Two Much!

by Donald E. Westlake

  “I don’t know.” I did not, in fact, have a good explanation for that, and trusted the question would eventually become lost in the onrush of events. For my own purposes, a telegram established the California connection much more realistically than a telephone call, but that was hardly something to mention to Betty.

  Nikki came back with the long-corded phone. “I wish he’d given his number,” I said. “How do I get information in Los Angeles?”

  Betty’s take-over qualities came promptly to the surface, as I’d hoped they would. “Give me the phone,” she said. “Nikki, pencil and paper.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  While Nikki pogoed away once more, Betty dialed L.A. information, then asked me, “What’s his address, do you know?”

  “Vassar Drive, in Hollywood.”

  “Vassar?” Her lip curled slightly. “Those people out there. Yes, operator. In Hollywood, a Mr. Joseph Gold on Vassar Drive. Yes, I will.”

  Back came Nikki, with pad and pencil. She started to give them to me, but I shooed her over to Betty. She started then to leave again, but I said, “Nikki, wait here a minute. We may want something else.” If she was an eavesdropper, I didn’t want her near any of the extension phones in the next few minutes.

  “Yes, Mr. Bart.” The words, the manner, and the look were all directly out of The Story of O, and not for a minute did I believe that coincidental.

  Betty, her hand over the receiver mouthpiece, said to me, “Is he Jewish?”

  “I really don’t know,” I said.

  “He probably is.” Then, into the phone, “Yes, operator?” She wrote down some numbers. “Thank you, operator.” Hanging up, she said, “Nikki, give all this to Mr. Dodge.”

  “Yes, madame.”

  Ignoring Nikki’s dance routine, I glanced at the phone number on the pad, saw that Betty had gotten it right, and dialed it from memory. Ring. Two rings. Three rings. Come on, Joe, you said you’d be home, it’s only six P.M. there. Four ri—“Hello?”

  “Hello, Joe?”

  “Hey man. You got it, huh?”

  “Yeah, I got it. What’s it all about?”

  “I must say,” he said, “your relationships with women get more baroque all the time.”

  “Good God!” I said. I sounded shocked, and I’m sure I looked stunned. Nikki and Betty both watched me, with curiosity and apprehension.

  “I never did like Lydia,” Joe was saying, “even when you were married to her.”

  “When?” I asked. I was hunched tensely over the phone.

  “But at least,” Joe said, “that was your ordinary tag-team unfaithful modern marriage.”

  I said, “Do you think she meant it?”

  “What you’re into now,” he said, “I shudder to think.”

  I said, “What do the doctors say?” Both women on the terrace with me reacted predictably to the noun.

  “There must be an easier way to get laid,” he said. “Or to break off with a woman, or whatever the hell you’re doing.”

  I said, “Good God, Joe, that was over a long time ago. I never gave her any—” And stopped, as though I’d been interrupted.

  Joe was saying, “Don’t you have any massage parlors back there?”

  “Yeah, I can see that,” I said reluctantly. “But what am I supposed to do?”

  “Have you considered onanism?”

  I gave Betty a helpless look, shaking my head. “Joe,” I said, pleading to be understood, “you don’t understand. I have commitments back here now, I can’t just—”

  “Of course,” he said, “as Marx once pointed out, the bourgeoisie had to invent adultery to keep from dying of boredom.”

  “I realize that, Joe,” I said desperately.

  “Or was it Lenin? One of those commies.”

  “Well, how long would it be for?”

  “The point is, maybe what you need is a hobby. Jigsaw puzzles, for instance.”

  “The thing of it is, Joe,” I said, being confidential with him, “I’ve got a girl now, back here in the East”

  “I don’t doubt it for a second.”

  “It’s, uh, it’s serious, Joe. If I came out, I’d have to—”

  Again I appeared to be interrupted. Both Nikki and Betty looked shocked at this suggestion that I was being asked to go to California. Meanwhile, Joe was saying, “Maybe you’d like to grow plants. Vines and things. Tell them all your little secrets, and watch their leaves fall off.”

  “Joe,” I said, “how can I explain that to my girl?”

  “If anybody can, Art,” he said, “you can.”

  “I see what you mean,” I said, but I didn’t sound happy about it I said, ‘The doctors really think so, huh?”

  “They sure do,” Joe said. “They think you’re a nut”

  “Thanks, Joe,” I said. “I’d appreciate that. Be better than a hotel.”

  “Do you get the impression,” he asked me, “that we’re talking at cross-purposes?”

  “I don’t see how I can promise anything,” I said.

  “Go ahead and promise, baby.”

  I nodded slowly, listening. Logic, duty, friendship, my own moral sense, all were clearly conspiring to make me agree to something about which I was extremely reluctant “You’re right, Joe,” I said.

  “Why, thank you,” he said.

  “I’ll work it out somehow at this end,” I said, “and I’ll get out there as soon as I can.”

  “Don’t you dare,” he said.

  “Sure, Joe, I know,” I said, “and I appreciate it So long.”

  “Is it soup yet?” he asked me, and I hung up.

  Betty said, “You’re going to California?”

  “It’s—” I stopped myself, glanced at Nikki, and said, “You can take the phone back now, Nikki.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bart.” Off she went, no doubt to hide behind the draperies and listen to me tell my tale.

  Betty was showing understandable impatience. “For heaven’s sake, what is it?”

  “A girl,” I said. “Her name’s Lydia, we used to go together when I lived in L.A. For a while, we even talked about getting married.”

  “And?”

  “We broke up,” I said. “I hadn’t seen her for two or three months when I left. In fact, that’s part of the reason I was so glad when Art called and wanted me to go into the card business with him. I was ready to come back.”

  Her impatience was not appeased. “And?”

  “She tried to kill herself.”

  “Bosh,” Betty said, sitting back, and suited the old-fashioned word with an old-fashioned expression of disbelief and contempt “It’s a silly ploy to get you back.”

  “I don’t think so, I really don’t think so. She drove her car off a cliff, up on Mulholland Drive. I mean, it wasn’t a sleeping pill thing or head in the oven, one of those tries with rescue built right into it. She really did try to kill herself.”

  “Well, what are you supposed to do about it? Go back and marry her?”

  “Go back and see her,” I said. “Her doctors think she’s idealized me or something, that if she sees me as I really am, if we have a talk and she sees the reality of it she’ll snap out of it. She made another try in the hospital, tried to drag herself to the window.”

  Sympathy for this unknown victim of heart’s blight finally began to seep into Betty’s expression, mixing with the impatience and the annoyance there. “Don’t they have her under restraint or something?”

  “They can’t leave her like that forever.” I reached across the table, taking Betty’s hand in both of mine, and gazed sincerely into her eyes. “Betty,” I said, “this thing is ghastly. I wish I didn’t know a thing about it. But I do know, and how can I turn my back? What if I refused to go out there, said it wasn’t my problem, and—”

  “It isn’t your problem.”

  “What if she tries again, a third time? What if she makes it? Could I have that on my conscience the rest of my life?”

  “She might try it anywa
y, even if you do go out”

  “But at least I’ll have done what I can. Betty, how could I face myself if I didn’t at least make the try?”

  Her arguments were failing, and she knew it. “This is so inconvenient,” she said, looking away at the darkness of Central Park. “I’m not sure I could get away now.”

  “Betty, you can’t come with me. Don’t you see what a shock that would be to her, rubbing her nose in it, I show up with—”

  “You mean you’ll go out by yourself?”

  “Just for a day or two,” I said. “Joe offered to let me stay at his place. You have the phone number, we can be in constant contact.”

  Briskly dismissing that, Betty said, “She wouldn’t have to know I was anywhere in the state. We could stay at the Bel Air, I could visit friends while you were at the hospital, there wouldn’t be any problem.”

  “You may think I’m silly,” I said, “but I couldn’t do that. It would just be on my mind all the time, as though I were flaunting my own happiness in the face of her misery. Let me do this my way, Betty. It won’t be for long, and once it’s over it’ll be over for good.”

  She frowned. “How do you know she won’t do it again a year from now? An annual event, like the tulip festival. Lydia’s leap.”

  “Even if it happened,” I said, “I wouldn’t feel obligated any more. Once is all I owe her, but I do owe her that. And besides, you wanted our marriage kept a secret. How could we travel together, stay at a hotel, visit your friends out there, do all of that and keep the secret?”

  She glared out over Central Park, with its viaduct of taxi headlights and the dim lamps gleaming uncertainly along the blacktop paths. She considered arguments, rejected them, went back to them, thought out the potentials and the implications, and at last irritably shrugged her shoulders and said, “All right. Do it your way. I suppose I should be happy I have such a straight-arrow husband”

  “And I’m delighted,” I told her, squeezing her hand, “that I have such an understanding wife.”

  THE NEXT PLANE TO LOS Angeles was not, as I’d already known, until nine-thirty the following morning. Betty and I rode out together to Kennedy in the Lincoln, Carlos at the wheel. A good if arrogant driver, Carlos delivered us to TWA’s concrete-bird terminal earlier than anticipated, and we had a cup of coffee together before saying good-bye. “I’ll call you from Joe’s place the minute I arrive,” I promised.

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “And remember,” I said, “you be sure to call me if there’s any problem at all. You’ve got Joe’s number?”

  “I have it,” she assured me.

  “Good.” And if she called, Joe would tell her I was at the hospital or out to dinner or whatever the time of day suggested, and would then call me, and I would then call Betty. Considering some of the scrambling I’d already done this month, the Bart-in-Hollywood device was child’s play. Miniature golf.

  At last the moment came for departure. “Our first separation,” I said, clutching her to me.

  “Hurry back,” she whispered, and just slightly ground her hips.

  “Oh, I will. I will.”

  We kissed good-bye, I clutched the first-class ticket paid for by Betty’s American Express card, and off I went through the anti-hijack screening process. Passengers Only Beyond This Point. She stood on the other side of the private guards, watching me with her friendly and efficient smile. Bye-bye, Betty. I waved and waved, and walked away down the long red tunnel.

  Out of sight. Good. The men’s room was just over there. Fortunately, Betty had reminded me to buy a paperback book for the plane ride, so I had reading matter to take me through the following twenty minutes in a toilet stall for which I had paid a dime. Then, leaving the book behind for the next customer, in case the toilet paper should run out—it really wasn’t a very good book—I hefted the small canvas bag I’d packed for my California trip, left the men’s room, and joined a group of passengers deplaning from—or so their conversations suggested—Detroit We all walked together back down the red tunnel to the main terminal area, where I tried to turn the roundtrip ticket in for cash. (My expenses had been hellish this month.) Damn them, they wouldn’t give me money, only a credit on Betty’s American Express. “In that case,” I said, “I’ll take the flight after all.”

  “I believe it’s already left, sir.”

  “I’ll catch up,” I said, took my ticket, and went away.

  TWO DAYS IN A ROW,” Gloria said when I walked in. “Summer must be over.”

  “When I’m with you,” I told her, “there’s always summer in my heart.” Then I went on inside to see what new outrages had been laid on my desk through the wonders of the postal service and the telephone.

  Not many. I’d grown used to weekly accumulations, Wagnerian in scope and volume, while one day’s output barely showed up on the seismograph. Linda Ann Margolies had not made any more calls, which I regretted. Nor were there any from Liz, though there was one from Ernest Volpinex. Oh, really?

  Click. “Gloria, get me that fellow Volpinex, will you?”

  “Right”

  On to the mail. Wastebasket, wastebasket wastebasket …

  Buzz. “Volpinex.”

  “Thanks.” dick. “Volpinex?”

  A female voice said, “One moment, please.”

  I considered hanging up. Didn’t Gloria know better than that? She should have insisted on the other secretary producing her boss first.

  Ah, screw it Volpinex wasn’t likely to appreciate such subtleties anyway. Unless, of course, he had it in mind to keep me waiting. The clock on my desk has a sweep second hand, which I now stared at; I would wait exactly one minute, then hang up.

  Forty-two seconds: “Mr. Dodge?” Volpinex’s voice, like curdled molasses.

  “That’s right.”

  “Arthur Dodge?”

  “Come on, Volpinex,” I said.

  “I suppose you know why I’m calling.”

  “Dumb supposition,” I told him. “If I knew, I probably wouldn’t call back.”

  He chuckled slightly. “I must admit I like you better than your brother,” he said.

  “That’s why you called? Sorry, I’m already engaged.”

  “As a matter of fact that’s why I called. Your engagement, the contract you signed.”

  “What about it?”

  “I drew it up, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  “Not willingly.”

  “Of course.”

  “I spoke against you as strongly as I could,” he assured me.

  “Speak for yourself, John Alden,” I suggested.

  “Nevertheless,” he said, “Elizabeth insisted. You were the only candidate she would consider.”

  I chuckled deliberately into the phone. “Put your own name in nomination, did you?”

  “In order to protect her, yes. I know you won’t consider that selfless of me, but in truth it was. Particularly when it’s Betty that I’ve always been the most fond of.”

  I burst into sudden honest laughter. “That’s footwork, Volpinexl” I told him. “Now you’re out to be my brother-in-law.”

  “I’m used to your cynicism,” he said. “And to be honest with you, I—”

  “Oh, yes, do,” I said.

  “I hold as low an opinion of you,” he said, “as you do of me. But whatever may happen between myself ands Betty, there is still the fact that I am your fiancée’s attorney. And a brother-in-law status in the future is not entirely inconceivable.”

  “It is to me,” Bart told him.

  “Don’t count too highly on your brother’s prospects,” he told Art. “I’ve seen Betty through this sort of infatuation before.”

  “Have you now.”

  “Yes, I have. Still, the point is, in one way or another you and I will have to reach some sort of accommodation. Whether we can rise above our personal dislike or not, we’ll have to construct a viable procedure for dealing with one another.”

  What
did he want now? I asked him: “What do you want now?”

  “A truce,” he said. “Possibly productive, but at least not harmful. To either of us.”

  “Fine,” I said. “You don’t knife my back and I won’t knife yours.”

  “Possibly we could go into greater detail,” he said. “Would you be free for lunch?”

  It was not yet eleven. I said, “Today?”

  “Or tomorrow. The sooner the better.”

  “All right, today. Where?”

  “At my club,” he said, and gave me its name and address. He had, of course, gone to one of the correct New England universities—educational standards are not what they used to be—and it was that university’s club at which we would lunch. “Twelve-thirty,” he suggested.

  “Fine,” I said, and we both hung up.

  Now what? Did Volpinex really think I’d help him beat my brother’s time with Betty? If he did, he either had too high an opinion of himself or too low an opinion of me. And if that wasn’t what he wanted, what were the alternatives? “A viable procedure for dealing with one another.” How much was that, in American money?

  Well, I’d find out soon enough. Right now, it was time to reestablish contact with sweetheart number two. Back to the phone I went, and dialed.

  “Kairnair reseedonce.”

  “Hello, Nikki, this is Art Dodge. Is Liz there?”

  “Meez Leez? I go see.” There was a click as she put me on hold, and I spent the next minute or two going through the rest of the telephone message memos. Nothing from Ralph yet, but it was far too soon anyway; I’d only put him to work on Liz and her lawyer yesterday. As for the rest, it was wastebasket, wastebasket, wastebasket …

  “Hello?” A voice as snotty as ever.

  “Hello, there, my bride-to-be,” I said. “How’s my little dove this fine morning?” I’d very nearly said pigeon, but switched in the nick of time.

  “You were going to call me yesterday.” She sounded imperious and annoyed, very like her tone when she’d thought she was talking to Carlos.

  It was time to start fine-tuning the relationship. Casually I said, “I was busy.”

  “When you’re supposed to call me, you—”

  “Supposed to call you?”