Skyscraper (9 page)

“Wait a minute, you're breaking my heart. Throw the chops out of the window. Dwight?” Jennie rocked on the table, slim hands clasped about slim knees. “He's some boy. Carla Lang—you know, the dancer, she was in that show I glorified. He was her lawyer. First he got her an annulment and a big settlement from the boy's family. Then with her next trial trip he got her a Paris divorce and a hunk of alimony. Then she sued Stuart Whitehead for breach of a fountain pen—and what a ready letter writer he was, too!—and dragged down a cool hundred grand. But he wouldn't give her a tumble. I think he was scared of having to sue himself or something.”

“Isn't he married?” asked Lynn.

“Sure, he's married. Don't you ever read the papers? His wife lives in California when she isn't abroad. I saw her picture once—and took my wrist watch to the jeweler's. They've got some kids, I think. Not that that's any gray in his hair.”

“Well, he's terribly interesting,” Lynn said, the chops disposed of on a platter, the potatoes fried deliciously, if beyond the dietician pale.

He had been. As she and Jennie ate supper she thought over the hour and a half—or was it two hours?—with him. He had told them about some of his spectacular cases, not, however, those that involved alimony or settlements. He had talked music to Sarah—who was an inveterate opera-goer, finding in music some unspoken release—and he talked cases, plays, books with Lynn. He had questions too. She realized that he knew all there was to know about her—or pretty nearly all. He had an easy way of drawing you out.

She spoke her subsequent thought aloud. “I'd hate to be on a witness stand with him doing a cross-examination,” she said.

“Slim?” Jennie who had just concluded a monologue relative to Slim, looked at her in astonishment. “Why, that boy's so darned dumb he couldn't get a rise from a goldfish!” she expostulated.

“David Dwight, I meant.”

“Oh! Him!” Jennie speared the last potato and drank deeply of coffee. “He's a good lad to keep away from in court. As far as that goes, I hear he's just about unique in his class, courtroom, drawing-room, barroom, bedroom—”

“Jennie!”

“Well,
don't
you read the papers? Not that it's all in the papers. Gosh, what a break! He has all kinds of money, his own and other people's, and spends it like a South American. Not that
you'd
take advantage of it,” said Jennie, sighing.

“He's an old friend of Sarah's.”

“Wonders will never cease,” said Jennie. “Tom coming tonight? Bet you anything he won't take kindly to the idea of the new boy friend.”

“Don't be an idiot,” counseled Lynn. “Mr. Dwight was just nice to me, that's all, because I happened to be with Sarah when he asked her for lunch.”

“Not that you're pretty good-looking,” said Jennie indifferently, “or that he likes ‘em young or that Sarah's neat but not gaudy. If Tom's coming, guess I'll ankle around to the Capitol or somewhere. I told Slim he could lay off, over the phone just before you came in. Maybe he didn't burn up the wires!”

“Oh, Jennie, why? Poor Slim, he's so crazy about you.”

“I can't stand men with honorable intentions and small incomes.”

“We'll all go out to the Capitol,” suggested Lynn brilliantly.

“What's the matter? You and Tom cooling off?”

“No, of course not.” Lynn rose and started to clear the table. “I haven't seen a good picture for ages.”

Tom came. Slim came. “I might have known it!” sighed Jennie, giving him a limp hand.

“Backgammon?” asked Tom, slinging his hat in a corner.

“Lynn and I want to see the Capitol picture,”Jennie told him serenely, “if you boys are in funds. We don't want to upholster the chairs until fall if we can help it.”

They went to the Capitol. It was crowded; they waited in line in the lobby. Tom, standing behind Lynn, grasped her firmly by the elbows. “Lean back,” he ordered, “and take the weight off your feet.”

When they finally found seats in couples they were separated by several rows. Tom said, taking Lynn's hand in his own, “I tried to ditch Slim. Gosh, Lynn, I haven't seen you alone for weeks.”

She said, “I know—”

“Saw you and Sarah and David Dwight going out together. Waited for you a while tonight, but you didn't show up. How come?”

“I was late. I stayed too long at lunch time,” she whispered. “Had to make it up.”

“Did you have lunch with Dwight?”

“Yes—Oh, Tom, don't talk; people are glaring at us!”

Tom subsided, none too happily. The picture ran its course. An exodus began with the stage show. “Let's stay,” said Lynn, as Tom made a motion to rise.

It was late when they met Slim and Jennie in the lobby. Jennie's color was high and Slim's eyes were sulky. “Let's get a sandwich somewhere!” said Jennie, the insatiable.

They went to Fifth Avenue Child's.

Walking home, Tom tucked Lynn's arm closely under his own. “Sore at me?”

“No, why should I be?”

“Because I didn't like your going out with Dwight.”

“I didn't know you didn't like it,” she answered, not very truthfully.

“Well, I didn't. He's a hot number, besides being twice your age.”

“I liked him,” Lynn told him stubbornly. “I'll probably never see him again, but I liked him. Besides, he's an old friend of
Sarah's.”

“Oh,” said Tom, a little mollified. He added, “I wish you wouldn't go out with anyone—but me.”

“Tom, remember our bargain—no strings!” said Lynn.

“I know—but it's hard,” he told her, “to see you dashing off with someone else.”

“Well, this is the first time, and doubtless the last,” she said, laughing.

They had reached the apartment, were walking up the stairs. Jennie and Slim were well in advance but their voices drifted back. They were quarreling.

“Slim's all show, poor devil,” said Tom. “That girl certainly takes him for a ride. Heartless little—”

“She isn't,” Lynn interrupted. “It's her business if she doesn't want to tie herself down, isn't it?”

Tom was silent. They reached the corridor; Jennie and Slim had gone in, leaving the door open. Lynn started to follow them, but Tom pulled her back and into the semi-dusk of the hall, took her roughly in his arms and kissed her.

“You feel like that too!” he accused her. “My God, Lynn, I don't know what to think about you—There's nothing I wouldn't do for you, you know that. I'd go through hell for you, I do most of the time, as it is. You belong to me, you know it, and to keep you mine, to make you mine, I'd lie for you, steal for you—”

“Tom—for heaven's sake—” She pulled herself away. “Don't talk so wildly. It isn't like you. You know I love you.”

She returned to him of her own accord and kissed him very sweetly. He bounded into the apartment a moment of so later singing, “My baby just cares for me,” a little off-key but at the top of his lungs. He was perfectly and extravagantly happy again. He had forgotten the fantastic fears, the hot desperation, the sudden smothering sensation of a savage despair, which had briefly seized him a moment before. He had forgotten David Dwight, to whom he had spoken once, on conventional words—“Mr. Norton will see you at once, Mr. Dwight”—and at whose back he had glared incredulously as Dwight walked
from the outer room with Sarah and Lynn. He had forgotten that the thought of Dwight had affected his mood, as the hand of the puppet master jerks the puppets from attitudes of serenity into postures of terror and rebellion.

He was very much in love, and twenty-three years old.

Going home, to sit up the rest of the night, in an endeavor to capture Europe on his home-built short-wave receiver, he tried to console his gloomy companion out of his own superabundance of confidence. For himself, things would come right, he'd get a raise, he'd make some money somehow. Lynn would give up the damned job, in which she was in danger of meeting undesirable people—which, translated, read,
attractive men with money
—and they would be happy forever after. As far as David Dwight was concerned, well, Sarah had been with them, and probably Lynn was right, she'd only been included because of Sarah, and anyway she might never see him again. Not that it would matter much if she did, for what could Lynn find really worth her while in a “middle-aged” man? Forty-eight plus, to twenty-three may seem middle-aged—depending upon your viewpoint and your sex. But Lynn next day pulled a blue card from the files marked
D
and entertained herself with reading what was inscribed thereon. Not that it told her more than she already knew; and the
Who's Who
recountal was little better. She'd probably never see him again.

She saw him the following week. He wandered into the room where she was working, a flower in his buttonhole, a faint smile on his subtle lips. He apologized.

“I suppose this is out of order. I've been talking to Sarah. I've got Scarletti—of the opera, you know, coming to dinner Friday. I thought you and Sarah might like to come too, all very informal and all that.”

He added quickly, marking her slight hesitation, “Sarah says it's alright with her.”

“I'd love to,” Lynn told him sincerely, her heart beating a little faster. She did like him so much, he was so stimulating a personality, and there was about him—the bland actor's face, the rather big head with its shock of gray hair, the lazy, keen
eyes—a glamour; the glamour of legend or tradition.

He took out a notebook and a little gold pencil. “I'll send a car,” he offered, “say, about seven-thirty. We'll dine at eight. What's your address?”

She gave him the address. He asked, lingering a moment, putting the notebook away, “You're in the telephone book?”

“Yes, but under Le Grande. I live with another girl,” she said. “The phone is listed in her name.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Le Grande—is it possible?”

Lynn laughed. “Smith, really. She's a model here in the building.”

He nodded, smiled again, said, “Friday, then,” and departed.

“Holy cat,” breathed Miss Marple, suddenly at Lynn's elbow, “who's the grand duke?”

“You're sure stepping out,” was Jennie's only comment as Lynn told her over the lunch table. “What'll you wear?”

“There's the black net—”

“Too sophisticated—”

“There's the cherry satin, but that's pretty well worn out!”

“Look here,” suggested Jennie, “there's a little dress, it's a dusky pink lace, stiffened with wide sleeves and a do-funny of French blue at the waist. It's been taken off the line, it's a fourteen, with a twelve skirt length. I can get it for you. It will set you back $69.50, but it's worth it. It sells for $110, retail.”

“Jennie, it sounds marvelous!” Lynn looked at her friend, gray eyes shining. “But—I shouldn't!”

“Sure you should. You've got to dress for the occasion. This Scarletina—or whatever his name is—may be as contagious as he sounds—offer you a castle in Florence and a gondola in Venice. He gets about a thousand a yip, I guess. Hop to it, you're only young once. I'll ask Madame if I can bring the dress home tonight. She's a pretty good fellow. She'll let me do it.”

“All right,” agreed Lynn. After all she needed another evening dress, she excused her extravagance—and she had not spent her father's Christmas check.

Jennie went upstairs after luncheon and attacked Madame on the subject of the little number fifty-eight, size fourteen, in
dusky pink. Madame was agreeable. Madame rather liked Jennie; “lazy, stupid, dependable,” was Madame's reaction toward her model, not entirely just.

Madame was very tiny, very dark, with an almost startlingly intelligent little face, and smartly, amusingly dressed. She was quick as a humming-bird, shrewd, emotional. She designed her own frocks, all of them, bought the materials, oversaw workrooms and showrooms. She was the first of the wholesalers to move over and up into the Times Square district as a convenience for the out-of-town buyers who entered town via Grand Central. The Seacoast Building welcomes her with open doors, and the Bank and Trust Company had respect for her account. A hard worker, Madame.

Jennie found the frock, boxed it, and put it away until closing time. Business was slow today, but, standing at the dressing-room door behind the drapes, she heard Sam Pearl, the salesman, Pearline, as he was affectionately called by the models, expostulating with a lone buyer who had wandered in and demanded to see models at, say, $39.50.

“Oh,” cried Mr. Pearl, with a short sharp scream, “thirty-nine fifty! Impossible!” He put his hand up on his hip and shuddered, large reproachful eyes on the buyer. “Impossible,” repeated Mr. Pearl firmly. “Madame
never
expresses herself under sixty-nine fifty!”