The Wrong Kind of Money (35 page)

“And I've also got a headache, Frank. I've changed my mind.”

“I've got a friend who can take care of head!” says another girl, and there is more shrill and noisy laughter.

“Okay … okay,” Frank says. “Don't bite my head off, buddy.”

“Oooh … oooh,” say the girls. “Somebody's just bit
his
head
off
!” And there are great shrieks of laughter at this.

Noah says nothing, merely stares at the elevator door over the heads of the laughing girls, a smooth mirror of brushed chrome. In the door the reflection of his face is pale, opaque, moonlike.

“Whatever it is, something's sure got you in a grouchy mood,” Frank mutters. “That's for sure.”

“I've got a goddamned important presentation to make on Friday, in case you don't remember!”

“Okay …
okay,”
says Frank.

“I've got a goddamned important presentation to make on Friday, in case you don't remember
!” mimics the girl standing just in front of Noah in a piping voice, wiggling her butt against him. There is more loud laughter.

“Jesus!” Noah says as the elevator comes to a stop on seventeen. “Ladies, this is my floor. Will you let me get off, please?”

“Oooh … oooh … He
needs to get it off
!”

“You have a roommate,” she says. “I'm sorry. I tried to get a room, but your convention has taken over the entire hotel.”

“For Christ's sake, what the hell are you doing here, Melody?”

“I can sleep there—on your sofa.”

“You're goddamned the hell not sleeping here anywhere! What the hell do you think you're doing here, anyway? How the hell did you get here?”

“On—a bus.”

“Well, you're damn well getting on the next bus back to New York. You're not staying here with me.”

“Please don't be angry with me, Noah,” she says.

“Angry
! This is just the goddamned most inconsiderate thing—”

“I know it is.” Her chin trembles, but she is not crying. She reaches for her suitcase. “Well, I'm sure I can find a place to stay. I had at least six propositions made to me in the lobby while I was waiting for you to come out. Somebody in this hotel will take me in for a few nights, don't worry about that.”

“Now, wait a minute,” he says. “Tell me what happened. Tell me what made you do this.”

“If I had a home I could go to, I'd have gone there,” she says. “But I can't go to Japan! He's started stalking me, Noah—Bill Luckman. After you left, I looked out the window. He was standing there, in the street. He's got the building staked out, Noah. He looked up at me, and said—I could read his lips—‘I'm watching you.' And then he—then he gave me the finger, and he looked up at me with—with a look of purest hatred. I can't describe it. He frightens me, Noah.”

“Why didn't you call the police?”

“You told me not to.”

“Or the building's security?”

“They can't do anything about someone who's outside on the street, can they? Anyway, I was too shocked—too terrified. I felt trapped. I just had to get out of there. I decided to sneak out of the building through the service entrance in the basement, so he wouldn't see me leave. I thought—I thought if I could just stay here with you, just for a day or two, then maybe he'd realize I'd gone away. Then I could come back and be able to go out on the street again, to look for a job, without thinking that he's following me everywhere I go. I guess it was a crazy thing to do, to come here, but I just couldn't think of any other place to go. I was desperate, Noah.”

“What did you tell Carol?”

“I left her a note. I said I'd gotten a job with a theater company in New Haven. I hated to lie, but I just couldn't think of anything else to say!”

“Sit down, Mellie,” he says, and she sits down in one of the pair of armchairs that flank the sofa.

“If you let me stay here, Noah, just for a day or so, no one will ever know.”

“That's not the point,” he says. “The point is that this is a five-day business conference. I've got meetings to go to every day. And when I'm not in meetings, I'm expected to be going around here socializing. Right now, right this very God-given moment, Mellie, I should be down at the bar, or in the casino, or upstairs in the hospitality suite, shaking hands, talking it up with these people who work for me, telling them what a great job they're doing, smiling, being nice to all these—these stupid sons of bitches who are in the bar down there getting drunk and trying to pick up girls in the lobby! I just don't have time to look after you, Mellie, or entertain you. I just can't do that while I'm here.”

“I don't need to be looked after! I don't need to be entertained! I'll stay out of your way, I promise you!”

“But I'll need to do some entertaining in this suite. I'll need to have people in. I'll—”

“If you have people in, I'll go somewhere else. I'll go to the pool. There's a movie theater. I'll go to the movies.”

“But—”

“You think I'll leave traces of myself around? My shoes under the chair? My panty hose drying in the bathroom? I was brought up in Japan, Noah. I'm a very tidy girl. If I'm not here, there'll be no signs of me, I promise you—not even lipstick on your facecloths. I'd never embarrass you, Noah.”

“Well,” he says, hesitating. “Well, perhaps. Perhaps just for tonight. You can have the bedroom. I'll take the sofa—”

“No! I want it to be the other way around. I'm the uninvited guest.”

“But just for tonight. Tomorrow we'll work out something else.”

“Oh, thank you, Noah!” She jumps from her chair and kisses him on the lips, and there it is again, that scent of her. “Thank you, dear Noah.” Just then the telephone rings, and Noah goes to the desk to answer it.

“Hello, darling,” Carol says. “I just called to see how things were going. Is Atlantic City pretty awful?”

“Pretty bad. This hotel is full of call girls.”

“Well, you just keep your hands off them,” she says.

“Oh, I will. You can count on that.”

“Are you alone, darling? Or is someone with you? Somehow you sound as though someone's with you.”

“Frank Stokes just dropped by for a drink.”

“Oh, then I won't keep you. Beryl's coming by for cocktails Wednesday night. Some people she wants to meet. Oh, and Melody's found a job, with a play that's trying out in New Haven.”

“I know.”

“You know? How did you know that?”

“No, I mean—yes, she told me about that before I left this afternoon. She was pretty excited about it.”

“Yes. Well, darling, I just want to wish you all kinds of success on Friday. Notice I didn't say luck. I said success. Ballachulish is going to be a big hit, I know it is.”

“Keep your fingers crossed.”

“I will, darling. I love you, darling.”

“Love you, too.”

“Bye.”

He replaces the receiver in its cradle, realizing that he has forgotten to ask her about the party for Anne and the Van Degan girl.

“You lied for me,” Melody says. “You told two lies for me. They were white lies, but they were nice lies. Thank you for lying for me, Noah.”

He looks at her face, upturned in the lamplight. He clears his throat. “Have you had any dinner?”

“No.”

“Hungry? Want me to have something sent up?”

“Nothing much. Something simple.”

“Chicken sandwiches?”

“Perfect.”

“There's some champagne in the fridge. Would you like a glass of champagne?”

“Yes,” she says.

But later, in the dark bedroom of the suite, Noah cannot sleep, and his thoughts race uncontrollably. The drapes at the windows do not close properly, and from some invisible neon advertisement outside, lights flash white, then yellow, then blue, then white again. The red-lighted numerals of the digital clock at his bedside mark the time, and all the primary colors assail him in this mysterious, pulsating room where nothing will come to rest. For the better part of an hour he lies there, trying to keep his body still, trying to force his thoughts to separate themselves from himself. And just as he feels he is finally succeeding, and drifting off to a place where he feels his thoughts will float away from him, no longer be a part of him, but be rejoined with some vaster universe beyond this room, he is roused to consciousness by the sound of a door opening, and he raises himself on one elbow. There is a noiseless whisper of fabric moving, and the door closes again. Again there is a whisper of fabric, as though dropping to the floor, his bed sighs softly as it gives to the weight of a second person, and there is that fresh, clean scent of her hair.

“Hush,” he hears her say. “Don't turn on the light. Don't say a word. I just want to lie down beside you for a while. I just want to make sure of something. I want to try something.”

“Melody,” he says. “We mustn't.” But he is well past caring.

“But,” she says, “we already are, my dear Noah.”

Much later, he hears her say, “Have you ever been unfaithful to your wife before?”

“No,” he says into the pillow.

“Then you have no reason to feel guilty. It was I who seduced you.”

“It's not that. It's just that I'm—that I'm not—”

“Not free?”

“Yes.”

“But, my dear Noah, that's the thing I love about you most—that's what's best about us—that you're not free. I know you love Carol, and I know Carol loves you, and I also love Carol, and I love Anne, and I never want anything to come between you and all those people you love, and who love you so much. You see, it's because you're not free that we can make love. Not being free, you are safe, and therefore so am I.”

He takes her in his arms again.

12

Brief Encounters

“Thank you for showing me your script, Noah!” she says.

She is sipping coffee from their breakfast tray.

“A travelogue,” she says. “Yes, I see what you mean. I like that idea. Now, go back to that third or fourth shot, the one of the ferry dock in the little Scottish village. Try starting with that one. That's how you'd enter the village, right? If you were just stepping off the ferry …”

“Right,” he says, finding the slide she wants and placing it at the head of the conveyor of transparencies. “This one?” he says as the image appears on the screen: the ferry dock, the little village, the houses of the picturesque town rising from the grassy banks of the loch.

“That's it.” She sits, in her stocking feet, her legs tucked beneath her, on the sofa beside him, while he, in his shirtsleeves, operates the carousel. She begins to talk, in a low, calm voice that is also rich with excitement, and he immediately sees that she is writing his presentation for him:
“For me it all began in the tiny Scottish village of Ballachulish, population three hundred and sixteen, not far from the entrance to the Firth of Lorne. It was in the early summer of 1992, and the air was crisp and fresh and new. What was I doing in this little town, so small and remote that it doesn't appear on most maps, a town that reminded me of Brigadoon, that magical town that reappears only every hundred years, and only for a day? It was because I'd heard that here lived a man named Angus Kelso, who distilled a single-malt whiskey that was like no other in the world
.…”

“Hey, this is great!” he says eagerly. “One of us should be writing this down!” He rises and begins pacing the floor.

“Don't worry, I'll remember it. I'm a quick study when it comes to lines. But I'm thinking, Noah—what about a little music? Not all through the show, of course, but just right here, at the beginning? A tape playing, very softly, one of the songs from
Brigadoon.
And then maybe, at the very end, a reprise of the same song? What do you think of that?”

“I think that would be—just great!”

“A tape shouldn't be hard to find. I'll pick one up today. Now let's cut straight to that close shot of Mr. Kelso.”

He rearranges the slides again, and the image of the redheaded, smiling Scotsman appears on the screen, and she continues her narration:
“Meet Mr. Angus Kelso. What would you guess his age to be? Forty? Forty-five? Mr. Kelso is actually sixty-nine, and the secret of his eternal youth may just be his whiskey, which he tells me he pours on his breakfast pancakes every morning.
Pause for a laugh.
He also assures me that his whiskey cures barrenness in women and impotence in men.
Pause for laughter.
Incidentally, his whiskey also cures the common cold. Oh, and I almost forgot
—
it also cures cancer. I hope all you advertising people are taking notes, because these are pretty impressive claims
—
claims no other distiller has ever dared to make.
Pause for more laughter. And we'd cut the music right here, I think.”

“Melody, this is just wonderful. Wonderful!”

“Now I think we could move to the picture of the caves. Can you find that one?” He finds it, inserts it next, and the dripping white limestone caverns appear, their pools receding mysteriously into the dark interior of the earth, and Melody continues:
“But Mr. Kelso also told me that the secret of his whiskey's extraordinary flavor and lightness, as it is in the case of every single-malt, lies in his water, which is drawn by hand from these deep limestone caves. He calls his water ‘the sweetest water you'll ever taste on God's green earth.' I tasted some, and I had to agree.…
And now the shot of the hillsides.…”

He finds the shot, inserts it: pine-clad hills.
“But there's more to this water of Ballachulish than just the deep limestone caves,”
she says.
“The rainwater that has been gathering in these caverns for centuries is first filtered through a thick blanket of pine needles. In some places on these hills the blanket of pine needles is more than three feet thick
… Now the close-up of those pine needles …”