Park Avenue Tramp

Chapter 13

Monday was not one of Charity’s better days, but neither, on the other hand, was it one of her really bad days, and on the whole it was just a day in between. She wakened in the middle of the morning and lay thinking for a while of Connecticut, how fine and exciting and yet restful it had been there with Joe Doyle, but this was not good, for it made her begin to want Joe again, and it was much too soon to begin this, for it was far too long a time until Tuesday night. If she began thinking about him and wanting him already, it would make the passing of time much more difficult to bear, and she was quite likely to do something precipitate and unfortunate instead of waiting patiently and sensibly as she had planned. In order to avoid this, she began thinking of what she could do to fill in the rest of this day that she had now started. The first thing that occurred to her was breakfast, and she was surprised, the moment it occurred to her, to discover that she was really quite hungry, which she scarcely ever was at the beginning of any day, no matter what time she began it.

She got up at once and had a shower and dressed and then went out to the dining room, where she ate a substantial breakfast, even including an egg, that would eliminate the necessity for lunch. The breakfast was served by Edith, who said good morning in a respectful voice and didn’t say anything more all the while she was serving and Charity was eating. She hovered about, however, usually in a position in which Charity could not see her without turning her head, and this made Charity uncomfortable. She wished that Edith would go away, but she didn’t say anything about it until she was ready for a second cup of coffee and a cigarette, and then she said something as politely as she could with the definite intention of not being unpleasant.

“Edith,” she said politely, “I wish you would go the hell away.”

“I beg your pardon, Madam?” Edith said with a rising inflection which implied that she had either not heard correctly or could not believe what she had heard.

“You heard me quite clearly, Edith,” Charity said. “I said very politely that I wish you would go the hell away.”

“Certainly, Madam. Is there anything more I can do for you before I go?”

“No, there is nothing more you can do. I am only going to have a second cup of coffee and a cigarette, and I am perfectly capable of doing it without any help from you.”

“Shall I pour the coffee?”

“I’ll pour it myself, Edith. I’ll also light my cigarette myself.”

“Very well, Madam.”

Edith walked around the end of the table and across the room to the door. She stopped there and turned and smiled and stood with her hands folded under her breasts in the kind of posture taught to offensive children by teachers of elocution. It was a kind of posture that was meant to be ingratiating but only succeeded in being annoying,

“I hope you had a pleasant weekend, Madam,” she said.

“I had a very pleasant weekend,” Charity said, “I went with Miss Samantha Cox to her house in Connecticut.”

“So I understood, Madam. I was certain that I saw Miss Cox drive past on the Avenue Saturday afternoon, but obviously I was mistaken, since she was in Connecticut.”

“Obviously you were, Edith.”

“Probably it was only someone who looks like Miss Cox and happens to drive exactly the same kind and color of car.”

“It’s more probable that you are trying to be malicious and troublesome, Edith, which I understand clearly.”

“Pardon me, Madam. I’m sorry if I’ve offended you. Would you like me to make your bed while you’re having your coffee and cigarette?”

“Yes, you may go make my bed, Edith, and please don’t help yourself to any of my things while you are there.”

“Very well, Madam.”

Edith smiled again and unfolded her hands and went out, and Charity poured a second cup of coffee and lit a cigarette and was furious.

The bitch! she thought. The sneaky, unreliable bitch!

She wasn’t thinking of Edith, however. She was thinking of Samantha. It was just like Samantha to have driven right by the place innumerable times and to have made no effort at all to be inconspicuous during the time she was supposed to be in Connecticut, and it was Charity’s opinion that she had probably let herself be seen deliberately. You simply couldn’t rely on Samantha to do her part faithfully in anything, and it was bad luck that she had been the only one with a suitable house to borrow for the weekend. She was more than unreliable, as a matter of fact. She was absolutely treacherous when it pleased her to be, with no conscience whatever, and it wouldn’t be the least surprising to discover that she had actually called Oliver on the telephone on some pretext just to let him know that Charity had lied about going with her to Connecticut. But if this were done and she were charged with it, she would simply be too contrite and exuding apologies for being so careless and forgetful and utterly undependable, which she wouldn’t have been deliberately for the world, of course, and she was absolutely a bitch, bitch, bitch!

While thinking of Samantha, she had been drawing deeply and methodically on her cigarette without realizing what she was doing, and suddenly she became aware that her tongue was hot and the cigarette was tipped with a long red coal that was almost half as long as what was left of the cigarette itself. She crushed it in a tray and drank the coffee in her cup. She was beginning now to wish that she hadn’t eaten such a hearty breakfast. It had tasted good, and she had enjoyed it, even the egg, but it was beginning to feel like a mass of sodden facial tissue in her stomach, and she couldn’t imagine how it had got as far as it had, or how it would ever get the rest of the way it had to go.

Well, it served her right for being such a glutton. Ordinarily she had very little taste for food of any kind, and she ate lightly as a necessity whenever her body demanded it, and she simply couldn’t understand people who made a big issue of eating, a kind of religious ceremony, with all kinds of specifications as to how things were to be prepared and served. It was disgusting, when you stopped to think about it, making such a thing over eating flesh and eggs and things like that, a lot more disgusting than some of the natural appetites some people professed to find disgusting, and anyone who did it, as she had just done it, deserved to have an uncomfortable stomach at least.

Getting up abruptly from the table, she went out of the dining room and into a hall and down the hall to a library with two or three thousand books that no one ever read. Once she had gone through a period of resolving to be something different from what she was, and then she had decided to start reading the books in the library with the intention of becoming dedicated to a reclusive life, and she had actually taken a few of them down and read snatches in them here and there, but she had never got around to starting one at the beginning and reading through to the end. It was just as well that she hadn’t started, anyhow, because the period had been pretty brief, and she probably wouldn’t have had time in the length of it to read a whole book. Now, starting Monday morning to wait for Tuesday night, she put several records on the hi-fi and sat down in a chair to listen.

Not that she really listened. Not, that is, with an understanding of scores and a genuine appreciation of execution. The music simply became a part of her emotional content and gave a kind of splendid quality to things remembered and anticipated that had not really been splendid at all, or would not be. Eventually, this effect became flattened, and she became bored. She wondered what she could possibly do with the rest of the day without going out somewhere to do it. There was nothing she could do with it, she decided. Nothing in the apartment. She had determined as a matter of sagacity to stay home until tomorrow night, but it would surely do no harm to go shopping, which was something she had not done for quite a long time, and so she went to her room with a freshly made bed and dressed appropriately and went.

There was nothing she needed or especially wanted, but then she thought that she would buy a new gown to wear tomorrow night for Joe Doyle, and this became at once a rather exciting venture. She tried to decide what he would probably like in the way of a gown, and she realized that she didn’t have the least idea. It was astonishing. They had actually known each other intimately for a long while, almost a week, and she did not know about him such a simple thing as what he might like in the way of a gown. Perhaps this was significant, and it bothered her slightly for a moment because she thought it might indicate a deficiency or basic indifference in their relationship. But this was not true, she assured herself, and what it really indicated was a kind of stripped and unqualified acceptance of each by the other. What she would have to get was something that she especially liked herself, and the chances were, since they were so compatible and acceptable to each other in all ways, that Joe would like it too.

She went to a salon and looked at some original gowns on two sleek models, and by a stroke of uncommon luck the third one on the first model was a gown that she knew immediately was exactly right and that she must certainly have. It was simply designed and seemed to be precariously secured, which added a quality of anticipation to its effect on whoever was watching whoever was almost in it, and it was a gown, most importantly, which clearly required other prerequisites than merely the considerable sum of money it took to buy it. After paying for the gown and arranging to have it sent, she went to two other places and bought lingerie in one and shoes in the other, which she also arranged to have sent, and then it was definitely late enough to have the Martini she had been thinking about, between other thoughts, all afternoon.

In the cocktail lounge that happened to be nearest to where she bought the shoes, she sat at a small round table in cool shadows and drank one Martini quickly and another slowly. While slowly drinking the second one, she began to think deliberately about something she had been deliberately not thinking about, or at least trying not to think about and this was what Oliver might know about the weekend, and what he might say or do about it when she saw him this evening for the first time since returning last night. She didn’t see how Oliver could possibly know anything, unless Samantha had given it away, damn her, but Samantha couldn’t have given away anything specific, at least, because she only knew that Charity had used the house, not with whom or why, although she could surely guess the latter. If it turned out that he knew about Joe’s being there, or about Long Island or the night before Long Island, then that would be additional evidence of an abnormal capacity to learn things, or of some method of systematic spying, and she didn’t know which of these would be worse, but either would be too bad. They were both threatening and frightening, and that was why she had deliberately not thought of them, and she would not have thought of them now if she had not been compelled by the time and supported by gin.

Having considered the issue at last, whether Oliver would know anything or not, she felt a strong compulsion to find out as quickly as possible, and for that reason she wanted to be home when he arrived at six, which it would be in less than an hour according to the tiny watch on her wrist. Resisting the desire to have a third Martini, she left the lounge and returned to the apartment and went directly to her room. After she had changed into something more casual and comfortable, there were only ten minutes left of the time before Oliver would return on schedule to dress and do whatever else he regularly did before going out again this particular night of the week for dinner and bridge at his club. Or was it Tuesday night that he went for dinner and bridge? She was uncertain about it, but it didn’t matter, anyhow, for she definitely remembered that he went somewhere for something this night.

She had intended waiting here in her room, but in considering his coming and what might happen, she remembered what had happened the other time, the time about a week ago right after he had told her all about her first experience with Joe, and so she decided suddenly to wait instead in the living room, where the same thing might still happen again but was less likely. Going into the living room, she sat on a sofa and looked at pictures in a magazine and spent the remaining minutes, and when Oliver arrived at six she was vastly relieved to see that he was quite normal and apparently not suspicious or angry about anything.

“Hello, my dear,” he said. “How are you?”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Do I look as if I were not?”

“On the contrary Your weekend in the country seems to have agreed with you. Perhaps we should have a place of our own. Not in Fairfield County, however. I think I’d prefer Bucks.”

“Well, I’d not prefer either one as a regular thing. As a regular thing, I prefer the city. We’d only want to go to the country now and then, and it would hardly be worthwhile having a place for no more than that. It’s always possible to get invited to someone’s house when you want to go.”

“You’re right, of course. I didn’t really offer my suggestion seriously.”

He walked over and sat down on the sofa near her, turning sidewise to face her in an unusually companionable position. He was behaving so graciously, as a matter of fact, that it made her uneasy and inclined to listen sharply for significant nuances in his voice.

“Did you and Samantha get along all right?”

“Perfectly. Usually I can’t tolerate her for more than a few hours at a time at most, but this time we didn’t have the slightest difficulty.”

“That’s good. Who else was there?”

“You mean all the time or just everyone who happened to come and go?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to account for all of Samantha’s casual visitors. Just the guests.”

“There were only three besides me. There were a couple, a Wesley Bussy and his wife, who were from Hollywood. He has something or other to do with motion pictures, production or administration or something like that, not acting or directing or anything. An executive is what he is. His wife’s name is Andrea, and she went to Hollywood from someplace like Texas to become an actress, but he saw her there and married her, and she’s given it up. Acting, I mean. Neither of them is anyone you’d be likely to hear about.”

She said all this naturally, with a perfect accent of truth, and even the names, which were imaginary, were produced without hesitation. To anyone who heard her give such a performance and knew all the while that she was lying, which was frequently the situation, it seemed an incredible accomplishment, but it was not actually as remarkable as it seemed. The truth was, she often amused herself by thinking up names and circumstances that might become useful to her, and when she needed to tell something convincing in an emergency, they were always available. She was really rather proud of her ability to file them away in her mind, and she was very particular about the names, evaluating them carefully to be certain that they were neither too common nor too odd, which would have made them excite suspicion in either event. The only thing that concerned her sometimes was the feeling that she had, in lying to someone it was necessary to deceive, given certain names to certain imaginary people that she had previously given to other imaginary people who were obviously altogether different in all other respects. She tried never to use the same name over in telling lies to any given person, but she couldn’t always be sure she hadn’t slipped. She was sure now, however, of the Bussys. She had only imagined them recently and had definitely never used them before.

“Were they interesting people?” Oliver said.

“No, they were very dull. They were bores, as a matter of fact. Especially her. A number of years ago she won several of these beauty contests you are always reading about in which someone becomes Miss something-or-other, and she seemed to think this was important. Everyone knows perfectly well that such contests mean hardly anything, but she kept referring to them all the time as if having won them was an exceptional accomplishment.”

“I’m sorry you were bored. Was the other guest any better?”

“Yes, he was. He was much better, He’s a professor in a university somewhere and is apparently quite poor, but he’s writing a book that may make some money for him.”

“What’s his name?”

“Clyde Connelly. I don’t remember what university he teaches in, but I believe it’s somewhere in the Middle West, like Ohio or Illinois or somewhere, and if I’m not mistaken he is on sabbatical leave next year and is going to Europe. He came to New York to see a publisher about the book and met Samantha at a party they had both gone to with someone else. You know Samantha. She is always picking someone up and cultivating him for a while and then dropping him. This professor is good-looking and not very old, and it’s probable that they’re having an affair.”

“You think so?”

“Yes, I do. I think it’s probable.”

“Are all your friends always having affairs?”

“Oh, no. Not always. I didn’t intend to give that impression at all. If you think they are, you’re mistaken.”

He laughed and reached over and squeezed her nearer knee in a sudden warm gesture.

“My dear,” he said, rising, “I know practically nothing about your friends, and I think about them just as infrequently as I can.”

He stood looking down at her, smiling, and her feeling of uneasiness returned and grew, not because of what he had said or the way in which he had said it, but simply because his geniality was rare and excessive and therefore suspect.

“I must go change,” he said. “Are you going out this evening?”

“No. I thought I’d stay in and go to bed early. I’m rather tired after the weekend and all.”

“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll not disturb you when I come in.”

When he was gone, her uneasiness began to diminish slowly and after a few minutes was gone. There had simply been no evidence at all that he was informed on her affair, and it was impossible to believe that he was capable of such convincing and monstrous deception. Besides, what would have been the point of it? It was obvious that everything was all right, that there was nothing to worry about, and she began to regret, now that she had convinced herself of this, that she had not planned to go see Joe Doyle tonight instead of tomorrow night. She was tempted to go tonight anyhow, regardless of plans, but perhaps it would be wiser, since she had committed herself to staying in and going to bed early, to wait another twenty-four hours.

The time would pass. Tomorrow she would find something to do, though she didn’t know what, and tonight she would have a simple dinner alone and two or three Martinis afterward, and then she would watch television in bed. Television was commonly so utterly dull that it would probably put her to sleep after a while without the help of soporifics.