Two Much!

55

We had identical Air France bags, many-pocketed and pale blue. Mine had been Betty’s, but as Liz pointed out, “Why let it go to waste?”

Monday morning, while she phoned the servants in Saint Croix and the airline at Kennedy, I went back, possibly for the last time, to my little black office in the garment district, carrying my new blue bag. Gloria was typing away, and had the usual pile of outrageous mail and phone messages stacked up. “Forget all that,” I told her. “Remember that rabble of ungrateful illustrators that wanted to steal the company from me, couple of years ago?”

Gloria nodded. “In lieu of payment,” she said. “I always thought they were crazy, myself.”

“They had a lawyer,” I said. “Look him up in the file, prepare a letter for my signature, no date, saying, ‘I don’t ask to be insulted. Mine was a serious question.’ I’ll sign it.”

She frowned at me. “You do carry a grudge, don’t you?”

“Not exactly. This afternoon, call that lawyer and ask him if his company of turncoats is still interested in making a deal. If he says yes, ask him to forward the details of their proposition. When you get it, put a date on that response of mine and send it to him with all copies of his proposition. Any time he calls, I’m out of town but expected back shortly, and you don’t know where I can be reached.”

Gloria said, “You wouldn’t really quit, would you?”

“Life goes on.”

“And I go back to Met Life? That isn’t fair! I’ve given you the worst years of my life!”

“Don’t dramatize, Gloria,” I said, and went on to the inner office, where I collected my emergency cache of ten-dollar bills from behind the “Kiss me again” plaque, then turned my attention to the desk. Was there anything I wanted with me for an indefinite stay in the Caribbean?

A bottom drawer revealed an extra glasses case; startled, I stuffed it out of sight into the wastebasket. Bart’s glasses had been consumed with his body, and Art would never wear glasses again.

There were, however, some useful items: my passport, my birth certificate, my immunization record. And what was this on the desk top, this large manila envelope with its combination of pleasant and unpleasant associations?

Ah, yes: the thesis of Linda Ann Margolies. In all the activity of the last week or so, I hadn’t given the thing a thought. Now at last I opened it, and withdrew a sheaf of Xeroxed manuscript pages, plus a brief letter. The letter said:

Right. I slipped the stolen plans into the Air France bag, for later reading ’neath a tropical sun.

Gloria wouldn’t talk to me when I left.