Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (12 page)

           
No. I realized then for the first
time that whenever I thought of Mary at last getting herself a fella, it was a
given in my mind that it would be a fella
1 didn’t know.
The idea of Lance and Mary— No.
“Incest” wasn’t precisely
the right word, but it had precisely the right feeling.

           
Lance’s thoughts must have meandered
to a similar terminus, because eventually he gave a long sigh, finished his
drink, and said, “Let’s find a better joint.”

           
“You’re right.”

           
We crossed 14th Street into the
Village, found another bar, and Lance told me about his experiences as a hunter
of women: “They’re
terrible
, Tom, there are a whole lot of truly
terrible women out there, and they go to parties, and they
smoke
, and
they have opinions about every goddam thing in the goddam world, and they’re
just making me very depressed.”

           
We didn’t like the jukebox in that
place, so we went on to another, and Lance told me more: “They have that
magazine called
Self
for the single women,” he
said, “and believe me, Tom, the name tells it. The reason all those single
women are single is not because nobody’s noticed how terrific they are, it’s
because they
stink."

           
“They do look good.”

           
“That’s part of the trouble,” he
said. “The one thing they believe in and truly understand is packaging. But you
know what’s inside the package?”

           
“Nothing,” I guessed.

           
But he shook his head. “I’d take
that. The way I feel right now, a woman with nothing at all inside her head
would be a blessing. No, Tom; what’s inside the package is
thoughts about
the package"

           
In the next bar, Lance told me about
women whose lives were centered on jogging, and in the bar after that he told
me what happens when you give up on all those self-centered
Bloomingdale-wrapped single women and spend some time with a divorced woman
instead: All
she
wants to talk about is her children. “I have children,
too,” he said.
“Everybody
has children, dammit, and my kids are just as
neurotic and brilliant as their goddam kids, but I don’t go around
talking
about
it all the time.”

           
The next bar was The Lion’s Head,
where there was a guy Lance knew and where I phoned Ginger, who sounded very
cold and annoyed: “The children and I already ate.”

           
“You did? What time is it?”

           
“Seven-twenty-three,” she said,
which meant she was in the bedroom with the digital clock. And it also meant
she and the kids had eaten dinner earlier than usual.

           
“I’m sorry, Ginger,” I said. “Lance
and I just got to talking—”

           
“Lance
and
you!
Oh, that’s just too much,” she said, and slammed the receiver down,
and I went back to the bar to find that Lance had bought me a drink and was
talking with his pal about television rating systems. It made for a change, so
I joined in.

           
There was a party Lance was supposed
to go co a little later, but he said he just couldn’t face it. He thought he’d
probably have dinner right there at The Lion’s Head. I said I thought I would,
too, since I seemed to be in the doghouse with Ginger. Lance shook his head and
said, “That woman’s got a lot of nerve.”

           
During dinner, some other people we
knew came in, and after dinner we went back to the bar where the group just
kept getting larger, and we all kept finding things to laugh about, and then I
have a sudden clear memory of the digital clock in the bedroom here reading
three-twenty-seven in the dark. That was immediately followed by Ginger
ruthlessly awakening me. It was morning, she claimed, and she was in an
absolutely
rotten
mood.

           
What a way to start the day. Ginger
yelled at Lance and me all through breakfast, accusing us of male bonding. I
don’t know exactly where that phrase came from, but I suspect a woman must have
made it up, deliberately choosing an expression that
sounds
painful.
Women these days “network,” a wonderfully mushy word that implies both serious
business going on and yet a protective safety net below, but men are reduced to
“bonding,” something that sounds sticky and sadomasochistic. “Help me find the
Krazy Glue,
Ethel,
I’m goin bondin’ with the boys.”

           
Anyway, having helped our hangovers
no end, Ginger then stormed off to make her presence felt at work. A little
later, Lance slunk away to his own work, and I was frowning at the bed,
seriously contemplating a full day of sleep, when Vickie called to suggest an
editorial conference. I told her I had a bad cold.

           
Fresh clean
sheets.

           
WHAT a week; I never thought I’d get
through it alive.

           
The trauma started on Tuesday, when
Vickie called to say we were destined to have dinner together on Friday;
all
of us. It seems Ginger had tired of my inactivity and had made the Approach
Direct, calling Vickie at work, identifying herself as “Tom’s friend,” and
saying (according to Vickie), “We’d love to have you and
your
friend to
dinner. Tom has just raved about how much help you’ve been on the book.” Spasms
closed my throat when Vickie reported this, but I did manage to say, “What did
you tell her?”

           
“What
could
I tell her? I was
so startled all I could think to say was how delighted I’d be.”

           
“Oh, boy.”

           
“So we set a date for Friday.”

           
“This
Friday?”

           
“Of course.
Tom, it’ll be all right, don’t worry about it.”

           
“Who’s going to be your friend?”

           
“I’ll bring Carl along,” she said.

           
Well. Carl Bindel is Vickie’s
secretary, a willowy boy in his late twenties with a sandy bushy moustache,
large moist hazel eyes, spectacles with frames the same color as the moustache,
and an absolutely terrifying sex life centered
around
various S-M bars in the West Village. There is absolutely no possible sexual
permutation that could wind up with Carl and Vickie in a carnal relationship;
it would be practically cross-species. Even Gretchen would take one look at
those two and know they didn’t hang out together, so the idea of Vickie passing
off Carl as her boyfriend to Ginger would have been laughable if it weren’t so
horrifying. “Vickie!” I said.
“Carl?”

           
“He can be very butch when he
wants,” she promised.
“When his mother comes to New York, for
instance.
Besides, I already asked and he said yes. He’ll do just fine.
He says it’ll be a hoot.”

           
“Uhh, Vickie,” I said, “maybe you
should suggest that he not call anything a hoot during dinner.”

           
“He’ll do just
fine
, Tom,”
she insisted. “Are we still on for our conference tomorrow?”

           
“You bet,” I said, but faintly.

           
The rest of the week, apart from
editorial conferences, I spent working on a couple of magazine pieces to pay
the rent, trying to get them out of the way before the copy-edited
Christmas
Book
comes back, which will be any day now. Unfortunately, it seems
impossible to get
Lance
out of the way, so I’m still working in the
bedroom, which is all right for now, but once
The Christmas Book
returns
this room is going to get awfully crowded.

           
The problem is, since Lance hasn’t
found an apartment yet and we’re going to be out on Fire Island all next month
anyway, it’s been agreed he’ll stay here through July He absolutely swears and
vows and promises he’ll have made some other arrangement by August first, but
in the meantime his interest in both of his searches—a place to live and a new
girlfriend—seems to have slackened considerably He’s spending more and more
evenings at home, and is now an apparently permanent addition to my weekend
jaunts with the kids.

           
In fact, he joined us for dinner
Friday, which did nothing to normalize an already weird occasion. Ginger came
home from work early Friday afternoon to start cooking, while I stayed in the
bedroom, trying to concentrate on my final draft of the “Major Jewels in
History” piece
Cosmopolitan
had commissioned, and when Lance arrived at
five-forty- eight by the digital clock, I abandoned the Hope and the Kohinoor
and the rest of them and joined him for a prehurricane drink.

           
I had not, of course, confided in
Lance about my carrying-on with Vickie—there’s just no way to tell a man you’re
cheating on his wife—so it was impossible to enlist his aid in the ordeal to
come. While Ginger chopped and poured and pounded in the kitchen, Lance and I
sat in the living room and chatted of inessentials, and my drink just seemed to
vanish; so I had another.

           
Vickie and her friend had been
invited for seven. Believing that whatever wits I had I should keep about me, I
stopped after the second drink and just sat in the living room, smiling and
nodding and listening to Lance’s incomprehensible shoptalk about CBS executive
politics, while inside I felt exactly the way I used to as a child at the
dentist’s: I don’t care how awful it is, just so it’s
over.

           
A little after seven, fashionably
late, the downstairs bell rang. Going to the intercom in the front hall, I
asked who it was, and a voice said, “Vickie and Carl.” I smiled
grimly,
realizing I didn’t know which of them had answered,
and buzzed them in.

           
Ginger removed her apron, dried her
hands and was standing smiling in the living room, all her hundreds of eyes
very wide-open and glinting, when the upstairs bell rang and I opened to the
happy couple.
“Hi, Vickie.
Hiya, Carl.” Vickie and I
leaned forward to kiss the air beside one another’s cheeks; she smelled like
illicit afternoons. Smiling, Carl extended a scrod fillet and I gave it a manly
shake and he winced, but happily. “Come on in,” I said, against my urgent
desire to scream GO AWAY FOREVER
!,
and shepherded them
into the living room for introductions.

           
Both guests were dressed a bit
oddly. Vickie had apparently decided to allay suspicion by appearing as a
frump, because she was wearing black pantyhose and a dark paisley-pattern dress
that was too tight for her, emphasizing bumps and rolls I’d never noticed
before. As for Carl, his tight designer jeans were tucked into his high-heeled
cowboy boots, and his canary yellow shirt under a fringed tan suede jacket was
graced by a black string tie. His belt buckle, shaped like a large rectangular
manhole cover, had a bucking bronco on it.

           
I introduced everybody to everybody
else. The fact that Ginger and Lance had the same last name made Vickie pause a
millisecond, but then she sailed onward and I’m sure I was the only one who
noticed. She said to Ginger, “Something smells
delicious
.”

           
“I
hope
it’ll be all right.
It’s a new recipe from Elizabeth David.”

           
“Isn’t she
fantastic
? Can I
do anything to help?”

           
“No, no, I have everything under
control. I
think."

           
Meantime, I was singing my part:
“Can I offer anyone a drink?”

           
I could. Drinks were made, Vickie
joined Ginger in the kitchen, and we three hearty males sat around the living
room listening to our horses eat hay and the lonely cry of a distant old
coyote. Lance broke a rather painful silence by saying, to the room at large,
“What do you think’s going to happen to the Mets this year?”

           
“Oh, the Lord knows,” Carl said,
waving airy fingers. “With Bliss gone, it’s a whole new ballgame.”

           
Lance gave him a puzzled look.
“Bliss?”

           
“Anthony Bliss,” Carl said.
“The general manager.”

           
Lance was floundering.
“Of the
Mets?”

           
“Of the Met, yes.”
Looking to me for confirmation, Carl said, “Anthony Bliss.” Turning back to
Lance he said, “Of course, if they replace him with another Beverly Sills,
quelle
disaster
. ”

           
“Opera,” I said, catching up.
“The Metropolitan Opera.”

           
“Well, yes, of course.” Belatedly,
Carl too was becoming puzzled. “What else were we talking about?”

           
“Baseball,” I said.

           
“The New York Mets,” Lance said,
with some emphasis.

           
“Oh,
base-
ball!”
Carl did his airy wave again. “Macho ballet,” he said.

           
Apparently, Vickie and Ginger were
hitting it off somewhat better in the kitchen, so that by the time we sat down
to our meal at least the women were relaxed. (Joshua and Gretchen had both been
farmed out for a few hours, Gretchen dining at a school chum’s house, Joshua
downtown with Mary and my kids. He would sleep over, and I would pick the whole
crew up—sans Mary—in the morning.) We talked publishing gossip mostly during
dinner, that being the one subject that could reach all the way from Carl to
Lance, Carl for the evening pretending to be another editor at Craig rather
than Vickie’s secretary.
(One pretense among so many.)
A few times I saw Ginger give Carl a puzzled look, but that was all.

           
After dinner I went to the kitchen
to make more drinks, and all at once Vickie was in the doorway, a devilish grin
on her lips and a sparkle in her eyes as she hissed, “A
menage a trois?”
(I know there are those who claim you can’t hiss a word without an
S
in
it, but that’s nonsense. In human speech, to hiss is to whisper forcefully.
Pooh to Newgate Callendar.)

           
At any rate, I was both startled and
alarmed. “No, no,” I whispered. (Not being forceful, it wasn’t a hiss.) “Lance
is just between apartments, that’s all. There’s
nothing
going on.”

           
“I’ve never done that,” she mused,
and gave another wicked smile. ‘Td
like
to be a
sandwich!”

           
“With Carl?”

           
She raised her eyes to heaven. “He
can be the lettuce leaf,” she said, and went away to the living room.

           
Mercifully, it was an early evening;
one postprandial drink and a brief description by Carl of a Bette Midler stage
show he’d recently seen (complete with impersonations), and they were off, Carl
a cowgirl Ariel and Vickie in her too-tight frowsy dress a lonely Caliban. At
least he hadn’t described anything as a hoot.

           
Later, in bed, Ginger employed the
phrase “fag hag.” I blinked big innocent eyes: “What?”

           
“Well, surely it’s obvious. Carl is
gay as a jay.”

           
“I thought he was a
little—ambiguous,” I admitted.

           
“Ambiguous? I thought he’d go down
on the candelabra!”

           
“Vickie’s never talked about him
much,” I said, shrugging it off.

           
Unsuccessfully.
“That’s because she’s probably embarrassed,” Ginger said. “But she’s your
typical fag hag; afraid of sex, afraid of adult relationships, so she wears
frumpy, unattractive clothes and just hangs out with faggots. Did you see that
dress?”

           
“Yes, I did,” I admitted. I felt I
should be defending

           
Vickie somehow,
but there was just no way to do it.
And wasn’t this, under the
circumstances, the best possible view for Ginger to take of Vickie?
Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist adding, “I thought you two got along.”

           
“We did,” Ginger said. “As a woman,
I think she’s very sensible. But can you actually believe she’s having an
affair
with Carl?”

           
“I guess not,” I said.

           
“Does she dress that way in the
office?”

           
“I don’t know, I suppose so, I never
noticed that much.
Not come-on, anyway.”

           
Suddenly Ginger’s eyes were narrowed,
and peering at me. “No,” she said.

           
“No what?”

           
“Not come-on. Did you like the
ratatouille?”

           
Quelle
(as Carl would say)
change of subject. I complimented her on dinner for a while, and we never did
return to the topic of Vickie, so I didn’t find out what had been going on
inside her head for that one tiny instant.

           
This afternoon—being the day after—I
had another brief and equally disquieting talk about Vickie, this one with
Lance, in the Central Park Zoo, while the children amused themselves making faces
at the monkeys. (The boys always want to look at the snakes, the girls always
want to look at the cats, and they always compromise by looking at the
monkeys.) “That editor of yours,” Lance said.