Comfort Station

5:00 P.M

The hours crawled by for Carolina Weiss, former Russian countess now A & E mechanic, every hour seeming to last sixty minutes. Sitting in Stall Number 2 at the Bryant Park Comfort Station, crossroads of a million private lives, she wiled away the wily hours by alternating reflections on the events which had led her here to this place at this time with speculations on what had become of Roland, who was to meet her here at this place at this time, but who had not as yet put in an appearance: the whole leavened with a soupçon of general philosophic commentary on the overall subject of relations, both marital and extra.

Who was it who said the bourgeoisie, having solved all the real problems of human life, had to invent adultery to keep from dying of boredom? Well, no matter: it doesn’t sound like someone we’d care to invite to the house anyway, so who cares what his name is? (The driver’s name! Arbogast Smith’s driver, from 8:00 A.M. Elwood Tripe, that was it! Elwood Tripe. All facts eventually rise, like corpses, to the surface.)

When Carolina Weiss began to reflect back upon her past, it was perfectly true that she had a past well worth reflecting back on. Born to an aristocratic Russian family still living in their beloved mother country years after the Communist overlords had begun to lord it over their unhappy nation, Carolina and her parents and brothers and sisters had managed for years to hide their nobility by overeating. It was Carolina who, at the age of nine, inadvertently gave the game away. Her class taking a compulsory tour of a nationalized mattress factory, Carolina had slipped and fallen from a catwalk, falling a scant two feet and landing on a pile of twenty superthick mattresses. No one thought anything of the incident, except that Carolina complained bitterly that something sharp had dug into her hip when she’d landed on the top mattress. The factory foreman announced this to be impossible, and patted the mattress all over to demonstrate that there was nothing sharp or hard within it. Nevertheless, the child continued to weep and to complain, and her teacher noticed a large bruise beginning to form on the youngster’s hip. The foreman, puzzled, had the top mattress taken apart by factory employees: it contained no foreign matter. Very well, he would have the second mattress taken apart, and then the third, and then the fourth ...

On the floor, beneath the twentieth mattress, there was found a single pea.

No one said anything at the time, but Carolina noted the glances she received the rest of that schoolday, and fortunately had the presence of mind to report the incident to her parents that evening.

Her father turned white — not that he’d ever really been red. Putting down his dinner shovel, “We are undone,” he said. And, “We must flee.”

Suiting action to words, the family fled that very night to Paris, where all became cab drivers, until the onslaught of the Nazi hordes forced them once more to flee, this time across the mighty Atlantic Ocean to the New World, where the family members split up, each finding his own niche in the Land of Opportunity. Carolina’s father became a famed Hollywood director, the man who did the gypsy number in the middle of every Abbott and Costello movie, until the castanets drove him insane and one memorable day he flung himself and his Stutz Bearcat into the sea off Big Sur.

Carolina’s mother became an internationally known Washington hostess and also had a nice line of frozen cookies. Her older brother went into psychiatry and was never seen again, the younger brother opened a factory which supplies pencils to William F. Buckley, and the family prefers not to discuss Carolina’s sisters. As to Carolina herself, she became an aircraft and engine mechanic out at Kennedy International Airport, crossroads of a million private lives, most of them at the same time.

And she married. Oh, it seemed like a good idea at the time, when big, bluff, handsome Derek Weiss came into her life. Looking at him across the table in the candle-lit restaurant, she thought, He’s a man. He’s all man. Perfectly true, and she was a woman. And so they got married.

Perhaps it would have been all right if they’d had children. Perhaps it would have been all right if they’d had more in common. But there she was in her Eastern Air Lines coveralls out to Kennedy Airport, and where was Derek? Derek, a high-powered attorney, was usually down in Washington arguing cases before the Supreme Court, crossroads of a million private lives.

But it might still have been all right if big, bluff, handsome Roland Redwing hadn’t come into her life. Looking at him across the table in the candle-lit restaurant, she thought, He’s a man. He’s all man. True again, and she was still a woman. And so they went to a lot of motels, crossroads of a million private lives.

What she didn’t know, of course — and it’s a violation of point-of-view to tell this but what the hell — what she didn’t know was that Roland Redwing was a confirmed bigamist, a man who traveled from city to city, from state to state, taking lonely wealthy women away from their husbands, marrying them, and leaving them sadder, wiser, and much, much poorer. Under a wide variety of aliases, Roland Redwing was wanted in every state in the Union and several European nations as well. Roland Redwing really was the crossroads of a million private lives.

And Roland Redwing, at this very moment, was in custody out in Merrick, Long Island, having been spotted by an alert rookie cop who’d recognized him from his wanted poster at the station. (Actually, the alert rookie cop had thought he was arresting Milton “Mad Dog” Mendelsohn, who did bear a superficial resemblance to Roland Redwing — they both had receding foreheads — and by the time Roland realized the mistake he’d already given up and confessed all.)

None of this, howsomever, did Carolina know, and so she continued to sit in the cramped stall with her valpack and wait for Roland, believing he would get here at any moment and the two of them would flee together forever to the sunlit Caribbean with all of Derek’s money, which was in the valpack.

Entering the men-only Comfort Station had not been at all difficult, as Roland had promised. Disguising her femininity by wearing a set of love beads around her neck, Carolina had simply worn her own clothing and hair, and had entered with no questions asked, and none answered. And now here she was.

And where, she wondered, was Roland?