Fast Start, Fast Finish

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  He had also decided, slamming down on the fat white ball and sending it snapping back into the far corner of the court, that the thing he had started with Tessa he was going to stop. After all, an affair like theirs had no sooner begun than it had begun to end, and he would end it. Events breed events. But there came a time when this mounting, steamrolling process had to be called to a halt, and that time had come. What had started as an affair was now becoming a Situation. Though she had not said anything definite, he knew she was thinking about it: marriage. And he was not young enough or fool enough to think he would ever chuck his whole life aside to marry a thrice-married actress whose existence was surrounded by sycophants and deadbeats and spongers and shallow flatterers.

  The thing was, of course, that she did excite him, she did make him feel so young—horny bastard that he was—like a bold young stud. She had a big, smooth, explicit sort of body that even the bulky knitted suits and sweaters she sometimes wore—as though she were ashamed of that lovely body—did absolutely nothing to conceal. She always looked naked. There was a small brown mole on her belly that fascinated him, and he loved her throaty voice and the way she laughed. Just thinking about her, clothed or unclothed, could do it, and it could hit him at any time or place. In the shower just yesterday morning that swift ache of lust had clutched at his groin, nearly doubled him over with its pain, and Nancy from the next room had called out, “Are you all right, dear?” But he was not a young stud. He was a man nearly forty, with a family and responsibilities, and with a great many things to do. She was time-consuming, that was the thing. She took larger and larger hunks of his time. And a man nearly forty, with so many things to do, doesn’t have that kind of time to waste. And so he would finish the portrait as quickly as possible—it was nearly finished, anyway, and would not take him long. Then, as gently as possible, he would tell her good-bye. It was the best thing to do. In fact, it was the only thing to do—and it had to be done soon, before it got stickier, harder to do. Give her the portrait, tell her good-bye. Then he would go back to his important work, the work Myra Mirisch wanted him to do, the work he had spent half a lifetime waiting to do and wanting to do. He would not tell Tessa about Nancy’s job, because if he did she would only assume that more and more of his afternoons could be spent with her. And those afternoons were going to end.

  He had felt marvelous driving home from the club, and then he had had what was perhaps the best idea of all and had stopped in the village and gone into the bookshop. And now, looking over the book he had bought, he was so excited and pleased by the prospects it opened up that he felt like sitting right down and writing a fan letter to Anna Mary Garver, the genius author of “1,001 Sandwiches and How to Prepare Them.”

  There were, indeed, a thousand and one sandwich recipes in her book, many of them handsomely pictured in color, and he had never dreamed that the simple sandwich could be produced in so many delicious-sounding variations. Nancy had been distressed about what he and the children were going to do for lunch when she went to work. She had suggested a couple of things—having the children go downtown to a drugstore for lunch or preparing something early in the morning and putting it in the refrigerator for them. Of course, when school started, the kids could buy their lunches in the cafeteria, and there would be only Charlie at home to worry about. Well, now he had solved all that. He would fix sandwiches for them all. It would be pleasanter, and more economical too, than buying lunches in drugstores. When school started his sandwiches would be much tastier than anything they could buy in the cafeteria—and again, much more economical, and they needed to economize. According to Anna Mary Garver, certain sandwiches, properly wrapped, could be placed in the refrigerator the night before and removed for school lunches the next morning as fresh as ever. He had begun to envision picnics, all sorts of family trips and frolics involving sandwiches. That was one of their troubles, they didn’t do enough things together, as a family. And after looking at some of the recipes, he knew that making the sandwiches was going to be a lot of fun. He had taken the book into the supermarket and for half an hour or so had had a wonderful time buying ingredients. He had bought a whole shopping-wagonful.

  Had anyone ever heard before of checkerboard sandwiches, made with two different kinds of bread? Anna Mary Garver told how to do it. And then there were her recipes for French-fried sandwiches filled with sliced or chopped chicken or ham or cheese, dipped in a mixture of beaten egg and milk—they made your mouth water. And imagine a sandwich filled with creamed cheese mixed with French dressing and chopped pecans, or chopped mushroom sandwiches, or fillings made of Gruyère cheese and chopped walnuts, chopped dates moistened with orange juice, lobster with mustard and lemon sauce, chopped eggs with pickles and mayonnaise and anchovy paste, shrimp with chicken livers and: onion, chopped ginger with chopped pecan, orange pulp and ginger syrup. The possibilities went on and on, and he couldn’t help thinking how pleased the kids would be with the delightful surprises they would find in their lunchboxes. Miss Garver also had a; section on “Sandwiches of Other Nations.” My God, sandwiches were practically educational! He would take them on a sandwich tour of the world, each day visiting a new and exotic port and country. Come to think of it, Nancy, though a fine cook, had never been a particularly talented sandwich-maker. She approached sandwiches halfheartedly and had a habit, which had always annoyed him, of never filling out the mayonnaise to the edges of the slice of bread. When she used butter, she never waited for it to soften enough. When one bit into her sandwiches, one was always encountering hard cold chunks of butter. It was like the miserable way she cooked frankfurters—always letting them explode in the boiling water and turn themselves inside out. He had never understood that. Other peoples’ hot dogs didn’t blow up in the pot. Anyway, with the sandwich book, he would not only be making his kids happy, but he would be also helping her in her new career in an important way.

  He had finally decided, for his first try, on Anna Mary Garver’s Spanish sandwich filling. It was a little complicated—calling for anchovies, pickles, parsley, capers, mustard, salad oil, vinegar, chopped eggs, and salt and paprika. But it sounded good, and the result looked good in the photograph, so he settled on it. It was probably better to tackle some of the tougher recipes first and master them, and then the simpler ones would be a cinch. In the kitchen now, with the book spread open in front of him for easy reference, he was chopping and pounding the various ingredients and waiting for the hard-boiled eggs to cool when the telephone rang; it was Tessa.

  “What are you doing, darling?” she asked him.

  “Making the kids’ sandwiches,” he said. “Hey, I’ve become the world’s champion sandwich-maker! You should see—”

  “Oh, hell,” she said. “Can you come on over—quick? All hell has broken loose here and I’m in an awful mess. Can you, darling? Please?”

  “Well—” He looked at the unfinished sandwich filling. He could not really tell her over the telephone that their affair was about to end. So he said, “Let me just finish this up and I’ll be right over.”

  “Hurry!”

  “Okay.”

  Quickly he peeled and chopped the hard-boiled eggs—he probably should have waited until they were a little cooler, the yolks were a little gummy—and mixed all the ingredients in a bowl. He tasted it. Spicy. Tangy. He added a bit more salt and stirred it in. Ah, that was perfect. Delicious. He had never tasted anything quite like it. He covered the bowl with aluminum foil and placed it in the refrigerator. He would make the actual sandwiches later. He started out to the car and then remembered something and went back into the house and up to his room. He picked up the unfinished canvas and his box of paints and carried them down to the car with him. He would make her pose for him this afternoon.

  She was in her bedroom when he arrived, and Minnie was with her, and the telephone was ringing.

  “Hi,” he said.

  “Oh, thank God you’re here!” she said.

  “Hello?… Just a minute,�
� Minnie said, and she covered the phone with her hand. “You want to talk to Oscar Newman?” she said in a stage whisper.

  Tessa shook her head.

  “What’s happened?” Charlie asked her.

  “No, I’m sorry, Mr. Newman. Miss M., she’s all tied up right now. She’s in—ah—conference, Mr. Newman.…”

  “Jesus, but I’m glad you’re here,” Tessa said again. “I’ve just fired Bruno and I’ve thrown Richard out too. Thrown them both out on their little pansy asses!”

  The telephone was ringing again.

  “Hello,” Minnie said. “Oh, just a minute.” She covered the phone again. “It’s Bruno,” she said.

  “Tell him I never want to talk to him again, and if he keeps calling I’ll report him to the police.”

  “Bruno, honey? Miss M., she say she never want to talk to you again and if you keep calling, Bruno, Miss M. she say she’ll call the fuzz.”

  “What in the world happened?” Charlie asked.

  “I thought Bruno had more sense! He got beat up and rolled last night when he was cruising the public men’s room in some park. Did you ever hear of such a stupid thing?”

  Once more the phone was ringing. “Hello.… Just a minute. It’s Mr. Schullinger’s office in California.”

  Tessa hesitated. “I’d better talk to him,” she said.

  “Will you put Mr. Schullinger on, please?… Yes, I have Miss Morgan, if you’ll put Mr. Schullinger on, please.… Yes.… Mr. Schullinger? Just a moment, please, I have Miss Morgan.” She handed the telephone to Tessa.

  “Ben, darling,” she said. “Yes … or I mean no. No, I’m in a hell of a jam.… I just had to fire my secretary.… Oh, the usual thing—getting in trouble with little boys.… Oh, Ben, you’re sweet.… Look, Ben, I really can’t decide anything yet—not now. You understand. I was just beginning to get myself organized, and now this had to happen.… When do you need to know, Ben?… Oh, good.… How much do they want to pay me?… Oh, you can get me more than that, can’t you, Ben?… Now, look here, Ben, I know what my value is. Ask Abe Goldsmith what my value is. Ask—Okay, Ben.… Well, call me—oh, next week sometime, when I get this mess straightened out.… Good thing, Ben.… Bye, darling.” She made a kissing sound into the phone and handed it to Minnie, who hung it up for her.

  She slapped her hand against her thigh. “How am I going to do anything? How can I make any decisions at all? Now they want me to make a picture, but how can I do anything with—this business!”

  “What’s the picture?”

  “God knows!” She picked up a green-covered script from her bed and then flung it down again. “Ben keeps saying I play the Spirit of Western Civilization in it. He thinks if he tells me I’m playing the Spirit of Western Civilization he’ll get me to do it cheap. Minnie, shut off that phone now, okay?” she said. “And take any more calls downstairs. I don’t want to talk to anybody else today.”

  “You are exactly right, Miss M. You get a little rest now, you hear?” And she threw a sideways look at Charlie.

  “Thank God for old Minnie,” she said after Minnie had left the room. “I don’t know what I’d do without her at times like this.” She threw her hands into the air. “Lord Charles, tell me true. Did you ever hear of such a stupid thing? Didn’t you think Bruno had more sense? Do you suppose he’s been doing that all along—going after the rough trade in public toilets?”

  Charlie laughed softly. “Your guess is as good as mine, Tessa.”

  “Well, he certainly found a score last night. Got his skull damn near split open and got himself robbed of four hundred dollars—four hundred dollars of my money! Hey, I just thought of that. That was my four hundred in his pocket that he was out cruising with. Jesus! How am I going to find a new secretary, Charlie? Do you know any fagots? It has to be a fagot—nobody else would want to work for a bitch like me.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t, Tessa. My list of fagot friends gets smaller every day.”

  “I can’t have this thing going on around me. Minnie and I have been on the phone all morning, talking to the lawyers and the district attorney’s office, trying to keep this thing out of the papers. Wouldn’t the papers love that sort of thing? Dragging my name into a story about beatings and robbery and nances in public Johns? Charlie, do you know what I’d like to do right now?”

  “What?”

  “Just get out of this house. Where can we go? Think of a place.”

  “There are so few places …”

  “Oh, there aren’t any places!” she said. “If only there were some place where we could go, you and I—fly off to, where we’d be all alone, nobody else. I wish we could fly off to the moon, or even farther.”

  “Tessa …”

  “We could play some tennis. Shall we do that?”

  “I was hoping maybe you’d pose for me.…”

  “Oh, darling,” she said, stepping toward him. “Don’t talk about that! There’s only one thing I want to do, really. I’m just so glad you’re here, Lord Charlies. Just so glad you’re here!” She opened her arms wide, and he felt himself moving into them. “Where you belong,” she whispered.

  Later he went into the bathroom for a few minutes. When he came out again into the dark room—they had drawn the curtains in the bedroom to provide a simulation of night—he had gone nearly halfway across the bedroom before he noticed that Minnie was sitting on the bed beside Tessa. The two of them were looking at him like two conspirators. He muttered something absurd, something about just having taken a shower and not knowing that the room was occupied—he was wearing nothing but his underpants and could not have been very convincing—and beat a hasty retreat back into the bathroom.

  When he stuck his head out a few minutes later and saw that Minnie was gone, he said, “Christ!”

  “She just had something to tell me,” Tessa said. “Don’t mind about Minnie. She knows about us.”

  “I’d fire that one too, if I were you.”

  “What?”

  “Minnie. Always sneaking around, causing trouble. Why don’t you fire her too—then you’d really be getting somewhere.”

  “What?” she cried, sitting straight up in bed, the white bed sheet falling from her breasts. Even the dark little points of her breasts looked angry. “Just who the hell do you think you are? You’re trying to tell me what to do, and how to run my house? What the hell do you think gives you that right? Do you think I’m going to let you tell me how to run my life? Just who the hell are you beginning to think you are—my husband, or something?”

  He felt incredibly foolish standing there in the center of her bedroom in his horrible underpants—that had, he had noticed, a hole in the seat—recalling that just this morning, on the tennis court, feeling so wonderful, he had promised himself that he was going to end what had been going on between them, and hearing himself say, “I’m sorry, Tessa.”

  She was trying to balance the checkbook, and she had turned the radio on to WQXR on the vague theory that the soft music of string quartets would help her little checkbook solve its many financial problems. The pile of unpaid bills was at her right hand. Then the telephone rang, and it was Genny, sounding very croupy, explaining that she had Asian flu, of all the damn things to get in the middle of summer. No, she wasn’t going to postpone the lunch, absolutely not, she was not that kind of person. She had invited all the gals, and she was not going to disappoint them. No, the lunch would take place, but of course she could not have it at her house. She was not going to infect all her friends with the Asian flu. She had made all the arrangements. She had called the club and reserved a table, and they were all to go there instead and have lunch—on her—and she was only mad as hell that she couldn’t be there herself to share their fun. No, it was not too much for her to do. It was the very least she could do. She had issued an invitation for lunch, and she was going to follow through and see to it that they got a lunch, and a nice lunch. No, there was no use arguing about it, it was all set and all the arrangements were
made. And if the four gals felt like it—Nancy, Vera, Alice, and Jane—they could call her up after it was over and tell her how it had gone and what they had all talked about, and maybe that would cheer her up.

  Nancy hung up, not at all sure of what the point—if any—of this lunch business really was. WQXR was playing Haydn, who always sounded to her so funereal, and she returned to her checkbook, which looked limp and ill itself, as though it too were the victim of some kind of flu.

  So she closed the checkbook and put it away. She would worry about that later. She picked up a pen and a sheet of paper and began a letter to her father. She wrote:

  Dear Dad,

  Have been meaning to write for weeks but have been so terribly busy decorating the house. I’d forgotten how much work it is to do a house, and now it’s done, I want awfully to have you and Mother come and see it, for a visit. Why don’t you, as you planned, in September? I hope you don’t think I’m still angry, Dad, at some of the things you said on the phone. You really are unfair to Charlie sometimes. We’d have told you about the show being postponed if we’d known you were planning to come. He’s working awfully hard these days, and of course the kids are fine and healthy and we’re really very happy here. Have made a number of nice new friends.

  She would never ask her father for money, even indirectly. She would never give him that satisfaction. She wished WQXR would play some happy tunes, some show tunes; they were what she loved the best—the bright tunes of the thirties from the musical films like Flying Down to Rio, and Gay Divorcée. Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. Oh, God, but she loved Fred Astaire. She did not mind Frank Sinatra either when he wasn’t being mournful. Sometimes, on her birthdays, her father sent her checks. At times, in the past, the checks had been for as much as a thousand dollars. She would very much like a thousand dollars now, but it would have to come from him voluntarily. Her birthday was August seventeenth. She envisioned her father’s large round signature on a cheek. Haydn droned on. She hated Haydn. She turned off the radio.