“All good things must end,” said Frances Price.
She was a moneyed, striking woman of sixty-five years, easing her hands into black calfskin gloves on the steps of a brownstone in New York City’s Upper East Side. Her son, Malcolm, thirty-two, stood nearby looking his usual broody and unkempt self. It was late autumn, dusk; the windows of the brownstone were lit, a piano sounded on the air—a tasteful party was occurring. Frances was explaining her early departure to a similarly wealthy though less lovely individual, this the hostess. Her name doesn’t matter. She was aggrieved.
“You’re certain you have to go? Is it really so bad as that?”
“According to the veterinarian it’s only a matter of time,” Frances said. “What a shame. We were having such a lovely evening.”
“Were you really?” the hostess asked hopefully.
“Such a lovely evening. And I do hate to leave. But it sounds an actual emergency, and what can be done in the face of that?”
The hostess considered her answer. “Nothing,” she said finally. A silence arrived; to Frances’s horror, the hostess lunged and clung to her. “I’ve always admired you so,” she whispered.
“Malcolm,” said Frances.
“Actually I’m sort of afraid of you. Is that very silly of me?”
“Malcolm, Malcolm.”
Malcolm found the hostess pliable; he peeled her away from his mother, then took the woman’s hand in his and shook it. She watched her hand going up and down with an expression of puzzlement. She’d had two too many drinks and there was nothing in her stomach but a viscous pâté. She returned to her home and Malcolm led Frances away, down the steps to the sidewalk. They passed the waiting town car and sat on a bench twenty yards back from the brownstone, for there was no emergency, no veterinarian, and the cat, that antique oddity called Small Frank, was not unwell, so far as they knew.
Frances lit a cigarette with her gold lighter. She liked this lighter best due to its satisfying weight, and the distinguished click! it made at the moment of ignition. She aimed the glowing cherry at the hostess, now visible in an upstairs window, speaking with one of her guests. Frances shook her head. “Born to bore.”
Malcolm was inspecting a framed photograph he’d stolen from the hostess’s bedroom. “She’s just drunk. Hopefully she won’t remember in the morning.”
“She’ll send flowers if she does.” Frances took up the photograph, a recent studio portrait of the hostess. Her head was tilted back, her mouth ajar, a frantic happiness in her eyes. Frances ran her finger along the edge of the ornate frame. “Is this jade?”
“I think it is,” said Malcolm.
“It’s very beautiful,” she said, and handed it back to Malcolm. He opened the frame and removed the photo, folding it in crisp quarters and dropping it into a trash can beside their bench. He returned the frame to his coat pocket and resumed his study of the party, pointing out a late-middle-aged man with a cummerbund encasing a markedly round stomach. “That man’s some type of ambassador.”
“Yes, and if those epaulets could talk.”
“Did you speak to his wife?”
Frances nodded. “Men’s teeth in a child’s mouth. I had to look away.” She flicked her cigarette into the street.
“Now what,” Malcolm said.
A vagrant approached and stood before them. His eyes were bright with alcohol and he asked in a chirpy voice, “Got anything to spare tonight, folks?” Malcolm was leaning in to shoo the man when Frances caught his arm. “It’s possible that we do,” she said. “But may we ask what you need the money for?”
“Oh, you know.” The man raised and dropped his arms. “Just getting by.”
“Could you please be more specific?”
“I guess I’d like a little wine, if you want to know.”
He swayed in place, and Frances asked him, in a confiding voice, “Is it possible you’ve already had something to drink tonight?”
“I got my edges smoothed,” the man admitted.
“And what does that mean?”
“Means I had a drink before, but now I’m thinking about another.”
Frances appreciated the answer. “What’s your name?”
“Dan.”
“May I call you Daniel?”
“If that’s what you want to do.”
“What’s your preferred brand of wine, Daniel?”
“I’ll drink anything wet, ma’am. But I do like that Three Roses.”
“And how much for a bottle of Three Roses?”
“A bottle’s five bucks. A gallon’s eight.” He shrugged as if to say the gallon was the shrewd consumer’s choice.
“And what would you buy if I gave you twenty dollars?”
“Twenty dollars,” said Dan, and he whistled a puff of dry air. “For twenty dollars I could get two gallons of Three Roses and a weenie.” He patted the pocket of his army coat. “I already got my cigarettes.”
“The twenty would set you up nicely, then?”
“Oh, quite nicely.”
“And where would you bring it all? Back to your room?”
Dan squinted. He was realizing the scenario in his mind. “The weenie I’d eat on the spot. The wine and the cigarettes, I’d take those into the park with me. That’s where I sleep most nights, in the park.”
“Where in the park?”
“Under a bush.”
“A particular bush?”
“A bush is a bush, in my experiment. Experience.”
Frances smiled sweetly at Dan. “All right,” she said. “So, you’d lie under a bush in the park, and you’d smoke your cigarettes and drink your red wine.”
“Yeah.”
“You’d look up at the stars.”
“Why not.”
Frances said, “Would you really drink both gallons in a night?”
“Yeah, yes, I surely would.”
“Wouldn’t you feel awful in the morning?”
“That’s what mornings are for, ma’am.”
He’d spoken without comedic intent, and Frances thought that Dan’s mornings were probably wretched beyond her comprehension. Sufficiently touched, she opened her clutch and fished out twenty dollars. Dan received the bill, shuddered from skull to toe, then walked off at an apparently painfully brisk pace. A beat cop approached, looking after Dan with malice.
“That guy wasn’t bothering you two I hope?”
“Who, Daniel?” said Frances. “Not at all. He’s a friend of ours.”
“Seemed like he was putting the bite on you.”
Frances stared icily. “Actually, I was paying him back. I should have paid him back a long time ago, but Dan’s been very patient with me. I thank God for the fact of a man like him. Not that it’s any of your business.” She held up the lighter and lit it: click! The flame, stubby and blue-bottomed, was positioned between them, as though defining a border. A sense of isolation came over the cop and he wandered away, asking sorry, small questions to himself. Frances turned to Malcolm and clapped her hands together, communicating a job is done sentiment. They disliked policemen; indeed, they disliked all figures of authority.
“Have you had enough?” asked Malcolm.
“I’ve,” answered Frances.
Walking toward the town car, she took up Malcolm’s arm in her special-loving-creature manner. “Home,” she told the driver.
The grand, multilevel apartment was dim, and resembled a museum after hours. The cook had left them a roast in the oven; Malcolm plated two portions and they ate in silence, which was not the norm, but they were both distracted by personal unhappinesses. Malcolm was worrying about Susan, his fiancée. He hadn’t seen her in several days and the last time they’d spoken she had called him a rude and vulgar name. Frances’s concern was existential; she lately had found herself mired in an eerie feeling, as one standing with her back to the ocean. Small Frank, elderly to the point of decrepitude, clambered onto the table and sat before Frances. She and the cat stared at each other. Frances lit a cigarette and exhaled a column of smoke into his face. He winced and left the room.
Malcolm said, “What’s tomorrow?”
“Mr. Baker insists on a meeting,” Frances answered. Mr. Baker was their financial adviser, and had been the executor of the estate after the death of Frances’s husband, Malcolm’s father, Franklin Price.
“What’s he want?” asked Malcolm.
“He wouldn’t say.”
This was not, technically, a lie—Mr. Baker hadn’t stated explicitly what the meeting was about. But Frances knew all too well what he wished to discuss with her. The thought of it made her morose, and she excused herself, ascending the marble staircase to curry solace in a bath choked with miniature pearlescent bubbles. Afterward she sat on the settee in the bathroom, in her plush robe, and her hair was down, Small Frank sleeping at her feet. She was speaking with Joan on the phone.