Classic Love: 7 Vintage Romances (28 page)

He had a feeling Jack had
not
been to Windows on the World, many people had not, the view was fabulous, and so were the prices. A writer carving out a career almost certainly would not favor the latter.

Well, then, should he phone first?

He had a feeling — call it a hunch — that if he did, Jack would look at all the work he had to do and say, Rodney, I’m afraid I simply can’t take the time, I’m bogged down in a chapter.

Or something like that.

Very well, no phone call. Just drop in. Ring the bell, rouse him from his labors and insist he get some fresh air and a good, hearty lunch. Just dropping in would be a
fait accompli
. Jack wouldn’t have time to mull it over. He stepped up his pace, striding on. It would be pleasant to see Jack again. He was looking forward to it.

He got sidetracked at Alexander’s, where they were having a fall sale. All the stores were having fall sales, but leave it to Alexander’s to make theirs sound more alluring,
EXCITING FALL SALE
!
DESIGNER COATS, DRESSES, SUITS
!
ITALIAN KNITS
!

He went in and an hour later came out with a big, filled shopping bag. He preferred Bloomingdale’s shopping bags, with those femme fatale faces, beautiful ladies with luscious lips, but anyway he had some good bargains in his hot little hands, and it dawned on him that it could be a selling point too, he’d explain to Jack Allerton that he ought to hurry right over to Alexander’s, look what he himself had garnered. And then take him to lunch.

It was just short of noon when he turned into Jack’s street. There was a man with a dog just ahead of him, a cute little bugger, one of those endearing Schnauzers New York was awash with, everyone seemed to have a Schnauzer on a leash. He caught up with the man and the dog and, just before going on past them, stooped to put a hand on the dog’s head. “Hey there, little thing.”

He was still half crouched when he spotted her. Christine. Christine Jennings, walking lightly up the stone steps of Jack’s building. He lost balance slightly, astonished as he was and then, righting himself quickly, saw her gain the entrance. He watched, convinced he must be going off his rocker, as she pushed open the front door and disappeared inside.

What was this?

What
was
this? Why, she was having lunch with her friends. “You know, my women’s group.” Un-comprehension seized him and then, not much more than a second or two later, a peculiar feeling. A very peculiar feeling. His mouth felt dry. There could be an explanation? Jack too had called Christine. Jack was under some, sort of stress, worse than his, Rodney’s distress. Something so serious that Christine, ever the good Samaritan, had hurried over to see what she could do. Maybe Jack had pneumonia or something. Though that seemed unlikely at this time of year. Well, then, maybe he had a
crise
, some ghastly bit of news.

Like what? Rodney thought, chilled. And in any case why should Jack Allerton turn to a casual acquaintance for whatever ghastly news had fallen on him? Why? Would he turn to Rodney, who was also a casual acquaintance? How could either of them solve his problem, or whatever it was.

Very odd, thought Rodney, standing indecisive on the street. The man and the Schnauzer had long since passed, in fact had turned the corner at Second Avenue. What the bloody devil was all this about, Rodney pondered, but at the bottom of his mind was a cold and stony supposition that didn’t stay at the bottom of his mind for very much longer, but instead began to surface in quickening stages, like water flooding a basement floor, at first sluggishly and then with increasing rapidity.

Jack got there first
.

This was put aside at once. No, he would not settle for that. And no, it was not possible. If it was, he would have guessed it, seen some signs. She would have tipped her hand in some way. Mentioned Jack inadvertently. Then flushed, been disconcerted. And he would have been alerted.

It just was not possible.

It took him a long time to acknowledge that yes, it was not only possible but even probable. The way she had slid out of his invitations, always returning to the tried and true, and safe for her. “Not today, I’m so sorry, Rodney, but I’m longing to see you, so please, please come to dinner, you name the evening.”

He felt a trifle faint. Dizzy and faint. There was a ringing in his ears, his head felt as if someone had tied a band round it and was pulling it tighter and tighter. It couldn’t be that way, he silently insisted. It simply could not be anything like that, he must be crackers to even give it a moment’s consideration.

In the next second his thoughts swung full circle to this conviction: his imagination had been running away with him. Your imagination is running away with you, he told himself. The situation he was picturing was —
must
be — out of the question, a by-product of his overactive preoccupation with Christine’s desirability. He had been fantasizing about her too much and now he could find no other reason for her to be visiting Jack Allerton than a sexual one. It was all in his mind.

Maybe it wasn’t Christine?

A hope that was dismissed almost at once. Reluctantly, but with resignation. He knew that of course it had been Christine going up those steps and vanishing into the doorway beyond. He might mistake someone else for her a block or so away, but —

It was Christine, all right.

He realized after a while that he had been standing, in the precise same spot, for something like fifteen minutes. Which meant that Christine had been, for those fifteen or so minutes, upstairs in Jack’s flat.
What were they doing up there
?

A wave of blind anger swept over him. There was hurt mixed in with that violent fury, but he subdued the hurt. The anger was what was sustaining him and he held on to it, which was not at all difficult, as the more he let the hostility build the more vehement it became. It was a way of protecting himself from the terrible letdown, the enormity of his loss. He was unconsciously casting himself in the role of betrayed lover: the fact that this was somewhat uncalled for escaped his attention. He simply would not sit still for this, he decided in a white heat of rage. He would just go up those steps himself and ring that doorbell. Which he would have done in any case a quarter of an hour ago had he not seen Christine precede him in her ascent.

Okay, here we go. You just bet I shall find out what’s going on. You just bet on it, my fine friends; we shall just haul out your dirty laundry; how will you like that?

Okay. He still stood there, however, his hands in his pockets and sketching out an opening gambit. Jack would answer the bell and he would open the door quickly, dash up the stairs to Jack’s landing before the chap knew what hit him. It would be too late for Jack to dissemble, because there would be Christine, large as life, and nothing either of them could do.

Apparently your friends were all at death’s door, Christine, and couldn’t make it for lunch today?

Why, Rodney. Her white face, her shaking hands
.

He gained the flight of steps in front of Jack’s building and stopped. Suppose Jack answered the door in a bathrobe? Suppose Christine wasn’t in the living room. Suppose she was concealing herself in the bedroom, cowering there when she heard the familiar voice of her onetime lodger?

Rodney paled. If he were thus confronted so baldly and blatantly with such a contretemps, would he be able to handle it? Would he be able to deliver a speech heavy with irony, dripping with sarcasm?

Would he be able to say anything at all?

His heart began to pump away unpleasantly: abruptly he felt nauseated. For a ghastly moment he thought he might be about to barf. This compulsion was conquered by sheer force of his will, then another thought, heretofore not occurring to him, rushed into his mind. My God, if someone were at the window in Jack’s apartment they would be able to see him standing down here! He was in plain sight of anyone standing at the window!

This latest possibility sent him up the steps two at a time. At the top he hesitated, mentally feeling his way. On the one hand, if he had been seen from above he would have to go ahead and ring the bell. On the other hand, he was increasingly loath to face the truth. It seemed to Rodney that if Jack opened the door in a state of dishabille he would turn tail and make for the stairs again, speechless and ashen. Like a whipped cur.

He opened the outer door and stepped quickly into the vestibule. Chances were no one had been standing at the window. Also — a faint touch of cheer — if he, or she were at the window in the living room it would mean they were not in the bedroom.

Yes, what about
that
? A casual visit only, maybe on her way to meet her friends she was having lunch with them after all. And on an impulse had stopped in to see how Jack Allerton was doing, it could be that, couldn’t it?

Let’s think it over, he told himself, buying time. Perhaps after all it was nothing, an eerie coincidence only, and he was torturing himself for no reason.

Well, then? Shall we go ahead and ring the bell?

A finger hovering over the bell, Rodney saw in his peripheral vision a shadow to his left which, when he turned to look, proved to be someone coming up the steps from the street. Ah, Christ!

He had to make a hasty decision. Either press the bell or, if he after all was not going to, open the door and go out, make as if he had just left someone’s flat, was now departing. Which was it going to be, and it had to be fast because the person outside — it was a middle-aged woman — was at the top step now.

His uncertainty was the reason he finally pressed it. She came in too quickly for him to mull it over any longer. The fact that she gave him a thorough, comprehensive glance didn’t help matters any: she looked as if she were a suspicious sort, not happy about seeing a stranger standing in her vestibule.

“Good morning,” he said, and plunged his finger down on the bell.

She said, “Good afternoon,” and made an elaborate fuss about finding her keys, groping in her handbag and keeping her eye on him. The keys appeared to be elusive, she was fishing about in the depths of her bag, shuffling through its contents. Rodney had heard a few New York stories: people — particularly women — didn’t like to open the door with an unknown person — particularly an unknown man — standing outside on the threshold.

“Why don’t you ring it again,” she suggested, edging a little closer to the outer door. He gave her a look of utter hatred. This lady seemed intent on making things even more difficult for him.

He rang again, and his mind shifted suddenly from the woman as he realized that when someone rings your doorbell you generally didn’t take all day to answer it, unless you were in the bath, and if Jack had a visitor he wouldn’t be in the bath, would he? The only reason Jack wouldn’t answer the doorbell if he had a visitor — which in this case happened to be Christine — would be that he simply did not want to be disturbed.

There was still no response to either of Rodney’s rings.

“Patently,” woman said, “patently your friend is not at home.”

“Yes, patently,” he echoed, abusing her mentally for only a second or two and then too infuriated with the status quo to give her another thought. “Thank you,” he said, and let himself out. This time he took the steps slowly, funereally, walking down with stately steps with his legs feeling heavy and thick. Into his turbulent muddle of thoughts popped the story of “The Little Mermaid.” by Hans Christian Andersen, where the lovely little sea nymph, falling in love with a mortal, prayed for limbs instead of her fish tail, so that she might be mortal too. She got her legs, but pain along with them, as every step she took proved to be excruiating agony.

Well, he had fallen in love with a mortal too, though he had thought of her as goddess (with a few earthly appetites). Just a mortal after all, weak and designing and corrupt. They were up there and they hadn’t answered the bell. Was any further corroboration needed?

He was all purpose now. He was Nemesis, shadowing a sinner. She would not go unscathed. He took up a position at the foot of the street, on the corner of Second Avenue, which was nearer Jack’s building than Third. He would bide his time, and bide his time he did, even though his legs began to feel more and more like the little mermaid’s after an hour or so of shifting from one foot to the other. Also his eyes, from constant concentration on that building up the block, were strained and bleary.

There was a pizza store across the avenue. He would like a slice, not that he had the slightest desire to
eat
, it would probably stick in his throat, but simply to help pass the time and take his mind off his misery.

There was no question of his leaving his post, however. That would be foolhardy. Nevertheless, when his watch told him it was now past two, he surrendered to hunger pangs, telling himself that the body had to be refueled; it was a matter of obeying the laws of nature.

The phrase, laws of nature, suddenly made him want to pee. If he were a street urchin in Naples he would go ahead and pee against the wall of the corner building. Hell. Well, he wasn’t going to pee, he wasn’t going to leave this spot, and that was final. He tightened his sphincter and determination, and the compulsion passed.

A kid, about nine or ten, crossed the street and reached the place where Rodney was standing. He stopped the kid. “I say,” he hazarded. “I was wondering — you see I have to stay here, I can’t move, I’m on the watch for someone. It’s very important, don’tcha know.”

He reached in a pants pocket and pulled out a handful of change. “I was wondering if you would be so kind as to go in that pizza place and bring me back a slice?”

“You want a slice? One enough?”

“One will be fine. Thank you very much. Here’s the money, then.” He counted out two dollars in quarters and dimes, handed it over. “You won’t mind?”

“Nope. You gave me too much.”

“Oh. That’s perfectly all right. You keep whatever is left for yourself. I do thank you.”

“Be right back.”