A Key to the Suite (8 page)

“I don’t know just how to say what I want to say to you people. To me … and I guess you know I’m a sentimental man … the breath of life itself is the strong, warm, honest contact between human beings.”

He was silent for many seconds, and when he spoke again his voice was husky and uncertain. “Even if
NAPATAN
had failed at all the ambitious things it tried to do, I would still treasure my long association with it. Because … through this organization
 … I have been privileged to become a friend of … of some of the finest men our society has ever produced.”

The applause was long and loud. People here and there began to stand, applauding, and soon the multitude was on its feet. Floyd had the uneasy feeling that perhaps too many people had underestimated Jesse Mulaney.

As the applause began to die he heard a man at the table directly behind him. “Dix Weaver’s speech. The same old crap, and it always works.”

The man’s neighbor said, “It was sixteen years he did nothing. Not two. You should hear Harry Mallory on that subject, Ed.”

“How can a guy like Mulaney fake his way so far for so long? I heard that with the new team at AGM, they’re finally catching up to that …”

“Ssshh!”

“Huh? Why’re you … Oh.”

Hubbard, as everyone began to sit down again, looked sidelong at Connie, hoping she hadn’t overheard. But he knew at once that she had. She was staring down at the table, her lips compressed, her face pink, a tear in the corner of her eye.

“That was just what they wanted to hear, Connie,” he said.

She looked at him and knuckled the tear away. She looked angry. “Certainly. That’s Jesse’s special talent, you know. Telling everybody exactly what they want to hear. That’s the secret of salesmanship.”

He made a forlorn attempt to turn it into a joke. “Not only salesmanship. Love and politics.”

She seemed to study him. “It’s a lot tougher, I imagine, to tell people the things they don’t want to hear. But some people enjoy it. A certain special type of person.”

“Connie, I … I don’t think we ought to …”

She touched his hand. “Of course. I’m sorry.”

The toastmaster made some closing announcements and adjourned the banquet meeting. Dave Daniels had returned for the speeches, but he left the moment it was over. It was ten thirty.

After the slow herd movement into the lobby, Floyd found himself with Cass and Sue Beatty. “What happens now?” he asked.

“Suite-hopping,” Cass said. “A test of endurance. Everybody visits everybody else’s suite. By my count there are twenty-three hospitality suites. One drink in each would be a masterful accomplishment. But many will try. Our little men are up there, bracing themselves for chaos. Miss Barlund shouldn’t miss this sturdy tradition. She’s over there with Stu. Sue, trot over and nab her and we’ll make a group effort.”

After an hour and a half of smoke, handshakings, short elevator rides, incompleted sentences and inadvertent animal contact, Hubbard worked his way across a fourth floor suite to where Cory was hemmed in by two admiring bald men.

“Miss Barlund,” he said briskly. “They want you down at the main desk immediately. Come with me please.”

He walked her briskly out of the suite, taking her glass from her and putting it on a table near the door. Fifty feet down the corridor they slowed their pace.

“Did it show that much, Floyd Hubbard?” she asked.

“Not too much. Your eyes kept rolling up out of sight and you kept dropping to your knees. But you got up every time.”

“Where is this rescue party headed?”

They had arrived at the elevators. “It’s midnight and your option, Cory. Want to try yet another suite?”

“Lord, no! You’ve seen one and you’ve seen them all.” She looked at herself in the wall mirror in the elevator alcove. “I even look as if I smell like cigars. I want a dark little corner to sit in, with a place to rest my head, and a vodka stinger to drink slowly, and somebody who will talk to me and finish every sentence, and require very few answers.”

“We take care of our journalists.”

He found them a banquette corner in one of the smaller quieter bars in the hotel. It was called the Suez Lounge. A lean woman in silk harem pajamas played a listless, noodling piano. Cory took a sip of her drink and sighed and said, “And they’re still up there, milling around. It’s a scene I won’t have to make twice. Do you think anybody is enjoying it, really?”

“Some of the drunker ones, maybe. But everybody thinks everybody
else
is enjoying it. But don’t put that in your story.”

“Sir, it is not my purpose to tear down honorable American institutions. I have a simple theme. Conventions are lovely.”

“Is that what you want to write?”

“Not especially.”

“So why don’t you write about something where you can say what you want to say?”

“I’ll tell you my horrid secret, Floyd. I’m strictly no talent. And I’m a horrible ham. I’ll do anything to see my name in print. So I write little things people will buy. And once in a great while they actually do. Don’t tell anybody, but this is my first crack at it in a couple of years.” Her smile faded. She shrugged. “Call it busy-work. Restless female. Bored, I guess. Bored to the teeth.”

“Because you don’t have to earn the money?”

“Possibly.”

“It wouldn’t be alimony?”

She sipped her drink and put the glass down and turned toward him. In the shadowy corner he could see the gleam of her eyes and her teeth and a highlight of moisture on her lip.

“Rather than have you labor away at the personal history bit, Hubbard, suppose I just shovel it all out in one hideous chunk and then we can forget the whole thing forever. Okay?”

“If you want to. But I was only …”

“I’m a spoiled brat from way back. I went to a good school. I made a very bad marriage, and worked like a damn dog to keep it going, but it fell down dead. I have one child, defective, institutionalized. I have money coming in from a couple of places. I live well, and live alone, and try to like it. It helps to get all involved with idiot projects, like the one I’m on now. I am not the least bit sorry for myself. Now you can stop prying.”

He sat for a full minute of silence. “I suppose two can play. I went to a good school, and I made a very good marriage, and we both work like dogs to keep it going, and it seems as if we will. I have two kids and one salary. I don’t live as well as I would like to, except when I’m on the expense account, like now. I keep getting all involved in idiot projects, like the one I’m on now, but somebody else thinks them up for me. I very often feel terribly sorry for myself, without any good specific reason. Now you don’t even have to start prying.”

He could tell that he had startled her, topped her and amused her. “How about spoiled?” she asked.

“I would have liked to have been, but I was the third of six kids. The first and the last got spoiled.”

“Floyd, darn you, I like you!”

“Right friendly of you, ma’m.” They made a small ceremony of shaking hands. “But you weren’t so friendly to Dave Daniels.”

“Him! Ha! God, how I despise that type! But later I thought that maybe I should have … pulled the punch a little bit. You see, Floyd, when I decided to do this, I knew very well that somebody was going to make the first pass. Somebody always does. I don’t say that arrogantly. It’s a fact of life I live with. And probably like. So I was braced to give the first one such a brush-off, the others would get the message. I didn’t expect … that kind of a pass, exactly.”

“From where I sat, it seemed sudden.”

“It was.”

“What was Dave’s approach?”

“Do you really want to know? There are a certain percentage of men around, a very small percentage, who try the shock approach. It must work, or they wouldn’t use it. I won’t tell you exactly what he said. He started by saying we were going to take the first chance to sneak away from the rest of the group. He said conventions could be fun. Then he leaned closer and he … went anatomical, and told me the … kind of dimensions I could expect and how long he could make it last. I think I’m blushing.”

“Good Lord! No matter how drunk I was, I couldn’t ever …”

“I know you couldn’t, dear. According to his script, I guess I was supposed to go all weak and dizzy and eager. So I just turned toward him and kept my voice down and said if that sort of thing attracted me, I’d have long since bought a Shetland pony. The conversation would be more attractive, and ponies seldom get pig drunk. Then I asked him why he was wasting his time at a convention when he could be cleaning up in the dirty movie business. I used my landed gentry voice. Ah, I can be a wicked bitch. I meant to shatter him, and I guess I did.”

“He’ll recover. He’ll take an old-fashioned country remedy, and be just fine.”

“What kind of a remedy?”

“A woman.”

“Yes. Yes, of course. But I fear we shall never be friends.”

“The kind of passes I make, Cory, they’re so subtle nobody ever knows I’ve made one. The system has a lot of advantages. I get a little feeling of guilt, and nobody ever says no. But of course, nothing ever happens either.”

“You mean you’ve made a pass at me?”

“It would spoil it if I told you. You see, you have to stay alert, and detect one when it comes along.”

“And if I happen to detect one?”

“If you do, for heaven’s sake, don’t let on to me that you have. If I knew you knew, I’d run like a damned rabbit. I’m one of those married cowards, Cory.”

“I’m glad you are, Floyd. It makes all this … sort of restful. We can kid around, and I don’t have to stay on guard. It’s rare and it’s nice.”

“Don’t overdo it, now. Hell, let me feel a
little
bit dangerous, woman.”

“But your wife
does
understand you?”

“With an eerie frequency.”

“What’s her name? What’s she like?”

“Janice. Jan to almost everybody, including me. She’s got a twenty-ninth birthday coming up, and we’ve been seven years married. The boy is four and the girl less than a year. Jan has gold-blonde hair and green eyes and a round face. She’s bigger and heavier than you are. How tall are you?”

“Five-five.”

“You look much taller than that!”

“It’s because I’m a wraith. A hundred and five pounds. I’ll even tell you the forlorn dimensions. Reading from the top they’re thirty-one, nineteen, thirty-one. Symmetrical, no?”

“Not exactly. Thirty-one, thirty-one, thirty-one would be truly symmetrical. Putting that crazy nineteen in the middle is what saves it. Anyhow, Jan has a hell of a good figure, said he with husbandly pride. She’s generally a placid gal, which works out fine because I’m inclined to blow up. Lately she hasn’t been so placid. That’s because I’ve had to leave her alone too much, and she has the idea I could get out of all this traveling. I could, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be the smart thing to do. You didn’t ask for my problems. You asked about Jan. She is my nifty girl.”

“It makes me feel like an urchin outside a candy store.”

“You never feel sorry for yourself. Remember?”

“Any time I start to, all I have to do is remember the delights of
my
marriage. And suddenly you’d be surprised at how contented I get.”

“You should try again.”

“Uh uh! I rode my little barrel over the falls, thank you. I survived, but not by much of a margin. Floyd, dear man, thank you for the drink and the talk. You can plant me in a cab, please. Tomorrow I’ll be the earnest quester, and nail you down about what you really think about conventions.”

Halfway through the lower lobby she stopped suddenly and turned, smiling, and said, “If you have time, and if it’s possible to get anywhere near the ocean, ten minutes of sea breeze would blow the cigar smell out of this mop.”

“I have time and there’s an ocean around here somewhere. I swear I’ve seen one.”

They walked across the pool area and found an outside stairway that led up to the low flat roof of the furthest rank of cabanas. With most of the hotel lights behind them, they could see the phosphorescence in the waves. They stood side by side, looking over a low wall.

“One day,” she said, “it ought to reach up with one hell of a big wave and yank all this gunky luxury right back out and drown it.”

“Nature girl?”

“By instinct, but not habit.” Suddenly she took her shoes off, put them on the wide railing and stood close to him, smiling up at him. “See? Five five. Not even that, actually. I lie a little. Five four and a little over a half inch.”

“And you actually weigh seventy-two pounds, and the measurements are really nineteen, nineteen, nineteen.”

“The
hell
you say, Hubbard.” She came up on tip-toe, put her arms around his neck and sagged her weight on him. “A hunnert ’n five pounds of dreary broad.”

She kissed him lightly, mockingly, and suddenly he was kissing her with a strength and fury he could not have anticipated. She fitted her slimness to him, strained to him, left her mouth soft for the breaking. The kiss ended and he was holding her close, whispering, “Cory, Cory, Cory, Cory.” Her hands moved on his face and his throat, and she covered all the parts of his face she could reach with a hundred light quick kisses, making an audible, murmurous sound of contentment as she did so, until her mouth came back onto his, into a little more violence than before.

“You’re not running,” she muttered. “You’re not running like a rabbit.”

“Cory, Cory. God, you feel so sweet and good.”

She thrust him away, snatched up her bag and shoes. “I better do the running, my darling. Right now it’s the only thing that makes any kind of sense.”

She fled more quickly than he would have guessed possible. He called to her, but she did not stop or answer. By the time he reached the bottom of the steps she was more than halfway across the pool area, moving fleetly through a confusion of colored spotlights and floodlights, between the tropical plantings, angling toward the flank of the tall pale hotel.

He slowed his pace and sat on a chaise near the pool and smoked a cigarette. He wiped her lipstick from his mouth. He looked at the sky, and went on up to his room.