Two Much!

34

At quarter past three, I began my rehearsals.

I’d sent Gloria home early, I had the mirror positioned just inside the inner office door, and I stood in the doorway in front of it practicing my moves. Half-blind with my lenses out and my glasses held at waist-level in my right hand, I told my reflection, “I’ll think it over and we’ll talk tomorrow.” Then I stepped back, pulling the door shut toward me with my left hand while my right hand came up in a single robotlike gesture that slipped my glasses onto my face and continued up to tousle my hair backward from Art’s hair-forward style to Bart’s hair-back appearance.

Last night, before inserting myself in my sleeping bag here, I’d made another Bart-from-Los-Angeles phone call to Betty, telling her I was coming back to town today. She wanted to meet me at the airport, of course, but I explained I was still troubled about the rift with Art, and mat I wanted to take care of that before I saw her or did anything else. “I’ll take a cab in from Kennedy,” I’d told her, “and go see Art at the office. Why don’t you meet me there?” We set the time at four o’clock.

And by three forty-five I was ready. At first my little Balinesian dance had been stiff and uncoordinated, but practice had made it perfect, and now my movements were smooth and assured. The mirror was angled right, the door was open just so, everything was ready. All I needed was my audience.

Nerves. Opening night jitters. I left the office, walked down past the freight elevator and back up the hall, down to the elevator and back to my office, fidgeting, scratching, constantly checking the time. Was Betty the kind who would show up early, or late? Would I still be able to do my glasses-and-hair gesture with this new aching stiffness across my shoulders? Would I be able to coordinate the movements of two hands, two feet, and one mouth while twitching like a sandpiper?

Every once in a while, the freight elevator would grind into motion. I would dash back to my office, stand just inside the door, try to calm my heart and my breathing, and listen to the groans and complaints as the elevator puffed its way upward.

To a different floor.

Ten minutes to four, five minutes to four, three minutes to four.

I stood by the elevator as it went downward after yet another false alarm. The stairs were next to it, with the door propped open in violation of the fire laws. I’d told Betty to take the freight elevator, but would she come up the stairs instead? I cocked an ear, trying to hear approaching footsteps.

Whinninninninninrdnne. The elevator was coming up again. This time pretending disdain, I strolled casually back to my office and was barely out of sight when the damn thing greeked to a stop at this floor.

I’m on! I shut the outer door, crossed the office to the inner door, stood facing the doorway and the mirror. My lips and mouth were dry, and I worked at producing a little saliva, so I’d be able to speak. With my left hand on the doorknob and my right hand clutching the glasses, I looked into the mirror, past my own reflection at the corridor door. Silently I rehearsed my line: “I’ll think it over and we’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll think it over and we’ll talk tomorrow. I’ll think it—”

The corridor door opened. Betty walked in.

Now, let me tell you what Betty saw. She entered the room, and she saw Bart with his back to her in the doorway opposite, in conversation with Art. She could clearly see Art’s face, spectacleless and with hair brushed forward, beyond Bart’s right shoulder. She saw Art’s lips move, and she heard Art say, “I’ll think it over and we’ll talk tomorrow.” Then, as it seemed to her, Art pushed the door closed in Bart’s face, forcing Bart back a step. Bart moved back, turning, lifting his hand to his head in a distraught manner, and finished turning to blink through his spectacles, lower his hand again from his brushed-back hair, and say, “Betty!”

“Darling!” Betty responded, combining the joy of reunion very delicately with a sudden concern. She hurried across the room to me, saying, “Was there trouble?”

I’d previously decided my best manner at this juncture would be a slight vagueness, a distraction caused by a combination of jet lag and the argument with Art. It was a happy decision, as it turned out, because a numb befuddlement was about all I was capable of at that moment. The mirror, Artless, was just the other side of that door. An entire Artless room, in fact, was just the other side of that door. How on earth could I have hoped to get away with such a juvenile stunt? “Trouble?” I echoed. “Trouble?”

“I saw Art just now,” she said, gesturing toward that rather special door, “and he—”

“You did? You saw him, eh?”

“Of course. And it didn’t look to me as though you two were getting along.”

A great flamingo-wing smile spread across my face. I couldn’t help it, I just couldn’t help it. “Quite the contrary,” I said. By God, it had worked! “I think,” I said, “I think everything’s going to be all right.”

“But he was — I saw him—”

“I know you did, my love,” I said, and gave her a great big kiss. I didn’t even care that she wasn’t faithful to me. “Don’t worry about Art,” I told her, “that’s just his manner. He can’t come down off a mad all at once. Believe me, I know him, things are fine now. I’ll call him tomorrow and we’ll be buddies again.”

“If you say so,” she said.

“Listen, let’s get out of here,” I said. “Give him a chance to sulk and get it over with.”

She frowned in the general direction of the closed door. Was she thinking of going in there, arguing with Art on my behalf? No. She shook her head and said, “Well, you know him better than I do.”

I might have disputed that, but I didn’t Instead, I held the door for her, we left the office, and we rode the interminable freight elevator down down down.

As we were leaving the building, Candy was going in. She looked grim, and she brushed by us with hardly a glance. I admit I was startled, but I don’t think anything showed.

Oh, but what if she’d arrived first? What if she’d been the one to get out of the elevator and open the office door to see the twin charade? What if Betty had walked in Second, to find one brother, one mirror, and one strange woman, instead of the well-rehearsed playlet about Art and Bart? A close call, that.

Carlos and the Lincoln were out front. Betty and I got in, and as we started away it seemed to me that from the corner of my eye I saw Candy appear again in the building entrance, staring, perhaps frowning, toward our car. But I didn’t look back.