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“Lister,” Gretchen said, drinking, noting that the kitchen was a mess and deciding that she’d do nothing about it till morning. “Alec Lister.”
“Isn’t he dazzling?” Mary Jane said. “Is he attached?”
“Not tonight.”
“Blessings on him,” Mary Jane said, “the dear fellow. He drowned the kitchen in charm when he was in here. And I’ve heard the most terrible things about him. He beats his women, Willie told me.” She giggled. “Isn’t it exciting? Did you notice, does he need a new drink? I’ll appear at his side, goblet in hand, Mary Jane Hackett, the faithful cup-bearer.”
“He left five minutes ago,” Gretchen said, meanly pleased at being able to pass on the information to Mary Jane and wondering at the same time what women Willie was intimate enough with to hear from them that they had been beaten by Alec Lister.
“Ah, well,” Mary Jane shrugged philosophically, “there are other fish in the sea.”
Two men came into the kitchen and Mary Jane swung her red hair and smiled radiantly at them. “Here you are, boys,” she said, “the bar never closes.”
It was a cinch that Mary Jane had not gone two weeks without making love. What’s so wrong with being divorced, Gretchen thought, as she went back into the living room.
Rudolph and Julie walked toward Fifth Avenue in the balmy June evening air. He did not hold her arm. “This is no place to talk seriously,” he had said at the party. “Let’s get out of here.”
But it wasn’t any better on the street. Julie strode along, careful not to touch him, the nostrils of her small nose tense, the full lips bitten into a sharp wound. As he walked beside her on the dark street he wondered if it wouldn’t just be better to leave her then and there. It would probably come sooner or later anyway and sooner was perhaps to be preferred than later. But then he thought of never seeing her again and despaired. Still, he said nothing. In the battle that was being waged between them, he knew that the advantage would have to go to the one who kept silent longest.
“You have a girl there,” she said finally. “That’s why you’re staying in the awful place.”
He laughed.
“Your laughing doesn’t fool me.” Her voice was bitter, with no memory in it of the times they had sung together or the times she had said, I love you. “You’re infatuated with some ribbon clerk or cashier or something. You’ve been sleeping with somebody there all this time. I know.”
He laughed again, strong in his chastity.
“Otherwise you’re a freak,” she said harshly. “We’ve been seeing each other for five years and you say you love me and you haven’t tried once to make love to me, really make love to me.”
“I haven’t been invited,” he said.
“All right,” she said. “I invite you. Now. Tonight. I’m in room 923 at the St. Moritz.”
Wary of traps, fearful of helpless surrenders on a tumbled bed. “No,” he said.
“Either you’re a liar,” she said, “or you’re a freak.”
“I want to marry you,” he said. “We can get married next week.”
“Where will we spend our honeymoon?” she asked. “In the garden-furniture department of Calderwood’s Department Store? I’m offering you my pure-white, virgin body,” she said mockingly. “Free and clear. No strings. Who needs a wedding? I’m a free, liberated, lustful, all-American girl. I’ve just won the Sexual Revolution by a score of ten to nothing.”
“No,” he said. “And stop talking like my sister.”
“Freak,” she said. “You want to bury me along with you forever in that dismal little town. And all this time, I’ve thought you were so smart, that you were going to have such a brilliant future. I’ll marry you. I’ll marry you next week. If you take the trip to Europe and start law school in the autumn. Or if you don’t want to do that, if you just come down here to New York and work here. I don’t care what you do here, I’ll work, too. I want to work. What’ll I do in Whitby? Spend my days deciding which apron to wear when you come home at night?”
“I promise you that in five years you can live in New York or anyplace you say.”
“You promise,” she said. “It’s easy to promise. And I’m not going to bury myself for five years either. I can’t understand you. What in God’s name do you think you’re getting out of it?”
“I’m starting two years ahead of anybody in my class,” Rudolph said. “I know what I’m doing. Calderwood trusts me. He’s got a lot more going for him than just his store. The store’s just a begi
“Boylan’s baby,” Julie said. “He’s ruined you. Money! Does money mean that much to you? Just money?”
“Don’t sound like Little Miss Rich Bitch,” he said.
“Even if it does,” she said, “if you went into law …”
“I can’t wait,” he said. “I’ve waited long enough. I’ve been in enough schoolrooms. If I need law, I’ll hire lawyers.” Echo of Duncan Calderwood, that hard-headed man. They hire schooling. “If you want to come along with me, fine. If not …” But he couldn’t say it. “If not,” he repeated lamely. “Oh, Julie, I don’t know. I don’t know. I think I know about everything else, but I don’t know about you.”
“I lied to my father and mother …” She was sobbing now. “So I could be alone with you. But it’s not you. It’s Boylan’s doll. I’m going back to the hotel. I don’t want to talk to you anymore.” Weeping uncontrollably, she hailed a cab on the Avenue. It squealed to a halt and she opened the door and got in and slammed the door behind her.
He watched the cab roar away without moving. Then he turned and started back toward the party. He had left his bag there and Gretchen was going to make up a bed for him on the living room couch. 923, he remembered, the number of the hotel room.
Alimonied, Mary Jane did well for herself. Rudolph had never been in a wider or softer bed and in the glow of a lamp on the dressing table (Mary Jane insisted on keeping a light on) the large, warmly carpeted room, its walls pearl-gray silk, showed an expensive decorator’s touch. Deep-green velvet curtains shut out the sounds of the city. The preliminaries (they had been brief) had taken place in the high-ceilinged living room furnished with gilt Directoire pieces and large, gold-tinted mirrors, in which the embracing couple were caught in a vague and metallic luminosity. “The main event takes place inside,” Mary Jane had said, breaking away from a kiss, and without any further agreement from Rudolph had led him into the bedroom. “I’ll get ready in the bathroom,” she said, and kicked off her shoes and walked splendidly and almost steadily into the adjoining bathroom, from which had immediately come the sound of water ru
It was a little bit like being in a doctor’s office while he prepared for a minor operation, Rudolph thought resentfully, and he had hesitated before getting undressed. When Mary Jane had asked him to take her home from the party, well after midnight, with only four or five guests still sprawled around, he had no idea that anything like this was going to happen. He felt a bit dizzy from all the drinking he had done and he was worried about what his head would feel like when he lay down. For a moment, he had considered stealing quietly out and through the front door, but Mary Jane, her intuition or her experience at work, had called out su
So Rudolph had undressed, putting his shoes soberly side by side under a chair and folding his clothes neatly on the seat of the chair. The bed was already made up for the night (lace-fringed pillows, he noticed, and pale-blue sheets) and he had slipped under the covers, shivering a little. This was one way of making sure he wouldn’t be knocking on a hotel door that night. 923.