Very Cold for May

Chapter Three

Jake reached the office at ten the next morning. The receptionist said Noble wished to see him right away, so Jake walked down to his office. Noble was at the bar and looked unhappy. But he brightened when Jake came in.

“Care for a drink?” he said.

Jake said no and sat down beside Noble’s desk. “What’s up?”

“Well, the session with May last night accomplished very little.” Noble brought the drink to his desk and sat down in his leather-backed swivel chair. “Damn that woman,” he said in the voice one would use to damn the weather, or any other disagreeable but inevitable phenomenon. “She seemed to go out of her way to antagonize Riordan. I never pretended to understand her, but now, by God, I don’t think anyone can.”

“What happened?”

Noble lit a cigarette and ran a hand through his rumpled white hair. “The bare facts won’t give you an idea of the way it was.” Noble waved a hand futilely. “It was as if she were the only one there who wasn’t afraid of something.”

“I think I know what you mean. Go on.”

“Riordan wasn’t in a good mood, in the first place. He picked me up at the office and didn’t talk on the way to May’s. He barged into May’s parlor and told her he wanted to talk with her.”

Noble put out his cigarette, then lit another and frowned at the curling smoke. “I can’t describe it very well,” he said. “But the impression I got was that May was deliberately trying to be as bitchy as possible. He asked about her book, and she immediately expressed vast surprise that he cared about literature. Riordan knew he was being laughed at. But he stuck his ground. He said he’d heard about the book and that he hoped she wasn’t using anything which he’d told her in confidence.”

Jake said, “Was everybody at the party listening to this?”

“Hard to say. Neither of them raised their voices, but I suppose they could have been overheard if anyone bothered to listen. Anyway, May kept needling Riordan, but she did it in that good humored, little-girl manner she affects at times. She asked him what he was worried about, and from her attitude you might think she really didn’t know.”

“Well, what is Riordan worried about?” Jake said. “This vague talk of exposes and so forth is unconvincing as hell. Does May have something specific and damaging on him?”

“I don’t know. He acts as if she did. Last night I got the impression he would enjoy strangling her, slowly and carefully.”

“How did their talk end?”

“It didn’t really end, in the sense that anything was settled. Riordan warned her not to use anything about him, said she’d be making a mistake. May pretended to believe he was referring to the artistic problems of selection, and so forth, and assured him she would be most careful in her choice of incidents. She told him very sweetly that biography in the de Sévigné manner was a form that required a blending of techniques at their highest level of effectiveness, and that any mistake she made would only be because she aspired too high. She laughed then and said he probably hadn’t the vaguest idea of what she was talking about, and added that this was not at all surprising considering his bourgeois predilections.”

“Nice sweet exit line,” Jake said.

Noble shrugged and sipped his drink. “Riordan is mad as hell, Jake. He’s going to be hard to handle.”

“Let’s not worry about that. Isn’t his man due here this morning with some facts and figures?”

“I forgot. Riordan called this morning and said Avery Meed — that’s his secretary — couldn’t make it today, but will be here tomorrow morning. That gives us a day’s grace.”

The phone on Noble’s desk buzzed. He lifted it, listened, then handed it to Jake. “For you.”

Jake said, “Hello.”

There was a pause. Then: “Jake, it’s May. I have melodramatic news right out of a grade B thriller. Someone tried to break into my little bagnio early this morning. Isn’t that interesting?”

“That’s nothing funny,” Jake said.

“It’s hardly tragic, however,” May said. “What I called for was to see if you could have coffee with me this morning. I feel in the mood for you. How about it?”

“Sure, I’ll come right over.”

Jake hung up, glanced at Noble. “Someone tried to break into May’s last night.”

“She’s a damn idiot,” Noble said shortly. “She’ll get into trouble and make a mess for everyone. You know how the papers would love to latch onto her tie-up with Riordan? That would shoot our campaign right in the tail.”

“I’m going out to have breakfast with her now,” Jake said. “Maybe this is a good thing. It might frighten her into using her head.”

The cab ride to May’s was pleasant. The colors were changing in the shrubs and trees of the park, and the gray fall waters of the lake were smooth as slate except for occasional lacy whitecaps.

May met him at the door and led him to her study, which was on the first floor, facing the morning sun. It was a brisk room, done in white leather, and furnished with deep chairs, an enormous coffee table, and a desk piled high with books and manuscript. A silver coffee service was on the coffee table, and the white Venetian blinds were drawn against the morning sun. The room was pleasantly dim.

May wore a simple gray dress with gray suede shoes, and her heavy, shining hair was looped up into a low chignon. Her eyes were clear, and her skin was fresh and blooming. She looked like an enormously healthy and beautiful school teacher who bought her clothes in Paris.

She poured coffee, sitting beside Jake on the deep couch. A bar of sunlight struck her face and she put her hand up in a curious, defensive gesture. Jake saw then that she was tired; there were tiny lines at the corners of her eyes and mouth and the illusion of her glowing youth was shaken for an instant. She stood up quickly and adjusted the blind. Then she sat down beside Jake again.

“I hate sunlight,” she said, irritably.

“What about last night? I didn’t rush over here to hear about your phobias.”

May told the story simply. She had gone to bed at two o’clock, the maid having left. She stayed alone at night until the cleaning woman, a Mrs. Swenson, came in at six in the morning, May explained digressively. Sometime after falling asleep she was awakened by a sound on the first floor. The time was three fifteen. She came downstairs and snapped on the lights. There was no one in the house. But an attempt had been made to force a window on the side of the house. A pane of glass had been broken. Her arrival probably scared off whoever had been trying to get in.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked, smiling. “White slavers, maybe?”

“Has it occurred to you that someone may be worried about this book you’re planning?” Jake said, drily.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous!”

“Listen: I heard Mike Francesca talking last night and I know he’s not happy. Also Dan Riordan is stewing about your book. And there are probably others. So don’t tell me I’m ridiculous.”

“How do you know about Riordan?”

“Noble told me this morning. You weren’t very nice to our client, I gather.”

May laughed and then lit a cigarette. “That was my sincerest hope,” she said. “Jake, Riordan is a type I dislike. He’s the perfect symbol of our society today, the insane blending of Geiger counters with animated commercials. He’s a mixture of man and child, at home building a million dollar plant but equally in character smashing all the furniture with a hammer.”

“I never suspected your flair for epigram,” Jake said. “But the fact that Riordan conforms to our culture is no reason to crucify him.”

“Do I have to have a reason for everything?” May said sharply. Standing, she walked to the window and her shoulders were straight and angry.

Jake remembered that she had been annoyed last night when he’d pressed her about her reasons for writing the book. He lit a cigarette and tried to guess what that reaction meant. Finally a thought occurred to him that seemed to supply the answer, but its very obviousness made him suspicious.

“Turn around and stop sulking,” he said. “I’m curious about why you’re writing this book. You don’t need money, and you aren’t yearning for literary recognition. So what’s left?”

May came back and sat beside him. She crossed her beautiful legs and leaned back comfortably, apparently in better spirits. “What difference does it make why I write the book?”

“None, I suppose,” Jake said. “But I’m curious. You’re going to hurt people, you’re going to make enemies. Why go to all that trouble to become unpopular?”

“Embarrassing a collection of charlatans and frauds is no trouble,” May said, grinning.

“They were your friends at one time.”

“Such magnificent friends they were,” May said. She crushed out her cigarette and looked down at her hands. “Let’s don’t talk about it any more.”

“Okay,” Jake said.

The door opened as he was preparing to say goodbye; the maid came in and said, “There’s a man and woman to see you, Miss Laval. A Mr. and Mrs. Riordan.”

“Well, well,” Jake said.

“Show them in,” May said, grinning at Jake.

The maid reappeared a moment later and stepped aside at the doorway. Denise Riordan walked in, looking tanned and sure of herself in voluptuous mink, but the man with her wasn’t Dan Riordan. It was his lean, sandy-haired son, Brian.

Brian grinned at Jake and walked over to shake hands. Jake introduced him and Denise to May.

“We were having coffee,” May said. “Would you like something stronger, Mrs. Riordan?”

“No, thank you. I sometimes go all the way until the afternoon without a drink,” Denise said drily.

Brian said, “I’ll take a whiskey and soda, if you don’t mind.” He put a hand to his forehead gingerly. “Last night was Homeric in a sloppy sort of way.”

Denise sat in a chair opposite the sofa, where bars of the clean morning sun highlighted the perfection of her furs. She was wearing a brown suit, with alligator pumps. There was a controlled, deliberate quality about her, Jake noticed, as she lighted a cigarette. She watched May all the time, studying her as if she were some curious phenomenon that had been brought to her attention for the first time.

Finally she said, “Dan has told me a lot about you, Miss Laval.”

May smiled gently as she poured coffee, and Jake decided she had already taken a round from Denise. Her simple gray suit and relaxed manner made Riordan’s wife, for all her polished beauty, look like a burlesque queen.

“Dear Danny,” May said. “So impulsive and...” She paused, considering a word. “So garrulous,” she concluded. “What did he tell you about me?”

The maid brought Brian his drink, and he sipped it gratefully. “Fine,” he said. “The old man told me about you, too,” he said to May. “He had a great respect for your intelligence.”

“I think ‘shrewdness’ was his word,” Denise said, and blew smoke in the air.

“You mustn’t give me too much credit,” May said blandly. “Danny stands in awe of anyone who can read without moving his lips. But now that you’ve reminded me, Danny used to tell me about you, Denise. You were in show business or something, I believe.”

“I was a dancer.”

“Yes, I remember. Weren’t you ever afraid of falling off the runway?” May said, innocently.

Brian Riordan slapped his thigh and let out a delighted shout. “Wonderful, wonderful,” he said, beaming at Denise.

Denise looked at him without expression. She put out her cigarette with a hard vicious gesture, and turned to May. “I didn’t come here to swap wisecracks,” she said.

“You haven’t, of course,” May smiled. “But go on.”

“Dan is worried over what you’re going to write about him,” Denise said, and now there were spots of angry color in her cheeks. “He didn’t send me to see you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I came on my own because he means a lot to me. Can you understand that?”

“Why, of course, my dear,” May said.

“All right. I want you to let him alone. We’ve had a good time of it so far, and I don’t want everything spoiled.”

May sipped her coffee for a moment in silence. Finally she glanced at Brian. “May I ask why you came here?”

“Not at all,” Brian said. He smiled. “I came to rephrase my step-mother’s comments, which I knew would be inadequate. Let me put it this way: I have no illusions about my father. However, there is enough of his money around to take care of everyone in his circle very nicely. I like that. So does Denise. So, I should think, would you. Do you see what I mean?”

“All too clearly,” May said.

“I like things clearly understood,” Denise said quietly and it seemed she had recovered her poise. “We’ll pay you to destroy whatever damaging records or information you have about Dan. That leaves one thing to settle: How much?”

May stood up and Jake saw that she was angry, beautifully and completely angry.

She said to Brian, “You came here to re-phrase your step-mother’s comments. You bungled the job. This overdressed creature,” she said, swinging about suddenly and pointing at Denise, “who, I might add, blackmailed your father into marriage by feigning a maidenly hysteria at the prospects of a pregnancy which, after the wedding, turned out to be a false alarm, has about as much understanding of my work as a grub in a bag. She’s worried about her meal ticket. She’d have to go back to doing the grinds if anything happened to Dan Riordan.”

May raised her hand imperiously as Denise got to her feet, trembling with anger. “Don’t lose control of yourself,” she said coolly. “I am writing a book which interests me and which will be finished quite soon. It’s a work of art quite outside your comprehensions, which are limited to eating, sleeping and lusting, I presume. The fact that your husband is an integral piece in the mosaic I am doing is unfortunate. For you, that is.”

“Just a minute,” Brian said, gently. He patted Denise’s shoulder in a soothing gesture before turning to May. “I love all this fine rhetoric,” he said, “but I don’t believe in it. I never heard a writer talk about an ‘integral piece in his mosaics.’ You’re not kidding me, May.”

“Oh, Lord!” May said, with mock despair. “Now the sophomores have figured me out, Jake.”

“I’m no sophomore,” Brian said, still smiling. “I’ve been through a big war, and I’ve seen girls with their clothes off, and I’ve filled an inside straight flush. But that’s beside the point. I think you should stop acting and listen to my proposition.”

May lit a cigarette with an annoyed gesture, then sat on the couch and slumped back against the cushions. Letting the cigarette dangle from her lips she put her feet up on the coffee table and looked at Denise and Brian through the curling smoke.

“Please go home,” she said. “Say that wonderful word ‘goodbye’ and get the hell out of here.”

“Let’s go,” Brian said shortly.

Denise glared down at May and there was naked hatred in her face. “You’ll regret this, you bitch,” she said.

“Goodbye, my dear,” May said, languidly. “And by the way, ask Danny sometime about that girl in Amarillo. She was a Minsky grad, too. Maybe you knew each other.”

Denise walked out of the room and Brian, after an amused salute to May, followed her. Jake smoked in silence until he heard the front door close. Then he said, “You were in good form. All part of your unpopularity program, I take it?”

“I don’t know what the hell it’s part of,” May said in a musing voice. She lifted one leg about a foot above the coffee table and turned her neatly shod foot about in a slow circle. “That’s a very good ankle, if I say so myself,” she said.

Jake stood and glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to run along, May.”

May came to the front door with him, and the maid brought his hat and gloves. Jake opened the door and in the bright sudden light he saw that May looked tired and old. She stepped away from the sun and put a hand to her face.

“You look tired,” he said.

“You look like a Dachau escape yourself,” she said sharply.

“Oh, come off it. Get some rest and you’ll be all right. And one other thing. Take care of yourself, will you? Do you have anyone here with you at night?”

“No, the maid leaves after dinner. Mrs. Swenson comes in at six or seven in the morning.”

“Why don’t you ask her to sleep in?”

“Because I don’t want anyone in the house when I’m working. I don’t like people tiptoeing around and eavesdropping.” She gave him a little push toward the door. “Come on. Don’t hang around on the slim chance that a good exit line will occur to you.”

Jake grinned and patted her shoulder. She smiled at him as he went down the steps and when he reached the sidewalk he turned and they waved to each other.

That afternoon Jake tried to get some work done on an industrial account the agency had got recently. The company, which was having union trouble, wanted a brochure for distribution to its retailers which would puff its products while implying that such achievements could be made only in an open shop.

It was very dull, and Jake found his thoughts wandering time and again to May, and the trouble she represented for him, and the people she intended to write about.

He had a hunch why she was planning to write the book. She needed attention and she was trying desperately to get it. Through a combination of factors she had lost the excitement and limelight after the war. Her friends were scattered, she was alone. May was no longer the radiant, compelling woman she had once been; in the cheerful pastel lighting of her home she was still lovely, but the reckless, untended beauty had gone. That beauty had been a magnet and people had forgiven May a great deal because of it.

Her tragedy was that she couldn’t change her values, or accept the change in herself. She was growing old and felt she was being shunted aside. That, he guessed, accounted for her touchiness about why she was writing the book. She was ashamed of what she was doing, and why she was doing it.

The pettiness of May’s motivation didn’t surprise Jake, because he had long ago decided that many of the lovely or ugly things men did had their origin in incongruously mean causes. Men fashioned towering philosophies to justify what ignorant nurses had told them as children, and great books and plays had been written because the authors hadn’t made athletic teams or had acne. These insignificant irritants worked on the human soul like a grain of sand in a bivalve, and the results were things of great beauty or terror.

Jake thought about it that afternoon and got very little work done. He called Sheila at six to ask her to have dinner with him, but she had a date. He dined alone and returned to his club about eight thirty, where he read several current magazines before showering and going to bed.

That was at one thirty.