HE WAS SURPRISED WHEN he opened the door of his apartment after the last class of the day and saw Hazen standing in the living room picking a magazine off a bookcase shelf. Strand had not heard from him since the drunken conversation on the phone more than a week ago.
“Hello, Allen,” Hazen said. “I hope you don’t mind. Mrs. Schiller let me in.” He put out his hand and Strand shook it. “I brought you a little gift.” He gestured toward the table behind the sofa, where two quart bottles of Johnnie Walker, Hazen’s favorite Scotch, were standing.
“Thank you,” Strand said. “They’re bound to come in handy.”
“I came to apologize for my bad temper over the phone.” Hazen peered at him warily, as though unsure about how Strand would react.
“Forget it, Russell,” Strand said. “I’ve already done so.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Hazen’s manner became hearty. “Misunderstandings are bound to crop up from time to time—even between the best of friends. And I was a little nervy about the piece in the Times.”
“How is it going? I haven’t seen anything more in the papers.”
“There hasn’t been anything more,” Hazen said. “I guess they decided the fishing expedition was a flop. Justice has probably decided to drop the whole thing.”
“I’m glad to hear it. Can I fix you a drink? I’m afraid I’ll have to give it to you out of your own bottle. I finished ours a week ago.”
Hazen looked at his watch. “Well, I guess it’s just about drink time. If you’ll join me…”
“I could use one, too,” Strand said. “This is drinking weather. I nearly froze walking across the campus.” He went into the kitchen to get ice and glasses and a pitcher of water. Although Dr. Philips had prescribed a drink now and then, when Rollins had finished off the last bottle, Strand had not bothered to go into town to get another one. He tried to stay indoors as much as possible during the cold spell, but he could have asked Mrs. Schiller to buy a bottle of whiskey when she went into town to shop. It wouldn’t be Johnnie Walker. There was a limit to the amount of pampering he could fit into his budget.
Hazen had opened one of the bottles when Strand got back to the living room and Strand poured them each a generous drink. They touched glasses and drank. The immediate warmth in his gullet made Strand resolve that from then on he would have a drink each day before dinner.
Mrs. Schiller had laid a fire on the grate and Strand touched a match to the crumpled newspaper under the grate and watched as the flames began to lick up toward the kindling. He warmed his hands for a few moments before he went over to the table in front of the window where Hazen had installed himself. It was snowing lightly outside in the dusk, making a winter pattern on the half-frosted panes. Hazen’s profile was reflected off the glass and the two images of the man himself and his reflection gave a curious double impression of him. The real face was relaxed, friendly; the reflection was etched on metal, cold and austere, like the head of an emperor on a coin, a wielder of power to whom applications for mercy were useless.
As Strand sat down opposite him at the table, Hazen peered at him thoughtfully. “Allen,” he said softly, “I have come to ask forgiveness. Not only for what I said on the telephone to you. For my treatment of Romero. I’ve had plenty of time to think it over and realize what my responsibilities are. I was up in Hartford today and I spoke to the judge and found out that it was the Rollins boy who went bail for him. How he got the money is a mystery to me, but no matter. The judge said he got it in one day. I tell you, I felt ashamed in front of that hard old man. I told him I was going to take a personal interest in the case and would come to the court to take the case myself and explained the circumstances of how I met Romero through you and what we both thought of his capabilities and his extraordinary background. No matter what he looks like, the judge is not a monster, and he remembers my father from the time he, himself, was just a young lawyer breaking in. What he agreed to do was lift the bail and free the boy on my recognizance.” Hazen smiled bleakly. “I guess he didn’t happen to read The New York Times that day. He made conditions, of course. Romero has to report weekly to the hospital for psychiatric tests and treatment. I’ve already told this to Hollingsbee and Hollingsbee will get Rollins’s money back for him tomorrow.”
Two thousand dollars back in the bank, Strand thought. There would be presents for Christmas. “Russell,” he said, “I can’t tell you how good I feel about this. Not only for you. For you, of course. And for me, too.”
Hazen looked a little embarrassed. He took a gulp of his drink. “It isn’t all pure saintliness of character, Allen,” he said. “Hitz and Company will pass a few unhappy days. That will not exactly displease me. Tell me, now that the kid looks as though he may get a break, what did he say to you that you said was confidential, about why he thought it was Hitz who took his money and letters?”
“It wasn’t he who told me.”
The lawyer’s inquisitory tone came back into Hazen’s voice. “Who told you?”
“I promised I’d keep it to myself.”
“Promises.” Hazen wrinkled his nose in disgust. “They’re the bane of a lawyer’s existence. Did anybody find the letters?”
“No,” Strand lied.
“What could there be in a kid’s letters that could be so damned important?”
“Think back to when you were eighteen, Russell.”
“My father read every letter I received until I went to college.”
“Romero doesn’t even know if his father is alive or dead.”
“The judge had better wake up on the right side of the bed the morning of the trial,” Hazen said, “or the psychiatrist better find out Romero is the most disturbed kid in Connecticut and at the same time as harmless as a pussycat if he’s not ready to do time. The judge was agreeable today but if the prosecutor lays it on, there’s no telling…Professional courtesy is one thing. The law’s another. Ah, well…” He sighed. “I’ve done my best. At least I can go to bed tonight with a clear conscience. It hasn’t been an easy time for me.”
“Not for anybody,” Strand reminded him.
Hazen laughed. “Egotism is not the least of my faults.”
“No, it’s not.”
The smile on Hazen’s face became a little strained. He looked thoughtfully across the table at Strand again. “What do you really think of me, Allen?”
“A lot of things. Naturally. You’ve been insanely generous and helpful to us all. I imagine that you wouldn’t be surprised that I have interlocking feelings—gratitude and”—he hesitated—“resentment.”
“Nonsense,” Hazen said. “You’re not like that.”
“Everybody’s like that,” Strand said quietly.
“Christ, for the most part, it was only money. I don’t give a shit for money.”
“You can say that. I can’t.”
“Let’s forget about the gratitude and resentment and all the hogwash. What else do you think about me?”
“That you’re an unhappy man.”
Hazen nodded gloomily. “That’s no lie. Who isn’t these days? Aren’t you?” His tone was challenging.
“On and off.” Strand realized that Hazen was serious and felt that he should be serious in return. “But on balance, I feel that the happy days in my life have outweighed the unhappy ones. I don’t have that feeling about you.”
“And you’re right. By God, are you right!” Hazen finished his drink, as though to wash out of his mouth the words he had just spoken. “This is just the sort of talk for a cold winter’s evening, isn’t it? Would you mind if I made myself another drink?”
“Help yourself.”
Strand watched the big man as he rose from his chair and crossed to where the bottles and pitcher of water and the ice were standing. The old hockey player was still there, broad, virile, vaguely menacing, willing to take blows and return them. He made his drink, then wheeled at the table. “How about you? This minute? Are you happy now?”
“It’s not the sort of question I usually ask myself.”
“Ask. For old times’ sake.” Hazen sounded mocking.
“Well, for one thing, I’m glad you came. I felt our friendship was being undermined and I didn’t like that,” Strand said, speaking deliberately. “I feel it’s repaired now and I feel better about that. About other things…” He shrugged. “When Leslie’s not around, I miss her. I haven’t yet gotten over not having the children present and I miss them, too. What’s happened at the school is unpleasant and I still don’t think I exactly fit in here yet, but I prefer to hope that given time that will improve. The work is easy and for the most part rewarding. The people are…well…polite and helpful. For the future, yes, I expect to be happy, reasonably happy.”
“The future.” Hazen made a derisive, blowing noise. “The future is going to be goddamn awful. The way things are going in the world.”
“I wasn’t thinking about the world. I can be pessimistic about the world and selfishly optimistic about myself. I’ve found that when a man steps back from very nearly dying and resumes what can be called a normal life, optimism is almost an automatic response.”
Hazen came back with his glass and sat down at the table again. He looked out the window. “Miserable night,” he said. “No wonder the whole country’s moving south. Sometimes I think every city in the Northeast, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, will be a ghost town in fifty years. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Okay, Pollyanna—” For a breath he sounded as he had when he shouted at Strand over the telephone. “Everything is coming up roses, Mr. Strand says. The news of the century. So nothing else is bothering you?”
“Of course there is.” Strand thought of Leslie’s flight in the middle of the night from Dunberry, of the letters signed Caroline, burned in the basement incinerator, of Eleanor, leading her husband around by the nose in Georgia and arousing the antagonism of the townspeople, of Jimmy, aged nineteen, involved with a pop singer almost twice his age, who had already gone through two or three husbands, of his own forced celibacy. “Of course there is,” he repeated. “Family things. Routine.” He knew the word was false. “But I’d rather not discuss what they are or even dwell on them. My dreams remind me of them and that suffices.”
Hazen nodded, his head like a heavy, off-balance pendulum. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, “have you ever thought of suicide?’”
“Like everybody else.”
“Like everybody else.” Again the heavy, swinging nod. “Hell, this is a sorry conversation. The drink. It’s unusual for me. Usually drink makes me feel good.”
Strand remembered the grotesque scene the first night at the Hamptons when Hazen had arrived drunk late at night and snarled and bellowed and railed against his profession, his family, the world. He wondered how a man ordinarily so intelligent could have such a misconception about himself.
“Anyway,” Hazen said, with a plain effort at geniality, “the ladies aren’t here to watch us making self-pitying idiots of ourselves. I talked to Linda in Paris and she says they are having a marvelous time. They’re delighted that the Christmas holiday in the Hamptons is definite.”
“Is it?” Strand asked, surprised.
“I guess I forgot to tell you. Can you get your kids?”
“I haven’t asked them yet.” He didn’t tell Hazen that after their argument he had resolved not to go. “Are you sure Leslie hasn’t got other plans?”
“Linda asked her—she was in the room when I called—and I could hear her say it was a great idea.”
“I’ll get in touch with the rest of the family.” The prospect of ten days away from the school, away from the weight of the presence of four hundred boys, alone when he wanted to be with Leslie on the quiet beach along the shores of the Atlantic, lifted his spirits. “I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful time.” He smiled. “See what I mean by being able to be pessimistic about the future of the world and still be optimistic about your own? At least for ten days. Just keep us from watching the television news programs and reading the Times and it will be Eden.”
The bell of the apartment rang and Hazen looked at his watch. “That must be Conroy. I sent him to the main hall to keep warm while I talked to you. It’s going to be a long drive back to the city in this weather. Thanks for the drinks.” When they shook hands, he held Strand’s for an extra moment. “I’m glad I came. I’m too old to turn friends into enemies.”
“I wasn’t your enemy, Russell.”
“Well, you damn well should have been.” Hazen laughed and went out.
Strand sat down at the table, feeling the glass of whiskey sweating in his hand, and looked out through the patterns of frost on the windowpanes at the thickening snow. He thought of the great cities of the North Hazen had spoken of, half in jest, the winds looting the glass and concrete avenues, the population fleeing. He, too, in the first winter of his imminent and sea-wracked old age, longed for the South.
There were three letters waiting for him the next day when he got back from his last class. Mrs. Schiller had put his mail in a neat little pile on the table behind the sofa in the living room. It had stormed all day. On the walk across the campus snow had gotten into his shoes and down the collar of his overcoat, so before he opened the letters he took off his coat and shoes and socks, dried his feet, put on slippers and changed his shirt. He had been soaked once before that day, after lunch, and his throat felt dry and raspy and there was a peculiar hot throb in his chest. Perhaps he would take Dr. Philips’s advice and go into New York on Saturday and have Dr. Prinz take a look at him.
Then, remembering the inner warmth of the Scotch the evening before with Hazen, he made himself a whiskey and water without ice and took the first sip before he went back into the living room and picked up the letters. One, he saw from the envelope, was from Caroline, another from Leslie, and a third had no name or return address. He usually read Caroline’s letters with a small, indulgent smile on his face. They were short and bubbly and obviously hastily written and were merely signals that she was alive and enjoying herself and loved her parents. But he had had no word from her since the day he had heard from Mrs. Schiller about the letters in the basement trash basket.
He opened her letter first. There was no mention of Romero. Caroline reported that she was having a great time, that she had been chosen as the queen for the Homecoming Game of the new basketball season, that she had made two intellectual friends, a girl who was majoring in philosophy and another who was certain to be the editor of the college literary magazine in her junior year, that the coach of the track team thought that if she applied herself she could beat out the girl who always came in first in the two twenty and that she had been invited to spend the Christmas holidays with a family in Beverly Hills but had declined because she couldn’t wait to see her Mummy and Daddy. She had also received a postcard of the Eiffel Tower in a letter from Mummy and thought it was most self-sacrificing of Daddy to spend all that time in dreary Dunberry alone while Mummy gallivanted in Paris. There were five crosses at the end of the letter, above her signature.
There was a postscript, “Mummy wrote that we’re all invited to Mr. Hazen’s house in the Hamptons for Christmas and I decided that it was childish of me to tell you that I would never go there again. The past is the past and I’m none the worse for having been hit in the head by a dashboard there. In fact I’m much the better for it. Nobody would have dreamed of electing me Homecoming Queen if my nose hadn’t been busted.”
Well, Strand thought, at least she knows how to stick to a story. It was too late now—if it hadn’t always been too late—to let her know that he knew it wasn’t a dashboard that had hit her.
As he put the letter down, Strand remembered Mrs. Schiller saying that Caroline was a very popular name these days.
He opened Leslie’s letter, saw it was a long one.
Dearest,
I have the most enormous news. You are now married to a wealthy woman. Comparatively speaking, of course. What’s happened is that I’ve sold the dune painting I started over Thanksgiving in the Hamptons. Linda was as good as her word and hung it in the show. It was the first one sold. It might have something to do with the fact that it was priced at only two thousand dollars ($2,000!!! It sounds like a lot more in francs) and all the rest started at five and went sky-high after that. I’ve also sold a water color that I did in a few hours in Mougins. Linda says she didn’t believe anyone could do something new with the Riviera as subject and somehow I managed it. Even more dazzling—the man who bought it is a painter himself, a well-known painter in France, and he’s invited me to his studio and told me that if I want to paint from live models there I could do so at the same time he’s working. Incredible, isn’t it? I feel like somebody’s maiden aunt who does embroidery in her spare time and is suddenly told she’s producing works of art. Linda says that if I go on in what she calls “my new style” (ha-ha) and work hard she’ll definitely give me a show in New York next year. I’ve been working on a big canvas of a courtyard I wandered into, only it doesn’t look like a courtyard on the canvas, it looks like a medieval dungeon. “Lit by an unearthly light, like Balthus, only American,” is the way Linda describes it, but you know how she exaggerates. I’ve never felt like this before. The brush seems to move by itself. It’s the most peculiar and wonderful feeling. Maybe it’s something in the air. Now I think I know why painters had to come to Paris sometime in their careers, the earlier the better. If I’d have come when I was eighteen, I don’t think I’d ever have touched the piano again.
I’m on such a high, dear man, as though I’m soaring, that I hate to leave before I have to. Linda’s suggested that we stay on here longer than we planned and arrange to meet you at Kennedy the day you’re due at Russell’s. You have to pass the airport anyway on the way out and to tell you the truth, a little extra time away from Dunberry will fortify me for what I have to face when I get back.
I know it sounds selfish, but it’s only a few days, and it’s not like Gauguin leaving his family to paint in the South Seas, is it? Of course, if you want me to come back sooner, just send me a cable.
In the meantime, if you can do the family chores and get in touch with the kids and tell them where we can all assemble for the holidays, it will ease my mind.
I hope you’re taking care of yourself and that you miss me as much as I miss you. Please let me know as soon as possible what you decide.
Please don’t think that because I have the crazy idea that I have a chance to be a good painter I will turn into a bad wife. If I had to make the choice you know what it would be. I am no Gauguin.
Give my blessing to the kids when you speak to them.
Linda sends her love and I send you everything I have. Until the blessed holiday,
Leslie
Strand put the letter down slowly, trying to sort out his emotions. He recognized pride, jealousy, an obscure sense of loss among them. If she were willing to give up the music to which she had devoted her life what would be the next thing she would forgo? He would send her a cable of congratulations later, when he had time to compose a fittingly joyous message.
He looked around him. The room suddenly seemed bleak, a seedy bachelor’s quarters. He certainly was not soaring.
Absently, he tore open the third letter.
Dear Mr. Strand,
I am not going to tell you my name. I am the wife of an instructor in the biology department in the college which your daughter, Caroline, attends. I am the mother of two small children.
He stopped reading for a moment. The handwriting was narrow and neat. Much could undoubtedly be discovered about the character of the woman who wrote it by an expert in graphology. He felt a little dizzy, sat down, still holding the letter. The handwriting was very small and he had been straining to read it. He fished for his glasses and put them on. The handwriting now loomed large. Ominously large.
My husband has become infatuated with her. She is the flirt of the campus and the boys crowd around her like hungry animals. My husband has told me that if she’ll have him, he’ll leave me. They had arranged to go to California together over the Thanksgiving holiday, but at the last moment she went off with a boy on the football team. She flits from affair to affair, I am told, although the only one I can be sure of, because I have been told so by my husband, is the one with him. In other days she would have been thrown out of school after the first month. Times being what they are and educators having given up all pretense at discipline or the practice of decency, she is coddled and cosseted and most recently has been elected the queen of the basketball Homecoming Game. Up to now, she has promised my husband that she will finally make the trip with him to California during the Christmas season. I am reduced to the pitiful state of praying that once more she will jilt him. He is neglecting his work and ignoring me, except when we argue, and paying no attention to our children. He is on a small salary, since he is only an instructor, but I know he lavishes expensive gifts on her.
I know that you, yourself, are a teacher and understand how easily a man’s career can be destroyed by professional neglect added to an open indiscretion. I understand, also, how when a girl lives away from home for the first time, the attentions of the male sex, especially when the girl is as young and pretty as your daughter, can turn her head, to her everlasting regret later on.
I have no idea of what you know about your daughter’s behavior or how much you care about her future, but for her sake and mine and that of my family, I beg you to do whatever you can to make her realize how cruel and irresponsible she is being and restore my husband to the bosom of his family.
The letter was unsigned.
The bosom of his family. Strand read the line, with its biblical echo, over again. He thought of prairie churches, Sunday evening prayer meetings. He knew one thing the biology teacher didn’t know—he would be jilted for Christmas as he had been jilted for Thanksgiving. Compliments of the seasons.
He opened his hand and the letter fluttered to the floor. Through sleet and snow and gloom of night, the daily bread of affliction is delivered to our door six times a week by the ever faithful United States Postal Service. Thank God for Sunday.
A biology teacher, he thought. He, himself, had been a teacher of history and Leslie had been in his class, at Caroline’s age, demure and beautiful in the first row, and he had lusted after her. Was he to feel guilty? At least he had waited a decent year after she had been graduated and had called at her family’s apartment with the intention of marriage. But the biology teacher, too, no doubt intended marriage.
What could be said to his daughter? And who could say it? Not her father, he thought, never her father. Leslie? He guessed what Leslie would say—“She’s a big girl. Let her work out her own problems. We’ll only make it worse. I’m not going to sacrifice my relations with my daughter for the sake of a randy old fool of a hick biology teacher.” If he showed Leslie the letter, she probably would say anybody with a handwriting like that was bound to lose her husband.
Eleanor? Eleanor would tell her, “Do what you want to do.” Eleanor had always done exactly that.
Jimmy? Possibly. He was the closest in age to Caroline, moved in the currents of the same generation, was protective of his sister. But with his thrice-married thirty-five-year-old singer, Caroline would probably laugh at him if he brought up the subject of morality. Still, Jimmy was worth a try.
Strand finished his drink. It did not help the dry rasping of his throat or the hot thrust of pain in his lungs. He stood up and went over to the phone and dialed Dr. Prinz’s number in New York. Dr. Prinz said it was about time he called. He would see him at eleven Saturday morning. He would have to get the early train.
Then he called Jimmy’s number in New York. For once, Jimmy was in.
“Jimmy,” Strand said, “I have to be in New York Saturday morning. Can we have lunch? I have some things to talk to you about.”
“Oh, Dad,” Jimmy said, “I’m sorry. I have to leave for Los Angeles Saturday morning. Business. I’d love to see you. Can you come down for dinner Friday night?”
Sons by appointment only, Strand thought. “I’m through with my last class at three o’clock on Friday,” he said. “I can get into New York by six o’clock. Fine. I’ll have to stay over, though. I have a checkup with the doctor on Saturday morning.”
“Anything wrong?” Jimmy immediately sounded anxious.
“No. It’s routine.” Strand felt a cough collecting in his throat and controlled it. “Can you get me into a hotel?”
“The Westbury is near me. It’s on Madison Avenue, around 70th Street. I’ll book you in there.”
“It sounds expensive.” He had once had drinks in the bar of the hotel with Leslie on an afternoon when they had been at the Whitney Museum nearby. It had been too luxurious for him. The other people at the bar were the same sort as the guests at the parties Hazen had taken them to in the Hamptons.
“No matter,” Jimmy said airily. “My treat.”
“I can stay at some cheaper place.”
“Forget it, Pops. I’m in the chips.”
Nineteen years old, Strand thought, and in the chips. When he was nineteen he had stayed at the YMCA. “Well,” he said, “if it won’t break you.”
“I’ll reserve the bridal suite.”
“The bride’s in Paris,” Strand said. “Save your money.”
Jimmy laughed. “I know she’s in Paris. She sent me a postcard. The Mona Lisa, at the Louvre. I guess she wanted to remind me that she’s my mother. And that not all art was produced by electric guitars. I’ll pick you up at the hotel.”
He sounds at least thirty years old, Strand thought as he hung up. He went into the kitchen and fixed himself another drink. If one drink was good for him, perhaps two would be twice as good.
The French restaurant Jimmy took him to was quietly elegant, gleaming with snowy tablecloths and large arrangements of cut flowers. The headwaiter fawned over Jimmy and bowed politely when Jimmy introduced Strand as his father, although Strand thought he detected a momentary flicker of disapproval in the man’s eyes. Beside Jimmy, lean and immaculate in a dark suit, narrow at the waist, which looked as though it had been made in Italy, Strand was conscious of his impressed old tweed jacket, the loose fit of his collar, his baggy flannels, as the head-waiter led them to a table. When he looked at the prices on the menu he was aghast. He had been aghast, too, when he asked the room clerk at the Westbury the price of the room that had been reserved for him.
“Your son’s taking care of it,” the clerk had said.
“I know,” Strand had said testily. The trip down to the city had been uncomfortable. The train was crowded and overheated and the only seat he could find was in the smoking car and the man next to him smoked cigarette after cigarette and only looked at Strand curiously when Strand had a coughing fit. “I know my son’s taking care of it,” Strand said to the clerk. “I just would like to know what it costs.”
The clerk told him and Strand groaned inwardly, thinking, My son will also be the youngest bankrupt in the United States in one year.
When Jimmy appeared a half hour later, Strand hadn’t chided him about his extravagance. In fact, he hadn’t had the time to talk to him about anything. “We’re late,” Jimmy had said, after saying “Pops, you look great. Joan’s expecting us for a drink. It’s just around the corner. She wants to meet you.”
“What for?” Strand asked sourly, annoyed at Jimmy’s tardiness. He took it for granted that Joan was the name of Jimmy’s thirty-five-year-old mistress or whatever she was.
“Maybe she wants to see the oak from which the acorn was dropped.”
“Is the lady having dinner with us?” With her at the table he could hardly bring up the subject of Caroline and her biology teacher.
“No,” Jimmy said, hurrying him out of the hotel. “Just a drink. She has to pack for the trip tomorrow.”
“Trip? Where is she going?” Strand asked, although he knew.
“California,” Jimmy said nonchalantly. “With me. She hates to travel alone. She can’t cope.”
When he was introduced to Joan Dyer in her gaudy, all-white apartment twenty-two stories high, with a view of the East River, Strand thought she looked like a lady who could cope with anything, including fire, flood, famine and finance. She was a tall, skinny woman with no breasts and enormous wild dark eyes, heavily accented with purple eye shadow. She was barefooted, with yellowish, splayed toes, and was wearing gauzy black pajamas through which Strand could see the pinkish glow of bikini underpants. She didn’t shake the hand that he extended to her but said, in a deep, powerful, almost masculine voice, “Do you mind if I kiss the father?” and embraced him and kissed his cheek. He was enveloped in a wave of heavy perfume. Whatever he ate for dinner would have to be highly seasoned to compete with the fumes that clung to his clothes. He knew, too, that he would have to wipe off the purplish lipstick before he went anywhere else. This was all at the door, which Joan Dyer opened herself. When she led them into the enormous living room, Strand saw that Solomon was standing there, next to the chair from which he had risen to greet them. “Hello, Allen,” Solomon said. “Jimmy.” There was a cold edge to his voice when he said “Jimmy.” It did not escape Strand. “Well,” Solomon said, “I’ve had my say, Joan. You’ll both regret what you’re doing.”
The woman waved a languid, disdainful hand at him. Her nails, long and predatory, were painted purple, too. “Herbie,” she said, “you’re beginning to bore me.”
Solomon shrugged. His face was deeply tanned and his hair looked almost white over the deep color of his forehead. Strand would have liked to ask him where he found sun in New York in December, but the expression on his face was not conducive to idle conversation. And Jimmy’s face, too, had a stubborn look to it that Strand had become accustomed to by the time Jimmy was eight.
“Allen,” Solomon said, his voice gentle and friendly now, “if you’re staying in town can we have lunch tomorrow?”
“I’d like that very much,” Strand said.
“Sardi’s,” Solomon said. “One o’clock. It’s right near my office. West 44th Street.”
“I know where it is.”
“I’ll reserve a table.” Solomon left without looking at Joan Dyer or Jimmy and without saying good-bye.
“Ships that pass in the night,” Joan Dyer said as they heard the distant closing of the front door. She smiled a purple smile at Strand. “And now, can I give you a drink? I must warn you, though—it’s carrot and celery cocktail juice. I refuse to poison my guests with alcohol and cigarettes.”
“Thank you, I’m not thirsty,” Strand said, somehow reassured about his son’s companion, who, because of her profession, he had automatically supposed was addicted to marijuana, at the very least. A woman addicted to carrot juice could hardly be considered a danger to a young man like Jimmy.
“Do sit down,” Joan Dyer said. “I want to take a good look at you. Jimmy’s spoken so much about you. You’ve raised a marvelous son,” she said as Strand sat down, sinking almost to the floor on the soft low white couch and wondering if he was going to need help to get up off it. “In our profession the young men are usually runaway children, immature, resentful of their parents, misunderstood talents. It’s a breath of fresh air to see you two together. I mean it, Mr. Strand.”
“Joan,” Jimmy said, with authority, “why don’t you cut the bullshit?”
The woman gave Jimmy a baleful stare, then smiled her dark smile at Strand and went on as though Jimmy had not interrupted. “From the look of you, Mr. Strand, Jimmy must have gotten his intelligence, his sense of personality, from you. From the moment I saw him I had a feeling of serene trust, a feeling that finally I had found the man—a child in years, perhaps, but a man, nonetheless, whom I could depend upon, whose judgment in both personal and professional matters was intuitively right. What I’ve just said will explain the unfortunate little scene you’ve just witnessed between Herbie and us. I’m sure Jimmy will fill you in on the details. And, now, if you’ll forgive me, I must finish my packing. It’s the crack of dawn tomorrow and to the airport, so please don’t keep my dear Jimmy up too late tonight, Mr. Strand. And I do hope that you will come out and visit us in California soon with your beautiful wife, whose photograph Jimmy has shown me. What a lucky family. I was a waif, tossed around from relative to careless relative, so I can appreciate a family…”
“Damn it, Joan,” Jimmy said, “your father still owns half of Kansas and your mother has a racing stable.”
“I am a waif in spirit,” the woman said with dignity. “It is why the audiences respond with such emotion when I sing. I sing to the loneliness of the American soul.” She came over to Strand and gracefully swooped over him and kissed his forehead. “Good night, dear father,” she said and flowed out of the room.
Strand struggled to get up from the couch and Jimmy came over and gave him his hand and pulled him up.
“What was all that about?” Strand asked.
“It was one of her nights,” Jimmy said. “You never know which one you’re going to get The waif, the grande dame, the anarchist, the little girl with a bow around her waist and a lisp, the femme fatale, Mother Earth…You name it,” he said, grinning, “and it’s in her repertoire. And don’t take the carrot juice too seriously. She asked me if you drank and I said no, so she became a health nut for an evening. The next time you see her she’s as likely to be roaring drunk as not. If that’s what it takes to make her sing like an angel, which she does, the only thing is to sit back and enjoy the act. Come on, Pops, let’s go to dinner. I’m starving.”
The restaurant was nearby and they walked to it. As they walked, Strand asked Jimmy what was wrong with Solomon, but Jimmy had shrugged and said it was a long story, he’d tell him over dinner.
Seated at the table to which the headwaiter had led them, Jimmy ordered a martini. In some places, Strand knew, Jimmy would have had to produce his I.D. card to get a drink. Not here. Strand shook his head when Jimmy asked him if he wanted a drink. The second whiskey he had had the night of the three letters had left him with a headache and he hadn’t had a drink since.
“Now,” he said, after they had ordered and Jimmy was sipping at his martini, “what was all that about with Mr. Solomon?”
Jimmy drummed his fingers impatiently on the tablecloth. “It’s nothing,” he said. “His nose is out of joint because we’re leaving him. He’ll get over it.”
“Who’s we?”
“Joan and me. Her contract’s run out and she’s had a better offer. On the Coast. Her second husband has a music company out there and they’re friends again. It means a lot of bread. For both of us. Twice what old man Solomon was paying me and a piece of the action and that can mean millions with a dame like Joanie girl. And she won’t make a move without me. She was ready to leave Herbie anyway before I came…”
“He told me he was about to fire her. Until you came along.”
“Did he?” Jimmy said carelessly. “Somehow, she fixed on me. We have the same vibes. She won’t even sing do re me unless I approve. The good old second husband is young and he knows what the kids’re doing and that’s ninety-nine percent of the business these days. Not like old Herbie. The tide has passed old Herbie by. He’s washed up on the beach, only he hates to admit it.”
“He was very good to you.”
“It was money in the bank for him. I don’t owe him anything. Gratitude in the trade is like putting a knife in a guy’s hand and giving him lessons in how to slit your throat. I like the old fart, but business is business.” Jimmy ordered a second martini. “Joan and I are going to have our own imprint. So we get the credit and the name without putting up any of the dough. And I’m my own boss. No running around like a messenger boy if old Herbie decides he wants a report on a new country singer down in Nashville or out in Peoria. You and Mom can come out to Beverly Hills and swim in my pool.”
Strand looked soberly at his son. “Jimmy,” he said, “I find all this thoroughly distasteful. I never thought I’d say these words, but I’m ashamed of you.”
“Pops,” Jimmy said, without anger, “not everybody can be a Knight of the Round Table like you. Camelot is kaput, even if the news hasn’t reached Dunberry yet. Now, on the phone you said you had something you wanted to talk to me about. What is it?”
“Nothing,” Strand said shortly. “I’ve changed my mind. I wanted you to do something for me. For the family. Now I believe I made the wrong choice.” He stood up.
“Where’re you going?”
“I’m leaving.”
“Your dinner’s going to be here in a minute. Sit down.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Don’t you even want my address in California?” There was a wailing tone in Jimmy’s voice that reminded Strand of when Jimmy was small and had fallen and skinned his knees and come running home to be comforted.
“No, Jimmy, I don’t want your address. Good night.” Strand walked across the restaurant toward the checkroom. He got his coat and while he was putting it on, he looked back and saw that Jimmy was ordering a third martini. He went out and walked a few blocks along the cold streets to the Westbury and took the elevator to his room and lay down in the darkness. The telephone rang twice before he fell asleep, but he didn’t answer it. Among the things he regretted about the evening was that he would have to allow Jimmy to pay for the room because he didn’t have enough cash with him to pay for it himself.