The Loving Couple Read online

  "B-But somebody ought to be with poor old Teddy," he said getting into the cab.

  "Oh, forget about Teddy. This is important. Where to? Grand Central and thence to squalid suburbia?"

  "No. I can't go home. I don't really know where I . . ."

  "Well, you can ride along with me while I tell you the big news. The Plaza, driver," Toby said. . "Listen, Toby . . ."

  "For Christ's sake stop yammering all the time. I'm trying to tell you something. Guess where I'm going to be working at ten or eleven or whenever I happen to feel like getting up on Monday?"

  "I give up, Toby. Where?"

  "Right in your office. Just Sonny-boy and Toby-boy and Papa Grotescu. I'm your new assistant, kid! Think of the boffs we'll have."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "What do you mean what am I talking about? Popescu and Lillian took me out for dinner and after I steered that tub of guts around the dance floor for a few miles and shot a line of bull to the old pirate, he ups and offers me a job as your assistant. Public Relations in Charge of Entertaining. That's me. Of course I had to tell him that you and I collaborated on all the college shows and that I gave you the original idea for Heart Beat—or whatever it's called. I knew you wouldn't mind. He wants us to work very close together, which I think is all to the good so you can teach me the lingo and . . ."

  "Listen, Toby," John said quietly. "Do you mean to tell me that you actually talked yourself into a job that you know nothing about? A big job?"

  "Well, I don't know how big it is. It only pays twelve thou, per annum, but that's better than a kick in the ass. Besides, what's there to learn? You can show me the ropes and . . ."

  "Toby, do you think that what you did was entirely honest or even . . ."

  "What's honesty got to do with it, stupid? I need the dough. Anyhow I knew you wouldn't care, since you seem to have the old man's daughter sewn up."

  John felt the last prop falling away from his life—not with a crash but with a gradual crumbling, as though termites were finishing the final course of a long, heavy meal. I'll try one more time with Toby, he thought, just to make absolutely certain. As the cab turned north on Fifth Avenue he moistened his lips and said tentatively, "Moving into the Plaza, Toby?"

  "Hell, yes," Toby said. "The Bacchus Club was giving me the creeps—lousy service and Teddy always whining around for his money. I . . .”

  "Toby, if you could get a double room I wonder if . . ."

  "Well, actually it's a small suite. You know, now that I'm the dashing boy executive I have to live in a style commensurate with my . . ."

  "Toby, I happen to be fiat broke at the moment and I haven't got anyplace to stay tonight. I wonder if you could put me up—just for tonight until I can get a check cashed and . . ."

  "Gee, kid, that's a shame. You know I'd like to, but this dame I know—she's a hat-check girl at Chandelier—is coming up after work and . . . Well, you know: 'Two's Company . . .' All that sort of thing. I tell you what, though, why don't you give me a ring tomorrow and we can get together in the evening. Then you can coach me in this watch works thing and just give me the general line of patter. You know I can talk myself into anything if I just . . ."

  Now the disaffection was complete. In the dimness of the cab he saw for the first time the petulant baby face, the selfish mouth, the cruel little wrinkles around the eyes as Toby squinted in a cloud of cigarette smoke. He cleared his throat. "Sure. I understand Toby. I won't be able to see you tomorrow and I'm not coming into the office on Monday, but I can give you a couple of pointers right now."

  "Good. Shoot!"

  "Well, if you really want to make an impression on Popescu, go right into his office and be sure you close the door—he hates drafts—and ask him about Dr. Schwartz in Bern and Mr. Gomez in Rio and Mohammed Maloof in Cairo."

  "Well, what'll I say about them?" Toby said, all interest.

  "You don't have to say anything about them. Popescu will do all the talking. You just kind of start the conversational ball rolling. Say something like: 'Say, Manfred, I bet you could tell me a lot of fascinating things about Dr. Schwartz in Bern and Mr. Gomez in . . .'"

  "Gee, that's swell," Toby said effusively. "Show him I'm really interested in his business. Wait'll I just jot those names down." He took out a pencil and began writing on the back of an envelope. "Dr. Schwartz, Bern; Gomez, Rio; Mohammed Aloof . . ."

  "Maloof, Toby."

  "Oh, sure, Maloof, Cairo. Gosh, thanks a million. I'll really bowl the old boy over."

  "You really will, Toby."

  "Well, here we are," Toby said as the cab drew up to the blazing marquee. "Sorry I can't offer you the sofa tonight, but you know how it is. Oh, by the way, can you take care of the cab? All I seem to have is this thousand dollar bill of Popescu's and . . ."

  "Afraid not, Toby," he said as he got out of the cab. "But I'm sure the doorman can change it for you—in nickels and dimes. Thanks for the ride, though. It's been one of the big events of my life."

  "Well, maybe I do have a couple of singles. I . . ."

  "So long, Toby," he said and walked away in the darkness.

  Ten

  He walked rapidly away from the brilliance of the plaza, crossed Fifth Avenue and wandered into a dim side street. He had no place to go and plenty of time to get there. Broke—stony, flat, penniless broke—he had nothing to do all night but to walk.

  This had been his first full day of independence and he hadn't made much of it. Or had he? In a negative way he had accomplished quite a lot. He had shed himself of a humiliating job; of a hollow idol; of the Bacchus Club; of a scheming adventuress; of all of his cash; and of a wife. Just now, he only regretted the cash. Although he was certainly curious about the wife. On Monday morning he could start out from scratch and begin an entirely different life with none of the same mistakes. For the present, well, he could walk; walk the night away.

  He pounded his way across Fifty-ninth Street to Third Avenue. Third seemed so big and broad and wide and naked with the elevated gone. He paused hesitatingly on the corner for a moment and then turned north. The wind swirled down the avenue, sending up little whirlpools and eddies of paper and grit. He pulled up the collar of his suit coat and hoped that he wouldn't look too much like a vagrant. How perfect, he thought grimly, the young executive, cut off from everything, walking along Third Avenue with the collar of a London suit turned up and not a penny in his pockets. Camera pan out. It's like the kind of TV script I always rejected for Pulse Beat.

  He kept on walking, thinking about everything and about nothing, not even paying any attention to where he was going, passing bars and antique shops, delicatessens and truss dealers. He was snapped out of his revery only by a fearful clanging of gongs and wailing of sirens. He stopped and realized that he had walked all the way up to Sixty-seventh Street, where the fire department was rushing out on an emergency call.

  This was his old neighborhood, the neighborhood where they had spent their poor years together before the big move to Riveredge. There wasn't a shop on either side of the avenue that he didn't know. He walked on more slowly, conscious of the fact that he could go into Oscar's or Shannon's, where they knew him well, and cash a check to see him through the night. He wondered if he shouldn't and then thought better of it.

  He looked in through the plate glass windows at the Irish hunched over the bar in Shannon's Cafe. It would be so easy to go in and get ten or twenty dollars. Instead, he decided to suffer the night out as a kind of self-punishment. He came to the Playhouse and then sauntered west on Sixty-eighth Street. Their old apartment was only a block farther on. He had no idea why he was going to see it. The building looked like any of a hundred other converted townhouses in New York. But he told himself that he had nothing better to do and all night to do it in and kept on going.

  He felt his heart bound as he crossed Lexington Avenue. There, on the other side of the street stood the row of elaborate old houses—Georgian, Palladian and baroque—each one
eighteen feet wide; each as tall as the law would allow; and each as over-ornamented as its architect could permit. They were the sorts of houses that Mary Petty's people still inhabited, put up by the rich when taxes were nothing and servants were cheap. Each had changed hands more than once and each had been converted into apartments.

  He stopped under a plane tree across from Number 123 and stared across at it. The place hadn't changed since they had lived there on the parlor-door front. Mrs. Larson on the floor above theirs—that would have been the master bedroom in the first youth of the house—was still growing ivy in her window boxes. The Condons, who lived in what would have been the old nursery, were still addicted to late parties. The commercial artist who lived above and behind the ornamental cornice was undoubtedly still trying to teach her parakeet to talk. It was odd how he knew exactly what would be going on in the house at exactly what hour. Only the big windows of their old apartment were dark. There was a sign in one of the windows. He squinted in the darkness trying to read it from across the street. APARTMENT TO LET—at least that's what he thought it said. He was about to go across to make sure when a taxicab came along, stopped at the door of Number 123, and a woman got out.

  I'll just wait until she goes in, he thought, and then I'll cross over and see.

  But the woman didn't go in. She looked flustered and confused at first. Then, like a damned fool, she just stood back at the curbstone and gazed and gazed and gazed up at the old house.

  "My God," he growled, "isn't she ever going in?" He reached impatiently into his pocket for a cigarette. He hadn't any. Toby had kept the whole pack.

  Just then the woman turned and stared in his direction. There was a pause and then he heard a loud, rather scared voice say, "Sir, are you following me?"

  Well, who did she think she was, Helen of Troy?

  "No, madam," he said loudly and angrily, "I am not!"

  "Oh, it's you," she said from across the street.

  Stunned, he recognized that it was his wife.

  Slowly, he crossed the street. She might just be in trouble.

  "What are you doing out on the streets alone at night?" he asked.

  "I don't see that it's any concern of yours. Certainly not after this morning."

  "Believe me," he said coldly, "it's none of my affair where you go. But I shouldn't like to see any woman mugged or raped."

  "How thoughtful. I had no idea you cared so very deeply." Oh she could be a bitch!

  Well, he wasn't going to take that lying down. "I thought that you were probably safe at home until I saw you cavorting around Chandelier tonight."

  "Oh," she said, "I could tell that you were thinking about me every minute. I suppose that brunette snake was your marriage counselor."

  "She happened to be Popescu's stepdaughter,” he said quickly. "So don't try to make anything out of that."

  "Who cares who she is or what she means to you. I simply remarked that you didn't seem to be holed up in the exclusive male society of the Bacchus Club or some wholesome Y.M.C.A."

  "The Bacchus Club no longer exists,” he said.

  "What a loss!" she said with heavy sarcasm.

  Well, just how one-sided could this interrogation get? "And you seem to have picked up a prize package in Uncle Tom, or whoever that big economy-size helping of corn pone was."

  "He's some friend of Fran Hollister's,” she said quickly. "I don't even remember his name."

  "Oh, Fran Hollister, eh? You are running with a smart set!"

  "After all,” she said stuffily, "Fran and I were schoolmates at Baldwin and . . . Oh, lay off, please. Go away and leave me alone. I've spent the day with such awful people that I . . ."

  "So have I,” he said quietly.

  "What?" she said with elaborate bitchiness. "With charming people like the Popescus and their gifted daughter? I should think you'd call it furthering your career. Don't worry, you'll get ahead!"

  "Maybe. But not with Popescu. I'm quitting my job."

  "Quitting?" That shook her. "Don't kid, please," she said irritably.

  "If you're still that interested,” he said, "just try to call my office on Monday. You'll only get Toby."

  "Toby? Toby Wentworth?" she said. "What does little Huckleberry Finn know about running a television show?"

  "Nothing. But he knows enough about Popescu to hang him. Or at least he will. It should be interesting to watch—like a fight to the finish between a ferret and a rat."

  "What on earth are you talking about?" she asked.

  "I thought you didn't care."

  "I don't," she said. "Really. Not in the least. I just love standing out in the middle of the street in the middle of the night making idiotic conversation with my ex-husband. Aren't you cold?"

  "No, I am not,” he said. He was almost frozen solid. "Furthermore, I am not your ex-husband."

  "You might as well be," she said with a touch of bitterness.

  "I suppose you're right," he agreed.

  "However, there's no reason why we can't act like civilized people. I hope you'll be very happy. I just never want to see you again, that's all."

  "That suits me fine," he said. He hoped that it sounded sufficiently casual. "I would like to say, though, that I'm sorry about the coffee pot this morning. That seemed to bring the whole thing to a . . ." Well, he didn't know what the incident had brought anything to, except a quick and violent grand finale.

  "Oh, don't worry about that. It made lousy coffee, anyhow. But of course you're right. It takes more than a broken coffee pot to ruin a marriage." A little less guardedly she said, "It takes things like a husband who suddenly ends up married to his job and a Manfred Popescu pinching your rear and a year or so isolated in a stagnant backwater like Riveredge and . . ."

  "Well! This is interesting," he said grandly. "After you nearly drove me to bankruptcy moving out there with your sister Alice and a pack of snobs and squares to face on the commuters' train twice a day . . ."

  "Don't blame me for Riveredge," she said quickly. "I hate it. I always have."

  "That's a pity. The house is in your name."

  "Well, it won't be for long," she said. "I'll sell it."

  "Good. That'll give you a settlement of some forty or fifty thousand dollars, provided you can find anyone who's a big enough fool to buy the place."

  "Thank you," she said. "But I happen to be an independent, educated woman quite able to earn my own living without alimony or a settlement. And you may quote me in court. But in case you should be interested, I do know a couple of prize customers."

  "Who?" he asked. Of course she was lying. Just getting fancy with him.

  "They're two of the Hennesseys' favorite people—Dan and Peggy Slattery from Dee-troit. The only trouble is that you could never get them past the Membership Committee. That's too bad—for you."

  Was she kidding? "Do you really know someone who might want that house?"

  "Yes, indeed. Mrs. Slattery peeked through the windows and pronounced it de-vine. They want to buy it lock, stock and barrel. But as I say, they're even worse than the Hennesseys. That snobbish Membership Committee would never . . ."

  "I think the Membership Committee could be handled,” he said. "A word or two with Whitney Martin and your friends will be in like Flynn." Just a glance at Whitney Martin and he could move the whole Jukes family into Riveredge.

  "That's your worry. Not mine," she said. "You bought the house. You sell it. I'm going to try to get back into our old place."

  "Here?" he said.

  "You see it's for rent."

  "Oh, really?" He was on his guard now. "I just happened to be strolling past and kind of thought of moving back myself."

  "Well, you'll undoubtedly get it. You have all the money."

  "That's a hot one!" he said.

  "What?"

  "Nothing," he said.

  A querulous voice called down from above: "Would you two mind not standing directly below my window and talking at the tops of your lungs? It's one o
'clock in the morning!"

  "Sorry," he called, looking up.

  "My God," Mary said with a nervous laugh, "that's old Mrs. Larson who used to live above us and grow all the ivy."

  "I suppose she still bangs on the pipes every time the Condons pour a martini." John was almost beginning to enjoy himself with Mary. It was like old times.

  "Yes," she said, "those were awfully funny years living here at one-two-three. Well, Mrs. Larson does have a point. I've got to be going anyhow."

  "Where?" he asked. He hated to think of her walking away into the night, of being left all alone here.

  "I can't see how that's any of your business. But as long as you ask, either back to the garage and then to Riveredge, or else to some hotel. I haven't decided which."

  "You really oughtn't to be running around alone at night," he said. Damn it, he was concerned about her. You couldn't just go and wipe a whole person out of your life as easily as that. "No woman in her right mind would . . ."

  "Thank you for your vote of confidence," she said icily. "But we're better off going our separate ways. I think you made that quite clear this morning."

  Could it possibly be that those were tears he saw in her eyes?

  "I've m-managed beautifully by myself all day," she continued. "So beautifully, in fact, that I'm just . . ." her speech faltered. "That I'm just miserable!" With that she broke down and wept like a child. "Oh, darling," she cried, "I've been so lonely and frightened and unhappy. I've—I've . . . Have you a hankie?"

  "Here," he said, fighting the wave of tenderness that swept over him.

  She blew her nose. Then she straightened up and managed to get control of herself. "Thank you," she said. "I'll have it laundered and send it back."

  "Don't bother," he said largely. "I have dozens." All at once his pride collapsed in a heap. "Listen," he said tensely, "you think you’ve suffered. I've never spent such a day in all my life. I'd rather work all year in that Goddamned garden than spend another minute like the minutes I've put in today!"

  She looked up at him through misty eyes. "Do you honestly mean that the Other Woman—I mean the Bessamer girl—is nothing to you? That she isn't your mistress? That you only walked out this morning because of . . ."