CHAPTER 4

Rudolph stood on the sidewalk in the morning sunlight with Enid and her nurse, waiting for Johnny Heath and his wife to come by in their Lincoln Continental and pick Enid and himself up for the trip to Mon-tauk. The nurse had a suitcase with her. She was off for her family in New Jersey for the week. Somehow, Rudolph thought idly, children’s nurses never seemed to have families who lived in the same state in which they worked. Enid was carrying some schoolbooks and her homework to do over the holiday. The nurse had packed a bag for her. He had a small overnight bag with his shaving kit, pajamas and a clean shirt.

The night before, after they had said good-bye to Wesley, Rudolph had walked Gretchen to her apartment. He had invited her to come with him and the Heaths to Montauk. She had looked at him strangely and he remembered that she had once had an affair with Heath. “You want a lot of witnesses present when you see your ex-wife, don’t you?” she had said.

He hadn’t really thought about this, but as she said it, he recognized the truth of what she had said. Jean had visited him once, with the burly masseuse she had hired as her companion in Reno, and the meeting had been an uncomfortable one, although Jean had been sober, reasonable, subdued, even when she had played with Enid. She was leading the quiet life, she said, in a small house she had bought for herself at Mon-tauk. Mexico had not worked out. It was a drinking man’s climate, she had decided, too raw for her nerves. She was completely dried out, she had said, with a tiny smile, and had even begun to take photographs again. She hadn’t tried to place them in any magazines. She was just doing it for herself, proud of the fact that her hands were steady again. Once more, except for the heavy presence of the masseuse, she was so much the woman he had married and loved for so long—shining of hair, her delicate, pink-tinted complexion healthy and youthful—that he started wondering uncomfortably all over again if he had done the right thing in consenting to the divorce. Pity was mixed in his feeling, but pity for himself, too. When she had called a few days ago to ask if she could have Enid for a week, he could not say no.

He had no fears for Enid, but feared for himself, if he and Jean had to spend any time alone in what she described as a cosy small house filled with the sound of an uncosy large ocean. She had invited him to stay in the guest room, but he had made a reservation at a nearby motel. As an afterthought, he had invited the Heaths. He didn’t want to be tempted by an evening in front of a blazing fire in a silent house, lulled by the sound of the sea, to go back to domesticity. Let the past belong to the past. Hence the Heaths. Hence Gretchen’s sharp question.

“I don’t need any witnesses,” he said. “Johnny and I have a lot of things to talk about and I hate to have to go to his office.”

“I see,” Gretchen had said, unconvincingly, and had changed the subject. “What’s your opinion about the boy. Wesley?”

“He’s a thoughtful young man,” Rudolph said. “Maybe too—well—interior. How he turns out all depends on if he can survive his mother and her husband until he’s eighteen.”

“He’s a beautiful young man,” Gretchen said. “Don’t you think so?”

“I hadn’t thought about it.”

“It’s a marvelous face for the movies,” Gretchen said. “The tough bones, the sweet smile, the moral weight, to be fancy about it, the tenderness in the eyes.”

“Maybe you’re more perceptive than I am,” was all that Rudolph had answered.

“Or more vulnerable.” She smiled.

“You sounded on the phone as though there was something you wanted to talk to me about,” he said. “Are you in trouble?”

“No more than usual.” She smiled again. “I’ll tell you about it when you get back to town.”

He had kissed her good night in front of her apartment house and watched her go into the lighted lobby, guarded by a doorman. She looked trim, capable, desirable, able to take care of herself. Occasionally, he thought. Only occasionally.

The Lincoln Continental drove up, Johnny Heath at the wheel, his wife Elaine beside him. The nurse kissed Enid good-bye. “You’re going to be a good little girl, aren’t you, miss?” the nurse said.

“No,” said Enid, “I’m going to be a horrid little girl.” She chortled.

Rudolph laughed and the nurse looked at him reprovingly. “Sorry, Anna,” he said, straightening his face.

Elaine Heath got out of the front of the car and helped establish Enid in the rear with her. She was a tall, exquisitely groomed woman, with hard, intelligent eyes, fitting wife to a man who was a partner in one of the most successful firms on Wall Street. The Heaths had no children.

He got in beside Johnny. Enid waved at the nurse standing with her bag on the sidewalk and they drove off. “Hi, ho,” Johnny said, at the wheel, “on to the orgies of Montauk, to the lobsters and the nude clambakes on the white beaches.” His face was soft and round, his eyes deceptively mild, his hands on the wheel pale, with only the smallest suggestion of fat, his paunch just a tiny hint of things to come under his checked sports jacket. He drove aggressively and well. Other drivers were forced to respect Johnny Heath’s right of way, as other lawyers had to respect his tenacity and purpose in a boardroom or before the bench. Rudolph did not see Johnny often; after the Heaths’ marriage they had drifted apart somewhat, and each time Rudolph saw his old friend after a lapse of months, he thought, with no regret, I might have looked like that, too.

Behind him he heard the child prattling happily. He heard Elaine whispering into her ear, making Enid laugh. To look at her, one would think that Elaine would dread embracing a child, fear that her handsome tweed suit would be wrinkled or dirtied. When Rudolph turned around he saw that Enid was mussing Elaine’s perfectly set hair and that Elaine was smiling happily. You never could tell about anybody, Rudolph thought as he turned back and watched the road. They were crossing the Triborough Bridge and New York stretched alongside the river, towers, glass, smoke, the old, enormous, impossible engine glittering in the morning springtime sun. Only at certain moments, moments like this one, when he saw the city as a great, challenging entity, its harsh, imperial beauty falling into a cohesive pattern, did he feel any of the thrill, the satisfaction of belonging, that had moved him daily when he was younger.

Down below, on the swiftly moving river, a small yacht chugged bravely against the current. Perhaps, he thought, this summer I will board the Clothilde and set sail for Italy. Might as well get some use out of the boat. They had been on course once for Portofino but had never reached it. Dispel ghosts. Get Jeanne somehow to escape her husband and children for two weeks and make love at twelve knots and in a softer climate, drink cold local wine out of a carafe at cafés along the Ligurian shore. I must not allow myself just to become a used-up old man. Fantasia Italiana.

He shook himself out of his reverie. “Johnny,” he said, “you told me over the phone that you wanted to talk to me. What about?”

“I have a client,” Johnny said; “actually it’s a dead client, whose estate has to be settled.” Johnny, Rudolph thought maliciously, makes more money out of the dead than a cityful of undertakers. Lawyers. “The heirs are squabbling,” Johnny said, “as heirs will. You know all about that.”

“It has become my specialty,” Rudolph said.

“To avoid litigation,” Johnny went on, “there’s a part of the estate that’s up for sale at a very decent, low price. It’s a big ranch out in Nevada. The usual income tax benefits. I don’t have to tell you about that.”

“No,” Rudolph said.

“You’re not doing anything in New York,” Johnny said. “You don’t look good, you certainly don’t seem happy, I don’t know what the hell you do with yourself day after day.”

“I play the piano,” Rudolph said.

“I haven’t seen your name recently on the posters outside Carnegie Hall.”

“Keep looking,” Rudolph said.

“You’re just sinking into decay here,” Johnny said. “You’re not in action anymore. Christ, nobody even sees you at any of the parties these days.”

“How’re the parties in Nevada?”

“Jamborees,” Johnny said defensively. “It’s one of the fastest-growing states in the union. People’re becoming millionaires by the dozen. Just to show you I’m not kidding, if you say yes, I’ll go in for half with you—arrange the mortgages, help you find people to run it. I’m not just being altruistic, old buddy, I could use a place to hide from time to time myself. And I could also use a little tax shelter in the golden West. I haven’t seen the place myself, but I’ve seen the books. It’s viable. With some smart additional investment, a lot more than viable. There’s a great big house there that with a little fixing up would be a dream. And there’s no better place to bring up kids—no pollution, no drugs, a hundred miles away from the nearest city. And politics are nicely controlled there; it’s a sweet, tight operation—you could move into it like a fish in water. And they never heard of Whitby, New York. Anyway, that’s all forgotten by now, even in Whitby, even with that goddamn article in Time. In ten years you could wind up being senator. Are you listening to me, Rudy?”

“Of course.” Actually, he hadn’t been listening too closely for the last few seconds. What Johnny had said about its being a place to bring up kids had intrigued him. He had Enid to think of, of course, but there were also Wesley and Billy. Flesh and blood. He worried for them. Billy was a drifter—even as a boy in school he had been cynical, without ambition, a sardonic dropout from society. Wesley, as far as Rudolph could tell, had no particular talents, and whatever education he might receive was unlikely to improve his chances for an honorable life. On a modern ranch, with its eternal problems of drought, flood and fertility and the newer necessity for shrewd handling of machinery, employees, the marketplace, there would be plenty of work for the two of them to keep them out of trouble. And eventually they’d have families of their own. And there was always the possibility that he’d marry again—why not?—and have more children. “The dream of the patriarch,” he said aloud.

“What was that?” Johnny asked, puzzled.

“Nothing, I was talking to myself. Seeing myself surrounded by my flocks and my progeny.”

“It isn’t as though you’d be stuck in the wilderness,” Johnny said, mistaking the intention of what Rudolph had said, believing it to be ironic. “There’s a landing strip on the property. You could have your own plane.”

“The American dream,” Rudolph said. “A landing strip on the property.”

“Well, what’s wrong with the American dream?” Johnny demanded. “Mobility isn’t a venal sin. You could be in Reno or San Francisco in an hour whenever you wanted. What do you think? It’s not like retiring, though it has a lot of its advantages. It’s getting into action again—a new kind of action.…”

“I’ll think about it,” Rudolph said.

“Why don’t you plan—why don’t we both plan—to fly out there next week and take a look?” Johnny said. “That can’t do any harm, can it? And it’d give me a good excuse to get away from the damned office. Hell, even if it turned out to be worthless, it’d be a vacation. You can bring your piano along.”

Heavy irony, Rudolph thought. He knew that Johnny considered his having retired a kind of whimsical aberration, a vastly premature symptom of the male menopause. When Johnny retired it would be to the cemetery. They had come up together, they had made a great deal of money together, they had never cheated each other, they understood each other, and Rudolph knew that Johnny felt that as an act and seal of their friendship he had to get Rudolph moving again.

“Well,” Rudolph said, “I’ve always dreamed of riding across the desert on a horse.”

“It’s not desert,” Johnny said testily. “It’s ranchland. And it’s at the foot of the mountains. There’s a trout stream on the property.”

“I can take a couple of days off this week,” Rudolph said, “while Enid’s with Jean. Can you get away?”

“I’ll buy the tickets,” Johnny said.

While they drove swiftly past the endless graveyards of Long Island, where the generations of New Yorkers had hidden their dead, Rudolph closed his eyes and dreamed of the mesas and mountains of the silver state of Nevada.

Usually, Gretchen liked to work on Saturdays, just she and her assistant, Ida Cohen, alone in the cutting room in the deserted, silent building. But today Ida could tell Gretchen wasn’t enjoying herself at all as she shuttled the moviola back and forth, running the film irritably through her white-gloved hands, pushing the slicing lever down with sharp little snaps and whistling mournfully, when she wasn’t sighing in despair. Ida knew why Gretchen was in a bad mood this morning. The director, Evans Kinsella, was up to his old tricks, shooting lazily, incoherently, fighting a hangover, letting the actors get away with murder, trusting that somehow Gretchen would make sense out of the wasteful miles of film he was throwing at her. And Ida had been in the room the day before when Kinsella had phoned to say that he couldn’t take Gretchen to dinner as he had promised.

By now, Ida, whose loyalty to the woman she worked with was absolute, loathed Kinsella with an intensity of feeling that she otherwise reserved for the cause of Women’s Liberation, a movement whose meetings she attended religiously and at which she made passionate and somewhat demented speeches. Fat and short, she had even gone so far as to renounce wearing a brassiere, until Gretchen had scowled at her and said, “Christ, Ida, with udders like yours, you’re putting the movement back a century.”

Ida, forty-five years old and plain, with no man in her private life to bully her, believed that Gretchen, beautiful and talented, allowed herself to be taken advantage of by men. She had persuaded Gretchen to accompany her to two of the meetings, but Gretchen had been bored and annoyed by the shrillness of some of the orators and had left early, saying, “When you go to the barricades you can count on me. Not before.”

“But we need women just like you,” Ida had pleaded.

“Maybe,” Gretchen had said, “but I don’t need them.”

Ida had sighed hopelessly at what she told Gretchen was sinful political abdication.

Gretchen had more to bother her that morning than the quality of the film she was working on. During the week, Kinsella had tossed a screenplay at her and asked her to read it. It was by a young writer, unknown to either of them, but whose agent had been insistent that Kinsella look at it.

Gretchen had read it and thought it was brilliant, and when Kinsella had called the afternoon before to break their date for dinner had told him so. “Brilliant?” he had said over the phone. “I think it’s a load of shit. Give it to my secretary and tell her to send it back.” He had hung up before she could argue with him. Instead, she had stayed up until two in the morning re-reading it. Although it was written by a young man, the central role was that of a strong-minded, young, working-class woman, sunk in the drabness and hopelessness of the people around her, a girl who, of all her generation in the small, dreary town in which she lived, had the wit and courage to break out, live up to her dream of herself.

It could be a bracing corrective, Gretchen believed, to the recent spate of films which, overcorrecting for the happy-ending fairy tales that Hollywood had been sending out for so long, now had all their characters aimlessly drifting, reacting with a poor little flicker of revolt against their fates, and then sinking hopelessly back into apathy, leaving the viewer with a taste of mud in his mouth. If the old Hollywood pictures, with their manufactured sugar-candy optimism, were false, Gretchen thought, these new listless dirges were equally false. Heroes emerged daily. If it was true that they did not rise with their class, it wasn’t true that they all sank with their class.

When she had finished reading, she was more convinced than ever that her first impression had been correct and that if Kinsella could be pulled up again to the level of his earlier work, he would finish with a dazzling movie. She had even called his hotel at two-thirty in the morning to tell him so, but his phone hadn’t answered. All this was going through her mind, like a looped piece of film in which the action of a scene is repeated over and over again, as she worked on the shoddy results of Kinsella’s last week of shooting.

Suddenly, she turned the machine off. “Ida,” she said, “I have something I want you to do for me.”

“Yes?” Ida looked up from her filing and registration of film clips.

Gretchen had the script with her in the big shoulder bag she always wore to work. She went over to where it was hanging and took it out. “I’m going to a museum for an hour or so,” she said. “Meanwhile I want you to drop that trash you’re fiddling with and read this for me.” She handed the script to Ida. “When I get back, we’ll go out to a girly lunch, just you and me, and I’d like to discuss it with you.”

Ida looked at her doubtfully as she took the script. It wasn’t like Gretchen to break off in the middle of work for anything more than a container of coffee. “Of course,” she said. She adjusted her glasses and looked down at the script in her hands as though afraid it might contain an explosive device.

Gretchen put on her coat and went downstairs and into the bustle of Seventh Avenue, where the building was located. She walked swiftly crosstown and went into the Museum of Modern Art, to soothe her nerves, she told herself, wrongly, with honest works of art. When she came out, she was no more soothed than when she went in. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to the moviola after more than an hour of Picasso and Renoir and Henry Moore, so she telephoned the cutting room and asked Ida to meet her at a restaurant nearby. “And put some makeup on and straighten your stockings,” she told Ida cruelly. “The restaurant is French and fancy, but fancy-fancy. I’m treating—because I’m in trouble.”

Waiting for Ida in the restaurant, she had a Scotch at the bar. She never drank during the day, but, she told herself defiantly, there’s no law against it. It’s Saturday.

When Ida came in and saw Gretchen at the bar, she asked, suspiciously, “What’re you drinking?”

“Scotch.”

“You are in trouble.” Philosophically in the vanguard of modern thought, as she believed she was, in her daily life Ida was grimly puritanical.

“Two Scotches, please,” Gretchen said to the bartender.

“I can’t work after I’ve had anything to drink,” Ida said plaintively. “You know that.”

“You’re not going to work this afternoon,” Gretchen said. “Nobody’s going to work this afternoon. I thought you were against sweated female labor. Especially on Saturdays. Aren’t you always telling me that what this country needs is the twenty-hour week?”

“That’s just the theory,” Ida said defensively, eyeing the glass that the bartender set down in front of her with repugnance. “Personally I choose to work.”

“Not today,” Gretchen said firmly. She waved to the maitre d’hôtel. “A table for two, please. And send over the drinks.” She left two dollars, grandly, as a tip for the bartender.

“That’s an awful big tip for just three drinks,” Ida whispered as they followed the maitre d’hôtel toward the rear of the restaurant.

“One of the things that will make us women equal to men,” Gretchen said, “is the size of our tips.”

The maitre d’hôtel pulled out the two chairs at one of the tables just next to the kitchen.

“You see”—Ida glared around her. “The restaurant’s almost empty and he puts us next to the kitchen. Just because there isn’t a man along.”

“Drink your whiskey,” Gretchen said. “We’ll get our revenge in heaven.”

Ida sipped at her drink and made a face. “While you were at it,” she said, “you might have ordered something sweet.”

“On to the barricades, where there are no sweet drinks,” Gretchen said. “And now tell me what you think of the script.”

Ida’s face lit up. A well-done scene in a movie, a passage she admired in a book, could make her euphoric. “It’s wonderful,” she said. “God, what a picture it’s going to make.”

“Except it looks as though no one is going to make it,” Gretchen said. “I think it’s been around and our beloved Evans Kinsella was the agent’s last gasp.”

“Has he read it yet—Evans?”

“Yes,” Gretchen said. “He thinks it’s a load of shit. His words. He told me to give the script to his secretary to send back.”

“Vulgarian,” Ida said hotly. “And to think what a big shot he is. How much is the picture we’re on going to cost?”

“Three and a half million.”

“There’s something goddamn wrong with the business, with the world, for that matter,” Ida said, “if they give a fool like that three and a half million dollars to play around with.”

“He’s had two big hits in the last three years,” Gretchen said.

“Luck,” Ida said, “that’s all—luck.”

“I’m not so sure it’s only that,” Gretchen said. “He has his moments.”

“Not three and a half million dollars’ worth,” Ida said stubbornly. “And I don’t know why you stick up for him. The way he treats you. And I’m not talking about only in the office, either.”

“Oh,” Gretchen said with a lightness that she didn’t feel, “a little touch of masochism never hurt a girl.”

“Sometimes, Gretchen,” Ida said primly, “you drive me crazy, you really do.”

The waiter was standing over them now, his pad and pencil ready.

“Time to order,” Gretchen said. She looked at the menu. “They have roast duck with olives. That’s for two. Do you want to share it with me?”

“All right,” Ida said. “I don’t like olives. You can have them all.”

Gretchen ordered the duck and a bottle of Pouilly Fumeé.

“Not a whole bottle,” Ida said. “Please. I won’t drink more than half a glass.”

“A whole bottle,” Gretchen said to the waiter, ignoring her.

“You’ll be drunk,” Ida warned her.

“Good,” said Gretchen, “I have some big decisions to make and maybe I won’t make them dead sober.”

“You have a funny look in your eye today,” Ida said.

“You bet your liberated brassiere I have,” said Gretchen. She finished her second whiskey in one long gulp.

“What are you planning on doing?” Ida said. “Now don’t be reckless. You’re angry and you’ve got all that alcohol in you …”

“I’m angry,” Gretchen said, “and I have a wee bit of whiskey in me and part of what I’m planning to do is drink most of the bottle of wine all by my little self, if you won’t help me. And after that …” She stopped.

“After that, what?”

“After that,” Gretchen said, “I’m not quite sure.” She laughed. The laughter sounded so strange that Ida was convinced that Gretchen was in the first stages of descending alcoholism. “After that I’m going to have a little talk with Evans Kinsella. If I can find him, which I doubt.”

“What are you going to say to him?” Ida asked anxiously.

“Some impolite home truths,” Gretchen said. “For starters.”

“Be sensible,” Ida said, worriedly. “After all, no matter what else he is to you, he’s still your boss.”

“Ida,” Gretchen said, “has anyone ever told you that you have a sick respect for authority?”

“I wouldn’t say sick.” Ida was hurt.

“What would you say then? Exorbitant, slavish, adoring?”

“I’d say normal, if you must know. Anyway, let’s get off me for a while. Just what are you going to tell him?”

“I’m going to tell him that the picture we’re working on stinks. That’ll be the overture,” Gretchen said.

“Oh, please, Gretchen …” Ida put her hands up as though to stop her physically.

“Somebody ought to buy you some rings,” Gretchen said. “You have pretty hands and rings would set them off nicely. Maybe we’ll spend the afternoon looking for rings for you if we can’t find that bastard, Kinsella.”

Ida looked around worriedly. The restaurant had filled by now and there were two men sitting near them. “People can hear you.”

“Let them hear,” Gretchen said. “I want to spread the good word around.”

The waiter was at the table and expertly carving their duck. The wine was in a cooler. “No olives for me, please,” Ida said. “Give them all to the lady.”

Gretchen watched admiringly as the waiter deftly sectioned the duck. “I bet he doesn’t drink during working hours,” she said. Kinsella had been known to do that, too, from time to time.

“Ssh,” Ida said. She smiled at the waiter, apologizing for her eccentric friend.

“Do you?” Gretchen asked the waiter.

“No, ma’am,” he said. He grinned. “But I would if it was offered.”

“I’ll send around a bottle the first thing in the morning,” Gretchen said.

“Gretchen,” said Ida, “I’ve never seen you like this before. What’s come over you?”

“Fury,” Gretchen said. “Just plain old healthy fury.” She tasted the duck, “Mmm,” she said and drank heartily of the wine.

“If I were you,” Ida said, nibbling at her food, “I’d wait until after the weekend before you did anything.”

“Never postpone fury. That’s an old family motto in my family,” Gretchen said. “Especially over the weekend. It’s hard to be furious on Monday morning. It takes a whole week to get into the proper frame of mind for fury.”

“Kinsella will never forgive you if you go on at him like this,” Ida said.

“After the overture,” Gretchen said, disregarding Ida’s interruption, “we go into the full performance. About how I only consented to work on the piece of junk he’s making because I wanted to continue to enjoy the favors of his pure white body.”

“Gretchen,” Ida said reproachfully, “you once told me you loved him.” In her spinster heart romance held a prominent place.

“Once,” Gretchen said.

“You’ll infuriate him.”

“That’s exactly my intention,” said Gretchen. “To continue—I will tell him that I’ve read the script he told me to send back to the agent and I find it original, witty and too good for the likes of him. However, since he’s the only director I happen to be half living with at the moment, and certainly the only director I’m intimate with who can raise money for a picture on the strength of his name, I will tell him that if he has the brains he was born with he’ll buy it tomorrow, even if he’s doing it only because I’m asking him to.”

“You know he’ll say no,” Ida said.

“Probably.”

“Then what will you do? Burst into tears and ask for his forgiveness?”

Gretchen looked at her in surprise. Ida was not ordinarily given to sarcasm. Gretchen could see that the whole conversation was disturbing her. “Ida, darling,” she said gently, “you mustn’t let it worry you so. After all, I’m the one who’s going to do the fighting.”

“I hate to see you get into trouble,” Ida said.

“There’re times when it can’t be avoided, and this is one of the times. You asked me what I will do if he says no.”

“When he says no,” Ida said.

“I’ll tell him that I’m walking off the picture as of that moment.…”

“You have a contract.…” Ida cried.

“Let him sue me. He can also go to law to get me back into his bed.”

“You know that if you quit, I’ll quit, too,” Ida said, her voice quivering at the immensity of what she was saying.

“In a war,” Gretchen said harshly, “sometimes you have to sacrifice the troops.”

“This isn’t a war,” Ida protested. “It’s just a moving picture like a thousand other moving pictures.”

“That’s exactly the point,” Gretchen said, “I don’t want to spend my life working on pictures that are just like a thousand others.” She saw that Ida was near tears, her soft dark eyes getting puddly. “You don’t have to pay for my peculiar notions, Ida,” she said. “There’s no reason you have to quit if I do.”

“I won’t talk about it,” Ida said.

“Okay,” Gretchen said. “The matter’s closed. Now finish your duck. You’ve barely eaten a bite. Don’t you like it?”

“I … I … love it,” Ida blubbered.

They ate in silence for more than a minute, Gretchen helping herself to more wine. She could see Ida making an effort to compose her soft, gentle face that could have been that of a chubby child, and for a moment was sorry that she had given Ida the script to read, burdened her with her own problems. Still, with her experience of Ida’s stony integrity and purity of taste, she had had to have confirmation of the value of the script. Without it, she would never have been sure enough to confront Kinsella. Evans Kinsella, she thought grimly to herself, is in for a rough afternoon, if he’s home, Ida Cohen or no Ida Cohen. If he’s home.

Finally, Ida spoke. “I’ve been thinking,” she said, her voice almost timid. “There’s another way of going about it. You don’t have to do everything head-on, do you?”

“I suppose not. I’m not good at doing things slantywise, though.”

Ida chuckled. “No, you’re not. However—maybe this one time you’ll listen to me. You know and I know he’ll never say yes. Especially if you argue with him.”

“How do you know him so well?” Gretchen asked with mock suspicion. “Have you been having a nasty little affair with him behind my back?”

Ida laughed aloud, her spirits restored. “How could I?” she asked. “He’s not even Jewish.”

They both laughed together. Then Ida’s face became grave. “My idea is this—finish cutting the picture—”

“Oh, God,” Gretchen said.

“Hush. Listen to me for a minute. I listened to you, didn’t I?”

“You certainly did,” Gretchen admitted.

“Don’t even mention the script to him again. Pretend you’ve forgotten all about it.”

“But I haven’t forgotten about it. It’s haunting me already. Even now I can see shot after shot …”

“I said pretend,” Ida said crossly. “Get someone to put up option money and buy it yourself.”

“Even if I could get the money,” Gretchen said, thinking immediately of poor Rudy, “then what?”

“Then,” Ida said triumphantly, “direct it yourself.”

Gretchen leaned back in her chair. Whatever had been in Ida’s head, she hadn’t expected this.

“My heavens,” she said, “what an idea.”

“Why not?” Ida said eagerly, forgetting once more to eat. “In the old days most directors came out of the cutting rooms.”

“The old days,” Gretchen said. “And they were all men.”

“You know I don’t like talk like that,” Ida said reprovingly.

“Forgive me. For the moment I forgot. But just for fun, Ida, give me the names of twenty-five women directors.”

“In the old days there weren’t twenty-five women in the army, either.” The meetings she attended gave a solid base to Ida’s arguments and she was making the most of it. “You won’t go to meetings, you won’t even read the pamphlets we put out—but you could do us a lot more good by coming along with a beautiful movie than if you went to a million meetings. And if you have any doubts about whether you could pull it off or not, let me tell you, you know more about movies than Evans Kinsella ever did or ever will.”

“It’s an idea,” Gretchen said thoughtfully, “now that the first shock is over, it’s an idea.”

“It’s not an expensive picture to make,” Ida went on quickly. “A small town, mostly location and easy indoor shots, a small cast, kids mostly; you couldn’t find name actors for the parts even if you had the money to spend. I know some people who put money into pictures. I could go to them. You could go to your brother …”

Poor Rudy, Gretchen thought again.

“How much did Evans Kinsella’s first picture cost?” Ida asked.

“One hundred and twenty-five thousand,” Gretchen said promptly. Kinsella was constantly boasting that his first picture, which had had a huge commercial success, had been brought in for peanuts and he always announced the exact sum.

“A hundred and twenty-five thousand,” Ida said. “And now they give him three and a half million.”

“That’s show business,” Gretchen said.

“Times have changed,” Ida said, “and a hundred and twenty-five is impossible these days. But I bet we could do this one for no more than seven hundred and fifty thousand. Most of the actors’d work for scale, and with parts like these the leads would defer their salaries and take percentages. All the money would be on the screen, no place else.”

“Dear Ida,” Gretchen said, “you’re already beginning to talk like a movie mogul.”

“Just promise me one thing,” Ida said.

“What’s that?” Gretchen asked suspiciously.

“Don’t call Kinsella today or tomorrow. Think everything over at least until Monday.”

Gretchen hesitated. “Okay,” she said, “but you’re depriving me of a lovely fight.”

“Just think of what Kinsella’s face will look like when the movie comes out, and you won’t mind giving up the satisfaction of telling him what a jerk he is.”

“All right, I promise,” Gretchen said. “Now let’s order a gorgeous, gooey French dessert and then we’ll indulge ourselves to the full the rest of the afternoon. Tell me—how many times have you seen Bergman’s Wild Strawberries?”

“Five times.”

“And I’ve seen it five times,” Gretchen said. “Let’s play hooky this afternoon and make it an even half-dozen.”

«  »

Driving home through the Sunday-afternoon traffic, in the rear of the Continental, with Johnny Heath at the wheel and Elaine in front beside him, Rudolph reflected upon the weekend. It had been a success, he thought. Jean’s house had been cosy, as she had promised, and the view of the ocean glorious. The masseuse did not seem to be a lesbian and turned out to be a very good cook indeed. There had been no orgies, no nude clambakes on the beach, despite Johnny’s prediction, but there had been long walks on the hard sand left by the ebbing tide, all of them together, with Enid holding her mother’s hand. The two of them had been delighted with each other, and without saying anything about it, Rudolph had thought that it might be a good idea for Enid to stay with her mother and go to a small country school rather than face the perils of the streets of New York. He could always see the child on weekends and school holidays. Of course, if he was to take Johnny’s wild idea about Nevada seriously there would be complications. Anyway, it wouldn’t be tomorrow or next week, probably not even next year.

Jean had looked healthy and fit. She and the masseuse did Spartan exercises each morning and Jean wandered for miles each day along the shore looking for subjects to photograph. She seemed happy, in a dreamy, reticent way, like a child who had just wakened after a pleasant dream. She had been pleased to see the Heaths and content to spend the short weekend in a group. Neither she nor the masseuse, whose name was Lorraine, had attempted to get him off for a private conversation. If Jean had any friends in the neighborhood, they did not appear either on Saturday or Sunday. When Rudolph had asked to see her photographs, she had said, “I’m not ready yet. In a month or so, maybe.”

Sitting in the back of the comfortable car, speeding toward the city, he realized, not without a touch of sorrow, that Jean had seemed happier that weekend than at almost any time since their marriage.

There had been wine on the table, but no hard liquor. Jean had not reached for the bottle and Rudolph had caught no warning looks to her from Lorraine.

She has come to terms with herself, Rudolph thought. He could not say as much for himself.

Coming into New York over the bridge, he saw the buildings rearing like battlements against the melodrama of the sun sinking in the west. Lights were being turned on in windows, small, winking pinpoints like candles in archers’ loopholes in a stronghold at twilight. It was a view and a time of day that he loved—the empty Sunday streets through which they passed looked clean and welcoming. If only it were always Sunday in New York, he thought, nobody would ever leave it.

When the car stopped in front of his brownstone, he asked the Heaths if they wanted to come in for a drink, but Johnny said they had a cocktail party to go to and were late. Rudy thanked Johnny for the ride, leaned over and kissed Ekine on the cheek. The weekend had made him fonder of her than before.

“Are you going to be all alone tonight?” Elaine asked.

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you get back into the car and have the evening with us?” she said. “We’re going to Gino’s for dinner after the party.”

He was tempted, but he had a lot of thinking to do and he felt it would be better to be alone. He did not tell her that he felt uncomfortable these days with a lot of people around. It was just a passing phase, he was sure, but it had to be reckoned with. “Thanks,” he said, “but I have a pile of letters to answer. Let’s do it during the week. Just the three of us.”

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Johnny said, “when I get the Nevada pilgrimage arranged.”

“I’ll be in all day,” Rudolph said. As he watched the car drive away, he was sorry he had said it. He was afraid that in the car, one or the other of the Heaths was saying, “He’ll be in all day because he doesn’t know what to do with himself.”

Carrying his bag, he went up the steps. He didn’t have to use the key to open the front door. The people downstairs again. He would have to talk to them. As he went into the darkened hallway a man’s voice said, “Don’t move and don’t make a sound. I’ve got a gun on you.”

He heard the front door slam behind him.

“Which apartment is yours, mister?” the voice said.

He hesitated. If Enid had been upstairs, he wouldn’t have answered. He thanked God she was safely with her mother, more than a hundred miles away. And the nurse was in New Jersey. There was nobody upstairs. He felt what might have been a gun jabbing him roughly in the ribs. “We asked you a question, mister,” the voice said. He was conscious of a second man, standing next to him.

“Second floor,” he said.

“Climb!” the voice commanded. He started up the steps. There was no light coming through the crack at the bottom of the door of the downstairs apartment. Nobody home. Sunday evening, he thought, as he went mechanically up the stairs, with the sound of two pairs of footsteps heavy behind him.

His hands trembled as he got out his keys again and unlocked the door and went in. “Turn on a light,” the same voice said.

He fumbled for the switch, found it, pushed at it. The lamp in the hallway went on and he turned to see the two men who had been lying in wait in the vestibule downstairs. They were young, black, one tall, one medium-sized, both neatly dressed. Their faces were lean and tense and full of hatred. Hopheads, he thought. The tall man was holding a gun, pointing at him, blue-black, gleaming dully in the light of the lamp.

“Into the living room,” he said.

They followed him into the living room and the second man found the light switch. All the lamps went on. The room looked comfortable and clean, the drapes drawn across the windows. The nurse had tidied up before they left the morning before. The clock on the mantelpiece ticked loudly. He saw that it was five-thirty. “Let’s have your wallet,” the tall man said, “and no funny business.”

Rudolph dug into his jacket and took out his wallet. The man with the gun grabbed it roughly and tossed it to the other man. “See what’s in it,” he said.

The second man rifled the wallet. “Thirty dollars,” he said, holding the bills in his hand.

“Shit,” said the man with the gun. “What’ve you got in your pants?”

Rudolph took out his money clip and two quarters. The second man put his hand out and grabbed the clip and the change. “You can say shit again, brother,” he said. “There’s only eight bucks here.” He let the two quarters drop to the rug.

“You got the nerve to drive up here in a Lincoln Continental and only have thirty-eight bucks on you?” the man with the gun said. “Smart, aren’t you? Afraid of being mugged, aren’t you, Mr. Rockefeller?”

“I’m sorry,” Rudolph said. “That’s all I have. And those credit cards.” The credit cards were strewn on the floor now.

“This institution don’t accept credit cards, does it, Elroy?” the man said.

“It sure don’t,” Elroy said. They both laughed hoarsely.

Rudolph felt remote, as though it weren’t happening to him but to a tiny, numb figure far off in the distance.

“Where do you keep the money in the house?” the man with the gun demanded. “Where’s the safe?”

“I don’t keep any money in the house,” Rudolph said. “And there’s no safe.”

“Smarter and smarter, ain’t you?” the man said. With his free hand he slapped Rudolph, hard, across the eyes. Rudolph was blinded momentarily by tears and he stumbled back. “That’s just to truthen you up a little, mister,” the man with the gun said.

“Look for yourself,” Rudolph said blindly.

“You got one last chance to show us where it is, mister,” the man said.

“I’m sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it.”

The man with the gun was breathing heavily, irregularly, and his eyes were flicking about, reflecting the light from the various lamps fitfully. “What do you say, Elroy?” he asked.

“Teach the cocksucker a lesson,” Elroy said.

The man with the gun palmed it in a sudden gesture and swung against Rudolph’s temple. As he crumpled to the floor it seemed to Rudolph that he was falling slowly and not unpleasantly through space and the floor seemed like a beautiful soft bed when he reached it. After a while a voice somewhere far off said, “That’s enough, Elroy, you don’t want to kill the bastard, do you?”

He was dreaming. Even while he dreamed he knew it was a dream. He was searching for Enid on a beach. There was the roar of breakers. Somehow, there were buses parked on the beach, in an irregular pattern, and people kept running in and out of them, people he didn’t know or recognize, who paid no attention to him, who sometimes blocked him, sometimes dissolved into shadows, as he pushed through them, shouting, “Enid! Enid!” He knew it was a dream but he was tortured just the same because he knew he would never find her. The sense of loss was intolerable.

Then he awoke. The lights were still on. Now they were a glare that stabbed his eyes. He was lying on the floor, and everything hurt, his head, his groin. It was torture to move. His face was wet. When he put up his hand it came away streaming with blood.

Around him the room was demolished. All the upholstered chairs and the sofa had been slashed with knives and the stuffing lay like heaps of snow on the floor. The clock was lying, shattered, on the brick apron of the fireplace. Every drawer in the desk and chests and sideboard had been pulled out, their contents thrown around the room. The mirror above the fireplace was splintered into jagged pieces. The wooden chairs and the coffee table and small sideboard had been fractured with the poker from the set of fireplace utensils and the poker itself was bent at a crazy angle. All the bottles from the sideboard had been hurled against the wall and there was broken glass everywhere and a pervading smell of whiskey. The front panel of the piano was leaning against the sofa and the exposed, torn strings hung, broken and loose, over the keyboard, like an animal’s intestines. He tried to look at his watch to see how long he had been lying unconscious, but the watch had been cut away from his wrist and there was an ugly seeping wound there.

With a gigantic effort, groaning, he crawled to the telephone. He took the instrument off its cradle, listened. It was working. Thank God. It took him what seemed like many minutes to remember Gretchen’s number. Painfully, he dialed. It rang and rang. He lay on the floor with the phone next to his cheek. Finally he heard the phone being picked up at the other end.

“Hello.” It was Gretchen’s voice.

“Gretchen,” he said.

“Where’ve you been?” she said. She sounded cross. “I phoned you at five; you said you’d be back by …”

“Gretchen,” he said hoarsely, “come over here. Right away. If the door is locked, get a policeman to break it open for you. I …” Then he felt he was falling again. He couldn’t talk anymore. He lay there on the floor with Gretchen’s voice in his ear, crying, “Rudy! Rudy! Rudy, do you hear me …?” Then silence.

He let himself go all the way and fainted again.

He was in the hospital for two weeks and he never did get to Nevada with Johnny Heath.