Fast Start, Fast Finish

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “The girl’s head,” he said quietly, “is my sister. Painted, I guess you’d say, from memory.”

  “I don’t care what it is. It’s good.”

  “And that’s the—only one?”

  “The only one I’d consider including in an artist’s first one-man show, Mr. Lord,” she said.

  “I see,” he said. Then, carefully, he said, “Miss Mirisch, I can do more pictures like that.”

  “Can you?”

  “Yes.” He stood up and faced her. “Yes,” he said. “Because I happen to think I have something too! If I can do more like that one, will you—”

  “Give you a one-man show? I’d need at least eighteen pictures for a one-man show—preferably more, so we can pick the best eighteen.”

  “I can do as many as you want! Because I want a one-man show this fall!”

  “Eighteen by August? Because that’s when I start making my fall schedule. In August.”

  “Of course eighteen by August.”

  “Why do you feel you must push yourself so? Or is someone else pushing you? What is it?”

  “Because I’ve got to have it!” he said desperately. “I’ve got to!”

  Her green eyes closed briefly, and then she said, “Oh, my dear man, I’ve trapped you, haven’t I? I don’t want eighteen little heads by August, and neither do you! I want you to paint, if you can paint—but, my dear man, not eighteen little-sister heads from memory. Eighteen pictures. Come on,” she said. “I’ve been much, much too hard on you. Let me buy you a drink.”

  “He’s a painter,” Nancy was saying, “and he’s having his first show in the fall at the Myra Mirisch Gallery—I guess you’ve heard of that. It’s terribly exciting, because it’s what he’s waited for all his life. All the important art critics will be there, of course, for the opening, and he’ll finally be getting the national recognition he deserves.”

  “And you can bask in some of the reflected glory,” Dr. Harding said.

  “Oh, I intend to! Up till recently, he’s always been in the advertising business—in various jobs. But that’s such a terrible business—you wouldn’t believe some of the things that go on. Terrible, especially for a man of Charlie’s genius, who’s always been a serious painter at heart.”

  She had a sudden vision of him on the cover of Time. Well, was that so far-fetched? The only thing was, of course—the only thing that had ever bothered her from the beginning—that he somehow didn’t look like a painter. She remembered when she first met him, when he had told her he was a painter, thinking, But he doesn’t look the role. She didn’t know what she expected a painter to look like, exactly, but it wasn’t like Charlie. When she thought of painters she thought of sad-eyed Rembrandt gazing from his shadows. Of cynical, world-weary Goya. Of crazy, bearded, one-eared Van Gogh. Of barrel-chested Picasso in his bikini. But Charlie Lord (and it didn’t even seem like a painter’s name, somehow), young and scrubbed and clean-jawed, his hair crisply crew-cut, in his pressed flannels and light-blue blazer and his brown-and-white saddle shoes (it was in the days when college boys still wore them, before they went to white bucks, before these too went out of style), had looked like a youth in an ad for shaving lotion. He looked so—there was no other word for it—conventional. He looked like an advertising man.

  “Where was I?” she said. “Oh, well, around the end of nineteen-sixty, Charlie was offered the job of head art director at one particular agency. The president of the agency made him the offer, and we both believed it was bona fide. But it turned out, as Charlie discovered, that he was caught in a squeeze play. There was another man being considered for the job also, and the president just wanted to pit the two men against each other! Can you imagine anything more underhanded? Well, the minute Charlie realized that the deal was a phony one, that it just stank with dirty office politics, he naturally went right to the president and gave him his ultimatum. Charlie said—” She broke off, laughing nervously. “Listen to me,” she said. “I vowed I wasn’t going to dwell on the past, and here I am again! It’s just that it was such a dirty trick they played on Charlie!”

  “Maybe you realize that we can never really separate the past from the present, Mrs. Lord,” Dr. Harding said. He leaned forward in his leather chair and folded his hands on the desk. The way he did that made her look at her watch, and she realized that the hour was over.

  Whenever Charlie Lord had bad news or a disappointment, the first thing he always did was head for the nearest tennis court to work off his steam on that soft white ball. Once, in college, he had been one of the top-ranking players on the East Coast, and he still had his form. So, after leaving Myra Mirisch, he headed for Grand Central and the Westmount train. Nancy had left the car for him at the Westmount station, and arriving there, he drove directly to the Westmount Country Club. In the locker room he stripped, showered, and changed to tennis whites and went out in search of someone who would give him a game. It was four o’clock in the afternoon, and there were not too many people at the club. But he finally found a young man—just a boy, really, no more than twenty-two or -three, who looked Charlie over somewhat skeptically and then said, “Well, why not?”

  Charlie Lord had been playing tennis since he was ten years old, and was good, and knew it. This boy was good also—a fast, strong, and extremely intense player. But he had an annoying habit of criticizing his opponent—of crying “Foot fault!” to Charlie’s serves from the opposite side of the court. He would also comment on Charlie’s game as they played. “You’ve got a good delivery there, sir, but you’re weak on your follow-through,” he said at one point. Finally, after the fifth or sixth cry of “Foot fault!” Charlie said, “Hey, cut it out, please. I know when I’m foot-faulting.”

  “In the absence of a linesman, it’s customary for the receiver to decide whether the service is good or not, sir. That’s the rule, sir—Rule Eight, I believe, sir.”

  “Jesus,” Charlie muttered under his breath. And then, “We’re playing for fun, aren’t we? This isn’t a tournament.”

  “Sorry, sir. That’s how we were taught at Yale.”

  “You on the Yale team?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Charlie walked back behind the baseline and served again. It was hard and accurate, putting the ball squarely in the court. “Foot fault!” his opponent called out once more.

  But, in the end, Charlie beat him two sets out of three. They shook hands, and Charlie headed for the bar and ordered a Scotch and soda. He was nursing his drink, staring into the pale gold depths, when a woman’s voice behind him said, “Well, hello there, Charlie!”

  He turned on his stool and for a moment didn’t recognize her hearty, leathery face.

  “Genny McCarthy,” she said. “Remember me? From the Willeys’ party last Sunday?”

  “Oh, sure,” he said. “Nice to see you. Sit down and let me buy you a drink.”

  She was wearing a faded blue denim golf skirt, which she flipped up over the bar stool as she sat down beside him, revealing a long expanse of hard, muscular thigh. “Vodka on the rocks,” she ordered. And then, “By the way, did you know Jane Willey missed a diamond wristwatch after that party?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Uh-huh. Of course Jane’s a nice gal, but she’s a damned fool. It’s perfectly obvious her maid took it, but she refused to believe it. ‘But Mary’s been with me for years!’ she says. Hell, Jane’s just a little nobody from nowhere who happened to marry a guy who makes eighty thousand a year. She’s had no experience with servants. She doesn’t know them like I do. You can have them for years and years and they’ll never touch a thing, and then suddenly, all at once, something will happen—you never know what the hell it is, a boyfriend who’s putting the squeeze on them for some dough or some damned thing—and they’ll swipe something, the first little old thing they see. You’ve got to face that with these people—it’s the way they are. Thanks, Mike,” she said to the bartender, who placed her drink in front of her. And then, turning to
Charlie, she said, “I didn’t know you’d joined the club.”

  “I haven’t yet. I’m just here on a guest card.”

  “Going to join?”

  “I think so—maybe.”

  “Well,” Genny said, “I hope you enjoy it if you do. A lot of the members are pompous asses, but some are okay.”

  “Like any club,” Charlie said.

  “But a little worse than most,” she said. She was a dry, well-wrinkled woman, tanned, her short brown hair white-streaked from the sun. “How are things going?” she asked him.

  “Very well,” he said. “In fact, extremely well. I just beat a kid who’s at least fifteen years younger than me, and it turns out he was captain of the Yale tennis team.”

  “You must mean Buddy Irwin,” she said. “Did he tell you he was captain of the team? I hate to disappoint you, but he wasn’t. He was on it, but not captain.”

  He raised his drink and smiled at her. “I guess I just wanted to think he was captain,” he said.

  The bar was filling up now. The commuter trains were getting in, and men in business suits, carrying raincoats and attaché cases, were meeting wives whose day had been spent on the golf course, or on the tennis courts, or at the bridge tables of the Westmount Country Club.

  “Notice how those lousy bitches are looking at me?” Genny said. “Tomorrow morning they’ll be hot on the phone: ‘Guess what?’” she mimicked, “‘Genny McCarthy—having a drink at the club with a strange man!’ Well, to hell with them.”

  “Right,” he said, beginning to like her. “To hell with them.”

  An astonishingly beautiful woman with chestnut hair, wearing a pale-yellow tennis dress, moved swiftly through the bar, looking neither to her right nor to her left. Following her were two blond young men who looked so much alike they might have been twins. This group took a table in the farthest, darkest corner of the bar.

  Following the woman with his eyes, Charlie said, “She looks exactly like—”

  “Doesn’t just look like, my dear. Is. It’s Tessa Morgan. She’s leased the Melville estate for a year, though God knows why.”

  “Well, well,” Charlie said.

  “I’m betting she’ll get the hell out of Westmount as soon as that lease is up. But she just finished a picture in Sicily, and I guess she figured she’d try a taste of country living for a while.”

  “So Westmount does have its chic international set,” he said.

  Genny laughed. “And the damned funniest thing is about this club. They’ve invited her to use it, you see, but now the big debate is—do we want an actress, with that big scarlet ‘A’ stamped all over her, in our club? A stage actress, maybe—but not a movie actress! You wouldn’t believe how many meetings these pompous asses on the membership committee have had over her. Well, they’ll finally decide, I bet, to ask her to join. But at that point she’ll be fed to the teeth, jaws, and gums with dear little Westmount. And she’ll have the distinct pleasure of saying no thanks. I’d like to see the expressions on some of these pompous asses’ faces then.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Because I’ll give you a clue. If they invite you to join, Charlie, you’d better decide once and for all if you want to. Because if you say no to this club, you never get another chance.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “I like your wife,” Genny said.

  “She liked you too,” he said.

  “She’s my kind of gal. We see eye to eye on a lot of things. She tells me you’re having a show in the fall.”

  He took a quick swallow of his drink. “That’s right.”

  “And between now and then?”

  “Work,” he said. “Lots of work to do.…”

  “Do you ever paint portraits?”

  “Yes, I’ve done portraits,” he said.

  “If I told you there’s a very rich and famous dame that’s looking for someone to do her portrait, what would you say?”

  “Well, it would depend. On who this rich and famous dame is.”

  “But you’d be interested?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  She pointed behind her with a jog of her elbow. “Tessa Morgan.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “I’ve gotten to know her pretty well. She’s a pretty decent dame—if she could ever forget the fact that she’s so bloody beautiful. And get over the idea that every man in the world wants to lay her. She wants a new portrait; she told me so.”

  “I see,” he said again.

  “It would give you something to do between now and your show, if you’re looking for something to do,” Genny said. “And she’d pay you a pile of money.”

  He nodded.

  “And—hell, I don’t know anything about art or the sort of stuff that’s good for a painter’s career. But a portrait of Tessa Morgan might not be a bad little showcase for you. Am I right?”

  “Yes,” he said, “I think you are.”

  “Interested?”

  “Yes. Very much.”

  “Well, then.” She took another sip of her vodka. “Then I’ll mention it to her.”

  “Why, thanks. Thanks very much, Genny.”

  She gave him her crinkly grin and winked at him. “Don’t mention it. Just part of the McCarthy Service,” she said.

  3

  Sometimes it wasn’t enough to make yourself be tough and hard and cynical. Heading home to face his wife, he decided that a bit more was required—a kind of pluck, perhaps. It was on whatever reserves of pluck he had that he now needed to call. Sometimes—he knew this well—a poor game could be saved by the dash and style with which you played. Dash and style could save the day for you, even if you lost. What mattered when you lost was how you carried it off. If, for instance, he had lost to that Yale boy, he would have lost with splendor. And so, whatever he decided to tell Nancy about his visit with Myra Mirisch he would have to tell with splendor.

  Besides, something had been happening to Charlie’s cynicism lately. It had begun to betray him. Perhaps it had been a trick too often used. In any case it had become transparent, at least to Nancy. She had begun to recognize in the old swagger, the old cocked chin, a kind of desperate bravado—she saw through him right away and knew instantly that something important had gone wrong. No, what was needed now was a different tactic. He knew he was an accomplished liar—the best in the world, his sister, Cathy, used to say. But he could not tell Nancy about Myra Mirisch with anything so simple as a lie; she would have to know the truth sooner or later. (“Come back in a year, Mr. Lord,” Myra Mirisch had said finally. “And don’t be surprised if, in a year, I tell you to come back in still another year.”) Well, he wasn’t going to take that advice. He was going to have to come up with something else. And so what he needed to tell his wife now was something that would lie in that soft region between truth and falsehood. It was in this area that he hit on the idea of pluck.

  Nancy met him at the front door and kissed him quickly and eagerly. “Well,” she said, “how was it? How did it go?”

  He winked at her. “It was great,” he said. “We had a long talk, she bought me a drink—she’s a funny little woman, but I like her. Yes, it was just great.”

  “Oh, wonderful!” she said. She followed him into the house, where he proceeded to inspect the work the painters had done that day. “Tell me all about it, Charlie,” she said. “When you didn’t come right home, I was worried.”

  “I stopped at the club for a little tennis. Hey, guess what? I skunked the ex-captain of the Yale tennis team.”

  “Genny McCarthy phoned me and said she’d seen you there. Charlie, she’s offered to sponsor our membership there. Isn’t that nice of her?”

  “Uh-huh.” He picked up a swatch of quilted fabric that lay across the back of a chair. “Hey, what’s this?” he said.

  “I was thinking it would be perfect for the sofa. It’s a little expensive. What do you think?”

  “I like it,” he said. “Damn the expense and full spee
d ahead.” He looked around the living room. “Little by little we’re getting there.”

  “Now tell me all about Myra Mirisch,” she said. “What’s she like, first of all?”

  “Just about what you’d expect. Gray. Plain. Spinsterish. A little brown wren with big green eyes. Smart as paint, though. Hey, that’s a pun!” he said.

  “Darling, be serious,” she said. “Tell me what else. Did she mention a date?”

  “A date for what?”

  “For your show, silly!”

  She was following him around the room. “Oh, it’s kind of early to set an exact date,” he said. And then, “Hey, Nancy, I wish you’d tell Carla not just to dump her schoolbooks on the window seat like that. It was painted three days ago.”

  “Yes, all right. But tell me—”

  “Where are the kids?”

  “Upstairs. Stop pacing, darling! Sit down and tell me everything. She’s still planning on the fall, isn’t she?”

  “Well, I think that’s the best time, don’t you?” he said. “You know something? The picture she liked the best was the little head—the one that reminds me of Cathy.”

  “Oh?” she said. “Well, personally I prefer the abstracts—the two big ones particularly. That little head—well, it’s so small. You won’t be able to get as much money for it, you know that.”

  “Now, honey,” he said, “pictures really don’t sell by the square foot. You know that.”

  “Darling, I just don’t think that’s true!” she said. “I showed you that article by John Canaday. He said that the bigger the picture the higher the price, and John Canaday ought to know. Goodness knows you’re always quoting him. Didn’t Myra Mirisch agree?”

  “We really didn’t discuss prices, honey,” he said.

  “Well, I’m sure you’re going to find the big abstracts will sell for more. But anyway—”

  “How about fixing us a drink?” he said.

  “Yes, but first just tell me a little more, darling. I want to know word for word what she said. You haven’t told me anything yet!” She touched his arm. “Oh, I know you’re excited, but please stop pacing-pacing-pacing and talk to me.”