Jack and Susan in 1953 (19 page)

“Well, it
was
the bride who was here. The elevator man said she was wearing a wedding veil, and she—”

“Which means that you know the bride,” said Susan, with a leap of reasoning utterly beyond Jack.

“Yes,” he said after a moment, “I guess you're right.”

“So who is it?”

Jack thought a moment. Then he looked at Susan, and Susan looked at him, and they both knew the answer, and they stared at each other, and then Susan began to giggle.

In another hour, Jack was nearly sober, though he had a headache that felt like the entire North Korean Army was marching across the inside of his forehead. He still had not figured out what
Item 3
was.

“Are you hungry?” he asked Susan. She was sitting in his living room, curled up on the sofa, watching the “Schlitz Playhouse of Stars.”

“I'm famished,” she said.

“There's a spaghetti joint around the corner. If you can rip up one of my shirts so that the cast fits through the arm, I'll take you.”

Susan pondered a moment, as if deciding between Jack and Irene Dunne. Miss Dunne had just promised Susan a splendid hour's entertainment, but Jack's offer won. “Let's see what we can do…”

They found a sport shirt in Jack's dresser, and with a pair of kitchen shears Susan slit the left sleeve, and helped Jack wriggle into it.

Woolf was already excited. Any sort of movement in the apartment suggested to Woolf that he was about to be taken for a walk.

“Not tonight,” said Susan warningly to the dog.

“Maybe later,” said Jack.

Sullen Woolf laid himself down across the threshold of the front door, so that when they left it was necessary for Susan to pick up the dog and move him aside.

The restaurant, called Simeone's, was somewhere in the neighborhood, though Jack couldn't remember exactly where. Sixty-seventh or -eighth or -ninth or maybe even Seventieth; between Second and Third avenues, or maybe between Third and Lexington.

It turned out to be on Seventy-first between Second and First, which Susan discovered by looking in a book in a telephone booth.

Simeone's had red-and-white checked tablecloths, guttering candles in old wine bottles, Agfa-Color photographs of Naples and the Isle of Capri on the wall, and a gypsy violinist who wouldn't go away for less than a dollar.

“No wine for you tonight,” said Susan, peering at the menu.

“Do you have Orange Crush?” Jack asked the waiter.

The waiter shook his head.

“Nehi? Royal Crown? Yoo-Hoo? Squirt? Coke?”

“No soft,” said the waiter carefully—it was evidently a memorized speech in a foreign tongue. “Only wine.”

“One glass for you,” Susan said.

The waiter went away and came back with a bottle. They ordered spaghetti and ravioli.

Jack poured for them both.

They raised their glasses, as if to toast, and then—simultaneously—they put their glasses down, and looked away, embarrassed.

After a moment, Jack looked at Susan. “How did you get in my apartment today?”

“The elevator man let me in. He recognized Woolf.”

Jack considered this.

“Why did you come?”

“I was returning Woolf.”

“Why did you have him? I told Libby to take him to the kennel.”

Susan looked at Jack closely. Then she said slowly, “I came to see you last week. You were in the shower, and Libby—”

“What do you mean, the shower? I just got out of the hospital this morning,” said Jack.

Susan blinked. “You mean that Libby…”

“Libby what?”

Susan didn't answer the question. She changed the subject. She said: “You were right about Rodolfo.”

“Well, you didn't marry him.”

“He asked me.”

“But you said no.”

“Actually,” said Susan, “I said yes. But I didn't do it.”

“Why did you say yes?”

“It seemed like a good idea—or at any rate it didn't seem like a bad idea.”

“I think he might even be dangerous.”

“He was. That's one of the most attractive things about him. Besides, being around Rodolfo couldn't possibly have been as dangerous as being around you,” she said, glancing at his broken arm.

“He would have made you very unhappy.”

“Probably,” admitted Susan.

“I was fired,” said Jack suddenly. He'd just remembered that.

“What?”

“I was fired. On Friday. Maddy came by the hospital and told me I was fired. I don't know why.”

Susan pondered this. “I know why,” she said.

Jack stared.

“Libby had you fired.”

“Why? Why would she do that?”

Susan shrugged. “She was probably mad at you for something. For trying to commit suicide on the night you were supposed to announce your engagement.”

“You know I didn't try to commit suicide. You of
all
people know—”

“I know,” said Susan, “but Walter Winchell said it was an attempted suicide.”

“I have never even met Walter Winchell. I wish people like Walter Winchell—”

“I think that Libby was upset—so upset that she ran off and married Rodolfo. Therefore I wouldn't be a bit surprised if she was upset enough to show up at the office of the president of your firm, and say, ‘Jack Beaumont has mismanaged my finances. I want him fired.' I think it might well have happened that way.”

Jack's eyes were wide. “I think maybe you're right. I don't see any other way it
could
have happened. But how do you think those two got together? Libby and Rodolfo. Libby was always pretending she couldn't even remember his name.”

Susan looked troubled. “I don't know exactly. But something happened between last Monday night—when Rodolfo asked me to marry him—and this afternoon, when he and Libby got married.”

“We're not really sure it
was
Libby,” said Jack. “I didn't see her face, after all.”

“I'm pretty sure,” said Susan. “And I'm not happy about it either. The more I think about it, those two—” She took a long sip of wine.

“Those two what?”

“—Don't deserve each other,” she concluded.

“Rodolfo doesn't deserve Libby? Or Libby doesn't deserve Rodolfo?” Jack couldn't help grinning, but he didn't get to hear Susan's opinion, because just then the waiter brought their food. In the few moments he took in putting down the dishes in the wrong place and getting them right again, Jack figured out exactly what item 3 was.

Item 3
: If Susan Bright was not married to Rodolfo García-Cifuentes, then she was ostensibly free to marry Jack.

“So will you?” he said aloud, forgetting that Susan had not been privy to his sudden happy enlightenment.

“Will I what?” asked Susan, blushing.

“That's the first time I've ever seen you do that—blush,” said Jack. “Will you marry me?”

“O
N ONE CONDITION,” said Susan.

“All right,” said Jack. He didn't care what the condition was; he'd accept anything so long as Susan agreed to marry him. His mind was still a bit fuzzy, but he knew one thing with absolute certainty: the only truly important thing in the world was that as soon as possible he and Susan Bright stand up in front of a preacher and say the words, “I do.”

“Aren't you going to ask what the condition is?”

“No,” said Jack. “I don't care.” She looked so disappointed that he asked, “What's the condition?”

“That we go on a honeymoon and I choose the place.”

“Anywhere,” he said, then after a moment added, “except Cuba. Where do you want to go?”

She didn't answer, but looked at him with misgiving.

“Cuba?” he asked.

She took a sip of wine and nodded.

“Then of course we'll go to Cuba on our honeymoon,” Jack said briskly. Despite his word, in his mind he saw the face of Rodolfo García-Cifuentes, and wondered if there was a connection. “Now wasn't that easy? So when?”

“When what?”

“When do we get married?”

“As soon as possible,” Susan said, and then added, peculiarly, “I'm very anxious for us to get down to Cuba.”

Jack ate a little ravioli, wondering if he really had heard somewhere that Italian food cleared the brain or whether he had just made that up, and then said, “I think there's something you're not telling me, Susan. And since we're going to be married—or at least I
think
you said you'd marry me—”

Susan nodded vigorously. “Oh yes, I have every intention—”

“—Well, since we
are
going to be married, maybe you should tell me why you're so interested in our going to Cuba.”

Susan put her hand over her mouth, and glanced about the restaurant as if making sure she could speak freely. There weren't more than half a dozen other couples in the place, plus the owner's loud, fat family at an enormous round table in the corner, and the slender gypsy violinist sitting alone with a plate of spaghetti in another corner. No one was paying attention to them. “Are you all here?” Susan asked. “I mean, you're sober enough to hear what I have to say, aren't you?”

“Yes of course I am,” he said, trying not to be offended.

“Please don't be hurt,” she said, “but this is important. You were wrong about Rodolfo—”

Jack was right. All of this Cuba business
did
have something to do with Rodolfo García-Cifuentes. While it may have been true that Susan wasn't going to marry the Cuban, Rodolfo was still in the picture. That was annoying.

“Wrong how?”

“He
does
exist
, no matter what you may think, and he's exactly who he says he is. My uncle's letter of introduction was genuine, although I think my uncle made a mistake in writing it. In general, you were right about Rodolfo.”

“Right how?”

“That he was up to no good. He asked me to marry him—”

“So I heard,” said Jack dryly, holding up his broken arm. “If you'll remember, I was there.”

“Oh yes, the window business.” She smiled as if at the memory of a charming drawing room escapade. Then her face darkened. “He asked me to marry him because he thought I was an heiress.”

Jack blinked. Though Susan had never confided to him the details of her trust fund, he had a pretty good idea of what her bank statements and savings books looked like. Solvent, but not impressive. Beautiful, but no heiress.

“Why would he think that?” said Jack. “You've never really made any secret about…” He trailed off diplomatically.

“About the fact that I have to work for a living? No, I've certainly never denied that, but the fact is, I
am
an heiress. Or I will be, when my uncle dies.”

Jack looked at her sharply. One eye was a fiancé's, the other eye that of a financial analyst. “I didn't know this,” he said.

“No, neither did I. I don't think I was supposed to, but someone let it slip. I wrote my uncle recently, and he confirmed it. He also said…”

“Said what?” Jack prompted when Susan hesitated.

“—He also said that someone was trying to kill him.”

Jack didn't drink any more wine that evening. Susan saw him back to his apartment, and there was an awkward moment when it was apparent that out of politeness and happiness, despite his fatigue, he wanted to ask her to stay the night. It was equally obvious that she, out of circumspection and dignity, should refuse the invitation.

All that was a bit odd, of course, since it was to Jack that Susan had lost her virginity six years before. What Susan remembered most about that first experience was that it hurt—not because of what Jack did to her, or any roughness on his part, but because they did it in the bottom of a small boat tethered to the dock of the boat house used by the Harvard rowing team one rainy spring night.