by Kane, Henry
“Later,” I said.
“We’re not going to have a later, lover. Change of plans. I’ve got to do a benefit at the Waldorf for the Heart Fund. Tommy’s taking me.”
As though on cue, there was a knock on the door and Tommy Lyons entered with David Holly.
Holly said, “I thought I’d find you here.”
“Hi,” I said.
“Get a move on,” Tommy Lyons said to Arlene Anthony.
“Shower now,” said Arlene Anthony and went into another room followed by her dresser.
“Good evening, Mr. Chambers,” said Tommy Lyons, smiling ruefully.
“Good evening, Mr. Lyons; you are even more splendid than last I saw you.”
He was in a slim suit: white tie and tails.
“I’m on the Committee,” he explained. “I have to make a speech. You must teach me some of your quick-tricks, Mr. Chambers.”
“Pleasure. Would you wish another demonstration?”
“Just for kicks,” he said. “Regards from Sammy Bleek.”
“What’s going on?” said David Holly.
Tommy Lyons opened a cabinet, closed it, opened a drawer, closed it. “Arlene’s got some real old Chivas Regal around here,” he said.
Arlene’s head came around the doorway.
“Fast enough, friend Tommy?”
“You dressed?”
“I’m showered, and the sheath I’m wearing’ll take no time to put on.”
“Where’s the Chivas Regal?”
“In here, and glasses and soda and stuff.”
“Would you send it out with your dresser, please?”
“Of course, my lord.”
We had drinks all around, and a bit of theatre chatter, and a bit of Heart Fund chatter, and then Arlene came out with her hair shimmering over a gold sheath that clung as though sprayed on with an air-brush.
“Duty calls,” she said and took a small white fur from a closet.
“The car waits without,” Tommy said. “Goodbye, one and all.”
“Hail to the Heart Fund!” said Arlene and Tommy turned the knob and they were gone with a slam of door. Then the dresser departed, closing the door behind her quietly.
“Ah, that Anthony.” David Holly sighed. “Quicksilver. Mercurial.”
“Yeah,” I said, grumpy.
“You’ll have supper with me.”
“Why?” I said, grumpy.
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Too much sleep.”
“You’re quite mercurial yourself, you know.”
“Yeah, quicksilver,” I said. “Do you mind if we skip the supper?”
“You’re not hungry?”
“I’m starved.”
“I want to talk to you, Peter.”
“But who says I want to talk to you?”
He set away his glass. “Do you want to earn some money?”
“Money talks,” I said.
“So we talk?”
“If it’s business.”
“It’s business.”
“What kind of business?”
“My divorce.”
“Divorce!” Now I set my glass away. “But you are divorced.”
“For five years now. Aside from the money, this may prove interesting to you.”
“Interesting to me? Why?”
He sighed again. “I’ve been married for eleven years, I had believed it to be deeply settled in its groove, and I had every confidence in my wife, in her wanting to continue to be my wife despite my, er, extra-marital idiosyncrasies. She surprised me, to put it mildly. She caught me with the goods, and she brought five unimpeachable witnesses along with her. Caught me with my pants down, so to speak.”
I was now seated at the bulb-surrounded mirror of Arlene’s dressing-table and I was using Arlene’s facial tissues against the smudges of lipstick on my cheek and ear. “Your pants, Mr. Holly,” I said, “down, up, or at half-mast, are not of the slightest interest to me and why you should believe otherwise escapes me, but wholly.”
“Do you know who was named correspondent in the divorce proceedings?”
“That also is of no interest to me. Honest, pal.”
“We have a point there, Mr. Chambers, which may, after consideration, turn out to be moot.”
I gave up on the bulb-surrounded mirror and swung around to him. “Moot? Shoot! I’m a big boy, Mr. Holly, and I’ve read all the books and looked at all the pictures. What possible interest can I have in your boudoir calesthenics, past, present, or future?”
“Arlene Anthony,” he said.
“Beg pardon?” I said.
“Arlene Anthony,” he said.
Eight
WE WENT to El Morocco and the renowned David Holly got the full red-carpet treatment. Captains bowed and flunkeys fluttered and fingers were snapped and we were made snug in a remote corner in a room so padded with soundproofing that the tinkle of ice in crystal glass sounded like the tapping of rubber in a velvet goblet. The renowned David Holly ordered large champagne cocktails and then he ran off on a tack of small talk that had me sucking up a great deal of champagne although I am notorious for my plebeian dislike of champagne. I am not a wine drinker, I do not attend soirees at the White House, and it will be an eon before my phlegmming makes bond with knowing doctors and I receive the stump of approval from politicians in high places. In short I am a peasant out of American soil so far back I feel guilty about Indians.
The renowned David Holly had me hooked and he was showman enough to know he had me hooked and so I was captive audience to his preliminary prattlings. He ordered more champagne, and shrimps, and steaks, and then he channeled his chatter. “Tommy tells me he talked with you yesterday.”
“Tommy tells you true,” I muttered.
“On Sunday?”
“Tommy is sacrilegious on Sunday?”
He looked at me with suddenly transparent hatred. “But on Sunday you’re up with Arlene at Monticello.”
“It got postponed this week.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
Holly looked thoughtful, and I looked at Holly.
He had black hair, black eyes, a black mustache, and a hawk-nose. He had a deep baritone voice with a precise clear accent. He was a tall man with a full-flesh figure, not fat, but with just enough paunch to bespeak the gourmet. Where Tommy Lyons was always Tommy—never Thomas—David Holly was always David: never Dave, Davie, or Davie-boy. He had reserve, presence, and a frigid crust of personality. He demanded respect and he got respect but respect is too often confused with fear: David Holly was feared. At forty-seven, he had not one grey hair of head and no particular corruption of face, but he looked older than his forty-seven. One could not imagine David Holly as a baby, or even as a boy: there are those who appear to have sprung full-blown: never young, always aging, never old. David Holly had round cheeks and brilliant teeth, all capped, and his smile was wide and white and frequent but without mirth.
He smiled his white smile for me and he said, “Tommy tells me you two had words.”
“Tommy confides in you?”
“Sometimes,” he said as the shrimps were served to us.
“Did Tommy tell you that during our words I knocked him on his ass?”
“He told me there was a disagreement.”
“Did he tell you that during the disagreement I flattened him?”
“He said there was an unpleasantness.”
“Not of my making, Davie-boy.”
“David.”
“Not of my making, Dave.”
“David!”
“Not of my making—David.”
David Holly speared a shrimp and dipped it in red sauce. “He’s out of his fucking mind for her, Peter.” Even a dirty word became prim when enunciated by David Holly. It was not a dirty word, an epithet out of burning viscera: it was a fashionable word out of modern-day freedom of speech; an obvious effort, in fact; an attempt at verbal italics, unfelt. “If you’re not in love, you ought to let go
.”
“Why?”
The mouth opened and the red-dripping shrimp disappeared encompassed into gullet without apparent chewing. He waved the clean little fork at me. “He could be a powerful enemy, but, just as easily, a very good friend. He’s a rich man.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“May I advise you?”
“On what?”
“Money.”
“You’re the boy for that kind of advice, David.”
The white smile came back without much muscle of mouth: call it a grin. “If you play it smart, you can pick up a huge hunk of loot. Depends, of course, on whether you’re in love.”
“Why?”
“Love makes no sense, and if one is in love, one cannot be expected to act sensibly. That may sound bad but it isn’t; it is, actually, a romantic concept. If you’re in love, then I’m out of line. If not, then I can advise you.”
“And what would your advice be?”
“Pretend you’re in love.”
So now I had a shrimp and I chewed it long, and swallowed.
“Why?” I said.
“Because, then, reluctantly, you will withdraw—for a price. Tommy can afford.”
“I don’t play that way, David.”
“You’re no business man, Peter.”
“Not that kind of business man, David. Put me down as a talent. Talents, notoriously, are not wise in business. You ought to know, David. You’re in the business of talents. You’ve got six big hits going for you, and you make most of the money.”
He speared and swallowed another shrimp. “You’re a talent,” he said.
“How do you know?” I said.
“I’ve inquired. That’s why you’re here.”
“Why am I here, Mr. Holly?”
“We’ll come to that.”
“When?”
“There’s lots of time. All night. So? Are you in love?”
“Let’s say I’m in like.”
“Then it wouldn’t be any great hardship to let go, would it?”
“It would—if I were letting go for Tommy.”
“Even though, in exchange, you could gather in a large head of cabbage?”
“Did Tommy put you up to this, Mr. Holly?”
“Frig Tommy. Nobody puts me up to anything, Mr. Chambers. I’m a business man, which is a sort of talent on its own. I simply hate to see a shaped-up deal go flat. It hurts the artist in me, so to speak.”
I ate shrimp and drank champagne.
He ate shrimp and drank champagne, his smile up by his eyes now.
“Look,” I said. “Let me set you straight, just for the hell of it. With me and Arlene it’s for fun, you know? An affair, you know? Dig?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, but with Arlene annd Tommy it has to be for real, for keeps, for marriage. You’re a smart man, Mr. Holly. You know just what I’m talking about.”
“I do.”
“So—if it were the marriage-go-round—I’d step out of the picture before he could even snap the shutter. No cabbage. For free.”
“For free would be stupid.”
“For free would be ethics.”
“I admire you, Peter.”
“Save it,” I said. “I may be able to use it later.”
“Use what?”
“Your admiration.”
“Later, when?”
“Later when you tell me why you’ve got me here.”
Black eyebrows soared, one higher than the other, as black eyes squinted imperiously. The nostrils of the hawk-nose grew tight and thin as the corners of the mouth turned down in a mocking pout. Superior, he studied me as though I were an amoeba sliding along the wrong end of a microscope, but when he spoke the smooth baritone had all the liquid coo of a pigeon.
“Why?” he said in direct plummet, sudden, pinning me, he hoped, to the bargain-table for later. “Why do you think I have you here?”
It was time to make a bit of character for myself.
Two can play at the bargain-table, in advance, for later.
“You need a new eye,” I said, “because your old eye croaked on you, like all of a sudden.”
Both eyebrows went up, as did the nostrils, as did the corners of the mouth. Hastily the little fork plunged for further shrimp but there were no more shrimp. The fork was laid away and champagne was drunk to dribbling on the chin. A napkin patted and then retreat returned us to the small-talk. “I happen to know,” he said, “that Tommy Lyons is in earnest about Arlene. He wants to marry her.”
“Bigamy is still not allowed, even for millionaires.”
“He’s working on getting out of his marriage.”
“So Arlene has told me.”
“You look skeptical, Peter.”
“I sure am skeptical, Pappy.”
“But why?”
I drank champagne, lit a cigarette. “Well, sir, here’s a millionaire by name Tommy Lyons who is legally separated from his wife for free, no alimony, which already sounds cockeyed. Now I figure the millionaire-fella wants it that way—separated but protected by marriage. He’s thirty-six years old, he can play the field, and any time one of his little doves starts clucking about marriage—sorry, baby, but I am married. To those whom he’s playing strong, like Arlene, he says the wife was asking for a paltry sum to give him his freedom—one hundred million dollars. But, because of certain pictures that were the basis for the legal separation without payment for separate maintenance, she came down to a far more reasonable figure, slightly higher than a king’s ransom—fifty million dollars. Now just between you and me, Pappy-boy, Grimm’s fairy tales are grim realism in comparison to the concoctions of Hans Christian Tommy Lyons.”
“Wrong. All the way.”
My package of cigarettes was on the table and my millionaire prospective client helped himself to one. I was about to strike a match for him but the hovering captain beat me to the pinch. He produced a snappy Dunhill gold lighter which produced a lovely glow at one snap. Gold lighter, not gilded lighter—the guy was a captain of waiters at El Morocco where the tips are somewhat larger than at the Hero Sandwich Coffee Pot and Soft Drink Fountain.
“Thank you,” said David Holly breathing grateful smoke.
“Not at all,” said the captain. “Your steaks will be with you momentarily, Mr. Holly.” He put away his lighter and took himself away.
Holly chuckled. “He didn’t mean momentarily; that’s a very frequent error. If the steaks were with us momentarily, it would be that they would be with us for a moment. Momentarily means for a moment; it does not mean at any moment.”
“Thank you so much for the English lesson,” I said and hunched my shoulders right up to my ears. Dismay takes many forms. Mine was hunching. The guy, quite obviously, was still crawling back from the end of the limb to which my oblique reference to Carl Rockland had jolted him.
He smoked. He smiled with the gleaming jacketed teeth. He said, “Where were we?”
“The grim fairy tales of the leonine Lyons.”
“Peter,” he said, “you’re a boy.”
“Well, thanks a large lump, Pappy.”
“Peter,” he said, “what might appear to be telephone numbers to you are normal figures in certain circles.”
“Figure out those circles for me, won’t you?”
“Sure.” He inhaled, made a black hole of his mouth, whistled out smoke. “Mrs. Monique Lyons is a daughter of one of the best families in the country, in the world. Society all the way back to the Mayflower but crusty-poor these days. Tommy, on the other hand, is worth”—shrug—”eight-nine hundred million dollars. Monique has the advice of crackerjack lawyers. A hundred million bucks as a property settlement out of perhaps nine hundred million is not quite as preposterous as it sounds.”
“Pappy, say what you will, those are still telephone numbers to me.”
“And when that is cut in half, that is a reduction. Fifty percent.”
“By fifty percent you mean fifty million?”
“That’s straight arithmetic.”
“Well, maybe in your circles that’s a reduction. Okay.” I crushed out my cigarette. “So why doesn’t he pay?”
“Because he happens to have her by the well-known balls.”
“Correction, Pappy. Gals don’t have balls.”
“You may not be quite correct there, Mr. Chambers.”
I stared at him.
He stared right back at me.
I shrugged and did not know what in hell I was shrugging about.
I said, “Look. Does the guy want a divorce, or doesn’t he?”
“Of late, he does.”
“Of late?”
“Arlene.”
“Has he made an offer? I mean, the hell with the telephone numbers.”
“He has, as a matter of fact.”
“How much?”
“A million dollars.”
“That’s much.”
“That’s a serious offer and it was made first crack, initial offer. He wants his freedom, Mr. Chambers. Actually, up to now, he didn’t give a damn about his freedom.”
I smelled truth and a trifle it shook me.
“Arlene?” I said.
“He wants to marry Arlene.”
“And so, would you say now that Monique is finished with telephone numbers? I mean does she grab that million?”
“No. She’s holding out for more.”
“She realizes this is a serious offer?”
“I’m certain she does.”
I blinked. “I thought you said she was crusty-poor?”
“She’s being advised by lawyers who aren’t crusty-poor. They realize now that Tommy does want out. Of course the hundred million was out of the question, as was the fifty million—pure window dressing. But now that Tommy has offered a million dollars, they feel there’s room for improvement.”
“And how does Tommy feel?”
“Outraged. There’s no doubt he made one hell of a liberal offer. In the circumstances, he was certain it would be accepted. Now he’s getting angry, and that worries me.”
“Why?”
