Two Much!

10

Walking with Liz to Hommel’s, toting my suitcase, I had leisure to think things over. What next, I wondered. I’d done my con and made it work, I’d screwed both sisters, I’d precipitated the break with Candy that I suppose I must have been angling for, so now everything was obviously finished. To repeat the twin gag would be insanity; I couldn’t possibly get away with it twice. And while Liz was fun in her way she was hardly restful; I might as well have stayed with Candy.

So what I should do right now was take the next ferry/cab/train back to the city, move into my office (ah, the sleeping bag stored in the closet), and start hustling around for someone else to put me up for the rest of August. Also for another female, though that was at the moment secondary.

But I just couldn’t seem to let go. I’d made the Art-Bart phone call to Betty the minute I’d gotten off the ferry, I’d risked severe physical impairment to drop Bart’s name into my farewell scene with Candy, and now I was walking to Hommel’s with Liz, my mind searching for a way to get invited to spend the rest of the summer at the Kerner house. Why?

Well, partly for the Laurentian Lumber Mills, I suppose. And maybe a tenny little bit for that television station in Indiana. I was, after all, engaged to an heiress, or at least Bart was.

And also for the sheer silly intrigue of it. I’ve never been able to quit when I was ahead, never known how to stop before I got caught, and I wasn’t likely to learn now. So I went with Liz to Hommel’s, watched a ferry depart, and waited to be invited home.

For a while it looked as though it wouldn’t happen. Liz spent her first two drinks making remarks about Candy, some of which I thought were probably unfair, then devoted her third to class-conscious slurs of the citizens around us. It must be hard to be a promiscuous snob, but Liz managed.

Finally, partway into her fourth vodka-ice, she looked at me and said, “So what do you do now?”

“Swelter in the city, I suppose. I’ll hate to break the news to Bart.”

“Screw Bart.”

“He’s my brother.”

“He isn’t mine,” she said, callously, I thought.

“Then there’s my apartment,” I said. I sighed, but was manful about it. “Well, I’ve camped in my office before.”

“What’s wrong with your apartment?”

I was just about to tell her it was sublet when I realized I was supposed to have been spending half of every week in the damn place. “Bart,” I said. “It’s just a one-and-a-half in the Village, there isn’t room for both of us.”

“He’s in your place?”

That didn’t make sense, did it? “Well,” I said. Invention flowed through me, bred by necessity, and I said, “Bart doesn’t have his own place yet Not till after Labor Day.”

“Why not?”

“He spent several years out on the Coast,” I explained. (Of course! If a friend of mine expressed bewilderment about Bart in Liz’s presence, this would explain it; he was a long-lost brother.) “He just came back the beginning of the summer,” I said, “when he came into the business with me.”

“Oh. Well, you want to come stay at my house?”

“Do I have to sleep in the closet?”

She showed me her sour grin. “I like being around you,” she said. “You’re a little funnier than most people. Like back at your lady-friend’s house.”

“I give all credit to my supporting cast.”

“Uh huh.” She downed her drink and signaled to the proprietor for another. “Can you get hold of that brat with the boat?”

“I can try.” But should I plead Bart’s case? No. Screw Bart, as Liz so correctly pointed out. Let him plead his own case, with Betty. “I’ll be right back,” I said, and headed for the pay phone.