Getting Away With Murder

EIGHT

“Benny! Which way did you go?” I was sitting in my apartment at the all-purpose table with Anna Abraham staring across at me. With the certain knowledge that Phil, the hood, or one of his pals was keeping at least half an eye on my windows, I was not brilliant company.

“Huh?”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself. Benny, what’s the matter with you tonight? You sulked through dinner and haven’t been listening for at least the last twenty minutes. Are you telling me that you could do with less of my company? I can take a kick in the pants as well as the next girl.”

“I’m sorry, Anna. I know I’m being lousy company.”

“An understatement if I ever heard one!”

“I said I was sorry.” I stared at the wine stain on the tablecloth. I’d poured salt over it to prevent it becoming permanent, but I wasn’t sure it wasn’t just an old wives’ tale. The wreckage of two approaches to eating grilled salmon lay before us: Anna’s tidy clean plate; my chopped-up remains, partly hidden under the mashed potatoes.

Anna had come early, letting herself in with her own key, and had a good dinner on the stove when I returned from playing travel agent at my parents’. I was delighted to see her, of course, but I knew that I had put her in danger by just knowing her. I wanted to tell her, but I was afraid of the consequences. I was sure that she would stick by me. In fact, her loyalty was the problem. The last thing in the world I needed at the moment was damn-thetorpedoes loyalty. What I needed was everyday indifference, the sort of long-standing arrangement that might allow for Anna to not see me for a couple of weeks. The last thing I wanted was to have Anna know more about Abe Wise than was good for her. I had already quizzed her during dinner about her responsibilities at the university. She couldn’t take any time off and that was that. What would have happened to her, I wondered, if she had been with me when Mickey and the Three Stooges paid their call?

“Do you remember what I was saying?”

“You were talking about … No, I don’t remember. You caught me fair and square.”

“Well, you’re honest, at least.” She was looking at me. I knew it, but I couldn’t return her gaze. I wasn’t sure what I might not say once I was caught staring into Anna’s salamandrine eyes.

“Let’s start again. Okay? I’ll try harder. I’m not the rat fink you think I am. I’m just careworn from a bad day at the office.”

“Office. You haven’t been in your office for hours. I tried calling you there umpteen times. You’re not going to tell me what this is all about, are you?”

“This is something you don’t want to get involved in.

“Benny, you’re always saying that the only way to protect yourself from the consequence of having guilt knowledge is to pass it around. Secrets get people killed. You say it all the time! Well, why not take your own advice? What’s going on in your life that I should know about? Are you tracking down a serial killer? Are the fuzz about to bust you for non-payment of your many secret operatives spread out across the nation, around the world?”

“Very funny!”

“Maybe it isn’t business at all. Let me think about that. The blonde hasn’t arrived to displace me, has she?” Anna has always been kidding me about my falling for a blonde bombshell with no brain and a full bra. I know it is just a joke, but she brings it out whenever she’s feeling peculiar about our arrangements. We have been seriously not living together off and on for nearly three years. I could go on like this forever, but Anna and Anna’s father would like some resolution to the informality. My own parents are noisily silent on the subject. I get looks across the table when Anna’s name is mentioned. I catch exchanged glances and sense the undercurrent in the room. I once was kicked under the table when Pa got close to the subject of rabbis and invitations. I didn’t know how to pass along the warning from Ma, but my father got the idea from my cry of pain.

“The blonde is in the closet under my laundry,” I said. Anna looked over at the closet door then back at me.

“She’s very quiet.”

“She’s well brought up. Breeding does it every time.”

“Is that a reproach to my father’s new money?” she said, brushing a lock of hair back where it belonged.

“You know I’m indifferent to your old man’s millions. It’s your body I’m mad about.”

“What about the blonde under the laundry? Doesn’t she have a body? Maybe she can’t pull herself away from your smalls.”

“Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. Dirty shorts are a very big kick. Maybe not my kick, but a kick nevertheless. Come over here.”

“Aren’t you saving yourself for her?” I answered the question by getting up and walking around the table. The next half-hour has no place in the report about Abe Wise’s call on my professional services. Although I hadn’t answered Anna’s questions, I had forgotten that she had asked them. Maybe she had too. It was a long time before I thought of Abe Wise or of his minions stationed across the street.

The light was gone when I rolled over. The candles had guttered out in silence while I caught thirty winks in Anna’s warm arms.

“She isn’t making much noise in there,” Anna said at length.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“I was, but I was feeling sorry for the woman with your smalls.”

“I told you; she likes it in there.”

“Until I’m gone and then she jumps out to behave in the most abandoned manner.”

“You’ve been looking in my window.”

“I’ve been reading your mind. Why don’t you give the poor dear a break while I sit in a hot tub. I’ll only give you ten minutes. I call that generous, I do,” Anna said, wrapping the top sheet around her. She made no move to abandon me.

“Why not make it a shower? There’s room for two.”

“I’m talking about cleanliness and all you can think of is more sex. No wonder you keep the blonde in there. If she wasn’t a figment of your warped imagination, I’d call the cops on you. And there are a few women’s groups that should be informed too. I think you should be seeing somebody about this. If Freud were alive …” Anna delayed her tub for several minutes with a dissertation on my mind and what the world of psychiatry was missing. I thought again about making things more permanent with Anna. There was a natural male reluctance in me. Anna had pointed it out a few times. She said I was addicted to having the blonde in the closet. As a figure of speech for my wild bachelor years, the blonde was carrying a lot of dark meaning, most of it Anna’s. But who am I to interfere with her illusions about me? I decided that this was a bad time to talk about the blonde coming out of the closet and leaving town. Abram Wise and his boys had a lot to answer for. Was I just turning to Wise as an excuse for continuing in the old established, make-it-up-as-we-goalong ways, or was I really worried about Wise and what he might do to Anna? I was worried.

“Before you head for the bathtub, Anna, will you scratch my back?” Anna moved around and pulled herself up on the pillows. She caught me in a straight look.

“Can’t get her to do it, eh?” she said. “It figures. Roll over.”