The So Blue Marble (19 page)

    She looked away, “What if I have?”

    “No.” He tossed it away. “No. You divorced me. You knew how worthless I was. You told me so. For once you were right And I haven’t improved during the years.”

    M’sieur’s waiters began loading the table with fish. Food ended conversation. When dinner had quieted her, she asked, “Are you going back to the border?”

    He made a negative noise, swallowed Bourbon. “Not till this is washed up.”

    She wanted to know. She didn’t know how to ask.

    He thought of it too. “You needn’t get out, if you don’t mind me bunking with you.” He was the extreme of casualness.

    “I don’t mind. I wouldn’t stay there alone now.” She kept her voice steady. Then she did look at him. “What about Gig? The one I call Gig.”

    He looked at her too. The moment was gone. “I don’t know. I’ll keep out of sight until you let him know I’m back. We’ll see what he does.”

    She was irrelevant. “He’s nice.” She didn’t want him hurt. He’d been on her side.

    “Mm.” His mouth was full.

    They were dawdling. The dishes had vanished.

    “Want to go to a show?”

    “No, thank you.”

    He yawned. “Better go home then. Toby wants to see you tomorrow.”

    “Again?” She was tired of all this.

    “Yeah.” He beckoned a cab. He didn’t believe in walking a block. “There’s some things you know that you ought to tell.”

    “Maybe.”

    They were at home. It was safe not to be going in alone, opening that elevator alone, riding with terror.

    “You’re still going to hold out on the marble?”

    She nodded.

    He swung the useless chain. “Better get a new one tomorrow.”

    “What good will it do?”

    He scratched his head. “That’s right.” He moved an end table against the door, set a lamp on the ragged edge of it, put a glass of water on top of the lamp. He chortled, “At least we’ll be warned.”

    Her lips curved. She went to the bedroom, began undressing. He passed through, began washing his teeth. It was like being married again only he was polite now, not in love with her. She got into bed with the evening papers. She couldn’t read much with her glasses somewhere in Mexico. The inquest photos were absurd. Jasper looked like an old man. She looked like a scared pullet.

    Con came in rubbing his jaws. She asked him without looking up from the newsprint, “When do I get my glasses? I shouldn’t read without them.”

    He was examining his nails. “I forgot. I’ll talk to the fellows tomorrow. They ought to be down by then. When’s the funeral?”

    “Private services here Saturday. The big stuff in Hollywood.”

    He got in bed, took half the papers. They read in silence. She put out her lamp. He went on reading. She closed her eyes.

    He asked, “You don’t mind my staying here?”

    She didn’t open them. “Not at all.”

    It was like marriage, only different.

    

    

    He was snoring when she woke. The phone shrilled, the door banged. She shook him, “Answer the door, Con.” It was nine-thirty. She took the phone.

    Ann said, “I want to talk to you, Griselda. Will you lunch with me?” She sounded troubled.

    She was a little suspicious. “You’ll be alone?”

    “Yes. Of course.” She hung up, went to the doorway. Con was clattering in the kitchen. He said, “It was the cleaner.” She returned to the bedroom, dressed with elegance for courage. A pencil of black crepe with shaggy hyacinth flowers under the chin. Her hat was a flung sail. At the living room door again she asked, “Isn’t Bette here yet?”

    Con was humped on the couch, drinking something amber. He yawned, “That’s funny, she isn’t.”

    “You shouldn’t drink so early, Con.”

    “All right, babe.” He finished the glass.

    She told him, “I’ll be at Ann’s for lunch.”

    “Think it’s safe?”

    “She said alone.” Her eyebrows narrowed. “I can’t understand Bette not being here. She must be sick.”

    Con said, “Call me later.”

    

    

    Ann herself opened the door. “I’m glad you could come. I needed you today.”

    They went through the French doors to the dining room. There were jonquils bright in a round silver vase. Olga served shrimp, chilled sliced tomatoes.

    Griselda was surprised to be ravenous. “What did you do last night?”

    Ann’s eyes brightened. “We went to an amazing little French place for dinner, way downtown. I have a problem, Griselda.” She flickered at the closed door of the serving pantry, lowered her voice. “David wants me to drive up to the country with him this week end. Do you suppose Arthur would mind?”

    Griselda’s throat was tight. “Don’t go!”

    Ann showed her surprise.

    She made it matter-of-fact “Of course Arthur would mind.”

    “But there’s no reason for him to know.” She was a child pleading the cause of green apples. “He has to go to Washington tomorrow on bank business. He won’t be back until Sunday night”

    She pleaded now, “Don’t go, Ann. Arthur wouldn’t like it. Those things are always found out You know that.”

    Ann wasn’t quite truthful and she knew it She was almost pious, Ann in her violet velvet hostess gown, her fingers tipped with mauve red. “But, Griselda, you surely don’t think I mean anything wrong! There’s nothing like that. It isn’t going away with a man for the week end.” She perished the thought! “I’d merely be their guest, nothing uncivilized.”

    Griselda shook her head. “It isn’t that.” How to tell Ann and not tell her, how to frighten what lived under the precious lacquer mask. “Listen to me, Ann. You remember that night at the Persian room.”

    “Which night?”

    “When the twins were with us.”

    Ann did remember. It came a shadow into the pupils of her eyes, was pushed back into the beyond of things not to be remembered, not ever to think upon. “What are you talking about, Griselda? You always did have the queerest ideas.”

    Griselda sighed. You couldn’t put things across to Ann obliquely. She understood but would continue to refuse. That was the why of Ann; she was as she was, nurtured, masked, because she would see and understand only that which she wished.

    They moved into the living room. Griselda flopped into the yellow quilted chair. You couldn’t tell Ann in indirect motion, why did she try? Because she didn’t want Ann hurt, although it would serve her right to be hurt, badly, in the face of such stubbornness. But Ann was her sister, beautiful if empty, too normal to be put to death, or worse, to be put to use as was Missy. She struggled again. “You don’t want to be murdered in your bed, Ann.”

    Ann didn’t stir from her pose on the laureled couch. But the fingers on her velvet skirt rose and slowly fell. “No, I don’t, Griselda.” She raised her eyelids. “I don’t fear that. I trust David.”

    Griselda spoke slowly. “Of them all I too trust David. I don’t believe he kills.” If only she could put this much across to Ann. “But there is such a thing as arousing the Furies.”

    Now Ann did stir. She was not comfortable. And the mask went away from her face. She leaned towards Griselda, whispered it “Who killed Nesta Fahney?”

    Griselda saw that room again, saw it so horribly that Ann’s couch became an old white-iron bedstead; the green laurel, dried blood. She put her fingers to her eyes.

    Fright shrilled the whisper now. “Who killed Nesta Fahney?”

    Griselda stared at her sister with empty eyes. Beneath the lipstick Ann’s mouth had the color of quince. Griselda continued to stare with a child’s curiosity at the elder; she had never before seen Ann without blood and bones, nothing but a flabby shape. This was fear, stark horrible fear. She wondered if this was as she herself had been that day in the farmhouse room, that night in the bank, that other when Mr. Grain spilled blood on Con’s carpet, and that first night when the twins spoke to her on the corner of Fifty-fifth and Fifth. She shivered. This had been going on for many years; it would go on forever, as long as the twins…

    “Who killed Nesta Fahney?”

    She answered without meaning, “I don’t know.”

    Whispering again. “Did Missy kill her?” There was nothing of Ann but eyes, not eyes, round black pupils. The rest of her was gone.

    Griselda repeated, “I don’t know.”

    Those black circles were furied from fear, that sightless panic of fear. “You do know. You were there. You saw her. Did Missy kill her?”

    She repeated, “I don’t know.” And then she broke out again with, “Don’t go up there with David, Ann. Don’t do it. It isn’t for you.” But her pleading only made Ann come to life again, the Cheshire eyes filling out with cheekbone, head, shoulders, thighs, green velvet sandals.

    The lovely masked Ann was there again, putting her ivory cigarette holder to her lips, saying, “I don’t know as yet what I will do, Griselda. I may go. It might be amusing. And then again…” The fear went down into dark again, but there was left a shadow of it, something that wouldn’t go away so soon.

    Under her breath Griselda kept repeating, urging, “Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go.” But not aloud. Too much dissent and Ann would go.

    Arthur was interruption. He came in on his key, looking important, broad. He kissed Ann’s dark hair, not as Con would kiss. Arthur’s lips made habit, not emotion. She half-spoke, “You’re early. Are you still going to Washington?”

    “Yes, in the morning.”

    Griselda mentioned, “Ann said bank business. Anything more on it?”

    He was so important. “Well, yes and no. At any rate Tobin thought it would be wise if we’d talk to Barjon Garth.”

    He pretended to be everyday but he wasn’t. It was something to be going to Washington to see the famous X head.

    Her pretense was better. She took a brown wafer from Ann’s always-filled china box, nibbled it. “Just what’s it about? Or is it secret?”

    “Well, we don’t care to have it in the press, naturally. There’d be a hullabaloo. But Tobin thinks if we went through the deposit boxes, there might be some clue. He wants Garth’s advice.”

    She could hide her fear, sucking at the chocolate. Only one box Tobin wanted to touch.

    “Temporarily we’ve placed a guard at the vault. Nothing is to be removed from it without a record.”

    “Won’t that cause trouble?”

    “No, indeed,” he said. “Everyone has been most co-operative.”

    And naturally. Anyone with legitimate business would be co-operative. If it weren’t legitimate-no one would go to the vault now. She couldn’t go. But Con must not see that letter. She flushed. It had been foolish to tell in it how she felt about him. Not that that really mattered now; humiliation was as nothing. But if Con took the marble, the twins would move against him.

    She finished the chocolate, wiped her fingers on her tongue. “I’d better run. I must see Gig. He must have wondered about me.”

    “I like him,” Arthur decided. “Something solid about him.”

    Always, either of them, undermining Con, but they couldn’t. Con was Con, beloved, even if he scorned social graces, social lines.

    She looked straight at Ann. “Call me.” It was a command. Her sister understood.

    “Yes, I promise I’ll call you.”

    Arthur saw her to the door. She went down, out into the cold sunshine. She walked the block over to Fifth, skirted down towards the shining towers. Buses elephanted down the street but she didn’t hail them. Walking was better. It made her head clear; it let air into her lungs. She hadn’t breathed for so many days. Tomorrow the twins would go upstate again. Or was it to be only Ann and David? What did David want with Ann? Merely diversion? But he was not Danny; women were nothing to him. Did he want Ann for another reason, to take Missy’s place? Griselda was colder than the breath frosting from her mouth. Had Missy bungled things slaughtering Nesta? Had she outworn her use? And Ann, cool, casual Ann, without emotion, would she fit better into their mold-with the help of those drugged cigarettes?

    She shivered in the sunlight. They couldn’t do it to Ann. No, they actually couldn’t. She walked briskly again. They didn’t know. Ann’s civilization would defeat them. She would do nothing that kept her from being invited to the Potters and the Van Rensaellers and the Kingdoms. They couldn’t offer anything good enough to take the place of the right invitations. The very qualities that would make Ann valuable to them were those which would keep her out of their madness. But what did David want with Ann? Surely not for Ann to die. That didn’t make reason. And they couldn’t think that Ann was in any way tied up with the blue marble. That was impossible.

    She couldn’t figure it. There was something more important to her. Con must not read the letter, know where to find the marble. She would give it up first. She didn’t know what to do. She only knew she must keep free until Arthur brought Garth’s decision. Only if she were free to get that letter first would Con stay safe. She crossed the width of Fifty-seventh, two blocks to Fifty-fifth, turned, but she turned back again to Fifth, rounding the corner with even, unhurried steps. Was that Tobin down the block, down by No. 21, idling before the window where there was an old Chinese vase and two tapestries? There was no other hat like to that. Tobin, looking towards Madison. Usually Griselda came from Ann’s on the Mad. bus. Tobin, waiting to spy her, to pretend casual meeting? But nothing was casual now. Suppose he had come to arrest her! Panic seized her. She couldn’t go home. She could go to Gig.