The Blunderer (18 page)

“If you think it's all right—of course I can.”

When Walter went back into the living-room, Jon was stooped in the corner, looking through some record albums.

“Just how much does Ellie mean to you, Walt?” Jon asked.

“I think quite a lot,” Walter answered.

“How long's this been going on?”

“Nothing's going on,” Walter said with a little annoyance.

“Are you in love with her?”

Walter hesitated. “I don't know.”

“She obviously is with you.”

Walter looked down at the floor and felt as embarrassed as a boy. “I like her. I may be in love with her. I don't even know.”

“Did Clara know about her?”

“Yes. Before there was anything to know about.”

“You must have seen Ellie
a few
times,” Jon said, looking up.

“Only twice.” Walter walked slowly up and down the room. He was thinking of the trouble Clara had taken in choosing this carpet, going to every store in Manhattan before she was satisfied.

“You must have made a big impression on her, then,” Jon said, with his good-natured chuckle.

“That may not last. I don't know her very well.”

“Oh, come on, you don't believe that.” Jon's voice sounded like the growl of an amiable bear.

“I've no plans at all about Ellie,” Walter said, embarrassed. He and Jon had never talked very much about women—only about being married to them. If Jon had had any affairs since divorcing Stella, he hadn't talked about them. Walter had never had any, until Ellie.

Jon stood up with a load of records. “By the way, I'd like to repeat that I like Ellie. If you two like each other I think that's fine.”

Jon's smile made Walter smile back. “Let me get you a drink.”

“No, thanks. Got to watch my waistline.”

“You'll never make thirty-four! Let's have a drink to Ellie.”

Walter fixed two generous Scotch highballs and brought them to the coffee table. They sat down and lifted their glasses, then suddenly Walter crumpled. His smile had become a bitter grimace. There were tears in his eyes.

“Walter—take it easy.” Jon was sitting beside him, his arm around his shoulders.

Walter was thinking of Clara, dissolved, a few ounces of ashes in an ugly gray pot. Clara who had been so beautiful, whose body he had held in his arms. He felt Jon pulling at the glass in his hand, but Walter held on. “You think I'm a dog, don't you?” Walter asked. “You think I'm a dog for sitting here and drinking to another woman when my wife's hardly buried, don't you?”

“Snap out of it, Walter.
No!”

“And for sitting here telling you all about it tonight, don't you?” Walter went on, talking with his head down. “But I have to tell you that I adored Clara. I loved her more than any other woman in the world!”

“Walt, I know it.”

“You don't—know it enough. Nobody does.” Walter felt the glass snap in his hand. He looked at his own hand holding a curved shard between bleeding fingertips, and he dropped the fragment on the floor, too. “You don't know,” Walter said. “You don't know what it is.” He was thinking of the empty stairway, the empty bed upstairs, and Clara's bright scarves still in the closet on the top shelf. He was thinking of Jeff, waiting all day for her, all night. He was thinking even of her voice—

Walter felt himself yanked to his feet. He realized Jon wanted him to go wash his hand, and he began to apologize. “I'm sorry, Jon, I'm very sorry. It's not the drink—”

“You haven't had a drink!” Jon was pulling him up the stairs. “Now you wash your hands and face and forget it.”

24

T
here was very little work for Walter in the office that week, because Dick Jensen had already taken over Walter's tasks in anticipation of his six weeks' leave. Walter took advantage of it and left earlier in the afternoons. The office depressed him even more than the house in Benedict. He went in to see Dick around three in the afternoon on Thursday.

“Dick, let's get out of here next month,” Walter said. “Let's call up Sherman and tell him we'll sign the lease for December first or the middle of November, if we can get the office then.” Sherman was the rental agent for the 44th Street building they had chosen as an office location.

Dick Jensen looked at him solemnly for a minute, and Walter realized he had sounded a little hysterical, that Dick probably thought he was a little hysterical because of Clara.

“Maybe we ought to let things cool down for a while,” Dick said. “It goes without saying that I—I know you had nothing to do with it, Walt, but it's a bad thing to try to get a new law office launched on.”

“The people we're going to have as clients won't care a hang about that,” Walter said.

Dick shook his head. He was standing behind his desk. There was a worried expression on his face. “I don't think it's fatal to us, Walt. But I think you're more upset by all this than you know. I'm just trying to keep us both from doing anything hastily.”

He could only mean, Walter thought, that he didn't want to be a partner in a new office that had a good chance of failing because of the other partner's bad name. And yet Dick had made such a fine speech Tuesday about his confidence in him, how sure he was of his integrity. “You said you had no doubt it'd blow over. By December first it certainly will have blown over. I only meant we'd better give Cross notice, a month if you like, and get our publicity started. If we wait till December first for all that it'll be the middle of January before we see our first client.”

“I still think we'd better wait. Walt.”

Walter looked at Dick's soft body in the conservatively cut suit, the vest slightly bulging over hundreds of bacon-and-egg breakfasts, leisurely three-course lunches. Dick had a cheerful, easy-going wife at home, alive and breathing. He could afford to be calm and wait. Walter tossed his briefcase down and put on his topcoat.

“Taking off?” Dick asked.

“Yes. This place depresses me. I can just as well read this stuff at home.” Walter walked to the door.

“Walt—”

He turned round.

“I don't suppose it's too soon to give Cross notice. I didn't mean that. I think we ought to give him a month. So next Monday—that will be the first of November, I suppose we could.”

“All right,” Walter said. “I've got my letter written. I only have to put a date on it.”

But as he went out to the elevator, it occurred to Walter that Dick had agreed to the notice only because he could still get his job back if he changed his mind. What Dick was still hedging about was signing the lease for the new office.

On the way to his parking lot Walter saw a store window full of glassware, and he went in and bought a heavy Swedish glass vase for Ellie. He was not positive she would like it, but it would look all right in her apartment, he thought. Her apartment was in no particular style. Ellie furnished it with pieces that she liked, whatever they happened to be.

He stopped at two or three stores in Benedict and bought steak, mushrooms, salad essentials and a bottle of Médoc. He had given Claudia the evening off, the last three evenings off, because he and Jon had preferred to cook for themselves. He spent the rest of the afternoon reading his work from the office, and around 6:30 started organizing the dinner in the kitchen. Then he built a fire in the living-room fireplace.

Ellie rang the doorbell at two past seven. He had been so sure that she would be punctual, he had started making the martinis at seven sharp.

“This is for you,” Ellie said, handing him a bouquet under wax paper.

Walter took it, smiling. “You're a funny girl.”

“Why?”

“Always bringing a man flowers.”

“They're only weeds out of my parking lot.”

Walter unwrapped the glass vase in the kitchen, and put the flowers in it. The short-stemmed clover and daisies nearly sank in the vase, but he carried them quickly in to her. “This is for you,” he said.

“Oh, Walter! The vase? It's beautiful!”

“Good,” he said, pleased that she really liked it.

Ellie got something else to put the flowers in, and brought the vase back and set it on the end table where she could admire it as they drank their cocktails. She was wearing a dark-gray silk suit he had not seen before, earrings, and the black suede pumps that he preferred. He knew she had made a special effort to look well tonight.

“When are you getting out of this house?” she asked.

“I hadn't thought. Do you think I should?”

“I know you should,” she said.

“I'll talk to somebody soon about it. The Knightsbridge people have already offered to handle it in case I want to get rid of it.” There was also Clara's mother's property in Harrisburg, Walter remembered suddenly. In spite of Clara's prior death, half of it was to go to him by the terms of the mother's will, but Mrs. Haveman had a sister somewhere in Pennsylvania. Walter was going to give the property and the inheritance over to her.

“Are you sleeping?” Ellie asked.

“Enough.” He wanted to go and kiss her, but he waited. “All right, I'll change my house and my job next month. Dick agreed to send in his resignation next Monday. We should be in the new office by December first at least.”

“I'm glad. Dick isn't worried, then, about the story in the paper?”

“No,” Walter said. “It'll have blown over by then.” He felt optimistic and confident. The martini tasted perfect. It was doing just what a martini ought to do. He got up and sat down by Ellie, and put his arms around her.

She kissed him slowly on the lips. Then she got up and walked away. Walter looked at her with surprise.

“Is this the wrong place to ask where I fit in?” she asked, smiling.

“I love you, Ellie. That's where you fit in.” He waited. He knew she didn't expect him to propose a time when they might get married, not this soon. She only wanted reassurance that he loved her. That at least he could give her, he thought. Tonight he felt sure of it.

They finished the pitcher of martinis and made half a pitcher more, then went into the kitchen to start the dinner. The potatoes were already in the oven. Ellie talked about Dwight, her wonder child at school, while she fixed the mushrooms. Dwight was starting to play Mozart sonatas after less than two months of instruction. Walter wondered if he and Ellie would ever have a child who was gifted in music. He was imagining being married to Ellie, imagining her sunning her long smooth legs on the upstairs terrace, or some terrace, in summer, and imagining her head swathed in a woolen scarf when they took walks in the snow in winter. He was imagining introducing her to Chad. She and Chad should like each other.

“You're not listening,” Ellie said, annoyed.

“Yes, I am. About Dwight playing Mozart.”

“That was at least five minutes ago. I think it's time to put the steak on, isn't it?”

The telephone rang as Walter was carrying the steak to the oven. They glanced at each other, then Walter put the steak down and went to answer it.

“Hello. Is this Mr. Stackhouse?”

“Yes.”

“Lieutenant Corby. I wonder if I could see you for a few minutes? It's rather important. It won't take long,” the young affable voice said in a tone so confident that Walter floundered as to how to refuse him.

“You can't talk to me over the phone? Right now I'm—”

“It'll only take a few minutes. I'm right in Benedict.”

“All right,” Walter said.

He went into the kitchen, cursing, yanking the dish-towel apron out of his belt.

“Corby,” Walter said. “He's coming over. He said he'd just be a few minutes, but I think it's better if you aren't here, Ellie.”

She pressed her lips together. “All right,” she said.

She hurried, and Walter did not tell her not to. She and Corby could still run into each other at the door, and Walter didn't want that.

“Why don't you go to the Three Brothers and have another drink, and I'll call you there when he's gone.”

“I don't want another drink,” she said, “but I'll be there.”

He held her coat. “I'm sorry, Ellie.”

“Well—what can you do?” Then she went out the door.

Walter looked around the living-room. He picked up Ellie's martini glass. His glass was in the kitchen. At least the table was not yet set. The telephone rang again, and Walter turned and set the martini glass in the back of the ivy on the mantelpiece.

It was Bill Ireton on the telephone. He told Walter that he had just had a visit from a Lieutenant Corby of the Philadelphia police force. He said that Corby had questioned him about Walter's personal life, his friends around Benedict, and his relations with Clara.

“You know, Walter, I've known you a long time, nearly three years. I haven't got a damn thing to say against you and I didn't. You understand, don't you?” Bill asked.

“Yes. Thanks, Bill.” Walter heard Corby's car.

“I told him you and Clara weren't the happiest people on earth, I couldn't very well deny that, but I said I'd go down the line that you hadn't a thing to do with her death. He asked me if I'd ever known you and Clara to have any violent fights. I said you were the mildest of guys I ever knew.”

Fatal, Walter thought. Bill's voice went on and on in his ear. He wanted to go and empty the ashtray in the living-room.

“He asked me if I knew about the divorce coming up. I told him I did.”

“That's okay. Thanks for telling me. I appreciate it.”

“Is there anything we can do for you, Walter?”

“I don't think so.” The doorbell rang. Walter kept his voice low and unhurried. “I'll call you soon, Bill. Give my best to Betty.” He hung up and went to the door.

“Good evening,” Corby said, taking off his hat. “I'm sorry to intrude like this.”