Jack and Susan in 1953 (5 page)

“Libby, you have all the money in the world. You can do anything you want to.”

“That's right,” said Libby, gratified with the thought. “Absolutely anything. What went on between you and Susan tonight?” she asked suddenly.

“Nothing much, except that she insulted me relentlessly,” said Jack.

“Did she insult me, too?”

“I didn't let her.”

“You're so gallant. Not only did you save my life—sort of—but you prevented another woman from saying terrible things about me behind my back. When did you two come to a parting of the ways?”

“Years ago, Libby. She and I…”

“What?”

He shook his head. “We came to a parting of the ways. That's all.”

“Then there wasn't any real…unpleasantness?”

“Oh, there was plenty of that,” said Jack. “And you'd think she'd be over it by now.”

“Oh no, darling, Susan holds a grudge forever. For
eons
. Remember, I went to school with her. We were confidantes. She's never forgiven me for something perfectly horrible I did to her when we were at Smith. So I know she'll never forgive you. And what did you find out?”

“Find out? About what?”

“About Rodolfo. That dark-skinned person—except he wasn't as dark-skinned as a Cuban should be.”

“Nothing,” said Jack. “Nothing at all.”

“You didn't ask?”

Jack hesitated. He suspected this was a trick question, but everything about this evening was so peculiar that he hadn't any idea how he
ought
to answer. “It wasn't any of my business, Libby. Susan Bright has every right to keep company with whomever she pleases. Even if the company she keeps has friends who run gambling casinos and carry weapons.”

“Unloaded weapons,” said Libby.

“But weapons nonetheless,” Jack insisted.

Libby, in a surprising movement, leaned over Jack's reclining body, snatched up the pitcher of highballs, and placed it on the floor on her opposite side. “No more,” she said. “I want to talk.”

“We are talking,” said Jack, reaching for the pitcher. “I may have killed a man tonight, and I'd like to deaden my conscience a little.”

“That man got a little hole in his cheek—that's all. So don't worry about him. I want to talk seriously.”

The evening was growing odder by the moment. He suddenly realized that Libby somehow had turned on music somewhere. Probably on her new Zenith Cobra-Matic radio-phonograph that Jack had helped her pick out the previous week. It was very pleasant music. Romantic music, in fact. Maybe all this strange business was leading up to something. He steeled himself for something large and surprising.

“What is it, Libby?”

She paused a moment, sighed deeply, and said solemnly, “Jack—”

“Yes?”

“—I hate your apartment.”

He stared at her.

“I hate your apartment,” she repeated. “I hate where it is. I hate what it is. And I hate what's in it.”

“You've only been there once,” said Jack, not understanding the attack.

“An experience I will never forget,” said Libby. “I cannot believe it. Those three…tiny…little…rooms. That
location
. Nobody lives between Second and Third avenues, Jack.”

“Actually, a great many people do,” Jack argued. “I just happen to be the only one you know.”

“You have to move,” said Libby.

“Why?” said Jack.

“Because when people ask, I will
not
tell them that my fiancé lives between Second and Third.” She threw up her hands. “I just won't do it!”

“Your…fiancé…” Jack repeated slowly.

He asked for the pitcher of highballs. Libby reluctantly allowed the indulgence, and he poured himself another.

“When did I become your fiancé?” Jack asked. Her statement was so unexpected that he felt he ought to explore the curious situation as logically and as slowly as possible. “I thought I was your investment counselor.”

“This afternoon you were just my investment counselor. Tonight you're both.”

Jack nodded slowly, but didn't comment. Had he proposed to Libby, and forgotten the fact in the melee at the gambling club? That didn't seem likely.

“You just said that with my money I could have anything I wanted,” Libby pointed out.

“I did say that,” Jack acknowledged, and as he finished off that highball he began to wish that he hadn't had any.

“And as it appeared,” Libby went on, “that you had no intention of asking me, I decided—”

“—that you would ask me,” said Jack, completing the thought.

Libby drew back in horror. “I would
never
ask a man to propose to me,” she protested. “But that's no reason that I can't accept.” She smiled a ravishing smile, and altered the position of her voluptuous body on the pillows so that it was even more alluring than before. The lighting in this room, Jack decided, had been designed precisely for the purpose of complementing the gold of Libby's hair.

“You must get at least twenty offers of marriage a week,” said Jack. “From all sorts of men. Why have you decided to accept the one offer that wasn't made?”

“I think it's very rude of you to quiz me on such a delicate subject,” said Libby. “It's not every day that I accept a proposal.”

Jack cleared his throat, and held out his glass. It was strange that the more he drank, the soberer he felt.

The funny thing was, Jack
had
thought about proposing to Libby. Often. His friends had suggested it to him as a wise course. The men above him in the firm had made jokes to him about it. He had received long-distance telephone calls from his father on the subject. Beyond the fact that he was truly fond of Libby, despite her obvious shallowness of character and often idiotic behavior, Jack could think of four reasons to marry Libby Mather: Libby was rich, Libby had a fabulous figure, Libby was very rich, and Libby was evidently in love with him. Besides those four, there was the additional argument that Libby was very
very
rich.

It was Jack who had handled Libby's finances for the past three and a half years, so he had an even better idea than Libby just how much money she had. To Libby, Jack's yearly income was like the pennies that gathered at the bottom of her purse.

She held out her hand to him. He took it politely.

“See?” she said.

“See what?” he said.

“You even bought me a ring.”

Four or five karats' worth, he judged. Square-cut. Tiffany setting.

Jack smiled at the ring, and he smiled at Libby; then he asked, “Why me?”

She pulled her hand back, and pondered the question, as if she thought it surprising, but interesting.

“You're probably the only man I know—the only man in our circle—who hasn't courted me for my money. I'm like a cow to them. To be led to slaughter for the meat I'll bring. That's what I feel like. You've never done that.”

Jack blinked. “Libby, all I
do
is think about your money.”

“Yes, but that's your job. That's different. And—as far as I can tell—you've done a very good job.”

“Thank you,” said Jack modestly.

“So now it's time for you to take
real
control of my money, by marrying me. Then we can get rid of that awful place where you live. It doesn't matter to me if you propose because of my money, or because you like my figure—that's why so many people hate me, you know, because first they see my figure, and
then
they hear how much money I've got. Anyway, I don't care why you ask me to marry you. Because”—and Jack had never found Libby Mather to be so candid, so straightforward, or so attractive—“I'm in love with you. I always have been. That's why I dislike Susan so much—because I think you used to be in love with her. So I would be saying yes to your proposal because I love you. And you would be proposing because…well, I don't really care why you propose to me, as long as you do it, of course.”

For a few moments Jack said nothing.

Then he spoke briefly and to the point.

S
USAN SAW THE gun in the hand of the ladder man, and her first instinct was to rush forward in an attempt to warn Libby of the danger. She took a half-step forward, and her mouth was open to shout, but then Rodolfo had a hand on her arm and was pulling her in the opposite direction.

Before she had time to protest his interference, the fight had broken out, and the crowd had begun to rush for the exit. At any rate, Libby was obviously still alive.

“It is their fight, not ours,” explained Rodolfo, as he led her away from the uproar toward a far corner of the room where there was a small folding screen that Susan had not noticed before. They slipped behind the screen and Susan saw that it concealed a small door. Rodolfo opened the door and pushed her through into a small room on the other side.

“You will be safe here,” he said. “I will make sure your friends are all right.”

Before Susan could say a word he had shut the door. To her astonishment, when she turned the knob she found it was locked.

She blinked, trying to dissolve her surprise, and looked around the room.

It was an office of some sort, expensively done up with a huge mahogany desk, leather furniture, paneled walls, and an Oriental carpet, but she somehow got the impression that it was rarely used. It didn't have a window, and the only other door led to a tiny bathroom, also without a window. Either the commotion in the gambling room had suddenly stopped or the room was soundproof, for Susan heard nothing.

She didn't know what to do or to think. How had Rodolfo known about this room? And why was he so anxious for her to be out of the main room?

She seated herself in one of the chairs facing the great desk, and was uncomfortably reminded of the half dozen times she had been interviewed by prospective employers. She felt as if she were being kept waiting for the entrance of the great man himself.

Then she noticed that there was no telephone.

Nothing about this place made any sense; then she decided that it was better to snoop than to conjecture.

She stood up and stepped around to the other side of the desk and began opening drawers. In the top right-hand one were three number 2 pencils, unsharpened. In the second drawer was an unopened ream of bond paper. The third held only a cast-iron paperweight in the shape of the Statue of Liberty. In the center drawer was a box of Gem paper clips and an envelope filled with large rubber bands. The left-hand drawers were locked.

In one corner of the room were two wooden filing cabinets, but these were also locked. Susan tried unsuccessfully to tilt one of them and from its weight she felt certain that the cabinet was filled with papers.

She went into the bathroom and peered into the medicine chest, which was recessed into the wall: a box of Doeskin tissues, a tube of Ipana toothpaste, three brand-new toothbrushes, a tin of Band-Aids, and a canister of Stopette spray deodorant.

There was nothing else at all in either room; no sign that anyone used the office as an office. Nothing to read; nothing with a letterhead; nothing bearing a trace of use, abuse, origin, or purpose. It was like a movie set office—it looked right from a certain angle, but didn't stand up to close inspection.

The more she thought about the room, the greater its mystery.

She returned to her interviewee's chair in front of the desk and sat down again. Then she thought about Rodolfo, to see if that would help make a little sense of the business.

What Susan had told Jack was true—Rodolfo was a friend of the family, though the connection was tenuous at best. Rodolfo had called with a recommendation from her uncle, James Bright. But, Susan had met her uncle James only twice, and then not since she was fourteen, which was the last time—as far as she knew—that he had visited the United States. So it was on the basis of his acquaintance with that slightly known relative that Rodolfo had one day called her up, and asked her to take pity on a poor, ignorant foreigner cast into the wilds of New York City. That had been six weeks ago, and out of boredom at first, and now out of habit, Susan was seeing Rodolfo twice a week or more. He was always charming, always polite, and—it occurred to her now—always a little mysterious. He never talked about his job; in fact, she wasn't absolutely certain he had one. He said he did “work for the consulate,” and he claimed, occasionally acted as cicerone for wealthy or important Cubans visiting the city. He lived in a small sublet on Ninety-fourth Street between Fifth and Madison. Once she had visited it for a drink, and found the place strangely cold, with tubular steel furniture on rattan carpets. She hadn't liked it.

All men lied, Susan supposed, but she had never caught Rodolfo in a falsehood. He said little, but every word had the crystal ring of truth. That gave her confidence in him. He was very handsome—
extraordinarily
handsome in fact, almost too good-looking for a man. Large dark eyes with lashes as long as hers. A mouth that had a genuine smile, and a genuine frown, and teeth that were incandescently white. His body was firm and lithe and when she took his arm, or was thrown against him in the back seat of a taxicab, she could feel how strong he was. He had two physical flaws. The first was a scar at the top of his right shoulder she'd glimpsed once when he wore an open-collared shirt. The second was that his beard was heavy and black and grew so quickly that he had to shave at least twice a day.

Most of what Susan liked about Rodolfo, however, was his manner. She had never met a man so supremely confident. And not an iota of that confidence was bravado. He was collected and secure. He thought about what he wanted to say before he spoke, and when he spoke his words conveyed his meaning precisely. His opinions were forthright and tended toward the simplistic, but Susan liked this.