The Loving Couple

by Patrick Dennis

"Oh," she said. "Oh, yes. Why, it's one-two-three East Sixty-eighth Street."

  "Okay by me, sister," the driver said, turning on the meter. "You just gotta tell me, that's all. I ain't psychic or anything like that. I bin drivin' a hack fer goin' on ten years now, I jus' gotta know the add-ress. All I ast was . . ."

  She closed her eyes and her ears and remained in oblivion as he drove the cab through Central Park.

  She had paid off the cab and watched it roll off before she realized her mistake. Of course this wasn't home! This had been home a year ago. This had been home in the pre-Popescu Pulse-Beat days, in the one-room-kitchenette-and-bath days, in the days when their income was limited and their happiness boundless. Home, now, was fifty miles up the Hudson River. Home was a fashionable Regency pavilion in fashionable Riveredge, and here she stood like a sentimental, romantic fool—and a fairly absent-minded one, at that—gaping at the place where once she had lived.

  She knew that she had no business being here. That if she had any sense she'd hail a cab on the corner, go back to the garage across from Chandelier, pick up her car and drive out to Riveredge before it became too late. But she couldn't tear herself away from the spot.

  She had always loved this building; not a building, really, but the turn-of-the-century conceit of a newly rich industrialist. He and his wife had felt that a limestone town house on a fashionable New York side street was essential to social advancement. The man had spared no effort in acquiring his tiny mansion. Thirty years later his son had spared no effort in ridding himself of it. The house had been converted into compact, inefficient little apartments, equipped with an iniquitous self-service elevator and a cantankerous superintendent, and rented out to the young, the frivolous and the undemanding.

  Their apartment had been the old drawing room, one flight up at the front of the house, elegant with its French windows, its boiseries, its marble mantel and its scuffed parquet. In it she had reigned like a queen.

  She looked longingly up at the windows of what had once been her domain. They were dark and curtainless. In the faint light cast by the street lamp she saw a sign that read APARTMENT TO LET.

  "Oh no!" she said. "It just couldn't be vacant! Not again!"

  Of course there were reasons for it to be vacant and on a permanent basis. The irregular supply of hot water, the two-burner stove, the minuscule refrigerator, the vicious indifference of the super. Oh, but the charm of the place! Its memories.

  "I wonder if I could manage to swing it alone," she said.

  Then she became conscious of someone watching her. She turned around and saw the figure of a man standing under one of the plane trees across the street, the collar of his jacket pulled up. Her heart began beating faster. She felt like running again. But then she summoned together the fragments of her courage. Why be afraid? After all, this was her old neighborhood. Her block! It was different from being molested in a strange section of the city. If the thug tried anything funny, she only had to dash across the street to the benevolent doorman. He had always hailed taxis for them and always refused to be tipped. Apparently he had liked her. Hadn't he said that she and John were the nicest young couple on the block? And hadn't she given him a lovely cashmere sweater to keep his old bones warm when they moved away?

  No, she had nothing to fear. She took a deep breath, faced the dim figure across the street squarely and said in a loud, imperious voice, "Sir, are you following me?"

  "No, madam," the answer reverberated back, "I am not!"

  "Oh! It's you!" she breathed.

  It was the voice of her husband.

  She watched him coming toward her from across the street with almost a feeling of relief. If only he hadn't followed her to the Rock Cornish Arms. If only he hadn't been spying on her. She didn't think that she could endure the humiliation of that.

  "What are you doing out on the streets alone at night?" he asked in a tone of supreme unfriendliness.

  "I don't see that it's any concern of yours," she said crisply. "Certainly not after this morning."

  "Believe me," he said, "it's none of my affair where you go. But I shouldn't like to see any woman mugged or raped." That was certainly white of him!

  "How thoughtful. I had no idea you cared so very deeply."

  "I thought that you were probably safe at home until I saw you cavorting around Chandelier tonight."

  How like a man. Of course he could be out all day and night doing God knows what, but he expected little Cinderella to be sitting out in Riveredge with her feet in the ashes!

  "Oh, I could tell you were thinking about me every minute," she said elaborately. "I suppose that brunette snake was your marriage counselor."

  "She happened to be Popescu's stepdaughter," he said. "So don't try to make anything out of that."

  Of course! That's who the Other Woman had been. Besame Bessamer, the girl she had seen on that terrible Pulse Beat show last night. At least now she knew who the menace was. Well, he and Besame could just go and jump through the television tube together. "Who cares who she is or what she means to you," she said coldly. "I simply remarked that you didn't seem to be holed up in the exclusive male society of the Bacchus Club or some wholesome Y.M.C.A."

  "The Bacchus Club is closed," he said.

  "What a loss!" She had always detested the place, she'd ever been permitted past the front hall.

  "And you seem to have picked up a prize package in Uncle Tom, or whoever that big economy-size helping of corn pone was."

  "He's some friend of Fran Hollister's," she said levelly. "I don't even remember his name." There. That had been casual enough.

  "Oh, Fran Hollister, eh?" he said unpleasantly. "You are running with a smart set."

  Of course he was right. Fran Hollister actually had all the glamor of a sow. Fran was hardly worth the powder to blow her up. But she wasn't going to let him say so.

  "After all," she said primly, "Fran and I were schoolmates at Baldwin and . . ." Then she gave up the pretense. "Oh, lay off please. Go away and leave me alone. I've spent the day with such awful people that I . . ."

  "So have I," he said quietly.

  Well, that was something of a confession, but she wasn't going to let it glide by quite so easily. "What?" she said. "With those charming Popescus and their gifted daughter? I should think you'd call it furthering your career. You'll get ahead."

  He'd get ahead, all right. Even if Lillian Popescu danced his arches right through his shoes.

  "Maybe," he said. "But not with Popescu. I'm quitting my job."

  She didn't believe him for a second.

  "Quitting?" she said. "Don't kid, please." But she wasn't entirely sure that he was kidding.

  "If you're really still that interested, just try to call my office on Monday. You'll only get Toby."

  What was he talking about? Certainly not about that infantile old school chum of his. That roommate from college who'd been his best man at their wedding, borrowed five hundred dollars from Mother and goosed Alice at the reception?

  "Toby?" she said, incredulously. "Toby Wentworth? What does little Huckleberry Finn know about running a television show?"

  "Nothing," he said delphically. "But he knows enough about Popescu to hang him. Or at least he will. It should be interesting to watch—like a fight to the finish between a ferret and a rat."

  "What on earth are you talking about?" He was obviously just playing on her curiosity, and it was a mean trick.

  "I didn't think you'd care," he said brutally.

  "I don't," she said with delicately arched brows. "Really. Not in the least. I just love standing out in the middle of the street in the middle of the night making idiotic conversation with my ex-husband." She paused for just a second to let that sink in. Then she felt a little sorry for having said it. He looked cold and miserable standing there with his suit collar turned up around his ears. "Aren't you cold?"

  "No, I am not," he answered indignantly, "Furthermore, I am not your ex-husband."

  "You mi
ght as well be," she said calmly, just in case he was entertaining any illusions about a touching reconciliation.

  "I suppose you're right," he said. Well, she liked that!

  "However," she said hurriedly, "there's no reason why we can't act like civilized people. I hope you'll be very happy." And that was true, she felt. She wanted neither to act like a churl nor to have him suffer very much. "I just never want to see you again, that's all."

  "That suits me fine," he said. "I would like to say, though, that I'm sorry about the coffee pot this morning." How generous of him! "That seemed to bring the whole thing to a . . ."

  She decided that she could be magnanimous, too, but only within certain limits. "Oh, don't worry about that. It made lousy coffee anyhow. But of course you're right. It takes more than a broken coffee pot to ruin a marriage." She had planned to stop right there, but she felt impelled to go on. "It takes things like a husband who suddenly ends up married to his job and a Manfred Popescu pinching your rear and a year or so isolated in a stagnant backwater like Riveredge and . . ."

  "Well," he said, interrupting her just as though she had never opened her mouth, "this is interesting. After you nearly drove me to bankruptcy moving out there with your sister Alice and a pack of snobs and squares to face on the commuters’ train twice a day . . .”

  Oh, the unfairness of a man! She wouldn't even listen to him any longer.

  "Don't blame me for Riveredge," she said flatly. "I hate it. I always have."

  "That's a pity. The house is in your name." And so it was.

  "Well, it won't be for long,” she said lifting her chin defiantly. "I’ll sell it."

  "Good," he said. "That'll give you a marriage settlement of some forty or fifty thousand dollars, provided you can find anyone who's fool enough to buy the place."

  Oh, he thought he knew so much! So smug. So manly. Thinking he could just dump a wife and then pay her off with a chunk of cash. Well, if he tried to give her any money she'd throw it right back into his teeth. "Thank you, but I happen to be an independent, educated woman quite able to earn my own living without alimony or a settlement. And you may quote me in court." That covered that. And now to let him know that she wasn't entirely without business acumen. "But in case you should be interested, I do know of a couple of prize customers."

  "Who?" he asked suspiciously.

  "They're two of the Hennesseys' favorite people—Dan and Peggy Slattery from Dee-troit." Now it dawned on her that the Slatterys were just not what Riveredge called "the Riveredge Sort." Well, that was his lookout. "The only trouble is that you could never get them past the Membership Committee. That's too bad—for you"

  "Do you really know somebody who might want that house?" he asked.

  "Yes indeed," she said archly. "Mrs. Slattery peeked through the windows and pronounced it de-vine. They want to buy it lock, stock and barrel. But as I say, they're even worse than the Hennesseys. That snobbish Membership Committee would never . . ."

  "I think the Membership Committee could be handled," he said with maddening smugness. "A word or two with Whitney Martin and your friends would be in like Flynn."

  Her friends. She liked that! And just when had he started getting so cosy with Whit Martin? He'd never been able to be more than civil to Whitney before. "That's your worry," she said with heroic indifference. "Not mine. You bought the house. You sell it. Ym going to try to get back into our old place."

  "Here?" he said, moving a shoulder toward the general direction of their old apartment.

  "You can see it's for rent," she said.

  "Oh really?" he said. He was sounding awfully casual. "I just happened to be strolling past and kind of thought of moving back myself." Oh she could see it right now. The procession of blondes and redheads snaking their way up the stairs for a session of Sibelius with that attractive divorced man.

  "You'll undoubtedly get it," she said with resignation. "You have all the money."

  "That's a hot one!"

  "What?"

  "Nothing."

  A querulous voice called down from above: "Would you two mind not standing directly below my window and talking at the tops of your lungs? It's one o'clock in the morning!"

  He looked up smiling—that enchanting smile! "Sorry," he called.

  "My God," she said laughing unhappily, "that's old Mrs. Larson who used to live above us and grow all the ivy." She had had words with Mrs. Larson before—especially the time when she had lopped off the ends of Mrs. Larson's ivy because it overhung their windows by a good two feet.

  "I suppose she still bangs on the pipes every time the Condons upstairs pour a martini," he said good-naturedly.

  She began to relax a little. "Yes, those were awfully funny years living here at one-two-three. Well," she added primly, looking at her watch which was still stopped, "Mrs. Larson does have a point. I've got to be going anyhow."

  "Where?" So, he really was concerned.

  "I can't see how that's any of your business," she replied regally. "But as long as you ask, either back to the garage and then to Riveredge, or else to some hotel. I haven't decided which."

  "You really oughtn't to be running around alone at night," he said. Still treating her as though she couldn't take care of herself. "No woman in her right mind . . ."

  "Thank you for your vote of confidence," she said lifting her nose into the air. "But we're better off going our separate ways. I think you made that quite clear this morning."

  Oh, please God, don't let me cry! she thought. Just let me get through this interminable interview and off someplace by myself. Just let me bear up until he gets around the corner and then I can climb into a taxi and have a good old-fashioned weep.

  She took a deep breath and plunged on. "I've managed beautifully by myself all day. So beautifully, in fact that . . ." Somehow she couldn't help herself. "That I'm just miserable!" The tears poured down her cheeks. She just stood there crying, too weak to stop and too strong to dissolve into his arms. "Oh, darling, I've been so lonely and frightened and unhappy. I've—I've . . ." This was too humiliating. She'd have to stop it "Have you a hankie?"

  "Here," he said, handing her the handkerchief from his breast pocket.

  She blew her nose noisily, aware that the effect wasn't particularly attractive. She stood straighter and managed to get some sort of tenuous control over herself. "Thank you," she said more steadily. "I'll have it laundered and return it."

  "Don't bother," he said, "I have dozens." Yes, he was born without a heart. Then she saw his whole face change. "Listen," he said suddenly, "you think you've suffered. I've never spent such a day in all my life." What was he talking about? I'd rather work all year in that Goddamned garden than spend another minute like the minutes I've put in today."

  She looked up at him and noticed that at last the granite jaw had crumbled like chalk. "Do you honestly mean," she said slowly, "that the Other Woman—I mean the Bessamer girl—is nothing to you? That she isn't your mistress? That you only walked out this morning because of . . ."

  He paused. Uh-huh. Inventing the Big Lie. "I swear that I've seen her just four times in my life," he said slowly. "First when she read for the part; again at dress rehearsal; last night over TV; and today for the last time." She realized that this was plausible. She wanted so much to believe him. "She means less than nothing to me. With both of us it was purely business." She decided that this could very easily be true, although she would have preferred a less dazzling business associate.

  "You're telling the truth?" she said. It was almost as much a statement as a question.

  "I'm telling the truth," he sighed. She decided that he was. "But Uncle Tom?" Oh, Lord, she thought, I might have known that this was coming. "This friend of Fran's?" he asked pointedly.

  "Who," she said, "Randy?"

  "I thought you didn't even know his name!"

  "I don't," she said. It was true. She had forced herself to forget as much about Randy as possible. "Randy's all I remember." That wasn't quite
all she remembered but it was more than she wanted to remember. This was a moment for exact speech and exact truth. But within limits. Could she, for example, allow herself to tell him that she had almost been duped by a cardboard gentleman, a shabby little he-whore who lived on the bounty of lonely women? Not very well. That would be too humiliating. Nor would it be entirely necessary. But within the framework of fact, she could make it quite clear that it had been an ill-advised thing of the moment, wholly regretted and almost forgotten, "He's just someone I met with Fran five or six hours ago." True. "He's not a bit nice." Oh, so true! "None of Fran's friends could be called nice." True again. "Neither could Fran, in fact." There now. She had purged herself of even that last pretense. She just hoped that he believed her because it was the plain truth.

  "God, but I'm sick of terrible people," he said. "After today, I . . ."

  "So am I. And I'm so afraid that we've been turning into terrible people ourselves. Vicious, grasping, scheming, mean, withered people—just like the ones I've been with all afternoon and all night." Fran, Fletch, Randy, Mrs. Updike, Gerald, Ronny, Grace; yes, they all seemed to fit within that category. "And we're on our way, you know. I've even admired some of them." There again was an admission, and a discomforting one. "But their terribleness rubs off. I can feel it on me."

  "Well," he said, "it won't any longer." Was this a bid to come back, and, if so, did he really mean it? "That is, it wouldn't any longer, if only we could get our feet back on the ground."

  Eagerly she said, "You mean off the ground. Off the hallowed soil of Riveredge."

  "And off the sandy soil of the Villa Manfrillian and off the dance floor of El Morocco and off . . ." He really meant it! He had broken with the Popescus! Never again a night of gaiety, a trip to their garish home in Palm Beach on their vulgar yacht.

  "We're too old for that sort of life, darling," she said recklessly. "I'm nearly thirty and . . . Well, I mean we should be grown up and. . ."

  "And forget all this nonsense about who has the smartest house and the biggest car and the most progressive children. . ." he blurted. How wonderful! He meant it. He'd be willing to leave Riveredge and take her with him! "Could we, darling? Could we just chuck the whole thing and start right back where we were before. Right here?" Right here where they had been alone and happy and together!