Catch the Brass Ring

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“MORE COFFEE?” Allison demanded, drooping the spout of the sterling silver pot to within inches of my cup. “Huh-uh.” I patted my stomach. “Full.” We had delivered the indignant couple to Glen Cove, then returned to Blind Man’s Bluff in the Allison I. By that time we’d all worked up more than adequate appetites for the shrimp cocktail and rare ribs of beef Allison had prepared. Even Shamus, who got the bones and was growling with them off in a corner of the large, mahogany-panelled dining room, seemed less ornery.

“I suppose you’ll be wanting to catch a train back shortly?” Gregory said. “We have a schedule someplace….”

“I’ve already checked,” Allison told us brightly. “Gideon can take a midnight train to Jamaica and change for the Brooklyn train there.”

“That doesn’t give me much time for sleep.”

“Well,” Gregory chortled, “you’re younger than I am. People always say walk off a big meal, but that’s ridiculous. Do animals walk off their meals? They curl up and go to sleep. That’s what I’m going to do. You wake me at ten, Allison.”

Gregory stood up and Allison kissed him lightly on the cheek before he left the room. Shamus growled but remained in the corner with his bones, gnawing and snuffling.

Allison led me by the hand into a living-room which featured a huge, thirty-foot bay window on one wall overlooking the Sound, a fieldstone fireplace on the opposite wall and delicately wrought furniture which I think they call French Provincial.

“Sit down, Gid,” Allison said. “I’ll get you some brandy.”

I began to feel what it was like to be a millionaire, with a gorgeous female in black velvet slacks tight at the knees and ending just below them, like the toreadors wear, and a tight white sweater, serving me a snifterglass of Courvoisier brandy. So the female had a husband sleeping someplace else in the house. So the female was trying to make me but wouldn’t have to do much coaxing, not the way I felt. I started calling myself a louse but thought Gregory Tolliver was a big boy now and if he wasn’t able to protect his own interests, the hell with him.

Allison set some records in place and we had music. I thought briefly of Karen and Beethoven, then listened to the suggestive strains of Ravel’s Bolero, pulsing and throbbing and dancing on air. Bless Allison, she began to dance.

I swirled brandy and sipped it and watched. Allison bound me with the slow undulations of the dance, weaving it like a faraway spell, half a world distant from Blind Man’s Bluff. I stared and stared and didn’t say a word. Sweat was glistening on Allison’s face and dark-staining the armpits of her sweater as the last exotic note spun her to the wall. She reached up and touched something and the lights were snuffed out. I sat there, not moving, and heard a rustling sound and footsteps dimly on the thick carpet.

I could see absolutely nothing. This is how the house must have seemed to Gregory — blackness stretching out in all directions, a great yawning gulf of it extending infinitely on all sides.

Allison touched me, finger-caressing my face and I stood up so I could hold her and found what I was holding was naked and dancing against me with the unheard music, warm of shoulder but cool of back and flank, with trembling, avid lips and hands that kneaded the small of my back and a voice that whispered, so low I almost couldn’t hear it, “Don’t stop, Gideon. Don’t stop.”

Well, I hadn’t done anything. I only stood there, holding her because she’d come to me, and I had no intention of stopping. But Shamus came barking into the room, snuffling and pawing the carpet and then barking off, unseen in the other direction.

“Damn that dog,” cried Allison. “He’ll wake Gregory.” She pulled away from me and got the lights on. I squinted, then saw her crouching over a little pile of clothing on the floor in the center of the room.

“That son of a bitch,” she said.

Allison donned her toreador slacks, and that was all, except for sandals. “Shamus has the sweater,” she said. “He’s taking it to Gregory. He… he’s done this before….” And then Allison reddened. Gideon Frey, nth man in a long line of predecessors.

“Allison? Allison, are you in the living-room?” It was Tolliver’s voice.

Allison darted for the room’s smaller entrance and didn’t make it. Growling, Shamus barred her way until Gregory arrived. “Where are you, my dear?” He followed the sounds of Shamus’ growling, and I stood there holding my breath. His hands touched Allison’s bare shoulders and the skin of her throat and her breasts. Shamus had the white sweater clamped between his jaws.

“I’m not altogether surprised, Mr. Frey,” Gregory said. I didn’t answer.

Allison laughed coolly. “What are you talking about?” She turned to me and raised a finger to her lips. “Gideon isn’t here. Gideon was tired too, and went to one of the guest rooms for a nap. I’m alone. All alone.”

“All alone,” said Tolliver. “Shamus, find him.” The boxer stirred, flexing the corded chest muscles. I definitely did not want that dog leaping all over me. “I’m not sleeping,” I said. “I’m right here.”

“Down, Shamus,” Gregory ordered, smiling. He took the white sweater from Shamus’ jaws and handed it to his wife. “Get dressed, Allison. Undoubtedly, Mr. Frey,” Gregory went on with amazing objectivity, “you thought I was unaware of my wife’s affliction. But you must realize that a blind man is vouchsafed certain senses which a man who can see lacks.”

“Hell,” I said, “she’s your wife.”

“Gideon!” Allison screamed.

“If I am a cuckold, then I am a kind you have never seen before, Mr. Frey. I try to make everything in life a game. You may say I compensate in that small way for my blindness. Out on the Sound, Mr. Frey, I was aware of the other boat. I could hear it. I rammed that boat on purpose. A game, you see? Allison, go to your room. When it is time to take Mr. Frey to the station, I will call you.”

Still staring at Shamus, Allison said, “Yes, Gregory,” and departed.

“You realize the awkwardness of your position, Mr. Frey,” Gregory said.

“Allison’s free and twenty-one,” I pointed out.

“And there is a law in New York State against adultery. Oh, I will never shackle Allison here at my side. She is free to come and go, but there is this part of the game you should know. Had I permitted your little scene to continue, the rules of the game would have placed my honor on the block.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“It should be perfectly clear. Is it clear to you, Mr. Frey?”

I said it wasn’t and forget it. I began to think Allison wasn’t the only queer duck around here. Her drake could have used a couple of years of heavy psychoanalysis to good advantage. And poor Allison, she must have known all about Gregory’s little game right along. Naturally, I couldn’t blame her for not telling me. The girl was trying. “Let’s drink on it, Mr. Frey?” I said sure but was itching to leave this booby hatch of a Blind Man’s Bluff as soon as possible. I watched Gregory pour a couple of snifter glasses of brandy and then drank with him. He smacked his lips politely and lit another cigar and called for his almost-unfaithful wife with complete composure.

Allison drove me to the station and we didn’t say a word until she parked the car. Then I patted her hand and said, “I’m sorry, kid.”

She stared straight ahead and I was sorry, so I kissed her and felt her cold in my arms and then responsive until she must have heard Shamus barking in her mind, all the way from Blind Man’s Bluff. She moved away from me and said, “You’ll miss your train.”

“There’s time. Twenty minutes.”

“Get out of here. Oh, get out.”

I chain-smoked in a no-smoking car on the Long Island Railroad all the way into Jamaica and got dirty looks from all the other passengers. The conductor stalked in angrily and walked right up to me and was about to point out the no-smoking signs clearly displayed on two walls of the car when he looked at my face and thought better of it and walked out the way he’d come.

By the time I got to a Brooklyn train and out of Jamaica I was glad nothing more than a couple of nude and semi-nude embraces had occurred between Allison and me. And by the time I boarded the Sea Beach express at Atlantic Avenue I was already itching for morning to come around so I could see Karen. This was the first time in all the years I’d known Allison that I felt anything like pity for her.

But there were others, it occurred to me at once, more deserving of pity. Bert Archer, for instance. And then, my mind going back to this strange day and the hope I’d originally had of learning something, I realized I hadn’t found out a thing. The puzzle was still as black as Gregory Tolliver’s sightless world. And I wondered if Allison had been holding something out on me.