Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (10 page)

He was full of himself. When he invited you to dinner, he'd say, “You're on your own? I have a charming friend here, and I'll ask her to bring along one of her little playmates.”

Was Kay still at the apartment? If only he could picture her face—just for a second. Again he tried and failed. He thought superstitiously:
It's because she isn't there
.

Then, perhaps because of Laugier and his good-natured cynicism, he buried the thought. He said to himself,
Of course she's there. If it worked before, it'll work again. Tonight she'll have a whole new show to put on for me.

She was lying, that was certain. She had lied to him again and again. She even said as much. But how could he ever be sure that she was telling the truth? And he was suspicious of everything, even the story of the Jewish tailor and the sink at the end of the hall in Vienna, which had melted his heart.

“You look pale, old man. Come on, let's get a hamburger. I insist. It's on me. I'll be through with Hourvitch in three minutes.”

While the two men were talking business, why did he find himself thinking about his wife as well as about Kay?

Probably because of what the Hungarian had said: “She ran off with a gigolo.”

People must have said the same thing about his wife. He didn't care. He had been honest that morning when he said he didn't love her anymore. And it wasn't even because of her that he had fallen to pieces. The truth was a lot more complicated.

Kay would never understand. Why should she? What sort of ridiculous pedestal had he placed her on just because he had run into her one night when he could no longer bear to be alone, a night when she was just looking for a man, or at least a bed?

Because it was a bed, all things considered, that she'd been looking for that night.

“Ready, old man?”

He sprang up, smiling agreeably.

“You should keep him in mind, Hourvitch, when you cast the part of the senator.”

A minor role, no doubt. Still it was good of Laugier. In Paris the situation would have been reversed. Seven years ago, at Fouquet's, in fact, Laugier, dead drunk, had insisted at three in the morning, “Imagine, kiddo … the role of a lifetime … Three hundred performances, guaranteed, not to mention the road shows … But only if you're the lead, because without you there's no play … Do it! I've told you all about it … Now read the script, get cracking … If you go to the director of the Madeleine and tell him you want to do it, it's in the bag … I'll call you at six tomorrow … Don't you agree, my dear, he should star in my play?”

Because his wife had been with him that night. Laugier had slipped her the script with a conspiratorial smile, and the next day sent her a fabulous box of chocolates.

“Coming down?”

They left. He waited for the elevator and slipped behind his friend, always with an absent air.

“You see, old bean, New York's like that. One day you're …”

Combe wanted to beg him, “Shut up, will you? Shut up, for God's sake!”

He knew the litany by heart. He'd heard it many times before. New York wasn't the point, he wasn't thinking about it anymore. He'd think about it later.

Only one thing mattered, that there was a woman at his place, in his room, a woman he knew nothing about, a woman who filled him with suspicion, a woman he could observe with eyes as clear and cold as he had ever looked at anyone with, a woman he loathed but couldn't do without.

“Hourvitch is a good fellow. A bit of a mixed bag, of course. He hasn't forgotten that he started out with a mop in his hand at the Billancourt studios, and he has scores to settle. Aside from that, he's okay, especially if you don't need anything from him.”

Combe was on the point of stopping short, shaking his friend's hand, and saying simply, “Good-bye.”

People talk about the living dead. Possibly he had, too—like anybody else. Today, right now, on the corner of Sixty-sixth Street and Madison Avenue, he really was one of the living dead. His thoughts, his life, were somewhere else.

“You shouldn't take it so hard. A month from now, a month and a half, you'll be the first to laugh about the state you're in. You've got to be brave, if only to show those bastards who want to kick you when you're down. Why, I remember after my second play opened at the Porte-Saint-Martin …”

Why had she allowed him to go? She always guessed everything, so she must have known it wasn't the right moment yet. Unless she needed the freedom herself.

Was even the story about Jessie true? Those trunks locked up in an apartment with the key now slowly sailing to Panama …

“What'll you have?”

Laugier had steered him into a place not unlike their little place. There was the same jukebox by the counter.

“A manhattan.”

His fingers fished for a nickel in his pocket. He looked at himself in the mirror behind the shelf of glasses, and he cut such a ridiculous figure that he smiled sarcastically.

“What are you doing after lunch?”

“I have to go back.”

“Back where? I would have taken you to a rehearsal.”

The word reminded Combe of the rehearsals he'd been to in New York, in a tiny studio twenty or twenty-five stories above Broadway. The room was rented for the minimum amount of time possible, maybe an hour or two, he forgot. They'd still be hard at it when people from another cast showed up and crowded into the wings, waiting their turn.

It seemed that people knew only their own lines, their own part. They weren't aware of or interested in anything else. Especially not the other actors. No one said hello or good-bye.

Did anyone know his name? Maybe the ones he'd tried out with before. The director signaled to him. He came on, said his lines, and the only indication of human interest there'd been was the others laughing at his accent.

And he was frightened, terrified, at the thought of that loneliness, of going back to it, of standing between those painted canvas stage flats, where the loneliness was deeper than anywhere, even than in his room, even when, behind the thin walls, Winnie whoever-she-was and J.K.C. let themselves go on Friday night.

He was scarcely aware of walking to the jukebox, looking for a song, taking a nickel out of his pocket, putting it in the slot.

The song had just started when Laugier, nodding to the bartender to refill their glasses, said: “Do you know how much that song has earned in the United States alone? A hundred thousand dollars in royalties, old man, for both the music and lyrics, of course. And it's just starting to make its way around the rest of the world. Right now there are two thousand jukeboxes just like that one playing it, not to mention bands, the radio, restaurants. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't write songs instead of plays. Cheers. You want to grab a bite?”

“Would you mind if I didn't?”

He looked so serious when he replied that Laugier stared at him, surprised and, in spite of his usual irony, somehow awed.

“You really are in bad shape, aren't you?”

“I'm sorry …”

“Of course, old … Listen …”

No. It was impossible. His nerves were on edge. Even the street, with its racket he usually didn't notice, its stupid hustle-bustle, was maddening. He stood for a minute or two at the bus stand, and then, when a taxi stopped nearby, he ran over, jumped inside, and gave his address.

He wasn't sure what he feared most, finding her there or not finding her there. He was mad at himself, and at Kay, without knowing exactly why. He felt humiliated, terribly humiliated.

The streets flashed by. He didn't look at them or recognize them. He thought to himself,
She grabbed her chance and ran, the bitch.

At almost the same time, he thought:
Me or somebody else … It doesn't matter who … Or the gigolo in Cannes …

Through the window he looked up and down his street as if expecting it to have changed somehow. He was pale and knew it. His hands were clammy, and his forehead was damp.

She wasn't at the window. He didn't see her there, as he had in the morning, when the sun was shining and the day was new and she slid her hand gently, lovingly against the glass.

He ran up the stairs and didn't stop until the third floor. He was so furious that he was ashamed. For a moment, he could have laughed.

There, against the slightly sticky banister, that morning, just two hours earlier …

He couldn't wait any longer. He had to know if she was gone. He jammed his key into the lock and was still fumbling when the door swung back.

Kay was there, smiling at him.

“Come on,” he said, not looking at her.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Come on.”

She was wearing her black silk dress. Obviously she had nothing else to wear. But she must have bought the little white embroidered collar. He didn't recognize it, and it infuriated him.

“Come on.”

“But lunch is ready.”

He could see. He could see perfectly well that the room had been all tidied up, which it hadn't been for a long time. He could also imagine the bearded tailor across the street, but he didn't want to think about him.

He didn't want to think about anything. Not Kay, who was bewildered, even more bewildered than Laugier had been just now. But in her eyes, too, he saw the same submission and respect.

He was at the end of his rope. Didn't they realize that? If they didn't, let them say so. He'd crawl off to die in a corner, all alone.

There!

As long as they didn't make him wait, as long as they didn't ask him any questions. Because he'd had enough of questions. The ones he asked himself, in any case, the ones that were turning him into a nervous wreck.

“Well?”

“I'm coming, François. I thought …”

Thought what! Thought she'd fix him a nice lunch—he could see, he wasn't blind. And then? Was that how he loved her, with her blissful air of a new bride? Were the two of them already able to just stop?

Not him, at any rate.

“But the hot plate …”

To hell with the hot plate, which could burn away until someone had time to think about him. Hadn't the light been on, too, for forty-eight hours? Had he worried about that?

“Come on.”

What was he so afraid of? Kay? Himself? Fate? All he knew for sure was that he needed them to plunge back into the crowd, to walk, to stop at little bars, to rub up against strangers, people you didn't have to apologize to for bumping into them or stepping on their toes, maybe he even needed Kay to drive him up the wall, leaving a smudge of lipstick on the tip of her so-called last cigarette.

Did she really understand?

They were on the sidewalk. He had no idea where to go anymore, and she wasn't curious enough to ask.

She took his arm. “Come on,” he dully repeated, as if accepting once and for all whatever fate held in store.

The hours that followed were exhausting. He seemed almost sadistically determined to revisit all the places they'd been together.

At the Rockefeller Center cafeteria, for example, he ordered exactly what they'd had the first time. Scrutinizing her fiercely, he subjected her to a merciless interrogation.

“Who have you been here with before?”

“What do you mean?”

“Don't ask questions. Answer me. When a woman answers a question with a question, she's about to tell a lie.”

“I don't understand, François.”

“You told me you came here often. Admit it would be unusual if you always came alone.”

“Sometimes I came with Jessie.”

“Who else?”

“I don't remember.”

“With a man?”

“Possibly, yes, a long time ago, with a friend of Jessie's …”

“A friend of Jessie's who was also your lover.”

“But …”

“Admit it.”

“I mean … Yes, I think … Once, in a taxi.”

And he saw the inside of the cab, the driver's shoulders, the milky blur of faces crowded in the darkness outside. He could feel those stolen kisses on his lips, he could taste them.

“Bitch!”

“It was so meaningless, Frank …”

Why was she calling him Frank all of a sudden?

It was him or anybody else, right? One man more or one man less?

Why didn't she fight back? He resented her passivity, her humility. He dragged her outside. He kept dragging her around everywhere, as if driven to it by some obscure force.

“And this street, have you been here with a man?”

“No. I don't know anymore.”

“New York is so big, isn't it? Still, you've lived here for years. You don't expect me to believe that you haven't gone to little bars like ours with other men, and that you haven't endlessly played other records that were at that moment
your
song.”

“I've never been in love, Frank.”

“You're lying.”

“Think what you like. I've never been in love. Not the way I love you.”

“And you went to the movies. I know you've been at the movies with a man and done things in the dark. Admit it!”

“I don't know anymore.”

“See! Was it on Broadway? Show me the cinema.”

“Maybe at the Capitol, once …”

They were less than a hundred yards away from it and saw the red-and-yellow letters blinking on and off.

“A young naval officer. A Frenchman.”

“You were lovers a long time?”

“A weekend. His ship was in Boston. He came to New York on leave with a friend.”

“And you had both of them!”

“When his friend saw how things were going, he left us.”

“I'll bet you met them on the street.”

“That's true. I recognized the uniform. I heard them speaking French. They didn't know I understood them until I smiled. They spoke to me.”

“Which hotel did he take you to? Where did you sleep with him? Answer me!”