Fast Start, Fast Finish

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “I’d like to speak to one of the officers about selling this stock,” she said.

  16

  He was a stranger to New York now, that was the hell of it. He had had friends once, in the business, but he had lost track of them long ago. He had spent too many years in California, and now he was out of touch with the city. There were really only one or two—men he’d known years before—whom he could look up, for leads, for contacts. It was a shame he’d let himself get so out of touch. He was not even sure of the names of some of the companies any longer. That was why he was calling Myra Mirisch. He explained it to her. “I remember you suggested that I might do some commercial work,” he said. “And I’m wondering if you could give me the names of some of the houses—places that farm out the sort of artwork I could do.”

  “You’ve caught me at an awfully bad moment,” she said. “I’m catching a plane to London in two hours.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “But I should think that with all your agency experience, you might try there first. One of the agencies.”

  “I intend to do that too, but I was also thinking of commercial-art houses. It’s a question of financial necessity, I’m afraid. I’ve got to line up something.”

  “Well, let’s see,” she said. “There are a couple of places you might try. Naturally, I have no idea whether they’re looking for anybody new to take on or not. And I have no dealings with any of these people, and so mentioning my name will do you no good at all.”

  “I understand.”

  “Got a pencil?”

  “Yes.”

  He was a little hurt that she didn’t ask him how his serious work was coming along. But then, after all, she had said she was in a hurry, and she was on her way to London.

  “Ed? It’s Charlie Lord.”

  “Who?”

  “Charlie Lord—remember? From Fawcett-Chisholm, back in Los Angeles?”

  “Well, Charlie Lord! Sure. Hey, how the hell are you? Boy, it’s been a long time.”

  “I’m fine, Ed. And you?”

  “Couldn’t be better. How are things at Fawcett-Chisholm?”

  “Oh, I left there in nineteen-fifty-three, Ed.”

  “Gosh, has it been that long? Gosh.”

  “I heard you were in the East, Ed.”

  “Been here for the last ten years, Charlie. Time flies.”

  “Ed, I was wondering. I’m in the East now myself, and I’m shopping around. You know the kind of work I do, and so I was wondering. Is there anything cooking at your place?”

  “Jobwise? Gosh, I just don’t know offhand. I’m in the marketing division now, and I don’t talk to the art department from one month to the next. But look, Charlie, I’ll be glad to ask around.”

  “Would you do that, Ed? I’d appreciate it.”

  “It’s a hell of a time of year, of course, Charlie. August. Half the place is on vacation. But I’ll check around.”

  “Thanks, Ed.”

  “Good to talk to you, Charlie. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Let me give you my phone number. Got a pencil?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Stan? It’s me, Charlie Lord.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned. A voice from the past. How’s the boy?”

  “I’m fine, Stan. How are you?”

  “It’s the damnedest thing. We were talking about you just the other day.”

  “Were you, Stan?”

  “Marjorie and me. I said to Marjorie, I wonder what’s ever happened to Charlie Lord. Where the hell are you?”

  “Here at home—in Westmount.”

  “You’re living in Westmount? Out with the swells, eh? Well, you must be doing real well.”

  “Matter of fact, Stan, I’m looking for a job in New York. You remember the kind of work I do—”

  “Sure, Lord and Lord. Whatever happened to Lord and Lord?”

  “We broke up, uh—couple of years ago.”

  “No kidding? Well, I’m sorry to hear that. That was a real swinging little agency you had out there. I remember you got some nifty write-ups, you and your wife.”

  “Yes.…”

  “Well, look—I don’t know what we’ve got here in this shop that would interest you, Charlie. But I’ll be glad to ask around.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Stan.”

  “Of course it’s a lousy time of year, August. Half the shop’s on vacation.”

  “Sure, I know.”

  “You might have better luck after Labor Day. But look, I’ll be glad to ask around.”

  “Thanks, Stan.”

  “Let me have your number, Charlie.…”

  He made a few more calls. He had made a little list—the few old friends and the names Myra Mirisch had given him—and next to each name he had written a notation: “Will call back,” “Out of town till September 6,” and so on. The orderliness of the list pleased him and gave him a sense of getting somewhere. Then he went downstairs to his car and drove to the Westmount Club to see if he could find a tennis game.

  The bar was deserted, and so were the shower and locker rooms. There was no one in either the tennis shop or the golf shop, and August seemed to be a lousy time of year everywhere. His Yale friend, if you could call him a friend, was sailing off Martha’s Vineyard, and the few others with whom he occasionally played were equally unavailable. There were a couple of teen-age boys lounging in chairs on the porch of the clubhouse, but when he approached them one of them said it was too hot for tennis and the other said he just didn’t feel like it. He finally found one of the older members who—perhaps because he knew how good Charlie’s game was—agreed to play one set only, and agreed with obvious reluctance.

  The club manager’s name was Paul McCabe—a man about Charlie’s age—and Charlie had gotten to know him fairly well through the summer. When the set was over Charlie met Paul, in white-duck pants and a blue blazer, strolling across the grass toward the courts.

  “I was hoping I’d see you,” Paul said.

  “Hi, Paul,” Charlie said.

  “Don’t tell any of the members I said so,” Paul said, “but you’re just about the best player I’ve ever seen on these courts, Charlie.”

  “Thanks, Paul.”

  “Have you got a minute, Charlie?” Paul said.

  “Sure.…”

  Paul McCabe’s hands were in his pockets, and he shifted his weight from one rubber-soled shoe to another, looking at his feet. “Charlie?” he said. “Is everything all right? With you?”

  “Why sure.”

  “I was wondering,” Paul said, still not looking at him, “because—well, you see we do have a pretty large bill for you, Charlie. You know—drinks at the bar, court fees—they add up. And so I was wondering—”

  Charlie said, “I know. I’ll get to it—right away.”

  “I hate to mention it,” Paul said. “But—well, it has been three months outstanding. And—well, you are only a guest here, not a member. If you were a member, nobody’d mind. But—well, you know how these people are.”

  “Sure,” Charlie said. “I’ll take care of it first thing. First thing next week.”

  “When I didn’t get your check, I began to wonder. You know—I began to think that maybe you figured some of those charges weren’t yours.”

  “Oh, I guess they’re all mine, Paul.”

  “Yeah. Well, uh—then you do want to pay them?”

  “Of course I do. What do you mean?”

  “Well, uh—most of those charges, the drinks and the court fees—I mean you signed for them all. But most of them were when you were with your friend Miss Morgan.”

  “Oh,” Charlie said. “Yes, probably.”

  “So I was wondering if you’d like me to put them on her bill.”

  “No thanks, Paul. They’re my charges.”

  “I’ll be honest with you. I could put them on her bill and she’d never know the difference.” Paul looked up at him for the first time.

  Charlie said, “Is that wha
t you’d do, Paul, if you were me?”

  Paul McCabe smiled faintly. “Well, I’m not you, so I don’t know,” he said. “But no, I guess I wouldn’t.”

  “No,” Paul said. “Well, I guess I hated the thought of the club losing a good tennis player—over a few hundred dollars.”

  “I’ll pay it,” Charlie said, “if I have to sell my racket.”

  They grinned at each other and shook hands, and Charlie walked off, feeling good.

  They arrived in Nahant late Friday night, but Nancy and Charlie both woke early Saturday morning. They got up, dressed, and went downstairs to the quiet lobby of the old hotel, leaving Carla still asleep in the room next to theirs. They walked out onto the wide veranda, where a wind from the sea had set all the rocking chairs in motion.

  “It’s a terrible time to look for a job, let’s face it,” he said. “The whole country grinds to a halt in August.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But I’m going to keep looking, don’t worry. I mean, don’t you think I should?”

  “Yes, it—might be a good idea. At this point.”

  “With all these damn bills we suddenly seem to have. But don’t worry, I’ll find something. Something’s bound to turn up after Labor Day.”

  “We really shouldn’t have taken this trip,” she said.

  “I wanted this for you,” he said. “For your birthday. Too bad we couldn’t talk Harold and Maggie into coming along.”

  “They both had plans for tonight. A party they were looking forward to.”

  “I hope we don’t get charged for the extra room I booked.” He reached out and took her cold hand. “Mostly, I wanted the trip for you,” he said. “Hey—how did you like my Spanish sandwiches? I think the secret is in getting the eggs just right.…”

  They walked out onto the beach, and even the beach was deserted. Nahant was having Massachusetts Bay weather, not August weather, and there was a thin, gray mist in the air—not quite rain, but the kind of chilly mist that Cathy used to say was good for the complexion; it was why English girls had such beautiful skin, because the mists were always over England. And it was cool, and the sand underneath their sneakered feet was colder, and Charlie and Nancy had put on raincoats for their walk, and old floppy rainhats that the clerk at the hotel offered them. They walked, leaving solitary pairs of tracks in the damp sand, and from a distance they must have looked like a pair of brown, strutting birds crossing the empty beach. Certainly the gulls overhead did not seem to mind their presence. The gulls reeled eastward from the wastes of Lynn, out along the tiny spit of land that supported Nahant above the sea, and hung, turning in the air above East Point. Far out at the head of the bay there was an indistinct shimmer of white as the sea rolled over the shoals—the Graves, and Roaring Bulls Shoal—and the buoys tolled their mournful warning. “Sorry about the weather,” Charlie said. “Let’s sit here a minute.”

  They sat down side by side on a smooth flat rock that protruded from the sand. The waves lifted and fell and slid across the sand. “But I’m almost glad about the weather,” Charlie said. “It means we have the place to ourselves.”

  “Yes.”

  “This is the real ocean, this is what I like,” he said. “Long Island Sound’s only a fake ocean, but this is real. There’s nothing now between us and Spain, where my sandwiches came from.” He still gripped her hand.

  The wind blew her hair under the floppy hat, blew it in little curly wisps across her face.

  “This is where you and Cathy used to come, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Yes. When we were kids. Before the old man wandered off.”

  “To this exact spot?” she said, touching the rock.

  “I don’t really remember,” he said. “We had a spot—it was somewhere along this beach. But I’ve forgotten now where it was.”

  “Has it changed much?”

  “No, not really,” he said. “It’s really pretty much the same.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Everything’s going to be just fine,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Don’t you think so?” he said, searching her face. “Aren’t you happy, Nancy? You’ve got your job that you like so much, and you’re going to take your course. I’m going to get a new job. I’m going to—”

  “It’s funny, I was just thinking,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “About my job. You know, I really thought you’d react—differently, somehow, about my taking it.”

  “Differently?”

  “I really thought you’d try to stop me. Tell me my place was in the home. Something like that.”

  “Why would I have done that?”

  “I was really a little hurt. That you didn’t seem to care. That you didn’t try to stop me.”

  “But I thought it was something you wanted.”

  “I did. But still.”

  Hurt? It was a strange thought. He had wanted not to hurt her but to help her, and yet she had been hurt that he hadn’t tried to prevent her from taking the job. Sometimes it seemed as though the two of them had spent the last few months speeding past each other in opposite directions, like endless freight trains on parallel tracks.

  “But I thought it was because of the Lane,” he said.

  “What about the Lane?”

  “The money—for paving the Lane. Don’t you remember? I bawled you out for spending that, and so I thought that was what gave you the idea of getting a job—to make it up to me.”

  She laughed softly. “Oh, dear,” she said. “I’d forgotten all about that. The damn Lane.”

  “The damn Lane is mostly that damned Edgar Willey.”

  She laughed again, nodding, “Yes. Oh, yes …”

  “But that wasn’t why you wanted the job?”

  “No, I wanted it because—because I couldn’t stand myself, I guess. I couldn’t stand being with myself while you—” her voice trailed off.

  “Yes,” he said. “Well, that’s all over.”

  “Was there—” she began, then turned away from him. “People used to say—some people used to say—that there was something between you and … Tessa. Did you know that?”

  He shook his head.

  “Was there?”

  He said nothing.

  With a little gasp she said, “No, I know there wasn’t. I know there wasn’t.”

  “What if I said there was?” he asked quietly.

  “I wouldn’t believe it! Because—because I met her. And she was nice to me. She even—why, she even asked me to come see her someday. And I actually liked her. No, it was like Cathy.”

  “What was like Cathy?”

  “You and she. A—companionship, like yours and Cathy’s. That was what it was.”

  Once more he said nothing.

  “Yes,” she said. “You know, Charlie—I was really awfully fond of Cathy.”

  “I know.”

  “I said a terrible thing about her once.”

  “I know.” He gripped her hand. “That’s all over too.”

  “Charlie,” she said, “I hope you’re not getting a job just because—because there wasn’t any money from the portrait. Is that it? Because if that’s it, then don’t do it. It’s more important for you to do your serious work. It is. To me, and to you too. I’m afraid we’re letting money—warp us. Are we?”

  “Or the lack of it,” he said. He raised his arm and circled her shoulder. He had not felt so close to her in, years. Oh, all good things had always happened at Nahant. “No, Nancy, that’s not it,” he said. “You said it for me just a minute ago.”

  “How?”

  “About feeling you can’t live with yourself. I’ve felt that way at times. Because I’ve done—some things I’ve regretted.”

  And he thought, There was always that other thing—that thing that haunted him like a shadow across his existence, the thing that he never allowed to come too close to him because he chose not to recognize it. When you couldn’
t live with yourself there was always Cathy’s way of escaping, but he could not tell Nancy about that. It had nothing to do with him, even though they had been paired cells, because he had always wanted to be born and she had not. Or his father’s way. He erased that vision from his mind by looking at the seagulls over East Point and by pressing her small shoulders closer against his chest.

  “Nancy?” he said after a moment.

  “What?”

  “I have a suggestion. Call it a practical suggestion. It may not be one you’ll like, and if you don’t like it, then just tell me to go to hell and I’ll never mention it again.”

  “What is it?” she said.

  “It involves our house—our house on the Lane.”

  Her voice was suddenly eager. “What about it?”

  “I think we ought to sell it.”

  “Oh, do you darling? Oh, God! So do I!”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, I’ve just gotten to hate it so! And the people—you were right about them in the beginning. What was it you called them after that first night at the Willeys’? Stupid, mediocre, banal bores! That’s what you said and you were right. I should have listened to you then.”

  “It wasn’t so much that I was right. It was something we both had to find out.”

  “Yes!”

  “And even your friend Genny McCarthy—”

  “My friend? Do you know she actually made a pass at me one day?”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “Kidding! Why do you think she hates me now? Because I brushed her off is all!”

  He laughed loudly. “My God! I always suspected—”

  “And her filthy dogs!”

  “Talk about passes,” he said. “You’ll never guess who made one at me the other day.”

  “No. Who?”

  “Alice Mayhew!”

  “Oh, priceless!” She laughed. “Fat Alice Mayhew?”

  “Asked me if I’d make a fourth for bridge some day, then tried to lure me over to her house because her husband was away. You know, I think she’s had her face lifted—just a bit.”

  “A bit! She’s had it lifted to the skies!”

  They were both laughing so hard now that they were doubled over, swaying from side to side, and she cried out, “Oh, we’re falling off the rock!” and clung to him with helpless laughter.