Two Much! (12 page)

The kitchen was empty. The extension there was a white wall phone, and like all the others it had a row of plastic buttons on the bottom for selecting which line you wanted to use. It also had a long cord, so one could tuck the receiver in between ear and shoulder and hold a conversation while walking around.

Fine. I picked up the receiver, tucked it, and pushed the button for the first line. It immediately lit up, as would the same button on all the other phones in the apartment, showing that this line was in use. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. Quickly I dialed the number for the second line and then, while the phone company did its mumbo, jumbo of clicks and computer notes, I walked across the room to the cabinets and picked out a glass. I was turning toward the refrigerator when simultaneously the receiver said, “Bdrrrrrrrrp,” in my ear and all the phones in the house, including the kitchen phone, said, “Ting-aling-aling.” No, I'm a liar; the phone in Betty's room would not be saying, “Ting-aling-aling.” At her special desire and request, it would be giving a really sickening birdcall, all tiny whistles and trills. If I was going to live around here very long, I'd have to give that phone poison some day.

I opened the freezer door and carefully selected an ice cube, and Nikki came bobbling in to answer the phone. “—the sleeves as soon as—Hold on,” I said to the phone, and to Nikki I said, “I'm on the phone to my tailor. Catch that on one of the others, will you?”

“We,” she said, and headed away again.

“Later,” I told her derrière, and crossed the kitchen again to the cabinet containing the liquor. I got the vodka out, the phone rang a second time, and Nikki answered: “Kairnair rezeedonce.”

“Liz Kerner, please.” I opened the vodka bottle while Nikki told me to please wait on.

Time passed, click. “Hello?”

“Liz? You're in town?”

“Oh, it's you,” she said. “Where'd you have lunch—Philadelphia?”

“Copenhagen,” I said, that being the name of a local restaurant. “What are you doing off-island?”

“Slumming. Why don't you come take me out tonight?”

Because Betty and I were going to a special honeymoon dinner tonight at The Three Mafiosi, one of New York's hundred-dollar-a-plate restaurants, that's why. “I'm afraid I can't baby,” I said. “Why didn't you call me earlier?”

“You've got a date.”

“When the cat's away, you know.”

“The rats will play.”

I said, “I don't think that's quite the way that goes. Listen, I tell you what, I'll cut it short, all right?”

“Come on over here, I'll cut it short for you.”

“Honey,” I said sweetly, “I'm answering
your
call.” And it occurred to me the simplest way out of this morass might be to get Art into arguments with everybody. Art on everybody's shit list, good old Bart hanging around all by himself. Could Bart put the make on Liz?

But she said, “Yeah, you're right. I guess I'm just in a bad mood from the drive in.”

“You drove in?” It seemed to me I'd seen Carlos lounging around the apartment all day.

“A friend drove me,” she said. “A friend of yours.”

“Mine?” Candy? Dear God, did Liz know all?

“Ernie Volpinex.”

“Oh!”

“He met your brother, you know.
That
was some—” Then she cut herself off, saying, “Just a second. Hold on a minute, will you?”

“Sure,” I said, thinking fast. She'd just reminded herself of Bart, ergo of the drink. I was taking too long.

“I'll put you on hold.”

“Ah,” I said, suddenly understanding what she would do, and the instant I heard the two clicks I said, in the most guttural voice I could manage, “Menches con carne conquista malatesta bergonez.”

“Carlos!” There she was, on the other line.

Still guttural, I said, “Hallo?”

“This is Miss L,” she said, and she sounded as offensively arrogant as the man from the finance company. Oh ho, I thought, so that's the way you speak to the lower orders. “Mr. Dodge is wandering around in there someplace, making me a drink. Give him some help, will you?”

“Si,” I said, listened to the clicks, and in my own voice said, “And as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock, with—”

“What?”

“Oh, you're back,” I said.

“What time tonight?”

That was brisk. I said, “Why don't I come by for you, say, eleven-thirty?”

“That late?”

“This girl's important to me,” I said. “Her brother's maybe going to invest in my—”

“Spare me. All right, eleven-thirty. Your place?”

“No, I'll come over and get you.” Then, just in time, it occurred to me to say, “What's your address?”

“Why, you creep,” she said, “she's sleeping over! You're coming here because you're going to leave her there!”

“I should know better than to try to put one over on you,” I said. Argument after all?

No. “That's what I like about you,” she said. “You're a breath of foul air. Eleven-thirty.” And she gave me the address.

“Right,” I said, hung up, and carried her drink at a brisk trot through the apartment, slowing to a friendly walk as I stepped out onto the terrace.

“Well,” she said, “that took long enough.”

“Carlos said you sent him to find me.”

She sipped from the drink and watched me sit again in my previous chair. She said, “What happened to you?”

“Call of nature, first,” I told her, with my sheepish good-guy grin. “Then I got kind of turned around, I'm still not used to this apartment.”

“Your brother called,” she said.

“He did? Did he mention me at all?”

“Uh huh. He said you were a goody-good and a bleeding heart and he was sorry he took you into the business.”

I looked at her. “Now I wonder,” I said, “why he'd say a thing like that.”

B
Y ELEVEN O'CLOCK
B
ETTY
was sleeping the sleep of the drugged; and that's what she was. The label on the prescription sleeping pills in her medicine chest had said to take one capsule one hour before retiring, so it was the contents of two capsules I'd mixed with the sauce on her
coq au vin
when she retired briefly to the ladies room in the restaurant. That was shortly before nine; when at ten-thirty she was still wide awake and raring to go I was beginning to get worried.

But then she flopped all at once, with huge yawns and an inability to keep her eyes open and a weaving unsteadiness in her walk. I got her into the Lincoln waiting outside, Carlos drove us home, and I half-carried her into the apartment and through to our bedroom. Liz had gone out somewhere before we'd left, and had apparently not as yet returned; if she stiffed me, after all the trouble I was going through, I'd never forgive her.

I undressed Betty, who folded sleepy arms around my neck and mumbled, “Screw me, lover.” She stayed awake for it, but was gone before I was off the bed.

Hurriedly I dressed, while my mind went scouting the terrain ahead. I couldn't maintain both halves of this charade much longer, that was clear. The joke was long since accomplished, so where was I now and what were my goals?

Money. A poor man among poor men is reasonably content, but a poor man among rich men begins to itch. The people inhabiting these Fifth Avenue apartments and Point O' Woods cottages and Far Hills estates were dull enough to dry quicksand, but their way of life was precisely what I had in mind for myself. Chauffeurs, tennis courts, terraces, stables out back. French maids, by God.
Money
. Like the tiger who has just had his first taste of man meat, I now knew what I was hunting.

So. I'd dropped two lines into the water, one labeled
Art
and the other
Bart
, and damn if the Bart line hadn't hooked a big one. Betty and I hadn't had a direct talk about money yet, but tonight on the way to the restaurant she'd handed me her American Express card and said, “You might as well use that until we get new ones.” Meaning it was all mine. Whatever Betty had I had, and she had the world.

So it was time to cut the other line; Art had to go. Bart would have been simpler to get rid of, naturally, but it could still be done. This evening at dinner I'd told Betty about the brotherly falling out, so now both sisters knew there was trouble. Typically, Liz had done her best to stir up the trouble a little more, while Betty had given me a serious look, like the social director at a resort hotel, and asked me if there was anything she could do. I'd assured her there was not.

So my next move was to precipitate a break between Art and Liz. That shouldn't be impossible, given the naturally nasty tongue of both principals. Then, with Art no longer seeing Liz, I could settle down peacefully as Bart with my little Betty and live happily ever after.

As to Art, probably the best thing to do was mothball him. Three years ago eight of my artists had gone to court against me, trying to gain control of Those Wonderful Folks, Inc., in lieu of the back payments I owed them. They'd lost, naturally, but now I could make them a very similar deal. They'd take over the firm, the copyrights, debts, office furniture, accounts receivable and all, in lieu of payment. We'd do it legally, with lawyers and signatures and possibly even handshakes, and that would be the end of it Art Dodge would simply have grown tired of his company, would have sold it to get out from under his debts, and would have moved on. I might even bruit it about that Art had told me he was going to England for a while.

Changing clothing now, with Betty dead to the world on the bed, I went over my options again and again, and among my other emotions I was surprised to find a growing sense of relief. The game had been fun at first, but as the stakes had risen it had become steadily less fun and more nerve-wracking. It might be difficult to go around pretending to be drab old Bart for the rest of my life, but nowhere near as difficult as pretending to be
two
people. The stunt was over, and good riddance to it.

A
T ABOUT TWO IN THE
morning, just after I'd ordered another round of drinks, Liz took a sheaf of documents from her purse, unfolded it, extended it across the table toward me, and said, “Take a look at that”

We were in a bar on the upper East Side, surrounded by advertising executives and television commercial actresses. For the last three hours or so I'd been under a considerable strain, trying to get Liz to join me in an argument. There was something strange about her tonight, muted and distant and almost mournful; whatever it was, it made her impervious to irritation. In fact, the only time she'd shown anything like her usual self was when she'd told me that Bart, after my phone call this afternoon, had said he was keeping away from me because I was nothing better than a crook. “You do bring out the best in people,” I'd responded, and she'd looked away and said, “I wish I did.”

What the hell was the matter with her? Was she onto me? Was that the purpose for these lies to the “brothers”? But it didn't feel like that; I wasn't sure exactly what Liz would do if she found out the truth about the con I'd been pulling, but cryptic remarks and withdrawn silences and an inability to get mad seemed unlikely modes of response.

And now this document. I've been served with subpoenas before, and I was hesitant to reach across the table for this thing. “What is it?”

“A proposal of marriage.”

“Ha ha ha,” I said.

“Go on and take it,” she said. “It won't bite.”

I looked more closely at her and her grim face. What was this minor key melody she was singing? What was so serious? Reaching out at last to take the papers from her, I said, “Am I going to love this?”

“That's up to you,” she told me, picked up her drink, and looked pointedly away.

I moved my own rum and soda to one side, unfolded the papers, saw they comprised a legal document of some kind, a contract or some such thing, and began to read: