43

The van dropped him right in front of Mardell’s building. In his brooding about the two women, he had forgotten to tell the driver he was going to use the back door. As they stopped in front of the apartment house, Charley felt as if he had just stabbed himself; he could feel the eyes of Mae’s agency man clocking him as he went in.

Charley stood outside Mardell’s apartment door, took a deep breath, and pushed the doorbell. He heard faint noises of movement inside the apartment so he waited without ringing again. He heard Mardell say, “Who is it?”

“Charley. I’m home.”

The chain lock rattled, the three dead bolts snapped, and the door flew open. Mardell stared at him wide-eyed. “What do you want?”

“Jesus, you lost a lotta weight, Mardell.” He reached out and pulled her into his arms.

She began to weep. “Buckingham Palace has forgotten me, Charley. She must be in Australia,” she sobbed. “I’ve been so sick.”

He eased both of them into the apartment and shut the door.

“Don’t cry. It’s all right. Everything’s gonna be all right.”

She turned away from him and tottered down the hall, turning left into the first doorway. He followed her. She got into bed. He covered her and tucked her in. “Pop told me how sick you were,” he said.

“I’ll be all right,” she said, lying on her back with her eyes closed, her arms stretched at her sides, palms upward.

“How come Pop didn’t get you a nurse here? You ain’t well enough to be all by yourself.”

“I didn’t want a nurse.”

“Why not?”

“Because I wanted you to come here, and when you came I wanted us to be able to talk without a stranger in the place.”

He pulled up a chair and sat where he could look closely at her face. “I go away on a weekend business trip to Miami and I’m gone almost three weeks. While I’m gone, you get pneumonia. If somebody said to me that was gonna happen, I woulda said they could send somebody else to Miami.”

She didn’t answer him. Two large, clear tears appeared at the corners of her closed eyes and ran down the sides of her head.

“I can’t tell you how much I thought about you, how much I missed you,” he said. He picked up her hand and held it. He kissed it.

“That—your fiancée came here yesterday.”

“Who?”

“She said she had just been with you in New Orleans.”

Charley blew up. “What the hell is she? My keeper?” he yelled, getting to his feet with his fists clenched and staring down at Mardell, who opened her enormous eyes at him. “She got herself invited to New Orleans by her aunt. The aunt is my boss’s sister. I had to go to the lunch and see her.”

“Is that where you were? Lunching with her?”

“I didn’t wanna see her. And she’s putting pressure on you for two weeks—Pop told me about those dried-up flowers she sent to the hospital after she practically handed you pneumonia on a silver platter by bugging you and trying to worry you to death.”

“Your father was very kind to me.”

“What is she tryna do now? Give you leprosy? Hey, Mardell—no offense.”

She began to giggle. She pointed her long, thin arm and a long finger at him as the giggle built into bellowing laughter. She held up both of her arms to him and he went into them. They held each other tightly.

“Now I’m sure my mother was putting me on with that story about my dad being a leper,” she gasped.

“You are tremendous, Mardell,” he said. “There ain’t another woman like you in the whole world. And that’s okay with me because, if you gotta know, I love you.” He kissed her. Then, recuperation or otherwise, one thing led to another.

After a while, as they rested on a pile of pillows, Mardell said, “I had a lot of time to think about everything, and I decided that I have to accept whatever happens.”

“Whatever happens?” Charley said with alarm. “Whatta you mean?”

“Charley—we haven’t known each other very long. A few weeks. She’s known you all of your joint lives.”

“Know? She knew I was there, I knew she was there. It was strictly zilch. This whole engagement thing is a mockery. I never had nothing to say about it. She said we was engaged, that’s all. I never said we was engaged.”

“She loves you.”

“Aaaah!”

“You don’t love her?”

He went silent. “I like her. She’s okay.”

Mardell started to get out of bed. “I’d better think about making us some dinner.”

He held her down. “What can I tell you? I don’t wanna lie to you. My father proved to me a long time ago that lying makes things worse.”

“What are we going to do, Charley?”

“Why are we alive? That’s what we gotta ask ourselves.”

“Why are we alive then?”

“I read about it in a magazine. I never forgot it because it’s logical. We are alive so we can reproduce ourselves. What are we? the magazine asked—and it was written by a famous scientist, I forget his name. We are envelopes for the genes that rule us, control us, and use us until we reproduce, and then they pass themselves along to a new fresh body that we reproduced from ourselves. So when a baby is made, the whole thing makes the genes what they are—immortal.”

“That’s beautiful, Charley. But what does that have to do with you and Miss Prizzi?”

“The article said the atoms that make us up altogether rule the genes. Who rules the atoms?”

“God?”

“Let’s not get too deep on this. Anyway, men look around to spread their seed, to reproduce. They don’t have the hard part—having the baby—so their instinct is just to spread the seed.”

“So?”

“That’s what I mean that I can’t lie to you, Mardell. I was following my instinct to reproduce. I was spreading my seed with her.”

“That is as neat an explanation for this sort of thing as I have ever heard.”

“It’s the truth.”

“My mother told my father that all a woman really asks is that a man know his own mind, that a woman will accept almost any conditions if she is sure they are what the man believes.”

“Yeah?”

“You are sleeping with another woman. I have to accept that because I believe in you.”

“I never had such trouble in my life. I can’t keep it up. No matter how rough it turns out to be, I gotta make my move, one way or the other—you or her.”