A Pinch of Poison (3 page)

“Yes,” Lois said. “Of course. A little higher in front, Anna.”

That would account for Buddy's insistence, Lois realized. “He wants to talk to me before I talk to Mother,” she thought. “To find out what I'm going to say to Mother.” She smiled to herself. “Poor Mother,” she thought. “And after all, what do I care?” But somebody had to be—well, call it judicious. And it couldn't be Mrs. Ashley; it couldn't be Buddy. It had to be Lois and—she smiled to herself again—Madge. Being judicious in opposite directions. Because you couldn't, certainly, deny that Madge thought things out.

She heard quiet steps in the carpeted hall outside. That would be Mary, coming to report that Mr. David McIntosh was calling. She hoped that this was going to be an evening of the McIntoshy David, or at least the reasonably McIntoshy David. Not the one who sometimes seemed to be pulling and jerking at her; not the one who, once or twice, had grown so hard and bitter in jealousy and made so much of so little. She could do with the nice, comfortable David, or with the gay David, or even, and perhaps just now that would be best, with the reasonably McIntoshy David. But not with the one who glared.

She held up her arms while Anna lowered the blue print to her shoulders. It was a pretty dress, she thought, turning before the long mirror, watching its soft folds swing at her feet.

“And,” she thought, smiling at the girl in the mirror, “there's nothing really wrong with the lady. Not with the lady who shows, anyway.”

David was reasonably McIntoshy. He was quiet and gentle and said nice things about the way she looked.

“It makes me cooler just to look at you,” he said.

“Well,” she said, “I don't know whether that is quite the effect—”

He said she didn't need to worry about that. As she knew perfectly well. And that he thought the Ritz-Plaza roof, unless she had some place else in mind? The Crescent Club on the river?

“Oh,” she said, “the roof, I think. And no lovely view of Welfare Island. I've had about enough welfare for one day.” He started to speak. “All right,” she said. “I know how you feel. And you know how I feel. And let's talk about it again—oh, a month from Friday. Shall we?”

A taxicab came politely up to them at the curb. “The Ritz-Plaza,” Dave said, and they waited for the lights to cross Park Avenue. The lights changed and they poked west through the still hot street, with the sun slanting in the driver's eyes. But there was a breeze with the top down.

There was a breeze, too, twenty stories above the street, with blinds cutting off the sun and higher buildings casting long shadows across the city. There was a cord stretched warningly between brass uprights at the entrance to the roof and several men and women standing disconsolately on the wrong side of it. But Nicholas smiled at them and beckoned.

“I have your table, Mr. McIntosh,” he said. “Near the floor, yes?”

“Not too near,” David said.

“But of course,” Nicholas assured him. “Not too near, certainly.” He led between tables, walking as if he were threading a needle. He whisked a “Reserved” sign from a table which was, as he promised, near the dance floor but not too near. He beamed approval on the table, and on Mr. McIntosh for receiving and himself for bestowing it. He seated Lois with delicacy; summoned waiters with the assurance of a magician whose effects have never failed.

“This be all right?” David asked, very McIntoshy and down to earth. Lois smiled at him.

“Perfect,” she said. She waited until he was seated too, and smiled at him.

“What if I had said the Crescent Club, though?” she asked. David looked puzzled.

“Why?” he asked. “It wouldn't have mattered.”

“Not after you'd reserved a table here?” she asked.

He looked puzzled still for a moment. Then he remembered.

“Oh,” he said. “That. That was just Nick's little gag. Good customers and all that. There wasn't any reservation, really.”

The waiters and the bus-boys hovered over them, filling glasses, procuring butter, offering menu cards. Frozen daiquiris came on summons and were cold and sour-sweet in the mouth, and relaxing. But Lois refused the second.

“I'm hungry,” she said. “Believe it or not.”

There aren't any worries worth worrying about, she thought, as they ate and talked idly; all the little things of the daytime vanished now, as lights went on here and there in buildings, as the city began its nightly transformation. How terrible blackouts must be, she thought, remembering London three years before and knowing that tonight there was a red glare over it. Both peace, as she had it then, and war seemed so tremendous, so overpoweringly important, that it was inconceivable that one could have time for little worries. They finished eating and sipped long glasses of iced coffee. Then, because it was so much cooler than she had thought, that afternoon, it could ever be again—so much cooler and more peaceful—they danced.

They sat and talked and danced again. Then Dave ordered drinks—brandy and soda for himself and, with a little grimace, a Cuba Libre for her—and they turned them lazily, letting the ice tingle against glass.

“It's lovely here,” Lois said. “I don't ever want to go away.”

Later, when the orchestra began again, Dave held out a hand to her and they danced again. “Lovely,” she said, against his shoulder. “What's the use of anything?”

The floor was comfortably filled, this time, and after they had left the floor, couples brushed past their table as they returned to their own. The people made it seem warmer and the cold drink was refreshing. Lois, who had only sipped before, drank more deeply and then, as they talked, drank again.

“It's getting much warmer, isn't it?” she said, feeling a flush mounting in her cheeks.

David smiled at her.

“Dancing,” he said, briefly. Then he looked again. “You do look rather warm,” he said. “I hadn't noticed it.”

She drank again, thirstily, her throat curiously dry. David looked at her and she felt him looking and smiled. Her skin felt hot and she could feel the flush in her face, and she drained her glass. But, although she let the ice caress her lips, they seemed to be growing hotter.

“It's imagination,” she told herself. “I'm perfectly all right.” She felt David looking at her, curiously. “Aren't I, David?” she said. She hardly realized she had said this aloud. But he was looking at her with concern.

“It's just the heat, of course,” she said. “Like this afternoon with little Mr. Finestein and all we have to do is open the back and drive down the parkway. Isn't that right, David? Only not have a baby because maybe we couldn't keep it and then Madge and Buddy would have it. And you know Buddy, don't you, David?”

I can't be saying this,
she thought.
I can't be saying any of this! Why does David keep looking at me like that? He looks as if he thought I was drunk. But you can't be drunk on what I've had. Something's happening to me,
she thought.
Something's happening dreadfully to me!

It was hard to breathe, her lungs seemed to be snatching for breath and, while she strove to quiet it, she felt her breast rising and falling quickly, frantically. And all the time, even after she could no longer make out the words, she could hear herself talking—talking. David was standing across the table, his face anxious, and from a long way she could hear his voice.

“Lois!” he said. “What is it, Lois? Lois!”

She stood up, and now she was gasping for breath and it seemed that her skin was on fire. She could feel her heart pounding now and—

She was standing with a hand out toward David, but as he came around the table to her Lois slipped slowly to the floor and her voice, which had been breaking delirium into words, faltered and died away. Waiters were around David as he picked her up, and the maître d'hôtel, his face very worried, was coming hurriedly between tables. Nicholas's disapproval was evident at a range of twenty feet.

3

T
UESDAY

9:30
P.M.
TO
10:10
P.M.

None of the four in the Norths' living-room was speaking when the telephone rang. Three of the four were looking at Mrs. North with expressions which bordered on surprise, although there had been nothing essentially astonishing in Mrs. North's last remark. Mrs. North had said, “Because it's election day, of course,” and Mr. North had looked at her with suddenly wide eyes and said, in gentle wonder, “My God.” William Weigand had looked at both of them with friendly pleasure and then he had looked at Dorian Hunt and smiled with a kind of contentment. Dorian had blinked a moment and then all three of them had looked at Mrs. North. It was then that the telephone rang.

Since dinner they had been sitting in the dimly lighted living-room. The thick walls of the old house made it a little cooler than it was on the street, and a silently turning fan stirred the air. They all had long drinks and in silence ice tinkled against glass. They were comfortably lethargic, filled with broiled chicken and wild rice and the peace which descends on those who do not, for at least some hours, have to do anything whatever—which descends, particularly, on people who are, momentarily, among those they like to be among and have no incentive to invent speech. Nobody had said anything for several minutes before Mrs. North spoke.

“You know,” Mrs. North said, “sometimes I wonder how old I
really
am.” She did not say it as might one who expected to start a conversation. Mrs. North merely laid the idea down and rested. Mr. North, who had been about to say something else, caught his own words and replaced them. Then he organized his mind carefully and spoke.

“What?” said Mr. North. Weigand and Dorian left it to him.

“How old I really am,” Mrs. North said. “To the year, I mean. I know approximately, of course. But sometimes I get so I'd just like to know. Because of Louise.”

“Louise?” Weigand had not meant to enter this. He had planned to leave it to Jerry North; to leave it between the Norths. But the irrelevance overcame him.

“Her younger sister,” Mr. North explained. “That's Louise. Only I haven't the faintest idea where she comes in.”

“Well,” said Mrs. North, “she just started me wondering, that's all. Sometimes it occurs to me that I'm really younger than Louise, because it's only a year or so either way, and then it's very confusing.” She looked at the others, and explained. “Because she's my
younger
sister, I mean,” she said. “She always has been. Only it's just as likely that she's older than I am.”

“Look,” said Mr. North. “Look, Pam. She—” He paused, feeling the subject suddenly elusive in his mind. “I tell you,” he said, “why don't you ask your mother? She'd know.”

“Would she?” Pam said, as one who really wants to know. “I don't know whether she would, really. Father always used to call
me
Louise, you know.”

Mr. North made a quick movement, as if he were clutching at something in the air.

“Look,” he said. “That hasn't anything to do with it. He was just absent-minded and you know it.”

“That absent-minded?” Dorian asked, suddenly. She looked at Pam North with interest. “Really?” Pam nodded, and Jerry, who had known Pam's father, nodded too.

“When he met her on the street,” Mr. North explained. “And after we were married he always called me Henry.” He smiled, reminiscently. “Henry and Louise,” he repeated. “He was always thinking of something else. But he was always very polite.” Mr. North caught himself, quickly. “However,” he said, “Louise was always younger than you, Pam—a year and some months younger.”

Pam nodded and said that that was what she had always thought.

“But I never really
knew
,” she said. “It was always just taken for granted. I knew when my birthday was, of course, but I don't remember that anybody ever told me what year. What year I was born, I mean.”

“Well,” said Mr. North, “I always thought it was 1907. So next December you'll be—” He calculated rapidly and was about to announce a result when Mrs. North intervened.

“That's just it,” she said. “Nineteen hundred and seven was either me or Louise. And the other was 1909. But I can't remember that anybody ever said which.” Mrs. North reflected a moment and then said, suddenly: “Teeth!”

Mr. North ran the fingers of one hand through his hair.

“Teeth?” he repeated, a little desperately. Weigand and Dorian looked at him with sympathy.

“Can't you tell by them?” Mrs. North asked. “Like horses?”

“Look!” Mr. North said. “Forget teeth. It's perfectly easy. We can just tie it to something. Say—say the other war. How old were you when it started? That would tell us. If you were—let's see—seven the next winter, then you were born in 1907. Or is that before you remember? Do you remember the start of the other war?”

He looked at her eagerly, hopefully.

“No,” Mrs. North said. “But I remember when we went in. Papa told me.”

“There!” Mr. North said. “How old were you then?”

“I don't know,” Mrs. North said. “Eight or nine, I think. I was in either the second or third grade, but that wouldn't show, because I skipped a grade. So—”

Mr. North, his eyes bright with purpose, waved her to silence.

“That's it!” he said. “We can tell by when you were in school, making allowance for the grade you skipped. When did you start in school?”

“When I was five,” Mrs. North said. “In kindergarten.”

“Now we're getting it,” Mr. North said. “If you were five when you started in kindergarten, and then went through seven grades, less the grade you skipped, we can work it out. How old were you when you got out of grade school?”