There was one form for me to put Bart’s name to, which I did while leaning over the desk. Finishing, I looked up and saw the judge glowering at me in sudden distaste. “Well, young man,” he said, “what do you have to say for yourself?”
“I beg pardon?”
He frowned, looked puzzled, glanced around at the others, and suddenly flashed a wide insincere smile, saying to me, “No last-minute doubts, eh?”
“No, sir,” I said. Not of the marriage, anyway.
“Fine, fine.” He went through the forms one more time, gave us all a swift keen look of disapproval, and rapped out, “Bailiff!”
The door popped open and a worried-looking gent popped in. “Yes, sir, your honor?” He was about thirty, covered with a layer of baby fat, and with dandruff sprinkled like monosodium glutamate on his black-clad shoulders.
Having called in this flunky, the judge seemed unsure what to do with him. “Mm,” he said, hefted the marriage papers in his hand, dropped them on the desk, and pointed vaguely toward a far corner, saying, “You just be, um, present.”
“Yes, sir, your honor.”
So the bailiff went off to stand in the corner, like something from a New England ghost story, while Judge Reagensniffer married us. First he got up and drew a slim volume from the shelves of lawbooks behind his desk, and then he spent an endless period of time arranging the four of us in some precise pattern in the middle of the room. “A bit to the right. You come forward a step; no, not that much.” Was this a judge or a photographer?
Well, the arranging finally came to an end, the judge stood in front of us flipping pages in his book till at last he found the right place, and then, one finger in the book to mark his intention, he said, “I usually preface these ceremonies with a few introductory remarks.”
A spectral throat-clearing took place in the corner. We all jumped.
“Marriage,” the judge told us, “is a frail bark on the stormy sea of life. It is not to be undertaken lightly. And those who do, and who don’t watch their steps, can’t expect to be treated lightly either. I’m the same man in these chambers that I am on the bench. I’m willing to listen to explanations, but I firmly believe in the letter of the law.” He fixed us with his bird-eyes. “Well? Anything to say to that?”
We all made uneasy movements. This wasn’t quite the ceremony any of us had had in mind. Finally, to break the awkward silence, I said, “Your honor, we still want to get married.”
“Married,” he said, as though it were a new and possibly interesting word. Then he blinked, looked at the book impaled on his finger, and said, “Ah, yes, married. Those who enter upon the married state take unto themselves a strong partner, a companion through the shoals and rapids of life. Two are stronger than one, a companionship, a giving and receiving of strength. And for there to be a conspiracy, no overt act needs to take place. Only the intention of the individuals to conspire together. Is that clear?”
Not to me, Jack. This time it was Betty who worked at getting us back on the right track, saying, “Your honor, we intend to conspire together and love together and remain together forever.”
“Yes, indeed,” the judge said. “A permanent bond.” He hesitated; was he going to say a life term? No, he fell the other way. “So we might as well get on with it,” he said, opened his book, and with no more preamble went directly into the wedding ritual. He read it briskly, almost angrily, as though explaining our rights to us before passing sentence, and we made the appropriate responses in the appropriate locations. Betty looked misty-eyed throughout, and I did my best to look solemn and trustworthy.
“… I now declare you man and wife. Bailiff, take them away.”
And so I was married. Bride and groom were kissed by the witnesses. Hands were shaken. I passed a sealed envelope to the judge, making sure Betty saw me do it. Everyone was pleased by that, but then again they probably all thought the envelope contained money. Its sole content, however, was a card from Those Wonderful Folks that had turned out to be even more apropos than I’d thought when I’d selected it yesterday afternoon. On the front an old man in a wheelchair is saying, “I’m not too old to cut the mustard.” Inside he finishes, “I just can’t seem to find the hot dog.”
WHEN LIZ ARRIVED THE next afternoon at two-thirty, I knew at once I was in trouble. “Well, you’ve made yourself at home,” she said, coming out onto the terrace where I was enjoying the sunlight, the view of the park, a rum and soda, and my marital status. Dropping into a canvas chair, she waved generally at the park and said, “Next you’ll want to graze your sheep on our lawn.”
“Well, hello,” I said, in my witty Bart manner. “Betty didn’t tell me you were coming to town.”
“Betty didn’t know.” She shrugged, looking vaguely irritable and discontented: normal, in other words. “I just thought I’d come in and see Art in his natural habitat.”
“Ah,” I said.
“He takes long lunches.”
“Oh?”
“I called the office,” she said. “His secretary said he was still out to lunch.”
“Well,” I said, “they’re business lunches. You know, with artists and distributors and so on.”
She frowned at the blue sky. “Maybe I’ll go down there and hang around, see what the office looks like.”
“You never know how long he’ll be gone,” I said. “Why not wait for him to call?”
She picked at the canvas of her chair, looking mulish, then frowned at me and said, “What about you? Shouldn’t you be at work?”
On my honeymoon? Well, I wasn’t to mention that; Betty still insisted on keeping our marriage secret, even from Liz, and for reasons of my own I was happy to oblige. Once again invention came when needed. With no more devious intention in my mind than to offer an acceptable answer to Liz’s question, I fell once again into a useful arrangement. “Art and I have had—” I gave a little shrug “—kind of an argument. I haven’t seen him for a while.”
Her attention had been caught; I could see in the sudden glint in her eye and curve in her lips the hope of hearing something amusing. “An argument? You two?”
“All families argue.” Bart would never amuse Liz, the best day he lived.
“I thought you and your brother were very close.”
“Don’t you and Betty argue sometimes?”
The eye-glint turned steely for a second. “We’re not talking about me and Betty.” Curiosity returned, and she said, “But what do you find to argue about?”
What, indeed? Searching for subject matter, poring over the personality differences I’d established between us, I said, “Oh, I just think sometimes Art gets a little careless with, urn, business ethics.”
“Business ethics?” She found the phrase hilarious, but struggled to keep a straight face for my sake.
“He doesn’t treat the artists well,” I said primly. Then I leaned closer to her, lowering my voice and looking toward the terrace doors as I said, “I haven’t said anything to Betty about it. I didn’t want to upset her.”
“You have a lot to learn about Betty,” she said.
Less than Liz thought. “Will you keep my secret?” I asked her.
She shrugged. “Why not?” And, since the threatened diversion had not after all arrived, she changed the subject without a backward glance, saying, “What’s that you’re drinking?”
“Rum and soda.”
“Isn’t that Art’s drink?”
“I thought I’d try it,” I said, grinning sheepishly at the glass and cursing myself for a fool. “I suppose it means I wish he and I were friends again.”
Liz was the perfect partner for a parlor psychology conversation; it put her right directly to sleep. “Yeah, that’s probably what it means, all right,” she said. “But who I want to be friends with is me. Would you see if you can find Carlos, tell him to make me my usual?”
I’d been looking for an excuse to go inside, and here it was. “I’ll do it myself,” I said, and absolutely bounded t
o my feet.
She squinted up at me in the sunlight. “You know what I drink?”
Did I? I couldn’t remember if Bart had ever been introduced to Liz’s drinking habits or not “I’m not sure,” I said.
“It’s an easy formula,” she said. “One glass, one ice cube, vodka to taste.”
“Coming up,” I told her, reflecting that Bart was apparently not worth being given the line about a big wet kiss, and hurried inside.
All right. Many things were lined up against me, including the fact that I didn’t actually have a twin brother, but here and there were some small factors on my side—principally, at this point, the Kerner’s telephone system. Not only were there three separate lines, there were also extensions all over the apartment, including a long-corded one in the living room. Already I had seen Nikki several times carry that phone out to Betty on the terrace to answer an incoming call. So Liz would stay where she was, and there just might be some hope after all.
The kitchen was empty. The extension there was a white wall phone, and like all the others it had a row of plastic buttons on the bottom for selecting which line you wanted to use. It also had a long cord, so one could tuck the receiver in between ear and shoulder and hold a conversation while walking around.
Fine. I picked up the receiver, tucked it, and pushed the button for the first line. It immediately lit up, as would the same button on all the other phones in the apartment, showing that this line was in use. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. Quickly I dialed the number for the second line and then, while the phone company did its mumbo, jumbo of clicks and computer notes, I walked across the room to the cabinets and picked out a glass. I was turning toward the refrigerator when simultaneously the receiver said, “Bdrrrrrrrrp,” in my ear and all the phones in the house, including the kitchen phone, said, “Ting-aling-aling.” No, I’m a liar; the phone in Betty’s room would not be saying, “Ting-aling-aling.” At her special desire and request, it would be giving a really sickening birdcall, all tiny whistles and trills. If I was going to live around here very long, I’d have to give that phone poison some day.
I opened the freezer door and carefully selected an ice cube, and Nikki came bobbling in to answer the phone. “—the sleeves as soon as—Hold on,” I said to the phone, and to Nikki I said, “I’m on the phone to my tailor. Catch that on one of the others, will you?”
“We,” she said, and headed away again.
“Later,” I told her derrière, and crossed the kitchen again to the cabinet containing the liquor. I got the vodka out, the phone rang a second time, and Nikki answered: “Kairnair rezeedonce.”
“Liz Kerner, please.” I opened the vodka bottle while Nikki told me to please wait on.
Time passed, click. “Hello?”
“Liz? You’re in town?”
“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Where’d you have lunch—Philadelphia?”
“Copenhagen,” I said, that being the name of a local restaurant. “What are you doing off-island?”
“Slumming. Why don’t you come take me out tonight?”
Because Betty and I were going to a special honeymoon dinner tonight at The Three Mafiosi, one of New York’s hundred-dollar-a-plate restaurants, that’s why. “I’m afraid I can’t baby,” I said. “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”
“You’ve got a date.”
“When the cat’s away, you know.”
“The rats will play.”
I said, “I don’t think that’s quite the way that goes. Listen, I tell you what, I’ll cut it short, all right?”
“Come on over here, I’ll cut it short for you.”
“Honey,” I said sweetly, “I’m answering your call.” And it occurred to me the simplest way out of this morass might be to get Art into arguments with everybody. Art on everybody’s shit list, good old Bart hanging around all by himself. Could Bart put the make on Liz?
But she said, “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I’m just in a bad mood from the drive in.”
“You drove in?” It seemed to me I’d seen Carlos lounging around the apartment all day.
“A friend drove me,” she said. “A friend of yours.”
“Mine?” Candy? Dear God, did Liz know all?
“Ernie Volpinex.”
“Oh!”
“He met your brother, you know. That was some—” Then she cut herself off, saying, “Just a second. Hold on a minute, will you?”
“Sure,” I said, thinking fast. She’d just reminded herself of Bart, ergo of the drink. I was taking too long.
“I’ll put you on hold.”
“Ah,” I said, suddenly understanding what she would do, and the instant I heard the two clicks I said, in the most guttural voice I could manage, “Menches con carne conquista malatesta bergonez.”
“Carlos!” There she was, on the other line.
Still guttural, I said, “Hallo?”
“This is Miss L,” she said, and she sounded as offensively arrogant as the man from the finance company. Oh ho, I thought, so that’s the way you speak to the lower orders. “Mr. Dodge is wandering around in there someplace, making me a drink. Give him some help, will you?”
“Si,” I said, listened to the clicks, and in my own voice said, “And as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock, with—”
“What?”
“Oh, you’re back,” I said.
“What time tonight?”
That was brisk. I said, “Why don’t I come by for you, say, eleven-thirty?”
“That late?”
“This girl’s important to me,” I said. “Her brother’s maybe going to invest in my—”
“Spare me. All right, eleven-thirty. Your place?”
“No, I’ll come over and get you.” Then, just in time, it occurred to me to say, “What’s your address?”
“Why, you creep,” she said, “she’s sleeping over! You’re coming here because you’re going to leave her there!”
“I should know better than to try to put one over on you,” I said. Argument after all?
No. “That’s what I like about you,” she said. “You’re a breath of foul air. Eleven-thirty.” And she gave me the address.
“Right,” I said, hung up, and carried her drink at a brisk trot through the apartment, slowing to a friendly walk as I stepped out onto the terrace.
“Well,” she said, “that took long enough.”
“Carlos said you sent him to find me.”
She sipped from the drink and watched me sit again in my previous chair. She said, “What happened to you?”
“Call of nature, first,” I told her, with my sheepish good-guy grin. “Then I got kind of turned around, I’m still not used to this apartment.”
“Your brother called,” she said.
“He did? Did he mention me at all?”
“Uh huh. He said you were a goody-good and a bleeding heart and he was sorry he took you into the business.”
I looked at her. “Now I wonder,” I said, “why he’d say a thing like that.”
BY ELEVEN O’CLOCK BETTY was sleeping the sleep of the drugged; and that’s what she was. The label on the prescription sleeping pills in her medicine chest had said to take one capsule one hour before retiring, so it was the contents of two capsules I’d mixed with the sauce on her coq au vin when she retired briefly to the ladies room in the restaurant. That was shortly before nine; when at ten-thirty she was still wide awake and raring to go I was beginning to get worried.
But then she flopped all at once, with huge yawns and an inability to keep her eyes open and a weaving unsteadiness in her walk. I got her into the Lincoln waiting outside, Carlos drove us home, and I half-carried her into the apartment and through to our bedroom. Liz had gone out somewhere before we’d left, and had apparently not as yet returned; if she stiffed me, after all the trouble I was going through, I’d never forgive her.
I undressed Betty, who folded sleepy arms around my neck and mumbled, “Screw me, lover.” She stayed awake
for it, but was gone before I was off the bed.
Hurriedly I dressed, while my mind went scouting the terrain ahead. I couldn’t maintain both halves of this charade much longer, that was clear. The joke was long since accomplished, so where was I now and what were my goals?
Money. A poor man among poor men is reasonably content, but a poor man among rich men begins to itch. The people inhabiting these Fifth Avenue apartments and Point O’ Woods cottages and Far Hills estates were dull enough to dry quicksand, but their way of life was precisely what I had in mind for myself. Chauffeurs, tennis courts, terraces, stables out back. French maids, by God. Money. Like the tiger who has just had his first taste of man meat, I now knew what I was hunting.
So. I’d dropped two lines into the water, one labeled Art and the other Bart, and damn if the Bart line hadn’t hooked a big one. Betty and I hadn’t had a direct talk about money yet, but tonight on the way to the restaurant she’d handed me her American Express card and said, “You might as well use that until we get new ones.” Meaning it was all mine. Whatever Betty had I had, and she had the world.
So it was time to cut the other line; Art had to go. Bart would have been simpler to get rid of, naturally, but it could still be done. This evening at dinner I’d told Betty about the brotherly falling out, so now both sisters knew there was trouble. Typically, Liz had done her best to stir up the trouble a little more, while Betty had given me a serious look, like the social director at a resort hotel, and asked me if there was anything she could do. I’d assured her there was not.
So my next move was to precipitate a break between Art and Liz. That shouldn’t be impossible, given the naturally nasty tongue of both principals. Then, with Art no longer seeing Liz, I could settle down peacefully as Bart with my little Betty and live happily ever after.
As to Art, probably the best thing to do was mothball him. Three years ago eight of my artists had gone to court against me, trying to gain control of Those Wonderful Folks, Inc., in lieu of the back payments I owed them. They’d lost, naturally, but now I could make them a very similar deal. They’d take over the firm, the copyrights, debts, office furniture, accounts receivable and all, in lieu of payment. We’d do it legally, with lawyers and signatures and possibly even handshakes, and that would be the end of it Art Dodge would simply have grown tired of his company, would have sold it to get out from under his debts, and would have moved on. I might even bruit it about that Art had told me he was going to England for a while.
Two Much! Page 8
