The Loving Couple Page 27

  Well, she'd never heard such beautiful words in her whole life.

  "Uh, Fran had something she wanted to tell me," she said.

  "Listen," Randy said with elegant shyness, "would you mind if we left here—I mean just you and I? I have this terrible kind of headache . . ."

  "Mind?" she said. "I'd give my soul to get out of this place!"

  "Well, then," Randy said, "let's go!"

  "B-but Fran and F-fletch? The check?"

  "I settled the check with—uh, with Fletch. And they want to be alone." Summoning more courage, Randy added, "And so do I"

  "W-well, all right," she said. She knew that whatever she was about to do, it wasn't right, but she wanted to disappear from Chandelier—forever. Really! The nerve of John! He'd probably been dancing this mystery mistress around for . . . well, for a long time; making her the laughingstock of . . . "Yes," she said, "do let's get out of here!"

  Nine

  "Well,” she said nervously as randy switched on the light in the dim little foyer, "here we are." The statement struck her as inane, but she was now faced with a problem of social usage that was entirely new to her. Just how does a young matron address a totally strange man who might or might not try to seduce her, who might or might not ask her to spend the night and who was even now propelling her into a pitch-dark living room? She rather doubted that Mrs. Post and Mrs. Vanderbilt could come up with any answer other than "Stop!" and she wasn't quite sure that she wanted to stop; at least not quite yet.

  "Just a minute, I'll light the lamps," Randy said. He was feeling a little nervous, too. He had never before brought a woman up to the apartment where he had been living as Grace's protégé. He hadn't really wanted to tonight. In the first place, it was chancy. Of course he knew that Grace was safely away in New Jersey for the weekend and that Herbert was peddling his socks around Worcester, Massachusetts, so that there was no fear of a surprise attack. But he hated to think that the tabetic old elevator man might snitch on him or that the garrulous biddy across the hall would see them and blab to Grace. So far so good. But was it really so good? He felt that Grace and Herbert's dowdy three-room flat on West Eighty-first Street was hardly the correct setting for a young Virginia gentleman of aristocratic lineage. And he was right.

  However, when he was down to his last sixteen bucks, he was damned if he was going to suggest a hotel. Nor had he looked forward to driving Mary all the way out to Riveredge and getting himself marooned fifty miles from town in case she didn't want to play. This had been the only possible solution. They had left her car parked in the garage across from Chandelier and had taken a taxi direct to the Rock Cornish Arms—a dollar-fifty right there, including tip—and then the creaking old elevator up to Grace's eyrie, while the operator gave them the fish-eye. Here they were, indeed, and Randy would have to make the best of it.

  "Please forgive the looks of this place," he said. "I'm only subletting it until my own apartment is ready."

  "Oh?" she said.

  "Yes," Randy went on hastily. "I've just bought a duplex over on Park Avenue—a tiny little place, but good enough. So I'm sort of camping out here until my things are sent up from down home. This is kind of tacky, but it's . . ." His speech faded away into silence.

  Tacky hardly did the place justice, she thought, and then hated herself for thinking it. She had speculated briefly on the tweed and leather virility of Randy's bachelor apartment while riding west in the taxicab. She didn't know quite what she had expected it to be, but certainly not this. Helplessly her dismayed gaze travelled from one monstrosity to the next.

  Randy sensed her surprise—almost shock—and felt his face go hot. True, he had been kept in more opulent quarters before, but he began now to see Grace's living room for almost the first time. Grace occasionally skimmed the more popular household magazines and talked a great deal about what was "in Good Taste" and what was "in Bad Taste." And Grace was quite critical of the tastes of others. But some of her own decorating experiments—either from lack of cash or judgment—hadn't quite come off. There were, for example, the very walls of the room which, after Grace's heated exchange of words with the landlord, had finally been unwillingly painted by Randy himself. Grace had been very professional about mixing the color. "Dusty rose," she had called it. "A soft, subtle pink the shade of a sweet pea." But between mixing and drying something had gone wrong with the color and the shade was more reminiscent of a set of cheap dentures than of anything in the floral world. Herbert had said "Jesus, it looks like a cat house!" There had been a scene. But Grace had brazened it out and had finally sworn that it was the exact shade she had had in mind.

  Somehow it just wasn't quite right with the burgundy slipcover on the studio couch, the red leatherette of Herbert's Heart-Ease Converto Club Chair, the coral formica top of the chrome dinette set or the gaudy hearts and flowers of the Pennsylvania Dutch-type prints Grace had picked up in that gift shop on Amsterdam Avenue. Yes Randy could see now that from the grimy ceiling with its harsh central fixture to the profusion of Mexican scatter rags on the floor nothing in the room was right. The blackamoor lamps, the little copper skillet ashtrays, the brandy balloon goldfish bowl, Grace's chartreuse sling chairs, the early-American maple coffee table, the copies of Silver Screen and Master Detective, the artificial ivy in the planter lamp on the television set—none of these properties lent themselves convincingly either to aristocracy or seduction.

  Mary sat down timidly on the studio couch which was Randy's bed when Herbert was in town, and regretted having done so. It was just slightly too wide for her to lean back. "It's very nice," she said lamely. Her attention was then riveted to a large photograph of a middle-aged brunette simpering out of a crimson plastic frame. "Your mother?" she asked, nodding toward the picture.

  "Good God, no!" Randy said. He was really shocked. It was Grace's favorite study of herself—a picture taken by a Chicago theatrical photographer in 1937 when Grace had toured in a company of Blossom Time, her last professional engagement. Grace kept it around to remind herself that, beaded lashes and all, she was eternally irresistible and to remind Herbert that she had thrown away not only a brilliant career, but also the best years of her life by marrying him. "It just came with the apartment," he said quickly. "I have no idea who it is."

  "It's probably just as well," she said. "There's one woman I'd hate to get on the wrong side of."

  Randy shuddered involuntarily. Then he said, "Let me get you a drink."

  She watched Randy make his way through the cluttered room and disappear into the kitchen. She felt uncomfortable and was angry at herself for being uncomfortable. She just wished that she could let herself go, have the courage of her convictions, thumb her nose at convention and carry on madly, passionately, scandalously with this attractive young man. It had all seemed so simple coming over here in the taxi, but the sight of this dreary apartment house, its Moorish lobby, its threadbare renaissance chairs, its smirking old elevator man, the odors of cabbage and tomato sauce that wafted through its gloomy halls had rather depressed her. The erotic schemes that had seemed so gratifyingly disreputable in the dark cab, looked a good deal less appealing beneath the harsh lights of the Rock Cornish Arms.

  She hadn't been exactly certain what her conduct would be tonight until she saw her husband spinning across the dance floor at Chandelier with the Other Woman. Then, when Randy had been just as anxious to leave early as she had—even more so, it seemed—she had made up her mind. "Two can play the game," she kept telling herself. "Life is for living!" It had all sounded more daring than trite at the moment and she had been about to ask Randy to come out to Riveredge for a nightcap. But Randy had beaten her to it. "Would you like to come up to my place for a drink?" he had said. Then he had added, "Do you have something for the doorman? I seem to be out of change.”

  Covered with confusion, she had started fishing in her purse for a tip. The next thing she knew she had been sitting in the taxi close to Randy, her hand in his. It was then that she
had decided definitely in favor of an affair. Randy was handsome, charming, well bred and two could, after all, play the game. She just wished that the game could look a little more attractive than it did at the moment.

  Randy just hoped that Grace hadn't locked up the liquor before she went off for the weekend. Not that it would have surprised him. Herbert was a terrible cheapskate, but Grace was even tighter and mean in the bargain. You could have a drink when Grace wanted a drink, but at no other time. And even then it meant that you had to sit in rapt and grateful attendance while Grace lapped up the Southern Comfort and No-Cal and keep telling her that she was the most beautiful, the most talented, the most charming woman alive and that the theatre's loss had been Herbert's gain and that no producer in his right mind would dream of refusing her the title role in anything from The Little Colonel to Medea if only Herbert weren't holding her back from her brilliant career. And then about six Southern Comforts later you had to get into the hay with Grace. It was almost easier to buy your own drink.

  But no, the old battleax had overlooked a half bottle of cheap rye and some syrupy domestic creme de menthe. He wished it were Scotch or something elegant, but the rye would have to do. There were no clean glasses in the cupboard, except for some tinted pink goblets which Grace called "my champagne glasses." There were plenty of glasses in the sink, however, along with a greasy frying pan, two egg-stained plates from breakfast and a dirty coffee cup stained with Grace's magenta lipstick. He rinsed out a couple of glasses, embellished with some Disney-esque fauns and which had once contained jelly. He dusted some crumbs off a fake tole tray, loaded it up and took it back to the living room.

  "Rye is about all I could find," Randy said. "I told the liquor store to send around a case of Scotch today, but I guess they just don't want the business very much. I hope you don't mind."

  "Rye will be fine, thank you," she said. "Not very strong, please."

  "Here," he said, "let me have your hat and your furs. Might as well be comfortable."

  She gave them to Randy with a smile and he carried them reverently to the dinette table, marveling at their softness. Randy wondered what they must have cost and guessed fairly accurately. He was a captious connoisseur of expensive things and his approval amounted to something just short of the Nobel Prize. All of his life Randy had yearned to possess the rare, the beautiful, the costly trappings of people with money and breeding and, like someone that has always wanted to have—but never quite achieved—a beautiful voice, say, he was a biased and jealous judge, acerb in his criticism, quick to spot the false note, the off-key, the flat or the shrill. And, like the frustrated singer suddenly confronted with a flawless performance of Norma, Randy was slavish in his admiration of harmonious perfection. True, Randy had seen more overpowering and more affluent women in his time, but for a production of exquisitely balanced tone and artistry, his hat was off to little Mrs. Riveredge.

  "Now I'll fix us some drinks," he said coming back with a smile.

  "Thank you, but not too strong."

  The drink, she assumed, was the beginning of the seduction. Never having been seduced before, she wondered apprehensively if everything was going to be all right. Immediately she began to regret her underwear. Of course it was perfectly exquisite stuff—a seldom worn segment of the extensive trousseau her mother had supplied and all of it real silk. But she felt that it should be a wicked black or a virginal white and preferably transparent. Actually it was a shade known as "tea rose"—no longer in fashion and exuding an air of neither sin nor virtue. Well, it was too late in the game to worry about her underwear. She just hoped that when the time came—if the time came—she could sneak off to the bathroom and do her own disrobing. Or was the man really supposed to undress you? Her stomach stirred unpleasantly.

  "Would you like a little, um, background music?" Randy said. It was a stab at levity and a stab that both of them regretted. Grace's record library was made up almost exclusively of light-operetta selections—The Student Prince, Show Boat, My Maryland, all good old standbys whose many touring companies had offered Grace saucy bit parts during the late twenties and early thirties. Grace enjoyed singing along with the recording artists, criticizing their diction and regaling whoever might be around with shrill anecdotes about her career in the theatre.

  But it seemed to Randy that gems from The New Moon or Naughty Marietta would hardly serve as the. backbone of a young aristocrat's collection, let alone suitable mood music for one of life's tenderest moments. Besides, Grace's record player was badly in need of an overhauling and a new needle.

  Instead, Randy switched on Herbert's radio to a station known for its all-night program of soothing and/or high-type music. Long-hair stuff would make him look more cultivated. There was a slight crackling of static and then the restful strains of Les Nuages burst upon the room like a dum-dum shell. Mary cowered on the edge of the studio couch. "Oh, my God!" Randy cried and rushed to turn down the volume. "There now," he said. The music was as at once subdued and caressing. "That's pretty," Randy said. He was about to ask what it was until he thought better of it.

  He sat down on the lumpy studio couch and moved a little closer to her.

  She looked deep into her jelly glass and took a sip of her drink. It was ghastly.

  "Drink all right?" he asked.

  "Mmmmmmm. Delicious," she said, struggling not to make a face. The ice cubes had already melted, making the drink tepid and imbuing it with an especially nasty taste.

  "Are you fond of Debussy?" she asked, nodding toward the radio.

  "Yes," Randy said, favoring her with a soft, slow smile. "But let's not talk about music, let's talk about you—about us."

  This sounded dimly like one of the worst lines in one of the worst plays she had ever seen and she wondered if Randy could be really as bright as he had seemed. But she credited it to an attempt at small talk and thought, a little hopefully, that perhaps he was as uncertain and ill-at-ease as she was. That at least would be sweet. If their affair was not to be as scarlet as a tropical hibiscus (and she had rather hoped it would be), then it might be the soft, delicate pink of a dewy camellia. That might be easier for a starter in sin.

  She wondered what her husband would think if he could see her here and the very notion made her angry. This is too ridiculous, she thought, when he's probably in a swan bed someplace over East with that brunette. Abruptly she lifted the horrid glass. Randy said, "Well, here's to us!"

  "Shall we go into the other room?" he said at last

  "Oh, no!" she said. Then she remembered that her sole reason for coming here had been to embark upon a life of immorality. "Well, yes. I suppose we should," she added. She wondered how long they had been here in the living room. Once she had been dimly conscious of a man's caramel voice on the radio saying something about a brand of aspirin and tomorrow's weather, but she had no idea of the hour. Her own watch indicated ten minutes past nine. That was a Popescu watch for you—all diamonds and no time, even if you remembered to wind it.

  She tried to recall just how this phase of their relationship had begun. It seemed to her that he had been sitting next to her and looking becomingly wistful when he had said, "I get so lonely up North here. New York's a nice place for a visit, but I wouldn't want to live here—that is, before I met a nice, understanding friend like you." It was a speech that had done yeoman service with Mr. Bessamer, with Mrs. Barrett, with Grace—with all of Randy's former protectors.

  Tonight it had fallen flat. Mary had writhed with agony at such a tired old string of cliches. She detested prejudice and intellectual snobbery and she had always been able to resist the prevailing Northern notion that the I.Q. dropped several points at the Mason-Dixon Line. Hadn't she known girls from the really deep South who had got straight A's all through college? But if this Randy couldn't say something halfway original, why did he have to say anything at all?

  "Tell me about your home,” she had suggested lamely.

  Nothing could have been more ill advised,
because that was just what he did—the pillars, the shuffling darkies, the juleps, the hunt ball. He had described his birthplace, room by room, until she felt that Greenwood House was slightly larger than Versailles, Schloss Belvedere, Buckingham Palace and the Vatican combined. She had longed, then, to meet just one Southerner who hadn't left a glorious Greek-revival plantation behind. If this is seduction, she had thought, give me Little Journeys Through Homes of the Great.

  "What happened to it?" she had said.

  "Burned to the ground," Randy had replied sadly.

  "By the Yankees?" she had murmured, stifling a cavernous yawn.

  "What?" Randy had asked politely.

  "I said that was a pity." Then he had drawn out his wallet and said, "If you'd like to see a picture . . ."

  Not color slides? she had thought miserably.

  Fortunately not. It had been a single snapshot of a cute little russet-haired boy wrapped in a sweater. Well enough behind him to be romantically blurred were some Ionic columns and a rakish old car.

  Randy bent over her. "That was me—I mean I—a long time ago, and that was the West Portico and my sister's runabout and . . ."

  "But what a darling little boy!" she had said. "You . . ."

  Just then Randy had ceased being the darling little boy and Randy the man had asserted himself. Before she could finish her sentence, his arms were around her and he was hungrily seeking her lips with his.

  And she certainly had to hand it to him. Except for her husband and her brother-in-law, no man had kissed her since she had been married. Before then she had escaped, aroused but unsullied, from the embraces of dozens of young men, for she had always been as popular as she had been chaste. But as soon as she had recovered from the initial shock, she realized that Randy was an artist in his own particular field. He was full of fits and starts, tricks and nuances when it came to making love and she had to admit that he was a persuasive and overwhelming adversary. It did her little good to protest his wandering hands, his far-too-intimate intimacies. He was a willful lover, so willful that once or twice she was almost afraid of him. They had lain there on the studio couch in the vicious light grappling and panting for—well, for she didn't know how long. Gasping, throbbing with desire, now the time had come to go to the bedroom and get down to the serious business of the evening. So this was seduction!