Two Much! (11 page)

Nikki's accent was French. She was the maid, her manner was saucy, and her presence made me revise slightly my opinion of the late Albert J. Kerner. She had Candy's boniness, and some of Candy's foxlike facial features, but softened in her case by a more honest lewdness. Her uniform skirts were short, and she seemed to find an incredible number of work tasks that required her to bend over in front of me, showing me what she would have called her
derrière
. I called it an ass, and I wanted to bite it, but of course with the wedding so close that was impossible. Perhaps Art, in a few days? …

Well. That was for the speculative future; in the speculator's present I was about to become a gushing groom. The waiting period in New York State was too long, so on Tuesday Carlos drove us to Jersey City where we took out our license, and where Charlie Hillerman's birth certificate passed with flying colors. Then some sexual extravagances in the backseat of the Lincoln during a run out to Far Hills for dinner with an old college chum of Betty's plus the chum's new husband; these were the only people in on our little secret.

I must say I liked their house. This was the foxhunting section of New Jersey, where Jackie Kennedy used to hang out, and the house did the neighborhood proud. A great sprawling stone creature four stories high, it stood amid a park of imported trees, dotted with tennis court and arbor and swimming pool. The stables were out back. Inside, there were warm wood tones and expensive antiques and the comfortable aura of money gouged from generations of peasantry.

The owners, Betty's chums, were named Dede and David. Dede was a cool ash blonde such as American men are supposed to go crazy for but which I have always suspected would be an inept lay, and David looked like one of those junior Washington lawyers who get sent out for coffee. He was in fact an attorney with the family firm in Philadelphia, and this house—Windy Knob they called it, which made my teeth jar—was also a family fixture, having been most recently occupied by an aunt who was now declining on the Côte d'Azur.

Having seen Betty mostly in sexual encounters recently, I'd forgotten just what a crashing bore she could be in company. The modulated voice, the standardized conversation, the social smile. How proud her etiquette teacher would have been.

Not that Dede and David helped. They'd gone to the same etiquette school, and with no trouble at all the three of them recreated that Point O' Woods party at which Betty had first entered my life. David talked with me about the stock market, Young Republicans, sailing, and men's shoes, and by God if Bart didn't join right in. Art would have behaved badly here, of course, either with smartass remarks or by falling asleep, but Bart was of a more placid nature. Men's shoes: I'd never known they could be that interesting.

Dinner was early, since our wedding was scheduled for nine. In a two-car caravan, Dede and David following in their V-12 Jaguar, we roared northeast to Weehawken, Where we cooled our heels for twenty minutes in Judge Reagensniffer's quarters while Hizzoner finished dealing with his evening's quota of traffic offenders and wife beaters. David spoke to me about imported automobiles.

At last the judge entered. A sharp-faced skinny geezer with thinning white hair on his bony pate, he probably wasn't a day over eighty-five, and had the brisk spryness that comes from years and years of uninterrupted bad temper. He looked at us, sitting around on his sagging brown leather furniture, and snapped, “What do you people want?”

“I'm Elisabeth Kerner,” Betty told him, her smooth surface unmarred by his cantankerousness. “We have an appointment here to be married.”

“Ah!” His sour face creased in a bony if fatherly smirk; he'd known for a long time how to behave with the gentry. “Of course, Miss Kerner,” he said. His little eyes surveyed us all “And this would be?”

“My fiancé, Robert Dodge. And these are our witnesses.”

Introductions were made. The judge offered to shake my hand, and I found myself gripping something that seemed to be made of coat hanger wire and sausage casings. Then the forms were gone through, Betty pulling envelopes from her purse, the judge sitting at his massive old wooden desk, people signing things right and left.

There was one form for me to put Bart's name to, which I did while leaning over the desk. Finishing, I looked up and saw the judge glowering at me in sudden distaste. “Well, young man,” he said, “what do you have to say for yourself?”

“I beg pardon?”

He frowned, looked puzzled, glanced around at the others, and suddenly flashed a wide insincere smile, saying to me, “No last-minute doubts, eh?”

“No, sir,” I said. Not of the marriage, anyway.

“Fine, fine.” He went through the forms one more time, gave us all a swift keen look of disapproval, and rapped out, “Bailiff!”

The door popped open and a worried-looking gent popped in. “Yes, sir, your honor?” He was about thirty, covered with a layer of baby fat, and with dandruff sprinkled like monosodium glutamate on his black-clad shoulders.

Having called in this flunky, the judge seemed unsure what to do with him. “Mm,” he said, hefted the marriage papers in his hand, dropped them on the desk, and pointed vaguely toward a far corner, saying, “You just be, um, present.”

“Yes, sir, your honor.”

So the bailiff went off to stand in the corner, like something from a New England ghost story, while Judge Reagensniffer married us. First he got up and drew a slim volume from the shelves of lawbooks behind his desk, and then he spent an endless period of time arranging the four of us in some precise pattern in the middle of the room. “A bit to the right. You come forward a step; no, not that much.” Was this a judge or a photographer?

Well, the arranging finally came to an end, the judge stood in front of us flipping pages in his book till at last he found the right place, and then, one finger in the book to mark his intention, he said, “I usually preface these ceremonies with a few introductory remarks.”

A spectral throat-clearing took place in the corner. We all jumped.

“Marriage,” the judge told us, “is a frail bark on the stormy sea of life. It is not to be undertaken lightly. And those who do, and who don't watch their steps, can't expect to be treated lightly either. I'm the same man in these chambers that I am on the bench. I'm willing to listen to explanations, but I firmly believe in the letter of the law.” He fixed us with his bird-eyes. “Well? Anything to say to that?”

We all made uneasy movements. This wasn't quite the ceremony any of us had had in mind. Finally, to break the awkward silence, I said, “Your honor, we still want to get married.”

“Married,” he said, as though it were a new and possibly interesting word. Then he blinked, looked at the book impaled on his finger, and said, “Ah, yes, married. Those who enter upon the married state take unto themselves a strong partner, a companion through the shoals and rapids of life. Two are stronger than one, a companionship, a giving and receiving of strength. And for there to be a conspiracy, no overt act needs to take place. Only the intention of the individuals to conspire together. Is that clear?”

Not to me, Jack. This time it was Betty who worked at getting us back on the right track, saying, “Your honor, we intend to conspire together and love together and remain together forever.”

“Yes, indeed,” the judge said. “A permanent bond.” He hesitated; was he going to say a
life term
? No, he fell the other way. “So we might as well get on with it,” he said, opened his book, and with no more preamble went directly into the wedding ritual. He read it briskly, almost angrily, as though explaining our rights to us before passing sentence, and we made the appropriate responses in the appropriate locations. Betty looked misty-eyed throughout, and I did my best to look solemn and trustworthy.

“… I now declare you man and wife. Bailiff, take them away.”

And so I was married. Bride and groom were kissed by the witnesses. Hands were shaken. I passed a sealed envelope to the judge, making sure Betty saw me do it. Everyone was pleased by that, but then again they probably all thought the envelope contained money. Its sole content, however, was a card from Those Wonderful Folks that had turned out to be even more apropos than I'd thought when I'd selected it yesterday afternoon. On the front an old man in a wheelchair is saying, “I'm not too old to cut the mustard.” Inside he finishes, “I just can't seem to find the hot dog.”

W
HEN
L
IZ ARRIVED THE
next afternoon at two-thirty, I knew at once I was in trouble. “Well, you've made yourself at home,” she said, coming out onto the terrace where I was enjoying the sunlight, the view of the park, a rum and soda, and my marital status. Dropping into a canvas chair, she waved generally at the park and said, “Next you'll want to graze your sheep on our lawn.”

“Well, hello,” I said, in my witty Bart manner. “Betty didn't tell me you were coming to town.”

“Betty didn't know.” She shrugged, looking vaguely irritable and discontented: normal, in other words. “I just thought I'd come in and see Art in his natural habitat.”

“Ah,” I said.

“He takes long lunches.”

“Oh?”

“I called the office,” she said. “His secretary said he was still out to lunch.”

“Well,” I said, “they're business lunches. You know, with artists and distributors and so on.”

She frowned at the blue sky. “Maybe I'll go down there and hang around, see what the office looks like.”

“You never know how long he'll be gone,” I said. “Why not wait for him to call?”

She picked at the canvas of her chair, looking mulish, then frowned at me and said, “What about you? Shouldn't you be at work?”

On my honeymoon? Well, I wasn't to mention that; Betty still insisted on keeping our marriage secret, even from Liz, and for reasons of my own I was happy to oblige. Once again invention came when needed. With no more devious intention in my mind than to offer an acceptable answer to Liz's question, I fell once again into a useful arrangement. “Art and I have had—” I gave a little shrug “—kind of an argument. I haven't seen him for a while.”

Her attention had been caught; I could see in the sudden glint in her eye and curve in her lips the hope of hearing something amusing. “An argument? You two?”

“All families argue.” Bart would never amuse Liz, the best day he lived.

“I thought you and your brother were very close.”

“Don't you and Betty argue sometimes?”

The eye-glint turned steely for a second. “We're not talking about me and Betty.” Curiosity returned, and she said, “But what do you find to argue about?”

What, indeed? Searching for subject matter, poring over the personality differences I'd established between us, I said, “Oh, I just think sometimes Art gets a little careless with, urn, business ethics.”

“Business ethics?” She found the phrase hilarious, but struggled to keep a straight face for my sake.

“He doesn't treat the artists well,” I said primly. Then I leaned closer to her, lowering my voice and looking toward the terrace doors as I said, “I haven't said anything to Betty about it. I didn't want to upset her.”

“You have a lot to learn about Betty,” she said.

Less than Liz thought. “Will you keep my secret?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Why not?” And, since the threatened diversion had not after all arrived, she changed the subject without a backward glance, saying, “What's that you're drinking?”

“Rum and soda.”

“Isn't that Art's drink?”

“I thought I'd try it,” I said, grinning sheepishly at the glass and cursing myself for a fool. “I suppose it means I wish he and I were friends again.”

Liz was the perfect partner for a parlor psychology conversation; it put her right directly to sleep. “Yeah, that's probably what it means, all right,” she said. “But who I want to be friends with is me. Would you see if you can find Carlos, tell him to make me my usual?”

I'd been looking for an excuse to go inside, and here it was. “I'll do it myself,” I said, and absolutely bounded to my feet.

She squinted up at me in the sunlight. “You know what I drink?”

Did I? I couldn't remember if Bart had ever been introduced to Liz's drinking habits or not “I'm not sure,” I said.

“It's an easy formula,” she said. “One glass, one ice cube, vodka to taste.”

“Coming up,” I told her, reflecting that Bart was apparently not worth being given the line about a big wet kiss, and hurried inside.

All right. Many things were lined up against me, including the fact that I didn't actually have a twin brother, but here and there were some small factors on my side—principally, at this point, the Kerner's telephone system. Not only were there three separate lines, there were also extensions all over the apartment, including a long-corded one in the living room. Already I had seen Nikki several times carry that phone out to Betty on the terrace to answer an incoming call. So Liz would stay where she was, and there just might be some hope after all.