Jealous Woman (3 page)

“That $227 will calm you down.”

“Is that what I won?”

“About.”

“Want to walk?”

On the bridge near her hotel we stopped and watched the water rushing along under the moon, and when I looked I saw somebody I hadn’t known was there. I mean, up to now, allowing for stuff you might see in any woman that was jangled up over what her husband was pulling, she had been just what Delavan had said, a well-born dame that might meet somebody before long, but didn’t live where I lived. Now, though, she was just a nice girl, nothing snooty, nothing horsey, just a girl with a guy on a bridge. “Do you realize, Mr. Horner, that you did something peculiar today?”

“And specially tonight, when I let you do the winning.”

“Today you came to me, not to your beautiful horse.”

“I should have, shouldn’t I?”

“Just doing your duty?”

“Why, sure.”

“Anyway, thanks.”

She looked away quick, and I felt like a heel, because she didn’t mean anything but a little flirting under the moon, but just to be sociable I could have played up to it. I wanted to, don’t get me wrong about that. Just the same, I’ve got a policy on that stuff. Until that application was signed, sealed and forwarded with report of medical examination to the home office, no romance on the bridge for Ed Horner. I took her home and said good night. Couple of nights later I bumped into her again and helped her win some more. Moving from one place to another, she’d put her hand on my arm and I’d catch her looking at me, like maybe I was dumb on horses, but I had a few other things she liked. In the meantime, I had Delavan examined by the doctor, got his check, and sent his papers through to Los Angeles. Then I felt free to call her. “How do you feel about dinner tonight, Mrs. Delavan?”

“Well, let me see, how do I feel?”

“Just inquiring.”

“My maid is summoned to court. Oh, that’s right, you were there when she told me about it. Her case comes up at four, and I’ll have to be there, as it’s a question of bail.”

“That oughtn’t to take all day.”

“Then I’ll be free.”

“Around seven?”

“I’ll expect you.”

I went to the hearing, just to keep the record straight, and sat in the back of the room. Delavan was there, and the maid, and Jane, and a couple of lawyers. It took about ten minutes. The maid was held, in $250 bail, and Jane took cash out of her handbag to put it up. I felt kind of proud I had a little something to do with that cash. She wasn’t broke any more.

That night I expected her to be upset, but she didn’t show any ill effects, and we went to the Bonanza for dinner. Then I drove her to Virginia City, the old mining town, for a brandy at a bar there, and after that we took a walk on the boardwalk to look at the pioneer stuff. Then we came back to Reno for a little more circular golf, and she won a little, but not much. Then we strolled over to my office to look up the Count’s pedigree, so she could see where those gaits came from. When I put on the desk lights she spotted the cups and brought one over to read the engraving on it. Then she said: “You’re such a funny thing.”

“How?”

“Such a—go-getter.”

“Is that funny?”

“But I mean it as a compliment!”

“Then O.K.”

“My world is oh, so veddy well-bred. In plain English, well-heeled. Well-heeled heels that would regard go-getting as a distinct social solecism.”

“As—
what
?”

“I just said that to see your face. As a distinct breach of form. But you, you really like to bring home that cup, don’t you?”

“And I do it, don’t make any mistake about that.”

“I like you for it.” She took my head in her hands and put a little soft kiss on my mouth. I put my arm around her and pulled her to me, to mean it. “No, please.”

“If not, why not?”

“I’m still married. It would be messy.”

On the doorknob, when we came in, had been a notice of a wire. So when she began looking up the pedigree I rang to find out what it was. They read it to me, and it was from Los Angeles, and I saved it:

DELAVAN POLICY MAILED YOU TODAY BUT HOLD DELIVERY PENDING FURTHER ORDERS. MR. KEYES ARRIVING YELLAND FIELD TEN TOMORROW WEDNESDAY A.M. REGARDS

NORTON

When I finally got her home, and said good night at the elevators, and went around to the Fremont, where I lived, and got to my apartment, I hit the roof. I cussed, I raved, I stomped around, till the desk rang up to know if there was something wrong. Then I tried liquor and that didn’t work. Finally I went to bed, but don’t get the idea I went to sleep. Norton is president of the company and Keyes is head of the claim department, a bird we got not long ago from another of the Norton group of companies, and there was no claim on the Delavan policy yet but he gets called in on all kinds of stuff that the underwriters don’t know what to do about, and without hearing any more about it this meant trouble. With Keyes in it it would be just plain agony, because if there was any twisted, cock-eyed, queer angle that could be found on it, he’d turn it up, and about two dozen of his own that nobody else could find in it, but that he had to see just to show what a genius he was at it.

I
HADN’T SEEN HIM SINCE
two or three cases he’d had that had got a lot of space in the newspapers, and while I had heard about the way he was playing up to it, and the reporters at the airport should have tipped me off, I wasn’t quite ready for what came off the plane. In the first place, he had lost about fifty pounds, because while he wasn’t exactly a slim, slanky cowboy type even now, he was rightdown beautiful compared with the Berkshire hog type he had been before. In the second place, the clothes he wore, from the down-on-one-side hat to the tailormade suit, were just like what a picture actor wears on a personal appearance tour. And in the third place, he had that look in his eye that says camera. He saw me and waved, and then looked surprised as anything at the reporters at the gate, though how they would be there if somebody hadn’t tipped them off, I couldn’t quite figure out. He stood twenty minutes being interviewed, on the political situation, the business outlook, and the crime wave, which all hands seemed to know about, though it was the first I’d heard there was one. Then I drove him to the Washoe-Truckee, where I had tried to get him a deluxe suite, but there weren’t any, so they gave him a nice single on the east side of the hotel and we walked over to my office. I sat him behind my desk, put the Delavan folder in front of him, went out to see some prospects, and told Linda I’d ring in from time to time to see if he was ready to talk. So when I got back around five it turned out his idea of when to talk was that night after dinner. I had to call Mrs. Delavan and break my date. “I’m sorry, but there’s a shot here from the home office and there’s nothing much I can do.”

“Well, Mr. Horner, does it really matter?”

“It does to me.”

“Then maybe you’ve forgotten something.”

“Which is?”

“The gambling houses never close—why not—why not,
Ed
?”

“Say, say, say.”

“Put him bidey-bye and ring Jingle-Janey.”

After dinner I took him to a picture, and around eleven there didn’t seem to be any place he could go but bed. So I took him to the hotel. I waved as he went up in the car, and he was hardly out of sight when I dived for the house phone.

“But, Ed, who’s the shot?”

“Just head of the claim department.”

“Anything wrong?”

“No. Why?”

“You seem greatly preoccupied.”

“Preoccupied with color.”

She had on slacks and a mink coat, with red bag, red shoes, and a red ribbon around her hair, and the way I told it, it had given me the idea for a whole new system based on betting the red. It cost me $18 before we switched to something that made sense, but she thought it was hot stuff and forgot about everything else. But then, as we took a drift over to some new place to change our luck, my heart stood still because there at a chuck-a-luck game stood Keyes. I pulled her back on the street. “But what—?”

“The shot from the home office.”

“Well?”

“Jane, I’d rather he didn’t see me.”

“Doing exactly what he’s doing?”

“He’s on a trip, and if he makes it a toot, well—they all do. But me, I’m home, and if it looks like I did it every night, that’s different.”

We started down the street, her hand on my arm, as it generally was now, but her head was down, like she was thinking. And pretty soon she said: “I have the queerest feeling.”

“About the red? It’s no good.”

“About the shot from the home office. I keep thinking it’s not the roulette you don’t want him to see, but me.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“It would certainly seem so, and yet—”

After awhile she stopped and faced me. “Now I’ve got it. ... The insurance deal is still on, isn’t it?”

“Listen, I bring home cups.”

“And this man’s investigating, isn’t he?”

“He might be.”

“Will you send him to me?”

“What for?”

“I might block this insurance.”

“This is not a guy I can send places, to you or anybody. This is Mr. Keyes, that regards himself as a national celebrity, and maybe he takes my advice, and maybe he doesn’t. And anyway, I’ve got enough trouble with him already without fixing it up for you to make me a little more.”

“To you this is just insurance, isn’t it?”

“That’s all.”

“And human questions, they don’t matter?”

“Yeah, Jane, but what’s insurance got to do with it?”

“Everything.”

“That’s no answer. Give.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I’d involve other people.”

“Like who?”

“I can’t discuss it with you.”

“Then the deal’s on.”

We went on a little way, then she stopped and right under the bright lights on Virginia Street she took my two coat lapels in her hands. “Ed, can’t you take what I say on faith?”

“Afraid not.”

“Would I be one to imagine things?”

“I wouldn’t say so.”

“Then why won’t you believe me?”

“You really want to know?”

“You know I do.”

“The No. 5 cup.”

I told her about the five-star cluster, and all the rest of it. Her eyes got wet, so they glittered. “But that’s so childish.”

“So’s everything.”

“But terrible things are at stake.”

“What are they?”

“If this wasn’t so serious it would be funny.”

She put her arms around me, there in front of the hotel, and kissed me, warm and full, the first time she ever had. “You like me a lot, Ed, or so you said.”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

“I think you are too.”

“Jane, are
you
in love with
me
?”

“I’m suffering from a badly bruised heart, and you can’t forget everything and be in love at the drop of a hat. But I’m happy when I’m with you, so I guess it’s not far off. Now, because you love me, will you drop this whole thing simply because I ask it and tell Tom he can’t have his insurance? There’s a reason for that. When he finds he can’t get insurance he’ll be so frightened he’ll drop this whole thing he intends to do to me. You see, Tom’s whole trouble is he can never take anything seriously. Whether it’s marriage, polo, or work, such little work as he does, it’s always the same. He makes a game of it. He even has to make a game out of ending his marriage. But if he’s a child about such things, he’s also a child in his unusual capacity to feel fear. This will scare him to death, and end the whole farce. Promise me, and then we’ll go up to my nice little suite and make coffee and you can work on the $64 question: What have you got that makes me want to run my fingers through your hair?”

I didn’t promise, but I kissed her, and I can kid myself all I please, but I know now, and I knew then, that she took it as a promise. Well, why did I go up with her, have coffee, spend one of those romantic hours, and not bring the thing up any more, to make it all clear, how I stood? I think I’ve told you, an agent thinks he’s doing anybody a swell turn to get a policy written for them, whether it’s for one year or twenty. And by that time, I had come to the conclusion that whatever it was she meant by all the fuss she was kicking up, it didn’t amount to much, or wouldn’t, once she combed Delavan out of her hair. On top of that, I’ll admit it, I wanted the cup, but I could see no reason, no reason that made any sense at all, why I couldn’t have the cup and her too, or at least have a wonderful time with her, and the works later, with orange blossoms, if that’s how it turned out. Then O.K., O.K., I’ll say it again: I wanted that cup.

And, believe it or not, I told Keyes what had been said, when he came to the office next morning after talking with Delavan. So far, I had told him nothing about her. But the way I did it, like leaving out her asking me to promise, was proof that down deep in me I wasn’t really telling all I knew, I was just going through the motions. I kept saying to myself it was “personal,” whatever that meant, and nobody’s business but my own. He hardly heard me. “I don’t see anything to this but a playboy that’s come into an unexpected piece of change and has figured a way to pretend to himself he’s going to do something pretty nice for her to square up for giving her a dirty deal on the annulment.”

“That’s how I see it.”

“And there might be a blow-hard angle.”

“In what way, Mr. Keyes?”

“In his clubs, or wherever he hangs out. It’s around, don’t worry, how little she’s getting, because he even admits it isn’t enough. But if he can toss it off about the ‘six-figure insurance deal’ that was put on top of it, that’ll get around too. Once it’s around, what does he care? He’s taken care of his name, and at the end of a year he can quit worrying. As he says, she’ll probably be married anyway. He’s probably patting himself on the back, what a noble guy he is. And there may be a tax angle we don’t know about.”

“You don’t seem to believe much in nobility.”

“In a word, no.”

“What do you make of her, Mr. Keyes?”

“Well, who
would
want this annulment?”