Mike used his newspaper connections so that she could meet people whose names she had read in magazines about New York life.
It was never difficult to find an extra man for Phyllis, and it was inevitable that she made conquests. But she never forgot that she was a married woman. That remote, untouchable quality, more than her beauty, was Phyllis’s greatest charm. Men felt that she was a prize almost beyond reach, that her favors were few, but, if given, would lead to ecstasy beyond imagining.
To Mike Jordan the happiest nights were those when they dined at Nancy’s, sipped liqueurs or brandy, and he read aloud from the works of Jordan. He was at the dreary stage then, writing morbid little pieces about unpleasant people involved in sordid conflicts. Nancy listened attentively, a pencil and notebook beside her.
Much of his later success, Mike admitted, he owed to her frankness and clarity. Phyllis never uttered a word except praise. Mike was an author, his work sacred.
Phyllis had planned to stay in New York for two weeks. Her holiday stretched on and on, until Mike quit asking when she intended to go home. Fred Miller wrote and wired, and went so far in extravagance as to telephone twice a week. Phyllis had always a new excuse — the opening of a play, a fitting, a concert the like of which she would never have another chance to hear; and, finally, the Beaux Arts Ball.
Phyllis was going with Mike, and his friend, Horace Tate, was taking Nancy. They had planned to go as characters out of Greek mythology. When Mike and Horace rang the bell of Nancy’s apartment that night, they were admitted by a masked Diana.
Mike looked Nancy over critically, “You’re too skinny to be classical. Zeus would have exiled you.”
Phyllis came in, unmasked, but dressed in a white tunic, bound in gold and with a bunch of golden grapes in her hair. Fred Miller followed, blowing his nose lustily.
He grasped Mike’s hand. “Glad to see you again, Jordan. A lot of water’s flowed under the bridge since the last time we met. Getting to be quite famous, aren’t you?”
“Fred surprised us,” Phyllis explained to him. “We were totally unprepared. I’m terribly sorry, Mike, that I can’t go with you.”
“Haven’t time,” said Fred. “One of my clients has moved up to Boston but I’m still handling his business. Want to show him that I appreciate his loyalty.”
Mike did not particularly like Fred nor care to see more of him, but he could not believe that anyone who lived in a dull, small town could be so indifferent to New York. He tried to persuade Fred to postpone his Boston engagement and let Phyllis go to the ball.
“A businessman can’t do just as he pleases. You artists and Bohemians don’t seem to understand that we’ve got responsibilities. Sure, I could get a kick out of the city, too, but I’ve got to think of others, not just myself.”
“Think of Phyllis,” Nancy said sulkily. “She’s been planning on this party for weeks.”
Phyllis took Fred’s arm. “I’m going with my husband. But it won’t be for long. I’m coming back; I’m going to live in New York some day.”
And she did. The following September Fred drove their sedan, filled with suitcases and hatboxes, to New York. Phyllis must have worked hard to uproot a man whose life was woven so deeply into the life of his home town. What emotion she must have spent, what tears, artifices, pleadings, and reproaches it must have cost her. Fred tried to make a brave show, as though the move had been forced upon him by the insurance company for which he worked. Since his father had represented the company for thirty-two years, they decently gave Fred a job in their New York office.
At Phyllis’s cocktail parties Fred was always busy, filling glasses, passing hors d’oeuvres, fetching ice from the kitchen. Whenever he had a moment between duties, he would corner some unfortunate guest and try to prove that an insurance man was no less interesting than a second-string dramatic critic. His body seemed never to fit comfortably into Phyllis’s Victorian chairs. For she, knowing she could never afford anything like Nancy’s penthouse, had done wonders with a three-room suite in a remodeled house. Fred suffered shame because she had bought furniture secondhand.
Mike had started to write his play, and since Phyllis knew the home-town background so well, he consulted her nearly every day. Out of her resentment of the townspeople who had pitied and patronized the music teacher’s daughter grew Mike’s most vivid characterizations. She had a gift for mimicry, and when she had the chance to strip others of their emotional veils she shed completely the pretty reticence with which she guarded her own secrets.
They saw less and less of Nancy. In the beginning she had been splendid, generous in helping Phyllis furnish her apartment, never appearing at their door without gifts and gadgets, and putting on an apron to help with the serving when Phyllis gave her first party. No one could name the day when they had ceased to interest her. Perhaps it was Fred’s conversation. Mike was too self-absorbed to worry about anyone’s moods but his own. He did not see Nancy nor bother to telephone her until the play was finished.
“I thought you were dead,” she said, when he finally called.
“This is the resurrection. I’ve written a play.” As she did not hail this with a bravo, Mike’s heart sank. “I’d like to read it to you,” he said timidly.
“Come up tonight,” she said. “How about dinner?”
That was in the morning, and the rest of the day passed like a century in a mortuary. To pass the time he took a long walk, and since a blizzard was beginning to blow up, he arrived with a purple nose and frostbitten fingers.
At dinner they chatted like long-separated school chums who had been living in different hemispheres.
They had their coffee and Courvoisier in the living-room. Then Nancy stretched on the couch and said, “Let’s hear the play.”
She seemed to accept his genius indolently, but he was as pleased as though she had compared him to Shakespeare. Now the writing of his play seemed a man’s job rather than a gesture of unholy impudence. While he read she lay quiet, her face expressionless, and only once, when he made a particularly neat point, caught his eye. Finally it was over. They heard the hiss of burning wood, the wind in the airshaft, the distant hum of the traffic.
After a time Nancy said, “It’s good, Mike. Some of it is very good.”
He skipped to the couch, leaned over to kiss her. “Do you really think so?”
She turned away, unwilling to accept the kiss until she had finished telling him what she thought of his work. He might not, after all had been said, still want to kiss her.
“Take a drink first.” She gave him three fingers of brandy. “It’s a good play, Mike, except for two things. Two very important things. One is the way you solve the problem for your characters. You make it too easy.”
“But the tragedy demands—”
“Tragedy, my eye,” she interrupted. “You’ve given it a happy ending. No one wanted that woman to go on living. You killed her because it was convenient. You were afraid to face the bigger problem of keeping her alive.”
Mike’s silence seemed significant. Actually he had nothing to say. Presently he became solemn and remarked, “It’s a good point. I’ll think about it. What else?”
“The girl.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
“I don’t believe her. She’s always right, always the victim. She hasn’t enough guts and evil to make her human.”
“Perhaps you don’t understand that sort of woman. There are females without evil in their hearts.”
“Down in their secret souls,” Nancy retorted, “all women are vipresses.”
“Apparently you judge every other woman by your own limitations.”