The Incredible Charlie Carewe (16 page)

He ordered an elaborate supper from the waiter who arrived at his request. With the large menu in one hand and a drink in the other, he paced the room, while the waiter patiently wrote, crossed out, and rewrote his order.

Suddenly Charlie said, “I’d forgotten! The country’s civilized again. Have you been able to engage a what-do-you-call-it—a sommelier? And more important what is the state of your wine cellar?”

“Excellent, sir. We have been anticipating repeal for some time—I can have Mr. John call you when I——”

Charlie smiled warmly, reaching into his wallet. “Ask him to come up—I hate telephoning about so serious a matter as the choice of wine——”

The waiter palmed the ten-spot as though it were a paltry quarter, but his “Certainly, Mr. Carewe,” indicated that the entire staff would be as prompt, efficient, and eager to serve Mr. Carewe as the most dedicated slaves.

To Charlie, an empty wallet was like being naked in the streets. Ridiculous and unnecessary. He woke around eleven the following morning, with only a slight dryness in his mouth, a mild headache. That was the trouble with liquor for him, he thought. He could never drink enough to have a really good time. For a while the world was simply enchanting, filled with fascinating people, and then without warning, all he wanted was sleep. The night before was a bit hazy. He remembered giving some money to a bellboy for a phone number. Then a “Mr. and Mrs. Adams” had been announced. The man, short, thickset, conservatively dressed except for a large diamond ring on his little finger, had stayed only long enough to down a quick drink of brandy. He spoke very little, except to explain to Charlie that they worked the big hotels this way, so the house dicks wouldn’t get curious, and that he’d find “Pearlie” lots of fun. Somehow “Pearlie” was an extremely vague figure. He looked over at the twin bed beside him and it was empty, the pillow hollowed, and the coverings thrown back only a little as though the occupant had slid out from under them, quietly. On the desk he found a note in a rounded childish hand on the hotel stationery.

“Thanks, Charlie,” it read. “You’re real cute. I had the best night’s sleep I’ve had in months. Call me any time you come back to our town. Love, Pearl.” His wallet was quite empty. Charlie laughed loudly, remembering. He had been so tired that nothing but the comfortable routine of preparing for sleep had occupied him. He had carefully showered and brushed his teeth, put on pajamas, and crawled into the other bed, muttering, “Night, Pearlie,” and had been asleep in a moment.

With beaming alacrity, the wallet was filled again, in recognition of the solidity back of Charlie’s flourishing signature. The desk clerk, the bell captain, the doorman all beamed at Charlie, wished him well, and assured him that they would all be glad to see him again sometime.

The world was a wonderful place, thought Charlie, as the miles rolled away beneath him. The check at the hotel would probably bounce. He always drew out his money from the bank as soon as it was deposited by his father, because a fat wallet was pleasant and more impressive than figures in a bankbook. His father would cover for him, of course, and on January second he would be twenty-one, and then the whole lovely hunk—well, half of it, anyway; there was the other half to be turned over when he was an old man of thirty—would be his for the asking at the whisk of a pen. He didn’t want anyone to know where he was for a while. Freedom was too sweet. He had left his home address at the hotel, so the check would be returned there. He had made it out for sixteen hundred eighty-two dollars and seventy-eight cents, after apparently making some quick calculation in his check stub at the cashier’s desk. “Like to keep the balance in round figures,” he smiled, and the clerk smiled indulgently at this harmless eccentricity.

It was snowing again and the windshield wiper kept a bouncy rhythm to Charlie’s whistling tune. There was very little traffic, the wind kept blowing spindrifts of snow from the piled-up shoulders of the highway. He was enclosed in a white world, and his blood sang to the call of strange gods, the call that was dearer to his heart than anything else. He pulled up to the side for a moment so that he might fill and light a pipe, and in the momentary silence, sudden gusts whipped at the canvas of the convertible’s top, sounding like the sail on the
Vee Cee
when she was lulled into the wind. Around the pipestem he grumbled an old resentment at the reminder. “Stinkin’ little skiff! Just wait, Miss V.C., someday I’ll hand you aboard the schooner
Double Cee
—
if
there’s room for you!” He caressed the smooth ivory ball of the gearshift which bore the design of two written notes of music budding from a single line. He wondered, delighted that he had never appreciated their full significance before. It had simply seemed to be a clever way of putting his initials together, but now it was as though in precognition he had put down the fate of this day. “Up the scale, Charlie boy—up the ladder! Boy, am I going to show ’em!” Just whom he was going to show what, and how he was going to go about showing it, was not important. But the multitudes were already saluting him in awe, the world gasped in amazement at having produced such a genius, and he was weary from acclaim. He meshed the gears and the car skidded back into the road. The tires sang, the wind sang, and the call of his gods sang and moved him swiftly onward toward the city.

The voice of a tug on the East River hoarsely demanded the right of way. Alma Beatrice Shelley’s nose was flattened into a tiny shape against the streaming windows of her important world, an apartment in the East Seventies overlooking the river. Her breath steamed a small area as she echoed the tug, “Hoo-hoo. Hoo-hoo!” A strong pair of hands lifted her from the floor and up to a white starched shoulder. “I’ll hoo-hoo you, young lady, right off to bed—let’s say good night to Mommy and Daddy, now.”

“I want Daddy to ride me in—take me ride, Daddy!”

“Coming up, sweetheart—one taxi, coming up.” Jeff was wheeling himself through the dining-room entrance into the big living room. Behind him, Virginia and Zoë Appleby were lingering over their coffee. Virginia interrupted the flow of conversation to call out, “Come say ‘night’ to Zoë first, Alma, like a good girl,” but the child was already being swung up onto Jeff’s shoulders, squealing, “Go fast, Daddy, go fast!”

Jeff laughed, “Once around the park, and then to bed. Okay?”

To Alma, her father’s means of locomotion was infinitely more fascinating than that of the other people in her world, for the invalid chair was part of his personality. She had no recollection of a time when he walked, tall and strong, nor did she remember the long gap in time when he was gone, for she had been safe and sound and warm and happy in her crib. In another part of the city her father had lain, equally helpless and cared for, battling through bitterness and shock, trying not to cry out, “Why
me!
” And coming through the clouds of pain and bewilderment to find an overwhelming gratitude, for Virginia and his baby, his home, the fact that they would never have to worry about money as did so many other tragic victims of polio, and the fact that he could still someday design the most beautiful buildings and homes and bridges in the world right in his own sky-swept studio.

The “taxi ride” was all too short for Alma, once around the living room, passing out kisses en route to Mommy and pretty Zoë, who smelled so delicious, through the hall to Daddy’s studio, where the rain was thundering on the skylight, and splashing on the terrace, beyond the french windows, then back into Miss Archer’s waiting, firm hands. Another hug and a slippery kiss all around. It would be fun to start all over again, but Miss Archer was unshakable about the fact that she was sleepy. Yawning, suddenly drooping onto the capable shoulder, Alma had to agree with her.

“More coffee, Jeff?” asked his wife.

“After that, I think I need a slug of brandy!” he laughed. “That baby is getting heavy as an ox. Isn’t she too fat, Virge?”

“Fat! You’re mad. Actually she has very small bones, she weighs just a bit under for her age——”

“Okay, okay, Mama, she’s perfect, sorry I mentioned it but she does have the feel of a small round Rubens.”

“Her face is pure Botticelli,” put in Zoë, thus winning a smile from Virginia. “I’m sure Charlie and I would have children as beautiful, although probably the girls would be dark,” she said, touching the pale gold of her hair.

“Counting your chicks already?” smiled Jeff, as he poured a bit of brandy into each of their glasses. “If persistence is any factor in winning the heart of a Carewe, you’ve got it. Personally, I never found it necessary, thank God,” and Virginia leaned to his kiss.

“Just wait and see, my friend. I’ll make a bet with you that you’ll be best man at our wedding.” Zoë had smooth cheeks which cracked into deep dimples when she smiled or laughed, and it was no small part of her charm. At twenty-eight, Zoë Appleby had more than her share of the world’s gifts bestowed on her by her widowed father. She had lived like a princess, and taken for granted that her wishes were everybody’s command. Graciously she had turned down the offers of marriage from the money-seekers. She could spot them a mile off, after a few stern lessons from her father, and her own experience had hardened her and made her shrewd in her summing up of the males in her coterie. She could have had any of them at the beckoning of a bejeweled little finger—but she wanted Charlie, and Charlie seemed indifferent. At the moment her campaign was in full swing. She had made herself an intimate of the Shelleys, quite frankly telling Virginia that she wanted her co-operation in getting Charlie to see that she would make an ideal wife for him.

“I’m tired,” she had said, “of simply being an ‘item’ in Cholly Knickerbocker, of dangling ornamentally from the arm of the boy genius of Wall Street.”

Virginia and Jeff had done their best to dissuade her. “He’ll never have any stability, Zoë.”

“Who needs it? Besides there’s something about the word ‘stability’ that sounds dull.”

Virginia put in, “I love him, but——”

“Exactly, you love him,
but
—I love him without any buts.”

“Well,
I
don’t, frankly,” said Jeff. “I find it difficult even to respect him—although I admit I am charmed by him when he’s around. But he’s a—a
disappointing
person, Zoë. Walter and Beatrice, his own parents, are either on a mountaintop or a toboggan, they live in a kind of tense fear at what he’ll do next.”

“They bore him, darling!”

“I’ll let that pass—for the moment.” Jeff was beginning to despair, the girl was completely blind, apparently. “Have you seen that office of his? It looks like something in the movies; that Gothic board room! I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a pin spot to light his face when he is presiding. And the girls—they look as if they had been promoted when he gives them a pat on the fanny!”

Zoë was calmly surveying the ice-blue tips of her sandals. Easily she folded her hands behind her head in Charlie’s relaxed “don’t give a damn” gesture. She smiled, and the dimples appeared. Her breasts tightened and lifted with her arms, the softly draped sleeves of her blue crepe dress falling away and stirring the delicate fragrance of her custom-made perfume. “Neither of you dear people,” she said, “seem to get the idea at all. I
know
Charlie. I know all the things he seems to be. Undependable, thoughtless—even heartless at times. But I have the strength to give him purpose. I can protect him from himself. He is a lousy businessman—really—I know that. Intuitive, sharp, he doubles, halves, triples and loses money for accounts that make conservative investors shudder, and then makes it all back again. He might lose his shirt completely someday—but maybe I can prevent that. I love him because money seems to have no value to him——”

“Oh, now, Zoë!” Virginia interrupted. “What would he do—what would he be—without it?”

“He’ll never be without it, Virgie love, because somebody will always be around to take care of him. I want to be that person. I want you to make him see that.”

The rain had stopped. Deep in the canyon of the street below the faint tooting of horns could be heard again. Jeff and Virginia looked at each other over the coffee table, in quiet hopelessness which Jeff tried to express. “What can we say to you, Zoë? You’re in love and determined to marry Charlie. All we can do is say to Charlie that he’s a lucky guy.” He smoothed the tartan cashmere over his knees.

“Damn!” cried Virginia from her corner of the big couch. She held up a shapeless hunk of fluff. “I forgot to decrease, and now I’ve got to take the whole thing back about six rows. Catch!” she said to Jeff, tossing him the ball of yarn. “Wind it up while I pull out this mess. I don’t know why I persist in making itty bitty things, when my fingers are meant to do nothing but pound a typewriter.”

“How’s the book coming?” asked Zoë.

“Don’t get me started, Zoë, you’d find it dull. I’ve just uncovered some evidence, about Richard III and Henry VII, that makes me feel my historical novel is going to turn into a first-class whodunit.”

“Sounds marvelous, darling,” but her heart wasn’t in it, for Zoë was repairing her lipstick in a small gold mirror, and wondering how to get the conversation back onto Charlie, without being too much of a bore. She rose and went to the tall windows, staring out at the lights and the blackness that was the river.

Behind her, Jeff was winding the wool too tightly—as it pulled taut between them, Virginia looked up quickly to protest, to find Jeff’s eyes on her, teasing, warm. “I love you so much,” he whispered; then, as she shook her head in a smile, he turned to Zoë. “Helps, doesn’t it?”

Zoë spun back to them, the dimples gone, her eyes sparkling with tears. “Helps what, for God’s sake!” The two took no notice of the heartache in her voice.

Jeff went on, “To look at water—to spread your thoughts over it like a net.”

Zoë looked out at the river again, sniffling. “My net doesn’t haul up any fishes, that’s the trouble—solutions, I mean.”

Virginia said, “When Jeff and I were on our honeymoon in Europe we were always gravitating to the call of watery vistas.”