Ghost Story (14 page)

Yet there were things they had not seen, and which they would see in time.

It is always true in personal, if not historical, terms that a golden age's defining characteristic is its dailiness, its offered succession of the small satisfactions of daily living. If none in the Chowder Society but Ricky Hawthorne truly appreciated this, in time they would all know it.

"What? You always like parties, Stella."

"I have a funny feeling about this one."

"Don't you want to meet that actress?"

"My interest in meeting little beauties of nineteen was always limited."

"Edward seems to have become rather taken with her."

"Oh, Edward." Stella, seated before her mirror and brushing her hair, smiled at Ricky's reflection. "I suppose it'll be worth going just to see Lewis Benedikt's reaction to Edward's find." Then the smile changed key as the fine muscles beside her mouth moved, became more edged. "At least it's something to be invited to a Chowder Society evening."

"It's not, it's a party," Ricky vainly pointed out.

"I've always thought that women should be allowed during those famous evenings of yours."

"I know that," Ricky said.

"And that's why I want to go."

"It's not the Chowder Society. It's just a party."

"Then who had John invited, besides you and Edward's little actress?"

"Everybody, I think," Ricky answered truthfully. "What's the feeling you said you had?"

Stella cocked her head, touched her lipstick with her little finger, looked into her summery eyes and said, "Goose over my grave."

As she had meant him to, Ricky felt a mocking blade of jealousy pierce him.

"It's extraordinary, isn't it?" Stella's voice was light, musical, confidential, as if she had intended nothing that was not superficial.

"What is?"

"That one of you is having a party. The only people we know who have parties are us, and we have about two a year. I can't get over it—John Jeffrey! I'm amazed Milly Sheehan let him get away with it."

"The glamour of the theater world, I imagine," Ricky said.

"Milly doesn't think anything is glamorous except John Jaffrey," Stella replied, and laughed at the image of their friend she could find in every glance of his housekeeper. Stella, who in certain practical matters was wiser than any of the men about her, sometimes titillated herself with the notion that Dr. Jaffrey took some sort of dope; and she was convinced that Milly and her employer did not occupy separate beds.

Considering his own remark, Ricky had missed his wife's insight. "The glamour of the theater world," as remote and unlikely as any such thing seemed in Milburn, did seem to have gripped Jeffrey's imagination— he, whose greatest enthusiasm had been for a neatly hooked trout, had become increasingly obsessed with Edward Wanderley's young guest during the previous three weeks. Edward himself had been very secretive about the girl. She was new, she was very young, she was for the moment a "star," whatever that really meant, and such people provided Edward's livelihood: so it was not exceptional that Edward had persuaded her to be the latest subject of his ghosted autobiographies. The typical procedure was that Edward had his subjects talk into a tape recorder for as many weeks as their interest held; then, with a great deal of skill, he worked these memories into a book. The rest of the research was done through the mails and over the telephone with anybody who knew or had once known his subject—genealogical research too was a part of Edward's method. Edward was proud of his genealogies. The recording was done whenever possible at his house; his study walls were lined with tapes—tapes on which, it was understood, many juicy and unpublishable indiscretions were recorded. Ricky himself had only the most notional interest in the personalities and sex lives of actors, and so he thought did the rest of his friends. But when
Everybody Saw the Sun Shine
underwent a month's change of cast which Ann-Veronica Moore spent in Milburn, John Jaffrey had increasingly had one goal—to have this girl come to his house. An even greater mystery was that his hints and schemes had succeeded, and the girl had consented to attend a party in her honor.

"Good Lord," Stella said, seeing the number of cars lined at the curb before Jaffrey's house.

"It's John's coming-out party," Ricky said. "He wants to show off his accomplishment."

They parked down the block and slipped through cold air to the front door. Voices, music pulsed at them.

"I'll be damned," Ricky said. "He's using his offices too."

"A pleasure, Mr. Robinson."

"This is some party."

"I'm sure it is," said Stella, the faintest of smiles tipping the edges of her mouth.

"Coats in the consulting room here, drinks upstairs. I'd be happy to get you one while you and your husband take care of your coats."

Stella looked at his blazer, his plaid trousers, his floppy velvet bow tie, his absurdly eager face. "That won't be necessary, I'm sure, Mr. Robinson."

She and Ricky dodged into the consulting room, where coats were flung everywhere.

"Good God," said Stella. "What does that young man do for a living?"

"I think he sells insurance."

"I should have known. Take me upstairs, Ricky."

Holding her cool hand, Ricky led her out of the consulting room and through the lower fringe of the party to the stairs. A record player on a table thumped out disco music; young people strutted, wriggled before it. "John's had a brainstorm," Ricky muttered. "If not sunstroke," Stella said behind him.

"Hiya, Mr. Hawthorne." This was from a tall boy in his late teens, a client's son.

"Hello, Peter. It's too noisy for us down here. I'm looking for the Glenn Miller wing."

Peter Barnes's clear blue eyes regarded him expressionlessly. Did he seem that foreign to young people? "Hey, what do you know about Cornell? I think that's where I want to go to college. I might be able to get early admission. Hiya, Mrs. Hawthorne."

"It's a good school. I hope you make it," said Ricky. Stella poked him smartly in the back.

"No sweat. I know I'll get in. I got seven-hundreds on my trial boards. Dad's upstairs. Do you know what?"

"No." Stella prodded him again. "What?"

"All of us were invited because we're about the same age as Ann-Veronica Moore, but they just took her upstairs as soon as she and Mr. Wanderley got here. We never even got to talk to her." He gestured around at the couples doing the hustle in, the small downstairs room. "Jim Hardie kissed her hand, though. He's always doing things like that. He really grosses everybody out."

Ricky saw Eleanor Hardie's son doing a series of ritualistic dance steps with a girl whose black hair flowed down to the small of her back—it was Penny Draeger, the daughter of a druggist who was a client. She twitched away, spun, lifted a foot, and then placed her behind squarely on Hardie's crotch. "He sounds like a promising boy," Stella purred. "Peter, would you do me a favor?"

"Uh, sure," the boy gulped. "What?"

"Clear a space so that my husband and I can go upstairs."

"Sure, yeah. But you know what? We were just invited to meet Ann-Veronica Moore, and then we were supposed to go home. Mrs. Sheehan said we can't even go upstairs. I guess they thought she'd like to dance with us or something, but they didn't even give her a chance. And at ten o'clock, Mrs. Sheehan said she was going to throw us all out. Except for him, I suppose." He nodded at Freddy Robinson, who had one arm around the shoulders of a giggling high-school girl.

"Terribly unfair," Stella said. "Now be a good boy and carve away through the undergrowth."

"Oh yeah." He took them across the crowded room to the staircase as if he were reluctantly leading an outing from the local asylum. When they were safely on the stairs and Stella had already begun to go regally up, he bent forward and whispered in Ricky's ear. "Will you do something for me, Mr. Hawthorne?" Ricky nodded. "Say hello to her for me, will you? She's a real piece."

Ricky laughed aloud, causing Stella to turn her head and look at him quizzically. "Nothing, darling," he said, and went up the stairs to the quieter regions of the house.

"I don't know why I never did it before," John said, his face gleaming. "I feel younger tonight than I have in a decade."

"How wonderful, John," Stella said, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. "What does Milly think of it?"

"Not much." He looked bemused. "She couldn't figure out why I wanted to have a party in the first place.

She couldn't understand why I wanted to have Miss Moore here at all."

Milly herself came into view at that moment, holding a tray of canapes before Barnes and Venuti, the two bankers, and from the determined look on Milly's plump face, Ricky saw that she had opposed the idea from the first. "Why did you want to?"

"Excuse me, John, I'm going to mill," said Stella. "Don't worry about getting me a drink, Ricky, I'll take one from someone who isn't using his." She went through the doorway in the direction of Ned Rowles. Lou Price, gangsterish in a double-breasted pinstriped suit, took her hand and pecked her on the cheek.

"She's a wonderful gal," John Jaffrey said, and the two men watched Stella deflect Lou Price with a phrase and continue toward Ned Rowles. "I wish there were a million like her." Rowles was turning around to watch Stella approach him, his face lighting up with pleasure. In his corduroy jacket, with his sandy hair and earnest face, Ned Rowles resembled a journalism student more than an editor. He too kissed Stella, but on the mouth, and held both her hands as he did so. "Why did I want to?" John cocked his head, and four deep wrinkles divided the side of his neck. "I don't know, exactly. Edward's so entranced with this girl that I wanted to meet her."

"Is he? Entranced?"

"Oh, absolutely. You wait. You'll see. And then, you know, I only ever see my patients and Milly and the Chowder Society. I thought it was time to bust out a little. Have a little fun before I dropped dead."

This was very giddy for John Jaffrey, and Ricky glanced at his friend, taking his eyes from his wife, who was still holding hands with Ned Rowles.

"And do you know what I can't get over? One of the most famous actresses in America is upstairs in my house, right this minute."

"Is Edward with her?"

"He said she had to take a few minutes before she joined us. I guess he's helping her with her coat or something." Jaffrey's ravaged face simply gleamed with pride.

"I don't think she's quite yet one of the most famous actresses in America, John." Stella had moved on, and Ned Rowles was saying something vehement to Ed Venuti.

"Well, she will be. Edward thinks so, and he's always right about things like that Ricky!" Jaffrey gripped his upper arms. "Did you see the kids dancing downstairs? Isn't that fantastic? Kids having a good time in
my
house? I thought they'd enjoy meeting her. It's a fantastic honor, you know. She can only be here a few more days. Edward's got the taping nearly done, and she has to get back to New York to rejoin the play. And here she is, in my house! By God, Ricky."

Ricky felt almost as though he should press a cold cloth to Jaffrey's forehead.

"Did you know that she just came out of nowhere? That she was the most promising student in her drama class, and the next week she got her part in
Everybody Saw the Sun Shine?"

"No, John."

"Just now I had a wonderful idea. It was about having her here in the house. I was standing here, listening to the kids' disco music from downstairs, and hearing bits and pieces of the George Shearing record from in there, and I thought—downstairs is the raw, animal life, kids jumping around to that beat, on this floor we've got the mental life, doctors and lawyers, all middle-class respectability, and upstairs is grace, talent, beauty—the spirit. You see? It's like evolution. She's the most ethereal thing you've ever seen. And she's only eighteen."

Never in his life had Ricky heard John Jaffrey express such a fanciful concept. He was beginning to worry about the doctor's blood pressure. Then both men heard a door close up on the next landing, followed by Edward's deep voice saying something that had the sly intonation of a joke.

"I thought Stella said she was nineteen," Ricky said.

"Shhh."

A beautiful little girl was coming toward them down the stairs. Her dress was simple and green, her hair was a cloud. After a second Ricky saw that her eyes matched the dress. Moving with a kind of rhythmic idle precision, she gave them the tiniest of smiles— still it was brilliant—and went by, patting Dr. Jaffrey's chest with her fingertips as she passed them. Ricky watched her go, amused and touched. He had seen nothing like it since Louise Brooks in
Pandora's Box.

Then he looked at Edward Wanderley and saw at once that John Jaffrey was right. Edward's feathers were shining. He had obviously been stirred up by the girl, and it was equally obvious that it was difficult for him to leave her alone long enough to greet his friends. All three men began to move into the crowded living room. "Ricky, you look great," Edward told him, putting an arm easily around Ricky's shoulders. Edward was half a foot taller, and when Edward began to propel him into the room, Ricky could smell an expensive cologne. "Just great. But isn't it time you stopped wearing bow ties? The Arthur Schlesinger era is dead and gone."

"That was the era right after mine," Ricky said.

"No, listen, nobody's older than he feels. I stopped wearing neckties altogether. In ten years, eighty per cent of the men in this country will wear ties only to weddings and funerals. Barnes and Venuti over there will be wearing that getup to the bank." He scanned the room. "Where the hell did she go?" Ricky, in whom new ties evoked a desire to wear them even to bed, looked at Edward's unfettered neck as his friend surveyed the crowded room, saw that it was even more corded than John Jaffrey's, and decided not to change his habits. "I've spent three weeks with that girl, and she's the most fantastic subject I ever had. Even if she makes the stuff up, and maybe she does, it'll be the best book I'll ever do. She's had a horrible life,
horrible.
It makes you weep just to hear it—I sit there and cry. I tell you, she's wasted in that piece of Broadway fluff, wasted. She'll be a great tragic actress. Once she's out of her teens." Red-faced, Edward guffawed at his own preposterousness. Like John, he too was in flight. "You two seem to have caught that girl like a virus," Ricky said.

John giggled, and Edward said, "The whole world will, Ricky. She's really got that gift."

"Oh," Ricky said, remembering something. "Your nephew Donald seems to be having a great success with his new book. Congratulations."

"It's nice to know I'm not the only talented bastard in the family. And it should help him get over his brother's death. That was an odd story, a very odd story—they both seem to have been engaged to the same woman. But we don't want to think about anything macabre tonight. We're going to have fun."

John Jaffrey nodded in happy agreement.