The Magician's Wife

7

Poor Sally, when she got there after phoning she would be late, didn’t quite look like herself. She was still in her Portico uniform, with little straw hat to match, but her crisp Portico style was not on view at all. The hat was askew, the dress mussed, the face slack. She was tacky, disheveled, and loose, and her mouth, wet with desire, plainly betrayed the reason. When he opened, she clamped her arms on his neck, started a long hot kiss, and lifted her heels from the floor, as though to be carried in the direction of love. He carried her, but into the living room, which was decked, to be sure, with several vases of roses and fragrant with toast, caviar, and crumbled egg — but it wasn’t their regular dovecote. “Here!” he said, putting her down and waving at the comestibles. “You must be starved.” She blinked, then told him: “Well, maybe I am — but not for this stuff, just yet. What’s the matter? Don’t you like me?” He said he liked her fine, “but we have some talking to do.” She stared, then snarled: “What is this? I come for a little romance and you give me goddam fish eggs — and a song and dance about talking we have to do. What is this, anyway? What talking?”

“Your husband was in today.”

“Alec?”

“Yes, Alec. He came to the shop.”

She sank to a sofa, stunned. “And you spilled it?” she whispered, licking her lips. “You told everything? After all I’ve said, you told him about me?”

“So happens I didn’t.”

Somewhat reassured, but not much, she braced to hear him out. In considerable detail, with special stress on the scene in the cold room, when he lifted Buster down, he told of the day’s visitation and when he had finished said: “So!”

“Well? So what?”

“Sally, can’t you see?”

“Why, I can see how he shook you up, coming in that way, but once you knew what it was, why should it be such a bomb? So he needs overhead rails and Mike sends him to you? Why shouldn’t he? After all, you do sell him meat, and after all you do have overhead rails. Maybe I’m dumb, but I don’t get the dramatics.”

“Then maybe you are dumb.”

“So — to the dumb you have to explain.”

“Don’t you see? I took his hand.”

“Well, did it have the pox on it, Clay?”

“I can’t shake his hand and sleep up with his wife.”

“You are sleeping up with his wife! Or were.”

“I can’t do it behind his back.”

“You did do it behind his back — didn’t you?”

“Listen, it started that way — things got out of hand. But from the beginning I wanted it out in the open. I begged you to go to Reno and never go back to him. You wouldn’t, and things coasted along. O.K., but now they can’t coast any more. Listen, it’s like that O. Henry story where the guy couldn’t drink with the man he blackmailed. I can’t take a man’s wife and then shake his hand. Listen: it’s not taking the wife — I don’t mind that at all. If he can’t keep her, she’s fair game for me — life is like that and I’m not even slightly ashamed. But shaking his hand, all at the same time — that’s different. I won’t do it, and now that it’s happened, a whole new chapter has started.”

“What O. Henry story?”

“Does it matter? I forget the title of it.”

“It still makes no sense to me but— Let’s get on, Clay. What new chapter? If you know.”

“First, we go to him.”

“And then?”

“Reno.”

“At my expense?”

“Sally! I pay for it, of course. We—”

“Including the millions it costs me?”

“Oh, so that’s it! It’s been said now, at last!”

“It’s been said from the beginning, Clay — the trouble is you don’t listen. You pretend nothing’s been said when it has been. Those millions, dear heart, are important. And so you get it straight, I’m not giving them up. Now, what else?”

“In the first place, you’re not in line for the millions.”

“So happens I think I am.”

“In the second place, they’re not all.”

“You mean there’s you and your lily-white hand?”

“Sally, I mean there’s you, and your more or less lily-white life.” And as she looked at him, startled, he went on: “I didn’t like this guy, and from the start I felt something peculiar. The whole thing, his idea for the trick, his coming, his testing of the rail, had something phony about it. And quite a while after he left I hit on the explanation — to my own satisfaction, at least. You used to work for him, didn’t you? In the act, before you had your baby? O.K., then — suppose Buster gets sick? Suppose she gets the flu? And he puts the bite on you to go on in her place? Sally, with you hanging up there by wires from a cradle on rails, your life will be hanging there too, and I would not give a nickel for it! That’s what we have to think about, and believe me, once you come crashing down, there’ll be no millions for you. Did you hear what I said? There won’t be anything — but a bang-up funeral, with lilies. And I happen to love you, that’s all.”

He had no recollection of having this idea at all before he started to talk, and in fact heard himself get it off with utter astonishment, mixed with some admiration. It was a pure, inspired ad-lib, but it got him nowhere at all. She listened with ill-concealed boredom and, when he was finished, said: “Well, thanks for worrying about me — though there was no reason, really. You were right, of course, about one thing: there was something phony about it. He’s dreaming about this stunt, which he thinks will be quite a sensation. But to pull it every night, with her ‘way up in the air, would get him in dutch with the cops — she’s a human being, believe it or not, and they would worry about her — maybe haul him to court. So to take care of that he’ll fake it — use a wire frame and plastic head, so she seems to be up there and isn’t. But to tell you how it’s done, as he figures, would be telling the whole wide world — and if that sounds silly to you, you don’t know magicians. They think the world is lying awake to know how their tricks are done — they guard their secrets like gold. So to cover up, to make it all look kind of real, he brings her to see you too — as though she’s the one to be reassured. But when she decided to chin herself on the rail, that was coming too thick. Now that was an idea, wasn’t it? All she wanted was a feel — from you. And the way you tell it she got it — and I don’t blame him for how he felt. He’s a crumb, he’s ruined my life — but for once I’m on his side.”

“I’ll never be on his side.”

“All right — what else?”

He tramped around, very agitated, then turned to her and blurted: “We talk — we bat it around — we don’t get anywhere. So I’m taking this bull by the horns. You’re not going back.”

“You mean, to him?”

“To him, to that house, or anywhere, but here. So, our new life begins — has begun — as of now. So why don’t we celebrate?”

He went out in the kitchen, got a quart of champagne from the icebox, with glasses he had put there to chill. Coming back, he twisted the wire off the bottle, worked the cork with skillful fingers, got it out with a festive pop. He poured a sip in one glass, tasted, then filled both glasses and raised one with a flourish. “Happy days!” he declaimed. “To you, to Elly, to me. Happy years, happy — everything.”

She made no move toward her glass. “Just goes to show,” she observed after a moment, “how mistaken you can be. How mistaken I can be.”

“Yeah? What mistakes have you made?”

“Oh, you know. Like with the rock I thought I had. Well? You looked like a rock, kind of. And acted like one — I thought. But the rock turned out to be more of a mock orange. Ever see one, Clay? Kind of pretty on the outside, like a big green grapefruit. Open it up it’s not so good. Instead of juice it has milk, that’s slimy and sticks to your fingers and stinks — so you want to throw up. Like what runs in your veins, come to think of it. What a rock. What a hero. What a joy. What a comfort — to a girl in trouble that needs someone to lean on.”

O.K., lean. I’m here — not there.”

“Damn it, shut up!”

Though his finger trembled, betraying how much he was shaken, he pointed it at her glass, saying: “I toasted you ‘Happy days.’ What are you toasting me?”

She raised her glass, and he reached for his to clink. But then suddenly he was blinded, by wet stinging stuff in his eye, and realized she had thrown the wine at him. Wiping off with a napkin, he heard glass breaking, and when he could see, she was lunging at him with a stem, a glittering, splintered thing that she held in her fist, like a practiced barroom fighter. He jumped up and backed away. She jumped up and charged. Her next lunge grazed his cheek and he clipped her on the chin, toppling her over backward. When he touched his tingling cheek his finger came away red, and he went back to the bathroom, stopping the blood with a styptic pencil. When he got back to the living room he gave a gasp of horror, for pictures, cups, and mementos were all on the floor, the caviar and egg were stamped into the rug, the champagne was upside down, gurgling into the sofa, and she was on his Orozco, the finest painting he had, which had hung over the fireplace, kicking the frame apart and grinding her heels in the canvas. He grabbed her and she cursed him, he flinching at the words, so different were they in her shrill feminine accents from their sound as said by men, and so horrible. Dragging her to the door, he pushed her out. Then, aiming with care, he drove a kick at her bottom, with all his strength, that sprawled her on her face in front of the elevator.

Coming back, he closed the door, panting from exertion and gagging from revulsion. He saw her bag on the telephone table. Grabbing it up, he opened the door again and threw it at her, where she still lay on the floor. Then, banging the door shut, he dived for the bathroom, where white foamy stuff came retching up from his stomach.

“You’ve had it — this is the end. You’re not seeing this dame again for the rest of your life or of hers. You’ve seen her for what she is, and if you go on asking for more, you should have yourself committed. Did you hear what I said? You’re through!”