The Troubled Air

by Irwin Shaw

  “Clement.” It was Vic’s voice. “I heard you called.”

  “Yes.” Archer glanced at Kitty, moist and inquiring on the bed below him. It would be impossible to talk now. “I wanted to see you.”

  “I’m afraid it’ll have to wait a few days,” Vic said. His voice w sober. “I’m having a little trouble.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I just got a call from Detroit. I’m taking a plane for there now. I’m leaving in ten minutes. My mother’s had a stroke and the doctors’re being gloomy.”

  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Vic.”

  “Well,” Vic said calmly. “She’s a pretty old lady. Maybe you’d better have somebody standing by for me next Thursday, in case I can’t get back in time.”

  “Sure,” Archer said. “Don’t worry about it.” He was unhappily conscious that he was annoyed with Vic’s mother for deciding have a stroke at just this time. For a moment he thought of telling Vic he’d see him at the airport. Then he thought better of it. Vic had enough trouble for one night. “Is there anything I can do for you here?” Archer asked.

  “You can come up and pat Nancy’s hand from time to time.”

  “Of course,” said Archer.

  “What did you want to see me about?” Vic asked. “Anything important?”

  Archer hesitated. “It’ll have to wait,” he said, “until you get home. I hope your mother. …”

  “I know, Clem,” Vic said gently. “Give Kitty my love.”

  Archer put the phone down slowly. Kitty was looking up at him inquiringly.

  “Vic sent his love,” Archer said. “He’s leaving for Detroit. His mother’s had a stroke.”

  “Oh, I’m so sorry,” Kitty said. She put out her hand and to Archer’s, as though the threat of death, even though to an old lady far away whom she hardly knew, had made her seek for obscure reassurance in the touch of her husband’s healthy and robust flesh.

  But the news cast a pall on the evening. They hardly spoke through dinner, and Archer wandered restlessly around the house the rest of the night, looking at the clock again and again, thinking of Vic crossing the night sky toward his stricken mother, and wondering where Jane was at that moment and what she was doing. He was unnecessarily brusque with Bruce when he appeared at nine o’clock. He gave Bruce Barbante’s invitation at the door and didn’t invite the boy in for a drink and was irritated with the forlorn, hopeless expression on the boy’s face.

  He sat up drinking by himself and resisted going to bed. He didn’t want to dream. Zero, he thought. Zero.

  8

  THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING DISTURBING ABOUT FRANCES MOTHERWELL’S voice, even on the telephone. It was low and a little hoarse and suggested, at all times, hidden invitations. “What that girl has,” the agents said, accounting for her success, “is Sex, from Coast to Coast.”

  Just now, on this Monday morning, the voice, with its constant undercurrent of energy and excitement, was merely saying, “Clement, darling, I just have to see you. Tout de suite.”

  “Sure,” Archer said. He had been caught by the telephone’s ringing in the hall, just as he was about to go out. He thought for a moment. He had wasted Sunday, tired and lying around and reading the papers, until it had been too late to call Pokorny, as he had planned. Frances Motherwell would do for a starter, he thought grimly. Might as well eat the bitter pill first. “I’m at your service. How about lunch?” Coat the pill with food and drink and keep everything friendly, at least in the beginning.

  “Sorry, lover,” Frances said. “I’m waiting for a call from California from a semi-forgotten man. Could you come up to my place?”

  “Of course.”

  “You have the address, don’t you?”

  “Engraved on my heart.” Elephantine gallantry, Archer thought coldly as he said it, brought on by embarrassment. Frances embarrassed everyone. She embarrassed women because they felt that she could take any man in the room from them and she embarrassed men because they couldn’t help wondering if it was true.

  “I live on the fourth floor. Can you make the steps?”

  “I’ll have a cardiogram and see,” Archer said, displeased that the girl thought he was so old.

  She laughed. Her laugh was a little wild, as though there was something in her that was out of control which revealed itself in her laughter. “Don’t be angry, lover,” she said, as Archer winced at the word. “I just want to preserve you for better things. Say a half-hour?”

  “A half-hour,” Archer said.

  “Promise not to mind how I look. I just got up and my face is folded together.”

  “I’ll wear rose-colored glasses,” Archer said. “See you soon.”

  Frances lived on a street in the East Fifties. The house was an old mansion converted into small apartments. Archer always got the feeling of transience from these streets. Actors lived there on subleases, ready to go to Hollywood at the first offer; readers for publishers lurked in polite cubby-holes, prepared to switch to larger quarters the day after they were made editors; newly married couples shared a few cubic feet of space, sleeping on daybeds, until the advent of the first child made them move to the country. Still, it was a pleasant street, especially today, with the air clear and the sun glinting on all the windows and making the thin row of winter-bare trees in front of the buildings very black against the clean pavements. Young women strode purposefully out of the gaily painted front doors, carrying their bags slung over their shoulders, like military messengers carrying important information to a higher headquarters. And hatless young men, who had jobs that permitted them to sleep late, strolled back from breakfast at the corner drugstores, their heads bent as they read the morning Times, giving a false, week-end air of leisure here in the middle of the busy city.

  Archer rang Frances’ bell, wondering how he would begin with her. Conducting a conversation with Frances was difficult at best of times, because she had a jumpy, quick mind and was imperiously in her own direction in any company. It’s too nice a day, Archer thought resentfully, staring back at the sunlit street, for a job like this.

  Then the buzzer rang. He sighed and went in. He climbed dark, genteel steps, past a door from which the smell of frying bacon wafted out, and another door behind which someone was practicing a run from the Brahms Second Concerto on the piano. Frances was waiting for him on the top floor, looking over the banister. He tried to disguise the fact that he was panting as he said hello.

  “Oh, you poor darling,” Frances said as she closed the door behind him and took his coat, “I just must move some place where there’s an elevator. Your dear little bald spot is perfectly purple. Sit down and don’t say a word.”

  Archer grinned weakly as he seated himself in a narrow modern chair that made him feel as though he had been captured. He saw that he was already at a disadvantage and that he would never recover from it. “You have a very nice apartment here,” he said, looking around him at the tiny room and spacing the words between gasps. “Although at this altitude I advise the use of oxygen.”

  “My lair,” Frances said carelessly, glancing at the dark-brick wall above the white fireplace. “It’s all right if you don’t try to have more than a hundred people in at any one time.”

  The phone rang in the next room and Frances said, “Oh, damn, there it goes again. Excuse me.” She rushed into the bedroom and picked up the phone. “Motherwell speaking,” she said crisply, sounding like an officer in the Army. Archer noticed the business-like affectation and was displeased by it. Actresses, he thought, if they’re any good, never can persuade themselves to sound like normal human beings. He could see her through the doorway, knee up on a chair, frowning into the phone and poking a pencil in her hair. She was a striking-looking girl and her face didn’t look folded together at all, he noticed. Her hair was pulled back severely to show her high, bold forehead. She had a nervous mobile face, with large gray eyes that were a little too flat in her head, so that they seemed over-prominent. She was slender and ha
d good legs and Archer could see she didn’t need a girdle and wasn’t wearing one. She was dressed in a sweater and a closely fitting green skirt, simple and finely made and reminded Archer of his daughter. Give Jane another six or seven years, Archer thought, and she’ll probably look very much like that.

  “It’s perfectly sweet of you to ask me, lover,” Frances was saying into the phone, causing unknown tremblings on the other end of the wire, “and I’d adore coming. Just let me look in my little book and see what it says about Tuesday.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and made a grimace at Archer. “Bore Number One of the Winter Season,” she whispered hoarsely. She didn’t open the book on the table. She waited an acceptable amount of time then took her hand off the mouthpiece. “Darling,” she said, her voice freighted with regret, “the little book says I’m spoken for on Tuesday. Isn’t it damnable? I’m so sorry. Do remember to ask me again, won’t you?” She nodded impatiently several times and took the phone away from her ear and hung it over her shoulder as the voice on the other end made several diminishing remarks. “That’s sweet,” she said briskly, putting the phone to her ear again. “We must get together. But real soon. Thanks so much for calling.” She hung up, looked briefly at herself in a mirror and came back into the room.

  There ought to be a law, Archer thought, regulating the conduct of pretty women over the telephone. The Federal Communications Commission. And they do it brazenly in front of you, confident of the absence of solidarity among men.

  “Poor dear,” Frances said. “He’s such a lump. And he never catches on. Do you mind if I go into the kitchen for a second? I was just getting myself a goodie when you rang.”

  “Go ahead,” Archer said. “I have all day.”

  Frances swept into the kitchen. She moved in swift bursts, brushing past the furniture in the crowded room with a dancer’s precision. Archer heard her rattling the door to the refrigerator. “Can I get you anything?” she called in. “I see I have five oranges, a quart of milk and a half pound of pâté.”

  “No, thanks,” Archer said, smiling at the menu.

  “Oh,” she called again. “I saw your daughter two nights ago. At the Ruban Bleu. With Dom. She looked heavenly. She’s a true man-killer, that girl.”

  “Is she?” Archer said loudly, wondering uneasily if in the language of the day that was a compliment.

  “She will devour them by the dozen,” Frances said. “Mark my word.”

  She relapsed into silence as she pushed glasses into the sink. Archer looked around the room curiously. There were red and white candy-striped draperies at the windows, an abstract painting that looked ugly, authentic and expensive above the fireplace and, surprisingly, a whole wallful of books. When does she get time to read? Archer wondered. Helplessly he felt himself staring at the books, searching for the titles. A great many current novels and one whole side devoted to poetry. Dobson, Donne, Baudelaire, Eliot, Auden. What message was hidden there for him? Or for the poor lump who had asked for Tuesday on the phone? Off to one side, in a neat pile, was a group of magazines. The top one was a small literary magazine that was put out by avowedly Communist writers. Archer leaned over and read some of the names on the cover. Two of them he recognized as being leaders of what the magazine itself often referred to as left-wing thought. He sat back feeling distaste for himself. Before this, he had, as a bookish man, always glanced curiously at his hosts’ books when he was invited anywhere. Until now he had done it thoughtlessly, without any sense of guilt. Now, he seemed to himself to be looking at bookshelves through the eyes of a potential informer. Perhaps, he thought, I will never be able to pick up a friend’s book innocently again. The curtailment of pleasure, brought about by secret dislocations in attitude. Guilt was not in the act, but in the conception of the act. Archer had an old-fashioned sense of hospitality and he could not help but feel that judging your host in his own home was a betrayal of friendship. I wonder, he thought, how detectives square their consciences after a fruitful day’s work.

  Frances came back into the room carrying a tall glass.

  “What’s that?” Archer asked.

  “Chocolate milk,” Frances said. “I’m queer for it. Wonderful after a rough night. Want some?”

  “Lord, no. I haven’t had a rough night since 1940.”

  “Lucky man,” Frances said. She sat down on the sofa across from him, putting her leg under her. She sipped at the milk. “Heaven,” she said.

  She has decided, Archer thought, that today she will be girlish and is putting in the proper strokes unerringly.

  “Clement, dear,” she said, staring at him over the rim of her glass, “I’m sure you’re wondering why I dragged you up here like this.”

  “Well …” Archer began.

  “I’ve always been meaning to invite you up,” she said swiftly. “You and your wife. For a little party. I’d never invite your daughter.” She smiled widely. She had a disturbing habit of licking her lower lip in darting little movements of her tongue. “Not after the other night. Things’re bad enough around town as it is without bringing the competition to your own fireside. Dom was all over her.”

  “Was he?” Archer asked, not reassured.

  “You know Dom. He never means any harm—except to women.” She grinned and Archer smiled woodenly back at her, confused and wishing she’d move on to another subject. “He never looked at me once,” Frances said. “And we’ve been friends for a long time. Though to be perfectly truthful, Dom is too fleet of foot for my tastes.”

  Dimly, Archer remembered that Frances and Barbante had been seen together for a short period. But then Barbante had been seen with almost everybody for a short period. Frances, he knew, had been involved with quite a few men. She was not promiscuous, but she was—well—restless. She fell deeply in love, made no bones about it, displayed her love proudly and publicly, was furiously attached to one man for a time and then suddenly, finding him lacking in one way or another, ditched him without ceremony, usually in public, and went on to the next. At every party she went to there would be several men who watched her warily and a little regretfully from corners, carefully keeping out of her way. She had a rough, ironic tongue and in her trail there were several limp markers where she had left lovers permanently demolished.

  “In a better-regulated society,” Frances was saying briskly, “you could hire Dom by the night, and send him out in the morning before the maid arrived to see how naughty you’d been.”

  “Now, Frances,” Archer said uncomfortably, “Dom is a friend of mine.”

  “He’s a friend of mine, too,” Frances said cheerfully. “I say all these things right in front of him. He loves it. He thinks it’s a compliment.”

  “Frances,” Archer said desperately, “you started to say …”

  “Oh, yes.” She took another sip of her chocolate milk. “Clement, I’m afraid I have some dreadful news for you. And I wanted to tell you in advance before …”

  The phone rang again. “Oh, damn it,” Frances said, putting her glass down. “I’m going to have the number changed.” She got up and went to the phone, patting Archer’s cheek as she passed him. “Motherwell speaking,” she said impatiently. “Yes. I see.” Her voice became guarded and she glanced involuntarily at Archer. He felt out of place and superfluous, knowing that she wanted privacy for this conversation. He wondered if it would be discreet to go and lock himself in the bathroom for awhile.

  “Yes,” Frances said. “That’s quite clear. Look—where are you? You’d better call me back. In about thirty minutes. Right.” She hung up. “Sorry,” she said, as she resumed her seat. Archer glanced obliquely at her face, but nothing was revealed there.

  “You said you had bad news,” he said gently.

  “Well,” Frances said, “maybe I’m just being egotistic when I say that. Maybe you won’t mind at all.”

  “What is it, Frances?”

  “I want to quit the program.” She peered at him with her head to one side. The sun caught her chee
k and lit up her hair and she looked young and morning-like. “Have I broken your heart?”

  Archer sighed. A dozen sensations flooded through him, jumbled and contradictory. He didn’t try to sort them out. Now, he thought, is the time for me to be very careful. “Why, Frances?” he asked.”

  “I’ve been offered the lead in a play,” she said. “The most beautiful part. And Cowley’s directing and he’s on fire to have me. It’s too good to be true.” She laughed, again a little out of control. “I even have to go mad at the end of Act Three.”

  Listening to her laugh, Archer realized why the director had picked her for that particular scene.

  “It’s the chance I’ve been waiting for ever since the war,” Frances said earnestly. “I couldn’t let it pass, even though it’s going to cost me quite a bit of money. I have to give up all my radio jobs, but I think it’s worth it.”

  “When would you have to quit?” Archer asked, guiltily feeling that luck, for this day at least, was running his way.

  “Well,” Frances said, “rehearsals don’t begin for another ten days. But I thought if you’d be a love and said it was all right for me to quit right now, I’d go skiing for a week and get that clear-eyed young look back on my face before rehearsals.”

  “You don’t have a contract,” Archer said. “There’s nothing to keep you—legally.”

  “I know,” Frances said. “But you’ve been such a dear, I couldn’t bear to leave you in a hole.”

  “Where’re you going skiing?” Archer asked.

  “The Laurentians,” Frances said. “But only if you say OK.”

  The suspects, Archer thought, may be found at all the winter resorts, coming downhill at thirty dollars a day.

  “Sure, Frances,” Archer said. “I wouldn’t want to stand in your way.” For a moment, Archer was almost ready to leave it at that. Telling her what he had to say seemed almost gratuitously candid. And Frances, as she had proved again, always made out all right. If you were that young, that attractive, that talented, nobody had to worry about you finally. And besides, she had a rich family back in Texas or somewhere, to complete her luck. Pokorny was a different matter, Alice Weller … That’s where the truth would be necessary, on those gloomy, unlucky grounds. It was almost silly to insist upon having your bad half hour with a girl like Frances Motherwell. Archer wrestled himself out of his chair, ready to go.