The Dud Avocado (12 page)

“But what on earth
were
you doing there, Teddy?” I asked him for the third time, ignoring John.

“Braziano as usual,” he shrugged. Braziano, a colleague, was not one of Teddy’s favorites. He was always having to deputize for him. “His stories are getting wilder and wilder. It seems on this particular occasion he was unable to get to the conference on account of being poisoned by a trout at the Relais St. Germain the night before. You know the tank of live fish they have there? Well, there is an expression that you Americans have— ‘to shoot trout in a tank’ …”

“Like shooting trout in a barrel,” I said.

“Yes—quite. Well, it seems the American he was dining with
did
shoot one—or so Braziano insists—and to quiet the management Braziano ate it. Naturally it poisoned him and naturally he had to stay home the next day.”

I later reflected that this was probably the only amusing thing said that evening, but at the time nobody laughed. Teddy was too exasperated, I was afraid of getting us off the track, and
John, of course, saw nothing funny about it. Dody shifted her invisible knitting with a little frown of concentration; she seemed to have dropped a stitch.

I turned to John, dizzy with excitement. We were approaching the crux of the matter now. “You see, at Teddy’s Embassy the various Cultural Attachés are assigned to Special Projects from time to time. Braziano’s, I suppose, is this European Aid thing, so it’s really just a fluke you met Teddy at all. Because it isn’t Teddy’s project. Teddy’s project …” I suddenly found I wasn’t able to say it. I could only pray that John would pick up the cue.

“What is your Special Project, Señor Visconti?” asked John. It came out quite simply with his breath. It was perfect—casual, perfunctory, polite. I marveled above all at the naturalness of the delivery. Now all I had to do was switch off, make myself invisible, convince myself of the absolute unimportance of Teddy’s reply. I turned quietly and smiled at Dody.

“Well,” said Teddy wearily, “for this particular six-month period I’m handling all the Student Conferences.” He sighed, feeling sorry for himself. “We have a rash of them breaking out at the Sorbonne, I can’t think why. Next week I have five——” I felt a slight pause; was he wondering whether to use this as an excuse for turning us out now? “Five. One every day to attend.”

I couldn’t believe my ears.
Five—
it was so much better than I’d dared hope. I turned back to them then. The transformation in John was glorious to behold. He was clenched with seriousness rather than glowing with enthusiasm, but there was no doubt that he was transported.

“Dammit man,” he said in a voice choked with emotion, “this is marvelous. Gosh, why didn’t I know it before? Dody, did you hear what he said? Student Conferences. Say, that’s my
real
interest, Visconti. Anyone’ll tell you that. The only hope we’ve
got
is based on the willingness of today’s youth to shoulder their responsibilities. And I never even knew these conferences were going on. That just shows what little publicity they get. Well, I’m going to change all that, all right; they’re going to get plenty in
my
rag, anyway. Hell, I know you won’t mind my tagging along with you this week—I’m going to need the advice of an
expert. Now—” pad and pencil were out “—now tell me about Monday’s conference. What I mean is, what do you feel is the
first
most important thing about it?”

I said good-by to them all. I told John I was sorry I wouldn’t be able to see them again, but I had a costume-fitting the next morning and I was rehearsing day and night for the next two weeks. I knew it didn’t matter what I said. I don’t think he even heard me. Student Conferences—Wow!

Teddy saw me out. Through the door, down the stairs, and into a taxi. We exchanged bitter farewells.

I
AWOKE THE NEXT
morning with a series of explosions popping off in my head like flash bulbs. “Sunday!” That was the first one. Then, following close upon it, and each more agonizingly vivid than its predecessor, scenes from last night’s debacle re-staged themselves with relentless accuracy for my edification. I was just wincing my way through the terrible moment at the dinner table where that cool cat of a Contessa managed to kidnap Larry right from under my nose, when it struck me that there was something peculiar about the whole sequence. I played it back and spotted the trouble: from the time the Contessa announced her decision to place her car at Larry’s disposal, to the time she waltzed out on his arm, she had addressed not one single word of explanation or apology to Teddy, and this, seeming as how the rat had really knocked himself out on the food and drink, struck me as just the least bit casual. Not that Teddy had minded. That was odd too. In fact they both seemed to take each other rather for granted, those two.…

I sat straight up in bed, my arms gripped hard against my
knees in concentration. By the revelation of one simple fact, the whole equation had taken on an entirely new dimension: the Contessa was Teddy’s mistress. Of course. How stupid of me. It was all so obvious I could only marvel at my denseness. Well then, that meant … that meant … I was suddenly overcome by a feeling of disgust. What it meant was that Teddy had deliberately trapped his
mistress
into doing his own dirty work. And all this just to get back at me. Much as I disliked the Contessa, I found myself wondering if I shouldn’t warn her somehow. But warn her of
what?
What was I getting so worked up about? The vehemence of my moral indignation surprised me. Was I beginning to have standards and principles, and, oh dear, scruples? What were they, and what would I do with them, and how much were they going to get in my way?

In the middle of all this confusion my thoughts swerved and plunged down quite a different alley. I knelt on my bed—the wall-telephone was just above it—and gave the operator Larry’s number. When his concierge told me there was no one in his room I could hardly stop myself from telling her to go back and see if his bed had been slept in. But I gave her my name instead, and asked her to have him ring the moment he returned. I had no idea what I would say. I flopped back on the bed and looked at the clock. Nine-thirty. To keep myself from going mad I pretended that he really
was
with the set-designer and that their appointment really had been for some dreadful hour like nine in the morning. After all, why not? Then I abandoned myself to my grief. It was no longer possible for me to ignore the sexual aspect of Larry’s abduction. I lay back on the bed groaning and stared at the ceiling.

Sometime in the afternoon the phone rang.

“Il y a un Monsieur Bright qui vous attend tout de suite, Mademoiselle!” My concierge shrilled impatiently in my ear, irritating me about twice as much as she usually did.

The name meant nothing to me. I barked back that there was some mistake and hung up. The phone rang again.

“Hello. Look, this is Jim Breit,” said the voice quickly, “Jim Breit—we see each other around here quite a bit—I’m a friend of Judy’s and——”

“Oh gosh, of course,” I suddenly remembered. “You’re the
good
painter.”

“The what?”

“Nothing. Sorry. But you want Judy, don’t you? She’s on the floor above—four—oh—five.”

“No, I want you. I’ve been looking for you all week, you’re never in. Judy’s in the hospital and she wants to see you.”

“Good Lord, what’s the matter with her?”

“Well, nothing serious. At least I don’t think so. She gets overtired, you know, and she’s supposed to go on a long concert tour with her brother soon, so it’s really more of a general checkup, she tells me. Can you come out now?”

“Well … oh, all right. O.K. Be down in a minute.”

I got dressed and went downstairs and we drove off to the American Hospital in Neuilly, practically in silence. I didn’t encourage any conversation. To tell the truth, I wasn’t too happy about making this excursion. I didn’t want to go to a hospital and cheer anyone up; I wanted to go off quietly somewhere and die.

Hospital doors open so soundlessly that Judy didn’t even hear us enter her room. When I saw her lying there, pale and listless, I became terrified. I gasped and she sat up and looked around. Now that she saw us, she seemed to spring back to life. It was extraordinary really, watching her color coming back and seeing how completely it transformed her. Reassured, I began babbling away inanely about how busy I’d been with rehearsals, how much of my time they were taking, how of course I’d have come sooner if I’d known, and on and on.

“Oh never mind, never mind,” she interrupted, bouncing up and down on the bed in her excitement. “Tell me everything that’s happened. It’s a whole week.
Millions
of things must have happened. Tell me about them all.” She pulled me down beside her, almost panting with anticipation.

I looked away for a moment. I was always a little embarrassed by her outbursts of curiosity. I found it difficult to believe she really followed my life with the same breathless anticipation as I did; that her interest in everyone and everything was as genuine as it was passionate. But it was genuine all right. I found out later just how genuine it was.

In any case I obviously don’t need much encouraging to talk about myself, and before I knew it (Ait came the story of last evening. And the funny thing was I don’t know whether it was the time, or the place, or just me, but now the whole thing seemed really more comic than tragic. I found I was almost enjoying myself. Also I was working up a brilliant imitation of the Contessa’s fractured English.

“But I know her,” squealed Judy suddenly, bouncing up and down on her bed again. “I know her, I
know
the one you mean! Listen, Sally Jay, let me tell you about it. It was the strangest thing. I think she must be mad or something. All her friends are, anyway. Do you know she had us over to lunch, my brother and I, without even knowing our names? Someone had taken her to one of Paul’s recitals and she came gushing backstage, spouting that funny English like you do, and invited us to lunch. She said she knew someone terribly important who would be terribly interested in Paul’s career, and she said for us just to write down our names and address like good children and give them to her chauffeur because she was hopeless at such things and she said for Paul to prepare a short program and that she’d send the car and then she gushed out again.…

“Have you ever seen her house? Well, it’s enormous. Full of lots of scary dogs that look as if they ought to be tied up or they’ll tear you to bits, and some of the strangest pieces of sculpture I’ve ever seen. She was waiting in the hallway when we arrived and gushed all over us again, but you could tell she still didn’t know our names. Nobody was introduced. There were about three or four other guests and she hustled us all into the dining room. She sat Paul next to an absolutely gorgeous elegant middle-aged man, so I guessed that he was the one she wanted him to meet. You could see he took to Paul immediately and after hearing him play he was just in raptures. He gave him his card, and said he wanted to have a long, serious talk with him the next day, and he invited him down to his château for the week end, where he said he was going to put his special Bachstein Grand at Paul’s disposal, and see to it that no one disturbed him from practicing to his heart’s content, and then he suddenly laughed, he had this strange excited, high-pitched laugh, more
of a giggle really, and he rumpled Paul’s hair and said he’d just realized he didn’t even know our names. When we told him he closed his eyes and murmured—Pablo Galache—sort of softly. It turned out he was Spanish, too. He asked us how we happened to have a Spanish name, so we told him about Mummy and Daddy and their elopement, and all and my gosh you can’t
imagine
the change that came over him! I think he must have gone crazy. He looked like he was going to choke. “José Alvarez de Galache?” he whispered. His voice was so husky you could hardly hear him. We were surprised at him knowing our father’s name. “He was one of my oldest friends,” he said, “I knew him all his life.” Then he leaned forward and began glaring at Paul— I honestly thought he was going to hit him—but he did something just as strange—he took his card back. What do you think of that? Then he sort of pulled himself together, and stood up, and bowed to me, and wished Paul success, and said he hoped we could all meet again under different circumstances—whatever
that
meant. I mean we just sat there with our mouths open. Then he gave the Contessa an absolutely deadly look and hissed something at her about being careful in the future to whom she introduced him, and flounced out.

“I watched him walk down the hallway, and when he noticed his card still in his hand, he tore it into tiny pieces and flung it on the floor. Can you imagine that? I wonder what came over him? You’d think being such an old friend of Daddy’s he would have reacted in just the opposite.… What’s the matter, Sally Jay?”

I was off on my old space kick again, aimlessly prowling around the room. “Nothing … nothing …” I answered vaguely. What was now crystal-clear was that there had never been any question of Teddy having to
trap
the Contessa into doing his dirty work; she would have done any kind of dirty work he wished. I felt a little sick. “They are corrupt—corrupt,” I kept saying to myself, over and over again, as I paced around the room. It was the first time I’d ever used that word about people I actually
knew
, and again the idea that I could take a moral stand—or rather, that I couldn’t avoid taking one—filled me with the same confusion it had that morning. And now they’ve got
their mitts on Larry, I thought. Oh Lord. If I don’t stop thinking about those two, I decided, they’re going to put me right off sex for good.

“Ouf!” In my travels around the room I had tripped over Jim, whom I had completely forgotten was even there.

“Hey, what’s this?” I looked at the scrap of paper on which he was scribbling. It was a sketch of Judy and myself. We looked like a couple of wild women, yapping away together on her bed; it only needed those little balloons filled with exclamation marks popping out of our mouths to complete it. I had to laugh.