Living Room (11 page)

“Why trouble?” asked Shirley.

“In Westchester if a single man wants a big house they think he’s out to corrupt the neighborhood with orgies or some illicit business traffic, something. The first question they always asked was ‘How large is your family?’ and then they’d look at me closely, I was what, twenty-two? In most of those places you can’t just argue the price and put money down, they look at you as if you were going to move in with them instead of you moving in after they move out. And if you check things with neighbors, which I did, the neighbors wonder out loud why you’re buying a big house,
et cetera. I finally found one.”

“Some find,” said Mary. “It’s gorgeous. Stone, formal gardens, a wooded area as far as the eye can see, a living room you could throw this whole apartment around in.”

“Mary flipped the first time she saw it. I invited her to stay and try it out. I didn’t invite Jack.”

Shirley sipped her espresso. This erector set of a man was not your usual blind date.

“It’s a nice place,” said Al. “I get claustrophobic under eight- or nine-foot ceilings. I like space above my head.”

“You need space above your head,” said Shirley.

“You live in the city?”

“I can walk to work.”

“Ever mugged?”

“I’m the rape kind, not the mug kind. My father didn’t go in for insurance, in fact he’s still alive.”

Shirley felt that childhood thing, a sharp constriction of the chest, her mother’s voice in her ear,
Shirley, smart-ass is not the same as being clever.

*

After cognac had been poured and they all were feeling easier with each other, Shirley, instead of the relaxation she had hoped for, was feeling tense again. It could have been fatigue. Yet something about Al held her.

It was Jack who asked, “How’s the project coming, Al?”

“Early to tell. Interesting.”

“I thought you didn’t work,” said Shirley.

“I don’t have a job is what I meant.”

“Al is—” Mary started to say, but Al cut her off.

“I’d just as soon not talk about it.”

Mary blushed.

“I meant now,” said Al.

Clearly,
thought Shirley,
not in front of me.

“I guess,” said Shirley, “I ought to turn in.”

Mary and Jack looked at Al, who sat without speaking. Finally, Jack said, “I’ll go down with you and help find a cab.”

“What’s wrong with the doorman?” asked Al.

“If I can help her find the doorman,” said Jack, “he’ll help her find a cab.” He was still expecting a volunteer. “You staying a while?” he asked Al.

“Sure. The night’s early.” He rose to say goodbye.

“I’m curious about one thing,” said Shirley. “Do
you
have lots of life insurance?”

Al laughed. “It’s not an inheritable characteristic. He had me as an excuse. I have no dependents.”

Mary and Jack exchanged a look.

“Good night,” said Shirley. “Nice meeting you.”

“Same,” said Al.

Jack took her out the door.

Al studied Mary’s disappointment.

“Well,” said Mary, after a minute. “I guess she’s not your type.”

“I don’t know that I have a type, Mary.”

“I was hoping.”

“You didn’t conceal that.”

Mary held the cognac bottle up and he nodded. As she bent, pouring, Al studied the admirable contours of her buttocks. When she straightened up, they were standing a few feet apart. Mary surmised he was going to put his arms around her. She didn’t stop him, but close to his ear she said, “We’re supposed to be on good behavior now.”

And so they sat on opposite sides of the room, waiting for Jack to return.

CHAPTER TEN

TOO TIRED TO READ, stretched out in her bed like a collapsed Raggedy Ann, Shirley’s mind rambled in the dark. Too much time had gone by since she had seen her father. Father? My God, Sunday was Father’s Day, she had almost forgotten. Summoning strength, she got out of bed and wrote out a note to herself and Scotch-taped it to her bathroom mirror. Must pick up a present tomorrow. Mustn’t forget.

She got back into bed, determined to fall asleep instantly, instead her drifting mind thought of Arthur. He would have read her plan for Ford by now. What was he thinking?

But her thought would not stay in place. She wondered if the voice was still sitting in Jack and Mary’s living room as if he had all the time in the world. Were they talking about her?

Why had she found his voice interesting? It wasn’t anything he said, it was that strange resonance. Voices were not disembodied. Yet her mother’s voice was. Could Al what’s-his-name lay his voice down here beside her, let it speak, without the bother of a body? Why without? Too thin? Hard to tell, why tell? Why thinking this? Joan of Arc
got burned listening to voices.

Sleep caught her unawares.

*

When Jack came back after getting Shirley into a cab, Al asked him, “On a scale of a hundred, what does medicine know now that won’t likely be contradicted by future research? I guess that’s an impossible question.”

Mary studied the two men. With Shirley present, they had been a group. Now she was excluded.

“It’s a guess,” said Jack. “Ten percent.”

“What are the weakest links?”

“Psychology, meaning the psychosomatic origins. Viruses. In surgery, immunology.”

It went on for half an hour. Mary thought of Shirley home in bed alone. Her name was never mentioned.

When Al left, Mary checked the baby, undressed, prepared for bed, came out into the living room to find Jack yawning.

“Come to bed.”

Mary was dozing when she felt the weight on the mattress shift.

“Do you think anything happened tonight?” she asked.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I think we ought to give up matchmaking.”

*

On the drive up to Westchester, Al thought a moment about Shirley. Face and figure good, quality of mind as yet unknown. He flipped on the car radio to get the late news, and rolled the window down to help keep him awake. He didn’t understand people who slept in the same bed with other people every night of their adult lives. Making love was one thing, sleep another. Coupling they called it. Till death do us part. Why are people so sanctimonious about their bodies? Wasn’t he? Would Jack ever find out what had happened between him and Mary? They say someday everybody finds everything out. He turned the radio louder in the hope that it would drown but his thoughts.

In Westport, Arthur Crouch had retreated to his study after a late dinner, clipped the end of a cigar, made himself comfortable in
his Barcalounger. Grateful to be away from the living room, where Jane would interrupt every few minutes, he settled himself in his retreat and slowly read Shirley’s Ford proposal.

When he finished, he had one more puff on the cigar, now just a stub, and snuffed it in the ashtray. He wondered how the others would react to Shirley’s idea. He felt a moment’s fibrillation. Nothing ventured, something gained: peace. Maybe he should never have hired Shirley. He closed his eyes and found himself remembering the day that Harold Armon died.

When Armon, Caiden, and Crouch had thrown their careers together, Max Caiden had a reputation as the great account-catcher. Arthur was the administrator, charged with building a viable organization. And Harry Armon had been the idea man. But in less than five years, one bright spring day, they had all gone their separate ways to lunch, and Harry never returned. Within a block of the office, late for a client meeting at the Four Seasons, he had suddenly sat down next to a trash can on Forty-seventh Street and told a woman passing by he thought he was having a heart attack. He died before the ambulance arrived. Harry would have been forty-three the following Sunday.

Arthur didn’t realize how much he had liked Harry as a person as well as a partner until after he was gone. Nor had Arthur realized how big a bastard Max Caiden was. Before Harry Armon’s estate could be wrapped up, Max, thinking the agency’s creative capacities had gone down the hole with Harry in the cemetery, took his person and nine of the agency’s most lucrative accounts elsewhere.

Arthur remembered the panic of those days, interviewing a stream of potential partners heavy on the creative side and sensing that every last son of a bitch would snatch Armon, Caiden, Crouch away from him first chance he got.

In an untrustworthy world, he finally settled for Marvin Goodkin as creative director because Marvin, though mischievous and as untrustworthy as
the others, had the instincts of an
employee rather than an entrepreneur and wanted a high salary and not a piece of the action. Marvin’s flash and aggressiveness helped the agency hold the remaining accounts, most importantly Ford, without which Arthur would have been compelled to fold his tent.

Marvin’s way was to build an organization of copywriters and artists who were talented and weak. He demanded obedience, not loyalty. “In this business,” he was fond of saying, “there are six zillion guys who can design an ad and write copy for it. If someone quits, you get someone else. If someone acts smart, you get rid of him.” To Marvin, people were standard interchangeable parts. Shirley Hartman was intolerable to him. He, like Jane Crouch, guessed wrongly that something might be going on between Arthur and Shirley. He considered that a special relationship. If Shirley bypassed him, he’d just bide his time.

The Ford plan might turn into Marvin’s opportunity. Yet he couldn’t bury it. Shirley wouldn’t let him. And it might just work.

Arthur sighed. He knew he should make up his mind and then lead the Plans Board. Instead, he would play it by ear, see what happens. Arthur, he told himself, you’re a weak son of a bitch. When are you going to be able to determine what’s best for yourself?

He put Shirley’s memo in his briefcase so he wouldn’t forget it Monday morning and prepared himself for bed. Jane, thank heaven, was already asleep.

*

Shirley slept until late in the morning hours on Saturday, awakened feeling spring in her veins. She opened the drapes and the sun burst in her vision; she turned from the light to face a bedroom that had been transformed into gold by the brightness streaming in from outdoors. Nothing planned, she showered, dressed and ate, thought of the Central Park Zoo, always great on a spring day, always certain to bring childhood flooding back;
lunch at an outdoor café in the part of the Village where she once lived; a boatride up the Hudson; she would call a friend.

But what she did was flip through the pages of the Westchester phone book under the “C’s” to find Chunin, Al.

She found nothing. Number unlisted?

She gave the name to the operator. Yes, number unlisted.

She called Mary Wood to thank her for dinner, to apologize for leaving early, perhaps to get Al’s phone from her, but there was no answer. Mary and Jack and Clarence were out strolling in the sunshine.

You are behaving like a horse’s ass, she told herself. You don’t even know the man. He may not be interested. There are other people you could call.

Shirley loved spur-of-the-moment, impromptu arrangements. And so she dialed half a dozen friends before she gave up. They had all deserted their homes. Gone where? The country? Al
lived
in the country. Alone.

Which is how she had her lunch, at the outdoor café in the Village, alone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

PHILIP HARTMAN, now sixty-eight, never slept past six a.m. “Sleeping,” he said, “is for the dead.”

On Sunday, Shirley telephoned early.

“Good morning, Pop.”

“Shirley,
neshumah,
nice to hear your voice, what gives?”

“Happy Father’s Day, Pop.”

“Today?”

“Today.”

“Why didn’t you warn me?”

“The papers have been warning you for three weeks. I’m coming over.”

“
Oy,
give me a few hours, I’ve got—”

“Pop, if you’ve got Mrs. Bialek over there, I don’t mind.”

“Shirley, she thinks it’s immoral.” The old man laughed. “Listen, favor. Don’t come in a limousine, okay?”

“I only did that once.”

“Once feeds the neighbors for a year. They think a girl your age can earn a limousine only one way. Gossip like that I don’t need.”

“I’ll take the subway.”

“Don’t do that. I had to ride subways for forty years. Now only muggers ride the subway.”

“I’ll take a cab.”

“Bless you.”

“It’ll take me an hour. That’ll give Mrs. Bialek a chance to get her girdle on.”

“Shirley, tell the cabby to drive carefully, you hear?”

“I hear. See you soon.”

*

The doorman had to go around the corner to Park Avenue to hail one of the Sunday-morning cruisers and picked a winner for Shirley, a Puerto Rican driver who had never heard of Mosholu Parkway.