“He’ll supply the rest, after that certain point. He knows about Bank Street.”
“That was eight years ago. Can’t you have an evening out with an old friend?”
“Would you believe that line?”
“No,” I said. “But I have a very suspicious nature.”
“You’re a blind man trusting a boy scout compared to Ken. He didn’t believe me when I told him I went straight home from the theatre. But in the absence of proof—now he’s got his proof.”
“Well, then have a date with me tonight. Make the son of a bitch good and jealous.”
“I’m almost tempted. When will we know about the News and the Mirror?”
“Oh, around nine o’clock tonight.”
“You’ll see them when they come out, before I can. If they mention me, will you stop for me at the theatre? That isn’t much of an offer, Jim, but for old times’ sake?”
“And if you’re not mentioned, you have a date with Ken?”
“Yes,” she said.
“All right. You understand, of course, this is something I wouldn’t do for just anybody, take second best.”
“I understand exactly why you’re doing it, and so do you,” she said.
“I detect the sound of double entendre.”
“Well, that’s how I meant it. You’re being nice, but you also know that nice little rats get a piece of candy. And don’t make the obvious remark about piece of what. Seriously, Jim, I can count on you, can’t I?”
“I would say that you are one of the few that can always count on me, Julie. For whatever that’s worth.”
“Right now, a great deal.”
“Well, I wish you luck, even though I’ll be the loser in the deal.”
“You didn’t lose anything last night. And I may have lost a husband. He was talking that way today.”
“Do you want to marry him?”
“Yes, I do. Very much. Too much. So much that all he ever sees is my phony indifference. Too smart for my own good, I am. Jim, ought I to call Nancy Preswell, or write her a note?”
“A note would be better, I think.”
“Yes, I do, too.”
“I’ve been calling Charley all afternoon, and nobody knows where he is. But he’ll be around when he wants to see me.”
“It’s a hateful thing for me to say, but in a way he’s stuck, isn’t he?”
“He wants to be.”
“He’s still stuck,” said Julie.
At about eleven-twenty I was standing with the backstage doorman, who was saying goodnight to the actors and actresses as they left the theatre. “Miss Moore’s always one of the last to leave,” he said. “We us’ally break about five to eleven, but tonight she’s later than us’al. I told her you was here. I told her myself.”
“That’s all right,” I said.
“She dresses with Miss Van, one flight up. I’ll just go tell her you’re here.”
“No. No thanks. Don’t hurry her,” I said.
“She’s us’ally one of the last out, but I don’t know what’s keeping her tonight.”
“Making herself look pretty,” I said.
“She’s a good little actress. You know, they had to change the curtain calls so she could take a bow by herself.”
There were footsteps on the winding iron stairway, the cautious, high-heeled footsteps of all actresses descending all backstage stairways, but these were made by Julie. She did not make any sign of recognition of me but took my arm. “Goodnight, Mike,” she said.
“Goodnight, Miss Moore. See you tomorrow. Have a good time,” said the doorman.
“Let’s go where we won’t see anybody. Have you got the papers? I don’t mind being seen with you, Jim, but I don’t want to be seen crying. As soon as Mike said ‘Mr. Malloy,’ I knew. Tomorrow the press agent will thank me for the publicity break. Irony.”
I took her to a small bar in the New Yorker Hotel, and she read the News and the Mirror. The Mirror had quite a vicious little story by a man named Walter Herbert, describing the gay foursome and the solitary man at the bar of El Morocco, and leaving the unmistakable inference that Jack Preswell had stumbled out into the night and thrown himself in front of a taxi. The News, in a story that had two by-lines, flatly said that Preswell had gone to the night club in an attempt to effect a reconciliation with his wife, who was constantly in the company of Charles Ellis, multi-millionaire stockbroker and former Harvard oarsman, and onetime close friend of the dead man. The Mirror ran a one-column cut of Julie, an old photograph from the White Studios; the News had a more recent picture of her in the décolleté costume she wore in the play. There was a wedding picture of Preswell and Nancy in the News, which also came up with a manly picture of Charley Ellis in shorts, shirt, and socks, holding an oar. There was no picture of me, and in both papers the textual mention of Julie and me was almost identical: Julie was the beautiful young actress, I was the sensational young novelist.
“Were we as gay as they say we were? I guess we were,” said Julie.
“The implication is, that’s what happens to society people when they mix with people like you and me.”
“Exactly. They only got what they deserved. By the way, what did they get, besides a little notoriety? I’m beginning to feel sorry for Preswell. I lose a possible husband, but it must hurt to be hit by a taxi, even if you do die right away.”
“You’re taking it very well,” I said.
“I thought Ken might show up, if only to demand an explanation. He loves to demand explanations. Have you talked to Ellis?”
“No. I’d like to know if there’s anything in that News story, about Preswell and the reconciliation. I doubt it, and nobody will sue, but either the News has a very good rewrite man or they may have something. If it’s something dreamed up by the rewrite man he ought to get a bonus, because he’s taken a not very good story and dramatized the whole scene at Morocco.”
“Thank goodness for one thing. They left my father and mother out of it,” she said. “Poor Daddy. He groans. He comes to see me in all my plays, and then takes me to one side and asks if it’s absolutely necessary to wear such low-cut dresses, or do I always have to be unfaithful to my husband? He told Thornton Wilder I’d have been just right for the girl in Our Town. Can you imagine how I’d have had to hunch over to play a fourteen-year-old?”
We were silent for a moment and then suddenly she said: “Oh, the hell with it. Let’s go to ‘21’?”
“I’ll take you to ‘21,’ but no night clubs.”
“I want to go to El Morocco and the Stork Club.”
“No, you can’t do it.”
“I’m not in mourning.”
“I used to be a press agent, Julie. If you want to thumb your nose at Ken, okay. But if you go to El Morocco tonight, you’re asking for the worst kind of publicity. Capitalizing on those stories in the News and Mirror. You’re better than that.”
“Oh, the hell I am.”
“Well, you used to be.”
“The hell with what I used to be. I was a star, too, but now I’m just a sexy walk-on. And a quick lay, for somebody that calls me up after eight years. Why did you take me out last night?”
“Because you’re a lady, and so is Nancy.”
“Oh, it was Nancy you were trying to impress? I wish I’d known that.”
“I have no desire to impress Nancy. I merely thought you’d get along with her and she with you.”
“Why? Because she did Juliet at Foxcroft?”
“Oh, balls, Julie.”
“Would you say that to Nancy?”
“If she annoyed me as much as you do, yes, I would. If you’ll shut up for a minute, I’ll tell you something. I don’t like Nancy. I think she’s a bitch. But I like Charley.”
“Why do you like Charley? He’s not your type. As soon as you
make a little money you want to join the Racquet Club and all the rest of that crap. That apartment, for God’s sake! And those guns. You’re not Ernest Hemingway. Would you know how to fire a gun?”
“If I had one right now I’d show you.”
“When did you get to be such pals with Charley Ellis?”
“I was hoping you’d get around to that. I knew him before I knew you, before I ever wrote anything. As to the armament, the shotguns belonged to my old man, including one that he gave me when I was fourteen. I do admit I bought the rifle four years ago. As to the apartment—well, you liked it last night. If you want to feel guilty about it, go ahead. But you said yourself it was a damned sight more comfortable than that studio couch on Bank Street. What do you want to do? Do you want to go to ‘21’ and have something to eat, or shall I take you home?” I looked at my watch.
“It isn’t too late to get another girl, is it?”
“That’s exactly what I was thinking.”
“Some girl from one of the night clubs?”
“Yes.”
“I thought they only went out with musicians and gangsters.”
“That’s what you thought, and you go on thinking it. Do you want to go to ‘21’?”
“How late can you get one of those girls?”
“Two-thirty, if I’m lucky.”
“You mean if you call up now and make the date?”
“Yes.”
“You’re a big liar, Jim. They have a two o’clock show that lasts an hour, so you can call this girl any time between now and two o’clock, and you won’t meet her till after three. I know the whole routine. A boy in our play is married to one of them.”
“The girl I had in mind isn’t a show girl and she isn’t in the line. She does a specialty.”
She put her chin in her hand and her elbow on the table, in mock close attention. “Tell me about her specialty, Jim. Is it something I should learn? Or does one have to be double-jointed?”
“You want to go to ‘21’?”
“I’m dying to go to ‘21’,” she said.
“Well, why didn’t you say so?”
“Because you’re such a grump, and I had to get a lot of things out of my system.”
We used each other for a couple of weeks in a synthetic romance that served well in place of the real thing; and we were conscientious about maintaining the rules and customs of the genuine. We saw only each other and formed habits: the same taxi driver from the theatre, the same tables in restaurants, exchanges of small presents and courtesies; and we spoke of the wonder of our second chance at love. It was easy to love Julie. After the first few days and nights she seemed to have put aside her disappointment as easily as I was overcoming my chronic loneliness. We slept at my apartment nearly every night, and when she stayed at hers we would talk on the telephone until there was nothing more to say. We worried about each other: I, when the closing notice was put up at her theatre, and she when a story of mine was rejected. A couple of weeks became a couple of months and our romance was duly noted in the gossip columns: we were sizzling, we were hunting a preacher. “Would you ever go back to the Church?” she said, when it was printed that we were going to marry.
“I doubt it. Would you?”
“If Daddy wanted me to get married in the Church, I would.”
“We’ve never talked about this.”
“You mean about marriage?”
“Or the Church. Do you want to talk about marriage?”
“Yes, I have a few things I want to say. I love you, Jim, and you love me. But we ought to wait a long time before we do anything about getting married. If I’m married in the Church I’m going to stick to it.”
“You wouldn’t have with Ken.”
“No, but he never was a Catholic. If I married you, in the Church, I’d want a nuptial Mass and you’d have to go to confession and the works. With a Protestant—Ken—I couldn’t have had a nuptial Mass and I’d have been half-hearted about the whole thing. But marrying you would be like going back to the Church automatically. I consider you a Catholic.”
“Do you consider yourself a Catholic?”
“Yes. I never go to Mass, and I haven’t made my Easter duty since I was nineteen, but it’s got me. I’m a Catholic.”
“It’s gone from me, Julie. The priests have ruined it for me.”
“They’ve almost ruined it for me, but not quite. I don’t listen to the priests. I can’t tell that in confession, but that’s why I stay away. Well, one of the reasons. I don’t believe that going to bed with you is a sin.”
“The priests do.”
“Let them. They’ll never be told unless I marry a Catholic and go to confession. That’s why I say we ought to wait a long time. I’m thinking of myself. If I marry a Catholic, I’ll be a Catholic. If I don’t I’ll be whatever I am. A non-practicing member of the faithful. I’ll never be anything else.”
“Well, neither will I. But I’m a heretic on too many counts, and the priests aren’t going to accept me on my terms. It wouldn’t be the Church if they did. It would be a new organization called the Malloyists.”
“I’ll be a Malloyist until we get married.”
“There’s one thing, Julie. If you get pregnant, what?”
“If I get pregnant, I’ll ask you to marry me. I’ve had two abortions, but the father wasn’t a Catholic. It was Ken. I paid for the abortions myself and never told him I was pregnant. I didn’t want to have a baby. I wanted to be a star. But if I ever get pregnant by you, I’ll tell you, and I hope you’ll marry me.”
“I will.”
“However, I’ve been very, very careful except for that first night.”
I have never been sure what that conversation did to us. I have often thought that we were all right so long as we felt a future together without getting down to plans, without putting conditional restrictions on ourselves, without specifying matters of time or event. It is also quite possible that the affection and passion that we identified as love was affection and passion and tenderness, but whatever sweetness we could add to the relationship, we could not add love, which is never superimposed. In any event, Julie stayed away one night and did not answer her telephone, and the next day I was having my coffee and she let herself in.
“Hello,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Jim.”
“I suppose you came to get your things,” I said. I took a sip of coffee and lit a cigarette.
“Not only to get my things.”
“You know, the awful thing is, you look so God damn—oh, nuts.” She was wearing a blue linen dress that was as plain as a Chinese sheath, but there was more underneath that dress than Chinese girls have, and I was never to have it again. Someone else had been having it only hours ago.
“All right,” I said. “Get your things.”
“Aren’t you going to let me say thank-you for what we had?”
“Yes, and I thank you, Julie. But I can’t be nice about last night and all this morning.” I took another sip of coffee and another drag on my cigarette, and she put her hand to her face and walked swiftly out of the room. I waited a while, then got up and went to the bedroom. She was lying face down on my unmade bed and she was crying.
“You’ll wrinkle your dress,” I said.
“The hell with my dress,” she said, and slowly turned and sat up. “Jim.” She held out her arms.
“Oh, no,” I said.
“I couldn’t help it. He came to the theatre.”
“Oh, hell, I don’t want to hear about that.”
“I promised him I wouldn’t see you again, but I had to come here.”
“No you didn’t, Julie. I could have sent you your things. It would have been much better if you’d just sent me a telegram.”
“Put your arms around me.”
“Oh, now that isn’t
like you. What the hell do you think I am? I’ve had about two hours’ sleep. I’m on the ragged edge, but you don’t have to do that to me.”
She stood up and slipped her dress over her head, and took off her underclothes. “Can I make up for last night?” she said. “I’ll never see you again. Will you put your arms around me now?”
“I wish I could say no, but I wanted you the minute I saw you.”
“I know. That’s why you wouldn’t look at me, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
She was smiling, and she could well afford to, with the pride she had in her breasts. “How do you want to remember me? I’ll be whatever you want.”
“What is this, a performance?”
“Of course. A farewell performance. Command, too. You don’t want me as a virgin, do you?”
“No.”
“No, that would take too much imagination on your part. But I could be one if that’s what you want. But you don’t. You’d much rather remember me as a slut, wouldn’t you?”
“Not a slut, Julie. But not a virgin. Virgins aren’t very expert.”
“You’d rather remember me as an expert. A whore. Then you’ll be able to forget me and you won’t have to forgive me. All right.”
She knew things I had never told her and there was no love in the love-making, but when she was dressed again and had her bag packed she stood in the bedroom doorway. “Jim?”
“What?”
“I’m not like that,” she said. “Don’t remember me that way, please?”
“I hope I don’t remember you at all.”
“I love him. I’m going to marry him.”
“You do that, Julie.”
“Haven’t you got one nice thing to say before I go?”
I thought of some cruel things and I must have smiled at the thought of them, because she began to smile too. But I shook my head and she shrugged her shoulders and turned and left. The hall door closed and I looked at it, and then I saw that the key was being pushed under it. Twenty-three crowded years later I still remember the angle of that key as it lay on the dark-green carpet. My passion was spent, but I was not calm of mind; by accident the key was pointed toward me, and I thought of the swords at a court-martial. I was being resentenced to the old frenetic loneliness that none of us would admit to, but that governed our habits and our lives.