Jack and Susan in 1953 (12 page)

A small jazz combo played on a tiny triangular stage that had been installed in a corner of the living room. The dining room table was loaded with food, and more food was set out in the library. Two bars had been set up inside the apartment, and, taking advantage of the exceptional warmth of the evening, a third had been set up out on the living room terrace.

Libby wore a gown from the apex of fashion—in Paris, at any rate. A bodice of red-and-white spangled lace flared out into a skirt built up of layers of red-and-white tulle. When Libby was still, the dress looked marvelous in the way that a new and outré fashion always does. But the skirt was so wide and so stiff that Libby had to move through doors sideways, and that made dramatic entrances impossible.

Libby touched her long white gloves to the back of Susan's hand. “Pretty dress,” she said. “So pretty.”

Libby somehow gave the impression when she said “pretty” that what she really meant was that it looked to her as if Susan had constructed her dress herself out of old dimity flour sacks.

Susan's dress, in considerable contrast to Libby's, was simple. A swath of ivory silk crossed her breast diagonally. The long wrap-around skirt was of the same material, fringed in silver. It gave Susan a silhouette as narrow and classical as Libby's was wide and modish. It had set her back three hundred hard-earned dollars. She wore white gloves so short they seemed barely to reach her wrist, and a tiny white sequined rocker hat that was like a smudge of white paint on her intensely black hair.

“Hello,” said Libby to Rodolfo. “I'm so glad you could come.”

Rodolfo bowed, lightly touching the fingers of Libby's gloved hand to his lips.

“Susan,” said Libby immediately, “I really must talk to you. Privately, do you mind?” she said to Rodolfo. “And then I'd like to have a word or two with you.”

Susan glanced back at Rodolfo as Libby led her away. What could Libby possibly have to say to him? She hadn't even called him by name. And if she was making a point of her indifference to him, why should she…

Whatever Libby had to say to Susan, she was making it seem important. As they crossed the crowded room, everyone they passed tried to speak to Libby. But the hostess, with Susan's gloved wrist in a vise grip, pushed through them all with smiling indifference, like a steam-roller with a broad grin painted on the front.

Libby's bedroom was being used as a powder room; coats and wraps were thrown across the pink-and-yellow bed and the air smelled like the first floor of Bloomingdale's with the mixture of the scents of a hundred different atomizers. Women were gossiping in the corners and out on Libby's private terrace. Others were fighting for mirror space, queueing up for the bathroom, and all of them—with more or less pretense at indifference—learning all they could about Libby herself by a close examination of whatever objects lay at hand.

Libby smiled at the crowd of women with a scarcely apologetic, “Oh I'll talk to everybody later. Susan and I have—”

She didn't finish the sentence because by that time she had pulled Susan into one of her clothes closets and pulled the door closed behind her.

“Shhh!” said Libby.

It was disorienting. With the door shut the closet was very dark. The closet wasn't very large, and it was filled with clothes. Susan felt a welter of fabrics brushing her arms and scraping her face. A rackful of shoes tumbled down over Susan's feet. Libby must have been very close for Susan could feel her breath and smell her perfume stronger than she could her own.

“Is there a light?” asked Susan.

A light came on—a single bright bulb in a ceramic fixture on the ceiling of the closet. Libby's hand was on the chain. Libby's face looked garish in the harsh light, as if she'd been made up as a clown—the sort of clown that frightened children rather than amused them. Her dress seemed to fill the closet, and the rustle of the stiff skirt sounded like rats in the wainscoting.

“Are you going to do it?” demanded Libby in a sharp, low whisper.

“Do what?” returned Susan, mystified—and wondering what the women on the other side of the closed closet door were thinking.

“Steal my thunder,” said Libby.

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“You know why I'm having this party. You know why I'm spending all this money. You know why I've gathered together all the people I dislike most in the world.”

“You tell me why,” said. Susan.

“To announce my engagement,” said Libby. “My engagement to Jack.” After a moment, she added, as an afterthought, “I love him very, very much.”

“Libby, what do you mean, steal your thunder?”

“By announcing your own engagement, of course.”

“My engagement to whom?”

“To—you know.” Even behind closed closet doors, Libby wouldn't admit that she remembered his name.

“Rodolfo?”

Libby nodded.

“He hasn't asked me to marry him yet,” said Susan, and then regretted she'd said
yet
. She wasn't exactly sure why she regretted saying it, but she did. “And even if he had asked me, and even if I had said yes, why would I announce it at
your
party? Libby, I don't think I know more than four or five people out there. And them I don't like.”

“Who does?” said Libby. “And I'd very much appreciate it if you wouldn't throw yourself at Jack tonight.”

“Libby, I don't throw myself at anybody. Ever.”

“Well, I know it would make Jack very uncomfortable if you—”

“If I what?”

“If you talked to him about…things.”

“Libby, I have never known you to beat around the bush like this. You dragged me into this closet, and you're holding me prisoner here”—Libby was standing with her back to the door, and Susan couldn't have gotten out unless she'd pushed Libby down and trampled over her and her new Paris dress—“so say what you've got to say and stop playing games. It's stifling in here, and I'm going to pass out from breathing your perfume if you don't.”

“All right,” said Libby. “I'll say what I have to say. I'm trying to protect Jack.”

“Protect him?”

“From you. Jack thinks that you're still in love with him.” Susan's eyes widened. “He thinks you're carrying a torch. He thinks that you never really got over him, and he's embarrassed. He's so sweet and he hates to think that he's hurting you, and if you go up and talk to him he'll just start to blush. And you know how he is when he starts to blush. He gets dizzy. And I don't want Jack to get dizzy on the night I'm going to announce our engagement so I don't want you to talk to him.”

“Libby, if you didn't want me to talk to Jack tonight, why on earth did you invite me to this party?”

Libby looked startled by the question, and she responded in all apparent innocence, “Because I like you. Because you're the only real friend I have in the world.”

It was Susan's turn to be startled. To think that Libby Mather, rich as she was, known by so many people, and traveling in the circles she traveled in, should call Susan her best friend was almost beyond Susan's comprehension. But Susan looked into Libby's eyes and saw no conniving about this statement. About the other notion, though, she had strong doubts. There was some reason that Libby didn't want her to talk to Jack. Susan decided right then and there, in the closet, being attacked by Libby's dresses and breathing Libby's perfume, that she was going to speak to Jack as soon as possible.

“O
H, I PLEADED with her,” cried Libby. “Just pleaded and pleaded.”

“Pleaded with her to do what?” said Jack. He was standing in a corner of the terrace overlooking the intersection of Park Avenue and Sixty-first Street far below. He was trying to persuade Woolf, whom he could see through the open window of one of the maids' rooms where Libby had exiled him for safekeeping during the party, that it would not be a good idea to jump from the window across to the terrace, even though it was only a matter of a few feet. Jack had without success been trying to toss hors d'oeuvres through the window onto the bed on which Woolf was stationed, preparing for the leap. A number of other guests on the balcony were watching this proceeding with interest, and one gentleman had even tried to bet the bartender twenty dollars that the dog would jump.

“I pleaded with her to talk to you,” said Libby. “I said ‘Let bygones be bygones, Susan.' That's what I said to her, Jack. I said, ‘I'm marrying Jack and you're marrying Rodolfo and we're all going to live happily ever after.'”

In a slightly strangled voice, Jack asked, “And…and what did she say to that?”

“She didn't want to talk about it, she didn't want to talk about it at all. What did you do to make her so angry?”

“Nothing. In fact, I—”

“You made those terrible accusations about Rodolfo, didn't you?”

“I made a few accusations,” said Jack, coloring and now sorry he had told Libby about his suspicions. “They weren't so awful.”

“You told her he didn't exist.”

“He doesn't.”

“You don't tell a woman that the man she loves doesn't exist,” said Libby sententiously. “It's not polite. Especially not coming from someone she used to…used to be acquainted with, if you know what I mean. Jack, is that dog going to commit suicide?” she asked suddenly, catching sight of Woolf with his forelegs perched on the sill of the maid's room's window just beyond the edge of the balcony.

Jack reached across the twenty-three story abyss with black caviar spread on a yellow cracker.

Woolf lapped it up out of Jack's palm and retreated a few inches into the room.

“He's lonely, that's all,” said Jack. “And he has no fear of heights.”

“If you think he's going to jump, why don't you just go close the window in the maid's room?”

“Because every time I start to walk away, Woolf climbs even farther out,” Jack said simply. “Would you mind…?”

“I have guests to attend to,” said Libby curtly. “And if he does decide to jump, I want
you
to deal with whatever or whoever he hits down there. You understand?
You
take care of it.”

Jack nodded, then gently suggested that Libby's other guests were probably anxious to speak to her.

She nodded. “It's ten o'clock now. I'm making the announcement at eleven.” Quite suddenly and unexpectedly then, she reached up, threw her arms around him, and kissed him. “I love you very very much,” she said quickly and loudly. “And remember, Susan really doesn't want to talk to you. So leave her alone, please. Just for tonight.” With that she was gone.

There had been something pointed and peculiar about Libby's injunction. It was clear she didn't want him to talk to Susan before she made the announcement about their engagement. Which had the effect of making Jack desperate to speak to Susan. He had approximately fifty-eight minutes to find her in the crush of the party, separate her from Rodolfo, convince her that the engagement was all Libby's idea, persuade her that he loved her desperately after all these years, and that nothing remained but for her to agree to marry him.

Temporarily sated with caviar and crackers, Woolf retreated from the window of the maid's room. Relieved of his mission to preserve the dog's existence, Jack quickly went up to the bar.

He needed a drink even if getting up to the bartender's table on the terrace used up a few of the precious minutes. He waited impatiently behind a man who wanted a Rob Roy, two salty dogs, an apricot cassis, and a rye with Canada water.

Jack asked for scotch on the rocks—a triple.

The bartender handed Jack the liquor and then paused, staring curiously at Jack.

When Jack tasted the drink, he understood why. His mouth was daubed with Libby's bright red lipstick. This, of course, was the precise moment that Susan walked through the glass doors onto the terrace, saving him the trouble of searching her out in the crowd.

“Hello, Susan,” Jack said, wiping Libby's lipstick from his mouth with a handkerchief.

“Congratulations,” she replied.

“On what?” he asked, swallowing half his drink.

“On convincing Libby to marry you.”

Sweat beaded out across his large forehead. He wiped it away with the handkerchief, smearing Libby's lipstick across his brow in the process.

“I…”

“You what?” she prompted.

“I tried to call you this week,” he said.

“I tried to call you,” she replied, a little puzzled.

“About this engagement…” Jack began.

Libby and Rodolfo suddenly appeared in the French doors nearby. Libby gave Jack and Susan a quick, hard glance. Then she smiled, took Rodolfo's hand and patted it indulgently.

“Rodolfo and I have been having the most interesting conversation,” said Libby. “Every word of it in English. Susan, Rodolfo has something to show you.”

Susan looked at Libby, then at Rodolfo.

“Yes?”

“Inside,” said Libby. “He'll show you the way.”

Then, as quickly as she had come, Susan was gone. Jack had said none of the things to her that he had meant to say, and in forty-three minutes, Libby was going to announce their engagement.