It was afternoon by the time he got back to New York. Nobody had seen him off at the Sloans’; he’d left before they rose. Because it was Sunday, there were few cars on the streets, and Manhattan’s sky was relatively clear. The sidewalks seemed populated entirely by young couples in leather pants and psychedelic shirts walking Afghans and Great Danes. Their parents no doubt had all locked themselves in their apartments with their air conditioners.
When he unlocked the door to his apartment, Dany was there, lying on the sofa, eating unionized grapes, and leafing through fashion magazines. Roman kicked his suitcase under a side chair and threw his jacket and tie over it.
‘Hi. I thought you were going to do some shooting on the island this weekend.’
‘We got it done in one day. The rest of the gang stayed up there, but I decided to come back. In case you did.’ She held up a center spread hosiery ad. ‘Don’t you think I have better legs?’
‘Models are insane.’
Dany frowned. He always said that when she asked for his opinion. She had the feeling that he meant it.
He stole a grape from her and ate it. She did have better legs, but he refused to encourage the vanity that served as a soul for a professional model. She was in nothing but an old happy jacket of his, her tan limbs and tilt of the head inviting a phantom photographer with a motorized Nikon to pop up from the other side of the sofa.
‘Find what you wanted?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’ He scratched the stubble that was taking over his chin. Even in a tuxedo on the steps of the opera, he’d look as if he had come to hold the place up.
‘What was it?’
‘A family. The all-American family.’
He went to the bathroom to shower off the sweat of the ride and shave. He picked up a roll of adhesive tape and came back into the living room in a towel.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Dany said. A grape stopped an inch from her lips. ‘What the hell happened to you?’
He raised his arms. ‘Tape me up, will you?’ Last night’s activities had irritated the tear. During the shower he’d kept his eyes away from the bruise that ran from his shoulder to his navel. Now that he saw it it hurt.
‘A truck run over you?’
‘A tree, believe it or not.’
She circled him until a wide white band covered part of his chest.
‘Looks like a bruised plum,’ she said, running her finger down the discoloration. ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t much of a welcome, was it?’
She kissed him, first on the cheek and then on the mouth. Roman’s arms found themselves inside the cotton happy jacket. The pain was subsiding.
‘Speaking of bruised plums,’ he said.
‘Stop that. You’re tickling me.’
Hillary’s come-on in the field had left its residue of desire. The happy jacket dropped to the floor beside the towel. He pressed Dany into him, conscious as always of the contrast in colors, a contrast that became more marked as contact became more intimate.
‘You’ve gained some weight,’ he told her. ‘You’ll lose your job, but I like it.’
‘And what will you do when I lose my job?’
‘Get you a crystal ball and teach you how to tell fortunes.’
‘I’d never be able to tell fortunes. I don’t even know what I’m going to be doing a minute from now.’
He grinned broadly.
‘Well, that, of course,’ she said.
‘Then why fight fate any longer?’
It was four thirty when Roman woke up. The room was in what shade they could get by closing the drapes on an afternoon. Dany, asleep and content, rested her head on his bruised arm. The sheet was down at the foot of the bed so that the air could blow over their bodies. Her breasts sagged slightly to the sides over her rib cage. They were supposed to be a bit too big for her business. What was it that made Americans demand large breasts in their fantasies and flat breasts on their models? To a Romany a woman’s breasts were not a sex object. They were out in the open too much, suckling children in a room full of friends or before anyone’s eyes on the public road. On Dany, he had to admit, they were sex objects. If she ever succeeded at what she hinted, if they ever did marry, would she suckle her children in front of her friends from Long Island?
Painstakingly he slid his arm out from under her and rolled off the bed. He went into the living room and closed the bedroom door. When he’d put the towel back around his waist, he sat by the telephone with the phone book and opened a fresh pack of cigarettes. He called Pan American first. A recording stalled him for a minute, and then a girl came on the line.
‘Hello,’ Roman said. ‘This is the First National Bank travel bureau, Mr Baldwin calling. We would like to check on a reservation made for a Miss Mueller. M-u-e-l-l-e-r. Judy Mueller, for last Monday to the Virgin Islands.’
‘That would be St Thomas?’ the girl asked.
‘That’s right. She was supposed to join a tour down there, part of the travel package that we handle. She never did join it. That isn’t really that unusual. Often younger clients prefer to disappear on their vacations. But the tour director has just called me to say that her flight is about to leave for the States and Miss Mueller still hasn’t shown up. I wonder if you could check your records and tell me whether she made her flight down to the islands.’
‘Could you tell me the number of her flight?’
‘I’m afraid that part of the office is closed on Sundays.’
The girl was obviously pondering the request on the other end.
‘This is very irregular.’
‘I understand. But the tour director is very concerned, and so am I. We feel some obligation to our customers to make sure of their well-being.’
There was another wait.
‘Could I have your name, please, miss?’ Roman said. ‘I’d like to know it the next time I see your supervisor.’
‘Wait a moment while I ask the computer,’ she retorted crisply.
Roman was putting out a cigarette when the girl came back.
‘We have no Miss Mueller on any flights for St Thomas last week. What’s this all about?’
He hung up.
That was a blank. Pan Am was the only airline he knew of that flew to the Virgin Islands; it was the one Dany had taken the year before. She was tight with her money, though; she would have shopped around. He went back into the bedroom.
‘Hey, Dany. Come on. Let’s go.’
She struggled up on her elbows. ‘You don’t have to lift my eyelid. You know that wakes me up.’ She rubbed her face. ‘God.’
‘I couldn’t tell if you were breathing there for a second. You should be glad I checked. Look, when you went to the Virgin Islands with that decorator – ’
‘He was doing the backgrounds for the bathing suit number. You know that.’
‘With that decorator, you flew Pan Am. What other airlines go down there?’
‘From here?’ Dany tried to think through the bleariness of sleep. ‘Trans Caribbean, but only on Sundays.’
‘Thanks.’ He kissed her eyes closed and pushed her head back down on the pillow. She knew she wouldn’t be able to go to sleep again.
He found the number for Trans Caribbean and called. A voice that was a copy of the Pan Am girl’s spoke to him. He was disappointed – he’d hoped for some rich fluty West Indian tones – but he went through his Mr Baldwin routine enthusiastically. The girl paused at the same points as her Pan Am sister, but she went to check her records, too.
‘Hello? Mr Baldwin? I checked and we did have a reservation for a Miss Mueller. It was paid in advance as you said. But I don’t think your tour director should worry. Miss Mueller never boarded the plane; she didn’t check in at all. I’m afraid she was a “Stay Away,”as we call them here.’
‘Yes.’ Roman agreed and hung up. He guessed so, too.
‘Trouble?’ Dany asked. She was at the doorway, picking up the happy jacket with her toes rather than venture in front of the window even though the nearest possible peeping Tom was on the other side of the East River.
‘Not exactly. The trouble’s gone.’
‘Antiques?’
‘Yeah, antiques.’
He had a lost look that came over him very rarely. She crossed the room and pressed his head between her breasts. The maternal gesture revived Roman because it amused him. Maybe she would nurse her kids in public after all.
‘I think you should drop the antiques,’ Dany said, ‘and get into something interesting.’