Part 7

Bemrose was bringing the anecdotist over to meet Lucy, and Steve Holmes pulled out hastily. Larry followed Steve as soon as he had grabbed a drink off a passing tray, and in a stupor of heat, noise, and alcohol, they circled the smoky room, inhaling wisps of talk.

“_They’re still picketing the White House ... goddamn saboteurs._”

“_Hard-boiled Harold should be good in the oil business._”

“_How can a fellow tell, the way they have priorities screwed up?_”

“_... Lady in the Dark, fifth row._”

“_A swell job. We wouldn’t have Lend-Lease if not for ...._”

“_Grew says it’s putting off an operation for cancer, and he’s one man who ought to know about Japs._”

The bits of talk stuck to Larry like sweat. He listened and he kept on drinking. The last two glasses were brandy, and his thinking blurred. He wondered about Marge Daugherty stranded in the next room with Ed, and he listened for her grating giggle. He shuddered when it reached him, proclaiming that Marge was tied down permanently. Larry looked around for Bemrose. He found him with the Vichyites, arguing in a voice that was pitched too high, his lips tight as a trap, and realized that it couldn’t be Vichy alone which had Bemrose worked up.

“Sonafabitch Darlan. If we don’t watch out, the French Navy--” Bemrose was saying. “To hell with the pussyfooting. We’ll never be able to play ball with them anyway.”

Steve Holmes pulled Larry out of the group around Arthur.

“Some other guy ought to lay her first,” Steve said. “Some guy ought to heat up that hunk of marble for him. He needs a woman who can wring him out. Look. One of these days he’s going to blow himself up.”

From the fireplace, Lucy nodded to them and smiled.

“Someone ought to heat her up,” Steve repeated. “She isn’t ready to take on Bemrose.”

Larry told Steve to stick around before he rushed upstairs. As he made it to the washbowl, Larry remembered that a skimpy lunch was the last solid food he had eaten, and that in the past hour he had mixed champagne, whiskey, and brandy. He couldn’t tell whether he was upset at the heart or at the stomach, but he thought of Janice Baldwin and wondered what she was doing. He thought of her huddled in an air raid shelter, or queuing up for a canned news handout.

None of it made him feel better. Larry wet a cloth and put it to his head, figuring that tomorrow it might be Janice’s turn to feel not so good. He’d cable her about Bemrose. She was a reporter, and would want to know the news when it was hot.

* * * * *

A couple of hours later Larry walked down Fifth Avenue with Steve Holmes. They stopped for a light at Seventy-sixth Street, across the street from the rough stone synagogue with the steep steps.

“I can’t get it,” Steve said for the seventh time since they had left Bemrose’s. “After all these years without being sewed up, I don’t see why--”

“She’ll take care of his house,” Larry said.

Steve’s sandy head twisted sideways in a question.

“The way he wants it,” Larry explained. “He’ll tell her and she’ll listen. That’s the way he likes it. No competition.”

“Who else does he tell?”

“The clients. The client-friends. You know that business about not charging them a fee if they’re his friends.”

From across the street he smelled the dank summer green of Central Park. A breeze from the west carried broken dance tunes through the darkness from the Mall.

Steve stopped. “Come to think of it, he never sent _me_ a bill. The last time I got even. I shipped him a picture.”

Larry nodded. “Would you do _him_ a favor if he asked you to?”

“Ye-e-es,” Holmes drawled, uncertainly.

“The chances are he doesn’t want anything from us, but Davis Shore who was there tonight-- Bemrose doesn’t take any money from him either.”

Steve whistled.

“A fellow like Shore could do him favors,” Larry speculated.

“Shore was the one talking to her when we came up?” Holmes asked.

“With the pink face.”

“He looked a little dry in the mouth trying to find something to say,” Holmes observed. “Maybe he’s not making the client-friends happy, getting hitched to her.” His head dropped forward, and he lengthened his stride.

Larry puffed to keep up with him. Only a fool would have let himself get drunk on a night like this. In spite of his tropical weight suit, the back of his shirt was a washrag. “She’ll let him run the show, she’ll be easy to live with. He’ll give her money--she’s never had much. She’ll enjoy the social stuff.”

“Sounds like a business deal,” Steve said.

“What’s wrong with buying that, if the price is right? Maybe it’s as good a reason as any. I wouldn’t know for sure.” Larry swallowed to get rid of the bitter taste. “Did you have supper?” he asked abruptly.

Steve swung around. “Say, you don’t look good,” he said. “What the hell are _you_ upset about? It’s not your funeral.”

“I had too much to drink,” Larry apologized.

“A couple of Scotch-and-sodas never made anyone look like you look,” Steve insisted.

Larry knew it was no use. The artist had third and fourth sight. Already in one evening Larry had told him more than he had confided to Bessie in a month. Steve Holmes took x-rays. He didn’t waste time with questions.

“Okay, so I like the guy.” Larry’s clammy fingers rubbed the moisture from his palms. “He’s a great guy,” he went on, talking to himself in the dark. “He’s what I always wanted to be, only it’s no use if you’re not built for it. I know his faults, and I think he’s a great guy.”

Silently they walked along. They had this side of the street to themselves. The green coaches lumbered by like middle-aged ladies with diabetes, and on a bench near a bus stop across the avenue, two sailors were draped around a couple of high school kids in purple sister dresses.

Holmes made sympathetic noises. “I know what you mean. I’d believe him if he told me the world was coming to an end next Friday night at seven fifty-nine and a quarter.”

“Every man has to have his guy,” Larry broke in. “Arthur’s been mine. For years. Since we were kids. I know every goddam one of his faults and----”

Steve Holmes gripped Larry’s arm above the wrist. “Take it easy, boy,” he said. “You’re okay. Where would you like to stop for a bite?”

Larry quickened his step, but his short legs were no match for Steve’s.

“You say he fell for Jan?” Holmes wanted to know.

“I thought he’d ask her to marry him, but they had a misunderstanding. I think he was waiting for her to come to him.”

“Jesuschris’, how did he get over her?” It came out a wail, from the bottom of Steve. “I’ve been trying, and Jesuschris’-- I haven’t seen her for ten years, and she’s still around.”

Still around. Larry smiled.

“She should have married me,” Steve said. “You say she likes Bemrose?”

“When she found out what she thought he was about, she tried not to,” Larry explained. “She tried to talk herself out of him but she didn’t have much luck.”

“He’s a fifteen-story fool,” Steve exploded. “A fool.”

They had reached the scrubby uptown side of Fifty-ninth Street where slit-entranced lunchrooms framed with neon lined the sidewalk. A trolley jangled by, and Larry invited Steve to join him in a cup of coffee across at Reuben’s, but Holmes said he wanted to get back to his hotel.

From behind an oversized table at the restaurant, watching the women in their cool cotton dresses drift in from the theater, Larry thought of Bemrose going upstairs alone, away from the stale air and the dirty highball glasses.

In a few weeks he wouldn’t be able to get away by going upstairs.

_PART II_

_Chapter 8_

Larry broke the eggs cleanly on the edge of the glass bowl, looked for an egg beater, and took down paprika, salt, and pepper. Bessie humored him on Sunday mornings and let him scramble the eggs his way, well beaten and cooked over a low fire. Patiently Larry stirred, scooping his fork along the side of the pan. The August sun blazed through the windows. Larry knew that if he wanted the eggs right, they couldn’t be rushed.

Larry opened the refrigerator and saw cool slices of honeydew melon on white Wedgwood, and an oval platter of smoked salmon in neat rows. He uncovered a top-of-the-stove oven where six shiny bagel were heating, and sniffed. Bagel were doughnut-like rolls with tough, crisp crusts. He remembered them nostalgically from home.

A container of cream was on the stove to be added at the last moment. The cream splashed, and Larry mixed the eggs again before he spooned them onto heated plates and called Bessie to help carry them in.

They ate in the foyer, where Elizabeth Brett, Bessie’s old school chum, was waiting at the table. She sampled the eggs expertly. “They’re wonderful. How do you get them so smooth?” she asked.

“He won’t even tell me,” Bessie pretended to complain.

“I wish he’d tell my cook,” Elizabeth’s flowers bobbed on her white bouquet of a hat. “Mm-m,” she sighed contentedly. “I don’t know when I last tasted a bagel.”

“You have a standing invitation any Sunday, Liz,” Larry said, grinning. He looked through the graceful arch to the living room and felt grateful to Liz, as he often had before. On this shriveling August day the dark emerald walls soaked up the heat, and the bright white fireplace with its oblong of unframed mirror fitted the serene Brett color plan. Chintz for the easy chairs. A lemon-colored sofa and striped woolen draperies. Ivy in white stands. The color was Brett, as though she had stood by, adding white to the paint and weaving it into each clean-looking fabric.

It was her color, but their home. At first Larry had been afraid to tell her about the Soyer painting, the gift last year of a client who owed him a fee. Bessie and he had thought that the somber, grayish picture of a girl with legs askew and knob knees bent might offend Liz, but she felt the power in the picture at once, said the girl in the painting looked like a high school chum in the Bronx who had lost her job during the thirties and tried to commit suicide with a rusty pair of scissors. Her school friend had the Soyer’s overlarge hollows for eyes, Liz said thoughtfully, while she searched her handbag for a picture hook to hang the painting.

Liz had made her way from a cold-water flat in the Bronx to the shop on East Fifty-seventh Street. _Elizabeth Brett, Inc., Interiors._ Bessie first met her when she was Lizzie Browarsky and they were freshmen at Hunter. Already Liz was designing her own clothes and painting sets for the dramatic club. In her junior year she quit and went to art school at night, and apprenticed herself during the day to the home furnishings section of a department store. There Liz made friends with an editor of a decorating magazine who introduced her to a society woman who was looking for someone young and energetic as a partner. The woman’s husband had gone broke on Wall Street, and she supported herself by decorating for wealthy friends. Liz, who had brains and a fresh color sense, delighted her employer’s clients, and Brett jobs began to be talked about and photographed. Friends of friends and total strangers visited the cramped upstairs office. When the business moved a year ago to a spacious street location, Liz bought out her associate, changed the firm name, and hired three assistants to handle the traffic. Liz deserved a lot of credit, Larry admitted. In fifteen years she had put herself at the top. Watching her thick-knuckled fingers on the slippery roll, Larry wondered, as he often did, how coarse-fibered Liz with her mottled strawberry skin, gossipy mouth and emphatic hips managed to get along with the airplane trade. Her own scheme of dressing was the reverse of the rooms she designed. She used too much makeup, loaded herself with gaudy costume jewelry, and on a scorcher like today, she wore a long-sleeved black crepe dress. Her voice was Bourbon, straight, she said “yeh-uh” for “yes,” and was the last person anyone would associate with the pure cool beauty of an interior by Brett.

Judged by standards of self-made success, Liz was the counterpart among Bess’s college friends of Bemrose among his. Both had come up from a curbstone. They both served wealthy clients. Only the edges of Arthur H. Bemrose were engine-turned while Liz Brett had hangnails that snagged. Her energy exploded like a hundred firecrackers set off at once while Bemrose’s was a steady glow.

They were on a second cup of coffee when Bess said, “Tell him, Liz. What you were telling me before.”

“I’ve been having a little trouble with your pal, Bemrose,” Liz said, a cigarette between her lips.

Larry struck a match for her. “Where did you tangle with him?”

“He asked me to do over his old house on Eighty-second Street.” The white hat tossed as she inhaled. “I met him at a party of a client of mine. I did a house for this woman on the Cape. He seemed like a nice guy, and I hoped there was a little something between them. When I saw that he had married another girl, I wrote, congratulating him. About a month ago he called to ask me how I’d like to do over his house.” She tilted the fragile chair and blew a smoke ring. “I should have been smart enough to know when _he_ called instead of Mrs. Bemrose----”

“Tell him about the bedroom paper,” Bessie prompted.

Larry looked curiously at his wife. The dark purple lips which usually curved with good nature twisted pouting, insistent, toward Elizabeth. Lightning threatened in her brown eyes which ordinarily were so warm and cloudless that they reminded Larry of a perfect stretch of weather. Thin lines of moisture had collected in the folds of her plump neck. Bess’s wavy dark hair which almost always obediently circled her face, accentuating its roundness, jabbed from the temples in straight, stubborn ends. The play of dark lips and blinding white teeth, a study of light-and-shadow which Larry never tired of watching, struck him now as greedy. He thought of a small, furry animal badgering its victim. This wasn’t his usual sweet, gentle Bessie.

“What _about_ the wallpaper?” he asked.

“Nothing that will make any difference in a hundred years.” Elizabeth had caught his amused tone.

“About the stripes,” Bessie persisted.

“You know the house,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a mausoleum.”

Larry nodded.

“He won’t let her get rid of the old furniture,” Liz explained. “So Mrs. Bemrose thought that by keeping the walls light and slipcovering some of the heavy pieces, she’d brighten up the place.”

“_Who_ thought of that?” Larry laughed.

“I did.”

Bessie motioned to him impatiently. “That’s what she is paid for, Larry. Go on, tell about the stripes.”

“We had agreed to use a pale blue sprig paper for the bedroom to keep it delicate,” Liz continued. “We had already selected a matching carpet and fabrics. Even samples for lamp shades. Her heart was set on that blue.”

“But he wanted stripes,” Bessie interrupted.

“Bottle green and tan stripes,” Elizabeth explained. “An inch wide. They would have been okay for the study, or in a man’s bedroom where the furniture was made to order, but----”

“She lost, I guess,” Larry said.

“She cried all the way through a good dress of mine. Scared to death that she’d never understand him. Children, it isn’t friendly at the Bemroses’. It isn’t friendly.” Elizabeth walked to the mirror and stroked her upswept coiffure with clumsy fingers.

“I guess they’ll sleep with stripes.” Larry shrugged.

“You haven’t heard about the cook,” Bessie protested.

“Let’s skip it,” Elizabeth ran a thumb along a pocket comb.

“No, he ought to hear,” Bess insisted. “To listen to Larry talk about Arthur Bemrose, you’d think he was-- Well, sometimes you do make me sick,” she said defensively.

Larry looked more reproachful than he felt. He knew Bessie was jealous of the time he spent with Arthur, but it didn’t bother him. He attributed it to feminine possessiveness and was rather flattered by her jealousy.

“What about the cook?” Larry asked, to humor Bessie. “I might as well know everything.”

“If cooks are good, they’re _usually_ a little crazy,” Elizabeth explained. “This one at the Bemroses’ makes like a genius, but he fired her because he claims she came home drunk.” Elizabeth smiled. “If she’d work for me, I’d gladly keep her in Scotch, cases of it. Anyway Mrs. Bemrose says the cook was sick, not drunk, and begged him to hang on to her, but he won, of course. Next day the cook was--” Elizabeth jerked a thumb toward the door. “I tell you, infants, it’s not friendly at the Bemroses’.”

Bessie watched apprehensively for Larry’s reaction, but he stacked the dishes unconcerned.

“Leave those. I’ll do them after Liz is gone,” Bessie said. “Don’t go yet, Liz. Tell him about the draperies.”

“Look, honey, how about letting him alone? He thinks we’re a couple of hellions.”

“Aren’t you?” Larry innocently asked.

“A thing like that shows up a man’s character,” Bess insisted. “Larry ought to know about it. For his own protection,” she added mysteriously.

“And you should get a job running a quiz program,” Liz said.

Larry pinched his nose delightedly. An embarrassed flush, rising on Bessie’s neck, colored her lower jaw.

“The other afternoon about five-thirty I was supervising the hanging of draperies for the upstairs study when Bemrose came in,” Liz continued. “He blurted out something at her and when I turned around, she was trembling. A lawyer named Harrison was waiting for him downstairs, and Bemrose had asked her to have her dinner sent up on a tray so that he and this other lawyer could be alone.

“I invited her to come home with me and look at a bedroom screen I had been trying to describe to her, thinking she might want to order one like it. Bemrose fell over himself thanking me. He can be damned ingratiating when you give him his way--”

“You bet he can. And sometimes even when you don’t give him his way,” Larry said.

“I decided he was getting off too easy, and it would do him good to suffer,” Liz said. “I asked, ‘How about inviting us downstairs for cocktails? I’ve been on my feet all day. I can use a drink.’”

She sat down and shifted her hips on the narrow chair. “Mrs. Bemrose tried to shush me and say they mustn’t be disturbed. She offered to have _our_ drink sent up. But I put my foot down and said I wanted to get away from the mess in the sitting room.

“Bemrose finally saw he was licked. He asked us to join them,” Liz continued. “When we got downstairs, he fixed a nice, smooth Martini, and he went out of his way to behave. He kept cutting us into the conversation, and his friend Harrison--he told some good stories.” She smiled speculatively. “I like that little runt.”

“Make a try for him, Liz. He’ll keep you in sables.”

“Thanks. I’ll buy my own,” Liz said. “I think Bemrose would have asked us to dinner if he hadn’t been afraid of reversing himself. Harrison was having a good time. He thought I was the life of the party. What is he? A corporation lawyer?”

Larry nodded.

“Bemrose wouldn’t let on, of course, that he wanted to change his mind,” Liz said. “It’s no _kinderspiel_, living with that guy. It takes quite a woman.”

Elizabeth removed a cylinder of red paste from her bag. She used a fingertip to spot each cheek and worked in the daubs of color. “That poor little thing had better catch on quick or----”

“He has a heart as big as he is,” Larry protested.

“He wants Larry to manage his office,” Bess said. “What do you think, Liz? You’re a judge of character. It’s a big step for Larry, closing his own office. My father says going into business with a man is like marrying him.”

Larry was grateful that Bess never reminded him he had taken her from a home with two servants. She never suggested that they wouldn’t have this apartment if her father, a successful diamond merchant, hadn’t furnished it for a wedding present. For fifteen years Bess had plugged away with Larry, counting on him to become a Judge, or at least a Magistrate, but keeping the thought in the back of a bottom drawer. Bemrose’s offer was the first real professional break he had had since law school. Since he told her about it, Bess had gone around the house absorbed, thoughtful, looking questions instead of asking them. She pretended to resent Arthur and his success, but Larry knew the firm name of HAYNES and BEMROSE was an overbright sun that watered her eyes. In the small veins of her heart, Bessie probably hoped that he would accept the offer.

“Larry’s a pretty good judge of character. He doesn’t need my advice,” Elizabeth said, walking over and affectionately tugging the knot of his tie. “Now children, I really must--” She crushed some long white gauntlets at her wrist. “The eggs were scrumptious. Ask me again!”

Before Larry could say, “I’ve already turned down his job,” Elizabeth was on her way, and the door clicked.

Gratefully Larry took off his tie, unbuttoned his collar, and stretched out on the yellow sofa, placing a newspaper under his shoes. Bessie was busy in the kitchen. He’d have to tell her someday and might just as well line up how he was going to put it. He’d have to go back a month to that stinking evening----

* * * * *

Larry would never forget that night in the middle of July. It was impossible to get a breath of air if a man had a pair of lungs like Dempsey. The gang decided they might as well forget the humidity and play poker because it was better to be out and occupied than to stifle and be bored at home. There was no point in going to an air-cooled movie, either, and come out later to the steaminess of Times Square. They set up the game at Danny’s, and griped like hell because Danny had promised every summer to put in air conditioning and hadn’t done anything about it.

Although Bemrose was married the end of June, none of the gang had seen him since long before his engagement. The usual stag dinner which the boys would have liked to give him hadn’t been discussed. Larry, himself, hadn’t heard from Bemrose since the party at his house five or six weeks ago.

Naturally the boys wondered about Lucy, what she was like, and when Larry dealt, he tried to satisfy their curiosity. He put down the cards to illustrate Mrs. Bemrose’s symmetrical distribution when Bemrose unexpectedly walked in, and the evening was finished. The gang attempted to congratulate him, but their good wishes went stale as warm beer. Bemrose looked edgy, miserable. His coat slipped from the back of his chair, and he let it lie in Danny’s sawdust.

The first round of the game everyone stayed. There was almost a hundred dollars in the pot. Cy O’Malley raised, Bemrose called, and Cy put down three ten spots. Arthur beat him with four kings and hauled in the chips, a wedding present from the boys. The next hand was deuces wild, and Bemrose drew two deuces. He was four hundred bucks ahead in a half hour, a run of luck that happened once in a year of Saturday nights.

Ordinarily someone would have wisecracked, “What’s the matter? Your love life sour?”; tonight the boys were very careful. Very, very careful.

With the third beer, Tremont Friendly, punctilious Terry who answered every letter and remembered every birthday and the only one likely to be hurt because Bemrose hadn’t invited the rest of them to the wedding, decided to do the right thing. He cleared his throat, and precisely raised his glass. “A toast to Arthur’s wife, boys,” he said. “To Mrs. Bemrose’s health.” Self-consciously he pointed the glass at Arthur.

Bemrose grunted his thanks, put down his beer without drinking, and shuffled the cards for the next round.

Terry looked as though he had been slapped.

This furtiveness of Bemrose’s was a little silly, Larry decided, even if he had married late in life and wanted to appear matter-of-fact about it. A man couldn’t hide a new wife in his vest pocket, because he felt ill at ease as a husband.

“Give Lucy my love,” Larry said easily. “When you came in, I was telling the boys about her. By the way, how is she these days? I know she’s beautiful, but otherwise----”