Privileged Conversation

by Ed McBain

  Her mother goes on for at least half an hour.

  By the end of that time, Kate is ready to jump out the window.

  “Mom,” she says, “I have to pee. Can we finish this some other time?”

  “Sure, some other time,” her mother says, weeping.

  “I’ll call you soon.”

  “Sure,” her mother says.

  “G’bye, Mom. Enjoy the rest of the weekend.”

  “Sure.”

  Kate hangs up.

  Her heart is beating very fast.

  He’s in New York, she thinks.

  And goes into the bathroom to wash her face.

  The phone rings again at a quarter past eleven, just as she’s about to leave the apartment. Her mother consistently tells her she dresses too provocatively, but she doesn’t care what her mother says, she dresses for comfort and she dresses to look attractive, yes, and sexy, yes. She’s an American girl, right? A dancer! Today, because she doesn’t have to be at the theater till one-thirty for the three o’clock show, she plans to check out some of the galleries in SoHo, and is wearing for her outing a short white cotton crochet-knit dress and laced white leather Docksiders. Her immediate thought is that it’s her mother calling back to weep a little more. Her next thought is that it’s her father, God forbid. A minute more and I’d have been out of here, she thinks. Safe, she thinks. But the phone is still ringing. Get out anyway, she thinks. She picks up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “You have a collect call …” a recorded voice says.

  “Yes,” she says at once.

  “From …”

  And then his recorded voice, announcing his name, “David …”

  “Yes,” she says.

  “Will you accept charges?”

  “I will. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.”

  “Thank you for using AT&T,” the recorded voice persists, seemingly unwilling to get off the line.

  “David?”

  “Yes, hi, how are you?”

  “Why don’t you come make love to me?” she asks.

  “I wish I could.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In a drugstore. I tried to get you earlier …”

  Damn her, Kate thinks.

  “… but the line was busy. Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too.”

  “I’m counting the days.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Seventeen, counting today.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m marking them on my calendar. You are coming, aren’t you?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “Good. I can’t wait. Is there any chance you can come down on the fourteenth instead? Because …”

  “I really don’t …”

  “… we’re dark on Tuesdays, you know …”

  “Yes, but …”

  “… and that would give us the whole day together.”

  “Well, the way Stanley and I have it worked out …”

  “I wish you …”

  “… we’ll have the whole day, anyway. Because we’re saying the lectures start that Tuesday night, you see …”

  “Wonderful!”

  “So I’ll be taking a plane down that morning …”

  “I’ll meet you at the airport.”

  “That would be great.”

  “With a limo again, if you like.”

  She hears a sharp intake of breath. There is a sudden silence on the line.

  “Kate,” he says abruptly, “I have to …”

  “No, please, not yet.”

  “I see the kids coming. Really, I have to …”

  “I love you, I love you, I love you,” she shouts.

  “I love you, too. I’ll call again. I really have to …”

  “Wait! Thanks for all the flowers! They’re beautiful!”

  “What flowers?” he asks.

  Before the evening performance on Monday night, the last day of July, a long white box is delivered initially to the Seventh Avenue stage door of the Winter Garden and then to the dressing room two and a half floors above street level. The night-shift doorman breezily walks into a roomful of women in various stages of undress, but he has worked many a Broadway show, m’little darlings, and has seen it all and heard it all. He scarcely bats an eyelash when Kate—in the midst of applying white makeup, a towel over her shoulders, her leotard top lowered to the waist—accepts the box and begins opening it.

  They are roses, of course.

  But instead of the now-familiar card, there is a sealed envelope in the box. The stock is heavy, it feels expensive, like something she’d find at Tiffany’s or Bergdorf’s. A cream-colored envelope, her name handwritten in purple ink across the face of it.

  She had thought at first, when David told her he hadn’t sent the flowers, that perhaps her father was the secret admirer the kids were speculating about. But the handwriting doesn’t appear to be his. She tears open the flap of the envelope. The page inside is of the same color. The same thick stock. The same handwriting in the same purple ink.

  Well, not dear Daddy, that’s for sure.

  The flowers have stopped.

  Now there are the letters.

  Three of them are waiting for her at the theater when she gets there on Wednesday night. The same cream-colored stationery. The same purple ink. The same hand.

  The postmarks all read New York, New York, August 1.

  Today is the second day of August.

  The envelopes are marked sequentially, the handwritten numerals on their separate faces. She feels an odd sense of dread as she starts opening the first envelope. Someone across the room—Kate’s head is bent as she tears open the flap of the envelope, and she can’t be sure who it is—someone calls, “No flowers today, Kate?”

  The letter reads:

  She resists the urge to crumple both letter and envelope, understanding at once and with a sharp clarity that this letter, these letters must be saved. These letters are evidence. Evidence? she thinks. And her hand starts shaking as she opens the second envelope.

  She does not want to open the third envelope, but she does. Sitting at the dressing table covered with brushes and liners and jars of makeup, she reads it silently:

  There are more letters waiting before Friday night’s performance. Four more letters delivered in the mail that afternoon. Each marked sequentially with the handwritten numerals The postmarks all read New York, New York, August 3. Which means they were mailed yesterday sometime. She stuffs them into her handbag and does not open them until she gets home that night.

  Sitting at her kitchen table, sipping a glass of milk, eating a ham sandwich she bought in the all-night deli on Second Avenue, she cold-bloodedly slits open the first of them with a sharp paring knife.

  It reads:

  She puts the note on the table alongside the first one, and then slits open the next envelope. The letter inside reads:

  How come the quantum leap? she wonders. How’d my adoring supplicant all at once turn into my one true lord and master? Is there something transitional in this letter, something that bridges the gap between the letter preceding it and the one I haven’t yet opened? There must be. Otherwise, why has he bothered to number them? If there isn’t a continuity, a sequence, then why the orderly progression? Tell me that, my lord and master.

  Calmly, she slits the envelope marked with the number six. Calmly, she unfolds the thick sheet of cream-colored stationery. Calmly, she reads the next note:

  Still oddly calm, she picks up the last of that day’s envelopes. Looks at the handwritten words spelling out her name and the address of the theater. Looks at the numeral Studies her name again. The purple ink lends urgency. The handwriting seems suddenly frantic, almost frenzied. She is tearing open the flap when the telephone rings.

  It is one of those odd coincidental occurrences, two separate unlinked events happening simultaneously, as if one has triggered the other, the tearing of th
e flap seeming to activate the ringing of the phone and causing her to drop the envelope at once, as if it has just burst into flames. The phone is still ringing. She looks at the clock on the kitchen wall. It is almost one A.M. The phone persists. She goes to the window and draws the shade, as if suddenly certain she is being observed, as if knowing without question that her one true lord and master is watching her as she moves to the counter and snatches the receiver from the wall phone.

  “Hullo?” she says.

  Cautiously.

  “Katie?”

  She is almost relieved.

  But not quite.

  “Hi, Dad,” she says.

  “Hello, darlin,” he says. “How are you?”

  Enter Neil Duggan. Yet another time, folks. A curtain call for the very same charmer who ran off with a blond, lanky (horse-faced, her mother insists) woman thirteen years his junior nine years ago, but who’s counting? His sweet lilting voice a bit mellow at a little past one in the morning and a little past six or seven drinks, she guesses. But that’s the only time he ever calls, really. In the middle of the night when he’s had too much to drink. To tell his darlin little girl how much he loves her. Let’s hear it for him, folks.

  “How’ve you been doin, Katie?”

  “Fine, Dad,” she says.

  She does not ask him why he’s in New York, does not ask him how long he’s been here, does not inquire after his health because frankly, my dear, she does not give a damn. She waits for him to speak next. She stands beside the counter with the phone to her ear, waiting.

  “Are you still dancin, Katie?”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  And waits.

  On the kitchen table, the last envelope is also waiting. She dreads opening it, but she would rather do that—would rather walk on a bed of coals in Bombay, for that matter—than spend another minute on the phone with Neil Duggan, her wonderful father. Another second, for that matter.

  The silence lengthens.

  “I just thought I’d see how you were doing,” he says.

  “I’m doing fine, Dad.”

  “Well, I’m happy to hear that.”

  Silence again.

  “Have you seen your sister lately?”

  “I visit her every month,” Kate says.

  Her voice catches. There are sudden tears in her eyes, sharp, burning.

  “How is she? How is my dear Bessie?”

  “Your dear Bessie is just fine,” she says, unable to keep the caustic edge out of her voice.

  “Now, now,” he says.

  “Dad …” she says.

  And catches herself.

  What good is the anger?

  What does the anger accomplish?

  “Dad, it was nice of you to call,” she says. “But I’ve got two performances tomorrow, and I really need to get some sleep. So if you don’t mind …”

  “I’ll let you go then,” he says.

  The words seem peculiar, all things considered.

  “Thank you,” she says. “Goodnight, Dad.”

  “Goodnight, Katie.”

  There is a click on the line. She replaces the receiver on its cradle, hesitates a moment, and then goes back to the table and the envelope with her name on it. Boldly, she tears open the flap. This time, the phone doesn’t ring. Calmly, she unfolds the note. It reads:

  “Oh sure, master,” she says aloud.

  But her hand is trembling again as she slides the letter back into its envelope. She scoops up all four envelopes and carries them into the bedroom. The letters she received on Wednesday are in the top drawer of her dresser, on a stack of leg warmers. She adds these to the pile. Closing the drawer, she goes immediately to the windows and pulls the blinds shut.

  Tomorrow will be almost a week since last she heard from David.

  He could be anyone in this Saturday matinee audience.

  Where before now her concentration has always been entirely on her performance—focusing on how to move like a cat, look like a cat, think like a cat, become a cat—she now scans the spectators in their seats, wondering which of the men is the one who sent her the roses and is now sending her the letters.

  Her part requires her to go into the audience.

  She wonders where he is sitting.

  Who out there is waiting for her to smile at him, wink at him, glance at him?

  Who out there might misinterpret any innocent move she makes?

  Any innocent look that crosses her face.

  She is happy for the white makeup.

  It hides her from him.

  She feels naked in the tight white costume.

  Who out there will try to touch her?

  Who out there is the one who thinks he owns her?

  You know that you are mine, I hope …

  Who out there is waiting for her to crouch at his feet?

  Kneel beside me and let me touch your fur.

  There is a moment in the show when she comes down off the stage—during the “Macavity” number—comes swiftly down the side ramp on the right of the theater, crawls through the wide space in front of row K, and then crouches alongside the aisle seat, sits up, seemingly detecting a human presence, seemingly startled, jerks her head around and looks directly into the face of whoever is sitting in that seat, her green eyes wide. The moment is literally that. An actor’s moment, but an actual moment as well. She is off again at once, scampering onto the stage again, gray-white tail twitching.

  But today she glimpses from the corner of her eye the face of the man sitting in that aisle seat. It is a thin pale face, the deep-set eyes a dark glowering black.

  After the show, she asks the dance captain if it would be okay for her to stay out of the audience for a while.

  “What do you mean?” he asks.

  “Not go down in the audience.”

  “Why?”

  “Somebody’s bothering me out there,” she says.

  “What do you mean, bothering you?”

  “Some creep.”

  “Bothering you? How?”

  “I’ve been getting letters,” she says. “Can’t we just work around it? Nobody’ll miss me out there, believe me.”

  “Change the choreography? How can I …?”

  “Please,” she says. “I’m asking you. Please.”

  The dance captain looks deep into her eyes.

  “Sure,” he says.

  That night, from where she is standing stage left, waiting for a music cue, she locates the aisle seat.

  A fat woman in a bright purple dress is sitting in it.

  The letter is delivered on Tuesday morning.

  The letter is delivered to her home address.

  She desperately wishes she could talk to David.

  But it is nine days since he last called, and he won’t be back in New York till next week—if he’ll be back in New York—and a lunatic now has her home address.

  She wishes next that she could talk to Jacqueline Hicks, but of course this is the month of August and every fucking psychiatrist in the city of New York is away at the beach or in the mountains.

  This is Lost Weekend.

  This is Ray Milland in the reruns she’s seen on television, frantically trying to find an open pawnshop on Yom Kippur.

  She goes to an open bike shop instead.

  Rickie Diaz is changing a tire when she gets there, wearing much the same outfit he had on when she bought the bike. Red nylon shorts with a white nylon tank top this time, the same numeral 69 on the front of it. In blue this time. Same bulging pectorals, biceps and triceps, same tattooed head of an Indian chief in full feathered headdress on the biceps of his left arm. Plus ça change, Kate thinks, perhaps because she, too, is wearing the same outfit she’d worn that day David came here with her to help pick out the bike. Green shorts and orange shirt, white socks and Nikes, plus c’est la même chose. Rickie’s shiny black hair is pulled to the back of his head in a ponytail and held there with the same little beaded band he was wearing the last time she saw h
im, and took his number, and told him she might give him a call someday. Because a girl seeing a married man never knows how long it might last, right, David? Where the hell are you, David?

  “Well, well, well,” Rickie says, “look who’s here,” and rises from his squatting position to shake hands with her.

  Well, well, well.

  I see little Kathryn is trying to avoid me.

  “Can I take you to lunch?” she asks.

  “Let me lock up,” he says at once.

  He reads the letters silently and thoughtfully.

  “Your lord and master, huh?” he says.

  “Yeah,” she says.

  “Where’d he get that idea?”

  “A weirdo,” she says, and shrugs.

  “Must be,” Rickie says, and continues reading. “Who’s Victoria, anyway?”

  “That’s my name in the show. The character I play.”

  “Darling Victoria Puss,” Rickie says, and nods.

  “No, just Victoria.”

  “I mean, that’s what he calls you here.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And Sweet Victoria Puss.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whose coat is so warm.”

  “Yes.”

  “Miss Open Pussy.”

  Kate nods.

  “I guess he likes that word, huh?” Rickie says.

  “Well, it’s … Cats, you know. The show.”

  “Oh, sure, I realize.”

  He keeps reading through the letters.

  “This guy ought to have his mouth washed out with soap.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Cock-tease, wow.”

  “Well, he’s nuts, you know.”

  “Sure sounds that way.”

  “Well, obviously.”

  “This kind of thing ever happen to you before?”