The Best of Everything (18 page)

The front entrance awed her, it looked so formidable, as though some snooty butler might pop out at any moment and ask her name. There was a pale blue Mercedes Benz car at one side of the entrance (she saw the name on the dealer's tag) and on the other side a white Jaguar convertible. My heavens, she thought, it looks like a movie set. I'll bet they could take movies here if they wanted to. She went around to the side entrance where there was a patio leading to a sort of cocktail bar, and walked in.

The place was deserted, there wasn't even a bartender at this hour of the morning. The heat and excitement had made her very thirsty, and when she saw a case of ginger ale on the bar she thought she might as well help herself. They surely wouldn't miss

one little bottle of ginger ale, probably anyone who belonged to this club could afford to take a bath in ginger ale if he wanted to. She had put ice in a glass and was searching for a bottle opener when a boy came into the room.

"I'll steal one too," he said.

"Do you think they'll kill us?" April asked. She looked up and he smiled at her. He was tall and dark and very handsome, and the planes of his face were rounded instead of angular, which made him look about twenty-one. He was wearing wliite shorts and a heavy white tennis sweater with a V neck, and his legs were so deeply tanned that standing there in the darkness behind the bar he didn't seem to have any legs at all.

"Kill us?" he said. "Ginger ale?"

"Not it" she said. "Them. They."

He looked at her, amused. "Are you drunk?"

"Of course not!"

He put his tennis racket on top of the bar and opened two bottles of ginger ale and poured them into glasses with ice. He held up his glass in a mock salute and drank the contents thirstily.

"I've never seen you before," April said. "You must be in Advertising."

"That's a non sequitur."

"What?"

He laughed. "You are drunk."

What a shame, she thought, that such a handsome boy was turning out to be so stupid. He must be in the mailroom, but she had thought she knew all the mailroom boys. Perhaps he was new.

"You were smart to bring your tennis racket," she said, gesturing.

"It does make it more convenient," he said, raising his eyebrows as if it were he and not she that was talking to the idiot.

"Are you a good player?"

"Fair. I try to play every day after work."

"Oh?" April said. "Where? In the park?"

"Why, am I that bad?"

"What?"

He patted her head. "Be a good girl and stay out of that sun."

"I know," she said. "I get terrible freckles." She had discovered a glassful of swizzle sticks with the name Hudson View Club printed

on them in tiny gold letters. "Do you think anyone would mind if I took one of these?"

"That's what they're there for."

"Isn't that nice of them!"

"Oh, it's very nice," he said. "They're thoughtful that way."

She tucked two of the swizzle sticks into her purse and felt better about the whole world. "Are you new here?" she asked kindly.

"No," he said. "But you must be. I've never seen you before."

"I've never seen you either,"

He held out his hand. "I'm Dexter Key."

"I'm April Morrison. I work on the thirty-fifth floor."

"And what do you do on the thirty-fifth floor?" he asked, looking as if he were trying to keep a straight face.

"I'm in the typing pool. Where do you work?"

"Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Beane."

"Oh, my gosh!" April said.

"What?"

"I thought you were ... I thought you worked at Fabian. You must be a member."

He began to laugh, holding on to tlie edge of the bar for support and shaking his head, laughing until tears came into his eyes.

"You're so pretty," he said weakly. "You're so pretty."

She was biting her thumb, the way she always did when she was embarrassed or startled, and when he said she was pretty she nearly bit right into it.

"I kept thinking, this poor pretty girl, she must have hit her head on the bottom of the swimming pool," he said, still chuckling. "Let's break open another bottle of ginger ale to drink to your regained health."

"I'm so embarrassed," April said.

"Don't be. I'm glad we met."

"So am I . . . " she said.

"Tell me, do you hate oflBce parties as much as I do?"

"I don't know. I've never been to one before."

"Well then, let me advise you. You'll hate it. I have a better idea. Why don't you have lunch with me?"

"In the clubhouse?"

''Well, in the dining room. They have a wonderful view of tlie water."

"I'd adore itl"

He held out his arm and she took it, feeling rather stunned and very happy. What a nice name, Dexter Key; it sounded so social. And what a marvelous tan he had. He was just as handsome from the side as he was full face. For a moment she almost asked him what was Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Beane, and then she restrained herself. The way he'd reeled it oflF you could tell everyone else around here knew what it was, and she didn't want him to think she was any more of a hick than she could help. Here he was, just the kind of boy she'd dreamed of meeting in New York—it was as if she'd wake up any minute and find out she was still in her roasting hot little room with the sheet tangled around her legs.

"Isn't that a nice view?" he asked.

"Oh, it is!"

"Do you drink before lunch?"

"I don't know."

He smiled at her, shaking his head. "How's a Martini, lunatic?"

"AU right."

He held up two fingers to the waiter, who hurried oflF to the bar. Dexter was looking at her, with his chin on his fist. "Do you like-now, check them oJBE—tennis, the stock market, sailing, skiing, the theater, Louis Armstrong, not getting dressed up, taking a walk somewhere you've never been?"

Tes, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, yes, and you've lost me after that."

"Louis Armstrong."

'Tfes."

"Not getting dressed up."

"I love it."

"Taking a walk somewhere you've never been?"

"I do it all the time. This is my first six months in New York. Sometimes on Sundays I walk for miles, just looking at things— and I get lost."

"I'll bet you do," he said, but so kindly and with such an obvious liking for her that she couldn't feel oflFended.

She was not quite sure afterward what she had said or what she had eaten during that long, exciting lunch. She remembered very

well everything he had said, and the line of his jaw and the movements of his mouth as he spoke. She remembered his hands, very suntanned, with a callous on the thumb of the right from holding a tennis racket, and a gold seal ring on the little finger of his left. The ring bore a family crest cut deeply into the gold. Dexter's voice had a variety of tones: land, personable and sometimes rather petulant, like a little boy. The petulance only made her feel more aflFection-ate toward him, because it was a part of his personality. She wouldn't have stood it in anyone else, she was sure, but she would probably have forgiven him anything. She would have expected anyone with his background to be spoiled, what with going to Yale and some exclusive prep school before that, and owning his own sailboat. But he told her that he had worked in a steel mill one summer during his vacation from college, and she was amazed.

"I wrote up my experiences and tried to sell them to a magazine," he went on. "But they wouldn't bite. Actually, I can't write, that's the thing. But it was great experience, and I made more money than I'm making working in a brokerage house."

"I think that's marvelous."

"It aU started as kind of a gag, that's the funny part."

It was four o'clock when they finished lunch. It was so cool in the air-conditioned dining room and the view below was so sparkling and changeable that they lingered on and on, Dexter smoking one cigarette after another and April watching the movements of his hands as he lighted the cigarettes with an initialed gold cigarette lighter which he kept tucked casually in the pocket of his teimis sweater. She had almost forgotten that this was the day of the Fabian oflSce party, and that she had never been to one before, and that she was missing the whole thing.

"How did you get here anyway?" he asked. "Car, or what?*'

"They have some buses," April said.

"Are you doing anything special after this?"

"No."

"Well, I could drive you back to New York and then you wouldn't have to go on the bus. I could change my clothes and we could have cocktails someplace. Do you feel like that?"

"That would be so nice of you . . ." April said.

He stood up. "I have to go to New York anyway. I live there."

"We're neighbors . . ." April breathed.

"Isn't that convenient?"

When he led her to the white Jaguar convertible parked outside the clubhouse April's heart almost stopped beating. He put the top down and then held the door open for her and helped her into the low little car. She looked back for an instant as the engine started with a roar, and she felt like waving a great white chiffon scarf, if she'd had one. She wished there had been someone she knew standing outside on the lawn to see her departing in this dreamy car vidth this unbelievable boy. He was still wearing his shorts and tennis sweater—imagine, April thought, being brave enough to go into New York City dressed like that. But it was obvious that Dexter Key could wear anything he wanted and get away with it.

He turned on the car radio and the music and the wind sang past her ears. "It's so scarey," she said. "I feel like we're going so fast."

'That's just because you're near the ground," he said. "I'm only going seventy."

"Seventyl"

"Look at that blue sky," he said.

She put her head back against the leather of the seat and looked at the wide blue cloudless sky that always stayed the same while they traveled so fast. The radio was playing a love song and she sang along with it, flinging her arms out and feeling the wind push against them. She was so happy, so happy, so happy . . . And how blue the Hudson was below them, sparkling with white and gold from the late afternoon sun. This was the best view of New York in the whole world, she thought, coming into the city when the buildings were tipped with gold, like the whole city was on fire, all the windows brilliant, fiery golden holes. How could she have thought the Plaza at twilight was New York? This was New York, beside her, Dexter Key; and the marvelous secret things people did inside those tall buildings at the cocktail hour were the things he did every evening, and tonight it was all going to happen to her.

When he parked the car on the quiet tree-lined street in front of his house it was as though they were in a different world. It was a side street of brownstone houses that were former mansions. The street was empty of people, shady and cool under the spindly little trees. There were a few other sports cars parked along the curb, a bright red one, a dull green one. April had the idea that everyone

who lived on this particular street was young and rich and rather special. Dexter took his tennis racket out of the car and helped her to climb out.

"Would you like to come up, or wait down here?"

Ordinarily she would have made some excuse to stay in the street instead of going alone into a man's apartment, but because he was gentlemanly enough to anticipate the possibility of refusal she felt safe. "I'll come up," she said softly.

His apartment consisted of one large room with a tiny kitchen and a large dressing room and bathroom. There was a garden in back of the house and his living-room windows opened out to it. He lived on the second floor. The garden had been fixed up with a white marble statue and grass and gravel, and there was a little gray cat playing on the walk.

"Oh, whose darling cat is that?"

"Two faggots who live downstairs," he said.

"Two what?"

He looked at her. "Fairies." He grinned. "I have fairies at the bottom of my garden, as the song goes." He fixed a drink for her and set it on the white marble cofiFee table in front of the fireplace and went into the dressing room. "Make yourself at home," he called.

She looked around. He had modem furniture, all very new and clean and comfortable looking, and obviously expensive. The brightly colored painting above the fireplace, which she couldn't make out at all, was obviously an original and not a print. There was a chest of drawers against one wall with a small bronze statue on top of it of a nude girl. There was a striped tie draped around the neck of the statue as if he had thrown it there in the morning when he put on his tennis clothes, and the incongruity of it made her smile when ordinarily she would have been a little embarrassed to be alone in a boy's apartment with a nude statue staring her in the face. The kitchen looked as if he never used it. She peeked into his icebox and all there was inside were two sealed bottles of wine lying on their sides, some frozen orange juice and a half a loaf of bread that was as hard as a rock. She sat down on the couch and sipped at her gin and tonic, listening to the faraway sound of his shower. Despite herself she couldn't help picturing him in the shower with no clothes on, and she was both thrilled and frightened. Here she was, sitting on the bed (well, sofa really, but it could con-

vert to a bed in an instant) of a boy she hardly knew, and no more than ten feet away he was stark naked and singing as if it were the most natural situation in tlie world. She wondered if he wore his seal ring in the shower.

The sound of the shower stopped and she heard him padding around and slamming drawers. She picked up a magazine from the cojffee table and pretended to read it so that when he came in he wouldn't suspect that she had been thinking about him.

"April?" he called. "Hey, April, did I leave my blue tie in there?"

She looked up. "One witli red and white stripes on it?"

"That's the one."

"It's here," she called. She looked at the nude statue and bit her Up

"Toss it in, will you please, honey?'

Honey! she thought. She stood up and walked to the chest, and picked the tie off the statue. Through the partly opened door she could see a mirror, and in the mirror she saw the flash of a white shirt. She opened the door and held tlie tie out to him.