“I was eight weeks’ pregnant with the thing or whatever it was. And I'm not sorry I got rid of it.”
“I suppose you're right to feel that way. If you loved Alan....”
Jane angrily rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. Conlon had almost made her cry and she wanted her to go.
“I thought I did for about five minutes. Oh, Conlon, it's over, so stop milking it, will you?”
Conlon got up to go. She was late for Mel, and knew he'd leave without her.
“In a way I'm lucky, Jane ... not to have your guts. I'll see you when I'm down again.” She checked her makeup quickly in the mirror, hoping Jane wouldn't notice, then hugged her friend. She felt irritable and aroused.
* * * *
On Monday Jane left the clinic, stronger and strangely happy. She had her hair done at Vidal Sassoon's, always an uplift. The beautiful young man who worked on her told her that she'd left it too long. Her hair was greasy and needed a cut, but she talked him out of it. When he combed it out, he complained that she looked like a lioness, but his remark pleased her and she put down the Cosmopolitan she'd been half-reading—which had introduced her to the “New Feminism,” by another Wunder-kind of ladies’ journalism and Smith—and stared at her image. She imagined she detected a new layer of depth, or was it simply her chalky complexion and the determination to resume her life at some mysterious point?
She ate a blood-rare piece of liver at the Running Footman. The atmosphere of the place relaxed her and she had a corner booth which allowed her to spread out the Times and study the sublet situation. Later that afternoon, walking off the Irish coffee, she struck oil in Gramercy Square. A heavy-breathing hysterical woman whom she called from a United cigar store agreed to meet her and show her apartment after Jane swore she wasn't a real estate leech.
Turning up at the apartment, Jane was confronted by a shrill, scrawny woman in her forties, wearing glasses on a chain and the unhappy facial characteristics of a Doberman. She kept Jane standing in a dimly lit foyer and explained that she was returning to her family in Duluth, a city with a reputation for sanity and unambiguous sex, for her husband (Mr. Burke, Jane learned under the mauve floral wallpaper) had absconded with money from their joint savings account to run off with a younger man who'd bewitched him when the two had appeared in an unsuccessful ABC-TV pilot episode. Officials from the Bowery Savings Bank and the network were mounting a two-pronged search to locate both the missing funds and certain items of wardrobe the demon lovers had taken.
“We're going to try to get Mr. Burke on a morals rap,” she announced to Jane, who was admiring the view of Gramercy Park from the seventh floor. “George Mosley to the best of my knowledge is under twenty-one. Never trust a Scorpio, Miss Siddley.”
As the oral petition of grievances continued to pour out, Jane was struck by the fact that the woman's suffering had reached a peak of desperation which she was compelled to confide the agony of her personal life to a stranger.
“There's nobody to talk to, is there?” Jane said.
“It's been a season of disasters. We had more returns than Klein's. I guess I know where I stand now.” Tears dribbled down her face but she didn't bother to wipe them.
“The kitchen is through the arch. Small but serviceable. I put the louvers myself. Mr. Burke couldn't even change a plug. It's three hundred a month.”
“Do you want any references?”
“I don't think that'll be necessary. Just a year's rent in advance and five hundred dollars against breakage,” she said, expecting Jane to faint in her tracks.
Jane wrote out a check for forty-one hundred dollars, and Mrs. Burke eyed her suspiciously.
“I'll have to wait till it clears, with all the rubber bouncing around.”
“You can get it cleared fast if you pay an extra dime.”
“I never knew that.” She stopped, examined Jane from head to toe. “How does a young little thing like you come to have that much cash?”
“I inherited it.”
“You could buy yourself a mink coat.”
“Or two Volkswagens, but I prefer the apartment.”
“My lawyer'll send round the lease in the morning. Where are you staying?”
“The Regency.”
“Doesn't sound very respectable,” Mrs. Burke observed. “It's not one of those places on Forty-second Street, is it?”
“Park and Sixty-second.”
“One other thing—you're not an airline stewardess, or fronting for a group of them?”
“No, honestly, I'm not.”
“I turned away dozens of them. A whole crowd from American Airlines wanted to camp down here. If you ask me, I'd say they were call girls in uniform.”
She held the check tightly in her hand, blew the ink even though it was dry, and adjusted her glasses.
“I've got a washing machine that you can use and I suggest you stick to Lux. I've never swerved, even though there've been all these commercials about enzymes. It tests a person's loyalty. Listen, my lawyer will give you a call in the morning.”
“Have I got it?”
“Let's hear what he has to say on the subject. I'll tell him I like you.”
“Thanks. I hope you catch up with Mr. Burke.”
“I wonder if I really want to.” She was still crying silently and Jane took out a handkerchief and wiped her face.
The hotel room began to bug her and she had trouble sleeping so she switched from one talk show to another. Celebrity guests were selling books, records, movies and fighting hungrily for the camera. They were all the same, everyone talking at the same time, trivial stories were applauded and no one listened. Me, me, me, I, I, I were the only words that came over. There was news that wasn't news and personality weathermen with flashlights and charts who babbled on so much, so that she couldn't even be sure if it was going to rain or not. She wasn't so unhappy as simply numb, and when she leaned over to look at the sleeping pills, toying with the idea of swallowing a batch of them, she made the irritating discovery that she had only two Seconals left. Even if she wanted to end it all she'd have to send out for it, and the drugstore was probably closed. She took the two remaining pills, found an early Raquel Welch movie, and went blissfully off to slumberland in five minutes.
At ten-thirty in the morning the phone rang, interrupting her dream at precisely the right moment, since the nurse at the clinic was just preparing her for Dr. Charney. Had she had the abortion? The growth of new hair which itched settled the question in her favor. The set was still on and Nancy Dickerson was advising an anxious world that Washington, D.C., was still in business.
“Is this Miss Siddley?” a man's voice asked.
“Yes, it is.”
“I'm Mrs. Burke's attorney.... Your check cleared the bank.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Shocked.... Needless to say there are plenty of paperhangers around the city. Mrs. Burke's met a few, that's why she was so cautious.”
“Can I have the apartment?”
“I'll have the lease sent over. Just sign it and the superintendent will give you the key.”
She checked out of the hotel and stood by the car as the bellhop stuffed her carpetbag into the small trunk. The wind had a sharp ragged bite and the sky was dark with threatening snow clouds. But she felt better, more in control, and thought that her luck might change if she could stop drifting.
* * * *
Slinking through the high grass, rotten with foul-smelling weed and unabsorbed fertilizer treatment, Luckmunn's displaced rump startled nesting birds and small rodents digging winter retreats. He caught a close-up of his first red-fox—much smaller than he thought the thing would be—but decided it was rich territory for his friend Ben Herchaft, the furrier. Instead of paying breeders’ prices, Ben ought to set traps on the estate, catch a fox or squirrel here and there, and run for his life, then start cutting in the car. He saw Nancy listing toward the old Bentley S.3. The chauffeur dealt her into the back seat. She'd
be going to her apartment on Sutton Place, probably for an appointment with a Yugoslavian hairdresser. Nancy, the perfect vampire, required a steady supply of fresh flesh.
The two servants, an elderly English couple superbly inept as attendants, would probably be too busy ransacking to notice him. As Nancy left, a small van, its engine coughing and sniveling with permanent catarrh, rumbled up the winding unpaved drive. All that money, he reflected, and pebbles still struck your windshield. On his visits to Nancy, he usually took the Impala, having wounded the Caddy several times in the flanks. He stopped beside the tennis court. The local electrician was wheeling out a lamp that Luckmunn had seen purchased at a charity auction in Westport. Almost fourteen hundred dollars’ worth of electricity. He himself had begun the bidding at a dizzy two hundred and fifty before gracefully retiring to the sidelines while the local rich alcoholics slammed away. Nancy, the eventual winner, had consigned it to the basement with the rest of the garbage she wasted her money on. Luckmunn had gained a dainty, serpentine, entangled Tiffany for only a hundred and ninety-five by hiding the translucent shade under a wing of the tent. Shadeless the thing was worth nothing, and Luckmunn the sport, patron of gentile charities, had gone to his Irving Trust account for a bid, gaining the respect of the rest of the boggle-eyed nuts, who thought his gesture priceless. With the shade on, and handsomely crated, he turned it into a quick buck at a fag-run establishment on the Old Boston Road, making four hundred percent on the deal. He almost got a blow job with his profit but for the sprinter's spring still left in his legs.
Luckmunn needed to get into the study to recover certain possessions he'd left previously. A pair of Poulsen Skone calf boots (two hundred guineas,) and his lime Wetherill breeches, equipment he'd abandoned at a fox hunt that never materialized, which marked his first encounter with Nancy. Ignorant, he couldn't refuse an invitation, never left the premises until cocktail hour when, pleading for a respite and urgent business calls, he hopped in her station wagon dressed only in jockey shorts and Jim's traveling slippers to get home. Whispering words of encouragement to himself, he slipped into the house through a side door, found himself a lead-black hallway, but knew his way blindfolded, having made the trip under cover of night many times.
The study sported many purchased trophies of other people's adventures in the American outdoors and darkest Africa. It smelled musty, unused like the rest of the place. He slid the paneled closet door, and amid polythene-encased children's clothes and a fuchsia evening gown, he came upon his breeches folded carelessly on a wire hanger. The boots were below in a gravy of gray dust. As he bent a voice said:
“What the hell are you doing?”
He turned slowly. The voice was unfamiliar but feminine, and he counted his blessings that it wasn't male, with perhaps a forty-gauge shotgun directed at his head. “I'm picking up some things I left here,” he said quite coolly. The girl was ashen-faced, decidedly pretty and without firearms. He went closer toward her. “I'm Charles Benjamin Luckmunn.” He extended his hand for a quick touch, but she simply looked at it and ignored it. “You're Nancy's daughter.”
“Have you found what you were looking for?”
He held up his gear, noticed a large suitcase by her ankle.
“You just missed your mother.”
“Did I?”
“Can I give you a hand with that?” He lifted it. A feather, obviously empty. “Where do you want it?”
She left the room, and he followed with the case, studying her calves as she went up the wide oak staircase ahead of him.
“It's Jane, isn't it?” he ventured on the landing.
She opened the door to her room. “In here.”
“Moving out?” When she didn't answer he continued. “Listen, we spoke on the phone. Do you remember?”
“You were helping my mother....”
He didn't quite like the sound of it, but suppressed his momentary paranoia, observing that ambiguity was in the mind of the listener.
“I'm a neighbor and one of her tennis victims. Boy, does she move on a court.”
Jane dumped a drawer of sweaters into her opened case.
“That's some packing. Want me to help?” He skillfully folded the arms of a cashmere.
“Where'd you learn that, in a department store?”
Definitely sarcasm this time, he concluded.
“I happen to be a builder, although I did put in a spell at Macy's when I was working my way through school.”
“Another success story.”
“I've done all right. We weren't what you'd call comfortable people. But no one went hungry and our clothes were always clean.” He changed the subject. “How's school, Jane? Your mother tells me that you hit dean's list every semester.”
She gave him a long strained look which made him redirect his attention to the glamor of brassieres and bikini panties being heaped in.
“You always ask people these irrelevant questions?”
“I'm interested in people. The psychology of what makes human beings tick. Human nature is fascinating.”
She went to her closet. Luckmunn noted a small room with about ten yards of hanging rail.
“No shortages here.”
She threw a half-dozen suits and dresses on the bed, and he caught himself fantasizing zipper and snap assistance for Jane. Why couldn't it have been her instead of Nancy? “Listen, if you need a lift into Manhattan, I'd be happy to drop you off.”
“My car's outside.”
He went to the window to verify her statement. The Mini was in view.
“You sure you can get everything in? I've got a huge trunk....”
She picked up the telephone and he watched her dial. He sat in a rocker, painted pink with a white Goldilocks on the back. He was determined to remain until asked to move on; and Jane for her part, conscious of his interest, pretended detachment while he stewed. Obviously uninsultable, he deserved whatever she could give him.
“Hello, Sonny. This is Jane Siddley. Remember?” She waited, as did Luckmunn. He'd heard of women nicknamed Sonny. “I've moved into an apartment and I'd like to celebrate. Can you come? Well, then after the cocktail party.”
A man. Luckmann sighed, made a mental note of her address and she gave it. Neutrality and feigned indifference were the only course open to him. She hung up, looked absentmindedly around the room.
“Some happy memories here,” he observed.
“You always seem to know just the right thing to say.” She closed the suitcase. “Can I change my mind about your offer?”
He stood up at her service.
“You can carry the suitcase down the car, please.”
Heavier than he thought. He paused on the stairs, but she goaded him on.
“You look strong.”
“It's an illusion. But I've got brain power.”
“That's obvious. So young and successful.”
Another dig. He couldn't make her out. Unthinkable that she might suspect his relationship with Nancy. She draped some winter suits over his free arm and went ahead, wiggling her behind just a bit, so that he wouldn't think the movement designed to incite him. It wasn't wasted on him. If that was a natural movement, what might he expect under stress of passion? He eased the case into the backseat.
“I'll bet you worked as a bellhop.”
“One summer at Klein's Hillside,” he admitted. “How'd you know?”
“You've got a way with luggage.”
“Listen, apart from being a friendly neighbor, I also have a place in Manhattan. Not far from you.”
“Why don't I give you a ring some afternoon.”
“Say, I'd like that. We could have dinner and go to a show. Any show you want to see. I've got a scalper living in one of my houses.” He was about to present her with one of his business/personal cards, when she started the engine.
“Listen, wait,” he called.
“I'll look you up. I'm in a hurry.”
Exhaust fumes sprayed in his face. He half believed
her because he wanted to. Something good had emerged from Nancy Teller Siddley's bed. He slung his hunt costume across the front seat of his car, mused silently to himself, then awoke with a start. He'd just make his golf lesson. Late, he'd still be charged. He'd had that out with the pro. Christ, the girl had gotten under his skin, the little cunt.
* * * *
“It's my night off,” Sonny explained, dipping a Ritz cracker into the barrel of Cheddar she'd set out.
She felt honored, a respecter of workingmen's free time, an investment not to be taken lightly. Having observed her father's aimless existence, she had adopted at an early age her grandfather's Benjamin Franklin precepts about the nobility of sweating for your living. She saved pennies in a piggy bank which occasioned much laughter from Nancy, born on a charge plate. As an heiress, she still didn't take wealth for granted or find the discussion of money in bad taste. Even at school she refused to patronize those of her friends with less, which included her entire circle.
She could understand why people killed for money, cheated insurance companies, pulled fast ones on relatives, married and divorced for it, and she thought quite positively that if she'd been born in a ghetto and disenfranchised, she'd burn stores and support her local Panther chapter. But in a sense she felt inhibited by the money that would come to her, almost defensive, and determined to keep it a secret from Sonny. She had no naïve desire to be loved for herself; she simply didn't want to intimidate him.
“I'm glad you're here,” she said. “We cut it short the last time.”
He had arrived with a battered old Keystone film projector and several cans of film, and she wondered if she was in for an evening of blue films. Perhaps this was another facet of his habitual moonlighting. She made no comment, accepting as commonplace the appearance of movie equipment on a date. He made a little noise with his lips as he sipped wine, more comfortable she thought with something he could toss back and chase with beer.
Making Love Page 11
