Two Much!

3

When she opened her front door to me, Liz was wearing a white dress with a fitted bodice and pleated skirt and a narrow white patent-leather belt around the waist. I’d heard the fifties were coming back, and here they were. “This time,” I said, “you really are overdressed.”

“I beg your pardon?” Her frown seemed equal parts puzzlement and disapproval. Somewhere behind her a piano discreetly tinkled “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.”

“What’s under that, I wonder,” I said, and then Liz appeared all over again, behind this one, wearing a purple T-shirt dress with no bra. “Oh,” I said.

“So there you are,” Liz said, the Liz in purple. To the non-Liz in white she said, “This is the riffraff I told you about.”

“You’re the sister,” I said.

Liz said, “They can’t get them past you, can they? Come on in, before we fill up with mosquitoes.”

And so I entered the Kerner household. Too late, they closed the door.

We were together in a small vestibule, the three of us. Through an arched doorway was a section of party scene painted by a member of the Royal Academy; the accompanying sound effects were polite conversational murmurs, unobtrusive ice cube clinking, and the modest piano segueing into “My Funny Valentine.” Our three heads were close together, the double Liz and me, and looking from one to the other I said, “That’s truly amazing.” Except for differences of expression and hairdo the faces were absolutely identical.

The non-Liz said, “But I thought you had a twin brother.”

How our thoughtless fibs return to plague us. “Oh, of course,” I said. “But I’ve never met any other twins before. Not as identical as you two.” To get us away from that subject, I thrust my hand out to the non-Liz and said, “I’m Art Dodge, by the way.”

She smiled, in the bland way that one does at parties, and said, “I’m Betty Kerner.” Her hand was cool and dry.

Then they brought me through into the next room, and what a collection of store-window mannequins they’d assembled for their party. There were men present in cummerbunds, I swear to God. Most of the men appeared to be named Frazier and most of the women Grahame. The piano was being played by a hireling, a lanky black youth with Belafonte good looks and a totally untrustworthy smile; he was probably saving his money to buy a machine gun. Two automaton black girls in black uniforms and small white aprons circulated with trays of hors d’oeuvres, while the bartender blockaded behind his white-cloaked table was a beefy Irishman of about fifty who laughed heartily at all the drink orders, as though phrases like “dry vermouth on the rocks” or “two rye and ginger ale, please” were both witty and profound.

What kind of party was this to be hosted by two girls in their mid-twenties? There were perhaps forty people present, but only about a quarter of them were under thirty, and they were as stiff as their elders. There was no dancing. In fact, there was scarcely any commingling of the sexes at all; women stood with women to discuss department stores, Arthur Hailey novels, absent friends and other parties, while men grouped with men to talk transportation, taxes, politics and horses — breeding, not racing. I actually did hear one man say, as I was strolling past, “After all, racing does improve the breed.”

“Quite the contrary,” I said. “In point of fact, all our effort is the other way, to make breeding improve the race.”

This being the most incisive remark any of them had ever heard in their lives, I was immediately absorbed into the group, where the man I’d contradicted thrust his hand out and said, “Frazier.”

I gave him my honest grip and said, “Dodge.”

Another man said, “Of the New Bedford Dodges?”

“Distantly,” I said.

We chatted about horses for a while, then transposed to a critique and comparison of several North Carolina golf courses, during which I excused myself and headed for the bar. “Rum and tonic,” I said.

“Ha ha ha,” he said. “Got no rum.”

“Make it vodka.”

“Ho ho ho,” he said, and made my drink.

Liz sidled up and said, “My usual, Mike.”

“Ha ha,” he said, gave me my drink, and made Liz’s usual: one ice cube in a glass, vodka to the brim.

Waiting for it she said to me, with a head-nod toward the rest of the party, “See why I wanted you here?”

“I think you should have called the coroner.”

“Here y’are, Miss Kerner.”

“Thanks, Mike.”

“Ha ha ha.”

We strolled away from Pagliacci and I said, “If I’m going to hang around here, you’d better lay in some rum.”

“Let’s wait and see if your option gets picked up.”

We stood in a quiet corner and observed the party. Betty, the twin, was in moribund conversation with a girl in yellow and a girl in pink. All three dresses, I noticed, ended just below the knee. I said, “You and your sister aren’t really very much alike at all.”

“She’s noisier,” Liz said. “What about you and your brother?”

“He’s quieter.” I was determined not to talk about my damn brother. “Is this your sister’s party? It seems more her style.”

“She isn’t that bad,” she said. “This is a political party. We want to sell the house.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

“If you’re going to sell a house in Point O’ Woods,” she said, “you don’t exactly run an ad in the Daily News. We’re a restricted community.”

Looking around at the revelers, I said, “You can only sell to someone with a valid death certificate.”

“Something like that. None of us actually own our houses, you know. The Association owns everything, and we have long-term leases. So what we’re selling is the lease, and of course the Association has to approve the new leaseholder.”

“Of course.”

“You see the gent over there in the gray tie with the maroon polka dots?”

“I’m afraid I do, yes.”

“He’s our potential buyer.”

He was one of the Fraziers: stocky, Republican, graying at the temples. “He seems absolutely perfect,” I said.

“Doesn’t he? Unfortunately, there’s a problem.”

“The wife?”

“Good God, no. That’s her there, in the tweed.”

Tweed, in August. The woman in question was a perfect Grahame. “What, then?”

“Family. They’re a little outside the general circle.”

“How awful for you.”

“We’re introducing them now, that’s the idea of the party.”

“Ah. And if they pass muster, you can sell. But why do you want to?”

She shrugged. “This was our parents’ place. Neither of us wants it.”

“Are you recently orphaned?”

“Last New Year’s Eve. They were on their way to a performance of Handel’s Messiah when someone tipped a piano off a terrace. It went right through the roof of the Lincoln. The chauffeur had a black key embedded in his shoulder but was otherwise completely unscratched.”

“That must have been, um, terrible for you,” I said. Sympathy is such a difficult mode to get just right.

But once again she shrugged, saying, “Death didn’t change them that much. Fewer questions, that’s all. Listen, why don’t we go upstairs and screw?”

“What a wonderful party this is,” I said.

She gave her glass a critical look. “Let me just get a fresh drink.”

The houses of Point O’ Woods are not summer cottages at all. They are perfect imitations of small-town houses, circa 1920. Brown shingle siding, white trim, full front porches, varnished wood floors. We did not clamber up a ladder to a sleeping loft, Liz and I, we walked up a solid flight of stairs to a solid second floor. Two bedrooms and a bath.

Unfortunately, that bath was the only one in the house, which meant a steady traffic of guests up and down the stairs. The bedroom doors were both standing open, and Liz thought it unwise to try closing one. Therefore, we had at it in a closet full of dusty garments and chittering hangers. It was warm in there to begin with, and we’d soon created an atmosphere like that in a rain forest at midnight Nor were matters helped much when Liz, writhing along midway in our progress, kicked over her fresh glass of vodka. Don’t let anybody ever tell you vodka has no smell; in a closed closet it does.

Still, there was a good side to it all, which eventually climaxed with a lot of rucking and bumping amid the shifts and sneakers. Following which, we readjusted ourselves for public consumption and returned to the quieter side of the party, carefully closing the closet door behind ourselves. It really did look — and smell — as though some sort of debauch had taken place in there. “Poor old closet,” I said. “Things will be dull for it once you sell.”

“I wish I hadn’t spilled that drink,” she said irritably, but she was thinking of herself, not of the closet Downstairs, she left me without so much as a thank you and headed straight for Mike.

I roamed a while, listened to three under-thirty males discuss the implications for the legal profession of no-fault auto insurance, eavesdropped on girl-talk about dog shows, had another vodka and tonic, and eventually found myself alone in a corner when Betty, the Liz who wasn’t Liz, came over with her polite-hostess smile and said, “This party must be dull for you.”

“Does it show?”

The smile became a touch more limpid. “No,” she said, “you’re carrying it off very well.”

“So are you,” I told her. Regardless of the white dress, regardless of the hostess smile and the tamed-down gestures, this face and body were so completely the same as the face and body I’d just been humping in the upstairs closet that I couldn’t help a sense of familiarity, an easiness of discourse. Also, it was impossible to believe this one was as unlike her sister as she seemed; surely that throat could be made to produce the same low groans as Liz.

She raised one eyebrow. I’ve never been able to do that, and I’ve always envied people who could. “Don’t you think I’m enjoying myself?”

“You’ve had better times,” I told her, and reached out to pat a hand holding a glass containing what looked suspiciously like sherry. “And you will again,” I said. Then I noticed Liz frowning in our direction from some distance away, and casually I removed my hand and placed it instead in my pocket.

But it seemed already to have done its work. The hostess smile was all at once much more honest, much looser. She said, “Do you like good times, Mr. Dodge?”

“Cozy times,” I said, but it was all a charade and meaningless. Liz was too self-contained to break in on our chitchat, but she was circling on the far side of the room, her awareness as intrusive as an electric current. You can’t change sisters in mid-scheme. I’ve tried and I know; you lose them both. Blood is also thicker than oil, apparently.

The sister in purdah was saying something about ski lodges and roaring fires; following on my use of the word cozy, I suppose. “That’s why I’m a winter person,” she said. “I love the ice and snow, and then you come in and get all bundled up and warm.” She hugged herself, and sipped sherry. “Are you like that?”

“Depends who I’m bundling with,” I said.

She pretended to find me risqué, and took the opportunity to touch my wrist with her own cool fingertips. “Oh, you’re perfect for Liz,” she said. “She just loves fast people.”

“And you?”

“Oh, I’m just a spectator.” Her little smile was meant to be fatalistic, I suppose, but in truth it was smug.

“If you see something you like,” I suggested, “just ask for it”

“Oh, I think I’ll stay on the sidelines,” she said, with a depressingly flirtatious little smile. Then she said, “Do you know your eyes sparkle in this light?”

I wear contact lenses. “It’s because I’m a romantic,” I said. “And so do yours.”

“Oh, I wear contact lenses. Liz doesn’t, though; her eyes aren’t as bad as mine.” She gave me a coy look. “So we aren’t exactly the same, after all.”

“Two separate mysteries,” I said, with low-voiced melodrama.

“That’s exactly tight Isn’t it that way with you and your brother?”

The brother again. “Oh, I suppose we’re different in some ways,” I said.

“Would I like to meet him?”

A comical thought entered my brain — casual, fanciful, not yet serious. “You’d probably get along fine with old Bart,” I said.

“Bart, is that his name?”

“Mmm hmm.”

“Why don’t you bring him around some time?”

I smiled. “Maybe I will,” I said. “Maybe I will.” Then another ray from Liz’s eyes struck my left temple a glancing blow, and I bowed my head to look at my drink and say, “I believe I need a refill.”

We parted with mutual expressions of esteem, and Liz intercepted me at the bar. “My usual, Mike,” she said.

“Ha ha ha,” said Mike.

Liz tossed me a sidelong green-eyed glare. “Having fun with my sister?”

“She’d rather be in a ski lodge,” I said. “Before a roaring fire.”

“Or in one,” she muttered, and Mike gave us our drinks.

I said, “Let’s go back to the closet.”

She gave me a flat look. “Screw you,” she said, and went away.

I hung around a while longer, but she remained angry, and God knows there was no other reason to be there, so eventually I made my departure. I gave my hostesses separate farewells. “Drop in any time you’re in the neighborhood,” Liz said, with eyes much colder than her sister’s winter wonderland. Betty, in her turn, said she was glad to meet me and asked once more after my dear brother Bart. Then I left.

This protected enclave of the well-bred well-to-do; they even leave their bicycles out at night, unlocked, safe from the teen-age chimpanzees who harass the proletarian communities. I stole the first bike I came to, rode it to the end of Point O’ Woods, walked it with difficulty through the thick sand around the end of the fence, and then rode cheerfully down the central walk through Ocean Bay Park and Seaview and Ocean Beach. I had to abandon it men and walk along the beach to Lonelyville, but in Dunewood I found another untended bike — most unusual — and sailed along to Fair Harbor and the fair Candy, who had just had a raging fight with Ralph and wasn’t speaking to anybody. Ralph and I went to Hommel’s and drank, until Ralph asked me to go back to the house and try to soothe Candy. “She won’t talk to me,” he said. “Maybe she’ll talk to you.” So I went back to the house and soothed her.