The Lady and Her Doctor (27 page)

“You don't need to feel sorry for Cissie, Mrs. Krop, not any more. In case you're interested, let me inform you Cissie came to her senses over your brother-in-law.”

“Now that's good news!” She held the bottle toward Mrs. Parker. “Give it to her. Chanel Five. I guess even a pretty kid like Cissie can always use a little Chanel Five in a pinch.” She waved the bottle under Mrs. Parker's nose. “She could have used it tonight, maybe!”

“I guess she could have.” Mrs. Parker took the bottle, sniffing at it. “She's at the Stork Club tonight!”

“You don't say!”

“I told you she came to her senses.” Mrs. Parker's triumph won over her anger at Jenny. “Boys like Sidney don't grow on bushes, but the more I said, the less she'd talk to Sidney when he called her. Anyway it must have soaked in because tonight she went with him to the Stork Club!”

“I wish I'd gotten a good look at her, then I would have seen this Sidney.” Sidney! Some Sidney, Jenny thought.

“He didn't come here. She's meeting him in Manhattan like last time. Sidney is a Manhattan boy, and you can't expect a Manhattan boy to come all the way out to Queens to get a girl and also bring her back home, Cissie says. Maybe in my day they did, she says, but not nowadays. Cissie's dolling up at this girl friend's apartment in Manhattan like last time. Some girls might not mind going in the subway in a strapless, but not Cissie. Cissie's a very particular girl.”

“She certainly is,” Jenny said. She saw from Mrs. Parker's expression that what she meant had crept into what she said and changed her tone. “A prettier girl than Cissie is hard to find. You give her the perfume and say—” Jenny stopped short. Did she want Cissie telling Milt she had stuck her two cents in again? She shook her head. “Mrs. Parker, it just occurred to me, since Cissie has come to her senses like you said, maybe I should stay out of the picture?” Mrs. Parker gasped and held the bottle out toward Jenny, who waved it away. “No, you keep it! Maybe you and me don't get to go to the Stork Club but we can use Chanel Five, too, right? Listen, there's life in the old dogs yet!”

Jenny let herself into the apartment softly and tiptoed into what had been Milt's office and closed the door. She sat behind the desk where Milt used to sit during office hours and thoughtfully pulled the telephone closer. The life that was in the old dog surged through her body; she wanted to do something, to make a move, any move, but she forced herself to think it out since she didn't want to pull another boner.

Should she call Sloane? Milt wouldn't be back yet from the Stork Club, don't worry! Should she call Sloane and say she had been thinking over the advice she gave?

Maybe Milt, she could say, was entitled to find out for himself the devil made mischief for idle hands? After all, Milt was no babe in arms. (Cissie was! Damn fool Milt!) She could tell Sloane that people had to learn from their own mistakes, that was the way it had to be. If Milt was out now getting himself mixed up with Cissie Parker again, wouldn't it be better to let him go to Europe the way he wanted? Wouldn't that be best for Milt? To go off to Europe and “forget”?

Jenny put her finger tip in number nine on the dial and let it click back. If she was Sloane's friend, of course, there would be no question. She put her finger tip into number nine again and let it click back. If it was Milt's wife she was loyal to, she should call Sloane this minute and say, go to Europe the way Milt wants, stay in Europe, keep away from Queens, but what did she care about Sloane, calling her up about Phil dying so young and leaving her alone this way and asking advice about how to help Milt's poor remaining years when all she wanted was to pump, pump, pump?

Jenny Krop was Milt's friend first and foremost. No matter what Milt did, she was Milt's friend, one hundred per cent for Milt even if he didn't know it, and the best thing in the world for Milt was what she had told Sloane. Forget Europe. Stay here and keep going. He'd go off his rocker otherwise! What did Milt know what was good for him! (Cissie Parker!) Phil would have gone off his rocker hanging around in Europe with nothing to think about but himself; nobody knew that better than she did!

Let Milt take Cissie Parker to the Stork Club on Sloane's money, Jenny thought. Phil had had his work and he had her to come home to, let Milt have Cissie to go to the Stork Club with if that's what he wanted. Let Sloane look out for herself. Let Cissie look out for herself, Jenny thought, the little fool, the little fool! First and foremost Jenny was for Milt and what she had told Sloane was for him, so he wouldn't go nuts.

So let it stand, Jenny thought, and gave the telephone a shove out of reach.

Then she put her head down on the cleared space on the desk and let the tears come.

At first Milt thought that Sloane must have found out about the Stork Club although he couldn't imagine how. It was almost 2
A
.
M
. when he got in, he hardly made a sound opening the front door, but the moment he stepped inside the hall she called him from upstairs. At first Milton thought it was anger and jealousy that electrified her voice like that, and while walking upstairs tried to figure out whether, as he was tempted to, it wouldn't be the best thing to tell her about little Cissie. One Night Of Love. A man is only human.

She was standing in the hall outside the bedroom. “Milton, Milton, Milton!” She ran to him, taking his two hands in hers, gripping his hands hard, dragging him toward the bedroom. Her long straight hair hung down her back and her eyes shone like a cat's eyes, and there were white circles around her thin nostrils.

He would have blurted it out about Cissie but she didn't give him a chance. All he got out was, “I'm sorry—” and then, pulling his hands with her cold ones, she led him to the bed, practically shoved him down on it, dropped his hands, started pacing up and down like a tiger, shoving her hair back the way she did because the bouncing way she moved got it into her eyes.

“Sorry, Milton?”

All desire to cry on her shoulder about little Cissie was gone. “Sorry I got sore about Mrs. Austen and ran out on you. I shouldn't have gotten sore when you've been so sweet.” She made an expansive gesture which was plain enough to put an end to his apology because it signified so clearly that his running out didn't matter; whatever it was, she wasn't sore about that. As a matter of fact, now he took a good look, it was obvious that whatever she was, it wasn't sore.

“Milton! Amory called right after you left.”

He couldn't get it out, couldn't ask her. The exhumation was finished? Of course. Why not? With his luck?

“I had Austen tell her that we were both out.”

Sweat broke out all over his body. “Don't be frightened,” he said. “Boy, you look scared! I'll handle her. I'll call her.”

“No, not until Monday. On Monday you can call back, but until then I have left instructions with Austen that you'll be out. Promise?”

Milton, wiping his forehead, nodded.

“Now, listen to me! This is what we must do.”

“We?”

“Not her, not Amory, please listen to me, please don't interrupt! I had an inspiration while you were gone—Oh, Milton, I feel as if you had been away a hundred years! A brainstorm!”

It was as if a cold wind had touched his sweated body. “Who needs brainstorms? Everything is settled!”

“A miracle,” she said, “a miracle! Oh, listen to me! I am not sure, poor lamb, whether you have any idea how much money there is, Milton—So much money! This is what came to me, darling. I'm going to take the Folsom money and we'll create a medical foundation with it! To be called the—oh, not the Folsom Foundation, darling, the Krop Foundation, the Krop Clinic, I don't know, only that its name must perpetuate your name and your brothers' name! Thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, will bless your funny name, Milton! A place where, among other things—this will be entirely in your hands—the best scientific minds work together to find a cure for high blood pressure, yes! Too late for your brothers, darling, or for you, I know, poor, poor Milton, but for the others to come?

“Milton—listen—establish fellowships, scholarships, what is the proper term? Establish fellowships for just such young men as you and your poor brothers were—if you wish, for boys from farms, or from your state, Connecticut—so that those coming after you won't have as gruelling a time as you had!” Breathless, Sloane waited, her two hands now actually clasped.

The last thing, positively the last thing he could have figured! He said, “All this while I had a couple beers and cooled off!”

Sloane giggled. “Oh, I cheerfully admit I have only the vaguest notion of precisely what I mean by the Krop Foundation, but I have you to fill out, don't I? You will know. Well?”

“Sounds O.K. to me. Good idea.” No skin off my teeth, he thought. There's more there than I'd want even if I could have it. “Let's sleep on it.” He got off the bed and began to peel off his clothes, which now felt sticky.

“Sleep!” She began pacing the room, thinking about it again. The walls hemmed her in, the big window was too narrow for her vision. “I couldn't!”

“I can. I'm tired out.” He thought of how much he would enjoy taking a shower now—in the kind of bathroom he was going to have.

Sloane stopped pacing. “I'm afraid—visitations leave one in a fine frenzy! Milton, you must believe this: this idea came to me because I was thinking of you and your mother and your brothers!”

“I appreciate that. Honestly, kid!”

“As far as it is possible for me to be, I was selfless to start with. The—the personal plum in the institutional pudding—the dividend—did not come to me until later. I honestly did not realize what this would mean to me—selfishly—until afterward. Two things. Two plums. Have you seen them yet, Milton?”

He was standing with his back to her, undoing his pants. He shook his head.

“Think!” She stamped her foot.

“You're way ahead of me. I'm too tired to think, it's almost 3
A
.
M
.!”

“Two things, surely you must see. First, something which has been haunting me all along, Milton, and I mean that literally—haunting! The fact is that under the law a criminal may not benefit from his crime. All along it has haunted me that if Amory is not bribed—if she doesn't stay bribed long enough—Should she go to the police for an autopsy and get it and should they, to coin a phrase, darling, find me guilty, the Folsom estate would go to Amory! Not to me, obviously, but not to you, either. As my accomplice, you would not be entitled to it and Amory would make sure you were so cited! I assure you, the nightmares I have had of Amory getting the money—” She laughed. “Far more terrifying than me in the electric chair—because more unjust? But, darling, if it is in trust for a humanitarian project like ours, she won't be able to touch it! That's the law!”

“Where did you find that out? Whom did you ask?”

“Heavens, Milton—I read a book once! Also, there was a series of articles in the
Tribune
last year about foundations and trusts! It's so, it's so! With the money tied up that way, whatever happens, Amory will not be able to get her predatory paws on it. Now isn't that a fat, juicy plum for us out of the pudding? Isn't it? ‘He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plum' and said what a good girl am I! Oh, Milton, Milton, I get my plum because I was a good girl, I wasn't self-thinking!”

Her words weren't grandoise, but her flinging gestures were, and the way she flung back her head. Her quotations were from Mother Goose but she proclaimed rather than spoke.

“Listen to me! Joan of Arc! Sloane of Arc!”

“Sloane of Arc's a good one!” While he had been at the Stork Club with Cissie, she had been here talking to her voices, seeing visions. Saint Joan. Saint Sloane. While he had been dancing at the Stork with little blond Saint Cecilia, his vision, not stone, not stone at all, Sloane at all. Cissie.

“—carry out your wishes, precisely, to the letter. What do I know about medicine, but you do. And you can consult men of standing in the field. Enough there to occupy you every moment and, as far as I am concerned, if—if I'm spared, Milton, which is an odd way of referring to escaping execution for my crime, I'll devote my every moment to it also!” Her smile darted like a dragonfly. “Much, much better than hying me to a nunnery hence!” Milton would teach Saint Sloane. Milton would show her. Milton would staff the foundation, would make the rules, lay out the plans for the staff, for the building, consult with architects, et cetera, et cetera. “Oh, Milton,” she said, “to be kept so busy with such work that your days and nights and thoughts are filled with it rather than—”

Days and nights
—“Wait a sec,” he said, “hold on—I'm just a plain garden variety medic—” The sudden jolting acceleration of his heart was making it difficult to talk. “You'll have to get the best men in the field. I'll look them up for you and we'll lay it on the line for them and exit. We've got a date with a lady named
Queen Elizabeth!
A previous appointment, like they say, velly solly!” He had to wait for breath. “A-deck, cabin number—”

“Cabin number! Cell number, darling, because that's what it would be for you. You would be as much in a cell as any condemned man in Death Row! This is the perfect thing to do, Milton!” She began to move again, touching objects, picking things up, her brush, her nail buffer, her mirror flashing in the light as she twisted it in her hands, laid it down.

His eyes were filled with burning sweat. He was afraid to move, afraid he would fall, he was trembling so violently, so he stayed where he was, comically holding his pajama bottoms which his hands could not button. “You promised me. You solemnly promised me. Remember? Remember? Ruth! Whither thou goest—What I say goes, in other words, remember? What I want, isn't that what you promised me? Well, you can have this foundation or what have you, sure, why not? I don't want to be any millionaire on your mother's money. I can't be even if I want to be—remember?”