Living Room (37 page)

When she unlocked the door, she saw the two scraps of paper
that had been shoved under. One was from Twitchy. It said only “Please?” The second was from Mary. “Phone any hour.”

Shirley crushed each note into a ball and flung it away. She wanted no contact with anyone now. Finished. Done. Strange to be hungry though. She scooped out the rest of a container of cottage cheese onto a plate, opened a can of fruit and dumped it on top. Two or three mouthfuls and she could eat no more. Her mind was made up. She abandoned the dish on the drainboard next to the sink, left the apartment, and took the elevator to the roof for the first time.

*

The figure on the rooftop was first spotted by the night watchman on his dosed-circuit TV set near the basement entrance. He woke the building superintendent, who told him to call the precinct, then wrapped a raincoat around his pajamas, pulled on socks, put on shoes, and took a pipe wrench just in case. When he reached the roof, he opened the door carefully. The squeak of the hinges caused Shirley, on the ledge, to turn.

“Miss?” said the superintendent, trying not to frighten her.

“Go away.”

He recognized her. “Miss Hartman!”

She stood up, swaying. “Don’t come near me.”

They both heard the police car in the street. Shirley looked down, saw the red light turning on the car’s roof far below. Two uniformed specks got out. If she jumped now, she’d hit the car. Did she want to jump? Was she testing?

The superintendent, who had seen Shirley on television and was proud of having a famous tenant, took advantage of Shirley’s watching the police arrive to move several steps toward her, then another step, almost within reach.

She saw him just as he grabbed her legs. He felt her swaying away from him, prayed to Mary Mother of God and all the Saints, and held on with more strength than he had ever before summoned
in his life, then with a deep breath pulled hard, falling backward, Shirley toppling with him, on him, and together they fell on the roof with a thud.

“Thank God,” he said, getting a better grip on her struggling legs, as the roof door opened and the two cops appeared with drawn guns.

*

At first she was conscious of her body drenched in perspiration, under the blankets. Then, of people in the room.

“Her fever’s breaking.”

She opened her eyes. Jack Wood had his hand on her pulse. “You had one hundred and five degrees, Shirley.”

“My flu,” said Al.

Mary and Dr. Koch were dimly distant in the room.

She remembered bits and pieces of what had happened.

Koch came over. “You frightened all of your friends.”

I frightened myself.
She wanted to speak. Her lips felt very dry.

“Don’t talk,” said Koch. “Just rest. It’s over.” To the others, he said, “Why don’t we go out to the living room?”

“Nice word that,” said Al.

“What?”

“Living room.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

BY COMMUNAL DECISION, Al camped in.
Jack dropped by on his way to the hospital mornings to take pulses, provide restoratives, counsel rest for them both.

On the second day, Dr. Koch came for a long visit. He closed the bedroom door so he and Shirley could talk privately.

“Fever gone?”

“Yes. Just very tired.”

He pulled a chair up to her bedside. “I’m not surprised.”

“I’ve been thinking,” Shirley said.

“It’s permitted.”

“Many people you know go through this?”

Koch scratched his cheek. “Patients. Friends. Noodle-users mainly, smart, they know life isn’t a kindergarten with some teacher telling you what to do every hour. If you know life is elective, how do you know you want to live until you try to die? If more people considered suicide seriously at least once, they might be happier.”

“You’re advocating more suicides?”

“Nonsense. I’m advocating more thought about the options.
Life. Death.”

Shirley envied his equanimity. “Gunther, you, I am afraid, are a wise man.”

“More nonsense,” Koch scoffed. “Experienced maybe, wise no.”

They talked of many things. Then Shirley, gingerly, brought up Mary’s affair with Al.

“Ah,” Koch sighed, “that is such an American trouble. Listen, child, in Europe, in the bathroom, there is one towel, everybody uses it. Maybe it’s not as hygienic as Americans like, but you know, Europe has survived. Americans take sex too seriously.”

“Suppose Mary and Al, well, began again?”

“Shirley, we have to live with the idea that anything can happen. If you were married to this man Al and had fifteen children by him, it could still happen. People do not live by contracts. Only lawyers.”

They could hear the ringing of the phone in the other room. In a moment, Al knocked on the door, poked his head in.

“It’s Crouch again.”

“The real world,” said Shirley.

“I’m not so sure,” said Koch.

“Tell him I’m still recuperating.”

“He says it’s important.”

“Recuperating,” said Shirley, “is important.”

Al closed the door.

“You’ll be all right,” said Koch. “When you’re all better, come and see me if you want to.”

*

The next day, uncomfortable in bed, Shirley put a robe on and sat with Al in the other room.

“Ready for the countryside yet?” Al asked.

“Give it another day. Any news from Montefiore?”

“Talked to Mrs. B. Told her to tell the old man you’ve got
the flu and you don’t want to risk giving it to
him.”

They listened to two records. She felt peaceful. It was time to make connections.

Al helped prop her up with pillows in her favorite chair. The phone, on a long cord, just reached. She dialed the office, asked for Arthur.

She could hear Arthur’s secretary scurrying, the sounds of voices in the background, then quiet and he was on, his voice a waterfall of cheer and good will.

“I was calling to touch base,” said Shirley.

“Glad you have,” said Arthur. “All of us here were sorry to hear you
were…
so ill, you’ve been through a lot, we’re happy you’re recovering, it’s nice to hear your voice again, we don’t want to bother you for a while, we think you’re terrific, Shirley, please come back as soon as you can, and in the meantime… His voice walked on eggshells. “Since you’re at the telephone, do you think you could call Cass Rodgers in Dearborn? Please? He’s waiting for your call.”

Another world.
Because she was silent he added, “Charge the call to the office number,” and she thought,
Arthur, Arthur, it isn’t the cost of the call.

“As a favor to me?” Arthur went on. “Cass wants to congratulate you, find out when you can get cracking on the campaign. Why don’t you say something? Aren’t you happy?”

Shirley laughed for the first time in three days.

“You should be,” said Arthur, “it’s a terrific campaign.”

“I’m happy for you, for the agency, for the world. Arthur, a lot has happened, I’ve had time to think. I wish I had Chabrow’s talent for terminations, he makes them think it’s a promotion to the world outside. I’m clumsy at goodbyes. Shall I tell you or shall I tell
Cass?”

Crouch’s voice was stone. “Tell what?”

“I thought myself out of a job.”

“You’re crazy, Shirley, you wrote yourself into a sure twenty-five-thousand-dollar bonus at the
end of nine months, even Marvin
is happy about that. I don’t care what Jane says, I’m going to give you equity in the firm. Shirley, I’ll call it Armon, Caiden, Crouch and Hartman if you want, anything!”

“Arthur, remember the Crimean War?”

She listened to the puzzled silence.

“It had no future,” she said, watching Al watching her.

“I’m talking about Ford.”

“I’m talking about the Edsel, wasn’t that Ford? I’m talking about that bastard, Henry the First, wasn’t that Ford? Please, Arthur,
ohne mich
.”

“What the hell’s that?” said Arthur.

“It’s what the pacifists said. Without me. Without me, Arthur.”

“You’re no pacifist, Shirley.”

“You bet your sweet ass I’m not. I’ll fight like a tigress to be left alone. I’m not fighting you, Arthur. Maybe you’re trapped running a business, maybe it’s the perfect life for you. But my life,” she hesitated only a second, “is ahead of me. Do you understand that’s a priority I just can’t ignore?”

She put the phone down gently, praying she hadn’t given Arthur hope. People believed what they wanted to believe. Hell, he was probably already inventing something spectacular to tell Cass.

*

The next day she was ready for the trip to Scarborough, bundled in warm clothes. She sat in the lobby, hoping the superintendent would not pass through, she wasn’t ready for that just yet, then the doorman signaled that Al had arrived in front with the car.

As she got in, she saw clearly the size of the scrape along the right side.

“You’ll have to get that pounded out and spray-painted, I guess,” she said to Al as they drove off.

“Plenty of time. Scars are sometimes useful reminders. Maybe that’s why they take a bit of time to heal.”

They were free of the city before she spoke again.

“Al?”

“Listening,” he said, eyes on the road.

She watched the road wind as if it, not the car, was moving. “When we made love…”

“I remember,” he said.

“It felt like you were indescribably close and running away at the same time.”

He thought about it. “Could be.” After a while, he said, “I had one contract.”

“I wasn’t proposing,” she said.

“Suppose,” he said carefully, “you were living up in Scarborough and I, well, had an affair.”

“Because you were bored?”

“Could happen. Or someone irresistible came along. I don’t want to be in violation of any contract.”

“Suppose you thought you were in love.”

“Suppose.”

“With me.”

“I understood that.”

“Suppose,” said Shirley, “I had an affair with somebody else.”

“There’d have to be a reason. I’d either live with it, or I wouldn’t.”

“Suppose,” said Shirley, “I went off and didn’t come back, Al.”

“If you wanted to, you’d do that anyway, contract or not, wouldn’t you? I don’t have a contract with Julie, but I’ll be around if she needs me.”

“I wasn’t talking about contracts. The only person I know who really cares about them is Mrs. Bialek, and she doesn’t have one.”

“It’s a dangerous way of living,” said Al. “The discipline, if there is any, has to come from inside.”

“What about all the people who need rules desperately?”

“You?”

“No.”

“I’m just talking about me. And maybe you. Not other people.”

“It sounds risky,” she said.

“What isn’t?”

*

That afternoon, with strength coming back into her limbs, they went for a short walk, crunching gravel with their feet. Shirley stopped to pick a leaf, examined its veins. Its life was predictable, spring come, autumn go. If she could flirt with death, could she not live with impermanence? In some ways everyone did. Life, she imagined Koch saying, is a temporary condition.

After a while, she said, “Maybe it’s the kids’ revolution creeping upward.”

“Maybe,” he said, his voice, recovered, finding the timbre that for her, the evening of their meeting, had been the first signal.

In the scattershot light under the trees, they walked without touching.