Westlake, Donald E - Novel 42 (13 page)

           
“Oh?”

           
“Is that
really
her
boyfriend?”

           
“Lance, I have no idea,” I said.
“Ginger invited her to dinner, and that’s who she brought.”

           
“Good-looking woman,” he said,
staring at the monkeys, who were making faces at one another. “She doesn’t know
how to wear clothes, but that isn’t everything.”

           
I thought I saw where his thoughts
were trending, and I didn’t like it. “She
was
kind of frumpy,” I said.
“Ginger thinks she’s a fag hag.”

           
But he wasn’t to be deflected that
easily. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he said, nodding, musing,
pondering
.
“There’s a real woman inside there. Maybe she’s on the rebound or something.”

           
“That’s possible.”

           
“I don’t suppose you know her home
number?”

           
“Sorry,” I said.

           
“We’ve already been introduced, last
night,” he reminded himself. “I could call her at work.”

           
“Yes, you could,” I said.

           
Now
what?
Lance
and Vickie?
To solve the Lance problem must I recreate the
Christmas
Book
problem? Is nothing to be simple any more, ever again?

           
IT’S not that I’m a nervous
traveler.
Its
just that I’m all packed and ready, and we
aren’t leaving until tomorrow.

           
June has gone by in a blur. All of a
sudden
The Christmas Book
is a major issue in my life again, and I’ve
spent most of the last two weeks in an empty office down at Craig, Harry &
Bourke, going over the copy-edited manuscript, straightening out worldwide
copyright problems with the rights department, arguing with production about
the quality of the first trial color pages (we have thirty-two, done in some
new process that doesn’t look quite as cheap as it is), and generally behaving
like an executive. Also, Vickie and I have managed to perform a few natural and
unnatural acts in there, keeping one eye on the door.

           
Time has suddenly become a major
problem. Craig wants books in the stores by the end of October, which in publishing
terms is yesterday. What with the urgency involved, plus the unwieldy size and
shape of the manuscript itself, plus all the other details to be seen to, it
just made more sense for Mohammed (me) to go to the mountain (the ms). Also,
having an office full of Lance and a bedroom full of flung panythose didn’t
help.

           
Because of the hurry, and because of
the size of the book, they didn’t wait for the copy-editing phase to be
finished before sending the manuscript off to the typesetter, but sent it on in
batches, and the first batch of galleys should by returning any day for me to
proofread. In the meantime, just yesterday I finished the
Cosmo
jewel
piece and mailed it to my editor there and have been finishing a piece for
Geo\
but with this imminent move to Fire Island it just hasn’t been possible to
think about the wonderful ancient Mayans of Belize. I’ll finish the piece next
week, out there.

           
Lance has dated Vickie two or three
times, but I haven’t been able to get a straight answer from either of them as
to precisely what this means. I don’t think they’ve been to bed together, or
Lance would certainly have told me. Lance hasn’t mentioned anything about
Vickie to Ginger, which I guess is just as well; it’s probably better for
Ginger to go on thinking of Vickie as a fag hag.

           
I am looking forward to comparative
peace and quiet; not tomorrow, when we make the big move, but starting the day
after. With Vickie here and me out there, editorial conferences will quite
naturally be fewer, though
The Christmas Book
will of course require at
least my occasional presence in New York. But even with Mary hanging around the
first two weeks, I am anticipating a simpler and more comprehendable existence
for the next month.

           
As for tomorrow, the simplest and
almost the least expensive method for transporting all these people and luggage
turns out to be a rented station wagon, with driver. He is due to arrive at
17th Street tomorrow morning at ten, to pick up Mary and Bryan and Jennifer and
all their goods and chattels, then come uptown to get me, plus Joshua and
Gretchen and
this
pile of baggage, which includes my typewriter and a
liquor store carton filled with work necessities, such as pencils and a
thesaurus.
Also a carton full of sandwiches and apples and
tomato juice and vodka.
If the traffic on Long Island treats us
decently, we’ll make the 1:00 ferry and have a picnic lunch in the rented
house, and Ginger will leave work early and be on the 5:00 ferry. (She
surprised me by very graciously accepting Marys offer to make dinner for
everybody tomorrow night.) The weather is expected to be sunny and mild.

           
I can’t help wondering what will go
wrong.

           
LATER

           
Good God. Vickie just called. The
galleys for the first quarter of the book, exclusive of artwork, will arrive at
Craig from the typesetter in Pennsylvania some time tomorrow afternoon. Vickie
has volunteered—there was simply no way I could say no—to bring them out to
Fire Island on Saturday.

           
I am to go over the galleys,
according to this plan, while Vickie sunbathes the weekend away. On the
afternoon of Monday, the Fourth of July, she will carry the corrected galleys
back to New York; mission accomplished. I did explain that we were already
pretty crowded out there, but she said that was okay, she didn’t mind, she’d bring
a sleeping bag and just bunk on the living room floor.

           
This is insane. Where do you go to
enlist in the Foreign Legion? I am going to be in that small rented house over
the Fourth of July weekend with Mary
and
Ginger
and
VICKIE! What
kind of Independence Day do you call
that?

           
AND it isn’t even over.

           
I was seated on the back deck a
little while ago, reading the Sunday
Times
Magazine, and then I looked
around at the three other people also on the deck, also reading sections of the
Times
, and I found myself thinking: 1 have been to bed with all three of
these women.

           
The thought did not make me feel
like a harem master or anything particularly macho. In fact, all I felt at that
moment was vaguely scared.
Three women in bikinis in the
sunshine, reading Travel and Arts and Leisure and The Week in Review.
If
they were suddenly to rise and turn on me, they could tear me to shreds.
Sitting there, looking at them, thinking about it, I could find no very good
reason why they
wouldn't
rise and turn on me. Dropping the Magazine—I
hadn’t found the rift between the French Newer Left and the Roman Catholic
Church all that fascinating anyway—I rose and announced in a loud confident
voice that I really ought to do some more work on the galleys of
The
Christmas Book.
Then I fled away up here to Ginger’s and my bedroom, where
I have made a fairly useful desk out of a closet door lying across plastic milk
crates stacked two high. We don’t particularly need a door on the closet up
here anyway. (The knobs are at the back.)

           
One thing we hadn’t foreseen in
April, when we rented the place, was that in the summer this upstairs room
would be an absolute oven in the daytime. I may have to buy a fan, if I’m going
to do much work up here. In the meantime, baking here in the heat is still
better than sitting down there among my women.

           
From time to time I glance out the
window at them, still all sprawled there, legs stretched out on the webbed
chaise longues, sunglasses on faces, strategic bits of colored cloth interrupting
the flow of flesh. A smell of rancid cocoanut rises from the suntan oil that
makes that flesh so prettily gleam. From time to time they turn a page or
exchange sections of the paper. Periodically Vickie rolls over onto her
stomach, to sun her back, but is never comfortable that way and soon rolls back
again. The only good thing I can say about the scene is that at least they
aren’t talking to one another.

           
Am I a misogynist? Am I one of those
men who claim to love women but who secretly hate and fear them? Am I guilt-
ridden? Do I feel I
deserve
to be torn limb from limb by a shock of
bikini-clad avengers?

           
Uhh, actually, no.
Everything would be fine, perfectly normal, if it weren’t for the addition of
Vickie. No matter how trapped I am, no matter how justified in the whole Vickie
thing, Ginger would be
very
upset if she found out about it. When Ginger
was The Other Woman, it was a very straightforward role; I was falling out of
that previous nest, and she was passing by underneath. But now Ginger is
simultaneously The Other Woman
and
The Wronged Woman, and debased in
both roles.

           
As for Mary, the one thing that has
kept our relationship relatively smooth has been her belief that I have
tried
to be honorable.
Failed sometimes, but at least tried. One of the reasons
she wants me back is that she thinks I’m a decent guy. If she found out about
Vickie, it would remove the dignity from the ending of our marriage; I would
have proved myself unworthy to have left her.

           
Whereas, if Vickie were to discover her
main attraction for
me
was bookish rather than bawdy,
she’d lead the posse.

           
My women.

           
I’M a nervous wreck.

           
Of
course
Vickie would demand
sex while she was here. She gave me several high-signs yesterday, once the heat
in the bedroom had driven me back downstairs, but with two other adults and
four children about the place all day Sunday it just wasn’t possible. And I’d
assumed it would go on being impossible.

           
But then came today. The beach is
seven houses and a dune from here, and after breakfast everybody went there,
leaving me to finish my work on the galleys before the bedroom becomes too hot
to stand, and so Vickie could take them back to the city with her this
afternoon. Suddenly, a little before eleven, here came Vickie skipping into the
bedroom, smiling her lascivious smile and untying her strings.
“Oh, no!”
I said, but, “We’ve got time,” she assured me,
giggling.

           
We did, too, but only just. She had
barely managed to reassemble herself and be in the kitchen making a big quart
bottle of packaged lemonade when Ginger arrived. “Oh, dear,” I heard Vickie
say. “I wanted to surprise you.”

           
“Mmm,” said Gingers voice.
“Hows Tom going?”

           
“Sore as a bear,” Vickie told her.
“I guess those galleys are driving him crazy. I called up to him, but he just
growled.”

           
So Ginger didn’t come upstairs to
inspect the site of the skirmish, and soon both women went back to the beach
with the bottle of iced lemonade and a handful of plastic cups, and I went to
take my second show
^r
er of the day.

           
But not my last.
At lunchtime everybody descended, including me carrying the finished galleys in
their big sloppy envelope, and we sat around the table on the deck, under the
big beach umbrella, making cold cut sandwiches and drinking white wine
spritzers. (The children stuck to lemonade.)

           
After lunch, Vickie went off to
Jennifer and Gretchen’s room to change, while Mary and the kids went back to
the beach, Mary wearing a bikini and two cameras, with a third camera in the
canvas bag she carried, down among the suntan oils and paperback books and
crumpled tissues. Then Ginger and I walked Vickie to the dock, where she and
the galleys took the three-ten ferry and life became slightly more plausible.

           
Walking back to the house, Ginger
gave me an updated assessment of Vickie, making several negative observations
with which I wholeheartedly agreed. Then she said, “How do you feel, surrounded
by all these women?”

           
“Like an Oriental potentate,” I
said.

           
She considered that, as though it
had been a real answer,
then
said, “Really?”

           
“Not really. For one thing, I don’t
have my pick of the harem.”

           
“You’re damn right you don’t.” Then
she linked her arm with mine and gazed around at the day and said, “It’s
beautiful out here.”

           
“It sure is.”

           
“I hate having to go back to work.”

           
“It’s only one week,” I pointed out.
Ginger had had to pull some strings and request special favors to get most of
July off, and at that she couldn’t wangle the entire month. Next week, from the
eleventh till the fifteenth, she’ll have to commute, getting up every morning
to take the 7:15 ferry— locally known as the “Death Boat”—then returning on the
6:05; the “Daddy Boat,” though not in this case.

           
“I don’t like leaving you here
alone,” she said.

           
“I won’t be alone. I’ll have the
kids.
And Mary.”

           
“That’s what I don’t like about
it.”

           
“Oh, come on, Ginger,” I said.
“Don’t try to tell me you’re jealous of Mary.”

           
“She wants you back.”

           
“Granted.”

           
“She’ll work her wiles on you when
I’m gone.”

           
“Mary doesn’t have any wiles,” I
said.

           
She laughed, and disengaged her arm
from mine. I said, “Don’t get mad for no reason.”

           
Brooding, she said, “Sometimes I’d
like to know what a man thinks about.”

           
“Sex.”

           
She nodded. “Good idea.”

           
So it was back up to the bedroom we
went. It must have been way over ninety in there by then, but did that stop us?
Unfortunately not.

           
So there I was, engaged in perfectly
legitimate intercourse with my mistress, while my wife was up at the beach and
my girlfriend was off on the 3:10, when all of a sudden a perfectly awful
noise
threw the both of us off-stride and then some. It sounded like a cat fight, it
sounded like mongooses mating, it sounded like a beached whale, it sounded like
the death-cry of an elk,
it
sounded like ... I don’t
know what it sounded like.

           
But, looking out the window, I found
out what it
was.
It was
Bryan
, blowing into the clarinet he’d been given
last Christmas. I’ve been paying for lessons, of course, and Mary had told me
he was being fairly diligent with his practice, but since I don’t actually live
with the kid I’d never heard these terrible sounds before, so naturally I
screamed out the window, “
Bryan!
For God's sake!"

           
He stopped squawking, looked up at
me, and smiled happily. “That’s
Jingle Bells,"
he said.

           
“The hell it is! Take that thing off
into the sand dunes somewhere if you’re going to play it! Take it to
Atlantique!”

           
Behind me, Ginger was saying, “Don’t
discourage him, Tom,
let
him play.”

           
“Play!”
I
yelled at her. “You call that play?”

           
“I don’t get to practice anywhere,”
Bryan
complained on my other flank. “How am I
going to grow up to be Artie Shaw?”

           
Where
did he ever hear of
Artie Shaw? And why on Earth would he want to grow up to be him? “Take—that—
awayl"
I yelled, pointing toward Europe.

           
So he moped off, clarinet at
half-mast, body doing a whole great exaggerated number on how mournful he felt.
Clarinet!
That's
what Christmas is!

           
Meantime, Ginger was nagging,
saying, “That’s no way to act toward a child who’s taking an
interest
in
something.”

           
“Under this
window?”

           
“You could have spoken to him gently
and reasonably.”

           
“I didn’t feel gentle and
reasonable.”

           
“You certainly didn’t.”

           
So much for sex; we spent the time
instead arguing about me mistreating my children. Well, it made a change from
our argument about me mistreating
her
children.