerson sings—sings to himself on a perfect New York summer afternoon.
“I just want you to know that I’ll fight any attempt to take over my company,” Mimi says. She is trying to return this conversation to the level of the sort of business discussion she had originally intended it to be. “I’ve already taken the matter up with legal counsel. I’m quite serious, Michael. You see, I don’t want this company just for myself. I plan to retire in a few more years. I want it for my son. I want it for Badger.”
“Don’t give me that crap. You love the business you’re in; that’s why you’ve been so successful. You love the glamour, the power, the money—all of it. It’s like Christmas. What’s Christmas for, kiddo? It’s not just for giving presents, it’s for getting them. It’s for reaping the rewards of being good all year. That’s what people like you and me are in business for—seeing the results pile up. People like you and me, we like it to be Christmas every day. Do you remember saying that? Because that’s what you said to me once, a long time ago.”
“Really, Michael, I—”
“And how is your son?” he says, and she watches as his eyes seem to grow wider, darker, and all at once there it is again, unbidden, the Michael feeling, the feeling she thought she had outgrown, become immune and insensitive to. She quickly averts her eyes, and to hide a certain trembling that she feels in her fingertips, she reaches for her bag and gloves to go.
“Badger’s fine,” she says. “But now I’ve really got to get back to my office.”
As they are leaving the restaurant, she sees her husband at a corner table. He looks worried, staring darkly at the tablecloth, his napkin clutched in one hand. The young woman with him looks troubled, too, even angry, and her hands are balled into fists on the table. Yes, she is pretty, blond hair, cut straight, with bangs. Well, he has good taste in women, at least. She thinks wildly: Why did I choose Le Cirque? Was it because that was where I overheard Edwee say he’d seen them? Or was this restaurant Michael’s suggestion? She can no longer remember. Why would they choose this place for their rendezvous, if that’s what it is? Le Cirque is certainly not the place one would choose if one wanted to be inconspicuous. She turns away quickly, not wanting to catch his eye. At least this nameless woman now has a face.
“Someone you know?” Michael asks.
“No. I thought I did, but no.”
What have they been discussing? she asks herself. Has she just told him that she thinks she’s pregnant? Is she the type who would try to trap a man with a time-worn ploy like that?
“Come to Palm Beach with me,” Michael says. “Do you know why I’ve been buying your stock? Because I suddenly knew I had to see you again, and this was a quick way to do it. Remember the little white stars? I love you, Mimi. You never loved that shegetz you married, did you?”
Mark Segal is waiting for her at the elevator and follows her down the corridor to her office. “We’ve got a little problem,” he says.
“Oh? What’s that?”
“I’ve been on the phone with Dirk Gordon’s agent.”
“Who’s Dirk Gordon?”
“Our male model.” He follows her into her office. “His agent wants a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus for the scar. He says it could adversely affect his career.”
“No!” She slams her fist on her desk. She is still under the stimulus of her meeting with Michael. “No,” she repeats. “What career? He didn’t have any career until we found him! There are a hundred other models in New York we could use just as well. Tell his agent that, and tell him—tell him he’s got till five o’clock to drop this demand, or else the whole deal’s off.”
“I like a boss who makes quick decisions,” Mark says.
Mimi’s secretary is standing at the door. “You have a call from Charles, the captain at the Le Cirque restaurant.”
Mimi thinks: Did I leave something behind? She picks up the telephone.
“I have a very grave apology to make to you, Miss Myerson,” he says. “I feel we may have caused you great embarrassment. You see, I just had a call from Mr. Horowitz, and he was quite upset, and quite rightly so. I had no idea, you see, that Mr. Bradford Moore was your husband. Had I known, I would have alerted you that Mr. Moore would also be lunching here today. But I have spoken with my waiters, and they are very confident that Mr. Moore did not see you lunching with Mr. Horowitz. Still, I do apologize, Miss Myerson.”
“My husband,” she says quickly, “was lunching with a client, a Mrs. Sturtevant, whose divorce he is handling. Mr. Horowitz and I were lunching on another business matter. My husband and I were both aware that we were lunching in the same place but chose not to interrupt each other’s business meetings. No apology is necessary, I assure you.”
“I see. Thank you, Miss Myerson. Le Cirque appreciates your patronage.”
Returning to her apartment, Fleurette Myerson makes her way across her living room, touching the familiar objects with outstretched hands, with Itty-Bitty leaping happily at her heels. Suddenly she enc
ounters an unfamiliar object. The library steps are out of place. Someone has moved them against the wall.
It cannot have been one of the maids. The maids come in the morning to do up the rooms, and the night maid appears promptly at seven to turn down her bed. It was either Nonie or Edwee. She sits down in her favorite chair, thinking what to do next. Then she picks up the hotel phone.
“Yes, Mrs. Myerson?”
“Were either of my children in my apartment this afternoon?”
“Mr. Edwin Myerson came by for a few minutes, ma’am,” the clerk says.
She replaces the receiver on its hook. Now what to do? Is there no one left in this family whom she can trust or turn to?
Then she remembers Mr. Greenway, who seemed so kind. Perhaps he will have a suggestion as to what she ought to do. She could tempt him by remembering more of the things that were in her husband’s diary. She could tell him exactly how Adolph forced his brother Leo out of the business, which is one of the things Mr. Greenway seems to want to know. Mimi seems fond of this young man. Perhaps he can provide her with a bridge to peace with Mimi.
9
In her apartment at 200 East 66th Street, Nonie Myerson and Roger Williams are in her bedroom, with the curtains drawn, where they have just made love. Roger has shifted his weight to one side and has lighted a cigarette. Normally, Nonie does not allow anyone to smoke in her apartment, but of course Roger is an exception.
Making love is perhaps the wrong term, because love had very little to do with it. Nonie considers herself a sensible woman, a realistic woman, and is cynical enough to know the difference between a sexual act and love. The sexual act is a glandular function, and love is—well, love is something Nonie has learned to distrust over the years; it has betrayed her too often. Many men have made love to Nonie Myerson and some of them have said they were in love with her, and a few of these she has thought she loved. But this is quite different. She does not love Roger, and Roger does not love her. What they have performed together is more like a business handshake, a quid pro quo. He makes love to her (What else to call it? Every other term that comes to mind is vulgar.) because he assumes she expects him to, and she lets him because she knows that is what he assumes. That is all. Oh, she admits that she finds him attractive. He is good-looking in a hard-boiled sort of way, lean and well-built, with chiseled pectorals, tight buttocks, and long, splendidly muscled legs. What older woman wouldn’t be delighted to be taken to bed by a virile, youthful specimen like that? And, to be sure, when they are making love, he whispers husky comments to her such as “You’re terrific.… You’re so beautiful.…” But Nonie is not fool enough to be taken in by any of that. That does not add up to love. No, each wants the other for different reasons. She wants him for his demonstrable ability—by making a call to Zurich, then to Chicago, in quick succession—to make eight thousand dollars a minute. He is her golden opportunity to get back into the business world, where she belongs, because business is in her blood, inherited, no doubt, from her father. And Roger wants her because, let’s face it—Nonie most certainly does—she is a Myerson, and a likely avenue to the kind of money he needs to put his talents to work. The sex is incidental, just a way of demonstrating that they trust each other, want to work together, that each wants something that the other has; a pleasant prelude to exploring more serious possibilities, a handshake.
This afternoon, of course, she could tell that his heart wasn’t really in it. His performance was halfhearted, even listless, and she is sure he didn’t come, only pretended to. And this, no doubt, is because she had been unable to bring him any good news. He lies beside her on the bed, naked under the single sheet, his erection gone, the cigarette drooping from between his lips. She touches his shoulder with a fingertip to reassure him and says, “That was lovely, darling.”
He swings his bare legs over the side of the bed and sits there for a moment, shaping his ash on the edge of an ashtray. Then he says, “Let’s face it, Nonie. This isn’t working out.”
She sits up as well. “What do you mean?” she says. “What isn’t working out?”
“It doesn’t look as though we’re going to get any money out of your mother.”
“Just be patient, darling! These things take time. I’ve got a few more aces up my sleeve. I know how to work on her.”
“I don’t like the way things are going.”
“She’s always come through before! It just takes time.”
“What if she’s telling the truth? What if she just doesn’t have the money?”
“How could she not have the money? She got trust funds from each one of her Guggenheim uncles, as well as from her father, and she had seven uncles! Daddy … dipped into them a bit before he died, but Mimi reestablished them for her. She got nearly a third of Daddy’s Miray shares, and think what they must be worth now! She’s loaded, Roger; she’s the richest Myerson of us all, except perhaps for Mimi.”
“And Mimi is—I mean, I suppose there’s no point in trying to approach Mimi?”
She hesitates. “The truth,” she says, “is that Mimi’s never liked me.”
“Why not?”
“It’s because of her mother, because of Alice. Alice has always been such a … difficult woman. None of the family could ever get along with her. Alice is an alcoholic, and she was always coming around, hat in hand, begging for money from everyone—from Mother, from Edwee, from me. Don’t ask me why. Daddy paid Henry a good salary, but he and Alice never seemed to have any money. Because of her drinking, I suppose. She’d trot little Mimi around—literally, from door to door—talking about how poor they all were, asking for money. It got so we’d all practically run and hide when we saw Alice coming, with her little girl in tow! Mimi grew up resenting us. It’s not that Mother and Daddy weren’t generous with them. Why, they bought presents for Mimi that were nicer—nicer than anything they ever gave to me! Alice just couldn’t seem to handle money. But Mimi’s very protective of her mother, and she’s well taken care of now.”
He is shaking his head back and forth.
She leans back against the pillows. “Isn’t it ironic?” she says.
“Isn’t what ironic?”
“If I’d taken over the company after Henry died, I could have been where Mimi is now—in the driver’s seat!”
“Yeah. Well, you didn’t, and this whole thing isn’t working out, Nonie.”
“It will! Just give me a few more days, Roger, to work on Mother. Let me work on this nursing home thing. She’s terrified of going into a nursing home, and if I can make her think—”
He is still shaking his head. “This is no way to get a business started, with a lot of goddam threats, with a blackmail—”
“Who’s threatening? I’m just saying—”
“You told me that getting the backing from your mother would be a piece of cake, Nonie. It’s turning out to be a goddam can of worms. I’m going to start looking for a new financial partner.”
“You can’t!” she cries in a panic. “You can’t do that! I’m your financial partner!”
“Yeah, well, where’s the financing? Look, I need to get this thing off the ground. I can’t sit around, day after day, twiddling my thumbs, waiting for you to—”
“Just a few more days. Give me through the weekend. Give me till Monday. I’ll have it by then, I promise.”
He sits there, with his back to her, still shaking his head.
He can’t, she thinks. He can’t back out now; they’ve only just begun. She still knows too little about him. He is terribly difficult to reach. All she has for him is an unpublished telephone number, which he has cautioned her to give out to no one, and when she calls this number it is invariably answered by a disembodied male voice, not even his own, on a machine that says, “You have reached five-five-five-one-eight-eight-oh. If you wish to leave a message …” She has not been to his house, doesn’t even know where he lives, though the telephone prefix indicates it is somewhere in lower Manhattan. Why this secrecy? He
has hinted that it has something to do with an old girlfriend who has been bothering him. She does not know whether he is married or not, though he wears no wedding band. He has been very unforthcoming with details about his past, his childhood, his education, his family, though she has told him everything about hers. All she knows about him is that she met him three weeks ago at a cocktail party, that they happened to leave at the same time, that it was raining, that he suggested they share a cab and he would drop her off, that she asked him up for a nightcap, that he told her he was a foreign currency trader, temporarily between jobs, looking for backing for a new venture, and then one thing led to another, and here they are.
He stands up, stubbing out his cigarette in the ashtray. “Sorry,” he says, “but it’s no go. I’m going to find another partner.”
“You can’t!” she screams. And then, “You mean you’re going out to look for another rich woman, who’ll let you fuck her, who’ll try to help you the way I’ve been trying. And then if she doesn’t help you just like that, you’ll walk out on her? Well, you can’t do that to me, you gigolo bastard! I’m not going to let you do that to me, you gigolo bastard, because you and I have an agreement. We agreed to be partners in this, full partners, fifty-fifty. We have a contract!”
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