A Good Story and Other Stories

The Mother of Invention Is Worth a Pound of Cure

Margo rolled over on her side. “Let’s discuss morality,” she said.

How I mistrusted her! Feigning unconcern, I adjusted a pillow against the head board and said, “Morality? Such as.”

“Such as you, dear Roderick. Light me a cigarette.”

I lit two, gave her one, and put the ashtray on the sheet between us. Once, for fun, I’d put the cold glass ashtray on her bare stomach, and without batting an eye she’d mashed the burning end of her cigarette against my leg. That was before I’d known her so well, before I’d learned to be wary.

“Morality,” she said thoughtfully, blowing smoke and considering the sound of the word. “What do you think of morality, Roderick?”

She called me by my full name that way whenever she wanted to tease or provoke me, but I refused to rise to the bait. “Morality,” I said, trying for the light touch, “I think morality is good.”

“Do you? And do you think that you are moral, Roderick? Are you a moral man?”

“About average.”

“Is that so? Roderick, I am a married woman.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“What we are doing together with disgusting frequency, Roderick, is called adultery. You know the word?”

“I’ve heard it mentioned.”

“It’s immoral.”

“And illegal,” I said, still trying for the light touch, “but unless you get pregnant it’s hardly fattening.”

“If you commit adultery, Roderick, you are no longer moral.”

“Morality in moderation,” I said. “Everything in moderation. Except sex, of course.”

“Stop that, I’m talking.”

I shifted position. “Sorry.”

“There is no such thing,” she said, looking very serious, “as morality in moderation, that was a very stupid joke.”

“My apologies.”

“One is either moral, or one is immoral. Sinful, or pure. Once you sin, there is no longer any question; you are immoral. Commit one sin, and it’s the same as though you’ve committed them all.”

“Is this your own theology?”

“Theology has nothing to do with it, I’m discussing morals. Once you do something immoral, knowing it to be immoral, and do it anyway for whatever reason, there’s nothing more to be said for you.”

“And you,” I said. “It takes two to tangle.”

She raised her head and offered me a wintry smile. “I’m aware of that, Roderick,” she said. “I make no pretension to be moral.”

“Good.”

“Being capable of one immorality,” she went on, “I now know I am capable of any immorality. Whatever I want, whatever I need, whatever is necessary.” She smiled again, as before. “But what about you?”

“Me?”

“You have never struck me,” she said, “as the introspective type. I suspect you have never spent a quiet evening thinking about your relationship to common morality.”

“The lady wins a cigar.”

“The gentleman loses.”

“Loses what?”

She rolled over, sat up, flicked ashes into the tray. “That depends,” she said.

“On what?”

“On how stupid you are.”

“Oh, very stupid.”

“I know. But too stupid?” She raised her head all at once, and looked full at me. Such a striking face, with its prominent cheekbones, its cold blue eyes, its hungry mouth; a barbaric beauty, more erotic than I can say. “Can you,” she said, “accept the real-life implications of the philosophical truth I have just described? Once you fall from grace, you must be prepared to perform any immoral action, as required. Do you know why?”

“I imagine you’re about to ten me.”

“Yes, I am.” So serious, so intent. “The only reason,” she said, “to refuse to perform an immoral act, other than self-interest, is the claim that you are moral and such an act is foreign to your nature. If, on the other hand, an immoral act is presented to you as being advantageous to you, and if you have performed other immoral acts in the past, then you can have no objection, no defense, no acceptable reason for saying no. Do you agree with me?”

I would have agreed with anything she said. “Yes,” I said.

“Good.” She put her cigarette out — in the ashtray, happily — and got up from the bed. “Get dressed,” she said. “Charles will be home in an hour.”

“Is that it?” I said. “Conversation finished?”

“What more is there to say? You agree that an immoral person cannot refuse to perform any immoral act, except from the argument of self-interest. That says it all.”

I said, “I thought you were leading up to something.”

She laughed. “You’re such a fool, Roderick. Get up from there now.”

“I want to take a shower.” I loved their walk-in shower, all blue tile.

But she said, “No, not tonight. Just get dressed and get out of here.”

Too bad. But with her mood so cruel and changeable, it was perhaps just as well to be leaving. I got out of bed and dressed myself.

Always she gave me a five-dollar bill for cabfare. Yes, and when we were out together she’d hand me a twenty-dollar bill to pay a twelve-doliar restaurant tab, and we would never speak of the change. Margo was hardly the first woman with whom I’d developed such a relationship, but she was by far the youngest and most attractive. At first I’d been amazed that she should require this son of arrangement, but later on I came to understand: her personality was too savage to put up with unless one softened it with cash.

Tonight, however, the five-dollar bill did not put in its usual appearance. Instead she said, “After four months of you, Roderick, I am sorry to have to tell you your services will no longer be required.”

“I beg your pardon?”

She smiled. “You’re being laid off,” she said.

“Margo...”

“Now, dear.” She put her hand on my arm. “Don’t say anything, it will only be stupid.”

“But—”

“Before you go,” she said, “I have something to show you. Come along.”

I followed her, baffled and more than a little worried, to her office, a small quaint room off the kitchen, containing a desk at which she sat while paying bills and a long sofa on which — because I am who I am — I had always craved to make love to Margo and on which — because she is who she is my craving had never been satisfied. Motioning at this sofa now, she said, “Sit down while I find it.”

I sat down. To my left was the view of the river and, beyond it, Long Island City and all the decaying borough of Queens. Far below us, out of sight because so close to the building, was FDR Drive, a race course for taxicabs. A gentle breeze came through the window, redolent of the smells of Queens and the sounds of Manhattan.

Margo was rummaging through her desk. “I wonder,” she said, as though distracted, hardly thinking what she was saying, “what will ever become of you, Roderick.”

I knew her by now. She was never distracted, never less than totally aware of what she was saying. It had been, in fact, a sad blow to what might be called my professional pride that I never could manage to offer her total distraction. Now, therefore, I understood that she was rummaging through the desk merely for effect, and that what she was saying was both calculated and important. I listened, searching for the hook, and said nothing.

“You’re getting older,” she went on. “In a few years your value on the open market will begin to dip. As it is, you’ll never again find anyone as” — she smiled at me — “interesting to work for as me.”

This was all true, bitterly true, and it was a mark of her cruelty that she would drag it into the open at the same time she was firing me. I kept my face blank and my mouth shut.

Now at last she came up with an envelope, legal-size, which she handed me with a flourish, saying, “Read that. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

Within the envelope was a single sheet of paper, written on in Margo’s small, thin, economical hand, and addressed To Whom It May Concern. The body of the letter was as follows:

I looked up from this amazing document and stared at Margo, who was watching me as a scientist might watch a rabbit he has just injected full of germs. I said, I whispered, “You’ve murdered Charles?”

“What?” She gave a scornful laugh. “What a fool! Of course not!”

“But this... this...”

She opened a drawer of the desk, pulled something from it, and tossed it into my lap. I started, and it fell to the floor: her little .25 caliber automatic. She said, “There. It isn’t in Central Park lake, is it?”

“I don’t... I don’t...”

“You don’t understand. They’ll engrave that on your tombstone, Roderick.” She smiled, and shook her head at me like an indulgent teacher, and got to her feet. “I’m going out,” she said. “Charles will be here in half an hour.”

“What do you want from me, Margo? For God’s sake, say it out plain.”

“Do I really have to?” She studied me a moment, and then sighed, and nodded. “Yes, I sec I do.”

“My mind?” I said, somewhat waspishly, “is not as devious as yours.”

“God knows. Roderick, I have given you my confession of murder, and the murder weapon. If Charles were to die, Roderick, in the appropriate manner, do you know what you could do?”

I shook my head.

“You could blackmail me!”

“I could what?”

“Roderick, you would have the evidence that could hang me. You could blackmail me, you could live comfortably the rest of your life.” She smiled, frostily. “I confess I’d rather have you as a blackmailer the rest of my life than Charles as a husband. Because, dear Roderick, I know you would keep your demands within reason.” The smile got colder and colder, colder and colder. “Wouldn’t you?”

Her meaning had become staggeringly clear. “You, you want me to...”

“I don’t want you to do anything,” she said quickly. And then added, “Do you know, no man has ever refused me anything I wanted, not ever. Most of the time I don’t even have to ask, it’s just done for me. I wonder what I would do if a man ever did refuse.”

I said, “You’ve planned this, haven’t you? For months. That’s why you took me on, isn’t it?”

“You silly fool,” she said, “did you really think I had to pay anyone? I suffered the humiliation of your moronic misunderstanding because it was necessary, but I can tell you now that I detested paying you for your services very nearly as much as I detested accepting the services I was paying for.”

Now, that stung. I said, “I never got any complaints.”

“Really? Roderick, I must be off. Charles will be home any minute—”

“Wait,” I said.

“Wait? Wait for what?”

“I want to think—”

She laughed. “This is hardly the time to break new ground,” she said.

I had no time to listen to her, nor to respond. I had to decide what to do.

Kill the husband? Follow it through, follow it through, what if I actually did kill Charles Ewing, even though I’d never killed anyone before and am among the most squeamish of men? Having killed him, I am now supposed to blackmail Margo for the rest of my life.

Oh? Blackmail Margo? Me? Vie with her in the evil duel of wits which is what blackmail is? She’d have the confession in her hands and me in my grave in six months.

Then what? Refuse? Should I be the first man in Margo’s career to refuse her something she wanted?

Margo looked at me. “Well?” she said.

Twenty minutes have passed. I’ve waited for you to come home, Charles, and now at last you’re here, and I’ve told you everything. I’m sorry I had to keep this little gun pointed at you all the while, but without it I hardly think you’d have agreed to listen to me.

No. I thought not.

I expect you hate me now for having cuckolded you, but that doesn’t matter. The horn I have placed on your forehead is a feather compared to the more weighty problems of the moment.

Margo’s confession, by the by, is in the envelope on the table beside you. Ill wait, if you’d care to read it and verify my tale.

Am I going to obey Margo’s command? Is it my intention to murder you?

Well. I had thought, at first, of an alternate solution, one both complex and satisfactory. If you’ll look once more at the confession. Charles, you’ll see that, read a certain way, it could also be construed as a suicide note. Do you follow me?

Of course. I would hit Margo on the head with something hard — the butt of this little gun, say — and wait for you to come home, as I have. Whereupon I would shoot you — if Margo was to have committed suicide in remorse at having murdered you, it followed that you would have to be murdered — then throw Margo out the window, hurry to Central Park to rid myself of the gun, and be safe from both of you forever.

In her office, behind her as she sat at the desk, I raised the gun above her...

And couldn’t do it.

No. I am too weak a creature for such blood-letting. Margo, in her talk of morality, forgot one thing: cowardice is far stronger a moral force than conscience. And if I could not kill her, whom I hate and fear, how less likely that I could kill you.

No, Charles, you won’t die at my hand. But perhaps you will die at someone’s — and I at Margo’s if you yourself do not take the offensive.

This is my solution: just as Margo flung me at your head, I now fling you at hers. You are, I believe, stronger than I and more likely to succeed. If you weren’t, Margo would surely have dispatched you herself. I wish you, most earnestly, bon chance.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I must run.