13
For a man leading a normal life it would have been a pleasant day. The weather was pleasant, there was a bright sun, but an ocean breeze came up the Hudson and gave Manhattan a break. There was a good breakfast, and a smooth bus ride uptown. Fifth Avenue seemed lively and contented, perhaps just a bit smug, but then Fifth Avenue could afford that.
In the advertising agency, the art director was pleased with the work and handed out another assignment. That was nice. The deadline was generous, and that was even nicer. Lunch was nice too. And Fifty-seventh Street was showing some extremely interesting work by some new people, and so the remainder of the afternoon went riding along gently and at just the right speed.
In one of the larger galleries on Fifty-seventh Street he became engaged in a conversation with one of the more successful surrealist painters, and the two of them moved along from oil to oil, discussing the importance of shadow in surrealism, the effect of color on shadow, the effect of shadow on color, the effect of color and shadow on line, and it became one of those conversations that could very easily go on for years. The surrealist was more than a little interested in Vanning's point of view, and the whole thing led to a dinner invitation. Politely refusing, Vanning said he already had a dinner date for tonight.
“Oh, I'm sorry.”
“So am I.”
“Maybe you can break it.”
“I could do that. But I don't think I will.”
“Business?”
“In a way. Maybe some other time. All right?”
“By all means,” the painter said. “I'll be here every day through the end of August, when the exhibition closes. You do like my work?”
“Very much. It has depth. It has technique. Very fine technique. You'll go places, I'm sure of it.”
“It makes me so happy to hear that. I'm going to tell my wife about you. There's so much in what you say about painting. You don't talk like the ordinary experts. Your judgment is so fair, so objective, so calm. I don't usually tell my wife these opinions expressed toward my work. As a matter of fact, I only tell my wife the things that affect me deeply. You see, I have a very deep feeling toward my wife. We've been married for sixteen years.”
Vanning stared at an open space of wall above the highest painting. “Why do you people pick on me?”
“I beg your pardon?”
Vanning kept staring at the wall. “Why do you rub it in?”
“I'm sorry. I fail to understand.”
“Skip it. I didn't say anything. I do that every now and then. Don't mind me. Here, let's shake hands. I hope you and your wife will always be happy together. There's nothing like having a wife and being madly in love with her. Is there?”
On the painter's face a perplexed look gave way to a shining smile, and as he shook hands with Vanning he said, “My wife means everything to me. More than my art. That's why I'll never be a truly great painter. But it doesn't matter. Success in love is success in life. Are you married?”
Vanning nodded. He said, “It isn't a good marriage. I don't trust her. I ought to let her go. I know she's bad for me. That's the practical side. The other side of it is way over my head.”
“Give her a chance. She's only a human being. And she's probably young. She can be molded. You listen to me. I'm much older than you. In the beginning, in Paris, my wife gave me a lot of trouble. She was a little imp. You know what I did once? I went on a hunger strike. After two days of that she got down on her knees, she cried like a little child. I told her I would eat if she prepared the kind of dinner I liked. She prepared a feast. We feasted together. We got drunk. We laughed ourselves unconscious. That's living, my friend. That's loving.”
“You have something there.”
“Fight with her. Make some noise. Give her excitement. Give her color. Give her children. My wife and I, we have three girls and a little boy. Every night I come home to a festival, a beauty pageant, a delightful comic opera right there in the little house where I live. There's so much yelling. It's wonderful.”
“I'll bet it is,” Vanning said. He smiled. He patted the painter's shoulder and walked out of the gallery. On the street, walking south on Lexington, he kept on smiling, and very slowly a frown arrived and he was smiling and frowning at the same time, and it showed he was a man in deep thought, somewhat amused at what he was thinking, somewhat puzzled. And when the smile faded and the frown stayed there, it showed he was a man who had made up his mind about something.
There was an hour to kill. He walked, he looked in some windows, he did more walking, he went into a haberdasher's and bought several shirts, a few ties, a few pairs of socks. He splurged on a brocaded robe. Splurging like that on himself gave him an idea, and a little later he was buying a five-pound box of candy and a large bottle of expensive perfume. Then he went home and showered and shaved, got himself into one of the new shirts, stood in front of a mirror, experimenting with the new tie.
At a few minutes to seven he walked down Barrow Street.
Again the door was open when he reached the third-floor landing. She was all ready. She was smiling.
She took a step toward him. “My, but you look nice.”
“Here's a little something I picked up.” He was extending the fancy packages.
“For me?” She took the packages and stared.
“I was going to try fur, but I didn't know what kind you liked.”
She didn't get that. He decided to let it pass. They were going into the room. She opened the packages. The big box of candy brought a murmur of delight. The ornate bottle of perfume caused her to step back, her eyes wide. He was watching her as if she were under a microscope.
Gesturing toward the perfume, she said, “You shouldn't have done that.”
“Why not?”
“That's very expensive.”
“Don't you think I can afford it?”
Her eyes were on the perfume. “That's an awful lot of money.”
He didn't say anything. He was lighting a cigarette. It was starting out the way he wanted it to start. The gifts leading to a mention of money, the money a potential path to the satchel. It was up to her to guide the way along the path. He waited, telling himself to step along with extreme caution. The type he was dealing with was the most dangerous and clever of them all. On the surface a soft-voiced innocence, an unembroidered sincerity. Beneath the surface a chess player who could do amazing things without board and chessmen.
“Really,” she said, “you shouldn't have spent all that money.”
“It wasn't so much, considering.”
“Considering what?”
He studied the way she was looking at him. “Considering,” he said, “what I have.”
“I didn't think you had a lot.”
“It all depends on what you mean by a lot.”
She laughed. “Maybe you haven't told me everything about yourself.”
“For instance?”
“Maybe you're heir to a fortune.”
“That's possible.”
“Should I guess again?”
“Sure,” Vanning said. “Give it a try.”
They stood facing each other, and it was as if lengths of foils separated them. He was trying to get rid of his own thoughts, his own strategy, trying to bring her thoughts into his mind so he could take a close look and figure how far she was ahead of him. Because even in this short time she had taken the lead, she was out there in front, her pace steady and yet relaxed, her confidence a thing of menace, her relaxed superiority almost like a panther's playing with a zebra.
“Maybe,” she said, “you've been fooling me all the time and it's some sort of a gag. Actually you're a young wizard of Wall Street.”
“Try again.”
“You made a fortune playing cards.”
“Do I seem as if I'd be clever at poker?”
“That's why you'd be clever. Because you don't seem to be clever. Or perhaps shrewd would be a better word. The shrewdest people give you the impression that they're exactly opposite.”
“That's a keen observation,” Vanning said. “I'm going to make a note of it and keep it on file.”
“Do that. You'll find out it comes in very handy now and then.”
“You still have another guess coming.”
“Feed me first,” Martha said. “I can think better on a full stomach.”
They went out and found a restaurant. It was one of those places where people concentrated on food, and yet each booth was a little rendezvous in itself. There was an emphasis on privacy and yet it was a casual sort of privacy. While they waited for their order, their conversation was affected by the atmosphere of the place and it became pleasant, meaningless chatter with a laugh here and there. She had a fine sense of humor, deviating in a marvelous way between the dry and the robust. For detached moments Vanning was enjoying her presence, and the worry and peril were completely out of it. She began telling him of amusing incidents at the glassware counter, and her imitations of various customers were definitely blue-ribbon. At one point his laughter came out in a burst, at another point he smiled and nodded appreciatively as she pantomimed to perfection the undecided buyer of glass.
When the steaks arrived, they stopped fooling around. It was phenomenal food and they gave it their undivided attention.
Later, while they sipped brandy, they looked at each other.
And Vanning said, “You still have that one more guess.”
“Oh, yes. I forgot about that.”
“I didn't.”
“Are you trying to find out how smart I am?”
“I already know how smart you are,” Vanning said. “Now I want to see how good you are at guessing.”
“Suppose it isn't a guess?”
“If it isn't a guess it's deduction. If it isn't deduction it's mind reading and I'll put you in business on Broadway. Now let's have it. This is the big one.”
He grinned at her. She didn't return the grin. A strange quiet became a bubble growing larger in the center of the table, and he could see her through the bubble. He could see her face, and that was as far as he could see. It frightened him, and he didn't know why. There was no reason for fright. The situation held no immediate danger. But he was very frightened, and gradually, as he sat there watching Martha, he realized that it was not Martha he feared. And it was not John. And it was not the police. It was himself.
And then all at once there was a bursting in his brain, and this place, and Martha, the table, the brandy, everything, it all assumed the substance and dimensions of a horrible reality. Horrible only because it was real, so very real that it refused to be reined in. He was in love with her.
It was not logical, it was impossible. And yet there it was. The attraction, the feeling were beyond measurement, beyond the limits of self-analysis. The thing itself was clear and definite, and yet the reasons were vague and far away and he had no desire to itemize those reasons. There was an eerie resemblance between this matter and something else that had happened to him, but right now he couldn't remember what that something else was. His mind was too busy accepting the fact, the ghastly truth that he had fallen in love with this woman. Shackles of some fierce, unbreakable metal were already locked, holding him secure. And that, too, was an awful paradox, because he had not the slightest wish to free himself. No matter what she was, no matter what she had done or was doing now, no matter what trouble and heartache the hidden Martha represented for him, he was in love with the Martha that showed herself to him now.
It was a phenomenon of huge proportions. It was bigger than life. And yet, as big as it was, there was something even bigger. And he knew what that was, too, only with this new realization there was no explosion, the knowledge reached him in a calm sort of way. He was certain she had fallen in love with him.
“I'm ready,” he said.
“I'm thinking.”
“Make it good.”
“If it's too good,” she said, “it won't be any good at all. It will wreck everything.”
“I'm willing to gamble.”
“Maybe that's because you don't have too much to lose.”
“And you?”
“I'll be losing a lot. You have no idea how much I'll be losing. Do you mind if I back out?”
“Yes,” he said. “I do mind. I want you to make that guess.”
“It's not a guess any more. I'm sure I know. If I'm correct, the whole thing blows up in my face. If I'm wrong, you'll walk out on me and nobody can blame you. I don't want to lose you, Jim. Maybe you know that already.”
“I've been playing with the idea.”
“No matter what you are,” she said, “I don't want to lose you.”
He stared at her. She had repeated what he had told himself. And it was no act. Because she meant it, actually meant it, her eyes and her words were far more dreadful than an act, and he could think of only one explanation. There were two sides to Martha Gardner, and what he had thought was the hidden side was not hidden at all, it was actual, it was living breathing, performing. And doubtless she feared and hated that side of herself just as he did.
“You're halfway across the tightrope,” he said. “You can't turn back.”
“You're really asking for it, aren't you?”
“Put it another way. Say I'm demanding it.”
A tinge of indignation came into her eyes. “You sound as if I'm obligated.”
“We're both obligated. It's just about time to take off our masks.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“I mean take off the masks. Walk off the stage. Remove the greasepaint. Any way you want to put it.”
“I'm sorry, Jim.” A confused little smile crept back and forth across her parted lips. “You have me in the dark.”
“Do I really?” He leaned toward her, his eyes a set of lances.
She touched finger tips to her chin. “It's so strange, the way you're looking at me.”
“I'm looking at the life ahead of me. With you.”
She gave him a sideways glance. “I'm not bothering you, am I?”
“You don't catch the drift,” he said. He bit a thumbnail. “Let's get out of here.”
He paid the check. They left the restaurant. The Village was under twilight, and nothing much was happening on the street. They went down the street and came onto Fifth Avenue, and then they turned toward the arch that officially welcomed people to Washington Square. He was waiting for her to say something, knew she was waiting for him. Eventually he realized it was up to him.