Three Bedrooms in Manhattan (12 page)

Combe noted that she used the familiar
tu
with Enrico.

“Let's go on up. I have a meeting in fifteen minutes. I'll tell the cab to wait.”

Enrico went up the stairs first. He was a small man, perfectly groomed. A cloud of cologne trailed behind him. Combe could tell that he had curled his dark, pomaded hair.

Enrico rooted around for the key in his pocket, which was filled with them. Combe noted it with pleasure, since he hated men who carried too many keys. Finally Enrico found the one he was looking for—found it in a jacket pocket—after a long search during which his feet in their delicate leather shoes tapped feverishly on the floorboards.

“I was completely
devastated
when I came here and found nobody! Luckily I thought of ringing the bell of the nice old gentleman next door, who gave me the note she'd left for me.”

“For me, too.”

“I know. He told me. I didn't know where to find you.”

He stole a glance at Combe, who grinned. Maybe Enrico was expecting some sort of an explanation from Kay, but all she gave him was a happy smile.

“Then yesterday I received the key, no note. I came in the evening.”

My God, how simple it all was! How utterly prosaic! The open window created a draft, and the door slammed shut behind them after they had slipped inside. It was an ordinary small apartment, like thousands of others in New York, with the same cozy nook in the living room, the same coffee table and side tables, the same ashtrays beside the armchairs, the same record player, the same tiny bookcase in a corner by the window.

It was here that Kay and Jessie …

Combe smiled without being aware of it, a smile that seemed to rise up out of his flesh. There may have been a trace of malice in his eyes, but not much of one, and he wondered, when the realization dawned, whether Kay was annoyed by it. What picture had he drawn of the life she had led here, of these men she tortured him with by always calling them by their first names?

One of them stood before him now, and he couldn't help noticing that at ten o'clock in the morning he was wearing a pearl pin on his multicolored tie.

After closing the window, Kay went into the bedroom.

“Can you give me a hand, François?”

She used the familiar
tu
again, and he knew it was out of kindness. It was nice of her to emphasize the intimacy they shared.

She opened a battered trunk and glanced into a wardrobe.

She said, surprised, “Jessie didn't take any of her things!”

Enrico said, lighting a cigarette, “I can explain. I had a letter from her this morning that she wrote from the
Santa Clara
.”

“She's already at sea?”

“He made her take the first boat back with him. It didn't turn out as badly as I thought. When he arrived, he knew exactly what was going on. I'll let you read the letter. She had a steward send it, since he won't let her out of his sight. He came here and said, ‘You're alone?'

“‘As you can see for yourself.'

“‘He's not going to show up, is he?'”

Enrico went on, holding his cigarette in the arch manner of an American woman: “You know Jessie. She didn't say so in her letter, but she must have argued, gotten angry, made a scene …”

Combe looked at Kay, and they both smiled.

“It seems Ronald was very cool.”

So! Enrico called him by his first name, too.

“I wonder if he didn't come to New York just for that, the moment he heard from whoever tipped him off. He went to the wardrobe while Jessie was screaming blue murder, took out my pajamas and dressing gown, and threw them on the bed.”

They were still there. A not quite brand-new floral-pattern dressing gown and cream-colored silk pajamas with a dark red monogram.

“While she was crying, he calmly went through her things. He only let her take what she had three years ago, when she came back from Panama. You know Jessie …”

It was the second time he'd used that little phrase. Combe, too, felt he was beginning to know Jessie. Not only Jessie but Kay, who'd become so understandable that he had to laugh at himself.

“You know Jessie. She just couldn't give up her dresses and things, and she said, ‘I swear, Ronald, I bought these myself.'”

Did Enrico actually have a sense of humor?

“I wonder how she managed to write it all down in the letter. She says he doesn't leave her alone for a minute, that he's with her the whole time, watching what she does, looking at what she looks at, and yet she managed to write me six pages, some of them in pencil, telling me everything. There's a note to you, too, Kay. She said to take whatever she left, if you like.”

“Thank you, Enrico, but I couldn't.”

“The rent's paid until the end of the month. I don't know what I'll do with all my stuff here, since I can't really take them home. If you want me to leave you the key … Well, I will regardless, since I have to go now. I have a very important meeting this morning. I suppose that, now they're at sea, Ronald will calm down a little.”

“Poor Jessie!”

Did Enrico feel guilty? He said, “I wonder what I could have done. I had no idea what was happening. That night my wife was having a dinner party, and I couldn't even telephone. Good-bye, Kay. Just send the key to my office.”

Enrico wasn't sure what to do about this man he scarcely knew, and he shook his hand with exaggerated warmth. Then he felt he had to say, almost as a mark of approval, “She's Jessie's best friend.”

“What's the matter, François?”

“Nothing, darling.”

It was the first time he'd called her that without a hint of sarcasm.

Perhaps the realization that Enrico was so small made her seem smaller, too. He wasn't disappointed, though. In fact, he felt an almost infinite gratitude toward her.

Enrico was gone, leaving behind a faint whiff of cologne, his pajamas, his dressing gown on the bed, and a pair of slippers on the floor of the armoire.

“Now do you see?” Kay whispered.

“Yes, love, I see.”

It was true. It was good that he'd come, since he had seen her at last, her and her crowd, all those Enricos and Ronalds, those sailors, those friends, all of them now shrunk down to their proper dimensions.

He didn't love her any less. He loved her more tenderly. With less strain, less anger, less bitterness. He had almost lost his fear of her and of the future. Perhaps, if he lost all his fear, he would surrender entirely.

“Sit down,” she said to him. “You're crowding the place.”

Did the bedroom she'd shared with Jessie seem smaller to her, too? It was bright and pleasant. The walls were painted a soft white, the cretonne spreads on the twin beds were imitation toile de Jouy, and the drapes, made of the same fabric, let the sun filter in.

He sat down obediently on the bed, next to the flower-print dressing gown.

“I was right, wasn't I, not to want to take anything that belongs to Jessie? Look! Do you like this dress?”

It was a simple evening gown, quite pretty. She held it up in front of her like a salesgirl in a pricey shop.

“Have you worn it a lot?”

Would she take it the wrong way? No—and it wasn't jealousy this time. He'd said it pleasantly, because he was grateful to her for flirting with him so innocently.

“Just twice. And nobody so much as touched me either time. Nobody even kissed me.”

“I believe you.”

“Really?”

“I believe you.”

“Here are the shoes that go with it. The gold's a little too shiny for my taste. I wanted something more muted, but these were all I could afford. I'm not boring you, am I?”

“Absolutely not.”

“You sure?”

“Quite the opposite. Come give me a kiss.”

She hesitated, not for her sake, he knew, but out of an odd sort of respect. Then she leaned down and brushed his lips with hers.

“That's my bed you're sitting on, you know.”

“And Enrico?”

“He only spent a couple of nights a month here, sometimes less. Because of his wife, he had to pretend he was on business trips. And that was complicated, because she always wanted to know what hotel he was staying at, and she'd call him in the middle of the night.”

“She suspected something?”

“I think she did, but she pretended not to. She wasn't dumb. I don't think she ever loved him, or she'd stopped loving him but was still jealous. If she'd confronted him, he would have divorced her and married Jessie.”

That little man with the pearl pin on his tie? It was good to be able to listen to all this now, to be able to automatically assign the proper weight to words as well as things.

“He often came in the evening. Every two or three days. He had to leave around eleven, and those nights I usually went to a movie to give them some privacy. I'll show you the theater where I'd see the same movie two or three times because I didn't dare take the subway anywhere else.”

“Don't you want to put on that dress?”

“How did you know?”

She still held it in her hands. Quickly, with a movement he'd never seen her use before, she slipped out of her everyday black dress, and he felt as though he was looking at her in all her intimacy for the first time. Was it in fact the first time he'd seen her without clothes?

Strange: he hadn't been that curious about her body. They'd been together and bruised each other savagely, and only last night they'd fallen as if into an abyss, and yet still he couldn't have said what her body was like.

“Should I change slips, too?”

“Everything, darling.”

“Go lock the door.”

It was almost a game—and deeply pleasurable. This was the third room they'd been in together, and in each he'd discovered not only a new Kay but new reasons to love her, different ways of loving her.

He sat down on the edge of the bed again and watched her, naked, her skin very white with a trace of gold where the sunlight came in through the drapes. She was rummaging around in drawers of lingerie.

“I wonder what to do about my things at the dry cleaners. They'll bring it here, but no one will be home. We should probably stop by. Do you mind?”

She hadn't said, “I should stop by”; she had said, “We should stop by,” as though from now on they would never spend a second apart.

“Jessie has much prettier things than I do. Look at this.”

She rubbed the silk with her fingers, then held it out for him to feel.

“She has a much better figure, too. Do you want me to put this on? It's not too pink for your taste? Oh, I've got a black lace corset, too. I always wanted a corset, and I finally bought one. But I didn't feel like wearing it. It seemed too racy somehow.”

She brushed her hair. Her hand found the brush without her having to look for it. The mirror was exactly where it had to be. She held a pin in her mouth.

“Would you zip me up?”

That was the first time. What an amazing number of things they were doing for the first time that morning, including, for him, kissing her delicately on the neck, without greediness, breathing on the down on her nape, then sensibly sitting on the foot of the bed.

“Like the dress?”

“It's pretty.”

“I bought it on Fifty-second Street. It was very expensive, you know. At least it was for me.”

She gave him a pleading look.

“Do you want to go out together one night? I could wear this, and you could dress up …”

Without a transition, just when he least expected it, or maybe when she herself least expected it, great tears filled her eyes. Her smile hadn't yet had time to vanish from her face.

She turned her head away and said, “You've never asked me what I do.”

She was still in her evening gown, her feet bare in the golden pumps.

“And I didn't want to talk about it because I was ashamed. I preferred, stupidly, to let you imagine things. There were times I did it on purpose.”

“Did what on purpose?”

“You know very well! When I knew Jessie, we were working in the same building. That's how we met. We used to eat lunch at the same drugstore. I'll show it to you, too—it's on the corner of Madison Avenue. Since I speak several languages, I was hired as a translator.

“Only there's something you don't know, something very silly. I told you a little about my life with my mother. When she began to get famous, I spent most of the time traveling with her, since she didn't want to leave me alone, and I pretty much stopped going to school.

“Whatever you do, don't laugh at me. There was one thing I never learned: how to spell. Larski used say, in a cold voice that still makes me feel ashamed, that I wrote like a scullery maid.

“Now do you understand? Unzip me, will you?”

She came over and offered him her back, white, milky, a bit bony where it showed between the half-open black dress.

When he caressed her, she begged: “No, not just yet, okay? I'd like so much to talk a bit more.”

In just her panties and bra, she got out her cigarettes and lighter and sat cross-legged on Jessie's bed, an ashtray within reach.

“They transferred me to the mailroom. It was way in back, in a windowless room with no light, and three of us stuffed envelopes there all day long. The two other girls were cows. We had nothing to talk about. They hated me. We wore rough cotton aprons because of the glue. I did everything to keep mine clean. But I'm boring you. It's ridiculous, isn't it?”

“Not at all.”

“You're just saying that … Well, you asked for it. Every morning, I'd find my apron already glue-stained. They even put glue inside so it would get on my dress. Once I fought with one of them, a squat little Irish girl with a face like an Eskimo. She was stronger than me. She made sure she ruined the brand-new pair of stockings I had on.”