“I don’t know.” She has developed a number of vivid little mannerisms, none of them posed. A trick of leaning forward suddenly shoving both hands up into her hair and keeping them there, while a tiny frown-crease comes and goes in her smooth forehead; pouting her big sweet mouth without knowing it; smiling so fleetingly you can’t be sure afterward that she smiled at all. “I don’t know. I know that I loved him pretty terribly. Ten years old is such a long time ago, Ben…. Afraid I don’t even know much about the famous male sex. It’s been — you know: technique, not parties — Czerny, not boy friends. And worth it, too — I haven’t minded that.”
“Plenty of time.”
“Oh — time…. I suppose I began to feel he was dead, after Mother Sophia — I’m sort of in the habit of calling her that, she likes it — after she told me that you were. I never forgot him, Ben, I just had to let it go into the past, like a station on a train. I didn’t finish high school, by the way. My mother died when I was thirteen, and Pop remarried — oh well, make way for Cinderella, I couldn’t stand the stepmother and she sure-to-God couldn’t stand me, so Mother Sophia took me to live with her — all I could’ve prayed for. I — hear from Pop now and then. Stiff little letters. Exceedingly grammatical.”
“He wasn’t there tonight?”
“Ah no, he” — her wonderful fingers were gripping my hand hard I again — “he doesn’t get around much, as the jellyfish said to the sea serpent. Means, translated, that while the heller he married runs the store, he goes down to the corner. Got it in all its beauty, darling? He’s Brand Anonymous. And little daughter can no more reach him than — oh, the devil with it. He writes only when he’s sober, about I once in two months, Ben—”
“Will.”
“I’m sorry — Will, Will. I’ve thought so much about Ben…. Well, he wrote that he would like to come to the recital but was very busy and not well. Could be the lady dictated it. She knows he still loves me, in his fashion, that’s her cross. People are so… so…” She gave it up.
We were both silent too long. I said: “Oo ill i owioffsh?”
For some reason that made her cry, but even while she groped impatiently for a handkerchief, and snatched mine, she was saying: “O. Ah ery ush. But I could go another cognac….”
“And Mother Sophia?”
“Splendid.” She was still annoyed at her eyes, wiping them, and repairing make-up. “Immortal — my God, if only she were! I didn’t know what to say, about coming away tonight. Lousy liar. Said I had a whim to be completely alone an hour or so, guess she didn’t mind. She’ll sit up for the press notices and not sleep, so can’t I take you home to see her?”
“Not this time, dear. Later.” I had saved that newspaper photograph, and presently showed it to her. “The man just behind Max, on his left. Remind you of anything?”
“Heck, it almost does.” She held it at different angles, then leaned back, closing the veils on the ocean-blue, opening them widely. “Billy Kell!”
“Just could be. Old Will Meisel has to find out.”
She stared awhile, darkly perplexed, not distrusting me but perhaps hurt by her certainty that I was withholding too much. “Will — what for? Do I sit quiet and play the piano while you butt your head on a stone wall? I have you back just in time to see you get hurt.”
“Angelo is alive, somewhere.”
“Faith,” she said gently. “But, Will darling, I just never have seen any of the mountains they say it moved. Well, you think if Angelo’s alive he might be in touch with — that fellow?”
“It’s possible.”
“I do remember Billy Kell, and a nasty piece of work he was, not that he ever actually did anything to me. He would grow up to be a Unity Party job, wouldn’t he! I’ve got to say it: what if you’re just breaking your heart over something that — I mean, it was so long ago! And none of it your fault anyway. Why, Ben — Will — the police must have looked, good and hard, it’s what they’re for and they have the means, they wouldn’t’ve let it drop. But you — look, if he’s — if he died, you probably wouldn’t ever even know it. Would you? Or maybe by this time he’s a bank teller or a physics professor or some ghastly thing, and you — I could shake you.”
“I’m old,” I said. “I have money. I could help him. Now that I know you’re a big girl, there’s nothing I want to do more.”
“Then I’ll eat my words. If it’s what you have to do….”
“It could mean a lot to you, if I find him. Couldn’t it?”
“Darling, to be filthily honest: how do I know?”
2
Today and yesterday make an ending and a beginning. Drozma, I am nearly certain Angelo is alive. I’ll fill in some background.
Damn the Organic Unity Party, at least it doesn’t hide itself. It occupies the first floor of an office building that went up when Lexington was remodeled as one of the two-level avenues — the others are Second and Eighth, a triumph of the Gadget. Lower levels are only for cars equipped with electronic controls; no wheeled traffic on the upper levels except busses in narrow center lanes; overpasses for crosstown traffic.
My apartment is in a plush downtown development near the ghost of the Bowery. I started early this morning and walked above Second Avenue Upper Level for the fun of it. There is a game for the young on those airy overpasses: you can’t climb the guard fences, but through the mesh you can register an occasional hit on a bus top with wet chewing gum. I don’t know what scoring system is used.
I took a bus on Lexington Upper Level. Organic Unity Party headquarters is uptown near 125th. And Harlem is not as you remember, Drozma. Negroes live anywhere in town, or almost anywhere: still some plague spots of white supremacy, but these are dwindling and unimportant. Harlem is merely another part of town, with as many pale faces as dark. I didn’t find any dark faces at the Organic Unity offices…. Prosperous place. Saving the world for the pure in heart is profitable. Always was, I reckon.
The receptionist blonde had glassy perfection like a rhinestone. She assessed my good clothes, turned on welcome — Smile, Standard B-1; semiautomatic; Sugar Daddies, for the control of — and waved me through a frosted glass door labeled DANIEL WALKER. He’s a synthetically jolly endomorphic mesomorph softening with fat in his thirties. Just a greeter, one step up from the blonde. I took my time and got a cigar out of it. Nothing too blatant about Walker. His gaze is carefully candid; he speaks with the odd hollow noise of a man whose every word is a quotation. “I’m interested,” I said. “You don’t seem to be getting a good press.”
“You’re from a newspaper, Mr. Meisel?”
“No.” I looked shocked. “Retired. Used to be in real estate.”
“Never worry about the press,” he quoted. “Joe doesn’t. It’s all reactionary. Doesn’t Express the Organic Unity of the People.” He talked in capitals while I nodded and looked grim and wise. “In the Larger Sense, we do get a good press. They hate us, that makes talk, and talk brings us Intelligent Inquiries like your own.” I bridled: a durned old goat. “What interests you most about The Party, Mr. Meisel?”
“Your Sense of Purpose,” I said. “You’re not afraid of Stating an Aim.” I lit the cigar with a lighter that cost me forty-eight bucks — lingeringly, so that Mr. Walker’s candid eyes could price-tag it. (I’ll bring it home, Drozma. It has a pop-up white-gold nude half an inch high who whangs the flint with a hammer and kicks up behind. Aesthetic value about a nickel — the kids might enjoy it.)