The Loving Couple Read online

  "Toby! You silly bastard!" he cried. "How long have you been back?"

  "Couple of days," Toby grinned, drinking deeply of somebody else's drink, "and I wish to hell I was still in Ecuador."

  "Teddy," he said, "why didn't you tell me Toby was here? For God's sake, we were roommates."

  "Oh, Toby? Toby?" Teddy said vaguely, trying to focus his eyes. "Funny, it just slipped my mind. Golly, Chum, isn't that strange. Why, I was just saying to Walter Goodenough—class of '34, '33, somewhere around in there—I was just saying that if there was one guy with real club spirit, it was Toby."

  "Come off the maundering you old stumblebum and get some more ice and a glass for me," Toby said, arranging the towel more modestly about himself. Still muttering, Teddy disappeared toward what had once been a well-stocked bar.

  Toby Wentworth was really named something impressive like Alexander Hamilton Wentworth, 3rd. He was the second son and first remittance man of some people in Cincinnati who'd made a killing in soap. Before he was twenty Toby had cracked up six cars and two marriages—all belonging to other people. Toby had a gift for bringing out the mother in women and a genius for bringing them to bed shortly—say an hour—thereafter. During the war his adventures had been legendary. Toby had insulted General Patton, gone A.W.O.L. to Paris for six weeks, been caught in the WAC barracks, black marketed six thousand dollars' worth of gas and got away with it. Since the war he had had a couple of dozen jobs—all glamorous and all in exotic places. He had faced man-eating tigers in India, Communist guerrillas in the Philippines, a bandit king in Sicily, a revolutionary assassin in Iran, and irate fathers of wronged daughters in almost any country you might care to name. The only things Toby had not faced were reality and the fact that he was no longer eighteen.

  "Toby, for God's sake," John said reminiscently. "I can't believe it's really you."

  "Well, it is," Toby said. "Come on upstairs and talk to me while I get dressed."

  "What about Teddy?"

  "Nuts to Teddy," Toby said. "The old creep gives me the willies. We'll just skip the ice and take the bottle up with us. Teddy drinks too much, anyway."

  Picking up his glass he followed Toby and the rye bottle up the stairway. The halls were dim and cobwebby and smelled faintly of mice. Toby's room adjoined Teddy's suite on the second floor. It was a dim little room, its one window overlooking the bleak and rather weedy back yard which had once been known as the club's Summer Terrace—two ailanthus trees, a dozen rattan chairs, and a noseless statue of Bacchus, but a pleasant spot withal. The room, too, would have been decent enough, given a good cleaning and a coat or two of paint. Yet Toby Wentworth always left his hallmark on any he occupied. In fact, he hardly had to set foot inside the door until a place became chaotically his own.

  Toby's half-emptied trunks and suitcases yawned rudely from the corners of the room. A cascade of neckties fell from the top of the chest, swirling in bright little rivulets and eddies on the worn carpet. His toilet articles sprawled over every surface, some few of them half buried in drifts of spilled talcum powder. Toby's shirts, his suits, his trousers, his coats and dressing gowns were draped over every piece of furniture. A black sock hung like mourning crape over a James Montgomery Flagg sketch of Bacchus. A small bale of dirty laundry filled the easy chair and in the middle of the unmade bed, forming a snug little nest, were Toby's wrinkled pajamas.

  "Sit down, make yourself at home," Toby said genially. Then he poured two stiff drinks from the rye bottle.

  The drink was too strong to taste really good and it occurred to John, vaguely, that he'd had no breakfast and might very reasonably expect to feel a little woozy drinking on an empty stomach. Yet this was so much like old times, sitting in a messed-up room with Toby and drinking while Toby dressed and talked amiably on.

  Automatically he began to pick up Toby's ties—someone always had to tidy Toby's messes—and thought back to the first time the two of them had been in a room together. It was on the first day at college, years ago. He had been a scared, green young kid away from home for the first time and beginning to doubt the tightness of his hard new salt-and-pepper tweed suit, described by the salesman at Kampus Klothiers back home as "perfect for the Ivy League." It wasn't. It wouldn't even have been right for the University of Stalingrad, pleated, padded, patch pocketed as it was. In fact it was thoroughly wrong. Forty dollars down the drain.

  He had sat miserably on a hard bentwood chair that day watching the sleek Gilmore trunks—each stamped A.H.W., III—being dumped into the bleak double room which was to house him and some total stranger possessing, apparently, untotaled wealth and the initials A.H.W., III. He had looked at the splendid new luggage and felt bitterly ashamed of his own—Dad's old gladstone, Aunt Lucy's steamer trunk and Mother's scuffed black pullman case with the violet moire lining. Then he felt even more bitterly ashamed of being ashamed. But he had begun thinking that perhaps the state university back home would have been better, after all, than this expensive Eastern college when his wretched revery was interrupted by the arrival of A.H.W., III himself. It had been Toby.

  "Hi!" Toby had said. That seemed to have been all that was necessary. The ice had been immediately broken and a beautiful friendship established.

  At seventeen Toby had looked like a cross between Peck's Bad Boy and a Botticelli cherub. He was rich, spoiled, willful, self-confident, dishonest, childish, and utterly captivating. The apparent fountainhead of all carnal knowledge, Toby had taught him quickly how to smoke Indian fashion, how to needle beer with grain alcohol, how to tell which town girls would and which ones wouldn't.

  Although smaller and younger, Toby had immediately taken him under his wing and served as guide and mentor to a world he had never known. Because of Toby, Cincinnati became Paris; the Wentworths' Norman-type house on Indian Hill Road, with its real, live, Finnish butler-chauffeur, was the Palais Royale; the Cincinnati Bachelors' Cotillion was gayer, more brilliant than any court ball and Toby's debutante sister—in sorry truth an aggressively plain girl with drooping lids and no eyelashes to speak of—reigned over it like Pompadour. Toby had more than charm. Toby had glamor.

  John had always felt beholden to Toby—grateful when Toby had candidly pointed out that all of his clothes were impossible; obligated for the loan of a tie; eternally indebted to Toby for the Spring Vacation week he had spent under the Wentworth roof; sick with remorse when he could only spend five dollars on Toby's Christmas present; understanding when Toby gave him none in return; happy to lend Toby money, to do Toby's assignments, to make Toby's bed, to dance with Toby's dreary sister. Everyone had always done things for Toby. They felt that it was only Toby's due. And Toby agreed.

  He watched now, amused and bemused, as Toby combed his wet, yellow baby hair in front of the mirror, pressing the deep, boyish wave above his forehead. He had seen Toby do just this at least a thousand times before and today in his happiness at being once again with lovable, witty, prankish old Toby, he either would not see or could not see that the yellow baby hair was thinning at the crown. Just as he would not see or could not see that Toby was getting a bit heavy beneath the arms and the jaw and that Toby's dashing clothes—like Toby's dashing face—were beginning to show signs of wear, neglect and age.

  It was more than the drink and the dimness of the room. Toby to him was a symbol, a symbol of youth and gaiety and freedom and eternal—eternal what?

  ". . . so this dame in Calcutta came around with her old man and claimed I was the father," Toby was saying as he got into his shirt. "And I . . ."

  Eternal sex appeal. That was what Toby had. He could remember the leather-framed photographs of Cincinnati girls on Toby's dresser at school—girls in riding clothes squinting into the camera at the Carmargo Club; girls in bathing suits at the Miami Boat Club; girls in their white coming-out dresses sitting bouffantly on gilt chairs at the Sinton Hotel. Compared to his own modest gallery of enchantresses—a second cousin at Mills College and a girl named Lila Lewis who was said, later,
to have gone to modern dance and the dogs—Toby's collection was awesome. These were pretty girls, nice girls, rich girls, all of whom, Toby allowed to be surmised, either had or would have gone to bed with Toby. And at seventeen!

  No, he reflected musingly, no woman could ever resist Toby. No woman except one—Mary! Peter Pan, that's what she'd called Toby! And how like her! Anything to be different! "I suppose he's nice enough," she had said. (She supposed Toby was nice enough—how about that!) "But he always gives me the feeling that I'm talking to the most precocious little boy in the fourth form and that the minute I've finished he'll be writing naughty words on the blackboard." A character assassin, that's what she was, talking that way about his best friend.

  ". . . turn 'em upside down and they're all the same!" Toby said with a flourish of his necktie.

  Amen, he thought. Toby had the right idea—no strings and no connections; travel light and travel alone. That was the only way to be. And what a perfect time for Toby to turn up again. Maybe they could find some kind of furnished apartment and start in all over again, just the way they'd lived in college.

  "Let's get the hell out of this hole," Toby said. "Maybe you'd like to buy me some lunch."

  "Sure. Sure thing, Toby," he said. With a slight lurch he got out of his chair.

  "Bottoms up," Toby said.

  In silence they emptied their glasses. He was beginning to feel almost anesthetized.

  "Well, let's be off," Toby said, flinging his worn old polo coat around him. In the dim light Toby looked just eighteen as he strode out of his room.

  A little unsteadily, John followed Toby, stopping only long enough to pick up Toby's towel from the floor and to turn off the light.

  "Hey, chums," Teddy called, from the lounge. "Hang on a second—wait for . . ."

  "For God's sake let's shake him" Toby said in a voice that could have carried to Connecticut. "So long, Teddy. Don't wait up."

  With a slam of the door they were out of the Bacchus Club and onto the street.

  Three

  The taxi crept up park avenue through the usual noonday congestion, reached Fifty-fifth Street, trickled a little to the west and stopped before the pink and black marquee of the Rococo. The meter read sixty-five cents.

  "Here we are, Toby," John said, fishing into his pocket. He had exactly sixty-five cents and not a penny more. He flushed uncomfortably and said, "Uh, Tobe, do you happen to have a quarter on you for the driver? I haven't got any change and . . " Once more, for the thousandth—the ten thousandth—time in his life, he felt inferior and beholden to Toby.

  "Sure," Toby said crawling out of the cab. Toby reached into his pocket, pulled out a lackluster old rupee and flipped it to the driver.

  "Thanks a lot, Toby."

  "Don't mention it, pal!"

  "You smart son of a . . .” the driver yelled, but by then they were out of earshot.

  Rococo was the third newest of New York's twenty-five most fashionable restaurants. Like twenty of the other twenty-four most fashionable restaurants, it occupied the ground floor of an old brownstone house and an unwarranted amount of space in the gossip columns. "Oillionaire Tex Perkins and Starlet Gigi Fontanel a duo at Rococo . . . Sir Stork to visit Mario and Rita Pucci (he's men's room attendant at Rococo) in May . . . Overheard at Rococo: 'She's the kind of girl I could remarry.'"

  The columnists, force-fed by hourly news bulletins from Rococo's hard-bitten public relations girl, had given the place a tremendous, though spurious, chic. They told their readers, for example, that Rococo had been decorated by a famous society woman (true—and as tastelessly as possible); that the doorman at Rococo was a Russian Grand Duke (untrue—he was an ex-wrestler named Dubinsky); that the backers of Rococo were a famous composer, a famous actor, a famous writer and a famous producer (partially true—these backers were actually fronters for a famous gangster who found it healthier to live abroad). Rococo had served as the setting for six women's magazine stories, as the background for a hundred fabulous beauties posing for fan magazines, fashion journals and beer ads. Thus Rococo became a by-word for the millions who could no more afford it than they could pronounce it. Rococo had become the standard, the goal, the Elysian Fields of the nation. Such is the power and the glory of publicity.

  John didn't like Rococo very much, but his boss, Mr. Popescu, and his boss's wife adored it. They had urged him to entertain there, had given him unlimited credit there. By now he was well known at Rococo, there would be no waiting and he could cash a check for almost any amount.

  His stock went up slightly as they entered. The doorman greeted him by name, so did the hatcheck girl and so did the bartender, over the heads of the people who were stacked three-deep at the bar. (Rococo had achieved such eminence as the playground of New York Society that tourists, unemployed actors, impressed nobodies and even New York Society would wait hours for tables which were occupied by dress manufacturers, out-of-town buyers, employed actors and impressive nobodies). And the Congressional Medal, the Legion d'Honneur, the Papal Blessing of Rococo was bestowed upon him when M. Josef, the headwaiter (né Giuseppe Marcantonio Maria Schifozzi) recognized him from beyond the red velvet rope, slithered under it, pushed his way rudely through the waiting customers, and did all but fall prostrate at his feet. Such a Monsieur-ing and bon jour-ing and ça va-ing hadn't been heard at Rococo for at least fifteen minutes.

  Two-thirds of the people at the bar—roughly that segment of smart society which feels that to be known by name by a head-waiter amounts to winning the Nobel Prize—turned reverently to wonder just which noted gossip column personality this handsome young man could be. Even Toby was faintly impressed.

  "Hello Josef," John said hastily. He loathed Josef. Josef had been a bootlegger, a dope pedlar and a pimp—and looked it. He meant nothing to Josef and he knew it. All that Josef cared about was the monthly tip of a hundred dollars and the annual Christmas present of a thousand which Mr. Popescu handed to Josef so that Mr. P. and ranking executives of the Pulse-Beat Eternal Non-Magnetic Watch Company might be suitably fawned upon while entertaining important people. "Could I cash a check? And then . . .”

  "A-nee amount M'sieu' weesh. I mortgage my own home to geeve M'sieu' the money. M'sieu' know that. I say to my wife theess mor-nang, I say . . ."

  "It's just for a hundred, Josef," he said, coloring. What a pain in the ass this phony wop could be! "And then will we have to wait very long for lunch?"

  "Wait? Sair-tain-ly not! I have pair-feet table, re-sairve' zhust for M'sieu'. Theess way, please." Josef puckered up his lips and made an obscene kissing sound at which every captain, every waiter, every busboy turned and looked as though transfixed.

  "Etienne," Josef called, "Tabla Numero Deeeeess pou' M'sieu'."

  Etienne, who was the only French French waiter employed at Rococo, bowed coolly and began to clear the table just vacated by three ravishing Hungarian whores.

  He and Toby were herded swiftly through the waiting throngs.

  "Hey, listen," an angry Texas voice called out, "they just come in an' we been waitin' here since . . ." The rest was lost in the clatter of china and silver.

  "Jesus," Toby said, as the chair was slid gently beneath his buttocks, "it looks like a Rue Blondell cat-house."

  Toby had a point. The famous society woman, who had become an even more famous decorator of public places, hadn't spared a trick to make the Rococo rococococo. There wasn't a straight, clean line in the place. The tufted magenta banquettes along the mirrored walls rose and fell in undulating swirls and waves, while the purple valance above fell in horrifying tangles of loops and swags. Great, gnarled blobs of white plaster served as candle sconces. A tortured chandelier, also in white plaster, cast a feeble, jaundiced light on the pink table cloths.

  The menus, which were somewhat larger than the tables, credited the famous society woman with the decoration, as did the matchbooks, the swizzle sticks, the bar napkins, and the coasters. John had wondered idly, before this, why they hadn't gon
e all the way with their credits:

  Paint job by Benjamin Siegel

  Upholstery by M. Leighton Co.

  Carpets by N. Rejeb

  Electrical work by Arthur Guth

  Rest Room fixtures by Crane and Co.

  Well, it had only been a random thought.

  "It's handy to my office, Toby," he said, almost apologetically.

  A silver inkwell attributed to Thomas Germaine, and an engraved house check were placed reverently in front of him. He made out a check to cash for a hundred dollars and signed it with just a hint of a flourish. It was swept away with a far greater flourish. Then ten ten-dollar bills were laid before him on a sacrificial platter.

  "Oh, My God," Toby said.

  "Come on, Toby," he said, "Let's have a drink, then we'll order lunch."

  He felt that the meal hadn't quite come off right. Oh, it had been very grand and very showy, but somehow he hadn't been able to talk to Toby as he had wanted to. In fact, Rococo was not conducive to serious conversation. There was a constant gabble of voices, punctuated by crashes from the pantry. Since anything you ordered—except possibly an aspirin tablet—was rolled in ceremoniously on a cart, like a patient about to undergo major surgery, the traffic problem was severe. And then Rococo had the unnerving habit of setting fire to practically every dish it served, so that in the continuous blaze you almost thought you were in hell. Nor were you ever left alone. Not only did the captain hover perpetually asking if everything was all right, but Josef always made a minimum of three short visits—if you were known to him—to ask the same question.