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“Willie doesn’t think about anything but infesting bars and occasionally screwing some drunken broad and getting by in this world with as little work and as little honor as possible. If he somehow was given the original stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, his first thought would be which sponsor he could sell it to at the highest price to advertise vacation tours to Mount Sinai.”
Rudolph laughed and despite herself Gretchen had to laugh, too. “There’s nothing like a failing marriage,” she said, “to bring out flights of rhetoric.”
Rudolph’s laughter was part relief. Gretchen had switched targets and he no longer was under attack.
“Does Willie know what your opinion is of him?” he asked.
“Yes,” Gretchen said. “He agrees with it. That’s the worst thing about him. He says there’s not a man or a woman or a thing in this world that he admires, especially himself. He’d be deeply dissatisfied with himself, he told me, if he was anything but a failure. Beware romantic men.”
“Why do you live with him?” Rudolph asked bluntly.
“Do you remember the note I sent you saying I was in a mess and I wanted to see you?”
“Yes.” Rudolph remembered it very well, remembered that whole day very well. When he had come down to New York the next week and asked Gretchen what the trouble was she had said, “Nothing. It’s blown over.”
“I’d more or less decided I wanted to ask Willie for a divorce,” Gretchen said, “and I wanted your advice.”
“What changed your mind?”
Gretchen shrugged. “Billy got sick. Nothing. For a day the doctor thought it was appendicitis, but it wasn’t. But Willie and I stayed up with him all night and as I looked at him lying all white faced and in pain on the bed and Willie hovering over him, so obviously loving him, I couldn’t bear the thought of making him another one of those poor forlorn statistics—child of a broken marriage, permanently homesick, preparing for the psychiatrist’s couch. Well …” her voice hardened, “that charming fit of maternal sentimentality has passed on. If our parents had divorced when I was nine, I’d be a better woman than I am today.”
“You mean you want a divorce now?”
“If I get custody of Billy,” she said. “And that’s one thing he won’t give me.”
Rudolph hesitated, took a long drink of his whiskey. “Do you want me to see what I can do with him?” He wouldn’t have offered to interfere if it hadn’t been for the tears in the taxicab.
“If it’ll do any good,” Gretchen said. “I want to sleep with one man, not ten, I want to be honest, do something useful, finally. God, I should like The Three Sisters. Divorce is my Moscow. Give me one more drink, please.” She held out her glass.
Rudolph went over to the bar and filled both their glasses. “You’re ru
“I wish that were true,” she said.
There was the sound of an ambulance siren again, wailing, diminishing, a warning as it approached, a lament as it departed. The Doppler phenomenon. Was it the same accident, completing the round trip? Or one of an endless series, limitless blood on the avenues of the city?
Rudolph handed her her drink and she sat curled up on the couch, staring at it.
A clock chimed somewhere. One o’clock.
“Well,” Gretchen said, “I guess they’re finished eating Chinese by now, Tommy and that lady. Is it possible that he has the only happy marriage in the history of the Jordaches? Do they love, honor and cherish each other as they eat Chinese and warm the bosomy marriage bed?”
There was the sound of a key in the front door lock. “Ah,” Gretchen said, “the veteran is returning home, wearing his medals.”
Willie came into the room, walking straight. “Hi, darling,” he said, and went over and kissed Gretchen’s cheek. As always, when he hadn’t seen Willie for some time, Rudolph was surprised at how short he was. Perhaps that was his real flaw—his size. He waved at Rudolph. “How’s the merchant prince tonight?” he said.
“Congratulate him,” Gretchen said. “He signed that deal today.”
“Congratulations,” Willie said. He squinted around the room. “God, it’s dark in here. What’ve you two been talking about—death, tombs, foul deeds done by night?” He went over to the bar and poured the last of the whiskey. “Darling,” he said, “we need a fresh bottle.”
Automatically, Gretchen stood up and went into the kitchen.
Willie looked after her anxiously. “Rudy,” he whispered, “is she sore at me for not coming home to di
“No, I don’t think so.”
“I’m glad you’re here,” Willie said. “Otherwise, I’d be getting Lecture Number 725. Thanks, darling,” he said as Gretchen came into the room carrying a bottle. He took the bottle from her, opened it, and strengthened his drink. “What’d you kids do tonight?” he asked.
“We had a family reunion,” Gretchen said, from her place on the couch. “We went to a prize fight.”
“What?” Willie said puzzledly. “What is she talking about, Rudy?”
“She can tell you about it later.” Rudolph stood up, leaving most of his last whiskey undrunk. “I’ve got to be moving along. I have to get up at the crack of dawn.” He felt uncomfortable sitting there with Willie, pretending that this night was no different from others, pretending he had not heard what Gretchen had said about him and about herself. He bent over and kissed Gretchen and Willie accompanied him to the door.
“Thanks for coming by and keeping the old girl company,” Willie said. “It makes me feel like less of a shit, leaving her alone. But it was unavoidable.”
It wasn’t a butt, Tommy, Rudolph remembered, I swear it wasn’t a butt. “You don’t have to make any excuses to me, Willie,” he said.
“Say,” Willie said, “she was joking, wasn’t she? That stuff about the prize fight? What is it—a kind of riddle, or something?”
“No. We went to a fight.”
“I’ll never understand that woman,” Willie said. “When I want to watch a fight on television, I have to go to somebody else’s house. Ah, well, I suppose she’ll tell me about it.” He pressed Rudolph’s hand warmly and Rudolph went out the door. He heard Willie locking it securely behind him and fixing the anti-burglar chain. The danger is inside, Willie, Rudolph wanted to say. You are locking it in with you. He went down the stairs slowly. He wondered where he would be tonight, what evasions he would be offering, what cuckoldry and dissatisfaction would have been in the air, if that night in 1950, room 923 in the St. Moritz Hotel had answered?
If I were a religious man, he thought, going out into the night, I would believe that God was watching over me.
He remembered his promise to try to do what he could to get Gretchen a divorce, on her terms. There was the logical first step to be taken and he was a logical man. He wondered where he could find a reliable private detective. Joh
Rudolph turned and took a last look at the building he had just left and against which he was sworn to conspire. He knew he’d never be able to mount those steps again, shake that small, desperate man’s hand again. Duplicity, too, must have its limits.
Chapter 6
I
He had pissed blood in the morning, but not very much and he wasn’t hurting. The reflection of his face in the train window when they went through a tu