Schmidt Delivered (15 page)

It was too late. The moment to kill had passed.

The police will get you, Schmidt said inconsequentially. Around here is the first place they’ll look. You had better go. Far away. Somewhere you’ve never been.

Nah. This Florida business is chickenshit. How about it, Albert? Are we friends? I’ll be your watchdog. Believe me, I don’t miss a thing.

I really wish you’d go. And then he added, stupidly, She never told me she was sleeping with the waiters at O’Henry’s. Or the owner.

You ever ask her?

No.

Albert! Why should she tell you if you didn’t ask? What do you think she was doing after work? Soaking her feet? She’s
still a kid, don’t forget that. Hey, will you drive me over to Springs? There’s no way I can get there. I walked all the way here from the bus.

That was beyond Schmidt’s strength. Should he offer to lend him Mary’s Toyota, assuming it would start? Call a taxi? No, Bryan had better walk back to the town and take a taxi from there. He will need money for the fare. Of course. Then give him money; it’s better to give it to him before he asks.

But Bryan refused, shaking his head. I’ve got money, he said. Fuck it, man, I thought you were my friend.

      So that was that. Bryan had certainly put things in perspective. There weren’t all that many dishes to wash after the ghastly, silent lunch. Sooner or later, she would come down, and she wouldn’t use the back stairs or fly out the window. Of course, nothing stopped him from getting into his car and driving off—to the beach, to Montauk, to the airport. Men disappear all the time, for no reason at all. Instead, he dried the two crystal wineglasses, put them away, and went back to the library to work on the bills.

She always moved soundlessly, even when she wasn’t barefoot, and it was not because he heard her steps that he became aware of her presence. She stood in the door, wearing the white terry-cloth bathrobe she liked. Her wet hair glistened. Darling, she said, you’re real mad at me. I’ve never seen you like this. Why?

You left me—without any warning.

Schmidtie, I went to see my parents. I called from school, between classes, and my mom wasn’t feeling good. Then I
called Mike Mansour’s house and told Manuel to give the message. There wasn’t anyplace I could reach you. Why is that bad?

You didn’t call me from the city.

I did. I left a message on the machine.

Yes, a message that you had gone out on the town with Michael Mansour. Was that part of taking care of your mom?

I drove her to the hospital for her leg and then drove her back home. There was nothing she needed. Yeah, I called Michael. So what’s wrong with that?

Nothing, if you’re going on dates with other men. I didn’t know you were.

I’m not. Whoa, Schmidtie, we see him all the time. He’s your friend. I wanted to see his apartment. I’ve never been to a fancy place like that. Then he asked if I like to eat Japanese. So we went to that restaurant. I told you that in the message.

And later?

What do you mean later?

I mean what did you do later, after dinner.

We went to a club in Tribeca and danced.

Mansour danced?

Yeah, he danced. He dances pretty good. Hey, he showed me how to belly dance! I danced with Jason too. Jeez, that guy really knows how to move.

I see. Security all the way, even on the dance floor. That’s nice. And what else? I mean what happened after that.

Michael asked if he should drive me home or if I wanted to stay at his place.

And what did you decide?

Boy, Schmidtie, you’re a real lawyer. I said I’d stay in his apartment. Here are the reasons: I left my car in his garage, so I would have to get it and drive all the way to Canarsie at three in the morning, which I didn’t feel like doing.

Aha! Mr. and Mrs. Gorchuck lived in Canarsie. That was an interesting, and someday possibly useful, fact, heretofore unknown to Schmidt. The precise situation of Canarsie in relation to Brooklyn, likewise unknown to him, merited investigation.

Second, I didn’t want to wake my dad up. When mom’s sick like this he sleeps in the living room.

Then where did Carrie sleep? Also in the living room? On the floor or on a second couch? Was there not a second bedroom, however small, or did she sleep in the kitchen on a folding bed? Sharp pain in Schmidt’s heart: Why didn’t this poor child trust him enough to have let him see how the parents lived, why didn’t she let him lift them above such sordidness?

I see, he said. But you didn’t think they would be unable to get back to sleep if one of them woke up in the middle of the night and saw that you hadn’t returned? I might have thought that was worse.

You’ve got to be kidding. They think I’m a grown-up.

True enough. And what happened once you got to the Mansour residence?

What do you mean?

I think it’s clear what I mean. Did he make a pass at you? Did you sleep with him?

You really want to know?

He didn’t, but he nodded his head.

Guess what! He raped me. Yeah, and Jason held me down. You happy now?

Carrie, Bryan was here this morning.

No shit.

Right. Back from Florida. I got his message, right after I got yours. He screwed it up there. It’s the old Bryan, only different. He talked a lot. About you.

Like what?

Like you slept with every waiter at O’Henry’s. The owner too. A full-service waitress, that’s what.

And what’s that to you? You thought you were the first, Schmidtie?

No, you told me the man—excuse me, Mr. Wilson—was the first. But I didn’t know that, to take Bridgehampton alone, you had serviced every waiter and busboy at your place of work, in addition to the owner, Bryan, and Mr. Wilson.

You mean like if you had known you wouldn’t have fucked me? Is that it? Up yours, Schmidtie. Mr. Wilson sure had your number. You’re a shithead, that’s what he said, a hoity-toity shithead. I should’ve believed him.

She cried, the way she always did when the subject of the man came up.

I am sorry, Schmidt said. You want my handkerchief?

Wipe yourself, you bastard. What’s your problem? When you’re in my pussy, it doesn’t feel right? Not clean enough for you? You don’t like what you get when you eat it because you’re not the first? How about me? Do I ask you
where you’ve stuck your dick? Remember, I asked you if you wanted me to be faithful. You blew me off. And now you’re jealous!

I am. I love you, Carrie. I’ve asked you to marry me, over and over. We’ve been together. I don’t know how I would live without you. When you asked me that question, at the very beginning, it was different.

Shit.

No, it’s the truth. Please come over here.

He couldn’t believe it, but he had somehow managed: he had, perhaps for the first time in his life, actually broken out of the box he had put himself into, had made a gesture of peace. She took a step toward him, then two. Trembling, he drew her onto his lap and caressed her hair. It was still wet, like a young dog’s just in from the rain.

Please, Carrie.

Don’t.

He had put his hand on her knee, where she allowed it to rest, and then tried to move it higher, toward the center, where he imagined she was wet too.

Carrie, this isn’t about the waiters or the busboys. That was Bryan talking, wanting to humiliate me. By the way, he did a good job. This is about now, about you and Michael Mansour. I can’t just let it go, I have to know. It’s not just some guy who thinks he is my friend. He’s someone we see all the time, together. What happened?

You really want to know? she repeated.

He nodded his head and took his hand off her knee, finding a neutral ground on the terry cloth.

OK. He’s got this triplex. His bedroom and a kind of living room with a big fireplace are on the second floor, and also a room with mats and machines—treadmill, bicycles, and a cage for weights. All kinds of stuff. He has a trainer come in every morning. You won’t believe it. At six. The guest rooms are on the third floor. He showed me into my room, and where the lights were and everything, and the bathroom, and I thought he was like going to kiss me and say goodnight. Instead, all of a sudden, he drops his arms and says, I want to see your breasts. I look at him surprised, and this time he says, Please show me your tits. I was like let me out, man! I had on this black blouse you gave me, you know, short, with little shoulder straps, that doesn’t button, so I just lift it up and tell him, Here they are. Say hello. I think he’s going to grab me or lick them, but no, he asks me, What’s Schmidtie going to say? I couldn’t believe it, so I say he’s going to try to break your stupid face. I’ll tell you, it was like he threw cold water over me. I closed up. So he says it’s all right, Schmidtie doesn’t need to know and other kinds of shit, and I tell him forget it, I’m going to sleep.

And then?

In the morning, he comes into my room again and says he’s sorry, he couldn’t sleep all night, he was jerking off thinking about me, and he’ll give me a million dollars if I fuck him. I ask, Right now? So he says, No, not now, I can’t get it up, I’m too worn out, but please soon. Don’t make me wait too long.

Oh, Carrie.

Some friend you’ve got there. You want to hear the best? On my way out of there, I was saying good-bye to Jason, and
Mike rushes out from somewhere, I don’t know where he was, and says, Don’t forget the dinner on Sunday. Hillel’s going to play. I expect you and Schmidtie. It’ll be a fabulous party.

Carrie, I’ll give you a million dollars if you don’t let that man get near you.

She looked at him very carefully and replied, It’s no good, Schmidtie. If I take your money, I’ll never sleep with you again. Then she took his hand, put it back on the inside of her knee, guided it upward, and whispered: Hey, you haven’t written that check for one million dollars yet, have you? Come on, dopey, we’re wasting time. Let’s go upstairs.

B
EFORE
Carrie left for school the next morning, he gave her a gold pin in the form of a scarab. It had been his present to Mary to mark the date old Dexter King told him that the firm had taken him into the partnership. It was a beautiful piece, although perhaps a bit strong—some might say too elaborate—in the manner of jewelry made in Boston at the turn of the century. To his surprise, Mary never wore it. That wasn’t the sort of thing that Schmidt would mention, let alone inquire about, but it occurred to him subsequently that she might have seen the bill, which he had put on top of his chest of drawers, together with other papers, to take to the office and send to the insurance broker. The price was high, well beyond Schmidt’s means. Not wanting to sell any of the few stocks he owned, he had borrowed to pay for it. She disliked—as in fact did he—his anomalous outbursts of extravagance, and, since they could bring themselves to talk about money only with the greatest difficulty, and then always stiffly, as though the subject made their flesh crawl, putting this object away would have been her way of annulling
an action she reproved. She could count on him to understand and to keep silent. This circumstance was probably the reason he had not offered the pin to Charlotte along with the rest of Mary’s trinkets, the bittersweet chronicle of his devotion and sense of circumstance reposing in leather boxes of various shapes and sizes as though in miniature tombs. Mary’s mother had died very young, her father, cut down by machine-gun fire while he waded toward a Normandy beach, even earlier; there was nothing she had inherited from them except their wedding bands and an engagement ring, all of which Schmidt had also withheld: the former because they made him uneasy, the latter because it was such a pitiful thing that he thought it best not to expose it to view and comment. The good jewelry in Mary’s family had belonged to Aunt Martha, and that Mary put in a safety box for Charlotte directly after the old lady died. Most of what Schmidt offered to Charlotte she accepted. The rest he sold for more money than he would have thought likely to a merchant he had dealt with over the years. But not the Boston scarab; he liked him far too much. He had made the right decision, to keep him and to give him the second time: when Carrie saw it—he had held out his fist enclosing the jewel and said, Quick, go knock, knock to see what’s inside—she asked him in her little voice, Darling, is this for me, and, when he nodded, she kissed his hand, called him darling once more, and then Bebop, and, after she had attached the pin to her shirt, offered to skip school and spend the day with him, because he had made her so happy. But he said, Go on, be sure that you’re not late and that you drive carefully, held open
the door of the little car for her, and remained in the driveway a long time after it disappeared. Bebop. The diminutive of his godfather’s name, and the only pet name Schmidt’s mother ever used. She had a way of saying, when one of his friends telephoned and he was sitting in the same room as she, and she happened not to be in one of her crankier moods, You want Bebop no doubt, I’ll get him for you, he must be somewhere in the house. It made him cringe. Spoken by Carrie, the color of the word changed. It was as gay as the rainbow.

She wouldn’t be back until late in the afternoon. There was nothing, literally nothing, he needed to do. It was pointless to make the bed or clear the dishes because the Polish women would arrive later that morning. Carrie had said she would pick up sausages and fruit and vegetables for their dinner on her way home. There were enough cans of tuna and sardines in the pantry to withstand a siege, and he had bought bread and cheese when he got the breakfast croissants. Lunch, therefore, was taken care of. The soft but steady rain that began to fall almost as soon as Carrie left—he was glad she had put up the roof of her car—did not rule out doing laps in the pool but made the prospect unattractive. Gil Blackman had left for the West Coast. Schmidt wasn’t sure he would have risked telephoning and being told by Gil that he couldn’t take time off from work to have lunch, even if Gil had been in Bridgehampton, or that he was ready to see him if that implied resuming their last conversation, and probably it did. He could always invite Elaine to lunch in his place. This was, however, something he had never done
before or even contemplated. Did Elaine go out to lunch when it was not a social obligation involving Gil? Schmidt doubted it; she had told him she was in the thick of research for her book on colonial orphanages. She had not mentioned how that was accomplished, given the limited resources of the Bridgehampton library. Presumably, she had books sent to her from the Society Library in New York or got them on some interlibrary loan, and, now that Gil was a Harvard overseer, perhaps even from the Widener. At any rate, why would he ask her to lunch? Whatever turn the conversation took, it would only lead to trouble. Carrie was not a safe subject, and neither was Charlotte or, for that matter, Gil, of whose secret sentimental life Elaine was convinced Schmidt knew the ins and outs. Was it worth the collateral risk that Elaine might see in his initiative some sort of absurd romantic overture? It wasn’t, and there was nobody else he considered even remotely possible.