The Paper Dragon (11 page)

Goodbye, fellow.

The war meant nothing to Sidney. He never saw any action, and the only danger to which he was exposed was that of tedium, even though he was aboard a destroyer. (Once they shot at a floating Japanese mine, and exploded it. Everyone cheered.) He was honorably discharged in September of 1946, and spent the summer with his parents who had moved from Houston Street to Walton Avenue near Yankee Stadium. His mother had one of her "fits" in August, shortly before he left for school again, it had to do with the doctor she had begun visiting, something about his nurse, Sidney couldn't follow it, nor did he try. He simply sat in terrified patience while the raving and ranting ran its course, his father fluttering about her like a broken butterfly, trying to calm her, Sarah's green eyes flashing, brown hair streaked with gray now, back straight and stiff, pacing, pacing (he remembered the soft embraces of Rebecca Strauss, they
do
sound to me like hysterical symptoms, she may have been raped or something, Rebecca's Law. Only once did they ever exchange harsh words, the time she was ten days late and they were frantic, no, twice actually, because she was also late after that long weekend in Providence, she almost climbed the ceiling that time, Rebecca, Becks, my love).

His mother died in 1953, after he had been practicing law for five years and had already started the partnership with Carl. He was so enormously relieved by her passing that for several weeks afterward he walked around in a gloomy cloud of guilt, questioning his love for her, had he wanted her dead? blaming himself for not having insisted on chest X-rays earlier, and yet delighted, but had it been his fault? had he wished it once too often? and yet deliriously happy that she was dead and finally in the ground where nothing but the worms could tremble if she took a supernatural fit. He began to question, too, his own monumental anger, was it really such? Or had he simply built an elaborate defense against his own fear, constructing an image of a violently dangerous human being (inside every skinny Jew there is a fat Nazi) whom you had better not fool around with, Mama, because he is as equally capable of murderous rage as you are. He didn't know. Even now, he still thought of himself as a person with a low boiling point, a violent man who easily lost his temper — and yet he knew he hardly ever raised his voice to anyone.

Well, Chickie made him angry, yes, but that was different because with her it was a teasing sort of thing, and more like, well — when he was with her, and she began to tease him that way, began to coax him into anger almost, he would feel an odd quaking inside him, something like what he had known on Houston Street, sitting at the oilcloth-covered kitchen table, which was odd because he certainly wasn't
afraid
of Chickie. And yet, the way she came at him, the way she approached everything they did together, the sex so different from what it had been with Rebecca, she created a, a turmoil in him, yes, that was both exciting and confusing and, he supposed, well, yes, he supposed so, yes, frightening sometimes. He could never understand, for example, why she constantly made oblique references, and sometimes not such oblique ones, to the men she had known. Surely she knew the habit infuriated him — or was that why she persisted? He could not understand. Point of fact, there were a great
many
things that baffled him about Chickie Brown, nor was his confusion something recent. It had been present six months ago when she first walked into his Wall Street office, and if anything it had assumed greater dimensions since.

"Mr. Brackman," she had said, "I'm Charlotte Brown," and he took her extended hand. He had known a great many women since Rebecca Strauss, both casually and intimately, but he had never felt for any of them an iota of what he had felt in Boston. And now, shaking hands with this tall and magnificently proportioned young lady, his heart began to pound foolishly and he found himself staring into her eyes, offering her a seat, barely knowing what he was saying to her. There was a fullness to her palm, a moistness to her flesh that he found intensely exciting, as though her handshake had inadvertently revealed a guarded secret and become a shared intimacy.

She sat opposite his desk, and he found he could not take his eyes from her, found that he was openly coveting her, and wondered that she was not embarrassed by his lavish attention. There was about her, he supposed, a look of easy availability that brought her youthful beauty dangerously close to the edge of cheapness, a look he found wildly stimulating. Her hands were in constant motion, now moving to touch her throat, now absently toying with a button on her blouse, now drifting toward her thigh to rest there a moment, now brushing at her cheek or her eye. She crossed and uncrossed her legs constantly and a shade too carelessly, but completely without guile. She kept jiggling her foot, and she had a habit of giggling unexpectedly. As she related her legal problems to him — she was part owner of a travel agency, and they were having trouble collecting from a client the monies advanced for airline tickets, hotel deposits, and so on — he barely heard a word of what she said, so intense were the lewd fantasies he built around this innocent young girl. It was not until toward the end of their interview, after he had agreed to take her case, that he began to suspect she was enjoying his insistent scrutiny, if not actively encouraging it. Surprising himself, he asked if she would like to discuss the case more extensively over a drink, and she surprised him even further by accepting his invitation.

He had not understood her then, six months ago, and he did not understand her now. He was proud of her beauty, flattered by her youth, but embarrassed by the tawdry look she narrowly escaped. He was wildly excited by her readiness and her intense passion, but frightened sometimes by her sexual knowledge. He was amazed by her shrewdness and appalled by her stupidity. She could doggedly argue a subject until he flew into a rage, and then instantly calm him with a subjugating kiss. She could bring him to the very edge of climax and then infuriatingly declare she was not in the mood for sex. She could cause him to roar with laughter, or weep in supplication. The first time they had gone to bed together, she had whispered, "Come, Sidney, I am going to take you where you've never been," and she had kept her promise.

He heard the bedroom door closing. To the closed door, she said, "Now you be a good pussycat, you be a good little Shah, do you hear me?" Her heels clattered along the corridor. She came into the living room buttoning her suit jacket. She smoothed her skirt over her hips, turned a small pirouette, and asked, "Do I look all right? I feel as though I dressed in a hurricane. I
hate
to rush."

"You look beautiful," he said.

"You dear man," she answered, "how can you even
see
without the light on?" She turned on a table lamp, and then stooped to kiss him on the cheek. "I really have to run, Sidney. You can sit here and finish your drink, if you like. Just pull the door shut behind you when you leave, it'll lock automatically."

"When will you be back?" he asked.

"Not until late."

"Maybe I'll stay here and wait for you."

"No, I'd rather you didn't."

"Why not?"

"Because I'll be exhausted, Sidney dear."

"All right." He paused. "Have you got at least a minute?"

"Yes, but barely."

"There's something I want to ask you."

"Not about the Indian."

"No, not about the Indian."

"Good." She smiled and sat on the arm of his chair. "What is it?"

"I don't know if I've ever explained my situation to you."

"What situation?"

"With the firm."

"No, I don't think you have. But Sidney…"

"It's not a very big firm, Chickie, not a very big firm at all. There's myself and my partner, and we each earn somewhere between ten and fifteen thousand dollars a year, I want you to know that."

"Sidney, I never asked you what—"

"I know, and I appreciate it, but I want you to understand the full picture. I'm not what you would call a very successful lawyer."

"Sidney, you're a very
good
lawyer."

"Well, I hope so, but I'm not a very successful one. There are lawyers in this city who can count on a hundred thousand dollars even in a bad year. I'm not one of them, Chickie."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Because I want you to know."

She looked at him curiously, and then frowned. "You're not going to cry or anything, are you, Sidney?"

"No."

"Because I really haven't got time for that"

"No, I'm not going to cry," he said.

"Good. What is it then?"

"If I win this case, Chickie, I will be a very big lawyer."

"Will you?"

"We're suing for an accounting of profits, Chickie. It's our estimate that the movie earned in the vicinity of ten million dollars. We can't tell for certain because API isn't required to produce its books unless we win, or unless they're necessary to show we
are
entitled to an accounting. But ten million dollars is our guess."

"Sidney. " she started, and frowned, and glanced at her watch.

"I'll tell you the truth, neither Carl nor I wanted to take it on at first, my partner. We weren't sure there was a case, we knew very little about plagiarism. But you'd be surprised, Chickie, you'd really be surprised at how many plagiarism cases have been won on evidence that seems silly at first, similarities that seem ridiculous. The ones Constantine pointed out seemed just that way to us in the beginning, until we had a chance to examine them in the light of other cases. There
was
copying, Chickie, I sincerely believe that now. Driscoll was clever, yes, he altered, yes, disguised, yes, but he copied. I believe that, Chickie, I'd
better
believe it — the case has already cost the firm close to ten thousand dollars, not to mention time, but it'll be worth it if we win." Sidney paused. "The fee we agreed to is forty per cent of whatever we recover. Do you understand me, Chickie?"

"I think so," she said. She was still frowning, but she was listening intently now.

"Forty per cent of ten million dollars is four millon dollars, Chickie. If we win this case, my partner will get two million dollars and I will get two million dollars. I will be a very r-r-rich man, Chickie, and v-v-very well-known." Sidney paused. "I will be a successful lawyer, Chickie."

"You're a successful lawyer now," she said.

"Not like J-J-Jonah Willow."

"You're every bit as smart as Willow," she said. "Don't stammer."

"Yes, but not as successful." He paused. "Maybe not as s-s-smart, either, I don't know."

"You're just as smart, Sidney."

"Maybe," he said. He paused again. "Chickie, as you know, I have a widower father to support, he has a garden apartment in Queens, he's a very old man, and no trouble at all. I pay the rent each month, and I give him money to live on, that's about the extent of it."

"Yes, Sidney."

"Chickie, I've been wanting to ask you this for a long time now, but I never felt I had the right. I'm forty-eight years old, going on forty-nine, and I know you're only twenty-seven and, to be quite truthful, I've never been able to understand what you see in me."

"Let
me
worry about that," she said, and began stroking the back of his neck.

"B-b-but, I feel certain I'm going to win this case and that would ch-change things considerably. That's why I f-f-feel I now have the right."

"What right, Sidney?"

"I guess you know I 1-1-love you, Chickie. I suppose that's been made abundantly apparent to you over the past several months. I am very much in love with you, Chickie, and I would consider it an honor if you-were to accept my p-p-proposal of matrimony."

Chickie was silent.

"Will you marry me, Chickie?"

"This is pretty unexpected," she said. Her voice was very low. He could barely hear her.

"I figured it would come as a surprise to you."

"I'll have to think about it, Sidney. This isn't something a girl can rush into."

"I realize that."

"I'll have to think about it."

"I'll be a very rich man when I win this c-c-case," Sidney said.

"You dear man, do you think that matters to me?" Chickie asked.

He lay full length on the bed opposite the window, his hands behind his head, staring up at the ceiling. He had been lying that way for close to an hour now, ever since their return to the hotel room. He had not closed his eyes in all that time, nor could Ebie fool herself into believing he was actually resting. There was a tautness in his very posture, an unseen nervous vibration that she could feel across the length of the room. His silence was magnified by the rush-hour babble from below. In the echoing midst of headlong life, he lay as still as a dead man and stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

"I'm fine," he said.

"Dris?" '

"Yes?"

"I'm afraid."

"Don't be afraid, Edna Belle."

"Can't we talk?" she asked.

"What would you like to talk about?"

"Can't… can't you reassure me? Can't you tell me we're not going to lose?"

"I'm not sure of that, Edna Belle."

"Please don't call me Edna Belle."

"That's your name isn't it?"

"My name's been Ebie for the past God knows how long, please don't call me Edna Belle. I hate the name Edna Belle. You know I hate the name."

"Ebie is an affectation," he said.

"It's not an affectation, it's my
name
. It's an important part of me."

"Yes, I'm sure it is."

"Yes, it is."

"I said yes."

"Then please don't call me Edna Belle."

"I won't."

"And if you feel like getting angry, please…"

"I'm not getting angry."

"… don't get angry with me. You have no reason to get angry with me."

"That's true. No reason at all."

"Get angry with Constantine, if you want to get angry. Or his lawyer.
They're
the ones who are trying to ruin us."

"If you ask me," he said, "
you're
the one who's getting angry, not me."