The Complete Crime Stories (9 page)

“It's plenty important—to me.”

“Hugo is that strange being that you don't seem to understand, that you even deny exists—but he exists, just the same. Hugo is an artist. He believes in my voice. That's all. The rest is irrelevant. Money, time, work, everything.”

That gave me the colic so bad I had to stop, count ten, and begin all over again. “… Listen, Doris. To hell with all this. Nobody's opposing your career. I'm all for your career, and I don't care what it costs, and I don't care whether it ever brings in a dime. But why the big act? Why do you have to go through all this stuff that I'm thwarting you, and we're starving, and all that? Why can't you just study, and shut up about it?”

“Do we have to go back over all that?”

“And if that's how you feel about it, what the hell did you ever marry me for, anyway?”

That slipped out on me. She didn't say anything, and I took it back. Oh yes, I took it back, because down deep inside of me I knew why she had married me, and I had spent seven years with my ears stopped up, so she'd never have the chance to tell the truth about it. She had married me for the dough I brought in, and that was all she had married me for. For the rest, I just bored her, except for that streak in her that had to torture everybody that came within five feet of her. The whole thing was that I was nuts about her and she didn't give a damn about me, and don't ask me why I was nuts about her. I don't know why I was nuts about her. She was a phoney, she had the face of a saint and the soul of a snake, she treated me like a dog, and still I was nuts about her. So I took it back. I apologized for it. I backed down like I always did, and lost the fight, and wished I had whatever it would take to stand up against her, but I didn't.

“Time to dress, Leonard.”

When we got home that night, she undressed in the dressing room, and when she came out she had on one of the Chinese kimonos, and went to the door of the nursery, where the kids had slept before they got old enough to have a room. … “I've decided to sleep in here for a while, Leonard. I've got exercises to do when I get up, and—all sorts of things. There's no reason why you should be disturbed.”

“Any way you like.”

“Or—perhaps you would be more comfortable in there.”

Yes, I even did that. I slept that night in the nursery, and took up my abode there from then on. What I ought to do was go in and sock her in the jaw, I knew that. But I just looked at Peter Rabbit, where he was skipping across the wall in the moonlight, and thought to myself: “Yeah, Borland, that's you all right.”

2

So for the next three months there was nothing but vocalizing all over the place, and then it turned out she was ready for a recital in Town Hall. For the month after that we got ready for the recital, and the less said about it the better. Never mind what Town Hall cost, and the advertising cost, and that part. What I hated was drumming up the crowd. I don't know if you know how a high-toned Social Registerite like Doris does when she gets ready to give a recital to show off her technique. She calls up all
her
friends, and sandbags them to buy tickets. Not just to come, you understand, on free tickets, though to me that would be bad enough. To
buy
tickets, at $2 a ticket. And not only does she call up
her
friends, but her husband calls up
his
friends, and all her sisters and her cousins and her aunts call up
their
friends, and those friends have to come through, else it's an unfriendly act. I got so I hated to go in the River Club, for fear I'd run into somebody that was on the list, and that I hadn't buttonholed, and if I let him get out of there without buttonholing him, and Doris found out about it, there'd be so much fuss that I'd buttonhole him, just to save trouble. Oh yes, culture has its practical side when you start up Park Avenue with it. It's not just that I'm a roughneck that I hate it. There are other reasons too.

I don't know when it was that I tumbled that Doris was lousy. But some time in the middle of all that excitement, it just came to me one day that she couldn't sing, that she never could sing, that it was all just a pipe dream. I tried to shake it off, to tell myself that I didn't know anything about it, because that was one thing that had always been taken for granted in our house: that she could have a career if she wanted it. And there was plenty of reason to think so, because she did have a voice, anybody could tell that. It was a high soprano, pretty big, with a liquid quality to it that made it easy for her to do the coloratura stuff she seemed to specialize in. I couldn't shake it off. I just knew she was no good, and didn't know how I knew it. So of course that made it swell. Because in the first place I had to keep on taking her nonsense, knowing all the time she was a fake, and not being able to tell her so. And in the second place, I was so in love with her that I couldn't take my eyes off her when she was around and I hated to see her out there making a fool of herself. And in the third place, there was Lorentz. If I knew she was no good then he knew she was no good, and what was he giving her free lessons for? He was up pretty often, usually just before dinner, to run over songs with her, and once or twice, while we were waiting for her to come home, I tried to get going with him, to find out what was what. I couldn't. I knew why I couldn't. It was some more of the blindfold stuff. I was afraid I'd find out something I didn't want to know. Not that I expected him to tell me. But I might find it out just the same, and I didn't want to find it out. I might lie awake half the night wondering about it, and gnaw my fingernails half off down at the office, but when it came to the showdown I didn't want to know. So we would just sit there, and have a drink, and talk about how women are always late. Then Doris would come, and start to yodel. And then I would go upstairs.

The recital was in February, at eleven o'clock of a Friday morning. About nine o'clock I was in the nursery, getting into the cutaway coat and gray striped pants that Doris said I had to wear, when the phone rang in the bedroom and I heard Doris answer. In a minute or two she came in. “Stop that for a minute, Leonard, and listen to me. It's something terribly important.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“Louise Bronson just called up. She was talking last night with Rudolph Hertz.” Hertz wasn't his name, but I'll call him that. He was a critic on the Herald Tribune. “You know, he's related to her.”

“And?”

“She told him he had to come and give me a review, and he promised to do it. But the fool told him it was tomorrow instead of today, and Leonard, you'll have to call him up and tell him, and be sure and tell him there'll be two tickets for him, in his name at the boxoffice—and make sure they're there.”

“Why do I have to call him up?”

“Leonard, I simply haven't time to explain all that to you now. He's the most important man in town, it's just a stroke of blind luck that he promised to give me a review, and I can't lose it just because of a silly mistake over the day.”

“His paper keeps track of that for him.”

“Leonard, you call him up! You call him up right now! You—stop making me scream, it's frightful for my voice. You call him up! Do you hear me?”

“He won't be at his paper. They don't come down that early.”

“Then call him up at his home!”

I went in the bedroom and picked up the phone book. He wasn't in it. I called information. They said they would have to have the address. Doris began screaming at me from the dressing room. “He lives on Central Park West! In the same building as Louise!”

I gave the address. They said they were very sorry but it was a private number and they wouldn't be able to give it to me. Doris was yelling at me before I even hung up. “Then you'll have to go over there! You'll have to see him.”

“I can't go over there. Not at this hour.”

“You'll have to go over there. You'll have to see him! And be sure and mention Louise, and his promise to her, and tell him there'll be two tickets for him, in his name at the boxoffice!”

So I hustled on the rest of my clothes, and jumped in a cab, and went over there. I found him in bathrobe and slippers, having breakfast with his wife and another lady, in an alcove just off the living room. I mumbled about Louise Bronson, and how anxious we were to have his opinion on my wife's voice, and about the tickets in his name at the boxoffice, and he listened to me as though he couldn't believe his ears. Then he cut me off, and he cut me off sharp. “My dear fellow, I can't go to every recital in Town Hall just at an hour's notice. If notices were sent out, my paper will send somebody over, and there was no need whatever for you to come to me about it.”

“Louise Bronson—”

“Yes, Louise said something to me about a recital, but I don't let her run my department either.”

“We were very anxious for your opinion—”

“If so, making a personal call at this hour in the morning was a very bad way to get it.”

I felt my face get hot. I jumped up, said I was sorry, and got out of there as fast as I could grab my hat. The recital didn't help any. The place was packed with stooges, and they clapped like hell and it didn't mean a thing. I sat with Randolph and Evelyn, and we clapped too, and after it was over, and about a ton of flowers had gone up, and my flowers too, we went backstage with the whole mob to tell Doris how swell she was, and you would have thought it was just a happy family party. But as soon as my face wasn't red any more from thinking about the critic, it got red from something else. About a third of that audience were children. That was how they had told us to go to hell, those people we had sandbagged. They bought tickets, but they sent their children—with nursemaids.

Doris took the children home, and I went out and ate, and then went over to the office. I sat there looking at my feet, and thinking about the critic, and the children at the recital, and sleeping in the nursery, and Lorentz, and all the rest of it, and I felt just great. About two-thirty the phone rang. “Mr. Borland?”

“Speaking.”

“This is Cecil Carver.”

She acted like I ought to know who Cecil Carver was, but I had never heard the name before. “Yes, Miss Carver. What can I do for you?”

“Perhaps I ought to explain. I'm a singer. I happened to be visiting up in Central Park this morning when you called, and I couldn't help hearing what was said.”

“I got a cool reception.”

“Pay no attention to it. He's a crusty old curmudgeon until he's had his coffee, and then he's a dear. I wish you could have heard the way he was treating me.”

That was all hooey, but somehow my face didn't feel red any more, and besides that, I liked the way she laughed. “You make me feel better.”

“Forget it. I judged from what you said that you were anxious for a competent opinion on your wife's singing.”

“Yes, I was.”

“Well, I dropped in at that recital. Would you like to know what I thought?”

“I'd be delighted.”

“Then why don't you come over?” She gave the name of a hotel that was about three blocks away, on Lexington Avenue.

“I don't know of any reason why not.”

“Have you still got on that cutaway coat?”

“Yes, I have.”

“Oh my, I'll have to make myself look pretty.”

“You had better hurry up.”

“… Why?”

“Because I'm coming right over.”

3

She had a suite up on the tenth floor, with a grand piano in it and music scattered all over the place, and she let me in herself. I took her to be about thirty, but I found out later she was two years younger. Women singers usually look older than they really are. There's something about them that says woman, not girl. She was good-looking all right. She had a pale, ivory skin, but her hair was black, and so were her eyes. I think she had the biggest black eyes I ever saw. She was a little above medium height, and slim, but she was a little heavy in the chest. She had on a blue silk dress, very simple, and it came from a good shop, I could see that. But somehow it didn't look quite right, anyway to somebody that was used to the zip that Doris had in her dresses. She told me afterward she had no talent for dressing at all, that a lot of women on the stage haven't, and that she did what most of them do: go into the best place in town, buy the simplest thing they have, pay plenty for it, and take a chance it will look all right. It looked just about like that, but it didn't make any difference. You didn't think about the dress after you saw those eyes.

She had a drink ready, and asked me if I was a musician. I said no, I was a contractor, and next thing I knew I had had two drinks, and was gabbling about myself like some drummer in a Pullman. She kept smiling and nodding, like concrete railroad bridges were the most fascinating thing she had ever heard of in her life, and the big black eyes kept looking at me, and even with the drinks I knew I was making a bit of a fool of myself. I didn't care. It was the first time a woman had taken any interest in me in a blue moon, and I was having a good time, and I had still another drink, and kept right on talking.

After a while, though, I pulled up, and said well, and she switched off to Doris. “Your wife has a remarkable voice.”

“Yes?”

“… It keeps haunting me.”

“Is it that good?”

“Yes, it's that good, but that isn't why it haunts me. I keep thinking I've heard it before.”

“She used to sing around quite a lot.”

“Here? In New York?”

“Yes.”

“That couldn't be it. I don't come from New York. I come from Oregon. And I've spent the last five years abroad. Oh well, never mind.”

“Then you think she's good?”

“She has a fine voice, a remarkably fine voice, and her tone is well produced. She must have had excellent instruction. Of course …”