Wake Up With a Stranger (11 page)

“I understand what you are trying to say, but I don’t understand why you are saying it.”

“Well, neither do I, precisely. Let’s just say that I am troubled by the memory of this man. Therefore it’s a relief to talk about him with someone he loved. Is that a satisfactory reason?”

“Yes. I’m sorry if I sounded rude.”

“No. Nothing of the sort. Perhaps I should not have spoken so freely.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Good. Then no one is offended. Tell me, Miss Buchanan, are you prepared to continue in your present position at the shop?”

“Yes, but I’ve been wondering if I would be asked.”

“I’m asking you now. I talked with Mrs. Burns this afternoon after the services, and she agrees that the shop should remain open until it is finally disposed of.”

“Is it going to be sold?”

“Yes. That is what Mrs. Burns wishes.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

“So am I, frankly. Would you like to know what I advised her to do?”

“Yes.”

“I advised her to keep the shop and put it under your management.”

“I’m flattered and very grateful.”

“There’s no need to be. I’m convinced that you are perfectly competent, which precludes flattery, and I was unable to get my advice accepted, which makes gratitude excessive.”

“Nevertheless, I am grateful to you for trying. Do you think it would do any good if I were to talk with Mrs. Burns?”

“No, I do not. In fact, I’m afraid it would be unpleasant for you to attempt it.”

“I’d be willing to risk the unpleasantness if there were the slightest chance of success.”

“I predict that there’s more than a risk of the former and less than a chance of the latter. However, you are perfectly free to see her if you please. If you do, I wish you luck.”

“Thank you. Will you have another drink?”

“No. I think not. It has been very nice talking with you, but now I had better go.”

He stood up, and she stood also. Taking his empty glass, she set it with her own on a table and went into the bedroom for his coat and hat. Returning, she found that he had walked to the door in her absence, and he took the coat and hat from her and stood with the coat draped over one arm and the hat held in his hand.

“Goodby, Miss Buchanan,” he said. “Since I am temporarily in charge of Aaron’s estate, it is certain that we’ll meet again.”

“I hope so.”

“Thank you for seeing me.”

“On the contrary, I am grateful to you for coming.”

There was, after the reopening of the shop, an appreciable increase of interest in Donna Buchanan originals. It was real and discernible and tremendously exhilarating. Stimulated by this, and needing in the difficult aftermath of Aaron’s death the relief and defense of intense activity, she entered a period of creativeness in which ideas were conceived and executed with a hot facility and perfection. And in her mind she began to evolve the plan for a show, an exclusive presentation of original gowns to those who would come by invitation. The only oppression was the threat of the shop’s disposal, and every day she resolved to go to see Aaron’s widow. But this was something she dreaded exorbitantly. Every day she postponed it until the day following, and the day never arrived.

In the third week, Queen Hattie returned and asked for Donna. With her was her husband, William Walter Tyler himself. He sat in a chair with his knees crossed and his hat in his lap while Hattie modeled for his approval (after Serena had modeled it for hers) a gold lamé sheath which Donna had designed. Tyler liked the gown and Hattie bought it.

When they were ready to leave, Tyler took Donna’s hand and held it for a moment in both of his. It was a gesture of mild intimacy that surprised her a little but did not offend her.

“I greatly admired the last gown my wife bought here,” he said. “You have a fine talent, Miss Buchanan.”

He said this with an odd wistfulness which was as surprising as his gesture in taking her hand, and she had a feeling that he was suggesting a genuine regret that his devotion to his wife was restricted in expression to the admiration of her gowns. But this, she thought, was really ridiculous, an impression based on preconceptions that were probably not valid. He had certainly meant to suggest that to a strange woman he had only met.

“Thank you,” she said. “You are kind to say so, but Mrs. Tyler certainly made the gown appear at its very best.”

“That’s true,” he said. “She’s a lovely woman.”

And now in Tyler’s voice, she would have sworn, the odd wistfulness was effaced by an odd, impatient anger, but this too must have been no more than a peculiarity of inflection that implied what it did not intend. Saying goodby, he turned away and followed his wife out of the shop.

The next morning, compelled by an inexplicable urgency that surmounted her dread, Donna called Aaron’s widow from the shop and was given permission to see her at three o’clock that afternoon.

The sense of urgency was the result of an unreasoned conviction that she had reached a particular point in time, a brief period that was psychologically propitious, that she would succeed today in what she would have failed at yesterday or would fail at tomorrow. There was as little validity in the conviction as in the priestcraft of the zodiac, but it sustained her, through the morning and the afternoon, to the time when she was in a taxi and on her way. Then, in the taxi, the hysterical assurance drained from her at once, leaving her hollow and spent and assured of defeat. She compelled herself to complete the errand because it was something she had to do.

When she reached the house, she was let into the hall by a woman she had never seen before but who she suspected was not Mrs. Cassidy. She was younger and wore a white dress that buttoned down the front, suggesting the effect of a uniform. Donna assumed at once, and correctly, that she was a practical nurse Shirley Burns had hired to serve roughly the same purpose a placebo would serve. She offered to take Donna’s coat, which Donna retained, and then went out of the hall on rubber soles, leaving her alone in the hall where Aaron had died. How long ago? Only three weeks, plus a few days. And where, precisely, had he fallen and died and lain? A step or two from the foot of the stairs. A little to the left of them. There, right there, on polished oak that bore no stain or scar or any kind of sign, though it seemed, somehow, that it should have. Struck by the idea that if she went and stood on the exact spot she might establish the contact she had tried and failed to establish in her apartment, she went and stood on it. But there was no more this time than there had been the other time. She was still standing there when the woman returned and told her Shirley Burns was ready to see her.

Shirley Burns was sitting in a high-backed chair with a small lamp burning on a table beside her. A book was turned face down in her lap, and she did not rise nor invite Donna to sit.

“Miss Buchanan?” she said. “Yes,” Donna said.

“Why have you come to see me? I am not well, and I’d appreciate it if you would be brief.”

“I’ve come to speak with you about the shop.”

“What about it?”

“I understand that you plan to sell it. I want to urge you not to do it.”

“Indeed? In what way do you consider yourself privileged to interfere with my plans?”

“If I give you that impression, I’m sorry. I admit that I have a selfish motive in wanting the shop to continue as it is, but it would also be profitable to you.”

“So I have been told by Mr. Joslin. I repeat to you what I said to him, that I do not wish to be bound to this city by any interests at all. I intend to settle my affairs and leave as soon as possible. However, assuming for the moment that I keep the shop, am I to understand that you are suggesting that I put the operation of it into your hands?”

“That’s my idea, yes.”

“Why should I do such a thing?”

“Because I am competent and can contribute more to its success than any other person. Your husband knew this to be true, and Mr. Joslin knows it now. I’m sure he would be glad to recommend me if you were to ask him.”

“It is unnecessary to ask him, for he has already volunteered that information. Apparently, Miss Buchanan, you made quite a strong impression upon my husband and his lawyer. Especially upon my husband.”

“I believe that we understood and respected each other.”

“Certainly he must have valued you quite highly. You have been informed, of course, that he left you ten thousand dollars.”

“Yes. He was considerate and generous, and I’m grateful.”

“Perhaps your gratitude is not altogether necessary. I feel certain that his generosity was no more than posthumous payment for yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. Do you wish me to say it directly? Do you think I am such a fool that I don’t understand the bequest was payment for the use of your body? I wish you to understand, whatever you call yourself, or were called by my husband when he was alive, that he has made you appear in the end no more than a common whore, which is exactly what you are.”

Once before in her life Donna had felt as she felt now. The time had been that late-May night when her father had violated the illusion of a fragment of time. In fury, with a physical feeling of cold, but calm, almost detached in her apparent reaction, she looked at Shirley Burns, as she had looked that other time at her father, with revulsion and scorn that excluded hate.

“I am as willing as you to speak frankly,” she said. “I am willing to tell you directly that Aaron and I slept together many times. We did so frequently in this very house, and I have walked through your room and despised you for an inadequate woman without the brains or passion or guts to hold a man who was worth holding. You did your best to destroy him, but I saved him, at least some part of him, and for this you hate me. As for me, I consider hate an extravagant concession that you are not worth. I only despise you, as Aaron did, and am sickened by you, as Aaron was. I regret I came here, and now I am going. And you can go to hell — if you can find one worse than the one you’ve made.”

She turned and walked to the door and out into the hall, leaving the door standing open behind her, and she was followed by the whispered epithet of the woman she left.

“Whore,” Shirley Burns whispered after her. “Whore, whore, whore!”

From her apartment, she called the shop and talked to Gussie. “Will you take care of closing, Gussie?” she said.

“Where are you now?” Gussie said.

“At the apartment.”

“How did it go with Mrs. Bitch?”

“Badly. There’s no hope there.”

“Well, that’s tough, but you’ll remember I predicted it.”

“I remember, and I really didn’t expect to accomplish much myself, but I thought it ought to be tried.”

“What now?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps nothing. I’ll think about it.”

“Sure, darling. You think about it. Goodby, now.”

“Goodby, Gussie. See you in the morning.”

She began to wonder what she could possibly do with the rest of the afternoon and the long night to come. She was still protected by a sense of detachment, but she realized it would not last, that she must — and quickly — find support. And the support she needed was one which, at the moment, she lacked, a man and the reassurance of a man, a man to talk with if not to sleep with, a man to use if not to love.

She wanted Aaron, but Aaron was dead — if he were not dead, she would not now be in excessive need. Because she had been faithful, in infidelity, she was now alone. While she was trying to decide what to do, the telephone rang. It was Earl Joslin. She thought she heard, after his voice saying hello, the sound of a chuckle, like a dry crackling in the wire.

“How are you feeling?” he said. “Quite well,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I think you must have just gone through a rather trying experience.”

“Oh. With Mrs. Burns, you mean. Apparently she lost no time in calling you.”

“When it comes to registering complaints, Mrs. Burns never loses time. I’ve never known her to be quite so furious before, however. You must have ticked her off pretty thoroughly.”

“I confess that I used poor judgment.”

“Well, that’s in how you look at it. As for me, I’m not so sure. You probably understand, of course, that she’s demanding your immediate dismissal.”

“Am I to take it, then, that this is notice?”

“Not at all. I’d merely like to talk with you. Is it possible for you to see me this evening?”

“Yes.”

“Would you consider having dinner with me?”

“I’d be happy to. Thank you very much.”

“Good, good. I’ll come for you about eight. Is that acceptable?”

“Perfectly. I’ll be ready.”

“Until eight, then. In the meantime, I shouldn’t worry too much if I were you.”

After hanging up, she looked at her watch and saw that it was exactly five o’clock. Her present problem, then, was reduced to the expenditure of three hours, and she tried to think what she could do that would be a defense against her increasing sense of disaster and the concommitant threat of depression. She had reached, she felt, a state of suspension in which she was impotent, a body without energy. She was more than ever by her feeling of impotence irrationally convinced that she had reached a time of enormous significance, that she must now in the matter of the shop, which was somehow identically the matter of her life, succeed enormously or fail definitively.

She mixed a much-needed drink in the kitchen, and stood leaning against the cabinet, feeling inside her the diffusion of the drink’s warmth, and reviewing in her mind the selection of gowns that were hanging in her closet in the bedroom. Without knowing exactly the reason, or trying to know it, she felt compelled to make on her dinner date with Earl Joslin the best possible appearance. This need was stronger and more directed than the natural desire of a woman to make the most of her assets, but it was not concerned specifically with the effect she might have on Joslin himself. What it surely was, though she didn’t verbalize it or even recognize it, was a reaction of pride and defiance to the threat of devaluation.