Death of an Angel (3 page)

“People do, at parties,” Jerry said. “Especially people on display. You know that.”

She did. But it was more than that. She was certain it was more than that.

“Probably,” Jerry said. “It's in your own mind.” He gestured; a waiter presented a tray; they exchanged empty glasses for glasses that bubbled. Bradley Fitch was passing; he stopped. “Making out all right, cousins?” he asked, and beamed at them. “Wonderfully,” Pam said. “It's a wonderful party.” Fitch went on. He was a large man; he moved with remarkable grace. “Like a big cat,” Pam said. “They'll all be very annoyed at us.”

“They,” Jerry said, “will be asleep on all the chairs they are supposed to stay off of. Leaving cat hair.”

That the Norths' three cats would be doing precisely that was obvious; that they would, in time, arise to express the vociferous protest of abandoned Siamese equally went without saying.

“Now,” Pam said, “we're doing it. Where
is
Miss Shaw? Because that's it, isn't it? It's her party, more than Mr. Strothers'. More even than Sammy's. What is there about her?”

“She's good-looking,” Jerry said. “She's a good actress. I don't mean a Helen Hayes, but—”

Pam was shaking her head. He stopped.

“There's more than that,” Pam said.

“Sure,” Jerry said. “The indescribable something, and I quote from somebody.”

“From everybody,” Pam said. “She—” Pam stopped. She was looking toward the door from the foyer. There was a stir there. Bradley Fitch, tall enough to show above the others, seemed the center of the stir.

But he was not. The stir moved into the room, and now most of those in the room were aware of it. And Fitch was not the center—or was, at best, a segment of the center, an adjunct of the center.

The center was a small and beautifully arranged young woman in a gold evening dress which left perfect shoulders bare. The center was a young woman of twenty-five, born Mary Shaftlich on Independence Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, daughter of the manager of a chain grocery store; graduate of Northeast High School, where she had “taken elocution” and of the Heart of America Business College, from which she had emerged as an only moderately competent stenographer. The center was, in other words, Naomi Shaw.

“Why,” Pam North said, looking at Naomi across the room, “she's really gay, isn't she?”

Sometimes one may toss a single match into a smoldering fire, and find that flame leaps up. Sometimes a party comes alight.…

“It's a wonderful party,” Pam North was saying, half an hour later, this time to a handsome young man named Sidney Castle—who danced perfectly—and this time meaning it. There had been another room behind the big room with the chandelier, and here the floor was bare and polished, and here there was a small orchestra. (And another bar. Mr. Fitch did things perfectly; that could no longer be denied.) Voices were generally somewhat louder by then, but they seemed (which was absurd) to have become more melodious.

“Tops,” Sidney Castle said. “Absolutely tops.”

It was, Pam thought absently, not so much what he said as the way he said it. He was a very expert dancer; she could look anywhere she liked. She could see Jerry dancing with—oh yes, that Mrs. Nelson. And there was dear old Jasper with—why, that was the girl with the famous laugh. She looked much smaller in real life, and much prettier, too. And Sam Wyatt—Sam of all people!—was dancing with Naomi Shaw, who was laughing at something he had said and looked, in that instant, as she must have looked at the Junior Prom at Northeast High (only rather differently dressed, of course) and seemed without pretense. And there was—

The music stopped. Sidney Castle bowed. He was an expert bower, too. Jerry came toward them and he had the expression—but how
could
he have?—of a man who is beginning to think it's about time to go home. And then—

A horn in the little orchestra sounded “Attention!”—sounded it softly, almost tenderly. And now Naomi Shaw was standing beside, not Sam Wyatt, but Bradley Fitch, and they were—they certainly were—a most beautiful couple.

“—says it's all right,” Bradley Fitch said, and his face was a little flushed, and it appeared he had begun speaking before he planned. He stopped, and put an arm around Naomi's perfect shoulders, and drew her closer.

“Want everybody to know,” Bradley Fitch said. “Nay and I—we're going to get married next week.” He looked around. “Going to steal your girl, cousins,” he said.

There was a kind of tingle in the air.

“Put her in my pocket,” Fitch said, and the delight was evident in his voice. He did, then, lift her off her feet. She laughed, her perfect arms around his neck.

It was very young, Pam thought. It was very charming. It was—

A stocky man in his middle thirties turned suddenly and walked out of the room. He did not dramatize the action. He merely went. A few noticed him, Pam North among them. But, by then, most were drinking to the health and happiness of Naomi Shaw and Bradley Fitch, who had more money than it was easy to think of, a seven-goal handicap in polo and now—and now the “delectable” star of
Around the Corner
.

2

Friday, 5:45
P.M.
to 8:10
P.M.

Jerry North, being trained, had given warning, although it was brief. He was bringing Sam Wyatt home with him for a drink. He had said, “Be with you in a minute, Sam,” from which Pam deduced that Wyatt was, politely, absenting himself from Jerry's private office while Jerry spoke, privately, with his wife. “Needs his hand held,” Jerry said. “Although why he came to me. All right?”

It was of course all right, although Pam made no promise of dinner to follow drinks. “Lamb chops,” Pam said, putting the matter in a nutshell. Lamb chops, as is known to all, cannot be stretched. Jerry said that they would see, which in domestic shorthand meant that they could go out to dinner, if it came to that, which meant that Martha, who cooked for the Norths, would be left somewhat in mid-air. To the smallest things, Pam told the cats, there are ramifications, and went to the kitchen to inform Martha of this new uncertainty. She returned, and decided to change her dress. The cats accompanied her and sat, two on a bed and one on the dressing table, staring with round blue eyes, as if never before had they seen any action so incomprehensible.

Just before Pam heard Jerry's key in the lock, the three cats turned their heads simultaneously toward the hallway which led to the living room, which was where the door was. This meant that they had heard footsteps in the outside hall. But they did not leap from perches and gambol down the hallway, which meant that they had heard alien footsteps, along with those of Jerry, and chose to bide their time. The cat called Gin had been ill, and visited by a veterinarian, so that now any unaccounted-for arrival might presage a hypodermic needle in the rump. To all things, there are ramifications.

Pam went down the hallway, and went quickly, although she did not gambol. Sam Wyatt's face seemed to have increased in length. To her greeting he slightly shook his head and said, “'Lo, Pam,” in a tone of gloom. “Man needs a drink,” Jerry said, from behind Sam Wyatt. “And how,” Sam Wyatt said, with a falling inflection. He snapped the thumb and middle finger of his right hand, soundlessly. “Can't think why I keep doing that,” he said, and looked at the hand with reproach. “Compulsion, probably. Means something, I shouldn't wonder.” He paused. “Something dire, no doubt,” he added. He looked at Pam and shook his head again.

“It's all gone down the drain,” he said.

“I'm terribly sorry,” Pam said. “What?”

“Everything,” Sam said. “Can I have a scotch on the rocks?”

He could. He did. They sat, the Norths with martinis.

“Six per cent of thirty thousand dollars,” Sam Wyatt said. “Thirty-two, one week. Less the ten, of course. A
week
. And then—”

And then, quite unexpectedly, he sniffled. He sniffled again. His eyes filled with tears and Pam, keeping a bright, and she hoped sympathetic, smile, thought, well,
really
.

The wife of a publisher meets writers from time to time, and this is inescapable. Writers often need their hands held and publishers occasionally oblige. Publishers must attend literary cocktail parties, and take their wives, and at such festivals writers are every now and then encountered. So for the breed, Pamela North, of all human idiosyncrasy tolerant, had acquired a special tolerance. But this—this carried it far. Even if things went down drains, did grown men weep into their scotch? It appeared, lamentably, that they did.

Sam Wyatt drew out a handkerchief, and dabbed his eyes. He sniffled further, and dabbed his nose. And then he stood up, and looked around. And then, a little wildly, he pointed toward the door which opened on the hallway to the bedroom, and said, in a choked voice, “Damn. Oh, damn.” And then he sneezed.

Martini, the older of the cats, the mother of the others, had come to scout. It might not be the vet; it had not sounded like the vet. It might be—At the sneeze, which was convulsive, Martini flattened pointed, dark brown ears. She spoke once, with emphasis. She turned, and stalked away, no doubt to warn her offspring. And Sam Wyatt turned to Jerry and said, still in a choking voice, “You've
got them!
”

The Norths merely looked at him.

“Cats!”
Sam Wyatt said. His eyes were streaming, now. “Of all things—
cats!
Don't you know they're worse than horses?”

“Than—” Pam said. “Than
horses
, Mr. Wyatt? I mean—horses in an apartment? I mean—”

She stopped, being unable, at the moment, to mean anything at all.

But Jerry said, “Damn. You've told me. I'd forgotten.” He turned to Pam. “Got to get him out of here,” he said. “Dandruff, you know.”

“Dan—” Pam began, and said, “
Oh!
How dreadful! And we're simply swarming with them. I'm so—”

“Wah-ugh,” Sam Wyatt said.

“—should have remembered,” Pam said, to Sam Wyatt with sympathy, to Gerald North with reproach. She raised her voice. “We have to go, Martha,” she called. “The chops tomorrow or something. Will you feed the—” She stopped. Perhaps even the word. “Martini and you know,” she said. “We—”

But by then Jerry had led Sam Wyatt to the door, and Pam followed. Wyatt sneezed briskly, now, and it was doubtful whether he could see. It was almost half an hour, in the dry coolness of a cocktail lounge, before Sam Wyatt could finally blink away the tears. By then he had, in what voice he could manage, apologized, had assured them that he liked cats, that it was he who should have remembered.

“Is it only cats?” Pam asked, then, and Wyatt shook his head sadly.

It was a lot of things. Cats were the worst, he told them. But horses were bad, also. And even dogs, although less immediately, with somewhat less violence, had the same result.

“Mental, I suppose,” Sam Wyatt said, in a tone of enhanced gloom. “Goes back to my childhood, probably. Cat-block. Probably a cat scratched me when I was—oh, two, maybe—and I got it confused with my mother. Things happen that way, they say.”

This Pam doubted, intensely.

“You'd have had to be scratched by a horse, too, wouldn't you?” she said. “I don't think horses—anyway, that would be ailurophobia. The cat part, at least. And you're not afraid of them.”

“I am of horses,” Wyatt said. “I'm an equinophobe.”

“It's a sensitivity,” Pam said. “Lots of people have it. Jerry and I know a man who's that way about face powder. It makes things terribly difficult, of course.”

“God,” Wyatt said, and snapped his fingers. “Married man?”

“How could he be?” Pam said.

Wyatt said he saw what she meant. He sighed deeply, and it was evident that, in air again breathable, he had reverted to a more basic sorrow. He finished his scotch, lapping the Norths. He beckoned a waiter, and pointed at the empty glass.

“May as well while I can afford it,” he said. He looked at the top of the table. “Wes'll have to close the play,” he said. “Nothing else to do. All on account of Rover boy, with his mouth full of silver spoons. His I'm-going-to-put-this-little-girl-in-my-pocket.” He snapped his fingers. “
My
play,” he said. “This
polo
player Wes was so thick with.”

He drummed on the table.

“What's so special about marriage?” he demanded.

There was a slight pause before Jerry said that a good many people found it rather interesting. Wyatt dismissed such people with another snap—another almost soundless snap—of his right thumb and middle finger. Then he went on, talking to the table top.

In spite of the notice, duly served, that Naomi Shaw was to be pocketed by Bradley Fitch, none of them had at first been too much concerned. Naomi wanted to marry her handsome, and noticeably wealthy, polo player. This was reasonably all right with everybody. It was obvious folly to marry outside the profession, but Nay would have to make her own mistakes. “You'd have thought she'd have learned, but there it is,” Wyatt said, and went on without immediate explanation.

She would want a vacation. This they had all supposed—they being Strothers, Wyatt himself, and the others involved with
Around the Corner
, including the ten other members of the cast. They would close for—oh, for July and August; being generous. There was no danger that
Around the Corner
would be forgotten during a summer hibernation. They would reopen after Labor Day. It would be a nuisance, obviously. There would be the troublesome matter of refunds on tickets already sold. Not all the members of the cast wanted payless months, and there would be adjustments called for. But love must be permitted to conquer something, if not all.