Fast Start, Fast Finish

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “Well, Sally,” Charlie said, sitting down beside her, since everyone in the room was looking at them now, “how are things in Akron?”

  “Oh, they’re still making tires there!” she said, laughing gaily.

  Another of their mottoes had been “Head for the top.” It had been one they had found very useful, in a business way, in their partnership. Because of the army, Cathy had a two-year gain on him—one in New York, one in Los Angeles—in terms of experience with the advertising business. And when they finally agreed to pool their savings and form their own agency, heading for the top had been one of the first principles Cathy explained to him.

  “Always go to the top,” she said, “for any decision, or to make any presentation. Never fuss around with the little people down below—they’ll only waste your time and get you nowhere. Whenever you have a problem or want an answer, pick up the phone and call the president. Poor presidents, you know—they never give them anything to do. They’re so flattered when you call that they’ll do whatever you want.”

  When they were younger, too, they had talked of heading for the top when it came to marriage. They would marry brilliantly, splendidly, successfully. “We must both marry absolutely splendid people,” she once said. “People who shine. And, let’s face it, my dear, now that our father’s wandered off, you and I will never have a penny to our names that we don’t earn. So it would be nice if, in addition to lots of shine, whoever we marry had lots of money too.” She winked at him. “Personally, I intend to marry a man who’s the president of something.”

  “President of what?” he asked.

  “Oh, anything big. But if he’s only a vice-president, he’ll be the vice-president in charge of everything.”

  He remembered the letter she had written him, that long-ago spring, from college. “Engrave this name on your brain with sharpest steel,” she had written. “Nancy Aylesbury. Say it over several times until it becomes a song. She really is—how shall I put it?—the most fauve girl. Tawny, musky. Chic? Very—but in a good, offhand, don’t-give-a-damn way. And lovely-looking. To a man, I would guess, agonizingly beautiful. Particularly beautiful cheekbones. Think of cheekbones. But also witty—our kind of witty, not just funny-witty. And bright. And nice. And generous. And think up a lot of other good adjectives because I like her very much. Got this all memorized? Good, because I’ve told her about you, and showed her your picture, and she wants to meet you, and I have the most awful feeling you’re going to love her and that she’ll love you. And P.S., she’s splendidly rich, if you care at this point.”

  And when he did meet Nancy, he had loved her. He had fallen in love with her, it seemed, looking back, instantly. They had gone to bed together on their third date. There had been no seduction. It had been a thing they had both wanted instantly, mutually, and had both demanded instantly, and had had. They had married, and he had gone into the army. He had certainly not married her for her father’s money. He had really forgotten about her father’s money at the time and had not been truly reminded of it until later, after the army.

  Cathy, perhaps, had married for money. He had never accused her of it, but there was always that possibility. She had certainly kept her promise, and had married a man who was vice-president in charge of everything. But in her case it had not turned out well. Perhaps it was because she had married someone for money that her marriage had been not nearly so happy as his.

  That Monday night, after dinner, he took a walk on his lawn and decided that he would have to cut the grass tomorrow. It was almost the end of May now, and the evenings were soft and warm and fragrant. From across the street he heard someone calling his name, and he saw that it was Genny McCarthy, on her front steps, surrounded by her four huge Labradors. He waved to her, and she came down the steps, and he started across the Lane to meet her.

  “Hey! You never called me back!” she said.

  “Was I supposed to call you, Genny?”

  “Didn’t your wife tell you? She’s a naughty girl! I’ve got good news for you, Charlie. It’s all set with Tessa Morgan.”

  Genny’s big dogs were not the kind of big dogs Charlie liked much. They grunted and growled and pawed all around him, sniffing and poking at his crotch with their oily black noses, and he kept having to push them away from him, as she talked.

  “Yep, it’s all set,” Genny said. “Cut it out, Siegfried! The McCarthy Service has it all arranged. She wants to talk to you about a portrait, and she’ll see you at three o’clock on Thursday, at the club.”

  “Well, that’s very nice of you, Genny.”

  “In the bar. Three o’clock, Thursday. Don’t be hurt she didn’t ask you to her house. She’s a funny dame, and I don’t know of anybody who’s been inside that house since she took it. As well as I know her, for instance, she’s never asked me to her house. Siegfried! You cut that the hell out!” She gave Charlie a lewd wink. “You don’t want that thing bitten off before you meet Tessa Morgan,” she said.

  7

  “She was the most beautiful girl, Dr. Harding,” Nancy said. “People used to say she looked like Maureen O’Hara. She had glorious red hair and transparent skin and the most marvelous blue eyes that looked green in some lights. And she was terribly clever and bright—editor of the magazine, secretary of the class, always on the honor roll. She was easily the most popular girl in our class at college, even though she was on scholarship, which was a drawback for some people. Everybody loved her, and I felt terribly proud and lucky to have her as my friend. Girls go through a kind of homosexual thing, I think, at that age—not outright, of course, but it’s kind of there—and there were girls in our class who absolutely worshiped Cathy Lord. She was the kind of girl who—the minute you met her—you said, ‘Oh, do you suppose she has a brother?’ And when we found out that she did have a brother—and a twin brother, no less—everybody drooled to meet him. When they saw Charlie they, drooled even more. And of course when I started going out with him it was the talk of the campus. She was the kind of a girl who seemed too good to be true, with her looks, her talent, and wonderful warm good nature. It was true. There was absolutely nothing you could say against her—that was the trouble.”

  “Were you ever jealous of her, Mrs. Lord?” he asked.

  She hesitated. “There was never anything to be jealous about—that was the thing. She was one of my dearest friends. Even after Charlie and I were married she was still my friend, and after she and Charlie went into business together she was always so considerate of him—and of me. She would never let him work late in the office, for instance, or take work home—because that was the time when he should be with me, she said. She was terribly good about that, and she almost never telephoned him at home unless it was an absolute emergency. No, everybody loved her, you couldn’t be jealous of her. My parents adored her. I used to bring her home with me, to Grosse Pointe, for school vacations, and my parents became awfully fond of her. My father once said—” she broke off.

  “What did your father once say?”

  She smiled a little guiltily, remembering it, and lowered her eyes. “He once said, ‘It’s too bad your husband isn’t his sister.’ But I’m getting way off the subject.”

  “Not necessarily,” he said.

  He strung her out, it seemed to her, like a long string of clothesline from a reel. Here and there, on the line, he placed clothespins, marking points in her story. There was always a connection between the points, but often it seemed a long way off. He never pulled her back or reeled her in, which was why she always managed to digress so with him and to wander so far from the subject. They had begun talking today about her attitude toward money and how her father had, as she put it, “warped” her about money. And how she had traveled from that to Charlie’s sister she could no longer recall. It was part of that stringing-out business of his. “Anyway,” she said, “to get back to my whole warped feelings about money—”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “I suppose it’s because I wa
s always made so terribly aware of money as a child—my father almost literally talks of nothing else—that I can’t seem to cope with money as an adult. Just the other day, for instance, I finally opened the last bank statement, after resisting opening it for months, and—”

  “Why?” he said. “Why do you resist opening them?”

  “But that’s the thing, don’t you see? I just don’t want to know, don’t want to find out—”

  “But why don’t you want to know, Mrs. Lord?”

  “Oh, I suppose it’s because—it’s because Charlie’s had so much bad luck, I suppose.”

  “Bad luck can be a bad habit,” he said quietly.

  “Oh, but he was doing so well when he was with his sister! They were just kids, really—terribly young. Twenty-four … twenty-five. Maybe that’s Charlie’s problem—he had his first success so young. But they did so well—they were brilliant together; everyone said so. Oh, why did what happened have to happen! Since then it’s been—”

  “Yes?”

  “Well, since then Charlie’s just had one bad break after another. And it’s simply because he’s run into one—if you’ll pardon my French—one damned double-crosser after another. One backstabber after another. He no sooner gets himself involved with someone he likes and trusts than that person turns around and knifes him in the back. If it’s Charlie’s fault it’s because he’s too honest, too trusting. Naïve, you might say. Just because he’s so honest and decent—the qualities I love most in him—he expects everyone else to be. But they just aren’t. And it’s always such a blow to him when he discovers the truth—that it’s happened again. Oh, and the awful thing now is—” She stopped short again.

  “What is the awful thing now?”

  “I’m wandering way, way off the subject.”

  “A little wandering never hurt anybody,” he said with a smile. “Tell me what the awful thing is.”

  “Well,” she said, leaning forward, clutching her gloves, “the awful thing is that I can feel it, sense it, beginning to happen again—with this Myra Mirisch woman, who’s promised him a show. She’s suddenly being awfully vague about dates. She was certainly aw fully vague to me on the phone, the one time I talked to her, when all I wanted to find out was where Charlie was, who’d had an appointment with her! Now she seems to be getting awfully hedgy, awfully indefinite about it—after she promised it to him in black and white. I’ve seen the letter! I have the most awful feeling she’s going to pull out on him. I could be wrong. Oh, dear God, I hope I’m wrong! She was our whole point in moving east, the whole reason—”

  “I thought you mentioned a disagreement with neighbors,” he said. “I thought that was another reason for moving east.”

  “Oh, but that was a relatively minor thing,” she said. “No, the whole real reason for moving east was just—Myra Mirisch! I’m getting to loathe the sound of that woman’s name; isn’t it silly? I’ve never met her, and she’s probably very nice. Charlie, of course, refuses to try to pin her down—it’s that stupid pride of his. I can see his point—I guess. He doesn’t want to rush her, doesn’t want to antagonize her. But still, I wish he’d at least try to pin her down on money, in terms of an advance—an advance we could certainly use at this point, I might add. But of course he won’t—the pride again. And I’m sure he’s right. But still, I was wondering—” She paused, uncertain. “I was going to ask you if you thought perhaps I should call her and try to pin her down.”

  “You call his art dealer?” he said. “No, I don’t think I’d recommend that at all.”

  “No, you’re right. Charlie’d be furious with me.”

  “Yes, he probably would be—but that’s not the point, is it? The point is, what possible good would it do—what possible good would you expect it to do—for you to interfere in what is, for him, essentially a business relationship? If that relationship is shaky now, you’d only succeed in making it much shakier, it seems to me.”

  “Yes, you’re right.”

  “Whatever gave you such an idea, Mrs. Lord?”

  “It’s what my friend Genny McCarthy suggested doing,” she said. “That’s one nice thing that’s happened to me this spring. I’ve made this terribly nice woman friend who lives across the street.”

  “That is nice,” he said. “But I don’t think her suggestion that you call your husband’s art dealer is very helpful.”

  “Anyway, where were we? Oh, we were talking about money. The bank statement.” She laughed. “I’d finally got up enough nerve to look at the bank statement, and I was horrified. At the money we’ve been spending—that I’ve been spending!”

  “Have you always spent this way, Mrs. Lord?”

  “Yes—oh, yes, I’m afraid so. I’ve always had an inflated idea of the size of my own purse—I know that. I told you about that house in Bel-Air, didn’t I—the one on Stone Canyon Road? My dream house with the marble terrace and the strawberry lawn, and the fern garden? I’ve always dreamed some day we’d own that house … even though … how could we afford it? But the thing is, always before, with money, there was some coming in. But now there isn’t—for the time being. And this awful habit of spending scares me; it really does. I think, heavens, we’re running out of money, and what will we do then? Harold’s going to college in the fall. I get all panicky, thinking about it. Oh, and it’s all my father’s fault—he did this to me. It’s so ridiculous. A lot of people think Charlie married me for my money. I know my father thinks so—he’s said so often enough. But it isn’t true. We’ve had a wonderful marriage, everything—the sexual side, everything—wonderful, and we have wonderful children. Charlie and I love each other tremendously much, and I’ve literally never looked twice at another man since the day I met him. Nobody has ever been able to excite me the way he excites me. But it’s this money thing. Oh, I suppose I’ll inherit something when my father dies. Sometimes I have the most terrible, awful wish—”

  “What is the wish?”

  “I wish my father would die. I wish he would die right now. Today,” she said.

  Tessa Morgan came very swiftly into the bar with a blond young man on either arm—the two who seemed to accompany her everywhere. She walked quickly, chin high, looking neither to the right nor the left, directly to the table where Charlie sat, and the little hush that always followed her appearances anywhere fell now. She sat down opposite Charlie without looking at him or speaking to him; the two men sat flanking her. She looked up at the waiter who appeared instantly at her side and said, “I’d like a Scotch and water, please.” She seemed a little breathless and impatient, and she shook her chestnut hair as though she were waiting for the voices in the room to resume their normal level. Then, still not looking at Charlie, she said, “Mr. Lord, this is Bruno. This is Richard.” The two young men gave Charlie dim, blond, sleepy smiles.

  “How do you do?” he said.

  Then she looked at him. “I’ve watched you playing tennis. You’re marvelous.”

  “Thank you very much,” he said.

  “Bruno and Richard, why don’t you run along,” she said. “Play something. Try tennis. Mr. Lord and I have some business to discuss.”

  The two men rose without a word and left the table. She turned to him again, this time with a smile. “You really are very good, you know,” she said. “I love tennis but I’d be scared to play with you. You’re too good.” It was a rather odd experience, having those famous eyes looking at him, sitting opposite that serene and celebrated face that had flickered to him darkly, two-dimensionally, from so many movie screens. “Bruno is my secretary,” she explained, “and Richard is his friend. It’s a crazy arrangement, but it seems to be what I have to have.”

  “Do they have last names?”

  She laughed and said, “Of course.”

  “They look so much alike.”

  “Don’t they. It must be like making love to a minor.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “And you’re also a friend of Genny McCarthy,” she s
aid.

  “Yes.”

  “Are you really?”

  “Well, more or less—she’s a neighbor. She seems like a nice person. It was nice of her to set this up, for instance.”

  “Do you think she’s a lesbian?”

  “Well,” he said, smiling, “I hadn’t really thought of that.”

  “She looks like one and acts like one. I’m terrified of lesbians. They combine the worst side of women with the worst side of men. Fairies are nicer. They have a woman’s bitchy side, but with a man’s gentle side. Lesbians have the woman’s bitchy side with a man’s brutal side, and they can be terribly dangerous. I think your friend Genny McCarthy is a monster; I hope you don’t mind. I’m sure she’s a lesbian, unless—” She leaned toward him eagerly, conspiratorially, across the table and whispered, “I have a private theory that she lets those horrible dogs do it to her. Don’t laugh! I knew a woman once who claimed she did it with her Great Dane.”

  Her drink arrived, and she said, “Oh, I’m sorry—we didn’t order for you. Do you want something?”

  “I’ll have a Scotch and water too,” he said.

  “Yes, I spend most of my time here trying to avoid Genny McCarthy. Do you know what Bruno calls her?” She giggled. “Genny McFarty. But she’s on the membership committee here, or something, and they’ve put her in charge of trying to get me to join this club. I know that for a fact. The bartender told me when I first complained about her. But why should I pay a lot of money to join this club, when they let me come here free anyway? No, I certainly wouldn’t have told her I’d meet you here today if I hadn’t seen you play tennis. I’ve just changed my mind. Maybe I will play tennis with you someday. You’re too good, but maybe you’ll teach me something, who knows?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Who knows?” His drink arrived, and he raised it. “Cheers. To our tennis game,” he said.

  “I understand you want to paint my portrait,” she said.

  “I understood that you wanted a portrait painted.”