“It’s good you told me. Someone almost bought one about an hour ago. He was going to bring his wife back after dinner, but I’ll tell him it’s not for sale.”
“No, don’t do that. That’s not what I meant.” Her voice almost broke; she stopped herself in time and waited for a moment. “Not what I meant at all. I want you to give them away.”
“Pardon me?”
“Whenever anyone admires one, give it away free of charge. Only if the admiration is serious. Take the tags off, and if anyone asks the price find out if they’re really interested, and then make them a gift of whatever it is. Just one to a customer, though.”
“I think I understand. Just the ones on the wall or the ones in back as well?”
“All of them. There are only a few in back.” She chuckled. “At these prices they ought to move quickly. There’s a key to my house in the lockbox in back. Could you do me a favor? If you start to run out of canvases, take a run over to my place and replenish the supply. Start with the unframed canvases in the little room off the kitchen. Those should last out the week, but if they don’t, you can help yourself to the ones on the walls downstairs.”
“Won’t you want to keep some of them?”
“My favorites are upstairs on the second floor. I’d like to see the others given the widest possible exposure.”
“Olive—”
“I can’t talk anymore, Linda. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? Thank you.”
Her hand shook as she replaced the receiver. She walked back down the corridor as she had walked to the phone, slowly, wearily, a picture of resignation. But another transformation occurred before she reached the door of their room, and it was as if the film the nurse’s aide had seen were run in reverse. She entered smiling and had already thought of a bright and cheerful opening line.
Warren folded the piece of paper and tucked it into the inside breast pocket of his jacket. He drank some coffee, checked his watch, looked across the table at Peter.
“You had no trouble getting it?”
“She got the point right away. If they had Robin’s birth certificate we were in deep trouble. I’m glad she didn’t ask why. I guess I would have come up with something but God knows what.”
Warren nodded.
“Then she couldn’t find it. She was looking in the wrong drawer and she figured out that they already had the fucking thing and was sure we were going to be completely shafted. You want to hear something crazy? She had me terrified. I was dreaming up all kinds of shit—that they really had it and there really was a conspiracy—”
“Good grief.”
“I don’t think I ever really believed that. I was just afraid I was going to start believing it any minute. And I also thought she saw through everything and was stringing me along and purposely not finding the birth certificate. I may be more paranoid than she is.”
“But she did find it. That’s a blessing. Robin is quite content to be with Anne. A remarkably agreeable girl.”
“Well, she knows Anne. That helps.”
“I was speaking of Anne, though Robin is agreeable, too, I’ll admit. Anne’s rather extraordinary. I’ve told her everything, by the way. I saw no reason to keep any of it back. As far as Danny’s concerned, she went to her doctor, and he sent her to a clinic for tests, and I gave her a ride there in my car. So there are four of us who know about this. You and I and Anne and the good Dr. Loewenstein.”
“Will anyone else have to know?”
“I sincerely hope not. It would simplify my life enormously if Tony could know, but nothing on earth would persuade me to tell him. Instead he simply thinks the world’s gone mad. Your performance last night, and now I’m missing rehearsal. And I never miss rehearsals. I simply gave no explanation at all. They can put anyone up here to read my lines off a script. It’s no great hardship.” He grimaced. “But I can’t miss tonight’s performance. Thank all Gods there’s no matinee tomorrow.” He checked his watch again. “I think I’ll go see how the girls are getting along. And closet myself in my bedroom to practice my couchside manner. You’re holding up well, aren’t you?”
“Am I? I guess I am.”
“It gets easier as it goes along. Like sodomy. Pay for my coffee, will you? I’m off.”
She was wrapping a painting when she saw Tanya outside in the hallway. The young actress was walking arm in arm with a tall boy with long hair and a Zapata mustache. Linda had seen them together before.
The painting’s new owner was reluctant to leave. She kept saying how willing she would have been to pay for it. “I feel so guilty,” she kept saying. “Could I buy one of the others? This is my favorite, but there are others I like as well.”
Linda explained that she couldn’t take money for any of them and that they were one to a customer. The woman assured her that she hadn’t been trying to make off with another free one and ultimately left saying that she would donate the price of the painting to charity.
The shop was empty of customers, and Linda was grateful. She sat down and put her head in her hand. She thought she knew why Olive wanted her to give the paintings away and only wished it were not so depressing. It would have been bad enough if people would just take the things and be grateful, but they always wanted to talk about it and she couldn’t bring herself to explain the situation.
On a better day she would have invented a story. But this was not one of her better days. There had been few enough of those lately. Everything got to her.
Tanya, for example. Tanya had a boyfriend, and that almost certainly meant that Tanya had a lover; the girl was hardly the sort given to long courtship or platonic relationships. Bill Donatelli had been replaced while his body was still warm.
Well, she admitted, that was not quite true. And Tanya was not yet living with the new one. She was still sleeping nights in her room at the Shithouse. She had moved back in after that one night in Linda’s bed—and how she could have managed that was another thing Linda did not understand. In a while Tanya might move in with her new lover, or he might move in with her, but for the time being Tanya slept alone.
But why did this bother her? A new love was just what Tanya needed, and it was healthy that she was able to accept it. Linda had no loyalty to Bill Donatelli’s memory. So why should she find the sight of the two of them, arm in arm and obviously delighted with one other, so personally disturbing?
She thought of Tanya and Bill and Olive and Clem. She thought of love and death and how the two seemed to go together in a hideous progression. Love and Death walked arm in arm, as obviously delighted with each other as Tanya and the boy with the mustache.
The phone rang. Hugh. He had just finished work for the day. The book was going well; it was going better than that; he was just pages from the end and would finish it tomorrow. And a premature celebration was just what he was in the mood for, and would she have dinner with him?
“I can’t,” she said; “I have to work tonight.”
Well, how about a late dinner? Or just a few drinks after she closed for the night?
“I’m exhausted already. I wouldn’t be good company.”
But there was something he wanted to discuss with her, something that wouldn’t work at all over the phone. Couldn’t he just see her for half an hour? He could even come to the shop if she wanted.
She gritted her teeth. People just wouldn’t leave you alone. Over the telephone, face to face, anywhere. They wouldn’t leave you alone. You couldn’t give them free paintings and shove them out the door. You couldn’t turn down a dinner or a drink or a marriage proposal, couldn’t get them off the phone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice firmer than she had intended. “Not tonight. It’s impossible; everything is impossible.”
She broke the connection before he could force any more words into her head. There were too many words there already. She couldn’t handle the ones she had.
She didn’t want to marry him. She didn’t want to be his wife or Karen’s mother.
She didn’t want to be anybody’s anything.
People never left you alone.
“Wasn’t that a dynamite dinner, Petey?”
“Just sensational.”
“I’m still a little hungry, though. Maybe we could go out for a milk shake. Would you like that?”
“Well—”
“A milk shake’s just what I want.”
A milk shake was not just what he wanted. What he wanted, what he really wanted, was to go somewhere private and vomit up the mountain of food he had just finished stuffing down his throat. It would be such an overwhelming sensual pleasure to vomit. He had never before appreciated the potential enjoyment of nausea.
“Then milk shakes are what we’re going to have,” he said. “Let’s go someplace good.”
Someplace with a men’s room. If he could get to it first, he could make room for the milk shake.
Karen came down the stairs and pulled up short when she saw her father. He was sitting in the living room with the telephone receiver in one hand, and he looked as though he had been sitting in that position for some time.
She said, “Daddy?”
He looked up, his eyes blank for a moment. “Oh,” he said. “Hello there.”
“Hello. Is something the matter?”
“Just lost in thought. Brown-study time.” He became aware that he was holding the telephone receiver, looked at it, hung it up. “Maybe something is the matter. I don’t know. I was talking to Linda and I didn’t like the way she sounded.”
She listened as he recounted the conversation.
“I’m a little worried about her,” he added. “She didn’t sound right at all. She seemed very troubled. I wonder if I shouldn’t drive over there and make sure she’s all right.”
“From what she said—”
“She said not to, I know, but it might be right for me to ignore that. Sometimes people say things in the hope that they’ll be ignored.”
“I don’t know if I should say anything or not.”
“What do you mean, kitten?”
“I don’t know. If it’s my place to say anything.”
“Please do.”
She hesitated, working things out in her mind first. She said, “Well, I dropped in on Linda awhile ago. I stop in and see her every once in awhile when I’m in the neighborhood. And we got to talking.”
“And?”
“She told me not to say anything. What it is, she likes you very much. But she doesn’t want to get serious. She didn’t say it that way but that was what she was saying, if that makes any sense.”
“It makes a lot of sense.”
“She doesn’t want to be rushed. She isn’t ready for it.”
“She said that when I first started seeing her.”
“And she … well, she’s also seeing somebody else. She didn’t come right out and say it but that’s what’s happening.”
“Oh.”
“I don’t think she’s serious about him or anything. I think she’s seeing him mostly because she doesn’t want to be seeing just one man. I’m just guessing, but … I guess I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“Well, I’m glad you did. I’m very buoyant right now because of the book and it’s made it hard for me to judge things properly in other areas.” He picked his pipe off the table. “I’ll be finishing it tomorrow.”
“Hey, that’s terrific!”
He brightened. “It is, isn’t it? I could have been done a long time ago, you know. I usually just get a first draft done and go back to it later. But this time I kept thinking of things I wanted to change and reworking earlier stuff.”
“I can’t wait to read it.”
“You won’t have long to wait. Hey, you know something, kitten? I still feel like a premature celebration. How about if you put on something beautiful and I’ll buy you a fancy dinner?”
“I had a sandwich while you were working.”
“Understandable. So let me have a sandwich myself and we’ll go out and do the town. What there is of it.”
She chewed her lip. “Well, I sort of have a date.”
“Just sort of?”
“There’s this girl, I was going to go over to her house for a few hours. Oh, there’s no reason not to say it. It’s Melanie Jaeger.”
“I didn’t know you were friendly with her.”
“I run into her in town now and then, and lately we’ve gotten to talking. She’s sort of interesting. Now that the summer people are gone there aren’t that many fascinating heads in town.” She hesitated. “I could call her up and tell her to make it some other time, I suppose.”
“No, don’t do that.”
“The thing is, I’d rather celebrate after you finish the book. And after I read it.”
“You may not feel like celebrating then.” He got to his feet. “But I’ll hold you to it,” he said. “You can read the book tomorrow afternoon and tomorrow night we’ll go out for dinner. Deal?”
“Will it be done by then?”
“I’m going to finish it tonight,” he said. “I’m not going to be able to unwind unless I drink too much, and I don’t feel like it. The only way I’ll get the book out of my head is by finishing it. Is there arty coffee?”
“I’ll make some. I’ll bring it to you.”
Hours later she got out of Melanie’s bed and took a shower. She toweled herself dry, then called out, “Hey, is it okay to use your toothbrush?”
Melanie burst out laughing.
“I’m hip, it’s a terrible question. Which one is yours?”
“The yellow one.”
As she was dressing, Melanie said, “I’m not going to brush my teeth. I want him to taste you on me.”
“Wow, that’s kinky. But you weren’t going to tell him about us.”
“Oh.”
“I mean, do what you want.”
“No, I’ll have to make up something.”
“Look, tell him the whole thing but make me some stranger you picked up in a gay bar in Trenton or something. Describe me and everything, but make me someone you don’t know and never saw before or since. You let me pick you up and you brought me back here and we made it in your bed, the whole trip just the way it happened.”
“And then you used my toothbrush.”
“Right.”
“You are devious,” Melanie said.
“I’m more devious than I used to think. It almost scares me how devious I am.”
Warren drove directly home from the theater, brushing off several cast members who wanted him to join them for a drink. By the time he got to his house Robin had been sleeping for hours and Anne Tedesco was yawning. He talked to her long enough to learn that everything was all right, then sent her off to bed.
So Bert’s entrance, fifteen minutes later, could not have been better timed. He was sitting in a corner of the living room when Bert walked in, and after one glance he knew that his assumption had been correct; Bert was leaving him, and with any encouragement whatsoever Bert would tell him so tonight.
“The prodigal returns,” he said. “I hope Aunt Elizabeth is feeling better.”
“She’s going to be all right.”
“It must be quite a change for her, though.” Bert looked puzzled. “A whole identity crisis,” he explained. “Her name was Aunt Harriet the last time we discussed her.”
“That’s sneaky, Warren.”
“That’s sneaky? Physician, heal thyself.”
“I was going to tell you. I need a drink.”
“You can fill my glass while you’re at it. Unless they taught you at women’s lib to stop waiting on men.”
“You don’t have to be a bitch, Warren.”
“I know. We can be civilized.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“Oh?”
“Not entirely what you think.”
Warren let him tell it. A week ago an agent from New York had heard him play at the Inn. The agent had told him he was wasting himself, that he could be pl
aying decent clubs in New York, making better money and being heard by influential people. And of course Bert had given him an unequivocal no at first, but after some thought he had realized that his career was vitally important to him and that he did not want to spend the rest of his life playing music for Bucks County drunks to talk over.
“I gather there’s a qualitative difference between Bucks County drunks and Manhattan drunks,” Warren said. “No, don’t let me interrupt you. Carry on.”
So he had called the agent, and the agent had arranged auditions Friday afternoon and evening and this afternoon, and he already had one booking and the promise of a second. And he knew how Warren felt about New York, and of course he couldn’t possibly commute, and their relationship had about run its course anyway, and—
“So it’s not another man,” Warren said.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“You didn’t ball anybody in New York.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I assume your new agent is a woman.”
“No, a man. What has that got—”
“A heterosexual man, however.”
“Cut the shit, will you. Warren?”
He stared moodily into his glass. Without looking up, he said, “When are you moving?”
“I was thinking of leaving tomorrow.”
“Why, that’s a rush engagement, isn’t it? Audition one day and start work the next. Your agent’s a whiz.”
“I have to get an apartment, I have to get settled.”
“One must get settled. You’ll be leaving your present employers high and dry, won’t you? Maybe you could call them now and let them know.”
“Well, I—”
“Because they won’t be open tomorrow.”
“Goddamn you, Warren.”
“When did you give notice? The night your nelly agent propositioned you?”
“The next day.”
“That’s splendid. And I have a splendid idea. Why don’t you pack a few things and fly away? I’ll ship the rest as soon as I have an address for you. Or do you already have an address?”
“No, I’ll be living alone.”
“Poor thing. Is there a place you can stay tonight?”