Privileged Conversation

by Ed McBain

  They are on coffee and dessert when Kate asks whether it might be possible for them to get out of the city for the next two nights, maybe find a little country inn …

  “Well, I …”

  “… someplace, figure out something …”

  “I’d have to talk to Stanley first,” he says. “Make sure he can justify …”

  “You can say one of the lecturers lives out of town.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “And can’t travel because he broke his leg or something.”

  “Like you.”

  “God forbid. All I told him was that I sprained my ankle. Which leaves me free, you see. That’s why I thought …”

  “I guess there’s nothing really tying us to the city, is there?”

  “Not until my ankle heals.”

  “Where’d you have in mind?”

  “Not Massachusetts. Too close to her.”

  “Connecticut then?”

  “Too close to her.”

  He looks at her, puzzled.

  “I was thinking maybe New Hope,” she says. “Have you ever been to New Hope?”

  “Once. Long ago.”

  “With her?”

  “With Helen, yes.”

  But why does she think Connecticut is close to Martha’s Vineyard? Or has he misunderstood her?

  “I’ll talk to Stanley,” he says. “See what he thinks.”

  “Don’t leave the thinking to Stanley. Stanley sounds like a jackass.”

  “He is.”

  “Then tell him what you’d like to do …”

  “Well, I can’t …”

  “Not about me, of course. Just say you’re finding it very dreary, hanging around all alone in the city, and you’d like to get out of town, and you’ve figured out a way to make it sound plausible.”

  “Yes, what’s the way?”

  “I don’t know. You’re the married one. I don’t have to make excuses.”

  “You’ve already made one to your stage manager.”

  “Yes, but not because I wanted to get out of town.”

  The band is playing something he recognizes, but it’s something everyone recognizes, Artie Shaw’s arrangement of “Stardust.” The dance floor is suddenly filled again with stiletto-thin men and women, gliding, floating, drifting to the sound of the soaring clarinet. He tells her about the time he was in Liberty Music on Madison Avenue and Artie Shaw was in there buying records. This was around Christmastime, oh, ten, twelve years ago …

  “I was fifteen,” she says.

  “Well, yes, I suppose you were. Shaw was buying dozens of albums as gifts. He told the clerk he had a charge at the store, and the clerk said, ‘Yes, sir, may I have your name, please?’ And Shaw said, ‘Artie Shaw,’ and the clerk said ‘Is that S-H-O-R-E, sir?’”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m serious. A music store.”

  “Didn’t know Artie Shaw.”

  “Incredible.”

  “Everybody knows Artie Shaw.”

  “Sic transit gloria mundi,” David says.

  “Our Gloria?” Kate asks, and they both laugh.

  “Why did you tell him you sprained your ankle? I thought it was because …”

  “He called me.”

  “Who? Your stage manager?”

  “No, Artie Shaw.”

  “Really, who …?”

  “The nut who sent me the flowers and …”

  “Called …?”

  “… the letters. Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “Backstage.”

  “At the theater?”

  “Yes.”

  “Aren’t those numbers unlisted?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then how …?”

  “I don’t know. David, I’m very frightened. That’s why I want to leave the city. That’s the real reason.”

  “Kate,” he says, “you have to go to the police again.”

  “No, I can’t. He warned me not to.”

  “Then call Clancy. Ask him to come see you. I’m sure he’d be willing to …”

  “Sure, in New York? Anyway, how can I call him?”

  “Why not?”

  “He’d find out.”

  “How can he possibly …?”

  “He knows everything I do!”

  “How can he hear a phone call you make from your own …?”

  “How do I know? How’d he get the number at the theater?”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “Of course. Who do you think it was?”

  “Maybe someone you know. Maybe someone playing a …”

  “I don’t have friends who kid around that way. Besides he called me Puss, of course it was him.”

  “You didn’t give Rickie either of those numbers, did you?”

  “No.”

  “Who else has them?”

  “Everybody in the show.”

  “I mean, who’d you give them to?”

  “My agent, of course. And my mother. A few friends …”

  “How about your sister?”

  “My sister doesn’t make phone calls.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My sister is in Whiting.”

  “Whiting?”

  “The Whiting Forensic Institute. In Middletown, Connecticut.”

  The band is playing “Gently, Sweetly.” A male vocalist croons into the microphone. A mirrored globe rotates over the dance floor. Spotlights strike its myriad facets and beam splinters of reflected light to every corner of the room. Across the table, Kate’s face seems shattered with light.

  “It’s a maximum security hospital,” she says.

  “Gently …”

  “For the criminally insane.”

  “Sweetly …”

  “Burning down the house was just the start.”

  “More and more …”

  “Completely …”

  “She tried to kill my father.”

  “Take me …”

  “Make me …”

  “Yours.”

  The band’s saxophone section—two altos and two tenors—modulates from the singer’s key to a somewhat higher one that lends a soaring semblance to the next chorus.

  David is staring at her now.

  “Yes,” she says, and nods in dismissal.

  The song ends.

  They order coffee.

  They hold hands across the table.

  They dance some more.

  She doesn’t wish to discuss her sister further at this present time, thank you.

  He respects her wishes.

  Frankly, he doesn’t want to open that can of worms, anyway.

  When she excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, he tells her he’ll meet her near the coat check at the front door, and then pays the check and goes to the men’s room.

  Dr. Chris Fielding is pissing in the urinal alongside his.

  “David!” he says, cock in hand, “how are you?”

  “Fine, fine, Chris, and you?” David says, unzipping his fly, thinking Jesus, did he spot us on the dance floor, does he know I’m here with, Jesus, Helen knows him, Helen knows his wife, Jesus Christ!

  Side by side, they urinate.

  “How do you like this place?” Chris asks.

  “Great, great.”

  “What does Helen think?”

  Helen?

  Helen thinks I’m listening to Dr. Gianfranco Donato giving a talk on Learning and Motor Skill Disorders at the Lotos Club, is what Helen thinks, he thinks, and immediately says, “I’m here alone. Helen’s on the Vineyard.”

  “Oh?” Chris says.

  “I love listening to these old songs,” David says. “It’s a great band. Sounds much bigger than it is,” he says, quoting New York magazine. “And the steaks are terrific.”

  “So they are, so they are,” Chris says, a trifle in his cups, giving his cock a little shake with each repetitive observation.

  But Kate is waiting at the coat
check.

  No one needs coats in this sweltering August, but she is waiting there nonetheless, looking eminently gorgeous in her little black Fuck Me dress and strapped high-heeled Fuck Me shoes and sheer black Fuck Me jacket. And as fate would have it, as fate always fucking does, mousy Melanie Fielding is also waiting at the coat check as Chris Fielding—Question: What do you call the guy who ranked last in his class in medical school? Answer: Doctor—Dr. Chris Fielding, then, staggers his way toward his wife with David close behind him, trying to catch Kate’s eye, but she seems thoroughly absorbed in reading the framed reviews of the place hanging on the entrance wall, her back to him, “David, hello, what are you doing here?”

  This from Melanie Fielding, who spots him now and quickly looks past him to see where Helen might be. For this is a place where couples come to dance, no? What then …?

  Kate has turned.

  Please, he thinks. Be smart.

  You’re smart.

  Be smart.

  “Hi, Melanie,” he says, and takes her hand, and leans into her, and kisses the air beside her cheek, and says, “I love this big-band stuff, Helen’s on the Vineyard …”

  “She’s on the Vineyard,” Chris says blearily.

  “… and the steaks are terrific.”

  “Oh, what a shame,” Melanie says.

  Kate is walking out the door.

  “Give her my love, won’t you?” Melanie says.

  “I’ll be talking to her in …”

  David looks at his watch.

  “… a half hour.”

  “Give her my love.”

  “I will.”

  “Mine, too,” Chris says.

  There is only one message on her answering machine when they get back to her apartment at eleven that Wednesday night. It is from Rickie Diaz.

  “Hi, Kate,” he says, “who’s that answering your machine?”

  “None of your business,” she says.

  “I was hoping I could see you this Friday night. I have tickets for the Mets game, and I thought you might like to go with me.”

  “Nope,” Kate says.

  “I don’t know if you like baseball or not …”

  “I hate baseball.”

  “… but let me know either way, okay? You have the number, give me a call. Thanks.”

  “Friday night, I’ll be down in New Hope,” Kate says, and tosses the gossamer jacket over the back of a chair.

  “I have to call Helen,” David says.

  “Sure,” she answers. “I’ll go hide in the bathroom.”

  She blows a kiss at him, and goes into the bathroom, closing the door behind her. As he dials the number in Menemsha, he hears the water running. He is on the phone with Helen for perhaps five minutes, telling her he went to this place in the Village, highly recommended by New York magazine, where he had a steak and, oh, guess what, he ran into Chris and Melanie Fielding, they both send their love. Annie gets on the phone, wanting to know when he’ll be coming home—both girls already think of the Menemsha cottage as home—and he tells them he’ll be up on Saturday morning, and she tells him she caught a frog and she has him in a jar and his name is Kermit. In the background, David hears Jenny say, “How original.” He speaks to her for a few minutes, and then Helen gets back on the line and they talk for a few minutes more before they say goodnight.

  A narrow line of light is showing under the bathroom door.

  The water is still running.

  “Kate?” he calls softly.

  The air conditioner is clattering noisily.

  “Kate?”

  He walks to the bathroom door and knocks gently.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course. Come in.”

  The bathroom is full of steam. She is lying in the tub under a mountain of bubbles. Her hair is wrapped in a white towel, a single red tendril curling on her forehead like a tiny wet serpent. Her arm comes out of the water. She turns off the faucet, and then pats the rim of the tub. “Come sit,” she says.

  Soapsuds cling to her fingers.

  There is an odd little smile on her face.

  He sits on the edge of the tub.

  She slides deeper under the suds, closes her eyes, rests the back of her head on the white porcelain rim. “Do you remember the movie 1984?” she asks.

  “Yes?”

  “Where the thing he fears most, the hero, I forget his name …”

  “Smith.”

  “Yes, he fears rats more than anything in the world. And what they do to him, what Richard Burton does to him, is put this cage over his face where there’s a rat in one end of it, but the rat can’t get at his face because there’s a sort of partition that keeps him away. What Burton is trying to do is get John Hurt … that’s who played the hero … to betray his girlfriend, her name is Julia. So he starts opening this little partition that separates Hurt’s face from the rat, this little sort of gate that pulls up, or to the side, I forget which, and as it’s starting to open Hurt yells, ‘Do it to Julia!’ I was thinking of that before you knocked on the door,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Richard Burton opening the gate. I just happened to think of it.”

  “Who’s Julia?” he asks.

  “The girl in the movie.”

  “Yes, but you mentioned her once before.”

  “I don’t know anyone named Julia.”

  “But don’t you remember saying …?”

  “Even when I read the book, I found that scene frightening.”

  “When was that?”

  “The summer I worked at the Playhouse.”

  “The summer you were thirteen?”

  “Yes. But, listen, David, if you’re going to play shrink, I’ve been over this a hundred times already, really. I don’t enjoy …”

  “Over what?”

  “What happened. I was in analysis for six years, you know. Jacqueline and I …”

  “What do you mean, what happened?”

  “What happened.”

  “At the theater? With Charlie?”

  “No. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “What happened, Kate?”

  “I’ve talked about it enough. I’m sick of talking about it. I’m sick of my goddamn sister and her goddamn prob—”

  “Did it have something to do with your sister?”

  “No.”

  “You told me she set the house on fire …”

  “That was three years later. I also told you I don’t want to talk about it!”

  “Who’s Julia?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Don’t you remember saying something about my doing it to Julia …”

  “No.”

  “… on the Vineyard …”

  “No.”

  “… when I should have been doing it to you?”

  “I never said anything like that.”

  “Yesterday morning. In the car.”

  “I know your wife’s name is Helen. Anyway, let’s not talk about her, either. And you’d better not be doing it to her.”

  “Why’d she try to kill your father?”

  “Who, Helen?”

  “Kate, you know who I’m …”

  “Who, Julia?”

  “Your sister. Who’s in a maximum security hospital for the criminally …”

  “Go ask her, you’re so interested.”

  The room goes silent. She nods in curt dismissal. The mirror over the sink is dripping with mist. Everything looks slippery and wet.

  “Put your hand in the water,” she says.

  The same little smile reappears on her face.

  “No sharks in here,” she says playfully.

  Tilts her head to one side. Towel wrapped around it like a turban.

  “Give me your hand, okay?” she says.

  Smiling.

  “Don’t you want to?”

  Lifting one eyebrow.

  “Say.”

  Her voice turni
ng suddenly harsh.

  “Do it!”

  He plunges his hand into the foam, wetting his sleeve to the elbow.

  “Yes,” she says.

  And finds her.

  “Yes.”

  “I want to get away for a few days,” he hears himself telling Stanley. “Tonight and tomorrow night. Go down to New Hope maybe. Or someplace else in Pennsylvania. I’ll fly back to the Vineyard on Saturday, from wherever I happen to be.”

  “Why?”

  Careful, he thinks.

  “I’m getting cabin fever,” he says.

  “But I’m not, Davey.”

  Davey? he thinks. When did I get to be Davey? Just when I was getting used to being Dave.

  Stanley has taken the subway downtown to Fifty-ninth and Lex, and has met David outside Bloomingdale’s, as arranged. Their Thursday morning stroll takes place on East Fifty-seventh Street as the two men saunter westward toward Victoria’s Secret, where Stanley hopes to purchase lingerie suitable for his nineteen-year-old delight.

  “I don’t want to leave the city,” he says. “I even hate having to go out for food. So why would I choose to go to New Hope, of all places? I’m perfectly happy doing just what I’m doing. Life is sweet, Davey, and time is short.”

  He is dressed for his lingerie-shopping expedition in clothes that look as if he’s slept in them. Perhaps he has. Aside from Tuesday night’s visit to Bertinelli’s, he and Cindy have not budged from his office. His beard has grown several inches since the last time David saw him. He looks like a homeless person who hasn’t shaved in a month. A derelict who sleeps on the sidewalk in a cardboard box or else on a black leather couch in some philandering psychiatrist’s office. He can’t wait to get back to his little Cindy. He wants to buy her some crotchless panties and a garter belt …

  “I don’t think they sell crotchless panties,” David says.

  “Oh, of course they do.”

  “Victoria’s Secret, I mean.”

  “Then I’ll find them someplace else. You ought to buy some panties for Helen today,” he suggests. “I certainly plan to buy some for Gerry.”

  “Stanley, let’s get back to this, okay?”

  “Davey, I do not want to leave the city.”

  “I do.”

  “Why are you so eager to get out of town?”

  Their eyes meet.