Marjorie Morningstar (91 page)

She bathed with some difficulty, stretching the brownish puddle of hot water a long
way. It was a pleasure to be able to choose fresh attire from her steamer trunk; she
was very bored with the clothes she had been wearing over and over in Switzerland.
But the black wool suit, specifically bought with a hundred and ten precious dollars
at Hattie Carnegie’s for her first encounter with Noel, needed pressing. She doubtfully
rang for the maid, and was astonished at the speed with which a smiling young woman
in a gray smock appeared; was delighted at the girl’s swift comprehension of the problem,
indicated by her seizing the suit and pantomiming a pressing job; was enchanted by
the reappearance of the girl in half an hour with the suit perfectly pressed. The
girl also brought her, unasked, a pot of hot chocolate with flaky little rolls and
butter. Marjorie began to like Paris better. She tried a couple of times to telephone
Noel, but only became hopelessly snarled up with gibbering operators. She dressed
with great care in the black suit, with a dusty-pink blouse, white gloves, black straw
hat with a single pink rose, and black nose veil. Well pleased with the image in the
mirror after a cold-blooded appraisal, she sailed out to run Noel down.

Eventually she found the Rue des Sts. Pères, a crooked narrow street in a shabby neighborhood,
meandering uphill between overhanging houses. She was going from door to door, looking
for the number Mike Eden had given her, when she saw Noel.

Hatless, in his old tan topcoat, carrying a bulky brown paper bag in each arm, he
came up the steep sidewalk, his head tilted in the old way, whistling. He walked right
by her; a stalk of celery and the legs of a chicken tied with cord protruded from
one bag, and the neck of a wine bottle from the other. When he was a few feet past
her he stopped and turned around, peering incredulously. With an impulse of mischief
she brushed the veil up on her hat. “Hello, Noel.”

“Jesus Christ, is it you?”

“Have I changed that much? It’s me.”

He bounded toward her. “Gad, and me with my arms full! Well, you’ll just have to do
the hugging and kissing, then, there’s no help for it. Come on, hug hard.”

He bent sideways, and she hugged his neck and kissed his cheek. “Well, that’s all
right for on the street,” he said. “Ye
gods
, let me look at you. You know this is hair-raising, it’s absolutely weird? If I wasn’t
thinking of you at the very second I saw you, may the devil come right up out of that
sewer and drag me to hell. Christ, you’re twice as beautiful as you ever were, d’you
know? You’re a
woman
, that’s what—Say, what in God’s name are you doing in Paris, right in front of my
house? I swear there’s something spooky about this. Are you real? Are you just a mass
of ravishing ectoplasm?”

Marjorie laughed. “Am I really in front of your house? The way they number them in
Paris, I don’t know how anybody ever locates anybody—”

“How the devil did you find out where I live? I’ve kept it from you every way I could.
Bless you for breaking through, anyway—Marjorie, my only darling, you can’t, you can’t
begin to imagine how glad I am to see you. I never really knew how glad I’d be until
this moment, but—Well, hell’s bells, let’s not stand jawing on the street, let’s go
upstairs, slay a calf, broach a hogshead of mead—” As he talked he led her to the
next house, and pushed open the door with his back. “Come on. Two flights up. No elevator,
you’re in Paris.”

Marjorie stood at the doorway, looking at photographs in a glass display case facing
the street. “Isn’t that André Gide?”

“Yes, my landlady’s a photographer. Her studio is on the first floor. Come along,
she’s shot all the intellectual glamor boys in town, you can look at the rogues’ gallery
she’s got any time you want to.” He put one of the paper bags on the floor, fished
a key out of his pocket, and opened the inner door. She was glad to see that he still
had his hair. It was blown about in great disorder, but it was there. She had had
ugly nightmares of him bald as an egg. He said, “Follow me, it’s simplest. Don’t break
your neck on these stairs. The dim light is strictly Parisian. You have to develop
owls’ eyes to get around in French hallways. Also a mountaineer’s legs and lungs.
Did you ever see such steep steps? If it had two rails instead of one it would be
a ladder—a winding ladder—”

Marjorie paused for breath on the first landing. In letters of silver on the dingy
door—the entire stairway was dingy, it smelled of dust, old carpets, and garlicky
food, and the walls were grimy yellow—the name
Gerda Oberman
arched over a modernistic sketch of a camera in red. Noel yodelled down the stair
well at her. “Caught in a crevasse? Shall I send out a St. Bernard?”

“Coming,” Marjorie said.

The door on the next landing opened directly into a living room, very large and almost
square, with cheap scatter rugs on the bare dark-varnished floor, and a glossy black
grand piano by the windows, incongruously new and expensive-looking amid the drab
worn furniture. The light from the windows was a dreary blue-gray. Noel flicked a
switch as Marjorie came in, and a chandelier in the middle of the ceiling lit up,
a monstrosity of orange and blue stained glass. “Here we are. Sit down for a minute
and let me get rid of this junk, then we’ll have a drink. Okay? Can you stand scotch
and water without ice? My landlady doesn’t believe in Frigidaires. We have a big old
lump of ice, I can chip some—”

“Scotch and water is fine. I’ve about lost the taste for ice.”

“I won’t be a second.”

“Take your time.”

He paused at the French doors that opened into a dining room. He made a comic gesture
with the two brown bags. “I can’t get over how superb you look. And how glad I am
to see you. I wish to hell you’d come a week later, that’s all, seeing you’ve waited
this long.”

“Why? Why a week later?”

“Well, we’ll talk in a minute.”

There was a framed picture of a blond woman on the piano; Noel came back in a minute
or so and caught her studying it. He still had his coat on and he was carrying two
brown drinks. “Here you are. What do you think of my landlady?”

“Is this Gerda Oberman?”

“Yes. Gertie, as I call her when I want to annoy her. Real Boche, isn’t she?”

“I think she’s quite good-looking.”

“I guess so. She used to be a model before she moved over behind the camera. That’s
a skillful picture, it minimizes her exceedingly Neanderthal jaw. Be with you in three
minutes. Drink up, there’s gallons of scotch.” He went into a dark hallway on the
right.

“Okay,” he said, returning in a few minutes in a different jacket, shirt, and tie,
with his hair combed, carrying an almost empty drink. “First of all, let’s clear up
a few mysteries. Where did you get my address? There isn’t a person in the States
who knows it except Ferdie Platt, and I know you didn’t get it from him.”

Marjorie, in a corner of a lumpy black leather sofa, toyed with her drink. “What difference
does it make? I was determined to find you and I’ve done it. That’s all.”

“Well, it’s an incredible bit of sleuthing. You belong with the FBI. Freshen your
drink?”

“Not just yet. Do you know a man named Mike Eden?”

He was slouching down into a chair, but he sat up at this. “Mike? Sure I know Mike.
Why?”

“I met him on the
Queen Mary
coming over. He gave me your address.”

“What? I haven’t seen Mike Eden since last summer. I’ve moved four times since then.”

“Well, he got me your address, all the same.”

“I’ll be damned.”

They looked at each other, Marjorie smiling slightly, Noel seeming puzzled and a bit
wary. She could see now what the illness had done to him. He had lost a little hair
in front; perhaps that was why he was wearing it excessively long and full. On the
left side, under the hair, a trace of pink scalp showed. The golden color seemed faded
too, a bit ashy. Strangely, the effect was to make him appear not older but younger.
He had rather the air now of a dissipated college boy. The clothes, his old brown
tweed jacket and gray flannels, with a stringy maroon knitted tie, and white shirt
with button-down collar, accentuated the undergraduate look. He was thinner; the flannels
hung on the long bones of his thighs. He had a fresh red-brown sunburn, and the skin
of his face seemed to be pulled forward tightly by his curving jaw.

What really surprised Marjorie was his apparently unchanged attraction for her. She
had felt a stinging thrill at her first glimpse of him on the street; and now the
old tug stirred potently in her, sharpened, if anything, by a touch of pity. “Noel,
you don’t look as well as you should.”

“As well as I should? Darling, I must look like the Black Death to you. I can only
say you should have seen me eight months ago. Or rather I’m glad you didn’t, you’d
never have recovered from the sight. I nearly died, you know.”

“Wally said he’d heard you got sick in Africa—”

“Sick? I all but tore the flesh from my bones with my own nails. I caught some horrible
fever in Casablanca—they say you get it from bedbug bites, anyway it’s hell on earth,
you break out in a murderous itching rash—I lay in the charity ward of a Catholic
hospital for two weeks, up to my neck in warm starch baths, delirious half the time—”

“How awful, Noel—”

“Well, don’t let me bore you with that, it’s past and done with. Actually I’m feeling
absolutely marvelous now, especially in the past couple of weeks. I’ve been skiing,
swimming, taking walking trips, all the corny old healthy things, for months. My strength
is really all back, I’m glad to observe. What I need now is about twenty more pounds
of meat just to pad out the bones. That’ll come. I’ve even gotten back a lot of my
hair. The doc says I’ll get it all back. God, do I ever massage my scalp and expend
lotions! I must lose two pounds every night just from massaging. But it’s the only
answer.—Take your hat off, why don’t you? Margie, you really have bloomed. You’re
a picture. Did you buy that suit here in Paris?”

“I just arrived a few hours ago, Noel.”

“Well, you do look New Yorkish, at that. You don’t look like a Parisienne at all.
New York girls have a different kind of chic. It’s refreshing. I have a feeling you’ve
just showered.”

Marjorie laughed, unpinning her hat. “Bathed. In about two inches of very rusty tepid
water. I’m at the Mozart Hotel.”

“Oh yes, that fleabag. For the money it’s one of the best. How did you know about
it? Tourists usually don’t.”

“Mike Eden.”

He nodded, and again the wary look came on his face. “So. You just got here, hey?
Didn’t waste much time tracking me down, I’ll say that.”

“That’s what I’m here for, you know.” She didn’t want to tell him yet of the pursuit
through Switzerland.

“Good old Marjorie. Ever direct. I like it. In fact I like you.” He got out of his
chair. “How about a kiss?”

“Sure enough.”

It was a friendly kiss. His thin arms, holding her loosely, felt familiar and delightful.
“Mm. Good.” He kissed her again, with a little more warmth. The telephone rang, a
queer shrill buzz. It was on a little table by a green armchair near them. It rang
again. Noel said, “Ah well. Remind me to pick up this conversation where we left off,
won’t you?” He dropped into the armchair. “Allo?… Bon, ou es-tu maintenant? Comment?
Et après, qu’est-ce que tu vas faire? Zut, et le diner?” He slouched lower in the
chair, cradled the receiver with his head and lit a cigarette, rolling his eyes comically
at Marjorie. A stream of rapid French was rattling in the receiver. He broke in impatiently,
talking just as fast. The other voice was a woman’s, high and authoritative. Noel
waved a hand, shrugged, and made faces into the receiver, like a Frenchman. The argument
reached a noisy, quarrelsome climax and Noel slammed the receiver down. He glanced
at Marjorie, and his irritated look faded into a rueful smile. “Don’t mind me. I’m
getting old and querulous. How about another drink?”

“Not just yet. That was a heavy slug you gave me.”

“Come off it. If you’ve been helling around with Mike Eden you should be used to booze.
He’s the original hollow-legged wonder. Come on in the kitchen. I have things to do.”

The plucked chicken, yellow and a little bloody, lay on a board by the small iron
sink. The kitchen was narrow and squalid. A scratched red wooden table, two red chairs,
a two-burner gas stove, a wooden ice-box with its varnish half worn off, and crockery
cupboards painted a sickly pink left little room for moving around. The floor was
greasy dark bare wood. Noel said as he ran tap water into two glasses a quarter full
of scotch, “We’re confronted with an executive decision.” He handed her a glass and
prodded the chicken with a long bony finger. “This happens to be one hell of an exquisite
pullet. We can eat here and I can promise you a superb meal, but on the other hand
it’ll be damn dull, I should think, for you to sit around watching me cook. It’s no
way to entertain a guest fresh from overseas, that’s for sure.”

“Why, it’s absurd for you to go to all that trouble, Noel. Let’s eat out, by all means.”

“Aye, there’s the rub. I have seldom been more broke, in a career checkered with bankrupt
stretches.” He drank deeply. “Oh, hell, Margie, why didn’t you come a week later?”

Marjorie said, “I’ve got plenty of money. That’s no problem.”

He smiled sidewise at her. “With any other woman it wouldn’t be. But with you—Or have
you become more broad-minded? Maybe you have, but… God damn Gertie, I could strangle
her. In fact, I should have strangled her months ago.” He poked the chicken again.
“This really is a good bird. Oh, what the hell, Margie, you’ve watched me cook before,
you won’t mind sitting here and talking to me while I put up the dinner, will you?
I’m very fast.” He took off his jacket, draped it carefully on a hanger on the back
of the kitchen door, and took a stained gray apron off the hook under the hanger.
“I hope this won’t destroy my glamor, if I have any left for you. I like my own cooking
better than most of the table d’hôtes in this dismal neighborhood anyway, and you’re
not going to go paying cab fares and treating me at one of the good places. It’s no
way to—”