The Rhinemann Exchange (22 page)

“Hello?”

“
David!
” It was a girl’s voice; low, cultivated at the Plaza. “David
Spaulding!
”

“Who is this?” He wondered for a second if his just-released fantasies were playing tricks on reality.

“
Leslie
, darling! Leslie
Jenner!
My God, it must be nearly
five years!
”

Spaulding’s mind raced. Leslie Jenner was part of the New York scene but not the radio world; she was the up-from-college crowd. Meeting under the clock at the Biltmore; late nights at LaRue; the cotillions—which he’d been invited to, not so much from social bloodlines as for the fact that he was the son of the concert Spauldings. Leslie was Miss Porter’s, Finch and the Junior League.

Only her name had been changed to something else. She had married a boy from Yale. He didn’t remember the name.

“Leslie, this is … well, Jesus, a surprise. How did you know I was here?” Spaulding wasn’t engaging in idle small talk.

“
Nothing
happens in New York that I don’t know about! I have eyes and ears everywhere, darling! A veritable spy network!”

David Spaulding could feel the blood draining from his face; he didn’t like the girl’s joke. “I’m serious, Leslie.… Only because I haven’t called anyone. Not even Aaron. How did you find out?”

“If you must know, Cindy Bonner—she was Cindy Tottle, married Paul Bonner—Cindy was exchanging some dreary Christmas gifts for Paul at Rogers Peet and she
swore
she saw you trying on a suit. Well, you know Cindy! Just too shy for
words …
”

David
didn’t
know Cindy. He couldn’t even recall the
name, much less a face. Leslie Jenner went on as he thought about that.

“… and so she ran to the nearest phone and called me. After all, darling, we
were
a major item!”

If a “major item” described a couple of summer months of weekending at East Hampton and bedding the daughter of the house, then David had to agree. But he didn’t subscribe to the definition; it had been damned transient, discreet and before the girl’s very social marriage.

“I’d just as soon you kept that information from your husband.…”

“Oh,
God
, you poor lamb! It’s
Jenner
, darling, not Hawkwood! Didn’t even keep the
name
. Damned if I would.”

That was it, thought David. She’d married a man named Hawkwood: Roger or Ralph; something like that. A football player, or was it tennis?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.…”

“Richard and I called it quits simply
centuries
ago. It was a
disaster
. The son of a bitch couldn’t even keep his hands off my best friends! He’s in London now; air corps, but very hush-hush, I think. I’m sure the English girls are getting their fill of him … and I do mean fill! I
know!
”

There was a slight stirring in David’s groin. Leslie Jenner was proffering an invitation.

“Well, they’re allies,” said Spaulding humorously. “But you didn’t tell me, how did you find me here?”

“It took exactly four telephone calls, my lamb. I tried the usual: Commodore, Biltmore and the Waldorf; and then I remembered that your dad and mum always stopped off at the Montgomery. Very Old World, darling.… I thought, with reservations simply
hell
, you might have thought of it.”

“You’d make a good detective, Leslie.”

“Only when the object of my detecting is worthwhile, lamb.… We
did
have fun.”

“Yes, we did,” said Spaulding, his thoughts on an entirely different subject. “And we can’t let your memory prowess go to waste. Dinner?”

“If you hadn’t asked, I would have
screamed.
”

“Shall I pick you up at your apartment? What’s the address?”

Leslie hesitated a fraction of a moment. “Let’s meet at a restaurant. We’d never get out of here.”

An invitation, indeed.

David named a small Fifty-first Street cafe he remembered. It was on Park. “At seven thirty? Eight?”

“Seven thirty’s lovely, but not
there
, darling. It closed simply years ago. Why not the Gallery? It’s on Forty-sixth. I’ll make reservations; they know me.”

“Fine.”

“You poor lamb, you’ve been away so
long
. You don’t know
anything
. I’ll take you in tow.”

“I’d like that. Seven thirty then.”

“Can’t wait. And I promise not to cry.”

Spaulding replaced the telephone; he was bewildered—on several levels. To begin with, a girl didn’t call a former lover after nearly four war years without asking—especially in these times—where he’d been, how he was; at least the length of his stay in town. It wasn’t natural, it denied curiosity in these curiosity-prone days.

Another reason was profoundly disturbing.

The last time his parents had been at the Montgomery was in 1934. And he had not returned since then. He’d met the girl in 1936; in October of 1936 in New Haven at the Yale Bowl. He remembered distinctly.

Leslie Jenner couldn’t possibly know about the Montgomery Hotel. Not as it was related to his parents.

She was lying.

The Gallery was exactly as David thought it would be: a lot of deep-red velvet with a generous sprinkling of palms in varying shapes and sizes, reflecting the soft-yellow pools of light from dozens of wall sconces far enough above the tables to make the menus unreadable. The clientele was equally predictable: young, rich, deliberately casual; a profusion of wrinkled eyebrows and crooked smiles and very bright teeth. The voices rose and subsided, words running together, the diction glossy.

Leslie Jenner was there when he arrived. She ran into his arms in front of the cloak room; she held him fiercely, in silence, for several minutes—or it seemed like minutes to Spaulding; at any rate, too long a time. When she tilted her head back, the tears had formed rivulets on her cheeks. The tears were genuine, but there was something—was it the tautness of her full mouth? the eyes themselves?—something artificial about the girl. Or was it him? The years away from places like the Gallery and girls like Leslie Jenner.

In all other respects she was as he remembered her. Perhaps older, certainly more sensual—the unmistakable look of experience. Her dark blonde hair was more a light brown now, her wide brown eyes had added subtlety to her innate provocativeness, her face was a touch lined but still sculptured, aristocratic. And he could feel her body against his; the memories were sharpened by it. Lithe, strong, full breasted; a body that centered on sex. Shaped by it and for it.

“God, God, God! Oh,
David!
” She pressed her lips against his ear.

They went to their table; she held his hand firmly, releasing it only to light a cigarette, taking it back again. They talked rapidly. He wasn’t sure she listened, but she nodded incessantly and wouldn’t take her eyes off him. He repeated the simple outlines of his cover: Italy, minor wounds; they were letting him out to go back into an essential industry where he’d do more good than carrying a rifle. He wasn’t sure how long he’d be in New York. (He was honest about that, he thought to himself. He had no idea how long he’d be in town; he wished he did know.) He was glad to see her again.

The dinner was a prelude to bed. They both knew it; neither bothered to conceal the excitement of reviving the most pleasant of experiences: young sex that was taken in shadows, beyond the reprimands of elders. Enjoyed more because it was prohibited, dangerous.

“Your apartment?” he asked.

“No, lamb. I share it with my aunt, mum’s younger sister. It’s very chic these days to share an apartment; very patriotic.”

The reasoning escaped David. “Then my place,” he said firmly.

“David?” Leslie squeezed his hand and paused before speaking. “Those old family retainers who run the Montgomery, they know so many in our crowd. For instance, the Allcotts have a suite there, so do the Dewhursts.… I have a key to Peggy Webster’s place in the Village. Remember Peggy? You were at their wedding. Jack Webster? You know Jack. He’s in the navy; she went out to see him in San Diego. Let’s go to Peggy’s place.”

Spaulding watched the girl closely. He hadn’t forgotten her odd behavior on the telephone, her lie about the old hotel and his parents. Yet it was possible that his imagination was overworking—the years in Lisbon made one cautious. There could be explanations, memory lapses on his part; but now he was as curious as he was stimulated.

He was very curious. Very stimulated.

“Peggy’s place,” he said.

If there was anything beyond the sexual objective, it escaped him.

Their coats off, Leslie made drinks in the kitchen while David bunched newspapers beneath the fireplace grill and watched the kindling catch.

Leslie stood in the kitchen doorway looking down at him separating the logs, creating an airflow. She held their drinks and smiled. “In two days it’s New Year’s Eve. We’ll jump and call this ours. Our New Year’s. The start of many, I hope.”

“Of many,” he replied, standing up and going to her. He took both glasses, not the one extended. “I’ll put them over here.” He carried them to the coffee table in front of the small couch that faced the fireplace. He turned rapidly, politely to watch her eyes. She wasn’t looking at the glasses. Or his placement of them.

Instead, she approached the fire and removed her blouse. She dropped it on the floor and turned around, her large breasts accentuated by a tight, transparent brassiere that had webbed stitching at the tips.

“Take off your shirt, David.”

He did so and came to her. She winced at his bandages and gently touched them with her fingers. She pressed herself against him, her pelvis firm against his thighs, moving laterally, expertly. He reached around her back and undid the hasps of the brassiere; she hunched slightly as he pulled it away; then she turned, arching her breasts upward into his flesh. He cupped her left breast with his right hand; she reached down, stepping partially away, and undid his trousers.

“The drinks can wait, David. It’s New Year’s Eve. Ours, anyway.”

Still holding her breast, he put his lips to her eyes, her ears. She felt him and moaned.

“Here, David,” she said. “Right here on the floor.” She sank to her knees, her skirt pulled up to her thighs, the tops of her stockings visible.

He lay down beside her and they kissed.

“I remember,” he whispered with a gentle laugh. “The first time; the cottage by the boathouse. The floor. I remember.”

“I wondered if you would. I’ve never forgotten.”

It was only one forty-five in the morning when he took her home. They had made love twice, drunk a great deal of
Jack and Peggy Webster’s good whisky and spoken of the “old days” mostly. Leslie had no inhibitions regarding her marriage. Richard Hawkwood, ex-husband, was simply not a man who could sustain a permanent relationship. He was a sexual glutton as long as the sex was spread around; not much otherwise. He was also a failure—as much as his family would allow—in the business world. Hawkwood was a man brought up to enjoy fifty thousand a year with the ability to make, perhaps, six.

The war was created, she felt, for men like Richard. They would excel in it, as her ex-husband had done. He should “go down in flames” somewhere, exiting brilliantly rather than return to the frustrations of civilian inadequacy. Spaulding thought that was harsh; she claimed she was being considerate. And they laughed and made love.

Throughout the evening David kept alert, waiting for her to say something, reveal something, ask something unusual. Anything to clarify—if nothing else—the reasons behind her earlier lies about finding him. There was nothing.

He asked her again, claiming incredulity that she would remember his parents and the Montgomery. She stuck to her infallible memory, adding only that “love makes any search more thorough.”

She was lying again; he knew that. What they had was not love.

She left him in the taxi; she didn’t want him to come up. Her aunt would be asleep; it was better this way.

They’d meet again tomorrow. At the Websters’. Ten o’clock in the evening; she had a dinner date she’d get rid of early. And she’d break her engagement for the real New Year’s Eve. They’d have the whole day to themselves.

As the doorman let her in and the taxi started up toward Fifth Avenue, he thought for the first time that Fairfax had him beginning his assignment at Meridian Aircraft the day after tomorrow. New Year’s Eve. He expected it would be a half-day.

It was strange. New Year’s Eve. Christmas.

He hadn’t even thought about Christmas. He’d remembered to send his parents’ gifts to Santiago, but he’d done that before his trip to the north country. To the Basque Provinces and Navarre.

Christmas had no meaning. The Santa Clauses ringing their clinking bells on the New York streets, the decorations in the store windows—none had meaning for him.

He was sad about that. He had always enjoyed the holidays.

David paid the driver, said hello to the Montgomery night clerk and took the elevator to his floor. He got off and approached his door. Automatically, because his eyes were tired, he flipped his finger above the Do Not Disturb sign beneath the lock.

Then he felt the wood and looked down, punching his cigarette lighter for better vision.

The field thread was gone.

Second nature and the instructions from Fairfax to stay alert had caused him to “thread” his hotel room. Strands of invisible tan and black silk placed in a half-dozen locations, that if missing or broken meant a trespasser.

He carried no weapon and he could not know if anyone was still inside.

He returned to the elevator and pushed the button. He asked the operator if he had a passkey; his door wouldn’t open. The man did not; he was taken to the lobby.

The night clerk obliged, ordering the elevator operator to remain at the desk while he went to the aid of Mr. Spaulding and his difficult lock.

As the two men walked out of the elevator and down the corridor, Spaulding heard the distinct sound of a latch being turned, snapped shut quietly but unmistakably. He rapidly turned his head in both directions, up and down the corridor, trying to locate the origin of the sound.