The victim (23 page)

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THAT fall, one of the editors of Harkavy's paper, Antique Horizons, went to a national magazine and, through Harkavy, Leventhal got the vacancy. Characteristically, Beard at first declined to meet the offer and then went two hundred dollars higher, but Leventhal left him. Things went well for him in the next few years. The consciousness of an unremitting daily fight, though still present, was fainter and less troubling. His health was better, and there were changes in his appearance. Something recalcitrant seemed to have left him; he was not exactly affable, but his obstinately unrevealing expression had softened. His face was paler and there were some gray areas in his hair, in spite of which he looked years younger. And, as time went on, he lost the feeling that he had, as he used to say, "got away with it," his guilty relief, and the accompanying sense of infringement. He was thankful for his job at Antique Horizons; he didn't underestimate it; there weren't many better jobs in the trade field. He was lucky, of course. It was understandable that a man suffered when he did not have a place. On the other hand, it was pitiful that he should envy the man who had one. In Leventhal's mind, this was not even a true injustice, for how could you call anything so haphazard an injustice? It was a shuffle, all, all accidental and haphazard. And somewhere, besides, there was a wrong emphasis. As though a man really could be made for, say, Burke-Beard and Company, as though that were true work instead of a delaying maze to be gone through daily in a misery so habitual that one became absentminded about it. This was wrong. But the error rose out of something very mysterious, namely, a conviction or illusion that at the start of life, and perhaps even before, a promise had been made. In thinking of this promise, Leventhal compared it to a ticket, a theater ticket. And with his ticket, a man entitled to an average seat might feel too shabby for the dress circle or sit in it defiantly and arrogantly; another, entitled to the best in the house, might cry out in rage to the usher who led him to the third balcony. And how many more stood disconsolately in the rain and snow, in the long line of those who could only expect to be turned away? But no, this was incorrect. The reality was different. For why should tickets, mere tickets, be promised if promises were being made--tickets to desirable and undesirable places? There were more important things to be promised. Possibly there was a promise, since so many felt it. He himself was almost ready to affirm that there was. But it was misunderstood. Occasionally he thought about Allbee and wondered whether Williston knew what had happened to him. But he had written to Williston, returning the ten dollars which, for one reason and another, he had failed to give Allbee. In his letter he made a special effort to explain his position, and, realizing that Williston believed he had a tendency to exaggerate, he gave a very careful and moderate account of what had taken place. Allbee, he said, "tried a kind of suicide pact without getting my permission first." He might have added, fairly, "without intending to die himself." For there were reasonable grounds to suspect this. But no reply came from Williston, and Leventhal was too proud to write a second letter; that would be too much like pleading. Perhaps Williston felt that he had kept the money from Allbee out of malice. Leventhal made it as clear as he could that he had had no opportunity to pass it on to him. "Does he think I'm that cheap?" he asked himself resentfully. Repeatedly, he went over all that he had done during those confusing weeks. Hadn't he tried to be fair? Didn't he intend to help him? He considered that he and Allbee were even, by any honest standards. Much difference ten dollars would have made! At first he was deeply annoyed; later he prepared some things to say to Williston if they should meet. But the opportunity never came. From time to time he heard rumors about Allbee. Invariably, however, he heard them from people who did not know him personally, and he could never be sure that the man to whom they referred actually was Allbee. "Some journalist, from New England, originally, who hit the bottle," etcetera. In three years a dozen or so stories reached him, no two of which agreed. He did not attempt to follow up any of them. Although they always interested him, the truth was that he did not want to know precisely where he was and what he was doing. He believed that he had continued to go down. By now he was in an institution, perhaps, in some hospital, or even already lying in Potter's Field. Leventhal did not care to think too much or too literally about it. But one night he saw Allbee again. It happened that a dealer who had furnished some of the antiques for a play that was running on Broadway gave Leventhal two passes. He was reluctant to go; Mary, however, insisted. Mary was pregnant; she was expecting the baby in a month, and she would be tied down, she argued, for a long time to come. Leventhal said that the theater would be very warm--this was early June and prematurely hot--but offered no real opposition. The evening of the play he came home early. (They had moved to the uptown end of Central Park West, closer to the Porto Rican slum than to the blazoned canopies of the Sixties and Seventies.) During dinner he was heavy eyed. But before he had finished his dessert, Mary was clearing the table. He washed, shaved for the second time that day, and put on a Palm Beach suit, breaking it out of the brown paper wrapper in which the cleaner had sealed it eight months ago. The trousers were a little tight and short, for during the preceding winter he had put on weight. The subway was hot enough; the theater was suffocating. Leventhal sat and endured the play. He had no taste for plays in general, and this was sentimental and untrue--a complicated love affair in a Renaissance palace. He held Mary's hand. In the refulgence of the stage, he saw drops of moisture on her forehead, under the thick loop of her braid, and on her nose. Her skin looked very pure, and his heart rose as he watched her, intent on the play. Presently he brought his eyes back to the stage. His own dark face was damp, and his tight suit was already crumpled; his collar was soaked with sweat. At the first curtain he quickly got to his feet and guided Mary through the crowd to the lobby. An usher opened the doors to the sidewalk, and they walked out. The tavern adjoining the theater was filling up. Leventhal and Mary lit cigarettes and gazed into the street and upward at the glow of yellow glass that passed into the haze. The afternoon had been almost tropical. A few large drops of rain had fallen; the air was moist, odorous, and black; one felt it like a soft weight. There were night clubs and restaurants in the block, and the traffic was heavy. Suddenly a taxi cut a dangerous curve from the far side of the street and made an abrupt, pitching stop in front of the theater. There was a terrific croaking of horns behind it. The door flung open and a woman was handed out. Something about the queerness of existence, always haunting Leventhal at a short distance, came very close to him when he saw her escort's face over her shoulder in the faint light. The glass slide in the roof of the cab was drawn aside, and the top of a straw hat circled and shone in the opening. The woman left the running board with a little bound, holding her silk scarf to her throat with one hand and gathering her skirt up with the other. Slender and long-legged, she walked with a somewhat free stride, elegant and yet slightly awkward. There were jewels beneath the scarf and on her fingers. Her painted nails looked purple under the frosted light of the marquee. She stood with her back to the street, irritated, holding a small, heavy, glittering bag. The man lingered, for some reason, in the cab. Mary touched Leventhal's arm. "Do you recognize her?" she whispered. But Leventhal was trying to see her companion. "Isn't that Yvonne Crane?" "Who?" "The actress." "I don't know," he said, looking blankly. "Is it?" "She's still perfectly beautiful," said Mary with admiration. "How do they stay looking so young?" The woman, after waiting awhile, turned and said in a low, harsh tone, "Come on. Will you come out of there?" The man inside shouted quarrelsomely, "He took us the long way around. Does he think I don't know the city? I'm no greenhorn here." They did not catch the woman's next words, but they heard the driver, laconic and confident, and then the escort, crying out laughingly, "Don't give me that... That's for the visiting fat boys." The woman opened her purse and threw a bill to the driver. Leventhal, when he heard the voice, was certain that the man was Allbee, and, with a rigid face and a look approaching horror in his eyes, he waited for him to appear. Then Allbee stepped to the curb, saying, "You shouldn't have done that." The cab started away with its open door flapping; the driver, without slowing up, reached back and slammed it. Leventhal had a close view of Allbee as the two walked into the theater. He was wearing a white dinner jacket. A flower, pinned erratically, swung from his lapel; he pressed his hat under his arm and strode forward, his large shoulders stiffly raised, swaggering and gallant. His cheeks were red and shining. He was laughing into his companion's pretty but nervously severe face. He seemed to be pushing her playfully, and it was evident from the set of her arms that she did not wish to be pushed. "I don't recognize him," said Mary. "But I'm sure she's Yvonne Crane. I've seen her picture a hundred times. Don't you remember her?" Throughout the second act, Leventhal peered round at the boxes. He could see no more than the color of a face in the radiance thrown back from the stage, or, occasionally, the black shape of a head rising near the red ball of an exit light, or moving its shadow across the obscure shine of the rails. He thought that they must be sitting in a box. The woman might or might not be Yvonne Crane, though Mary was probably right. She was, in any case, a wealthy woman; and Allbee looked more than moderately prosperous in the dinner jacket and the silk-seamed formal trousers. To say nothing of the flower. The flower struck Leventhal in a very curious way as a mark of something extraordinary, barbaric, rich, even decadent. "Yes, he's gone places," Leventhal mused. "And that woman, whoever she is, he's got that woman under his thumb." None of the rumors had described him as so well off. "And here I had him dead and buried in Potter's Field. Dead. But imagine!" He tugged a handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped his neck and chin. The lights came to life in the arches, causing him to squint and frown. The curtain was swooping down. There was applause. He had not noticed that the act was ending. The orchestra began a march and, more hurriedly than the first time, he helped Mary rise. He was lighting her cigarette, looking everywhere for Allbee, when, over her head, he caught sight of him on the stairs. He was alone, and, widening his eyes, he smiled at Leventhal and raised his hand with stiffly spread fingers in a gesture he did not understand. Mary spoke to him. Utterly confused, he answered something. She repeated what she had said. She was asking for her compact, which he had in his pocket. She was going to the ladies' lounge. He hastily got it out and gave it to her. His expression seemed to puzzle her, and she glanced at him sharply before turning away. As she passed Allbee on the stairs, he gave her pregnant figure an appraising look. Leventhal walked out of the lobby. He was aware that Allbee was coming up to him, but he did not raise his eyes until he heard him speak. "Hello, Leventhal." The low, thick voice with its old tone of complicity, the big, obtrusive figure in the white jacket, disturbed him. "Hello," he answered nervously. "I saw you when we were coming in." "I didn't think you did." "I knew it would be all right with you if I acted like a total stranger, so it's up to me, and I'd feel like a terrible fool if I didn't speak to you... You saw me, didn't you?" "Yes." "And who I was with?" "The actress? My wife recognized her." "Oh, your wife," he said politely. "Very handsome. Very fetching, even in her condition." He began to smile broadly, displaying his teeth. With his hands on his hips, he bent forward slightly. "Congratulations. I see you're following orders. 'Increase and multiply.' " Leventhal answered him with a dull, short nod. It seemed to him that Allbee had no real desire to be malicious; he was merely obedient to habit. He might have been smiling at himself and making an appeal of a sort for understanding. On nearer sight, Allbee did not look good. His color was an unhealthy one. Leventhal had the feeling that it was the decay of something that had gone into his appearance of well-being, something intimate. There was very little play in the deepened wrinkles around his eyes. They had a fabric quality, crumpled and blank. A smell of whisky came from him. "You haven't changed much," said Allbee. "I wasn't the one that was going to change so much." "Ah, that. Well, do I still look the same to you?" "You still drink." "Ever since I saw you, I've been wondering whether you'd mention that. You're true to form." He grinned, but he was somewhat hurt. "No, I only take it socially because everybody else does." "You look successful." "Oh," he said lightly. "Success is a big word. You ought to be careful how you use it." "What do you do?" "Just now I'm squiring Miss Crane around. The columnists say we're friends, when they bother to mention her. She's not the drawing card she used to be. You probably know. Well, she doesn't want much public attention now, or she'd be seen with someone more celebrated. But she doesn't care. She's glad all that professional business is over for her and she can live more quietly. She's actually a very intelligent person. We're both a little lost, out there on the Coast." Leventhal nodded again. "Oh, yes. She's real nobility. She's really fine. Queenly, if you know what I mean. Some of those women become loathsome when their popularity dies down. They live like criminals. They want to make up for all those years under the public eye, I guess." "So... I congratulate you too," Leventhal murmured. "She's not Flora, of course... My wife." His continued smile gave a touch of cynicism to the sensational, terrible look of pain that rose to his eyes. Leventhal saw that he could not help himself and pitied him. "She has qualities..." His last words were lost in the braying of the taxis. Leventhal found nothing to say. "I want you to know one thing," said Allbee. "That night... I wanted to put an end to myself. I wasn't thinking of hurting you. I suppose you would have been... But I wasn't thinking of