Two Much! (26 page)

“I should think not. You can't just walk into other people's houses.”

“Or other people's lives,” he suggested. “Or other people's plans.”

The morning sun was behind this building, casting its stunted shadow onto Fifth Avenue and a bit of the park, so there was no direct sunlight here on the terrace. Nevertheless, the sky was very bright and I couldn't help but squint when I stared upward at Volpinex, whose face was little more than a silhouette, practically nothing showing but his cold eyes and that flickering humorless cold smile. I thought of standing, meeting him man to man, but became suddenly hyperaware of that railing very near me, and the masses of empty air just the other side. Seven stories down were the concrete sidewalk and the blacktop street. I seemed suddenly to have developed a fear of heights, to feel more secure with my entire body below the level of the railing.

“Why don't you sit down?” I said. “As long as you're here. I mean, if you won't go away.”

“It's your going away that I'm here to discuss,” he said. He remained standing. His hands, resting calmly at his sides—approximately my nose level—were very long and very thin, but with a look of strength about them. My earlier image of Volpinex as part vampire returned to me, more insistently.

“I
am
going away,” I said. “Betty will be back any minute—” it seemed for some reason important to make that point, that I wouldn't be alone for long “—and then we'll be off for Point O' Woods.”

“I mean a different kind of going away.” His right hand lifted and made a slender graceful gesture toward the park, as though inviting me to admire it. Or perhaps to fly over it. “Something more permanent.”

What had failed with brother number one he was apparently now going to try with brother number two. I said, “I'm not leaving. I'm staying with Betty.”

An expression of cultured disgust rumpled the smiling lips. “I know you two are married.”

“Then that's an end to it,” I said.

“Perhaps.” He leaned toward me, placing his hands in odd flattened positions in front of himself, reminding me that he was a self-proclaimed karate expert. “And perhaps not,” he said. His eyes glinted, and a muscle inside his left cheek began jumping, like a moth under a sheet.

“Oh!”

A female voice. It startled us both, and I suddenly realized I'd been sitting there like a hypnotist's subject, staring up at Volpinex open-mouthed, saying nothing, thinking nothing, feeling only a steadily increasing nervousness. My mouth was dry, my shoulders stiff. My heart was pounding.

“Meestair Dahjj. I deed not know you had company.”

It was Nikki, blessed Nikki, in the living room doorway with the telephone in her hand. “Come out, Nikki,” I called, hoarse-voiced, and gestured extravagantly for her to approach. Meanwhile, Volpinex backed away a pace or two, his face as sternly angry as a Mayan stone god.

Nikki came out, tripping in much her usual fashion, but with apprehensive looks toward Volpinex. “Meez Kairnair on the phone for you,” she told me, and put the phone on the table beside me. She was in an uncharacteristic hurry to be off.

I said, “Mr. Volpinex was just leaving, Nikki. Show him to the door, will you?”

Volpinex stood glaring at me from under hooded eyes. I could almost see the gears of his brain ratcheting away in there. Leaning toward him, I said softly, “She'll remember you were here.” His eyes flickered at that, and I added, “And so will I.”

He expelled air; apparently he'd been holding it for some time. “We'll … talk again,” he said, nodded curtly at Nikki, and followed her away into the apartment.

I watched them go, then picked up the phone. My hand was shaking so much I could see two receivers. I put them both to my face, where they rattled against my skull, and said, “Betty?”

“I don't want you to guess,” she said. “About what I'm getting. But I want to know your favorite color.”

“My favorite color.” I reached out for my champagne and orange juice. “Orange,” I said, and drank it down.

L
ABOR
D
AY WEEKEND AT
Point O' Woods. Four of the most pleasant and comfortable days of my life. I know that Betty too was having a good time and I'm glad of it, all in all, considering how it ended.

After Blondell's seafood salad on Friday, we had driven out here with me at the wheel of Betty's present to me; an orange Thunderbird. Two cars in three days; this was becoming my week.

Except for Volpinex, whom I couldn't get out of my mind. Had he really come mere to kill me, on that terrace? It didn't seem possible. Volpinex was dangerous, of course, capable of trying to injure me in that squash court, capable of hiring toughs to drive me out of town or beat me up, but was he really capable of murder? It had all seemed very real at the time, but people don't actually kill people, and particularly lawyers don't kill people. As both Volpinex himself and Candy had recently pointed out, lawyers have too many other strings to their bow.

The former wife, dead in Maine.

“Nonsense,” I muttered, and looked over my shoulder.

But once at Point O' Woods it all faded away. Betty and I were here in this Episcopalian ghetto, and nothing from the real world—or the unreal world of Ernest Volpinex—could possibly get at us. The weather remained perfect: the sun a great dollop of Béarnaise on a sky of shimmering blue china, sand the color of raw silk, ocean the colors of mermaids, air a soft warm beneficent presence sailing up across the world from Brazil. The mosquitoes had all been burned off by the heat of midsummer, nor had any other obnoxious insects taken their place. Beauty, peace, contentment and suntan oil were spread o'er all.

As for Betty, the combination of her expressions of guilt for having betrayed me plus her joy at our reunion combined to make her the finest servant-wife since the last war bride was brought home from Japan. Did I wish to go to bed? Was there a position, a variation, possibly a rumor of an alternative method, which I would like to try? Absolutely, absolutely. Was I hungry? Betty blossomed into a cook before whom Blondell would have shriveled away in shame. Great sunlit breakfasts on the back deck, wonderful cold lunches of dishes like
salade Niçoise
, dinners so lavish and extensive and delicious that afterward I could barely bring the snifter of Rémy Martin to my lips.

Joy. Joy undiminished. Will I ever find its like again? No, not ever.

Partly, of course, it was my own doing that it all came to an end. Peace and joy bore me after a while, and I found myself itching again to do something. Something. So partly I do have myself to blame for what happened next.

But only partly. The rest of the blame goes to Volpinex, a sneak and a bastard and a poor sport if there ever lived one.

But first my own contribution to the acceleration of events. It was ten o'clock Monday evening, and we were both in bed, Betty and I, having repaired there for after-dinner calisthenics and having both fallen promptly to sleep. I was the first to awaken, finding myself semi-imprisoned by a Betty-arm and a Betty-leg flung across me. We were on Father's bed, as usual, and one lamp glowed on the night table. I lay on my back, studying the bedroom ceiling, aware of the summer house around me, the summer community, the summer island, and increasingly aware of the end of summer. One way and another, it was all coming to an end.

I tried to see through that ceiling and into the future, but it remained hazy. Who would I be in September? Betty's husband, true-blue Bart, respectable businessman, manager of his wife's vast business empire? Or Art, with his freedom and his Alfa and his little card business and his little marriage business with Liz? It couldn't be both, not any more.

Never make a business out of your hobby, you'll take all the fun out of it. Insult cards had been my business and fornication my hobby, and I'd been reasonably content. Now the card business was on the verge of being scrapped, I was on the threshold of making millions out of fornication, and look at me: staring at the ceiling, worrying about my future.

“Oh, fuck it!” I suddenly said, and pushed Betty's limbs out of the way so I could get out of bed.

She half woke up. “Swee-hart? Goin'?”

“For a walk on the beach,” I told her. I patted her cheek, and then her other cheek. “Have a nice nap, I'll be back in a little while.”

She moaned and smiled and rolled over, and I put on slacks, sneakers and a T-shirt, and out I went.

I walked aimlessly for ten minutes or so, brooding, and then I passed the phone booth. And I stopped and looked at the phone booth, and a thought entered my mind.

Just how reliable
was
Betty? If I was going to be faithful Bart, what about her?

There was a dime in my pocket.

She must have fallen asleep again; it was six rings before she answered, and then her voice sounded blowsy with unconsciousness. I said, “Hi, there, honey. Guess who this is?”

“Hello?”

“
You
know who it is, Betty.”

“Art? Is that you?”

My heart was pounding; it surprised me. “That's right,” I said. “Long time no see.”

“Where
are
you? What time is it?”

“Early. I'm in Ocean Beach, I'm staying with friends. I could be there in half an hour.”

“Oh, no!” She sounded truly shocked.

“No? Why not, honey?”

“Well … Bart's here.”

“I don't believe it. Put him on.”

“He—he just went for a walk. On the beach.”

“Come on, Betty, don't leave me hanging here like this.”

“He'll be back pretty soon,” she said, and suddenly she was pitching her voice lower, as though afraid she'd be overheard. “He really will.”

“Then you come out.”

“Oh, I couldn't.”

“Why not?”

“Well, your brother … He's staying here with me.”

“You can still go out for a while.
He's
taking a walk, isn't he?”

“Oh, Art, this isn't right.”

I didn't have to go on with it. I've had this conversation often enough with other women, I know when the argument is won and there's nothing left but the extra verbiage to help the woman feel she was overpowered; but there was a certain satisfaction in running the ritual right through to the end. “Of course it's right,” I told her. “Anything that feels good is right, you know that.”

“Art, you're terrible, you really are.”

“I'll meet you at the beach end of the fence.”

“I might not be there, Art.”

“I'll wait for you,” I said, and hung up, and left the phone booth, and went for a walk on the beach.

I
WAS LYING AGAIN ON
F
A
ther'S bed, hands behind my head as I brooded at the ceiling, when I heard her come in. The door opened and closed, she moved about down there, and then there was silence. Sitting up, I called, “I'm up here,” and heard her start up the stairs.

I hadn't been surprised to find her gone when I'd come back here, but I had been disappointed, and I'd spent the last hour and a half in a state of general depression. But why? Did I love her, for Christ's sake? Did I love either of those wretched sisters? In perfect truth I did not, but what I was learning—and this was quite a bit worse—was that I needed someone, someone, anyone, to love
me
.

(I don't count Candy. The architect's plans for my remodeling were already completed in her head, that was how much she loved
me
.)

But I still didn't know what to do about anything, and now Betty was back. Sitting up on the bed as I heard her footsteps approaching, I turned toward the door and saw Volpinex just reaching the head of the stairs.

I scrambled off the bed, pointing at him. “You did it!” I shouted. “You really did! And you were going to do it to me!”