Executive Suite (20 page)

She explained that such changes were necessary in order to escape direct competition from other stores carrying the same items, half apologizing as if she were fearful that he might be offended; obviously pleased when he proved that he wasn't by offering to buy some of her design ideas. She side-stepped the offer. “I'd be flattered to have you use anything you see, Mr. Dudley. You're more than welcome.” Then they had talked for more than an hour and he had filled several pages in his notebook.

Time had passed without notice and when he discovered that it was almost seven he felt that the least he could do was to invite her to dinner. He noticed with growing respect that she accepted without hesitation, making no more of it than any male business acquaintances would have done under similar circumstances. At her suggestion they had gone to Jacques Restaurant, which was only a few blocks away, and upon their discovery that the waiting line was impossibly long, she said with the same matter-of-factness, “We'll go to my place. You'll wait no longer for your dinner than you will here, and I'm sure you'll be more comfortable while you're waiting.” There had been no chance to refuse, nor any forseeable reason why he should.

When he thought about it afterward—and he thought about it a great deal, so often that the re-creation of the memory finally became almost an obsession—he could never quite understand what there had been about that first evening with Eva Harding that had given him so much happiness. The only explanation that was tenable, even for a moment, was that his pleasure had come from discovering that she was not the same person in her home that she was in business. He had known then that his explanation was incomplete, and later that it was totally inadequate.

The overture to his pleasure had been her apartment. It had offered, the moment he stepped inside the door, an atmosphere of comfort and relaxation which had led to the wish, unexpressed, that Eva Harding had done the interior decoration of his new home in Laurel Heights instead of that famous but strangely offensive man that Katherine had brought down from New York.

“Would you mind making the cocktails, Mr. Dudley?” Eva Harding had asked and then, at her direction, he had found the bottles in one corner of the buffet and the glasses in another and the shaker and the ice in the kitchen and, somehow, when the cocktails were finished they seemed very much better than the ones he made from the carefully laid out silver tray that Katherine always had Violet prepare and place on the sideboard every evening before he arrived home.

Eva had disappeared while he was making the cocktails and she returned in changed clothes, a kitcheny red-checked gingham that was in the sharpest possible contrast to the tailored black suit that she had worn before. “Will it spoil your cocktail if you sit here in the kitchen and watch me start dinner?” she had asked. “Or would you prefer a bit more formality?” The answer was premade and she said, “That's the first guess I made about you and I'm glad I was right.”

He had sat watching her, really noticing her as a person for the first time, and it was his opinion then—as it had remained afterward—that she was neither pretty nor homely, but somewhere in the indeterminate middle ground of ordinary appearance. She was by no means as handsomely attractive as Katherine. But there was a radiation of aliveness that came from the quick directness of her every movement, the fast sure reach of her hands, the alertness of her eyes, the instantaneous flashing of her smile that always came without a dulling moment of hesitation before.

They ate in front of the fire that she had asked him to start in the fireplace and, long afterwards, he was bothered because his memory, upon which he could usually rely with complete confidence, would not tell him exactly what he had eaten, but only that it was a delicious dinner. Nor could he remember all that they had talked about, only that what she said, and what she had made him say, somehow transmitted some of her aliveness to him—and that long before there had been enough talk she had said, “Time to do the dishes,” and he had laughingly offered to help and she had laughed back and said, “Of course, Mr. Dudley, that's exactly what I expected.”

There had been only one thing said in the whole evening that he could later recall as having carried the slightest hint of what was to come, and that had been a quick exchange at the door when he was leaving. They had shaken hands … and that was the first time their hands had touched … and she had replied to his thanks with a softly whistled phrase from a popular song and he fortunately remembered the words and paraphrased them in his answer, “It's been so nice to
be
the man around the house”… and she had laughed and he had laughed and he had said, “Good night, Miss Harding,” and she had said, “Good night, Mr. Dudley”… and it had been five minutes after eleven when he had stopped at the desk on the twenty-first floor of the Palmer House to pick up his key and the message to call Avery Bullard at once. He remembered the time because it had been after midnight in Millburgh when he got the call through and Mr. Bullard had said, “Now don't tell me you've been entertaining a customer,” and he had replied, “Believe it or not, Mr. Bullard, a customer has been entertaining me.”

The next few weeks were the most provocatively mysterious period in Walter Dudley's life. For some totally unaccountable reason, he could not keep the thought of Eva Harding from his mind and, what was even more disturbing, he would awake at night and in the fantasy-breeding darkness she would be lying beside him and his lips would touch hers—and then, frightened, he would get out of bed and go down to the library to smoke a cigarette. If that didn't erase the stain of insane eroticism he would walk through the house to the cold gleaming whiteness of the big kitchen and that always did. Those nights were the only times that he ever went into the kitchen because, as Katherine had warned him, the kitchen was Violet's private preserve and good cooks had to be humored because if you ever lost one it was almost impossible these days to replace her.

In March, he had stopped over in Chicago on his way to the West Coast. He had told himself that he had no intention of seeing Eva Harding and there was not the slightest hint that she had ever expected him to call again when he telephoned her from the airport. Yet, through some force as mysterious as that which had filled his nights with fantasy, when he stepped across the threshold of her apartment they were, without an instant's hesitation, in each other's arms—and the fantasy was no longer a fantasy but something that they had both lived through in the months of their separation.

Until that night, he had accepted the fact that his sexual abilities were waning, that age had almost won the battle against his potency. But Eva Harding had aroused the triumphant discovery of a maleness surpassing anything that he had known even as a young man. Looking up into his face, her eyes gleaming and her hands trembling ecstatically against his cheeks, she had said, “My darling, you're so very, very young!”

That moment he would never forget nor regret—but it all should have ended then as he had promised himself afterward that it would. It hadn't. It might have ended if she had ever made, even once, the slightest demand upon him or exhibited the faintest trace of possessiveness. She hadn't. He would call her at unexpected times and she would always be there. There had never been anything that he asked her to do that had seemed, in any way, to cause her the slightest inconvenience or to interfere, even remotely, with anything else in her life. She asked nothing, not even words of love in moments when the asking would have been a demand impossible to reject, and she let him go with no plea for return. If he had not come back, there would have been no broken promises.

It was only in his returning that a promise was broken—and that was only a promise to himself that had always proved, in the moment of final weighing, to be invalid because it had been made under the false assumption that Eva Harding would destroy his love for Katherine. That had not happened. It would never happen. His life with Eva was something as detached from his life with Katherine as he was now, nine thousand feet in the sky, detached from the earth below.

No, Katherine was not the reason why he must never see Eva Harding again. The true reason was that Eva had become an escape to peace that was all too desirable. Tonight, sitting there in that meeting, waiting, not knowing what was to come, sheltering the fear that always preceded Avery Bullard's arrival, his mind had reached out to Eva Harding. She had become his escape from fear and escape was something that he must never accept. A man had to keep working … hitting that old line, even when he was afraid … yes,
because
he was afraid! Fear had to be conquered … you didn't dare run away … you had to stay there and fight it out.

“Mr. Dudley?”

He looked up and the stewardess was smiling at him.

“Would you care for dinner?”

He had not eaten but he said, “No, thank you.” If her face had reminded him less of Eva Harding he would have said “Yes.”

It didn't matter. He would pick up something to eat after he got down to the Palmer House. There would be plenty of time before he went to bed.

He opened his portfolio again and took out the charts that Loren Shaw had prepared.

MILLBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA

7.28 P.M. EDT

Don Walling stood in the black shadow of a jagged head of rock hidden deep within the oaks behind his home. How long he had been there he did not know, but as he lifted the weight of his slumped body from his hands he saw that his palms were red-laced with the rough pattern of the rock's surface.

The shocking impact of the news of Avery Bullard's death was slowly draining away, but the fading numbness of shock only opened the way to a sharper realization of personal loss. His eyes drifted toward the house and everything he saw reminded him of Avery Bullard's beneficence. All that he had … everything … had come from Avery Bullard's hands. Even Mary would never have been his if it had not been for Avery Bullard, if he had not met Avery Bullard that night in Chicago, if Avery Bullard had not sent him back to Pittsburgh, if Avery Bullard had not given him the chance to prove that he was worthy of her.

The thought of his wife unconsciously eased the weight of grief. There was a mental link between love and death. He had fallen in love with Mary on the night her father died.

During the first weeks after Avery Bullard had sent him to the Coglan factory in Pittsburgh, Don Walling had tried to find Mike Kovales. There was no telephone listed in his name and the old restaurant out on Schenley Hill had a new proprietor who knew nothing about the former owner. Finally, through a man he met at a Greek-American social club where Mike had once been a member, Don Walling had learned that Mike Kovales was critically ill. He went immediately to the hospital and he was glad afterwards that he had not delayed. That was the last night that visitors were allowed. He had seen Mary in the hospital hall that evening but his mind had been on her father and he had paid her little attention after the first moment of surprise that she could ever have been the gangling child who used to come in the back door of the restaurant and sit in the corner of the kitchen, perpetually reading even while she ate.

A week later, on the night her father died, Mary Kovales had called him as she had promised she would and he had gone out to be with her. It was then—if the moment could ever be marked—when he had fallen in love with her. She was beautiful, with a classic Athenian perfection of features that reminded him of Grecian sculpture, but it was not beauty that attracted him most. It was the inner character she radiated, the strength that allowed her to rise above tragedy without minimizing it, an essential nobility, a femininity that offered all that any woman could offer, yet did not demand the common price of total dependency. There was, he knew, no strength that any man could give that Mary Kovales could not repay in kind.

He needed that strength now and he walked slowly toward the house, conscious that she was waiting for him on the edge of the terrace, yet reluctant to acknowledge her presence by looking directly at her. When he reached her side she took his hand in hers and, for the moment, her silence was wiser than anything she might have said.

“You reach Fred Alderson?” he asked, almost gruffly.

“They were at the Willoughbys' for dinner but were leaving as I called. They'd heard it over the radio.”

“I'd better call Fred and see if there's anything I can do.”

“He won't be home for a few minutes,” she said, carefully calm. “It's quite a drive in from the Willoughbys'. Come eat, Don. It's all ready.”

He followed her automatically and as automatically began to eat what she placed in front of him. He sensed that she wanted to talk and he appreciated the understanding that made her wait until his words would come more easily.

Seeing the empty seat where their nine-year-old son usually sat, suggested a side remark to break the silence, “Where's Steve tonight?”

“At the Brewster's—Kenny's birthday party.”

He mumbled an acknowledgment of a vague memory that they had talked about it that morning—but now the morning seemed a month past.

“Well—” he said finally, and the word was the plunge. “This is like dumping the world upside down.”

“Yes.” The sound was only a soft invitation to say more.

“I've thought about a lot of things that might happen—everything but this. It's—well, it's just one of those things that couldn't happen.”

“But it has,” she said firmly, as if she were demanding his acceptance.

There was a point in her demand. He knew it. Once he had openly accepted the fact of Avery Bullard's death, a door could close in his mind and another door would open. “Yes, he's dead,” he said slowly and his voice had the sound of decision.