Manhattan Monologues (24 page)

One Sunday morning, when Rod was away on a business trip, and she had gone to Harry's flat instead of taking the girls to church, and she found herself nude, kneeling down on his living room rug before his standing nude figure, her hands clasping his buttocks and her lips receiving his ejaculated sperm, she knew, with a dreary satisfaction, that she had no further to fall.

***

On a morning when Rod had an uptown appointment, he decided after lunch not to go back to his office, but to spend the afternoon working in his apartment. The girls would be at school until five; Vinnie had gone to Glenville for the day; so it would be quiet. He kept certain of his files in a closet that was also used as his liquor cabinet, and it was usually locked, as their cleaning woman was not above the temptation of an occasional nip. He had different hiding places for the key, and he now remembered that he had slipped it into one of the drawers of his wife's dressing table under a pile of her underwear. Reaching for it, his hand struck a notebook. Flipping the pages in surprise, he saw it was full of Vinnie's handwriting, and when he made out one sentence, he sat heavily down, ice sliding over his heart like a glacier, and read the journal through.

Vinnie had faithfully recorded what she and Harry had done. The journal was an inventory of acts. What had induced her to record it? Some remnant of conscience, some throwback to her mother's puritan ancestry? For a wild moment he thought it might be fiction. But it was too graphic. For another moment his curiosity was so keen that he could almost set aside the scarlet fact that his world was in tiny pieces, scattered all over the room. But when he rose at last to his feet, he tottered and almost fell. Then he returned the journal to its place and closed the drawer. He left the apartment and walked to Central Park, where he sat for two hours on a bench.

What he began to realize, slowly, but with a creeping ineluctability, was that this experience, which was like nothing that had happened to him before, seemed to be occurring to a person other than himself, a new man, perhaps even an opposite. For what sort of man would have married a woman capable of doing what Vinnie had described on the last page of her abominably honest journal? Or did all women do it, or want to do it, and had he been living in a paradise of idiotic fools? Was it even conceivable that he could want a woman to do it to
him?
Was
that
why the horrid journal had an eerie fascination for him, over and above the wrath and indignation it inspired? Or should have inspired? How could he know what might or might not arouse the lust of the new man that Rod Jessup had become in a single morning?

He then walked rapidly twice around the reservoir, only to find that his head was aching and that there was a queer buzzing in his ears. He sat again on a bench until this passed away. It broke upon him suddenly that the person who had to be protected from all this horror was his father-in-law. Arnold Dillard must never have an inkling of what his daughter and Harry were up to. The disillusionment might otherwise cause Dillard to lose faith in what his whole life had stood for. The copulations—and other things—of which the lecherous couple had been guilty should be sealed up forever in their marriage, Harry's marriage to the boss's daughter, which, Rod was sure, had been Harry's motive from the beginning. And that marriage could take place only if Rod himself were removed from the picture with Arnold's full approval. And there was only one sure way to bring that about.

He called his secretary from a booth and told her to tell his wife that he had to go out of town on business. Then he called Lila Fisk. Was she free to dine with him at the Colony Restaurant? She was surprised, but she was free, and a few hours later he faced her across a corner table at the costliest eatery in town, raising his cocktail glass to click it against hers in a silent toast.

Lila Fisk, raven-haired, alabaster pale, with a conspiratorial smile, rich and richly attired in black satin with large pearls, was a plump but still radiant forty. She was also a hearty and genial divorcée who had been wed three times and had ap-parently retired from the matrimonial market to live entirely for pleasure. She was a great pal of Harry Hammersly, through whom she had come to know the Jessups. Vinnie, who was not usually partial to epicurean types, had recently taken to her. It was not hard for Rod now to understand why. He also understood that Lila had been for some time attracted to him. A virtuous man was always a challenge to her.

"Are you having a row with Vinnie?" she demanded.

"Why do you ask?"

"You're not a man to ask a lady out without your wife unless you have a point to make. You want to get back at her for something."

"It couldn't be because the man finds himself greatly attracted to the lady?"

"Oh, it could be. But then he'd take her to a less conspicuous spot. There's Arlina, from the
Sun Times,
who's already taken us in."

"Do you care?"

"I don't give a damn. But I want you to know what I know. And now let's not spoil our evening with too many questions."

They talked, merrily enough, on other topics—she was an omnivorous reader, an avid theater-goer and a baseball fan—and after their dinner they went to her handsome Park Avenue apartment, where they had several drinks and made love. He was pleasantly surprised to find it not only simple but exhilarating. Yet she wouldn't let him spend the night; she kicked him out at midnight, with the injunction: "If you want to make it up with Vinnie now, you'll find it easier. Your guilt will cool your anger."

How much did she know about Vinnie and Harry? He was not to find out, but at any rate he had no idea of "making it up" with Vinnie. Lila agreed to dine out with him twice more, including a visit to a nightclub, where they were photographed together, but when he suggested that he move from his club into her apartment, she was profoundly shocked.

"Are you out of your mind? No one objects to an affair, if it's carried on with some discretion, but women my age don't
live
with men. Not in society. Not yet. Are you trying to ruin what shred of reputation I have left?"

"What's wrong with our living together?"

"What's wrong? What's right? Do you want to drive Vinnie into divorcing you for adultery? My God, man, maybe that's just what you
do
want! You're a lunatic, Rodman Jessup! Go home to your club, or wherever you hang out, and don't come near me again until you've learned to act like a gentleman!"

The strange thing about the next three months was that not once, even through the divorce proceedings and the negotiations following his resignation from the firm, did he have a word of direct communication with his wife or her father or Harry Hammersly.

The divorce decree awarded custody of his two daughters to Vinnie, but he had weekend and summer visitation rights. And she did not claim a penny of alimony. In two months' time he read of her marriage to her lover. He had won!

***

The next five years were to bring fame and fortune to Rodman Jessup. He had hardly settled himself in a new apartment, and adjusted himself to the life of a divorced parent who took his daughters to the movies on Saturday afternoons, when he was invited to lunch by an old law school classmate, Newbold Armstrong, in a newly formed club atop a skyscraper in midtown, whither much of the Wall and Broad Street legal and financial community was already beginning to move. Armstrong, the handsome, clean-cut scion of an old New York clan, was a partner in a new and aggressive law firm that was making a notorious name for itself in the burgeoning field of amalgamating different businesses into conglomerates. After one cocktail and a brief and perfunctory inquiry into his old friend's health and family, Armstrong came right to the point. Would Rod consider a partnership in his firm?

Rod restrained the impulse to wrinkle his nose. "I'm not a great fan of the take-over business. Some of it strikes me as verging on dirty pool. I'm sorry to say that, Newbold, but you and I may as well be frank with each other. At Dillard Kaye we used to turn down those retainers."

"Dillard Kaye is beginning to show its age, my friend. And you'll soon enough see the truth of that. Survival in these days depends on keeping up with the times. Luckily for me, the Armstrongs always made a point of that. One of my grandfathers acted as a broker for 'Uncle' Dan Drew, the greatest rascal on Wall Street. And a great-aunt of mine married a son of Jay Gould, whom no respectable family would let into their house by the front door. And look at us now! We're doing fine, thank you. I had rather hoped, Rod, that the way you'd been treated by your old firm and family-in-law, for doing something three quarters of the men I know have done at one point or another in their lives, would have opened your eyes. Of course, I have to admit that you weren't very tactful in the way you behaved. But that was probably because you'd always been such a Christer. You hadn't learned that it's not what you do that counts. It's how you do it."

Rod fixed a long silent stare on his luncheon host. "You know, Newbold, there may be something in what you say."

"There's a hell of a lot in what I say."

"Won't it create bitterness among the associates in your firm if you take in a partner from outside ahead of them?"

"Oh, I daresay they won't like it. But they're used to it. Everyone 'buys' partners from the outside these days. The only man who'll really mind is the partner we'll be dumping if we get hold of you."

"Why he? What's he done?"

"His billings don't add up, Rod. The days are gone when a firm will keep on some old geezer who's ceased to produce. We're not a retirement home, after all. I'll bet that at Dillard Kaye you've got some old farts who've been eating free off you for years."

Rod nodded grimly. "Probably. And of course the same thing would happen to me in your firm if I didn't pan out."

"And to me, too!" Newbold cheerfully agreed. "But I'm betting on us. Who wants special treatment? Come to us, Rod, and I'll count on you to become our star man in gobbling up vulnerable companies."

"What makes you think I'd be so good at that?"

His friend chose to make a joke of it. His laugh was loud and free. "Because you've taken off the mask, buddy. You're not Little Red Riding-hood's granny anymore. You're the big bad wolf!"

Rod took the job, and in two years' time he was generally considered one of the ablest take-over lawyers in the city. He married his secretary, a dazzling blonde of twenty-five who was as smart as she was efficient and who had the grace to maintain the hero worship for her handsome and successful boss when she graduated from amanuensis to wife. And it hardly surprised him when Harry Hammersly telephoned to suggest that they let bygones be bygones and meet for lunch.

Harry's manner, as closely observed by his former partner across the table, was as easy as ever. He didn't manifest any of the embarrassment that even such a sophisticate as he must have felt. Rod was gratified to note that when he recalled the acts that Harry and his former wife had performed together, as recorded in her infamous journal, he experienced no anger and little disgust. He had moved decisively into a different world.

Harry did not beat around the bush any more than Newbold Armstrong had two years earlier. He wanted Rod to come back to Dillard Kaye at double the pay he was now receiving. As to his position in the old partnership, he could write his own ticket. Harry made it clear that they needed him badly, not only to set up a conglomerate department but to revise the management of the badly stumbling firm. Rod was impressed by Harry's cleverness in realizing that a blunt statement of the facts was the best way to handle the man he had so deeply wronged. Harry had the genius to see that what Rod wanted above anything else was to triumph over the world that Rod himself had maneuvered into excluding him.

"But what about Arnold? How will he feel about taking back his ex-son-in-law?"

"Arnold will not be a problem, Rod. Arnold is not the man he was. He had a stroke a month ago, and though he's recovered his speech and pretty much the use of his arms and legs, he's a shadow of the old Arnold. I've discussed you with him, and he's taken it all like a lamb, just shaking his head."

"He still comes into the office?"

"Yes, but only from habit and to look at his mail. He does no work of significance. I even showed him that nasty cartoon of you in that rag
The Unconfidential Clerk,
and he only shrugged his shoulders."

"Why did you show him that?" The periodical in question, hated by the big law firms, purported to show their clerks exactly how their employers operated. The cartoon depicted Rod on his knees by an overturned garbage pail, ransacking its contents for dirt on some company a client of his was seeking to harass into submission.

"Because if that rag has it in for you, it means you're the hottest thing in take-overs!"

Less than half a year later, Rod was installed in the largest private office of the firm now named Dillard, Hammersly and Jessup, at the end of a corridor containing the adjoining offices of the two partners and four associates, all brilliant takeover experts, whom he had induced to sever their ties with Armstrong and join him in his new affiliation. His old friend and former partner, Newbold, had wildly threatened to sue him, but everyone knew it was an idle threat, and Rod had thrown back at him his own words on the importance of keeping up with the times.

Arnold, poor broken old man, had greeted him joyously, as if no cloud had ever darkened their covering sky. Though confined to a wheelchair, he loved to come to the office and lunch with any of the partners whom Harry Hammersly could induce to spare the time. He took to wheeling himself into Rod's office to chat, and the latter's time he so wasted became something of a problem. Rod decided at last that he had better drop a hint to his former mother-in-law.

He had his chance to do this one day when he heard that Eleanor Dillard was coming to the office to sign a new will. Meeting her in the reception hall, he invited her to lunch with him at his club, and she accepted, giving him what he took to be a rather forbidding smile. She was smaller, older, dryer, with even scantier hair, but her nose and eyes were as sharp as ever.