Augusta Played (16 page)

“Are you bed in bad?”

“Am I
bad
in
bed
!
”

“Oh,” he said, “no. At least I don't think so. I thought you were fabulous. But then”—he was thoughtful, trying to remember—“there aren't too many women I can compare you with. There's Elaine, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Well, it isn't really all that
of course
. I think Elaine would like to give it up altogether. She does her duty, of course. Did Norman say you were bad in bed?”

“No, he said I was rather good.”

“Then what makes you think otherwise?”

“Do you cheat on Elaine much?”

“Gussie!” he said, gazing on her lugubriously.

“I mean with other girls besides me.”

“I don't think so. No, I wouldn't say that I do. Sometimes, of course.”

“You keep saying
of course
as though everything was perfectly clear, but Richard, I no longer know what to think about anything.”

“Why is that?”

“For one thing, somebody keeps calling and hanging up.”

“Well,” he said, “that's only normal. That's standard for New York. Actually”—he reached for her hand—“I thought of doing that myself a few times. Just to hear your voice, you understand. But I didn't. It must be someone else who wants to hear your voice.”

“Richard, I don't think these calls are for me!”

“You don't mean somebody wants to hear Norman's voice? Well,” he exclaimed, indignant, “I can swear to you that I never telephoned and hung up in order to hear your husband's voice.”

“I know,” she said, sadly. “I wish it were you. I'd rather believe it was just you being crazy. I think Norman is seeing someone, and we haven't even been married for a decent interval yet. It ought to be like mourning. You shouldn't start cheating on your wife until you've been married at least a year, should you?”

“Is it only the phone calls that make you think this?”

“He works late. Once a week. He says he's at Columbia but I know he isn't because once I tried to call him there.”

“He might have stepped out for a while. Gone to the West End Bar, or something.”

“I don't think so. The guy in the office seemed very surprised that anyone would telephone. They were shut up tight.”

“Well, he was there. This guy.”

“But he wasn't supposed to be. He said he was a revolutionary. I think he was stealing files. He advised me to hang tough and keep the faith.”

“And did you?”

“I said I would.”

“It sounds like pretty good advice to me. I don't know that I have anything to add. Unless it's to suggest that you and I take up where we left off. It would give Norman something to think about besides musicology.” He was leaning across the length of the couch, trying to blow in her ear, but she was too far away and he wound up blowing at her sleeve. She laughed.

“I think I better go,” she said. “If Elaine walked in now, she'd think you lost your mind.”

“She thinks that anyway. Who knows, she could be right. Elaine is very shrewd.”

Gus had got up and was standing in front of the huge mirror, knotting the scarf at the nape of her neck. Her long, wavy hair tumbled out from under the triangle. “I need my bag,” she said.

“Here it is.” He looked at the book beside it. “Hey, Gussie, can I borrow this? I've always meant to read it.”

“Sure,” she said, “I suppose so.” She turned to go. “I'm glad I saw you today,” she said, softly.

“Me too. I miss you, Gussie.” He tugged at a lock of hair.

“Stay in touch,” she whispered, turning, and running.

He watched her go, down the stairs. She hated elevators.

He stepped back inside the apartment, sighed, poured himself a finger of Scotch, and sat soulfully down again on the couch. Elaine wouldn't be home until dinner time; even the kids wouldn't be home until three-thirty. He picked up the book Gussie had left; it was about Beethoven. He opened it. Once upon a time, it had been a library book. Her husband had written his name on the back of the front cover. There were other notes on the same page. He began reading them. It wasn't easy, because the handwriting slanted backwards and the words were jammed together; the notes crossed one another in different directions. Richard drank the Scotch and fixed himself another. After all, how often was a mere conductor privy to the innermost thoughts of a cultural musicologist? A certain sportive
joie de vivre
began to fill his being, as warming as the whiskey. Rossini as orally fixated, Beethoven's relationship with his nephew, cross-references to Goethe and da Vinci, church music, the Greek modes and the Apollonian and Dionysian split in Western culture—the notes were endless. Somewhere there was bound to be something about the phallic baton. Thank God a conductor only had to make music, not analyze its significance. Here, he thought, what's this? Birdie Mickle Miss Chicken Delight. There was a telephone number. What did Birdie Mickle Miss Chicken Delight have to do with Cultural Musicology? “I will pour myself a third Scotch and think about this,” Richard said to himself, aloud, beginning to feel the effect of the whiskey. But instead of reaching for the decanter, he reached for the telephone.

27

S
HE'S
FINGERLICKIN'
GOOD
. Richard reflected on the sign at length. It was still light, but the neon flashed through the midsummer evening haze. Traffic lights blinked, and more lights were going on and off in the pinball gallery next door. It was the kind of New York night that presses people together, wraps them in a gauzy, good-natured sense of fellowship. A kid came up to Richard and walloped him in the back, near the left kidney. “Hey, mister,” the kid said, before Richard had a chance to say anything, “it was an accident. Don't you believe me?”

“Why did you do that?” Richard asked, mournfully, but the kid had already drifted into the distance. The streets were packed with people. It was a warm, friendly night, the kind of night that promises excitement, and there was a mood of jubilation that seemed to snake through the crowd, striking here and then there. The war was over; it had lasted six days. Vietnam was momentarily forgotten.

Richard made up his mind and went into The Joint. The next show was at ten and by the time it started he was plastered. He stood at the bar. Finally Miss Chicken Delight came on, and before she went off again, she was looking, Richard thought, pretty plucked. What a bird. He caught her backstage.

“Mr. Hacking,” she said, solemnly, “I told you, I do another show at twelve. I can't leave until after that.”

“Come have a few drinks,” he said, almost pleading. He was a great deal taller than she and every time he looked down at her he got dizzy. He had never seen a pair like these—not from this angle, anyway. “I have been looking forward to this meeting,” he said. “Miss Mickle.”

“What do you do, anyhow?”

“Do?”

“You didn't explain that on the telephone,” she said, warily. “You do something, don't you? You're not one of these types who live on welfare, are you? I have never”—she drew herself up proudly, and the feathers on her nipples fluttered—“I have never resorted to welfare, although I have received unemployment compensation when it was an emergency. Sometimes things just go wrong.”

“I'll bet,” Richard said, dreamily, “that you could fly with those if you wanted to.”

“With what? Oh, you mean these? No,” she said, lifting her breasts and letting them drop again, “I'm afraid I can't make them flap. It's a question of pectoral muscles. I can twirl them, though. See?”

“Oh, yes,” Richard said, “I see! But I'm not sure I see how it works. Will you do it again, please?”

“Sure. Here.” She twirled her tits. “Actually,” she said, “it's very simple. Any stripper worth her salt can do it.”

“That's wonderful, Miss Mickle.”

“Thank you,” she said, leading him to a table, “but you didn't come here to see me twirl my tits.”

Richard was pensive. “I think I did, Miss Mickle. I think that probably is why I came. Can you tell me what that is?” He was pointing at the purple chicken next to her mouth.

“My signature,” she said.

“Oh,” he said, “certainly.”

“It helps to identify me. Professionally, I mean.”

“I think it would be very difficult to confuse you with anyone else.”

“You'd be surprised. This is a highly competitive business. But you never told me what you do, Mr. Hacking.”

“Didn't I?” he said. “I told you I wanted to see you about a mutual friend.”

“Norman Gold, you said.”

“Yes. Well, he isn't really a friend of mine. In fact, I've never met him. But I'm a friend of his wife's.”

“I don't understand what you want with me, Mr. Hacking. I have never even met Mrs. Gold. Not either of the Mrs. Golds,” she added, feeling a surge of forlornness.

“Gussie doesn't know I'm here. I found your number in a book that she lent me which belongs to her husband.”

“Norman.”

“Yes. Although really it belongs to the library at Columbia. Gussie left it with me when she came to tell me that Norman was having an affair with you.”

“Norman?”

“Yes. Although she didn't actually give me your name. She didn't say if she knew who it was, only that she thought Norman was having an affair with someone. But then I found your name in this book, and I figured why else would a musicologist have a stripper's private phone number? You see what I mean, Miss Mickle? So I decided to look you up and find out if you were going to continue this affair, because if you are, then I might be able to convince Gussie that she has a legitimate excuse for resuming her affair with me.”

“But I'm not having an affair with Norman. I'm having one with his father. And he has prostate trouble,” she added, sadly.

“I don't understand.”

“You should. It's very common in men when they get older. It usually makes them horny, but Sidney sees it as a
memento mori
, if you follow me.”

“I mean I don't understand what this means. You're supposed to be sleeping with Norman.”

“No, I'm not. I'm supposed to be sleeping with Sidney, but he doesn't like for me to pester him.”

“Then what do you do with Norman?”

“Nothing. I only met him once, and that was in his father's office. We have a beautiful friendship, but it's all on the telephone. Even that isn't all it should be, because I keep late hours. You'll appreciate that. Anyway, it all started because I tried to get him to stop blackmailing Sidney, but he said that if he agreed to that I would be depriving Sidney of his one chance to redeem his relationship with his son. Norman convinced me. After all, the father-son relationship is really special. Anyone who reads books knows that. Between fathers and daughters is a different story, I should know, but I guess more sons than daughters write books. Be that as it may, as a reader and a citizen I wouldn't want to come between any father and his son, much less Sidney and Norman. Why, Norman told me that if he didn't blackmail his father, they wouldn't ever get to see each other. It would be, like, kaput between them. This way, they see each other every week. Norman says he sees his father more now than he did when he was a kid. Sidney was D.A. then, you know.”

“I didn't know.”

“Now you do! I admire men of action, like Sidney. They're, you know, active. Mr. Hacking,” she said, bending over to adjust the strap on her shoe and then looking up at him through her false eyelashes in a way he could only assume was entirely artful, “what
do
you do?”

“I'm not a man of action,” he said, regretting this truth about himself more than he ever imagined he would.

“I don't believe that,” she said, now straightening up and idly flicking one of her nipple feathers with a fingernail, “even for one little minute.”

He gave in. “I'm a conductor.”

“On a bus or on a train?”

Hell, she was going to think he was an idiot. “In an orchestra.”

“A symphonic orchestra!”

He nodded, culpable.

“Oh,” she said, “oh, oh.” Richard couldn't believe his ears.

“You could go to Hollywood on the strength of that
oh”
he said.

“Oh, I'd much rather stay here and talk with you! I love intellectuals!”

“I thought you preferred men of action?”

“Action,” she said. “I can take it or leave it. But thinking is something else. Men who think are really deep.”

“Thank you,” he said, “but I don't really think of myself as an intellectual. It's more Gussie's husband's thing.”

“You're just modest,” she said. “A conductor!”

“Do you like music?”

“I listen to the radio all the time. I have to listen to rock music here, but at home I listen to the semi-classical station. I read, too. And I do interpretative dancing. Interpretative dancing is just about the most important thing in my life, I expect.”

“What's that?”

“You really don't know? Look, Mr. Hacking—”

“Richard.”

“Richard,” she said, smiling her scene-stealing smile at him. “Come to my place and I'll show you in person what interpretative dancing is.”

“But your show—”

“It's okay. I'll tell the manager to put somebody else on. Jock can take my place. You pay the bill while I run get my raincoat. Oh—” she said.

“Yes?”

“I certainly am pleased to make your acquaintance, Richard!”

28

I
N
THE
INFINITELY
SOFT
, velvet and satin, feather and fur apartment on Madison Avenue, with Désirée pillows, Richard sat on the Empire sofa while Birdie danced for him to Ravel's
Bolero
. He had always roundly detested this piece but, as he told her, she explored possibilities of meaning which he had never realized it contained. She was still wearing her meager feathers. “Birdie,” Richard said—they were on a first-name basis now—“you have the sexiest…the sexiest…”