I Come as a Theif (17 page)

"The brochure is perfect."

"Nonsense. You haven't read a word of it."

"That doesn't mean it's not perfect."

"Why don't you go home, Lee? You're obviously not going to get any work done today."

"I'm going to read the brochure!" Lee cried passionately, and she turned abruptly away from Belle.

She had slept heavily the night before, dreamlessly, a kind of love death. She must have dreaded her awakening, for when she had opened her eyes in the harsh light she had given a little cry of alarm.

"Darling, I'm right here." Tony was standing by the bed with a shaving brush in his hand.

"Oh, Tony, hold me!" she cried in panic. "Hold me, and tell me it's all right. That it's going to
be
all right."

He sat down on the edge of the bed and held her close.

"Thank you," she breathed. "When are you going to do it? Confess, I mean?"

"I have to speak to Max first."

"Max? Why Max?" She was wide awake now and throbbing with immediate jealousy. "What has Max to do with it?"

Tony looked at her in surprise. "Well, I guess
he
thinks he has something to do with it. I've got to work it out so as not to involve him. Of course, I won't give his name, but once the thing's out, the U.S. Attorney's office can be expected to run him down. I'll try to make a deal for him, but he may find it advisable to arrange a business trip to Brazil. Until it all blows over."

"A deal for MaxI What about a deal for you?"

"Well, I don't say that's impossible. It has been known for first offenders who turn themselves in to get suspended sentences. I'm not going to beg them to send me to jail. But with Max it's different. There's no reason that Max should suffer for my conscience when he's lucky enough to have none of his own."

"Well, I think there is." Lee could not abide the intrusion of Max into their strange new purgatory, just halfway between heaven and hell. "Max was responsible for the whole wretched business. He tempted you. He wheedled you into it. No, worse, he made you feel so sorry for him that you went into it to save him! Oh, how I loathe Max!" The golden canvas of Tony's heroism seemed to be crumpling at the corners, as if it were on fire. She put a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. If she had to go through this hideous trial on Max's moral level, it would be more than a soul could bear. "All right, go to Max," she argued with controlled vehemence. "Tell him you've decided to go to the U.S. Attorney's office. Give him the chance to go with you. That's fair enough, isn't it? And if he won't, to hell with him!"

"Lee." Tony put his hands on her bare shoulders and held her firmly. "Let me do this my way, will you? I promise you, it will be the honorable way. Trust me."

She had shuddered and then clung to him for a desperate embrace. She was still thinking of that embrace, trying to get back into it, to cover herself over with it as if it were some great dark hood, while she sat with Belle's brochure in her lap. She jumped up, startled, when Belle lightly touched her shoulder.

"Please go home, Lee. Your nerves are so tight. It makes me jumpy just to watch you."

Lee threw her arms about her and sobbed. "Oh, Belle, would you still speak to me if I went to jail?"

Belle was never at a loss. She patted Lee gently on the back and let her continue to hug her. "I think I would."

"Not matter what I'd done?"

"Oh, I wouldn't dream of knowing."

"But if you did?"

"I'd be sure you'd had a very compelling reason."

Lee closed her eyes as she visualized Eric's pained, bewildered face. Was anything worth that? Anything that had to be shared with Max Leonard? And would they ever be through with it, even after the jail was over? What about those criminals who had bribed Tony? Wouldn't they follow him? Wouldn't they try to get him? Or the children? Hadn't she read horrors?

"Oh, Belle, you must think I'm mad! Perhaps I am, a bit. No, I'm not going to jail. Nobody is. I was just thinking of the part of your brochure that deals with the program for ex-convicts. It's very well put. Very moving. I was thinking what a hard time they must have and how important it is for us to help them."

Belle released herself from Lee's embrace and surveyed her with a critical little smile. "My God, you
did
read the brochure."

"Of course, I did."

"Lee, you're remarkable."

"I read it, and I was swept away. It should swamp us with new memberships."

She felt worthy of Tony again as she turned to the mailing list. It was going to be difficult to breathe in this new altitude, but it was obviously only by learning that she would survive.

The Max Leonards' house in Vernon Manor, unlike its neighbors, was old—fifty years old—and had been, when they had bought it, of dark, weatherbeaten shingle, designed in a vaguely Queen Anne style, attractive enough when densely surrounded by lilacs and marigolds and a small, shimmering lawn. Now, however, that it had been converted by Elaine to the standards of opulent suburbia—painted light gray with picture windows, filled with bird prints and imitation French provincial furniture—now that it was bare and clean and bordered by a rock garden, it was as dull as Elaine herself.

Max was perfectly able to assess his own responsibility for the changes in her. He was even able to derive a dry satisfaction in his own perspicacity. After all, he and she had been caught in the same net. Elaine had never guessed, when she had married the prettiest senior at Williams, the boy with the sunniest disposition, that she had mated with a driven creature, a compulsively industrious aspirant to riches and power. It might have been better, but only a little better, had he achieved them. As it was, Elaine, neglected, had tinned for a time to adultery, but not finding it a much favored vice in Vernon Manor, where husbands were jealously guarded, she had graduated to the bridge lunch at the country club, to long hours of gin and gossip with the girls. Now a failing fight with her figure had given her another occupation. The two Leonard daughters were away at boarding school. It was supposed to be a liberal one, but there were still letters from the headmistress.

Elaine never joined Max for breakfast unless she had something to dispute with him. He hated the contrast that her billowing nightgown and undone hair offered to his own matutinal neatness. Never did she less seem the American blonde beauty of their early years, an image that she could still suggest when she was dressed and made up for a party.

"Why do you suppose Tony told Governor Horton to withdraw his name from the Treasury job?"

Max glanced up from his paper. "Where did you hear that? From the girls at the club?"

"No, dear. They've never heard of Tony Lowder. He's not nearly as famous as you like to think."

"Where did you hear it, then?"

"From you. Last night. You never remember anything you tell me after the second nightcap."

Max reflected uncomfortably that this was true. It was curious that she, who drank so much more than he did, should have such total recall. It must have been because she was checking up on him. Now that her looks were going, and he had kept his, she was afraid of losing him.

"I don't know why Tony did it," he admitted. "But I'll sure as hell find out. I'm meeting him in town today."

"May I make a suggestion?"

"Isn't that what you came down for?"

"Then I suggest your sacred Tony is self-destructive."

Max prepared himself for the latest bit of country club Freud. "Aren't we all?"

"To a lesser extent. You can tell about Tony by the way he plays bridge. He's a beautiful player, granted. But watch him through an evening when he has a winning streak. He gets progressively reckless. In the end, he's apt to be badly set on a grand slam, doubled and vulnerable."

"He likes to give the opponents a break. He's always that way in games."

"He might think of his partner."

"But that's usually Lee. She understands."

"And it's just a game. I know." Elaine seemed very sure of herself. "But I suggest that all life is a game to Tony. A game he insists on losing. And you're in for a sad disillusionment if you think Lee's his only partner. The real partner is you, sonny boy!"

Max looked at her suspiciously. Elaine could be a very insinuating woman. "What has given you this idea?"

"Watching you and Tony. Over the years. Whenever there's a noticeable disproportion between the affections of two supposedly best friends, watch out! There's trouble in store."

"You don't think Tony likes me?"

"Oh, he likes you well enough. That's not the point. The point is that what he feels about you bears no visible relation to what you feel about him. Tony's emotional life is bound up entirely with women. He has a bare tolerance for his own sex. I think I should know something about that."

"Do you imply that you've had an affair with him?"

"I imply that I could have. If I hadn't been such a faithful wife."

Max snorted. "Perhaps you misunderstood him."

"A woman doesn't misunderstand that kind of thing."

"
You
might."

Elaine flushed. "Maybe we'd understand each other better if we could talk frankly about your attitude toward Tony. Do you think we might do it impersonally? After all, we're not children."

Max shrugged without answering.

"I know he's the light of your life," Elaine continued tartly. "I've always known that. Oh, I don't say it's entirely a homosexual thing, though that's obviously part of it. People make too much of that these days. The real point is that Tony has to have all the success you haven't had. Tony has to lead
your
life. If you could ever exorcise Tony from your heart, you might discover a lot of things about yourself. You might..."

"I might even discover," Max interrupted angrily, "that I'm married to a woman who likes to turn a sharp knife in my guts under the cloak of a clinical discussion. Goodbye, Elaine. I'm going to my train."

***

In the Central Park Zoo, before the empty polar bear cage, Max smoked a cigarette impatiently, as if it were a task to be got through with. Tony had finished talking, for the moment anyway. He was gazing down at the seven faded wreaths piled under the sign. The bear had been shot a month before because it had seized and mauled the arm of a crazy man who had thrust a stick through the bars to annoy it. There had been no other way to make the poor beast let go of its tormentor.

"You picked a good place to meet," Max said bitterly. "You're even crazier than the guy who stuck his hand in there."

"And you feel sorry for the bear."

"Hell, I
am
the bear. I'll get shot, anyway, for your lunacy. And do you know something? I contradicted Elaine this morning when she said you liked to lose games. Well, she was right—for once in her life. You'd play Russian roulette with a cartridge in every slot."

"Except you won't be shot. You can get out of town."

"And lose my law practice? And be disbarred? Thanks, pal!"

"Don't cry before you're hurt, Max. I told you there was a good chance I could work a deal."

"A good chance! Do you realize the chance you're taking with my life? Even if you did make a deal for me, how will that square me with Lassatta? Do you think he'll ever believe I'm not a party to this crazy confession?"

"You worry too much about Lassatta. Those boys are going to have it so in for me, they won't even remember your name."

"You hope!" Max stamped his foot on the pavement in frustration. "And even if everything works out the way you say, where does that leave me?
You
were the biggest part of my plans."

"It's tough, Max. I know."

"You think it's all right to do this to me because you take the rap. But it's not, because you're getting some kind of a looney jag out of the whole thing. What's there in it for me but despair? How can you treat a friend like that?"

Tony became very grave at this. Suddenly he gripped Max's shoulder. "Why don't you come with me, Max, and confess the whole thing?"

"You
are
crazy."

"I have a kind of hunch that deep down you want to. A hunch that tells me you're sick of the whole rat race. Is it so, Max?" But Max angrily shook off his hand. "You talk about friendship," Tony continued. "Why don't you see my side? We got into this thing as friends. It was your idea to go in, and I followed you. Now it's my idea to get out. Why don't you follow me?"

"Because you're changing the terms of the friendship."

"For the better."

Max turned away abruptly and walked to the center of the zoo, stopping before the seal tank. The seals were all asleep. Tony did not follow him, probably wishing to give him the opportunity to think it out. But Max did not need to think it out. He had no intention of doing the mad thing that Tony suggested. Something had come over him that threatened to be even stronger than his fear of Lassatta. It was a hot stifled feeling in his chest and deep in his throat that made him actually cough. He was not sure what it was, but he wondered if it might not be hate.

Hate? For Tony? Was it conceivable? Of course it was conceivable! Love and hate had too much in common not to be interchangeable. But what was left of his life, then? Might he not just as well go for a ride with one of Lassatta's thugs and get it over with?

The surface of the dark water broke, and a seal's head appeared. One of them had been under, after all. Max found himself thinking of Dr. Redding, his old headmaster at St. John's, and how earnestly he had prayed in chapel. And then he thought of his mother, his darling pretty mother, Susie, who used to visit him once a term, coming up by bus and going back to New York the same day because she couldn't afford the Parents' House. How she had toiled to support him. How she had clung to the few "advantages" left after his father's death, working for a party bureau for debutantes and their ghastly mothers, until her fluttery little bird's heart had given out and he had been left alone. Could there be a more pathetic picture than that pretty boy and his pretty mother, alone against a sneering world? Laugh, will you? Screw you, brother! Max spat on the railing.