A Fine and Private Place (4 page)

“Impo!” he said. “You can't mean Nino-the great Nino—is incapable of …?”

“It's not worth discussing,” I said, fast. “I don't know why I brought it up. Don't you think we'd better order?”

“Not worth
discussing
?”

“Peter, keep your voice down.
Please
.”

“My God, baby, don't you know what this means? If your marriage has never been consummated, it's not a real marriage. That's grounds for an annulment!”

In his exuberance Peter didn't think to pursue the subject of exactly what my marital life did consist of. Which was just as well. I don't want to think of what might have happened. It turned out badly enough as it is.

So I went through the whole dreary recitation of no-noes. How it didn't matter what I could or couldn't do to have the marriage dissolved, legally, religiously, or any other way if such existed—how because of daddy Nino had me by the short hairs, now more than ever, because the Gay Controller had
not
learned his lesson in 1962, the lesson I've already paid for with almost five years of my life. Although he hasn't dipped into the till again and played more hanky-pank with the books—Nino's made sure of that—he hasn't stopped plunging on speculative stocks in the market or betting on long shots at the track, either. He keeps losing and going into debt to the loan sharks and Nino, kind, generous Nino, keeps bailing him out … his
suocero
, his father-in-law, his beloved's papa. Never failing to give me an accounting to the penny, so that I'll know the rising score of my obligation to him, and what he's still holding over dad's and my head: that fitting for a prison uniform.

“How can I let that happen, Peter? He is my father, the only one I'll ever have. In his own cockeyed way he loves me. Anyway, we couldn't build a life on a foundation like that. I know I couldn't, and I don't believe you could, either.”

“I'm not so sure about that,” Peter said crassly. “What's the matter with that crazy old man of yours? Why the hell doesn't he start seeing a psychiatrist? Doesn't he realize he's ruining your life?”

“He's a compulsive gambler, Peter.”

“And womanizer—let's not forget
that
. Virgin, your father is a compulsive everything.” Peter's been calling me Virgin in private for some time now, how aptly he hasn't known. It makes me writhe. “You say he loves you. It's a hell of a love that makes a father sell his only daughter to a—a eunuch just to save his own miserable hide!”

“Daddy's weak, Peter, and self-indulgent, and all the rest of it, but he really doesn't think marrying me off to one of the world's richest men is such a horrible fate. Of course, he doesn't know about Nino's … condition.” The waiter was hanging about, and I said haughtily, “I'm hungry,” which I was not. “Are you trying to starve me?”

We ordered something, I think mine was a veal cutlet that had been breaded in library paste—their marvelous chef must have been off today—and Peter kept asking me district attorney-type questions about the agreement I had been forced to sign before the wedding. I suppose he was desperate, poor darling, because we'd been over
that
Berlin wall a dozen times previously without finding a loophole or the sorriest chink. I had to point out to him again that for the five-year term of the agreement I have absolutely no financial claim on Nino or his estate, and if I left his bed (!) and board before the expiration date it would not only strand me without a Hungarian pengö but he could—and positively would—sic the gendarmes on daddy and have him packed off to jail on the old embezzlement charge.

“Is his money so important to you?” How Peter's lip curled.

“I hate it.
And
him! For Pete's sake, Peter, you can't really think it's the money. I
told
you. I'd gladly accept any kind of decent life, no matter how much of a struggle it would be, if not for–”

“Right back to dear old dad again,” Peter said, grinding his teeth. “Oh, damn him! When's the due date?”

“Of what, Peter?”

“The agreement. When the five years are up. That's one of Nino's private papers he's never let me in on.”

“What's today? December 9. Well, it expires 9 months from today, on Nino's 68th birthday, which is also our fifth anniversary. September 9 next year.”

“Nine months,” Peter said in a very peculiar way.

I hadn't realized till Peter repeated it, and it struck me funny, so I laughed. Peter did not, and at the expression on his face I didn't feel like laughing anymore. “What's the matter now, Peter? What is it?”

He said, “Nothing.”

The way he said it …

I know it was definitely not nothing. It was
something
. Something terrible. I mean what was going through that blond, frustrated, furious head. I didn't even want to think about what it might be. I wanted to wipe it out of
my
head just as fast as I possibly could. I told myself my Peter couldn't be thinking unthinkable thoughts like that. Even in fury. Or fantasy. Or anything.

But I knew he could. And was.

Does one ever really dig another human being? Not excluding the man one loves? And I mean dig? In every sense?

At that moment I didn't know Mr. P. Ennis, 30, Harvard '59, confidential secretary to Nino Importuna, Julio Importunato, and Marco Importunato, in charge of the three brothers' personal affairs.… I didn't know him from any stranger brushed against in the street.

It frightened me.

It still does.

And that wasn't all that made today so bitchy. As I was staring across the table at Peter, biting on my napkin, I saw over his shoulder—just walking into the restaurant—my father. At the moment I spotted him I noticed a flashy chick near him, but whether she was with him or coming in alone I never did find out. The big thing that concerned me was that he mustn't see me with Peter. Because not even daddy knows about Peter and me. He'd never consciously betray me to Nino, but he does take a few drinks too many sometimes, and Nino is a breathing radar—he plucks information out of empty air. I simply couldn't risk it.

I said under my breath to Peter, “Peter, there's my father—no, don't look—he mustn't see us together …!”

Bless Peter. He casually dropped a $20 bill on the table and strolled me toward the rear, so that our backs were to daddy all the way. We pretended to go to the rest rooms but instead we escaped through an utterly blasé kitchen staff. There's not much you can do to make New York service people look up from their appointed chores short of planting a bomb under them.

It was a close call, too close, and I told Peter outside that we didn't dare rendezvous in public again. He took one look at my stricken face, kissed me, and put me into a cab.

But my love wasn't through with me. Oh, no! Just before he slammed the cab door Peter said in a low, throbby sort of voice, “There's only one thing for me to do and, by God, when the time is ripe I'm going to do it.”

That was the last I've seen of him today.

But that remark of Peter's has been haunting me. That, and the look on his face a few moments before daddy walked into the restaurant.

9 months …

It's as if something was conceived today in the womb of time. I hope and pray I'm wrong, because if I glimpsed in Peter's eyes what I think I glimpsed, and if his parting shot to me meant what I think it meant, the embryo's going to turn out to be a thalidomide baby, or worse.

It's a very morbid thought, and I'm becoming incoherent besides. I see I've finished over half the fifth of zatsomac, and I'm good and smashed, which I almost never allow myself to get because I might grow to like it too much, and to hell with you and you and you too Mrs. Calabash. I'd better totter off and tuck my lil ole self into beddy-snooky-bye.

First Month

JANUARY, 1967

Gestation, the carrying or bearing, has begun
.

The zygote has become a multicelled embryo. It has grown to the size of a pea and its core to the size of a pinhead
.

The cells in this core now form a ridge, at one end of which an infinitesimal knob takes shape. It is the beginning of the head
.

Second Month

FEBRUARY, 1967

Before the latter part of the second month it is not possible, from ordinary observation, to determine whether the embryo is of a human being or a dog
.

But after the first eight weeks, it takes on the unmistakable semblance of humanity
.

By now it is no longer an embryo
.

It is a fetus
.

Third Month

MARCH, 1967

The eyes are no longer on the sides of the head but have approached each other. Tiny slits mark the ears and nostrils, a larger slit marks the mouth. The forehead has grown massive. The upper limbs show fingers, wrists, forearms. The internal reproductive organs can now be distinguished as to sex
.

Fourth Month

APRIL, 1967

During this period the abdomen develops with notable rapidity, reducing the disproportion between the head and the rest of the fetus
.

Hair emerges on the head
.

The mother begins to feel the stir of her little parasite
.

Fifth Month

MAY, 1967

The halfway stage of the pregnancy finds the lower portion of the fetus's abdomen enlarging proportionately, and the legs beginning to catch up
.

The mother is now very much aware of what she is bearing. Its arms and legs are in frequent vigorous motion in her body
.

Ellery had had his study done over in driftwood paneling, a choice that had seemed inspired at the time. The pitted and irregularly furrowed surface looked as if it had been clawed by the tides of years, and it was artistically stained a salty sea-foam gray. Contemplating it, he could feel the rise and fall of his floor and little imaginary stings on his cheeks. With the air conditioner set to maximum, it was very hard to keep reminding himself that he was not on the deck of a pleasure craft plowing up the Sound.

This proved a serious deterrent to the requirements of reality. The conversion of his workaday walls had altered his environment to the critical point, turning a functional study in an ordinary Manhattan apartment into a playful distraction. Ellery had always held that, for the most efficient use of time and the maintenance of a schedule, a writer required above all things a working atmosphere of familiar discomfort. One should never change so much as the Model T pencil sharpener on the windowsill. The very grime around the ratholes was an encouragement to labor. In the ancient metaphor, the creative flame burned brightest in dark and dusty garrets; and so forth.

Why had he excommunicated the dear old dirty wallpaper that had seen him devotedly through so many completed manuscripts?

He was glaring at the four and a half sentences in his typewriter and making beseeching motions with his hands when his father looked in, said, “Still working?” in a tired voice, and retreated from the sight of that anguished tableau.

Five minutes later, somewhat refreshed and bearing a frosty, green-tinged cocktail, the old man reappeared. Ellery was now smiting himself softly on the temple.

Inspector Queen sank onto Ellery's sofa, taking a thirsty swallow on the way down. “Why keep beating your brains in?” he demanded. “Knock it off, son. You've got less on that page than when I left for downtown this morning.”

“What?” Ellery said, not looking up.

“Call it a day.”

Ellery looked up. “Never. Can't. Way behind.”

“You'll make it up.”

He burped a hollow laugh. “Dad, I'm trying to work. Mind?”

The Inspector settled himself and held up his cocktail. “How about I make you one of these?”

“What?”

“I said,” the Inspector said patiently, “would you like a Tipperary? It's a Doc Prouty special.”

“What's in it?” Ellery asked, making a micrometric adjustment of the sheet in his machine, which was already adjusted to a hundredth of an inch. “I've sampled Doc Prouty specials before, and they all taste the way his lab smells. What's the green stuff?”

“Chartreuse. Mixed with Irish whiskey and sweet vermouth.”

“No crème de menthe? God keep us all from professional Irishmen! If you're bent on barkeeping, dad, make mine a Johnnie on the rocks.”

His father fetched the Scotch. Ellery surrounded half of it with sedate gratitude, set the glass daintily down beside his typewriter, and flexed his fingers. The old man sat back on the sofa, knees touching like a vicar's on duty call, sipping his Tipperary and watching. Just as the poised filial fingers were about to descend on the keys, the paterfamilias said, “Yes, sir. Hell of a day.”

The son slowly lowered his hands. He sat back. He reached for his glass. “All right,” he said. “I'm listening.”

“No, no, I just happened to think out loud, son. It's not important. I mean, sorry I interrupted.”

“So am I, but the fact, as de Gaulle would say in translation, is accomplished. I couldn't compose a printable line now if I were on my deathbed.”

“I said I was sorry,” the Inspector said in a huff. “I see I'd better get out of here.”

“Oh, sit down. You obviously invaded my domain with malice aforeceps, as a show biz lady of my acquaintance liked to say, in contravention of my rights under the Fourth Amendment.” The old man sat back, rather bewilderedly mollified. “By the way, how about not talking on an empty stomach? Dinner simmers on the hod. Mrs. Fabrikant left us one of her famous, or to put it more accurately, notorious Irish stews. Fabby had to leave early today—”