Jack and Susan in 1953 (2 page)

“I had forgotten,” breathed Libby through a wreath of smoke from her Camel cigarette, “I had totally and absolutely forgotten, Susan, that you and Jack already knew each other. But was it here? It wasn't here, was it?”

“In this restaurant, you mean?” asked Susan with obviously spurious innocence.

“New York, I mean,” said Libby. “
Here
in New York, not this restaurant.”

“It was in Boston,” said Jack. “About six years ago. Right after I finished Harvard.”

Libby made a great show of dredging weed-covered facts up from the silty floor of her memory. “And Susan, you went to Boston after you left Smith. Right at the end of the war. You went to Boston because you…you…”

“Got a job in Boston,” said Susan. “I went to work.”

Libby drew back, took a meditative puff on her Camel, and asked, “A job? You went to work? I don't remember that at all. I thought you went to be in a regatta or something.” She turned to Jack. “Does a regatta have anything to do with Quonset huts, whatever they are?” Libby asked Jack. “I have this distinct memory of Susan going to Boston to do something with regattas and Quonset huts.”

Susan, biting her lip, simply shook her head. “I was doing some translating for military intelligence. I didn't live in a Quonset hut. And I didn't—as far as I can remember—take part in any regattas. You must have me mixed up with someone else, Libby.”

“I don't think so,” said Libby, as if she were the authoritative historian of Susan's past, and her most recent article on the subject was being disputed. “But Boston
is
where you knew Jack.”

“We had friends in common,” said Jack in a tone of finality.

Rodolfo García-Cifuentes had sat silently through this exchange. He slowly drank his coffee, smoked a Lucky, and listened with his hand on his chin. When Libby made a trek to the ladies room, he spoke quietly to Susan in Spanish. Susan replied fluently in his language.

Jack could not help but listen. He cursed himself for never having studied a foreign language. He had seen Linguaphone language lessons advertised in
Esquire
, but had never given more than a passing thought to enrolling. He ached to know what Susan and Rodolfo were saying. Susan was talking out of the side of her mouth; her sarcastic mode, so the subject was probably Libby. Now she was speaking with her tongue drawn slightly back from her teeth. That was her holding-in-anger mode, so she was probably telling Rodolfo who Jack was.

“He means nothing to me,” she concluded in English. Jack at least knew for whom
that
statement was meant.

For a second, Jack lifted his eyes to the face of Susan Bright, and found his gaze returned. He felt blood rush up through the veins of his neck, and he knew his face was suffusing with a blush. There were many things in life over which Jack Beaumont had assumed control: his finances, his career, his relationship to most women and almost all men. But he had never learned how to control his blushes. He remembered how violently he'd blushed when he had spilled iced tea on his shirt at his first dinner dance, when he was fourteen. He blushed as violently now, at twenty-seven, as he looked into the eyes of Susan Bright.

Susan smiled. Susan never blushed at anything. But she knew that Jack did, and she smiled at his lack of control.

Jack put down his cup and rose as Libby sidled back into her chair.

She now smiled at Susan and asked relentlessly, “Did you two meet at a regatta?”

“No,” replied Susan evenly, “Rodolfo knows my uncle. I believe they met in the casino at Havana.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Libby, with a total alteration of expression in her face and in her voice. “I love casinos. I was never so happy in all my life as the time I spent in Monte Carlo. Somebody has since told me that Monte Carlo is on the water, but let me tell you this, I had no idea. I never saw the outside of the casino. Not once. Roulette,” Libby whispered. “I love roulette. Do they really have a casino in Havana?”

“Gambling has recently been made legal in Cuba,” Rodolfo explained.

“Rodolfo is
from
Cuba,” said Susan.

“Really?” said Libby excitedly. “Gambling really is legal in there? Do they have roulette wheels?”

Rodolfo laughed. “Yes,” he said. “Really and truly. But you know, Miss Mather, you do not have to go as far as Havana—or even Nevada—in order to find a roulette wheel.”

“Are you talking about Montreal? Call me Libby. May I call you Rodolfo?”

Jack stared at Libby. It had been a long time since he'd seen her so excited about anything. Libby Mather lived in a part of town and moved in a crowd of people that considered enthusiasm ill-bred, even unwholesome. It ruined the complexion and wrinkled your
ensemble
. But just now, Libby positively bubbled.

“Not Montreal,” said Rodolfo. “I am speaking of Fifty-fifth Street.”

Libby sat back in her chair as if thunderstruck. “A gambling house on Fifty-fifth Street?” she echoed. “East or west?”

“East,” said Rodolfo.

“My God,” whispered Libby, and actually seemed to tremble with the thought of it. “I know where that is.”

“You should,” said Jack, “since you live on East Sixtieth. It's a five-minute walk.” Jack noticed an expression of curious surprise cross Susan's face. Then she saw Jack looking at her, and she suppressed it just as quickly.
Aha
, thought Jack,
there is something in this…

“Is it legal?” asked Libby in a low voice.

Rodolfo smiled slightly, and shook his head once. “No, no. Gambling is not legal in New York. This place is very private. Like a club.”

“Oh, my goodness,” whispered Libby, gasping for breath that surprise had taken away. “I can't believe this. Do you need a password to get in? Is it like a speakeasy? Does it get raided?”

“No passwords,” said Rodolfo. “But one does need a friend. And no raids.” He smiled a knowing, secretive smile that seemed to melt Libby.

“Could you…” she began, and seemed to lack the strength to finish the question, so fearful was she of a negative reply.

“Yes, of course, I could,” he said, with a gallant half-bow in his chair.

“Tonight?” Libby asked, her eyes ablaze.

“By all means, if…” replied Rodolfo, looking across the table at Susan Bright.

“Why not?” said Susan.

Jack was by no means convinced that this was a good idea, but he did not object. “Yes, why not?”

“Oh, good-good-good-good-good,” burbled Libby. “This is going to be an evening to remember.”

A
FTER THAT, LIBBY'S undisguised anxiety to leave was amusing to Susan. She had been in other restaurants with Libby Mather, and she remembered that Libby always ordered two desserts and nibbled off of everybody else's plate as well. But now she was foregoing dessert altogether, announcing that the Baby Ruths in her bag were perfectly sufficient. “Get the check,” Libby said to Jack in a low insistent voice.

Once the bill was obtained and paid, the two men got up and fetched coats.

Libby leaned over toward Susan, and whispered—though whispering was hardly necessary—“He's so handsome. Does he use something on his skin?”

“I beg your pardon?” Susan returned, not understanding.

“To lighten it,” explained Libby. “I wouldn't have known he was Spanish until I heard his name. I've heard that the first thing Spaniards do when they get off the boat is invest in a case of lightening creams.”

“Rodolfo is Cuban,” said Susan. “Havana? The gambling casinos? Remember? And so far as I know, he doesn't use lightening creams—if there are such things.”

“Well,” said Libby thoughtfully, “maybe he's a half-breed.”

Libby was pleasant to Rodolfo, though that had more to do with the fact that he knew the whereabouts of a gambling den, than it did with any real sense of politeness. They found a cab a few doors up from Charles', and all crawled in the back. The two men were on the outside, with Susan and Libby squeezed together between them. Libby wouldn't hear of anybody sitting in the front. She maintained a belief, which she stated quite loudly, that all cabdrivers were infested with fleas picked up on trips to other boroughs.

Retaliating, the cabdriver deliberately took the long way and drove into Times Square. It was half-past ten, and the sidewalks were thronged with people. Beneath the enormous brightly lighted marquees of the Broadway theaters, well-dressed crowds were milling about and talking and making supper decisions and keeping eagle eyes out for empty taxis. Polite lines had formed in front of Longchamps and Lindy's, and teenagers in open-topped cars shrieked with laughter and waved at the pedestrians. At Broadway and Forty-fourth Street the cab became embroiled in a massive jam of cars and pedestrians. This gave Libby the chance to launch once more into a stream of chitchat.

Libby's arm pressed against Susan's ribs. Libby's arm was firm and fleshy, just like the rest of her. She wasn't fat—she wasn't even plump—but Libby had flesh where men thought a young woman should have flesh. Libby had curves that gave her a silhouette enticing from the back as well as from the sides. Susan, on the other hand, was slender. No curves. Enemies—and Susan herself—sometimes pronounced her figure
bony
, but in better moments Susan knew that wasn't the case. She just didn't have flesh to spare. She hoped she'd be around when—and if—thinness and flatness came into style once more. When was the last time? Susan wondered. Oh yes, the twenties. Her mother's generation. Well, maybe if Susan herself gave birth to a daughter tending to thinness, the eighties would be kind to the girl.

Susan was also annoyed by the fact that the young woman chattering in her ear always managed to dress in the teeth of fashion. It was a talent Libby had, of always looking as if she'd just walked out the door of a smart avant-garde shop. It was a discouraging habit, as far as Susan was concerned. Sometimes Susan tried to dress in the teeth of fashion as well. She would spend more than she ought on clothes that were exactly right; would take them home, and put them on and look at herself in the mirror, and
know
that at that moment she stood at the pinnacle of style. Then she'd go downstairs, and by the time she got to the street, the avant-garde style would be old hat, and every secretary in town would be wearing Susan's outfit. At a restaurant or nightclub Susan would see where she'd made her mistake. The new color today was red, not violet. The covering for the head was a tiny feathered helmet, not the wide-brimmed toreador hat with ball fringe that she had purchased with an impulsiveness she had regretted almost immediately. With a little inward sigh of despair, she would admit to herself that she'd probably never be on the cutting edge of modern fashion.

Before Susan could elaborate mentally on further differences between herself and Libby Mather, the taxi began to move. In another five minutes they pulled up in front of an ordinary-looking brownstone on East Fifty-fifth Street between Park and Madison. They climbed out, and Jack paid the driver.

Drawing her arm through Susan's, Libby leaned over and said, with evidently unfeigned relief, “Oh Susan, I feel so much more
comfortable
uptown, don't you?”

Only two minutes earlier Susan had told Libby that she was living in an apartment on the east side of Washington Square.

Whatever reason Jack had for seeing Libby, Susan wished him joy in the company of her old friend.

Mr. Vance's establishment—it had no other name—was located on the upper floors of the brownstone. On the ground floor was a small restaurant wholly inadequate to accommodate the considerable number of well-dressed persons who tried to get through its front doors. But in the lobby of the restaurant was a door leading to a narrow curving staircase that wound up to the second floor. At the top of these narrow steps was a wide door padded in red leather. It wouldn't open for Libby. She peered into the diamond-shaped mirror on the door and said, “I bet there's somebody behind here. I bet this is a three-D mirror.”

“Two-way mirror,” Jack corrected.

“May I?” said Rodolfo. Jack pulled Libby out of the way. Rodolfo stood directly before the door and tapped with his knuckles on the mirror. Almost immediately the door opened. The doorman was dressed in an ill-fitting dinner jacket that plainly outlined a shoulder holster beneath his left arm. Perhaps, Jack considered, that visibility was intentional.

Libby swept in and immediately declared herself enchanted. The carpet beneath her feet was deep and red; crimson damask draperies closed thickly over tall windows. Even the two ladder men who oversaw the room's gambling operations were seated on high platforms lacquered Chinese red. The floor–through establishment boasted two craps tables, three blackjack tables, and a roulette wheel in the far corner. The clientele was well heeled, if not precisely fashionable. While the men checked their coats, Susan sized up the room; she saw lots of expensive clothes and what appeared to be diamonds. The ladies looked as if they had paid for their adornment—one way or another. All the gentlemen seemed to be wearing new blue suits of a style comparable to Rodolfo's.