Jack and Susan in 1953 (6 page)

“I like this object and I want it for myself,” was the sort of thing Rodolfo tended to say. Or, “I do not want to go to this place, so I will not go.”

But he had never made love to her, had never attempted to seduce her; he was as formal, polite, and collected on their tenth meeting as he had been on their first. Now she wondered why she had never found that peculiar. (She had, in fact, found it a relief after so many other, dissimilar experiences with other young men.) Susan had come to no conclusion about Rodolfo by the time he returned, about fifteen minutes later.

“Your friends are perfectly safe,” he said, with a smile, closing the door behind him.

Susan's brows wrinkled. She'd thought little about Jack and Libby for the past quarter-hour, so intent had she been on her exploration of the office and her ruminations about Rodolfo.

“That's good,” she said, after a moment. And then, coming right to the point: “Why did you put me in here, Rodolfo, and lock the door?”

“I wanted to make certain you would be all right.”

“How did you know this room was here?”

“This is Mr. Vance's office,” he explained without hesitation. “I have been here before. During the day. Shall we go?”

Susan nodded uncertainly.

He opened the door and stepped back out into the gambling room of Mr. Vance's establishment. As Susan followed, she tried to imagine what she'd find. A woman rhythmically sweeping the floor with a broom? The overfed penguins counting the receipts of the aborted evening? Maybe the room would be empty.

She was wrong. The gambling room was exactly as it had been—filled with well-dressed people enjoying themselves at the blackjack and craps tables. The injured ladder man was no more to be seen, and Jack and Libby were gone, too. The only evidence of the violent altercation was a dark cloth that had been draped over the bloody roulette table.

“Did everyone come back?” she asked, but a moment's observation answered the question. “No, this is a different crowd. None of these people were here before. Where did they all come from?”

Rodolfo shrugged. “I know nothing of the gambling business.”

She glanced at the croupiers, the ladder men, the bouncers. All were as she had remembered them—except that a different man sat atop the elevated chair over the roulette wheel.

What had happened while she was locked in Mr. Vance's office?

“Would you like to stay and play for a little while?” Rodolfo asked.

“No, no,” Susan replied. “I'm quite ready to go…”

Rodolfo took Susan back down to Washington Square in a taxi. It was a little past midnight.

“Is she very rich?” asked Rodolfo as they rode down Park Avenue.

“Who?” returned Susan, mystified once more.

“Miss Mather. Your friend.”

“She's a margarine heiress,” returned Susan. “Lots of money. She's one of those people who have even more than you imagine they have.”

Rodolfo laughed.

Susan shrugged, and grimaced with the same mild envy she'd felt for Libby Mather's money ever since they'd been in school together. “I could live off the interest on her interest. So could the Netherlands. I've got my trust fund, of course, but my money looks to Libby like the loose change that falls between the cushions of a sofa.”

They were silent for a few moments. Susan's thoughts kept returning to what had happened at Mr. Vance's establishment. How long had it been since she'd seen any sort of violence? Not since she'd last seen Jack, she deduced. How strange it was that Jack—an investment counselor—should be a magnet for guns and ambulances. Perhaps, however, this was just an isolated incident. Perhaps…

“You used to be in love with Jack,” said Rodolfo matter-of-factly.

Susan turned her head and stared at the Cuban. “Why do you say that?” she asked, trying to keep the sharpness out of her voice.

“There are some things one need not be told in so many words.”

“Yes I was. But I'm certainly not now. How did you know? I don't—”

“I saw it in his eyes,” said Rodolfo. “Not yours.” Susan relaxed. “Do you think he will marry her?” Rodolfo asked.

“Jack?” said Susan. “Marry Libby?”

“Yes.”

“I hadn't given it the slightest thought.” She looked out the window—the taxi was going down Fourth Avenue now, passing Fourteenth Street. “I hadn't considered it at all. Though he might. Libby's certainly always been after him. Or at least since we were all teenagers together. Jack's prep school held dances with our prep school.”

“Would he marry her for her money?”

Susan considered this for a moment, then said, “No, I don't think so. Not directly anyway. Though Jack is peculiar about money. His family used to have a great deal, but after his father died, his mother squandered it all. Every penny. I think that's why he became an investment counselor. So that he could keep other people from squandering their fortunes.”

“Then he might marry Miss Mather to keep her from spending all her money unwisely.” Susan wasn't certain why that remark made her uncomfortable, but it did. “May I see you tomorrow night?” Rodolfo asked. “I'd like to make amends for tonight.”

“Amends? It wasn't your fault what happened. Libby—”

“If you will not allow me to apologize…”

“Yes, of course,” said Susan, realizing that this had been merely an excuse for the invitation.

But as she was getting out of the taxi at the door of her apartment building, she wondered why she'd accepted…

That night, in the tiny back bedroom of her small apartment on Washington Square, Susan Bright dreamed that she married Rodolfo García-Cifuentes in Mr. Vance's peculiar, windowless office, with the officiating minister a large, overfed penguin.

Susan Bright had a job at the Metropolitan Museum of Art giving lecture tours of the Gothic, Renaissance, and Classical collections—two a day in each, with fifteen-minute breaks to rest her feet and massage her throat. It's what a degree in art history got you these days: fifty-two dollars and fifty cents a week, before taxes. It was a good thing she had her small trust fund to lean back on, otherwise she'd have been one of the million other unfortunate twenty-seven-year-old girls in Manhattan with looks, brains, and ambition, who were fighting to get ahead in a system that held about half a dozen positions worthy of their talents.

When Susan wanted extra money she translated Soviet agricultural pamphlets for U.S. military intelligence, though why on earth the army cared by what means the Russians achieved such miserable harvests year after year was quite beyond Susan's power of reasoning. Russian agricultural policy not only dictated the actions of seventy-five million farmers, it provided Susan Bright a very nearly up-to-date wardrobe.

Yet there was something missing from Susan's life. It was hard to fool yourself into thinking your life had true shape and purpose when day after day, six days a week, you glibly expatiated on the glories of Western art to groups of tourists who hadn't the slightest idea what you were talking about. When your odd-hours were spent in the contemplation of soybean, alfalfa, and wheat quotas for the Ukrainian steppes. When your address read Washington Square, but your only view was of a windowless expanse of brick not ten feet away.

“What I need,” Susan often said to herself, “is someone to complain to.”

Someone-to-complain-to, of course, had certain unspoken qualifications. Male. Handsome. Accomplished. As intelligent as Susan herself.

And Susan had no intention of objecting if someone-to-complain-to also turned out to be quite rich.

Once she had thought it might be Jack Beaumont who filled that particular bill, even though Jack's family fortune had been squandered away by his mother. But things with Jack hadn't worked out, which was the politest way of remembering a relationship that had been a series of cloudy misunderstandings, thunderous arguments, and lightning-bolt accusations only occasionally interrupted by brief spells of sunlit happiness. More and more she had been thinking of Rodolfo García-Cifuentes as one who might fill out the desiderata of the perfect someone-to-complain-to. Susan had taken to lingering in the Spanish rooms of the European painting galleries of the museum, studying the Velàsquez portraits. Handsome men in general, though they tended to be poisoners as often as they were royal councilors.

She was still thinking about Rodolfo when she left the museum on the day after the incident in Mr. Vance's establishment, and that's why it was such a surprise to find not Rodolfo, but Jack, waiting for her on the steps outside.

“T
HIS IS ALL TOO sudden,” said Jack to Libby Mather, in response to her demand that he ask her to marry him. Then he wondered where he'd heard that line before.

“Would you like another highball?” asked Libby, pouring one without waiting for his answer, and in the process moving much closer to him. Her garden of perfume seemed to envelop him, but the scent now brought to his mind the thorns that grew around Sleeping Beauty's castle.

“What's the name of that perfume you're wearing?” he asked.

“Quelques Fleurs. Do you like it?”

He nodded yes, which was at least more polite than the emphatic no that first had popped into his mouth.

Libby put her head into his lap. The Cobra-Matic Arm of the new Zenith—the manufacturer had indeed made it look like a snake—did its business and yet another long-playing record began to play on the turntable, and it was even more romantic than the last music had been. The sash of Libby's blue Chinese robe loosened, and with the nail of her middle finger Libby drew a line down the middle of her breast parting the robe—just in case Jack had not noticed her cleavage.

It was a superfluous gesture. Libby looked romantically up into Jack's eyes.

“Yes, yes,” she whispered.

“Yes what?” he asked, feeling stupid.

“Yes, Jack, darling, I will marry you. Absolutely. Any time, any place—as long as it's not in the morning, and as long as it's in an Episcopal church on the Upper East Side.”

She waited. She breathed in romantically, and her cleavage grew deeper.

Jack finished off the highball Libby had poured for him two minutes before; it was the last of the pitcher. The emptiness of that vessel seemed to act as a signal that it was time Jack did something. He said, “Libby, I can't give you an answer tonight.”

“I don't want an answer,” said Libby. “I want to hear the question.”

“Libby,” Jack said, “I can't ask you a question tonight.”

“Not
a
question.
The
question.”

“Not tonight.”

“When, then?”

“Next week,” said Jack, and then immediately wondered why he had. He didn't even know what it meant.

“What day next week?”

Jack didn't think at all as he answered: “A week from today.”

“Thursday,” breathed Libby sultrily. “Next Thursday I'll—”

Jack checked his watch. “Actually, a week from today is Friday. It's past midnight.”

Libby breathed deeply and gazed soulfully up into Jack's eyes. At the same time her fingers were busily untying the knot of her sash. Jack struggled to his feet.

“Not a word, Libby. You can't say anything to anybody.”

“I won't,” she said. “I promise. Next Friday night I'll have a little party—a little engagement party.” Her eyes brightened. She was crying. For joy. She grabbed Jack's hand and peered at his watch. “Is it too late to start calling people?”

“I have to go, Libby.”

She made no objections; she was already thinking about other things. It was as if she'd made out a list headed Things I Have to Do to Get Married, at the top of which was (1) Find a Husband. Now that she'd accomplished that, she was ready to go to work on (2) Plan the Engagement Party.

Jack staggered out of Libby's apartment; he leaned against the wall of the elevator on his way down to the street; his voice was thick as he mumbled good-night to the elevator man and the doorman of Libby's building. What had he done? Well, he hadn't proposed to Libby; he'd only agreed to propose to her. Now he had a week to figure out some way either to convince himself that the proposal was a good idea, or somehow to convince Libby that it was a bad one.

Jack wasn't certain if a week was going to be long enough in which to recover from the hangover that he had laid down tonight.