The Return of the Black Widowers (37 page)
With a look of settled dissatisfaction on his face, Nemerson dialed, waited a moment, then said, "Marilyn, this is—
What? You did? Where?
But how—never mind, dear, as soon as I'm through here I'll come over."
He hung up the receiver and turned to Rubin. "Let me see that piece of paper, Manny."
Rubin looked at Henry, who nodded. Rubin handed Nemerson the folded paper. Nemerson opened it, stared at it for a long moment, then fumbled his way to a chair and sat down.
"All right, Henry," he said. "How did you know?"
"You told us yourself, Mr. Nemerson. You said you were on the point of leaving your fiancée’s apartment, at which time you said you saw the umbrella on the kitchen table. Your orderly way of handling the umbrella meant, to me, that you must have picked it up and held it in your hand as you were accustomed to doing. In fact, you said yourself that you were under the impression that you
had
picked it up. You said you could have sworn to it.
"Your fiancée then suggested you help yourself to a cold beer
and you were willing. On a steamy day like today, the beer could only have been in the refrigerator. You opened the refrigerator door and, I imagine, found the beer cans a trifle awkwardly placed. You therefore put down your umbrella on one of the refrigerator shelves while you reached for the beer.
"Forgetting the umbrella, you closed the refrigerator door and drank your beer. In your later search for the umbrella, you never thought to look inside the refrigerator for it. It is simply not a place one would normally think to look for an umbrella.
"However, when your fiancée set about preparing a tuna fish salad for herself, she had to obtain the ingredients from the refrigerator. When she opened the refrigerator door, she must have been astonished to see the umbrella there but she had no way of reaching you."
Nemerson held up the folded piece of paper dreamily. "The word Henry wrote was 'refrigerator.' "
Gonzalo said, "Absolutely great, Henry."
"Thank you, Mr. Gonzalo," said Henry.
Nemerson said, "Now why didn't I think of it?"
Henry said, "As I said, a refrigerator isn't a natural place for an umbrella, sir."
"But you reasoned it out, Henry."
"Yes, sir," said Henry, "but I did it in the cool, unimpassioned aftermath of the event. Had I been caught up in the immediate unexplained loss, I, too, would have been tempted to wonder about the possible existence of a space warp."
T |
he monthly banquets of the Black Widowers were never models of quiet and serenity, but on this occasion things were unusually noisy. Where, usually, one or another of the members was in a testy mood and made his views known with remarkable vigor, this was one of those rare times when all the Black Widowers were remarkably vehement. It seemed next to impossible for any one of them to complete a sentence or for any listener to determine who was saying what.
"I tell you that when we have a pipsqueak dope-runner like Noriega—"
"Pipsqueak? Why worry about pipsqueaks? What about the situation in South Africa, where we seem remarkably adjusted to—"
"Never mind South Africa. Panama is in our backyard—"
"You make it sound like Pennsylvania. It's a good—"
"I'm talking about the Panama Canal—"
"The less we talk about how we got it in the first place, the better—"
"Look, all of you are missing the point. The drug problem is a matter of demand. The supply—"
"What are the farmers supposed to grow? Coca plants are the only crop—"
"It's good old free enterprise, good capitalist doctrine—"
"Since when have you been such a yodeler on the mountaintops for free enterprise?"
Arnold Kriss, the guest on this occasion, listened gravely, his eyes traveling from one speaker to another. He had a round and
247
chubby face that made him look younger than he was, and curly brown hair that showed no signs of thinning. The well-cared-for fingers of his right hand drummed softly on the tabletop, making way briefly to allow that best of all waiters, Henry, to place the chocolate mousse before him.
Kriss turned to Mario Gonzalo, host for the occasion, who, mindful of his hostly dignity, had contributed very little to the hot discussion. Kriss said, "How long has this club existed, Mario?"
"It was founded during World War Two. Before my time, of course."
Kriss said, in a tone of deep envy, "You fellows must love each other."
Gonzalo turned his attention to Kriss with a look of wonder. "Are you kidding, Arnie?"
"Kidding? Not at all."
"Where do you get this love shtick? We're yelling at each other like crazy."
"But that's what I mean. No one's bothering to be polite. Everyone's saying what he wants to say without regard for anyone's feelings. You can't help but get the idea that there's complete trust among all of you. Everyone knows that nothing he'll say will in any way disrupt a friendship. That's
love.
Come on, Mario, is there anyone here who wouldn't lend you money if you needed it, or put himself out to help if you were in trouble?"
Gonzalo thought about it a moment, his eyes traveling from one squabbler to another. Then he said, "I guess you're right, Arnie. I can count on every one of them, but each one would be so sarcastic at my expense if I came to him with a sob-story that I think I'd try out a handful of strangers first."
"You would not. You'd go to them like a shot." Kriss turned his attention to the chocolate mousse.
As the members were drinking their coffee almost immediately afterward (or, in the case of Kriss, herb tea), Gonzalo rattled his water glass with his spoon.
"Gentlemen of the Black Widowers," he said, "you've all met
my guest, Arnold Kriss, and you all know he's a cellist with the Philharmonic, probably the best cellist it has had in at least thirty years—"
"What is this?" interrupted Thomas Trumbull indignantly, the lines on his tanned forehead turning it into a washboard. "Are you doing the grilling yourself?"
"What I'm doing," said Gonzalo, "is eliminating some of the things there's no point in talking about."
Geoffrey Avalon, hunching his thick eyebrows low, interrupted in his turn to say, "I don't think you should do any eliminating, Mario. I have some questions I'd like to ask about the internal workings of the Philharmonic."
"Maybe we'll get to that" said Gonzalo, "but I'm the host and I'm using host's privilege to turn the discussion in the direction I think proper. Arnie Kriss, as I was about to say, is a celebrity—"
At this, Kriss twisted uncomfortably in his seat and said, "Not really, Mario. I don't have the kind of following the Beatles had, or, in fact, that any third-rate rock star would have."
"Among people like
us
you're a celebrity," said Gonzalo, "and that's all we care about. So we'll take all that as given. Now it's customary for the host to appoint a griller, but I never heard that a host can't appoint himself as griller—"
There was at once a tumult, and Emmanuel Rubin raised an indignant voice, "It's never been done!"
"Just because something's never been done doesn't mean it can't be done, Manny. I'm host tonight and I've got the right to run this banquet as I wish. And I wish to be the griller. I have some questions to ask of Arnie—"
"How can you be an objective griller?" demanded Rubin. "You're a personal friend of the grillee."
"So what? I still want to ask the questions. Host's privilege."
James Drake peered through the smoke of his cigarette and said, "Let's give Mario his way. When he's asked his questions, we can ask sensible ones."
"I second those sentiments," said Roger Halsted in his soft voice. "Go ahead, Mario. Shoot."
"All right, I will." Gonzalo sat back in his chair and straightened his somewhat garish tie. "Arnie," he said, "you're a celebrity among people who have taste. You've been profiled in
The New Yorker
and you've played at a command performance at the White House. You've got it made. So what's the matter? Don't you have any friends?"
Kriss straightened in his chair and looked indignant. "Of course I have friends. What do you think? What kind of question is that?"
"It's a Mario question," muttered Rubin in ax low voice.
"Well, yes," said Gonzalo, "one would think you have friends. I'm a friend of yours—at least I like to think so. But then why do you envy us?"
"Envy you?"
"During dinner, while we were all screaming our heads off, you said to me that we must all love each other, and there was envy in your voice, as though you had no friends who loved you in the same way."
"Love?" Halsted's glance went around the table. "I wouldn't call it love."
"But Arnie did," said Gonzalo. "He said we had the complete freedom to yell at each other and curse each other without fearing anyone would resent it, and that that was love. So I want to know what's behind that, Arnie."
"Nothing," said Kriss, his voice rising in pitch.
"Don't give me that, Arnie. I told you the conditions of the dinner and you agreed to them. We can ask you any questions within the bounds of good taste and human decency and you've got to give a complete and truthful answer. Everything you say will be held completely confidential by us—that includes Henry, who is also a member of the Black Widowers."
Kriss said uneasily, "Well—"
Trumbull growled, "Go ahead, Mr. Kriss. If you have something
on your mind, you might as well spill it. You'll probably feel better."
Kriss nodded. "All right. Maybe I will. I'm not sure how to put it, though. I've been in music all my life. Child prodigy and all that. I can't remember anything but concerts and moving that bow back and forth. Don't get me wrong. I love music. It's my life. It's just that every once in a while I get tired. Not of music, but of musicians.—I wouldn't want that repeated, by the way."
"It won't be," said Gonzalo, "I promised you that. Why are you tired of musicians?"
"Almost all the time all I have around me are musicians—that's only natural, even inevitable—but their talk gets monotonous. They've got their special insecurities and jealousies. After a while, none of them has anything to say that I haven't heard a thousand times before. I suppose it's that way in any profession that's deep enough to consume a person.
"Now, you Black Widowers are all what we might call professional men." His eye went from one to another. "Mario's an artist, and if I remember my introductions correctly Mr. Avalon is a patent lawyer, Mr. Trumbull is a code expert, Mr. Halsted is a mathematics teacher, Mr. Drake is a chemist, and Mr. Rubin is a mystery writer. No two alike. And that's good, because if you were all chemists, or all lawyers, or all writers, I have a notion you'd get tired of each other a lot faster."
Halsted said, "You know, Mr. Kriss, you can seek out friends who are not musicians."
"I do," said Kriss energetically. "I do my best to get away from them. It's why I value my friendship with Mario here. And about a year ago, I found something else, too. By sheer circumstance, I met a group of men who play poker regularly and I accepted an invitation to join them. There are five of us now, and we meet every Tuesday night for the game. It circulates among our apartments. Every five weeks or so the game is at mine, and the whole thing is an incredibly welcome relief. Sometimes there's an additional player or two, and sometimes one of us is missing,
but there are five regulars—including," he added with satisfaction,
me.
"What kind of people are they?" asked Avalon. "Not musicians, of course."
"Absolutely not. In fact—" Kriss hesitated. "Actually, they're working people. Salt of the earth and all that, but no pretensions to intellectual activity at all. We just play poker and talk about football and drink beer and tell funny stories. In a way, I don't fit in perfectly, and I don't play the best poker in the world—I lose more often than I win—but I can afford the losses and they accept me. They know I'm a musician, but I never talk about it. They may think I blow a penny whistle. For a few hours each week I'm a man and not a musician. It's wonderful."
