by Warren Adler
He made no apologies for his wealth and never felt the slightest guilt about the fortune he had acquired. She was in charge of charity giving and he gave her carte blanche, although he would have preferred to keep his name out of it. His ego simply did not need the stroking.
In the past week he had relived their courtship, marriage and life together so many times that his mind finally refused to recycle the memories. Mysteriously, they had become different people from the days of their youth, or so it seemed. At this moment he wasn't so sure. He felt more like Sammy Goodwin, only son of Gladys and Seymour. "My Sammy," Gladys had called him. My Sammy got all As, she would tell the girls, her cronies at their mah-jongg games. To her, Sammy could do no wrong.
Her "my Sammys" had become a litany. They made my Sammy a partner, she had boasted. Then, a series of "Can you imagine my Sammy? He bought us a place in Florida." He was hardly a What Makes Sammy Run? Nor did he ever consider himself anything more than lucky, with a flair for numbers. He was always good at arithmetic, a talent inherited from poor, luckless Seymour, who had zero talent for making money or even holding a job.
In fact, when he analyzed his so-called success, his accumulation of wealth, he characterized it as a kind of poetic justice for the treatment his father had received at the hands of the bosses. Never once after he graduated from college as an economics major had he even considered spending a lifetime working for other people, being subject to the whims and foibles of bosses. The first chance he got, he went into his own business, then businesses, then big businesses. It didn't matter what kind of businesses, except that they had to make money.
If he had a talent, it was in picking good people. He made money on their labor, their ingenuity and their creativity, and he rewarded them handsomely. So he had made money, lots of money. At this stage it was somewhere between fifty and sixty million, a pittance in comparison to the dot-comers and computer zillonaires, but more than enough for two or three lifetimes. What did it matter now? Once it had seemed to be a goal, his passion; now it struck him as quite meaningless and of lesser and lesser importance as he grew older. In fact, it was becoming more of a burden than a comfort.
To Gladys and Seymour, Sammy's "success" was as natural as his daily bowel movement. He had never given them a moment's worry and their expectations of his success was simply the natural order of things, Sammy's destiny. The odd thing about his parents was that they never craved the creature comforts he was easily able to give them, preferring to live modestly, more on the scale of their friends, ordinary people who still counted their pennies.
Sitting now on the terrace outside his bedroom, he contemplated his destiny. Life, at the moment, was shit. All his money was so much garbage. In fact, he had been feeling this for years, even when Anne was alive. He pushed such thoughts from his mind. It wouldn't be fair to her memory.
It was simply inappropriate to contemplate the other life he had lived, his secret life. Not once had he given Anne a hint of this secret life, the yearnings, the secret longings and the numerous culminations among the vast worldwide army of prostitutes he had frequented. He had been crafty and cautious and secretive and had never let this other world interfere with his mainstream life, the life that Anne had constructed for him.
There was a moment when she lay dying that he wanted to tell her, to explain the drives and compulsions that led to this other life. But he could not summon the courage. He would never dare the risk.
He had justified this secret life on the grounds of personal necessity, and he had been clever and lucky enough to avoid it biting back and embarrassing Anne by its revelation. He could never abide the thought of hurting Anne in any way. There had been guilt in it and justification and torturous remorse, but he had miraculously escaped any emotional involvement and, also miraculously, any disease. Nor had he blamed Anne for his resorting to such habits.
Actually, he had reasoned, the sheer excess of this secret life had probably increased the tranquility and happiness of his life with Anne. They had never really argued, although at times he had expressed himself forcefully, if only for appearances' sake. When, in his present state, thoughts about this other life surfaced, he pushed them from his mind as he had always done.
Was this simply a testament to his cleverness, or his hypocrisy? Remorse was eating at him and, at the moment, he was defenseless against it.
If he had paid for this secret life in any tangible way it had been through the repetitive dream of Anne's infidelity with a young stranger whose face was impossible to recall when he was awake, although the dream remained vivid. In the dream Anne insulted and reviled him as she made love to the stranger. It was an odd and sometimes horrific dream, perhaps a subconscious transference of guilt. It came frequently when she was alive but, so far, had been dormant since her death, although he did expect its return. He wondered if it would be as terrible and nightmarish as it was when she was alive.
As he sat on the terrace, hoping that his mind would empty itself of his thoughts, he heard the door chimes. Carmen would answer it, ask the caller to wait, then come upstairs to tell him who it was. If it was something about the house, he had instructed Carmen to handle it by herself. Invariably he told her to send the caller away.
After awhile he heard her heavy tread on the stairs, and a moment later she was on the terrace.
"Woman say she come about madame's clothes," she said.
"Clothes?"
It took him a few moments to absorb the information.
"Say to tell you her name was Grace Tino-something. You know a Grace?"
"Grace. Grace," he repeated, trying to retrieve the vague memory. "Tell her to call next week. No, next month. Maybe never. Send her away."
Carmen turned and started moving to the door. Then he remembered.
"That Grace! About the clothes. She's going to dispose of madame's clothes."
He mulled it over quickly. Perhaps eliminating Anne's clothes would hasten him through this debilitating grief. He had told the children to take what they wanted. He assumed that they had. He remembered what the woman had said about Anne promising the clothes to the charity. The needy in designer clothes? He chuckled at the idea. Anne, too, would have had a good laugh over that one. Why not? Without the labels, they were simply clothes. Wasn't it the labels that gave them cachet and made them expensive? God, would he be open to argument over that one.
Once he had been in that business. It was all smoke and mirrors. All public relations bullshit. The designers had become franchises, products of the celebrity mill selling everything from perfume to T-shirts. Next would come toilet paper, designer toilet paper for tender, pampered assholes, or was it already out there?
The clothes were contracted out to sweatshops in Third-World countries where wages were a fraction of what they were in the countries where the finished goods were bought. But when the magic labels were sewed in, abracadabra, the price went through the roof. Celebrity consumers, he thought bitterly. Someday there might be a market for death masks, fingerprints, maybe even the bodily wastes of the worshipped ones. Or the body parts. He was getting morbid and was thankful for Carmen's interruption.
"What should I say, mister?" She always called him mister. He often wondered whether she could pronounce his name. She had waited patiently for his decision.
"Tell her to come on up."
"Me make some coffee?"
He shook his head. He merely wanted to show her where the clothes were hung. He wasn't interested in conversation, especially with someone he could barely remember.
"What was her name again, Carmen?"
"Grace."
"Right. Grace. Send her up."
Carmen shrugged and went out of the room.
He got up from the chair and went into his bedroom, glancing at himself in the mirror. He looked awful. His hair was awry, dirty-looking, and he had a three-day growth of beard. So what? he shrugged.
There was a knock on his bedroom door.
"It's open," he
called.
He recognized her instantly and gave her a very cursory inspection. Black-haired, well-groomed. He registered the observation casually.
"You said I should wait a few days before I called."
"Did I?"
"I tried to telephone a number of times. All I got was a message. I didn't leave any. At first I thought you had gone away. Then I decided to stop by today."
He sensed that her eyes were studying him. He knew he was in a sorry state. As a reflex, he pulled his robe tight around his chest.
"Very resourceful, Grace," Sam said. Did he detect a note of sarcasm in his tone? He hadn't meant it that way. He led the way to the closet and slid open one of the doors.
"Help yourself."
"I'll inventory everything," Grace said, "and give you a receipt."
"It's all right. You needn't bother."
"No bother. I believe you get an income-tax deduction."
"How thoughtful," he muttered. "But please don't. It would be just one more complication."
She hesitated, continuing to study him.
"Pretty messy, aren't I?"
"Considering what you've been through ... and I did barge in here."
She had good bones, he noticed. The lowering late-afternoon sun caught the glint of hazel eyes, or were they green?
"I'm going to make sure that her clothes go to the right charities. That was a condition of her promise."
"Was it?"
"She lived for helping others," Grace said. She stood through a long silence but made no move to begin work on the clothes.
"I know," he said.
"How are you managing?" Grace asked.
"Can't you see?"
"From here, not very well."
She put her hands on her hips. She was wearing a silk blouse and a single strand of pearls around her neck. Her skirt was dark and tight-fitting, short, slightly above her knees. It occurred to him, more as a reflex than an observation, that she was reasonably attractive, pleasant.
"You'll find lots of designer clothes. Anne was always impeccable in her taste. But I doubt if the homeless will have occasion to wear her gowns."
The woman hesitated a moment. A nerve began to palpitate in her cheek and she looked uncomfortable. She turned away for a moment, then looked at him again.
"Perhaps we'll find a way of converting the gowns to cash and use the money for other things."
"I'll say this," Sam said, "you people sure are dedicated. Anne was like that. Very dedicated."
He walked toward the door to the terrace. When he got there, he turned and looked at her again. It felt odd seeing this strange woman in his bedroom. Except for Carmen there had not been a strange woman in his bedroom since Anne died, not alone with him as she was now. He was suddenly reminded of his grief and shook his head.
"She ... she, ah ... died here," he said. Providing this information seemed inexplicable. "Three weeks she lay here. I had nurses around the clock. She told me she didn't want to die in the hospital. I agreed and took her home. I think being here actually extended her life." He shrugged and chuckled dryly. "A week maybe. But there were no life supports. Neither of us wanted that."
"Nor would I," Grace said. "At that point, I'd want nature to take its course."
"Anyway, we had a good life together. What more can you ask?"
Sam turned and looked out of the window at the sea. Listening for a moment, he could hear its rhythm, the splash of the curling waves against the sand. He started to open the door to the terrace. In one sense, he thought suddenly, it had been a life of compromise, a negotiated life, but satisfactory in every way. She had been his anchor, his underpinning, his home base. The unfaithful part of him belonged to another life, another compartment, another plane, perhaps even another person.
"I guess you were luckier than most," Grace said. When he turned, he noted that she had changed her position in the room. She seemed to be standing in a puddle of light, glowing slightly orange from the lowering sun, which came obliquely through a side window.
"You say that as if you've had a bad experience with marriage."
When the woman had arrived in his bedroom, he didn't want to talk. Suddenly he felt himself becoming inexplicably loquacious. It surprised him. Maybe it was the situation of having this strange woman in his bedroom. He felt no desire, no interest. This would not be the place. Not here, where Anne had died. Even in his secret life he had avoided such proximity. Indeed, the entire state of Florida was verboten.
"I'm divorced," the woman said. "Not very pleasant, I can tell you."
"So you're not sorry."
"No way."
"Does he give you alimony?"
It seemed, even from him, an oddly inappropriate question, and he detested himself for asking it. Always money, he thought. He was immersed in money, drowning in the idea of money.
The woman hesitated, and he noted that she turned briefly, as if to avoid his glance. He saw her in profile now, face and body, noting that she had a fine womanly figure. Again, he shunted the thought away. Was he so conditioned by his secret life that he could not control a knee-jerk reaction? He felt foolish and disgusted. Worse, guilty. Not here, he admonished himself. But the woman insisted on answering.
"I get more than enough to keep my daughter and myself," Grace said. "We don't live lavishly, but we live very, very well." She seemed to have added the last remark as a necessary qualifier, offering him her indifference to his wealth.
"Good. Then he's doing the right thing by you."
She smiled and nodded.
"Here I am babbling and you have work to do."
He moved across the room and passed by her, close enough to smell the aroma of her perfume. Was the scent familiar? He wasn't sure. When he got to the closet, he flicked a switch and the light came on.
"I couldn't bear to give you the grand tour of my late wife's closet, but it goes well back." He shook his head and sighed. "In order to get it big enough we had to build a room below it. We call it a sun room. Actually it's redundant. It was only built to support the closet. You will note, too, a double moving rack. There is a switch to operate it just to the right of the door. Tell you the truth, I've never really been inside it, except at the beginning, before it was stocked with her clothes. I've always considered it Anne's private place."
"I understand," Grace said. "I wouldn't want someone else poking around in my closet, especially a husband."
"She loved clothes. It was her grand passion."
"Yes," the woman said. "It was apparent to everyone who knew her. She was always magnificently dressed."
"Did you ever see her wear the same outfit twice? She had personal shoppers in New York, Paris and Milan who sent her clothes. She was always sending stuff back and forth."
He moved away from the closet and went back to the terrace door and again prepared to open it. Then he turned once again.
"I'd like to know how you're going to cart this stuff out of here. You'll need a truck."
"I haven't got a truck. I guess I'll have to do it in stages. Do you mind? It might be inconvenient."
"Inconvenient?" He paused. "I don't think so. Actually, I suppose I should get off my ass and start moving around. I've been holed up here for more than a week."
He rubbed his chin. "I've got the whiskers to prove it."
"I guess it's not easy to get yourself going again.... I mean ... you know what I mean. Your life has been so radically ... changed."
"Very much so," he said, shrugging. "I never had to think about what came next down here. Anne took care of everything. I don't know which end is up. She programmed me. She was my scheduler. Now, hell, I'm way off schedule. Nights melt into days. I haven't even read the papers or watched television. Everything seems totally irrelevant." He felt some dike breaking inside of him. "Shall I tell you something? I wished it was me who went first. She would be able to handle things better than I can. I think basically that women are more organized. At least she was." He paused, stud
ied her, then asked, "Are you organized?"
"I try to be."
"You look organized," Sam said. "I had a secretary who was very organized. But a few years ago I gave all that up. I didn't want anyone organizing my business life except me. I use a computer now to keep track.... "He chuckled wryly. "I haven't kept track for a few weeks. For all I know, all my investments have gone down the drain. Fact is, I don't really care."
"I suppose it's all part of the grieving process," Grace said.
"Have you ever lost anyone ... Grace ... what is your last name?"
"Sorentino."
"Sorentino? Italian?"
"Italian descent. From Baltimore. Both parents died recently."
"Mine are gone as well. Hell, nobody lives forever, do they? They're buried in West Palm Beach, just across the inland waterway. Kind of a very ... well ... unfancy cemetery. Not that it matters. You saw where Anne is buried. That's the fancy place. I thought she'd be more comfortable there." He shook his head. "This grieving thing makes you crazy. You don't accept the idea that they're dead and gone forever. Not right away. To tell you the truth, my folks still seem alive to me as well. I think of them a great deal. Did you know, Grace, that as you grow older you think more about your parents than when you were younger? At least that's the way it is with me. I keep remembering my early life, sometimes with such emotion that I actually tear up over the terrible loss of it. I guess I'm getting old."
"You don't look old," Grace said.
"Sixty-four. I'm eligible for early Social Security and I can get senior-citizen airline coupons, both of which, as you can see, I don't need. But I do like the idea of it. Not to mention the movies, where I get in at a discount. That doesn't bother me as much. Most of the films they're making today are hardly worth paying for ... at least from the perspective of an old fart like me. Anne used to be too embarrassed to get me the discount ticket. She just missed being a senior citizen. She would have been sixty-two in July."
He was speaking to her still standing near the terrace door. She, too, had stood stock still at the closet's entrance, her feet at right angles in a kind of a model pose, as if she were exhibiting herself.
