Two Much!

18

When Liz arrived the next afternoon at two-thirty, I knew at once I was in trouble. “Well, you’ve made yourself at home,” she said, coming out onto the terrace where I was enjoying the sunlight, the view of the park, a rum and soda, and my marital status. Dropping into a canvas chair, she waved generally at the park and said, “Next you’ll want to graze your sheep on our lawn.”

“Well, hello,” I said, in my witty Bart manner. “Betty didn’t tell me you were coming to town.”

“Betty didn’t know.” She shrugged, looking vaguely irritable and discontented: normal, in other words. “I just thought I’d come in and see Art in his natural habitat.”

“Ah,” I said.

“He takes long lunches.”

“Oh?”

“I called the office,” she said. “His secretary said he was still out to lunch.”

“Well,” I said, “they’re business lunches. You know, with artists and distributors and so on.”

She frowned at the blue sky. “Maybe I’ll go down there and hang around, see what the office looks like.”

“You never know how long he’ll be gone,” I said. “Why not wait for him to call?”

She picked at the canvas of her chair, looking mulish, then frowned at me and said, “What about you? Shouldn’t you be at work?”

On my honeymoon? Well, I wasn’t to mention that; Betty still insisted on keeping our marriage secret, even from Liz, and for reasons of my own I was happy to oblige. Once again invention came when needed. With no more devious intention in my mind than to offer an acceptable answer to Liz’s question, I fell once again into a useful arrangement. “Art and I have had—” I gave a little shrug “—kind of an argument. I haven’t seen him for a while.”

Her attention had been caught; I could see in the sudden glint in her eye and curve in her lips the hope of hearing something amusing. “An argument? You two?”

“All families argue.” Bart would never amuse Liz, the best day he lived.

“I thought you and your brother were very close.”

“Don’t you and Betty argue sometimes?”

The eye-glint turned steely for a second. “We’re not talking about me and Betty.” Curiosity returned, and she said, “But what do you find to argue about?”

What, indeed? Searching for subject matter, poring over the personality differences I’d established between us, I said, “Oh, I just think sometimes Art gets a little careless with, urn, business ethics.”

“Business ethics?” She found the phrase hilarious, but struggled to keep a straight face for my sake.

“He doesn’t treat the artists well,” I said primly. Then I leaned closer to her, lowering my voice and looking toward the terrace doors as I said, “I haven’t said anything to Betty about it. I didn’t want to upset her.”

“You have a lot to learn about Betty,” she said.

Less than Liz thought. “Will you keep my secret?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Why not?” And, since the threatened diversion had not after all arrived, she changed the subject without a backward glance, saying, “What’s that you’re drinking?”

“Rum and soda.”

“Isn’t that Art’s drink?”

“I thought I’d try it,” I said, grinning sheepishly at the glass and cursing myself for a fool. “I suppose it means I wish he and I were friends again.”

Liz was the perfect partner for a parlor psychology conversation; it put her right directly to sleep. “Yeah, that’s probably what it means, all right,” she said. “But who I want to be friends with is me. Would you see if you can find Carlos, tell him to make me my usual?”

I’d been looking for an excuse to go inside, and here it was. “I’ll do it myself,” I said, and absolutely bounded to my feet.

She squinted up at me in the sunlight. “You know what I drink?”

Did I? I couldn’t remember if Bart had ever been introduced to Liz’s drinking habits or not “I’m not sure,” I said.

“It’s an easy formula,” she said. “One glass, one ice cube, vodka to taste.”

“Coming up,” I told her, reflecting that Bart was apparently not worth being given the line about a big wet kiss, and hurried inside.

All right. Many things were lined up against me, including the fact that I didn’t actually have a twin brother, but here and there were some small factors on my side — principally, at this point, the Kerner’s telephone system. Not only were there three separate lines, there were also extensions all over the apartment, including a long-corded one in the living room. Already I had seen Nikki several times carry that phone out to Betty on the terrace to answer an incoming call. So Liz would stay where she was, and there just might be some hope after all.

The kitchen was empty. The extension there was a white wall phone, and like all the others it had a row of plastic buttons on the bottom for selecting which line you wanted to use. It also had a long cord, so one could tuck the receiver in between ear and shoulder and hold a conversation while walking around.

Fine. I picked up the receiver, tucked it, and pushed the button for the first line. It immediately lit up, as would the same button on all the other phones in the apartment, showing that this line was in use. Unfortunate, but unavoidable. Quickly I dialed the number for the second line and then, while the phone company did its mumbo, jumbo of clicks and computer notes, I walked across the room to the cabinets and picked out a glass. I was turning toward the refrigerator when simultaneously the receiver said, “Bdrrrrrrrrp,” in my ear and all the phones in the house, including the kitchen phone, said, “Ting-aling-aling.” No, I’m a liar; the phone in Betty’s room would not be saying, “Ting-aling-aling.” At her special desire and request, it would be giving a really sickening birdcall, all tiny whistles and trills. If I was going to live around here very long, I’d have to give that phone poison some day.

I opened the freezer door and carefully selected an ice cube, and Nikki came bobbling in to answer the phone. “—the sleeves as soon as — Hold on,” I said to the phone, and to Nikki I said, “I’m on the phone to my tailor. Catch that on one of the others, will you?”

“We,” she said, and headed away again.

“Later,” I told her derrière, and crossed the kitchen again to the cabinet containing the liquor. I got the vodka out, the phone rang a second time, and Nikki answered: “Kairnair rezeedonce.”

“Liz Kerner, please.” I opened the vodka bottle while Nikki told me to please wait on.

Time passed, click. “Hello?”

“Liz? You’re in town?”

“Oh, it’s you,” she said. “Where’d you have lunch — Philadelphia?”

“Copenhagen,” I said, that being the name of a local restaurant. “What are you doing off-island?”

“Slumming. Why don’t you come take me out tonight?”

Because Betty and I were going to a special honeymoon dinner tonight at The Three Mafiosi, one of New York’s hundred-dollar-a-plate restaurants, that’s why. “I’m afraid I can’t baby,” I said. “Why didn’t you call me earlier?”

“You’ve got a date.”

“When the cat’s away, you know.”

“The rats will play.”

I said, “I don’t think that’s quite the way that goes. Listen, I tell you what, I’ll cut it short, all right?”

“Come on over here, I’ll cut it short for you.”

“Honey,” I said sweetly, “I’m answering your call.” And it occurred to me the simplest way out of this morass might be to get Art into arguments with everybody. Art on everybody’s shit list, good old Bart hanging around all by himself. Could Bart put the make on Liz?

But she said, “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I’m just in a bad mood from the drive in.”

“You drove in?” It seemed to me I’d seen Carlos lounging around the apartment all day.

“A friend drove me,” she said. “A friend of yours.”

“Mine?” Candy? Dear God, did Liz know all?

“Ernie Volpinex.”

“Oh!”

“He met your brother, you know. That was some—” Then she cut herself off, saying, “Just a second. Hold on a minute, will you?”

“Sure,” I said, thinking fast. She’d just reminded herself of Bart, ergo of the drink. I was taking too long.

“I’ll put you on hold.”

“Ah,” I said, suddenly understanding what she would do, and the instant I heard the two clicks I said, in the most guttural voice I could manage, “Menches con carne conquista malatesta bergonez.”

“Carlos!” There she was, on the other line.

Still guttural, I said, “Hallo?”

“This is Miss L,” she said, and she sounded as offensively arrogant as the man from the finance company. Oh ho, I thought, so that’s the way you speak to the lower orders. “Mr. Dodge is wandering around in there someplace, making me a drink. Give him some help, will you?”

“Si,” I said, listened to the clicks, and in my own voice said, “And as in uffish thought he stood, the Jabberwock, with—”

“What?”

“Oh, you’re back,” I said.

“What time tonight?”

That was brisk. I said, “Why don’t I come by for you, say, eleven-thirty?”

“That late?”

“This girl’s important to me,” I said. “Her brother’s maybe going to invest in my—”

“Spare me. All right, eleven-thirty. Your place?”

“No, I’ll come over and get you.” Then, just in time, it occurred to me to say, “What’s your address?”

“Why, you creep,” she said, “she’s sleeping over! You’re coming here because you’re going to leave her there!”

“I should know better than to try to put one over on you,” I said. Argument after all?

No. “That’s what I like about you,” she said. “You’re a breath of foul air. Eleven-thirty.” And she gave me the address.

“Right,” I said, hung up, and carried her drink at a brisk trot through the apartment, slowing to a friendly walk as I stepped out onto the terrace.

“Well,” she said, “that took long enough.”

“Carlos said you sent him to find me.”

She sipped from the drink and watched me sit again in my previous chair. She said, “What happened to you?”

“Call of nature, first,” I told her, with my sheepish good-guy grin. “Then I got kind of turned around, I’m still not used to this apartment.”

“Your brother called,” she said.

“He did? Did he mention me at all?”

“Uh huh. He said you were a goody-good and a bleeding heart and he was sorry he took you into the business.”

I looked at her. “Now I wonder,” I said, “why he’d say a thing like that.”