Two Much! (15 page)

When I was a kid, the Saturday afternoon movie would occasionally show a treasure-hunting underwater diver caught in the clutches of an octopus. Fighting and struggling, bubbles rising up, seabed roiling, octopus arms waving all over the place. For the first time, I understood exactly what that diver was going through.

Over the next hour I dealt with the mail, the telephone messages, crap from illustrators, threats from the printer, filthy language from the landlord. “I'm getting out of this, prick,” I told the landlord, while my mental image-screen showed dollar bills with little wings flying
in
the window. And through it all I was thinking,
Bart away
.

I tried to be smarter than that. I tried to reason with myself, convince myself of the insanity of even
planning
to marry Liz. Stay with the old plan, take the lumber mills and run, don't be so greedy, don't be so stupid, don't be so crazy. I told me, I really did, I can't claim I didn't warn me, but none of it did any good. In my brain, or whatever that is behind my eyes, I was already committed, I was thinking only,
Get rid of Bart
.

The only distraction was a pair of phone messages from Linda Ann Margolies. Regretfully I dropped them into the wastebasket; I had liked that girl, but one more complication would finish me forever. Or should I just return her call, talk for a minute, see if she knew any new jokes?

No. I phoned Ralph again instead, and this time I got him. “Listen, Ralph,” I said, “could you do a little job of research for me? On the QT.”

“Sure. Trouble at the firm?”

“No trouble. In fact, and this'll probably surprise you as much as it does me, I'm thinking of getting married.”

“No kidding! Well, you old son of a gun. Anybody I know?”

“You never met her,” I said. “She's got a place at Point O' Woods.”

“Rich, huh? Trust you.”

That was something nobody was likely to do. I said, “She's the one I'd like you to look up. Also her lawyer.”

“Her lawyer? You aren't pulling something funny, are you?”

“Of course not I'll tell you the situation, Ralph. I'm in love with this girl, and she's in love with me, but her lawyer's out to get her for himself, because she's rich. Anyway, that's what I think.”

“That's unethical,” Ralph said. He sounded shocked.

“Exactly what I told him to his face,” I said. Then, speaking to Ralph in what I took to be his own language, I said, “He brazened it out But I just don't trust him.”

“What's his name?”

“Ernest Volpinex.”

“What firm is he with?”

“I have no idea. No, wait I think I have his card. Unless I threw it away.” I made a fast search on my desk, but it wasn't there. “Sony, I don't have it any more.”

“That's all right. I can look him up.”

“Fine.”

“What do you want to know, exactly?”

“Well,” I said, “he told my fiancée she had to get married this year or she'd have a great big tax bite next April. She's an orphan, see, her parents both died last New Year's Eve.”

“Before or after midnight?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, what's her name?”

“Elizabeth Kerner. What I want to know is her financial position. How much did she inherit, does she really have that tax problem, what her general situation is. And about Volpinex, I want to know what kind of bird he is. I think he's a crook, and I'd like to know his reputation in his field, and any scandal or anything like that in his past.”

“You want to turn your girl friend away from him, is that it? Move her to a different lawyer.”

“I'd like to move her to you, Ralph, if you'd like a client.”

“How much is this alleged tax bite?”

I knew why he'd asked that question. He wanted to know how rich she was, so he'd know how much he wanted her as a client. So I told him the simple truth: “Three million dollars.”

“Ah,” he said, calmly but promptly. “I'll look into it right away for you, Art. I'll find out everything I can.”

“Thanks, Ralph, I appreciate it”

“Anything for a friend”

“You're true blue, Ralph.”

“It's nothing. And congratulations on the coming nuptials.”

“Thanks, Ralph. This time it's the real thing.”

We chatted a bit more, and then we both hung up. I sat there a moment, quiet, my hand resting on the phone.
I have to get rid of Bart
.

T
HE TELEGRAM ARRIVED
at nine that night. Good old Joe; it's a blessing to have friends you can rely on, particularly when they live in California and you need a telegram from California.

Betty and I were having dinner for two on the terrace, bathing in the warm August air and watching the lights of taxicabs on the Park Drive. Liz was out somewhere, foul-tempered and door-slamming, and Art hadn't been heard from all day.

“Now what?” I said, and extended the yellow form across the coffee and peach melba toward Betty. Nikki had brought it out to us, wiggling her rump, and now stood beside the table, giving me her lewd looks and awaiting further orders.

Betty took the telegram, frowning past it at me. “What is it? that's all, Nikki.”

Nikki turned like a Buckingham Palace guard, but more interestingly, and pranced back indoors. She moved like someone with good pelvic muscles. I said, “It's a telegram. Trouble of some kind.”

Betty cautiously lowered her eyes to the words on the yellow paper, reading them by candlelight. I knew what they said. Not only had I just read it myself; earlier today I'd written it. And what it said was:

BART
CALL'ME TONIGHT OR TOMORROW. SERIOUS SITUATION.

JOE GOLD

“Who's Joe Gold?”

“An old friend of mine in Los Angeles. Makes a living writing record liner notes.”

“You know the strangest people,” she said, and handed the telegram back to me. “What's it all about?”

“I don't know. I suppose I better call.”

“Do you still have business affairs out there?”

“No. I told you, I sold my interest in the car wash before I came back East”

“Then what could it be?”

“I just can't think of anything. I ought to call.”

“I suppose so,” she said doubtfully. She frowned in mistrust at the telegram in my hand, a legitimate telegram legitimately sent from Los Angeles by a man legitimately named Joe Gold. “I suppose so,” she repeated, then picked up the summons bell on the middle of the table and shook it.

Nikki responded immediately to the tinkle—an eavesdropper, apparently, among her other qualities. “Yes, madame? I should clear now?”

“The telephone for Mr. Dodge.”

“Yes, madame.”

While she was gone, Betty said, “Why would he send a telegram here?”

“He must have called the office, and Art gave him this address.”

“Then why wouldn't he call here?”

“I don't know.” I did not, in fact, have a good explanation for that, and trusted the question would eventually become lost in the onrush of events. For my own purposes, a telegram established the California connection much more realistically than a telephone call, but that was hardly something to mention to Betty.

Nikki came back with the long-corded phone. “I wish he'd given his number,” I said. “How do I get information in Los Angeles?”

Betty's take-over qualities came promptly to the surface, as I'd hoped they would. “Give me the phone,” she said. “Nikki, pencil and paper.”

“Yes, madame.”

While Nikki pogoed away once more, Betty dialed L.A. information, then asked me, “What's his address, do you know?”

“Vassar Drive, in Hollywood.”

“Vassar?” Her lip curled slightly. “Those people out there. Yes, operator. In Hollywood, a Mr. Joseph Gold on Vassar Drive. Yes, I will.”

Back came Nikki, with pad and pencil. She started to give them to me, but I shooed her over to Betty. She started then to leave again, but I said, “Nikki, wait here a minute. We may want something else.” If she was an eavesdropper, I didn't want her near any of the extension phones in the next few minutes.

“Yes, Mr. Bart.” The words, the manner, and the look were all directly out of
The Story of O
, and not for a minute did I believe that coincidental.

Betty, her hand over the receiver mouthpiece, said to me, “Is he Jewish?”

“I really don't know,” I said.

“He probably is.” Then, into the phone, “Yes, operator?” She wrote down some numbers. “Thank you, operator.” Hanging up, she said, “Nikki, give all this to Mr. Dodge.”

“Yes, madame.”

Ignoring Nikki's dance routine, I glanced at the phone number on the pad, saw that Betty had gotten it right, and dialed it from memory. Ring. Two rings. Three rings. Come on, Joe, you said you'd be home, it's only six
P.M.
there. Four ri—“Hello?”

“Hello, Joe?”

“Hey man. You got it, huh?”

“Yeah, I got it. What's it all about?”

“I must say,” he said, “your relationships with women get more baroque all the time.”

“Good God!” I said. I sounded shocked, and I'm sure I looked stunned. Nikki and Betty both watched me, with curiosity and apprehension.

“I never did like Lydia,” Joe was saying, “even when you were married to her.”

“When?” I asked. I was hunched tensely over the phone.

“But at least,” Joe said, “that was your ordinary tag-team unfaithful modern marriage.”

I said, “Do you think she meant it?”

“What you're into now,” he said, “I shudder to think.”

I said, “What do the doctors say?” Both women on the terrace with me reacted predictably to the noun.

“There must be an easier way to get laid,” he said. “Or to break off with a woman, or whatever the hell you're doing.”

I said, “Good God, Joe, that was over a long time ago. I never gave her any—” And stopped, as though I'd been interrupted.

Joe was saying, “Don't you have any massage parlors back there?”

“Yeah, I can see that,” I said reluctantly. “But what am
I
supposed to do?”

“Have you considered onanism?”

I gave Betty a helpless look, shaking my head. “Joe,” I said, pleading to be understood, “you don't understand. I have commitments back here now, I can't just—”

“Of course,” he said, “as Marx once pointed out, the bourgeoisie had to invent adultery to keep from dying of boredom.”

“I realize that, Joe,” I said desperately.

“Or was it Lenin? One of those commies.”

“Well, how long would it be for?”

“The point is, maybe what you need is a hobby. Jigsaw puzzles, for instance.”

“The thing of it is, Joe,” I said, being confidential with him, “I've got a girl now, back here in the East”

“I don't doubt it for a second.”

“It's, uh, it's serious, Joe. If I came out, I'd have to—”

Again I appeared to be interrupted. Both Nikki and Betty looked shocked at this suggestion that I was being asked to go to California. Meanwhile, Joe was saying, “Maybe you'd like to grow plants. Vines and things. Tell them all your little secrets, and watch their leaves fall off.”

“Joe,” I said, “how can I explain that to my girl?”

“If anybody can, Art,” he said, “you can.”

“I see what you mean,” I said, but I didn't sound happy about it I said, ‘The doctors really think so, huh?”

“They sure do,” Joe said. “They think you're a nut”

“Thanks, Joe,” I said. “I'd appreciate that. Be better than a hotel.”

“Do you get the impression,” he asked me, “that we're talking at cross-purposes?”

“I don't see how I can promise anything,” I said.

“Go ahead and promise, baby.”

I nodded slowly, listening. Logic, duty, friendship, my own moral sense, all were clearly conspiring to make me agree to something about which I was extremely reluctant “You're right, Joe,” I said.

“Why, thank you,” he said.

“I'll work it out somehow at this end,” I said, “and I'll get out there as soon as I can.”

“Don't you dare,” he said.

“Sure, Joe, I know,” I said, “and I appreciate it So long.”

“Is it soup yet?” he asked me, and I hung up.

Betty said, “You're going to California?”

“It's—” I stopped myself, glanced at Nikki, and said, “You can take the phone back now, Nikki.”

“Yes, Mr. Bart.” Off she went, no doubt to hide behind the draperies and listen to me tell my tale.

Betty was showing understandable impatience. “For heaven's sake, what is it?”

“A girl,” I said. “Her name's Lydia, we used to go together when I lived in L.A. For a while, we even talked about getting married.”