The Best of Everything (22 page)

"So that you couid eat fourteen-course meals and have a wife who weighs two hundred pounds."

"Ugh," he said. "Not a fourteen-course meal. Just a leisurely one, with brandy afterward and lots of time to talk. Speaking of brandy, what kind would you prefer?"

"I'm ashamed to say I don't know the difference." But she wasn't ashamed, she really didn't care.

He ordered two ponies of brandy for them and leaned back, lighting his cigarette. "I asked you and you didn't answer me; do you like the theater?"

"I love it."

"I'll get tickets for next Saturday night if you'll go with me."

Did she want to go? Why not? He was kind to her and she liked the theater, so she would be a fool not to accept—and yet, something warned her. She didn't have the faintest idea what it was, it was simply a premonition, and she quickly pushed it out of her mind.

"I think that would be fun," Caroline said.

"Good. Supper afterward instead of before, we won't have to rush that way."

How planned everything was with him, how efficient! He was Gracious Living with capital letters. She remembered how the official watchword at Radcliffe had been Gracious Living, and how most of the girls had turned it into a kind of joke. Gracious Living meant you had to wear a dress to dinner instead of slacks, it meant demitasse in the living room afterward, and to Caroline and her friends it had seemed like a silly struggle to retain the superficial when the deeper things were collapsing all around them. Demi-tasse and forced conversation when you were failing in three subjects, demitasse and conversation when the boy you loved hadn't phoned for ten days, demitasse and conversation when your period was late and you were starting to feel mysteriously sick in the mornings? Here she was with Paul Landis in an expensive restaurant, drinking the best brandy, talking of ways to make life pleasant, and she wanted to cry out to him. Reach me! Say something that means something to me, anything, I don't even know what myself. Look into my face the way Mike used to do, the way Eddie used to do, and say something to show you're here with me, Caroline Bender, not just a thin girl in a chic black dress who also likes the theater.

It was too much to ask on a first date, and yet her instinct told her

that he would never look deeper. I'll have a good time, she thought; he's a perfect escort. He's kind. What am I looking for, a neurotic like Mike, like Eddie? Here's a nice solid young man who evidently likes me. Period.

"Would you like to take a walk for a few blocks?" Paul asked.

"Yes. I need to recover from that huge dinner."

"I'm going to send you a box of candy tomorrow. And you eat it. You need it."

She laughed.

While he was recovering his hat from the checkroom Caroline looked at him critically. It was typical of him that he should wear a hat, but it had a small brim and a jaunty look to it, so it was not, at least, the kind her father would wear. His large nose was a little shiny from the heat in the restaurant, but he had a clear, ruddy complexion with health radiating from it. She was sure he went to bed before twelve on week nights and never drank too much. The fit of his suit was impeccable. There was nothing effeminate about him, and yet he had the kind of build that made his body seem simply not to exist. He was an expensive suit reaching from a pair of the proper-size shoulders down to a pair of English shoes. He was tall, he weighed perhaps a hundred and seventy-five pounds, but these were statistics she had to bring to mind consciously. It was like trying to categorize something in order to make it exist. Perhaps that's how he feels about me, Caroline thought, he has to categorize me to make me exist for him.

In the street again she was acutely conscious of the sounds and colors around her: the neon hghts above the other restaurants, the traflBc noises, the laughter and conversation of people who passed by in an instant, never to be seen again, or if they should be seen, never to be recognized. The world was suddenly very interesting to her, and she clung to every facet of it, everything she could see and smell and hear. She hardly noticed that Paul had finally launched on a lengthy account of one of his legal cases "that would make a good story."

"You must be fascinated with your work," Caroline said. "That's wonderful."

"I am. The same way I guess you are. Although, I can't understand why you waste your time with trash. You seem to be an intelli-

gent girl, with a good educational background. Couldn't you have found something better?"

"Not at the time. The employment agency offered me this job and it seemed like a good thing. I just wanted to be busy, I didn't care at what. There was something I was trying hard to forget."

"You don't seem like a girl who has anything she doesn't want to remember."

"Every girl has," Caroline said. "Life isn't that perfect. Haven't you?"

He thought for a moment. "No . . . offhand I can't think of anything. I've been lucky. I've always had enough money, I got into the schools of my choice, I like all my friends. I get along with my family, I've never had any illnesses other than measles and chicken pox, and I'm enthusiastic about my work. I broke both my legs once when I was learning to ski, but it wasn't so bad after all because I had a chance to lie in bed and read things I'd never have had time to otherwise."

"What a wonderful, even life you've had," Caroline said, sighing. "No ups and downs, just straight all along."

"What are you talking about?" Paul said. "So have you. Don't tell me anything has happened to you that a year from now you will be able to look back at and honestly say was a crisis."

"How smug you are! I might have been in reform school, I might be an orphan. How do you know? Just because I have good manners and live in a certain thirty-block area?"

"I don't know," Paul said seriously. "Maybe you have been in reform school, since you mention it. But if you have, I don't want to know about it. I like you the way you are, to me, tonight."

"But if it happened to me," Caroline said, "then it's part of me. It is me. And the things I think—they're what made all the things that did or didn't happen to me important."

"Well, have you been in reform school?" he asked, his eyes twinkling.

"Of course not."

"I didn't think so."

"You don't understand," Caroline said. *Tou don't understand at all."

Paul hailed a taxi and helped her into it. "You see?" he said. Tm getting you home early, just as I promised."

'Td forgotten all about that."

"Good," he said. He put his arm around the back of the seat, his fingers just touching her shoulder. He took ofiF his hat and placed it on the seat between him and the window. '1 like the way you argue, Caroline."

"Thank you."

His hand was holding her shoulder now, lightly, and he moved closer to her. He took her hand from her lap and held it in his gloved hand. She could feel his breath on her cheek as he spoke. "It's a pleasure to meet a girl who thinks," he said.

But you don't know how I think, she wanted to say. She smiled at him a little nervously. She knew he was preparing to kiss her, and she didn't want to offend him, but she didn't want to kiss him either. Suddenly the image of Mike's face came up between them, looking knowing and a little mournful. If Paul Landis knew about me and Mike, Caroline thought, he would die. It seemed a little like a weapon in her hand; Mike, her affair with Mike, her communication with Mike and his understanding of her which this confident, content, ordinary boy would never be able to grasp.

"You're very nice," Caroline said. "You're a nice person." She turned away and rolled down the window, half leaning out of it. "Look how pretty the park is at night. It's a shame people can't walk in the park without being hit on the head. I wish I could go to the zoo sometime at night; it would be sort of crazy, don't you think? All the animals would be asleep and it would be too dark to see anything anyway." She was aware that she was talking gibberish.

"Come here," he said.

He took her face in one hand and drew her to him with the other. He had removed his gloves and his palm was slightly moist. He's as nervous as I am, she thought, and closed her eyes, submitting. He kissed her once, a long kiss, but only one. Then he kissed her lightly on the cheek and released her. Caroline could barely suppress a sigh of relief. Paul settled his arm more comfortably around her shoulders and leaned his head against the back of the taxi seat, closing his eyes.

"I'll take you to the zoo sometime at night," he murmured. "If you really want to go."

When he delivered her to her front door Paul held her hand for a moment but did not ask if he might come in. "Thank you for a wonderful evening," he said.

"Thank you."

He made a fist and tapped her playfully on the chin. "Next Saturday—remember. I'll speak to you before that."

He was gone then, and Caroline shut the door and locked it. She went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. She looked prettier than she had looked in a long time, hair curly from the damp of an autumn night, mouth rather voluptuous-looking from her smeared hpstick, eyes large and very blue in her tanned face. Why was it always like this, that one looked so much prettier when one was out with a boy who meant nothing? It was unfair, somehow. But no wonder he had liked her; she did look nice. She looked— appealing. Hiat was it. Or did she feel appealing because Paul so obviously admired her? It was pleasant to be liked by someone who was not a complete cluck, you had to admit that. He made her feel contented. But she also felt contented because she had locked the door of her own apartment and Paul Landis was somewhere on the outside of it while she was safe inside. It was as if she had completed a tiring mission and now could rest and recover alone.

Caroline wandered about the room, undressing, putting on her pajamas and turning down her bed. She washed off her make-up and brushed her teeth and drank a glass of water. Then, with her hand on the lamp to turn it out, a wave of melancholy hit her as strongly as if it had been a wave of nausea. She sat down on the bed, giving herself to the sensation, feehng as if a hand had tightened around her throat. Someone . . . she needed someone to talk to . . . why didn't Gregg come home? It was too early for Gregg, that was why. She knew whom she needed to talk to, whom she wanted to see more than anyone else in the world at this moment. But she didn't want to call him, for what good would it do? What could he do for her? Go to sleep, she thought, and forget it; tomorrow you'll feel fine. But she knew if she lay down on the bed she would never be able to sleep.

Picking up the phone book was a comforting act in itself. Carohne leafed through it, feeling her heart pounding. She found the name of Mike's hotel and dialed it, realizing only at that moment that it was too early for Mike to be home either. I hope he's out somewhere, she thought, and then an instant later; Please be home, please!

"Mike Rice, please."

How bored the switchboard operator sounded, as if she hated

everybody, and at this moment Mike Rice in particular. There was a long wait. I know he isn't there, Caroline thought, but now that she was sure he was away she was glad she had called just to find out.

"Hello," Mike Rice said.

"Oh, Mike!"

"Caroline?"

"Yes."

"Where are you? Caroline . . ."

"At home," she said lightly. "Where else should I be?"

"Oh." He sounded disappointed.

"Well, where did you think I was?"

"I thought you might be hung up at a dull party, that was all." His voice was as casual as her own.

"No. I was at a cocktail party and then I went to dinner with a boy I met there. He's a lawyer named Paul Landis."

"Did you like him?" Casual, very casual, with just an undertone of anxiety that he could not quite hide.

"He's nice . . . you know what I mean? What somebody else might call Mister Nice, only I don't feel the same way about that kind of person."

"Of course not," Mike said sympathetically.

His agreement made her feel that they were both being unfair to Paul. "But he is nice."

"How old is he?"

"About twenty-five, I think. It's hard to tell. He's almost no age. But he looks twenty-five."

"Did he try to sleep with you?"

"Heavens, no. You seem to think everyone wants to make out with me."

"Hell try."

"Not Paul," Caroline said. "I know he won't. He's marriage and two children and a two-car garage."

"That's what you want eventually," Mike said.

"I know. But not with him. Or at least, I'm almost positive not with him."

"Well, I'm glad you had a good evening, anyway."

"Yes."

"Are you going to go to bed now?"

"Yes."

His voice was hesitant, "Are you tired?"

"I am now," she whispered. "I couldn't sleep, but it's made me feel a lot better just to talk to you."

"I'm glad."

"Well . . ."

"Caroline?"

"Yes?"

"Goodnight . . . sleep well.**

"Good night, darling," Caroline said softly. "I love you."

"I love you too." He paused. "I love you too."

When she had replaced the receiver Caroline felt very tired, a good kind of tiredness that meant relaxation and sleep. She pulled file covers up to her chin and turned the light out, and felt the way she had as a child when her mother had told her a story that the whole room was full of angels guarding over her rest.

The next afternoon when she returned from the office there was a box of red roses leaning against her door. "You need the candy," the card read, "but flowers are more romantic. Paul."

She put the flowers into a vase of water and tucked the card next to the base of the vase. Not because she cared, but because Paul would notice it when he came to call for her on Saturday, and it might please him to know that she had saved his card all through the week.

Chapter 11

"I'm glad your parents liked me," April Morrison said. "I was afraid."

April and Dexter Key were sitting on the low stone wall on the clubhouse terrace at the Hudson View Country Club. It was three-thirty Sunday morning, one of a series of clear nights and days in November. Above them were the tiny high stars, and ahead of them were the lighted windows of the clubhouse ballroom, tlirough which April could see the last of the dancers gathered in groups to say goodbye, and the base player putting the case around his fiddle. She