The Troubled Air Part 10

"I think it's cut a d.a.m.n sight too low."

Kitty chuckled again. "She's very nicely built," she said complacently. "Isn't she?"

"All right," Archer said, exasperatedly. "I'm stuffy. She told me that, too."

"Girls have to make themselves look nice," Kitty said mildly. "You ought to be thankful she's so pretty."

"I'm thankful," said Archer. "I'm delighted. It's working out fine. It's working so well she's out tonight with one of the most notorious men in New York."

"Notorious!" Kitty pretended to be shocked. "Heavens!"

"Now, Kitty," Archer shouted, "will you please stop being so d.a.m.ned tolerant for a minute or two?"

"I haven't heard a man called notorious," Kitty said, "since our preacher ran off with the telegraph operator's wife, and that was in-"

"You know what you are?" Archer asked, resigned to the fact that he had already lost this battle.

"What?"

"Slippery. I have what your daughter would call an utterly slippery wife."

"Don't take it so hard, darling," Kitty said. She leaned over and patted his hand comfortably. "I think Mr. Barbante is very nice."

"He is the most thorough woman chaser in the city," Archer said gloomily. "He's at least thirty and has the morals of a Turk."

"I'm sure Jane will behave very well," Kitty said primly. "I'm not at all worried about her."

Archer knew that this was meant as a rebuke for his lack of faith. "Neither am I," he said quickly. "Not really."

"It's all good experience for a girl," Kitty said. "Let them see the whole line early so they won't be surprised later in life."

"If I weren't so tired," Archer said, "I would be shocked."

"Why don't you try to take a cold shower before dinner?" Kitty asked, instantly solicitous.

"I don't want a shower. Also-she put on a whole batch of disgusting airs with him and she wore low-heeled shoes because he's a midget."

Kitty smiled. "Girls have to grow up sometime," she said. "You've got to try on an air or two when you're eighteen years old to see what the effect is. And I always wore low shoes myself when I went out with a short man. Don't be so stern."

"Anyway," Archer said, with grim satisfaction, "I told her to come home early. From now on, I'm going to take over Jane's instruction, and I hope that that one"-he pointed to Kitty's stomach-"is a boy."

"My," Kitty said, wrinkling her nose, "you must have had a bad day. Did you have a fight with O'Neill?"

"No," Archer said. For a moment, he thought of telling Kitty the whole story. It would be a relief to unburden himself, get someone else's advice, share the painful interior monologue of the last twenty-four hours. He regarded her thoughtfully. She looked fragile, childish and helpless in the pillowed bed. Then he decided against it. Not now. Not yet. Not until it couldn't be avoided. He would leave Kitty's protection intact as long as he possibly could. "No," he said, "I didn't have any trouble with O'Neill. Just the regular routine," he said carelessly. "I spoke to Nancy on the phone. Clement has the measles. I told him I'd come up soon and tell him a story."

Kitty looked at him strangely. "You don't plan to go into the room, do you?"

"Of course I plan to go into the room. You can't tell a four-year-old child a story by coaxial cable, can you?"

"Oh, Clement ..." Kitty looked at him reproachfully. "Measles're so catching."

"I had the measles," Archer said, "when I was five years old. And I've known young Clement since before he was born and I'm his G.o.dfather. What do you expect me to do-stand at the doorway and make him feel like a leper?"

"Now you're angry at me," Kitty said. Her voice began to tremble. She had developed an unhappy tendency toward tears in the last few months. "You think I'm unfeeling toward the child."

"I despise the idea of being frightened of sickrooms," Archer said. "It's so cowardly and. ..."

"You despise me," Kitty began to sob.

Archer put his arm around her to comfort her. Her shoulders felt frail and young under the frilly bedjacket. "Now, darling," he kissed her neck, "I don't despise you at all. You know that."

"It's not for me," Kitty said. "Or even for you. But even if we don't get it ourselves, we can carry the infection and then when the child is born. ..."

"I know, I know," Archer said. "Don't worry about him. He'll be enormously rugged. I guarantee."

"I feel so queer these days," Kitty said wetly into his shoulder. "You have to forgive me."

"Of course I forgive you."

"It's not like when we were young. I knew nothing bad could happen then. ..."

"Nothing bad is going to happen now. And we're not so old," Archer said. "Stop making us sound as though we're both ready to fall apart."

"I don't have any confidence any more," Kitty whispered. "I have such terrible dreams. ..."

"Don't cry. Kitty, darling, please don't cry," Archer whispered, holding her. "And from now on, whenever you have a bad dream, wake me up and we'll put on the light, and you can tell me about it if you think that'll help, or we'll just sit up and read. ..."

Kitty stifled her sobs and rubbed her face against his coat. She kissed him. "I'm all right now," she said. She smiled wanly. "Is it dreadful, weeping like this? I'm ashamed of myself."

Archer stood up. "Don't worry about it," he said. "You cry all you want for the next four months."

"The perfect husband." Kitty even managed a chuckle.

The phone rang on the bedside table and Archer leaned over a picked it up. "h.e.l.lo," he said.

"Clement." It was Vic's voice. "I heard you called."

"Yes." Archer glanced at Kitty, moist and inquiring on the bed below him. It would be impossible to talk now. "I wanted to see you."

"I'm afraid it'll have to wait a few days," Vic said. His voice w sober. "I'm having a little trouble."

"What's the matter?"

"I just got a call from Detroit. I'm taking a plane for there now. I'm leaving in ten minutes. My mother's had a stroke and the doctors're being gloomy."

"Oh, I'm terribly sorry, Vic."

"Well," Vic said calmly. "She's a pretty old lady. Maybe you'd better have somebody standing by for me next Thursday, in case I can't get back in time."

"Sure," Archer said. "Don't worry about it." He was unhappily conscious that he was annoyed with Vic's mother for deciding have a stroke at just this time. For a moment he thought of telling Vic he'd see him at the airport. Then he thought better of it. Vic had enough trouble for one night. "Is there anything I can do for you here?" Archer asked.

"You can come up and pat Nancy's hand from time to time."

"Of course," said Archer.

"What did you want to see me about?" Vic asked. "Anything important?"

Archer hesitated. "It'll have to wait," he said, "until you get home. I hope your mother. ..."

"I know, Clem," Vic said gently. "Give Kitty my love."

Archer put the phone down slowly. Kitty was looking up at him inquiringly.

"Vic sent his love," Archer said. "He's leaving for Detroit. His mother's had a stroke."

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Kitty said. She put out her hand and to Archer's, as though the threat of death, even though to an old lady far away whom she hardly knew, had made her seek for obscure rea.s.surance in the touch of her husband's healthy and robust flesh.

But the news cast a pall on the evening. They hardly spoke through dinner, and Archer wandered restlessly around the house the rest of the night, looking at the clock again and again, thinking of Vic crossing the night sky toward his stricken mother, and wondering where Jane was at that moment and what she was doing. He was unnecessarily brusque with Bruce when he appeared at nine o'clock. He gave Bruce Barbante's invitation at the door and didn't invite the boy in for a drink and was irritated with the forlorn, hopeless expression on the boy's face.

He sat up drinking by himself and resisted going to bed. He didn't want to dream. Zero, he thought. Zero.

8.

THERE WAS ALWAYS SOMETHING DISTURBING ABOUT FRANCES MOTHERWELL'S voice, even on the telephone. It was low and a little hoa.r.s.e and suggested, at all times, hidden invitations. "What that girl has," the agents said, accounting for her success, "is s.e.x, from Coast to Coast."

Just now, on this Monday morning, the voice, with its constant undercurrent of energy and excitement, was merely saying, "Clement, darling, I just have to see you. Tout de suite."

"Sure," Archer said. He had been caught by the telephone's ringing in the hall, just as he was about to go out. He thought for a moment. He had wasted Sunday, tired and lying around and reading the papers, until it had been too late to call Pokorny, as he had planned. Frances Motherwell would do for a starter, he thought grimly. Might as well eat the bitter pill first. "I'm at your service. How about lunch?" Coat the pill with food and drink and keep everything friendly, at least in the beginning.

"Sorry, lover," Frances said. "I'm waiting for a call from California from a semi-forgotten man. Could you come up to my place?"

"Of course."

"You have the address, don't you?"

"Engraved on my heart." Elephantine gallantry, Archer thought coldly as he said it, brought on by embarra.s.sment. Frances embarra.s.sed everyone. She embarra.s.sed women because they felt that she could take any man in the room from them and she embarra.s.sed men because they couldn't help wondering if it was true.

"I live on the fourth floor. Can you make the steps?"

"I'll have a cardiogram and see," Archer said, displeased that the girl thought he was so old.

She laughed. Her laugh was a little wild, as though there was something in her that was out of control which revealed itself in her laughter. "Don't be angry, lover," she said, as Archer winced at the word. "I just want to preserve you for better things. Say a half-hour?"

"A half-hour," Archer said.

"Promise not to mind how I look. I just got up and my face is folded together."

"I'll wear rose-colored gla.s.ses," Archer said. "See you soon."

Frances lived on a street in the East Fifties. The house was an old mansion converted into small apartments. Archer always got the feeling of transience from these streets. Actors lived there on subleases, ready to go to Hollywood at the first offer; readers for publishers lurked in polite cubby-holes, prepared to switch to larger quarters the day after they were made editors; newly married couples shared a few cubic feet of s.p.a.ce, sleeping on daybeds, until the advent of the first child made them move to the country. Still, it was a pleasant street, especially today, with the air clear and the sun glinting on all the windows and making the thin row of winter-bare trees in front of the buildings very black against the clean pavements. Young women strode purposefully out of the gaily painted front doors, carrying their bags slung over their shoulders, like military messengers carrying important information to a higher headquarters. And hatless young men, who had jobs that permitted them to sleep late, strolled back from breakfast at the corner drugstores, their heads bent as they read the morning Times, giving a false, week-end air of leisure here in the middle of the busy city.

Archer rang Frances' bell, wondering how he would begin with her. Conducting a conversation with Frances was difficult at best of times, because she had a jumpy, quick mind and was imperiously in her own direction in any company. It's too nice a day, Archer thought resentfully, staring back at the sunlit street, for a job like this.

Then the buzzer rang. He sighed and went in. He climbed dark, genteel steps, past a door from which the smell of frying bacon wafted out, and another door behind which someone was practicing a run from the Brahms Second Concerto on the piano. Frances was waiting for him on the top floor, looking over the banister. He tried to disguise the fact that he was panting as he said h.e.l.lo.

"Oh, you poor darling," Frances said as she closed the door behind him and took his coat, "I just must move some place where there's an elevator. Your dear little bald spot is perfectly purple. Sit down and don't say a word."

Archer grinned weakly as he seated himself in a narrow modern chair that made him feel as though he had been captured. He saw that he was already at a disadvantage and that he would never recover from it. "You have a very nice apartment here," he said, looking around him at the tiny room and s.p.a.cing the words between gasps. "Although at this alt.i.tude I advise the use of oxygen."

"My lair," Frances said carelessly, glancing at the dark-brick wall above the white fireplace. "It's all right if you don't try to have more than a hundred people in at any one time."

The phone rang in the next room and Frances said, "Oh, d.a.m.n, there it goes again. Excuse me." She rushed into the bedroom and picked up the phone. "Motherwell speaking," she said crisply, sounding like an officer in the Army. Archer noticed the business-like affectation and was displeased by it. Actresses, he thought, if they're any good, never can persuade themselves to sound like normal human beings. He could see her through the doorway, knee up on a chair, frowning into the phone and poking a pencil in her hair. She was a striking-looking girl and her face didn't look folded together at all, he noticed. Her hair was pulled back severely to show her high, bold forehead. She had a nervous mobile face, with large gray eyes that were a little too flat in her head, so that they seemed over-prominent. She was slender and had good legs and Archer could see she didn't need a girdle and wasn't wearing one. She was dressed in a sweater and a closely fitting green skirt, simple and finely made and reminded Archer of his daughter. Give Jane another six or seven years, Archer thought, and she'll probably look very much like that.

"It's perfectly sweet of you to ask me, lover," Frances was saying into the phone, causing unknown tremblings on the other end of the wire, "and I'd adore coming. Just let me look in my little book and see what it says about Tuesday." She put her hand over the mouthpiece and made a grimace at Archer. "Bore Number One of the Winter Season," she whispered hoa.r.s.ely. She didn't open the book on the table. She waited an acceptable amount of time then took her hand off the mouthpiece. "Darling," she said, her voice freighted with regret, "the little book says I'm spoken for on Tuesday. Isn't it d.a.m.nable? I'm so sorry. Do remember to ask me again, won't you?" She nodded impatiently several times and took the phone away from her ear and hung it over her shoulder as the voice on the other end made several diminishing remarks. "That's sweet," she said briskly, putting the phone to her ear again. "We must get together. But real soon. Thanks so much for calling." She hung up, looked briefly at herself in a mirror and came back into the room.

There ought to be a law, Archer thought, regulating the conduct of pretty women over the telephone. The Federal Communications Commission. And they do it brazenly in front of you, confident of the absence of solidarity among men.

"Poor dear," Frances said. "He's such a lump. And he never catches on. Do you mind if I go into the kitchen for a second? I was just getting myself a goodie when you rang."

"Go ahead," Archer said. "I have all day."

Frances swept into the kitchen. She moved in swift bursts, brushing past the furniture in the crowded room with a dancer's precision. Archer heard her rattling the door to the refrigerator. "Can I get you anything?" she called in. "I see I have five oranges, a quart of milk and a half pound of pte."

"No, thanks," Archer said, smiling at the menu.

"Oh," she called again. "I saw your daughter two nights ago. At the Ruban Bleu. With Dom. She looked heavenly. She's a true man-killer, that girl."

"Is she?" Archer said loudly, wondering uneasily if in the language of the day that was a compliment.

"She will devour them by the dozen," Frances said. "Mark my word."

She relapsed into silence as she pushed gla.s.ses into the sink. Archer looked around the room curiously. There were red and white candy-striped draperies at the windows, an abstract painting that looked ugly, authentic and expensive above the fireplace and, surprisingly, a whole wallful of books. When does she get time to read? Archer wondered. Helplessly he felt himself staring at the books, searching for the t.i.tles. A great many current novels and one whole side devoted to poetry. Dobson, Donne, Baudelaire, Eliot, Auden. What message was hidden there for him? Or for the poor lump who had asked for Tuesday on the phone? Off to one side, in a neat pile, was a group of magazines. The top one was a small literary magazine that was put out by avowedly Communist writers. Archer leaned over and read some of the names on the cover. Two of them he recognized as being leaders of what the magazine itself often referred to as left-wing thought. He sat back feeling distaste for himself. Before this, he had, as a bookish man, always glanced curiously at his hosts' books when he was invited anywhere. Until now he had done it thoughtlessly, without any sense of guilt. Now, he seemed to himself to be looking at bookshelves through the eyes of a potential informer. Perhaps, he thought, I will never be able to pick up a friend's book innocently again. The curtailment of pleasure, brought about by secret dislocations in att.i.tude. Guilt was not in the act, but in the conception of the act. Archer had an old-fashioned sense of hospitality and he could not help but feel that judging your host in his own home was a betrayal of friendship. I wonder, he thought, how detectives square their consciences after a fruitful day's work.

Frances came back into the room carrying a tall gla.s.s.

"What's that?" Archer asked.

"Chocolate milk," Frances said. "I'm queer for it. Wonderful after a rough night. Want some?"

"Lord, no. I haven't had a rough night since 1940."