Third Deadly Sin

by Lawrence Sanders

  There were other couples like them, hand in hand, secret and serene as they. But none of them, as Ernest pointed out, had a red balloon. They laughed delightedly at their uniqueness.

  They stared at a yak, watched a tiger pace, heard an elephant trumpet, saw the cavortings of sea lions, listened to the chattering of baboons, and were splashed by a diving polar bear. Even the caged animals seemed pleased by that blooming day.

  Finally, wearying, they bought beers and sandwiches and carried them out of the zoo to a patch of greensward where the sounds of carnival and the cries of animals were muted.

  They sat on the warm earth, Zoe’s back against the trunk of a gnarled plane tree. They sipped their beers, nibbled their sandwiches. A fat squirrel came close to inspect them, but when Zoe tossed a crust, it darted off. Two pigeons fought over the crust, divided it, waited hopefully for more, then flew away.

  Dappled light melted through the foliage above them. The world was solid beneath them. The air was awash with far-off cries and the faint hit of music. They could see joggers, cyclists, horse-drawn carriages move along a distant road. A freshening wind brought the sweet smell of growing things.

  Ernest Mittle lay supine, his head on Zoe’s lap, eyes closed. She stroked his hair absently, looking about and feeling they were alone on earth. The last. The only.

  “I wish we could stay here forever,” she murmured. “Like this.”

  He opened his eyes to look up at her.

  “Never go home,” he said softly. “Never go to work again. No more subways and buses and traffic. No more noise and dirt. No violence and crime and cruelty. We’ll just stay here forever and ever.”

  “Yes,” she said wonderingly. “Just the two of us together.”

  He sat up, took her hand, kissed her fingertips.

  “Wouldn’t that be fine?” he said. “Wouldn’t that be grand? Zoe, I’ve never felt so good. Never been so happy. Why can’t it last?”

  “It can’t,” she said.

  “No,” he said, “I suppose not. But you’re happy, aren’t you? I mean right this minute?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “Happier than I’ve ever been in my life.”

  He lay back again; she resumed smoothing the webby hair back from his temples.

  “Did you have a lot of boyfriends, Zoe?” he asked quietly. “I mean when you were growing up.”

  “No, Ernie,” she said, just as dreamily. “Not many.”

  On a lawn, beneath a tree, blue shadows mottling, they were in the world but not of it. Locked in lovers’ isolation. Away from the caged and uncaged animals, and somehow protected from them by their twoness.

  “My mother was strict,” she said in a memory-dulled voice. “So strict. The boy had to call for me and come inside for inspection. I had to be home by eleven. Midnight on weekends, but eleven during the week.”

  He made a sound of sympathy. Neither moved now, fearing to move. It was a moment of fragile balance. They knew they were risking revealment. Opening up—a sweet pain. They inched cautiously to intimacy, recognizing the dangers.

  “Once I went out with a boy,” she said. “A nice boy. His car broke down so I couldn’t get home in time. My mother called the police. Can you imagine that? It was awful.”

  “It’s for your own good, my dear,” he said in a high-pitched feminine voice.

  “Yes. That’s what she said. It was for my own good. But after that, I wasn’t very popular.”

  They were silent then, and content with their closeness. It seemed to them that what they were doing, unfolding, could be done slowly. It might even cost a lifetime. All the safer for that. Knowing was a process, not a flash, and it might never end.

  “I was never popular,” he said, a voice between rue and hurt. “I was small. Not an athlete or anything like that. And I never had enough money to take a girl to the movies. I didn’t have any real girlfriends. I never went steady.”

  It was so new to them—this tender confession. They were daunted by the strange world. Shells were cracking; the naked babes peered out in fear and want. They understood there was a price to be paid for these first rumblings. Involvement presaged a future they could not see.

  “I never went steady either,” she said, determined not to stop. “Very few boys ever asked me out a second time.”

  “What a waste,” he said, sighing. “For both of us. I didn’t think any girl could be interested in me. I was afraid to ask. And you …”

  “I was afraid, too. Of being alone with a boy. Mother again. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. Don’t let a boy—you know … get personal.”

  “We were robbed,” he said. “Both of us. All those years.”

  “Yes. Robbed.”

  Silence again. A comfortable quiet. The wind was freshening, cooling. She looked down at him, cupped his pale face in her palms. Their eyes searched.

  “But you married,” he said.

  “Yes. I did.”

  She bent, he craned up. Their soft lips met, pressed, lingered. They kissed. They kissed.

  “Oh,” he breathed. “Oh, oh.”

  She traced his face, smiling sadly. She felt his brow, cheeks, nose, lips. He closed his eyes, and lightly, lightly, she touched the velvet eyelids, made gentle circles. Then she leaned again to press her lips softly.

  She straightened up. She shivered with a sudden chill.

  His eyes opened, he looked at her with concern.

  “Cold?”

  “A little,” she said. “Ernie, maybe we should think about leaving.”

  “Sure,” he said, scrambling to his feet.

  He helped her up, picked twigs from her skirt, brushed bits of bark from the back of her tweed jacket.

  “What should we do with the balloon?” he asked.

  “Let’s turn it loose,” she said. “Let it fly away.”

  “Right,” he said, and untied the string from her purse.

  He handed it to her and let her release it. The red balloon rose slowly. Then, caught by the strengthening wind, it went soaring away. They watched it fly up, pulled this way and that, but sailing higher and higher, getting smaller and smaller until it was lost in the sky.

  They wandered slowly back to the paved walkway.

  “Something I’ve wanted to ask you, Zoe,” he said, looking at the ground. “Is Kohler your married name or your maiden name?”

  “My married name. It was on all my legal papers and driver’s license and so forth. It just seemed too much trouble to change everything. My maiden name is Spencer.”

  “Zoe Spencer,” he said. “That’s nice. Zoe is a very unusual name.”

  “I think it’s Greek,” she said. “It means ‘life.’ It was my mother’s idea.”

  “What’s her name?” he asked.

  “Irene,” she said.

  Dr. Oscar Stark’s receptionist had Zoe’s home and office telephone numbers in her file. On the afternoon of May 13th, the doctor called Zoe at the Hotel Granger and asked how she was feeling.

  She told him she felt better since her period had ended, but sometimes she felt torpid and without energy. She reported nothing about her nausea, the continued loss of weight, the increasing incidents of syncope.

  He asked if she was taking the doubled cortisone dosage and the salt tablets. She said she was and, in answer to his questions, told him she suffered no stomach upset from intake of the steroid hormone and experienced no craving for additional salt.

  He then said that he had received the results of her latest blood and urine tests. They seemed to indicate a slight cortisol deficiency. Dr. Stark said it was nothing to be concerned about, but nothing to disregard either. He instructed her to take her medication faithfully, and he would reevaluate the situation after her office visit on June 3rd.

  Meanwhile, he wanted Zoe to stop by and pick up a new prescription. It would be left with his receptionist, so Zoe would not have to wait.

  The prescription would be for two items. The first was an identification bracelet that Stark wa
nted Zoe to wear at all times. It would give her name and Stark’s name and telephone number. It would also state that Zoe Kohler suffered from an adrenal insufficiency, and in case of an emergency such as injury or fainting she was to be injected with hydrocortisone.

  The hydrocortisone would be in a small labeled kit that Zoe was to carry in her purse at all times. The solution was contained in a packaged sterile syringe, ready for use.

  Dr. Stark repeated all this and asked if Zoe understood. She said she did. He assured her the bracelet and kit were merely a precautionary measure and he doubted if they’d ever be used. He was having them made up at a medical supply house down on Third Avenue. Zoe would have to pay for them, but a check would be acceptable.

  She copied the name and address he gave her.

  On the following day, during her lunch hour, she picked up the prescription at Dr. Stark’s office, then cabbed down to the medical supply house and purchased the bracelet and kit. When she returned to the Hotel Granger, she put them in the back of the bottom drawer of her desk. She never looked at them again.

  On the night of May 16th, Zoe was alone at home. She had just showered and was wearing her old flannel robe and frayed mules. She was curled on the couch, filing her nails, wondering about the slight discoloration in the folds of her knuckles, and watching Rebecca on TV.

  A little before ten o’clock her phone rang and the doorman reported that Mrs. Kurnitz was in the lobby and wanted to come up. Zoe told him to let her in and went to the door to wait.

  Maddie came striding down the corridor from the elevator. She had a soiled white raincoat over her shoulders like a cape, empty sleeves flapping out behind her. Her makeup was a mess, smudged and runny. Zoe thought she had been weeping.

  “Maddie,” she said, “what are—”

  “You got anything to drink?” Maddie demanded. “Beer, whiskey, wine? Or cleaning fluid, lye, hemlock? I don’t give a good goddamn.”

  Zoe got her inside and locked the door. Maddie flung her coat to the floor. Zoe picked it up. Maddie tried to light a cigarette and broke it with trembling fingers. She dropped that on the floor, too, and Zoe picked it up. Maddie finally got a cigarette lighted and collapsed onto the couch, puffing furiously.

  “I have some vodka,” Zoe said, “and some—”

  “Vodka is fine. A biiig vodka. On the rocks. No mix. Just more vodka.”

  Zoe went into the kitchen to pour Maddie’s drink and a glass of white wine for herself. Because her supply of Valium was getting low, she took two Librium before she went back into the living room.

  Maddie drained half the vodka in two throat-wrenching gulps. Zoe turned off the TV set and sat down in an armchair facing her visitor.

  “Maddie,” she said, “what on earth is—”

  “That bastard!” Maddie cried. “That cocksucker! I should have kicked him in the balls.”

  “Who?” Zoe said bewilderedly. “Who are you talking about?”

  “Harry. That asshole husband of mine. He’s been cheating on me.”

  “Oh, Maddie,” Zoe said sorrowfully, “are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure. The son of a bitch told me himself.”

  She seemed halfway between fury and tears. Zoe had never seen her so defeated. Heavy breasts sagged, fleshy body spread. All of her appeared slack and punished. Chipped fingernails and smeared lipstick. Gaudy had become seedy.

  She lighted a new cigarette from the butt of the old. She looked about vaguely.

  “First time I’ve been up here,” she said dully. “Christ, you’re neat. Clean and neat.”

  “Yes,” Zoe said. Then, when Maddie finished her vodka, she went into the kitchen again and brought back the bottle. She watched Maddie fill her glass, bottle clinking against the rim.

  “It’s not the cheating I mind,” Maddie said loudly. “You know I play around, too. He can screw every woman in New York for all I care. We had this understanding. He could play, and I could play, and neither of us cared, and no one got hurt.”

  “Well then?” Zoe said.

  “He wants to marry the bitch,” Maddie said with a harsh bark of laughter. “Some stupid little twit in his office. He wants to divorce me and marry her. Did you ever?”

  Zoe was silent.

  “I met her,” Maddie went on. “She was at that party you went to. A washed-out blonde with tits like funnels. A body that doesn’t end and a brain that never starts. Maybe that’s what Harry wants: a brainless fuck. Maybe I threaten him. Do you think I threaten him?”

  “I don’t think so, Maddie.”

  “Who the hell knows. Anyway, I’m out and she’s in. God, what a bummer. What hurts is that he knows how much a divorce is going to cost him—I’m going to take the fillings right out of his teeth—but he still wants it. Like he’ll pay anything to get rid of me. I even suggested we stick together and he could set her up on the side—you know? I wouldn’t care. But no, he wants a clean break. That’s what he said: ‘a clean break.’ I’d like to cleanly break his goddamned neck!”

  “Uh, Maddie,” Zoe said timidly, “I can understand your being upset, but you’ve been divorced before.”

  “I know, sweetie, I know. That’s why I’m so down. I’m beginning to worry. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I hold a guy? It lasts two or three years and then it falls apart. I get bored with him, or he gets bored with me, and off we go to the lawyers. Shit!”

  “But you love—”

  “Love?” Maddie said. “What the fuck is love? Having laughs together and moaning in the hay? If that’s what love is, then I love Harry. A great sense of humor and a stallion in the sack. Generous with money. I had no complaints there. And he never bitched. Then whammo! Out of a clear blue sky he dumps on me.”

  “Is she younger?”

  “Not all that much. If she was like nineteen or twenty, I could understand it. I’d figure he was going through a change of life and had to prove he could still cut the mustard with a young chick. But she’s got to be thirty, at least, so what the hell does he see in her? I’m drinking all your booze, kiddo.”

  “That’s all right. Take as much as you want.”

  “Harry dumps on me and I dump on you. I’m sorry. But I had to talk to a woman. I don’t have any close women friends. A lot of guys, but all good-time Charlies.

  They don’t want to listen to my troubles. And they’re not going to be overjoyed to hear I’m getting unhitched. Zapping a married woman is fun and games, and no problems. When you haven’t got a husband, a lot of men steer clear. Too much risk.”

  “Is there anyone you … ?”

  “Anyone I can snare on the rebound? No one in the picture right now. Another thing that scares me. Let’s face it, luv, we’re both getting long in the tooth. You’ve kept your body, but the rare beef and bourbon are catching up with me. Plus more than my share of one-night stands. I look like an old broad; I know it.”

  Zoe murmured something about going on a diet, cutting down on the drinking, buying some new clothes. But Madeline Kurnitz wasn’t listening. She was staring off into the middle distance, the glass of vodka held near her lips.

  “I’ve got to be married,” she said. “Don’t ask me why, but I’ve got to be. What the hell else can I do in this world? I wouldn’t know how to earn a living if my life depended on it. I’m too old to peddle my ass, and just the idea of spending eight hours a day in some stinking office is enough to give me the up-chucks. I don’t know how you do it.”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “The hell it isn’t. While other women are having lunch at the Plaza and buying out Bonwit’s … I couldn’t stand that.”

  Zoe went to the kitchen again and brought back the bottle of white wine and a bowl of ice cubes for Maddie. They sat in silence for a few moments, sipping their drinks. Maddie kicked off her shoes, pulled up her feet, began picking reflectively at the silver polish on her toenails.

  “You know, sweetie, my whole life has revolved around men. It really has. I mean I’ve depende
d on them. My daddy spoiled me rotten, and then I went from husband to husband like there was no tomorrow. And what have I got to show for it? A dead father and four flopped marriages. I suppose the women liberationists would say it’s my fault, I should have done something with my life. Been more independent and all that horse-shit. But Goddamnit, I like men. I like to be with men.

  Why the hell should I work my tuchas to a frazzle when there was always a guy ready to pick up the tab?”

  “You’ll find someone new.”

  “Yeah? I wish I could believe it. I’ll take enough out of Harry’s hide so that money won’t be a problem. For a while at least. But I just can’t live alone. I can’t stand to be by myself. You can handle it, but I can’t.”

  “Sometimes you have no choice,” Zoe said.

  “That’s what scares me,” Maddie said. “No choice. Thank God I never had any kids. Life is shitty enough without worrying about brats. Did you ever want to have kids, Zoe?”

  “Once maybe. Not anymore.”

  “That fucking Harry sure pulled the plug on me. He’s got me feeling sorry for myself—something I’ve never done before. That lousy turd. God, I’m going to miss him. Two years ago, for my birthday, he bought me a purple Mercedes-Benz convertible with my initials on the door.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “I totaled it on the Long Island Expressway. I was drunk or I would have killed myself. But that’s the way he was. Anything I wanted. He spoiled me rotten like my father. Oh Jesus, baby, I must be boring you senseless.”

  “Oh no, Maddie. I’m glad you came to me. I just wish there was some way I could help.”

  “You’ve done enough just listening to me. I don’t know what—”

  Suddenly Madeline Kurnitz was weeping. She cried silently, tears welling from her eyes and straggling down her powdered cheeks. Zoe went over to the couch, sat next to her, put an arm across her shoulders.

  “God, God,” Maddie wailed, “what am I going to do?”

  Zoe Kohler didn’t know. So she said, “Shh, shh,” and held the other woman until she stopped crying. After a while, Maddie said, “Shit,” blew her nose, took her bag and went into the bathroom.