The Fourth Side of the Triangle (6 page)

“Would you? That's awfully kind. One-ish? One-thirty? Name the time and place, Miss Grey.”

Sheila hesitated. It seemed to Dane that she found herself in a dilemma. That means I'm not repulsive to her, he thought; and he felt a tingle suddenly.

“If you're really interested in my work, in the whole area of fashion … Tell you what, Mr. McKell. Why don't you plan to get here a bit earlier Monday? Say, at noon? Then we can go over some of the basic things.”

“Wonderful,” said Dane. “You can't know what this means to me, Miss Grey. Monday at noon, then. Aunt Sarah?”

“Oh, you two
do
like each other,” cried Mrs. Vernier, glowing.

Dane had been normally aware that women wore clothes and that their creation was a matter of considerably more moment than, say, the designing of a nuclear flattop. He knew vaguely that there was rivalry between the Continental and American dress houses, and that it resulted in a secrecy that made the answer to
Does Macy's tell Gimbel's?
meekly affirmative. But he was hardly prepared to find Pinkerton guards standing watch over every nook and cranny of Sheila Grey's establishment except the salon itself.

“It's almost like the CIA!” he exclaimed.

The comparison was not inexact. In a hugely different degree, on an infinitely smaller scale, the behind-the-scenes scenes of high fashion did have a faint air of the Pentagon gone mad. Men with the dedicated look of the career idealist, women who gave the impression of having studied at the secretive feet of Mata Hari, zealous underlings of the three sexes, and assorted females who could have been camp followers, sat poring over plans, screwed up their tired eyes at sketches, moved from office to office in zombi-like withdrawal; they examined swatches as if the bits of material were secret weapons, and peered with tucked-in lips at lovely young models who, for all the excitement their beauty generated, might have been made of plastic. Here clothes were the only living things.

“And this is an annual event?” Dane asked.

“Yes. Let me show you.” Dane followed Sheila, attending her litany—Marc Bohan of Dior, Crahay of Nina Ricci, Castillo of Lanvin (like so many medieval saints, or feudatories, or even Isaac of York or Macdonald of the Isles), Cardin, Chanel, Jacques Heim, Balmain, Goma, Vernet, and the all but hallowed Yves St. Laurent. From Sheila's tone, Dane gathered that St. Laurent could cure scrofula by a laying on of hands.

“And that's just France,” Sheila was saying.

He was actually taking notes.

“It's like wine,” Sheila explained. “Any reasonable Frenchman will admit that certain French wines are inferior to their American counterparts. But we're such snobs! We'd rather tipple a mediocre vintage with a French label than a first-rate California. It's the same with clothes. All right, St. Laurent is tops. But it's not because he's French, it's because he's St. Laurent. Another thing that blows me sky-high is the women who won't wear a gown unless it's designed by a man. It makes me want to spit!”

“It becomes you,” said Dane. It did, too; anger put color into her cheeks, and a sparkle in her eyes that made them flash.

She stopped herself with one of her fresh, quick laughs. “Let's go to lunch.”

“I had forgotten lunch could be fun,” Sheila Grey said. “Thank you, Mr. McKell.”

“Could you make it Dane?”

“Dane. Are you sure you're writing a book with a designer-character in it?”

“Why would you doubt it?”

“I suppose I don't care for people with hidden motives.” She laughed. “I'm always on the watch.”

“The only hidden motive I could have would be
very
personal, and I can't imagine any woman resenting that.”

“At this point,” said Sheila, rising, “I've got to get back to the galleys.”

“Can we do this again soon? Tomorrow?”

“I shouldn't …”

“Another session at your place, then lunch again?”

“Get thee behind me! All right, I surrender,” and that was that. He took her back to Fifth Avenue, and she talked shop all the way, Dane scribbling away.

Taking stock of the afternoon, he came to certain conclusions about Sheila Grey. She was accessible, at least in the sense that what Sheila fancied, Sheila took. Had her affair with his father begun in much the same way—directly, without persiflage? Had she run into Ashton McKell in the elevator, decided then and there,
This man is for me
, and invited him up for a drink?

He found himself wishing that he were meeting her under other circumstances. He admired her honesty of mind and manner, her forthright differences from most women—even the sprinkle of freckles he had faintly made out in natural light. Oddly, she did not arouse a man's fighting instinct in the battle of the sexes. You could move comfortably in on her, without fuss, and she would either reject or accept in an uncomplicated way. He liked that.

Dane sighed. Between himself and Sheila Grey stood his father's selfish arrogance and his mother's helpless self-denial. This woman had chosen to become his father's mistress a couple of dozen feet above the head of his mother; she would have to take the consequences.

But the only sinister thing in their growing relationship skulked in his own heart. Sheila was delightful. She chewed popcorn like the teenagers around them in a drive-in movie, watching a Blob from Outer Space crush tiny people underfoot and topple buildings until the clean-limbed young scientist with the gorgeous laboratory assistant destroyed him with his newly invented death ray. She clapped her hands at a tiny place he introduced her to, run by devotees of a Hindu sect, and ate her curds and whey as if she had stepped out of a Mother Goose book. When the bearded proprietor pressed a piece of fig candy on her, saying, “It promotes regularity,
Sahibah,
” Sheila smiled, and took it, and remarked, “I wish something could be done to promote regularity in high fashion. We caught someone using a miniature camera this morning. Naturally I fired him and destroyed the film. But you can't help wondering if somebody got away with it yesterday. We'll know about it if copies of our line go on sale on 14th Street, selling for $7.98, the day after our fall showing.”

It appeared that the art of
couture
espionage was highly developed. “I could give you material for a dozen novels,” Sheila said moodily.

“I'm having enough trouble with this one,” Dane said, grinning. “Incidentally, how about dinner at eight?”

This time her gaze impaled him. “You're silly,” she said. “Nice, though. I'll be wearing a mantilla and chewing on a red, red rose.”

Dane began to feel uneasy. Things were going too well. But then he shook the feeling off.

They dined at a little Belgian restaurant with outrageous prices, took a ferry ride to Staten Island, visited Hoboken, where they strolled about for a bit, agreeing that parts of the city had a Continental air—Dane compared it to the 14th Arondissement. On the ferry coming back, standing side by side in the bow, he took Sheila's hand. She might have been any woman he liked. Her fingers lay cool and friendly in his clasp; the breeze lifted her hair and played with it. The great docks loomed, and Dane felt a twinge. Quite without calculation he said, “How about the Central Park Zoo tomorrow? The grilled armadillo there is out of this world.”

“You'd produce it, too.” Sheila's laugh sounded wistful. “No, Dane, I've been playing hooky far too long. You're wicked-bad for me.”

“Supper? I know an Armenian joint—”

“I really can't, I'm too far behind. Tomorrow is out.”

Tomorrow was Wednesday. The thought struck him like a club. Of course. She wouldn't date Yves St. Laurent himself on a Wednesday night. Wednesday nights were reserved for Daddy-o.

But there were other days and nights—the fights, the ballet, opera in a Connecticut barn, a county fair, a formal dinner at Pavillon one night and chopped liver at Lindy's the next. On several occasions they spent the evening at Sheila's apartment, listening to the hi-fi or viewing the summer re-runs on TV. On such occasions Sheila fed him.

“I have an understanding with the frozen-food people,” she told Dane, paraphrasing the old joke. “They don't design clothes and I don't stand over a hot cookbook.”

“Don't apologize,” Dane said. “TV dinners constitute our only native art-form.”

She laughed, throwing her head back. Viewing the cream-smooth neck, he felt a lecherous stir and wondered if he shouldn't encourage it. After all, he had been squiring her around for some time now without a single pass. Wouldn't she begin to wonder?

The phone rang. Still laughing, Sheila answered it. “Oh, hi,” she said, in a remarkably different tone, moving back into the chair; and Dane sighed—the moment had gone. “How are you?… No, I'm fine … I couldn't say.” She glanced at Dane, a mere flicker, and he said to himself: It's my father. He got up and went to the window, and her voice sank. The reflection showed him a scowling and—it seemed to him—evil face.

“I'd like a drink,” Sheila said from behind him. The phone call was over; comedy, recommence! “Something tall and ginny. Be my bartender?”

He turned to her; they were face to—the image persisted, it seemed to him—evil face. She seemed faded, even coarse, the smile on her lips complacent.
This is the way of an adulterous woman,/ She eateth and wipeth her mouth and sayeth,/ I have done no wrong
… He felt sick at heart, and he was glad of the excuse to turn away and tinker with bottles and ice cubes.

From time to time Sheila received other telephone calls—twice in her office while he was with her, twice more in her apartment—which, he assumed from her guarded tone, were also from his father.

One night at the end of August they attended an old movie in an art theater on the Lower East Side; it was almost 3
A.M
. when they emerged. In the car he put his arm around her. She slipped away. “I don't believe in one-arm driving. Isn't this safer?” She put her arm around him.

In spite of himself, Dane felt a shiver. “Shall we stop somewhere? How about Ratner's and a glass of borsht?”

“That pink soup with sour cream in it?” Sheila pursed her lips. “I think I'd prefer a nightcap. Let's have it at my place.”

“All right.”

It seemed natural. Entering the apartment building lobby was, as always when he was in Sheila's company, something of a shock—knowing that his parents lay asleep overhead—but he had steeled himself by this time; he did not dwell on it. He did not dwell on much of anything these days.

“Come in, Dane.”

“I'm suddenly reminded,” Dane said, following Sheila into the penthouse apartment, “of the experience of a friend of mine. He accepted the offer of a tropical-looking beauty he met at a party to come up and have a nightcap in her apartment, and when they walked in, lo, there pacing the floor was an economy-size ocelot. Arthur swears it was as big as a leopard. Needless to say, all he got that night was a drink, and he spilled half of that on the rug.”

“Well, my ocelot got the evening off,” Sheila said, “so don't spill yours. Not on this rug. Handwoven in Jutland, I'll have you know. Name your poison, pardner.”

The living room, furnished in Scandinavian Modern, was dimly lighted. Always peaceful-looking, it seemed extraordinarily so on this occasion. A feeling of contentment invaded Dane, in the van of which marched a wiry little excitement. It was the queerest thing. Sheila mixed their drinks at her bar, humming to herself the absurd tune to an absurd W. C. Fields song they had heard at the art movies; she reached for the ice, and he caught a quiet smile on her face.

So it happened—not by calculation, not with his father standing aghast and outraged in the living-room archway, not as part of a created plot, but as naturally as breathing. Dane put his arms around her. Sheila turned with the same smile, lifted her perfect face and half closed her eyes, and they kissed.

Her lips, her body, were sweet and soft and full. He had never thought of her body before except in a repellent image, lying in his father's hairy arms.

Dane heard her say, “I'm glad you waited, darling,” saw her hand him his drink, raise her own. They drank in silence, looking into each other's eyes. Then Dane set his glass down and took her hand, her strong white little hand with the smudge of violet India ink on the palm, and he kissed it, a brush of his lips; and left.

As he undressed for bed, the thought occurred to him for the first time that night:
I've accomplished my purpose. I've got her. Now all I have to do is arrange the pay-off
.

But it's gone all to pot
.

And the horrifying thought:
I've fallen in love with her
.

He was in love with his father's mistress. It was not as if the kiss symbolized a beginning; it was an ending, a climax of days and nights of exploration and intermingling of ideas and attitudes and laughter and close silences; a seal to a compact they—he—had never suspected they were making.
I'm glad you waited, darling
… It was the same with her; she had experienced the special quality of their relationship, sealed with the kiss. If there was a beginning at all, it was not the beginning of an affair; it was the beginning of a lifetime.

Suddenly the whole incredible structure crashed about his head. Whom was he punishing? His father, yes; but his mother more. Himself most of all.

It was not supposed to be that way. It was all wrong, twisted out of any semblance to the shape he had been fashioning. Everyone was going to be hurt—mother, father, himself … and Sheila.

He tossed for most of what was left of the night.

Dane awakened to a sense of purpose, almost recklessness. That was the way it had worked out. The hell with everything else.

But with breakfast came caution. Think it over, he told himself, don't rush it, perhaps you're reading a fantasy into what could have been a mere kiss of the moment, as meaningless to you as to Sheila. He did not really feel that way, and he was sure that Sheila did not; still, it had to be taken into account. Take a day or so to simmer down, to let matters adjust themselves to some realistic yardstick.