I lied to you, too, he thought.
He said nothing.
“Well, good night,” she said, and uncrossed her legs and rose. “I suppose I’ll order something from room service. I’m sure they’re still serving, wouldn’t you think?”
“I would guess so.”
“Yes.” She hesitated. “You’re sure you won’t join me?”
“I don’t think so, thanks.”
“Well, good night again,” she said. “If you should want to talk or anything...”
“Yes, thank you.”
“It’s seventeen-twelve.”
“Seventeen-twelve,” he said.
“Yes.”
“Okay.”
“Good night, David.”
“Good night, Hillary.”
He watched her as she walked to the elevators. He went to the front desk and asked for his key. The clerk asked him if he still planned to check out tomorrow.
“Is that what I told you?” David said.
“Yes, sir, when you registered.”
“Better extend it a few more days. I’m not sure what...” He paused. “My father’s very sick, you see. He’s in the hospital here.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Shall we extend your stay till Sunday then?”
“Yes, Sunday, please,” David said.
“We’ll do that, sir. Good night, sir.”
“Good night,” David said.
The elevator stopped on the twelfth floor; it always stopped on the twelfth floor. The fifteenth-floor corridor was empty; it was always empty. He wondered when the South American contingent would arrive. Never, he thought. He went to his room and fumbled with the key in the lock and finally got the door open. The room was neither too hot nor too cool, would wonders never? He undressed down to his undershorts and then went into the bathroom to brush his teeth. He looked at himself in the mirror.
“You’re a damn fool, Counselor,” he said to the mirror.
He snapped off the bathroom light and went back into the bedroom. He drew the drapes. He took off his undershorts and got into bed and pulled the covers up over him. He lay looking up at the ceiling. He could find faces in the rough plaster surface of the ceiling. He kept staring at the ceiling.
His mother had found the receipt in the back of his father’s top dresser drawer, what they used to call his chifferobe. It was in a Phillies cigar box that also contained four cellophane-wrapped cigars. His mother had thought the box was empty; she periodically went through his dresser to clear out the clutter. If the box had been empty, she would have thrown it out. She opened the box and discovered the four cigars and the receipt. There was a jeweler’s name on the receipt. Samalson Brothers on Jerome Avenue, where his father had just opened another new business. The address on the receipt was right next door to his father’s shop. The receipt listed a pair of diamond earrings at four hundred and twenty-five dollars plus tax. The receipt was marked “Paid In Full.” A signature was scrawled at the bottom of the receipt. She thought it read Ezra Samalson, but she couldn’t be sure. She looked for a date on the receipt. In the upper right-hand corner, she found the numerals 6/12/53.
What was in June this year? she wondered.
A birthday? An anniversary? Certainly not hers. Her birthday was in April, and her anniversary was in January. So what was in June? Why had her husband bought a pair of diamond earrings for four hundred and twenty-five dollars plus tax on June the twelfth? Was he holding them as a surprise for her? Holding them till next January, when they would be celebrating their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary? Holding them till next April, when she would be forty-six years old? That was a long time to be holding a present; this was still only August. But if he was planning a surprise, then where were the earrings? The receipt was in the cigar box, but where were the earrings?
She searched through the top dresser drawer, and then through all the drawers in the dresser. She found no earrings. She went into the spare room where he kept all his boxes and cartons full of junk, and she searched through each of them and could find no earrings. She even searched the medicine cabinet where he kept his shaving stuff. She could not find the diamond earrings he had paid so much money for in June. So where were the earrings? Where should a pair of diamond earrings be? she thought. On a woman’s ears, she thought. Morrie has another woman, she thought.
She told David about the receipt when he got home that day. He had been out shopping for new clothes. None of his old clothes fit him; he had gained fifteen pounds in the Army. He was still wearing his Army suntans. She told him the minute he came into the apartment. She showed him the receipt. Four hundred and twenty-five dollars. That’s a lot of money, David thought. He did not yet understand why his mother was showing him the receipt.
“So where are they, these earrings?” his mother said. “Do I have them? Then who has them?”
David’s grandmother was dead by then; she had died when he was overseas. His widowed Aunt Anna was an old lady, and, besides, his father had never really liked her and certainly would not have spent four hundred and twenty-five dollars on her. His Uncle Max had married a woman named Rachel Simon when David was twelve years old. They lived in New Jersey now, where his Uncle Max owned a successful delicatessen. David’s mother described his Aunt Rachel as “stuck up,” and they hardly ever saw them anymore. Besides, would his father have spent so much money on a sister-in-law? For what reason?
“It’s a woman,” his mother said.
“Maybe cousin Rebecca,” David said. “Or Shirley.”
“Rebecca lives in California, he hasn’t seen her in five years. Shirley just got divorced, God knows where she is. It’s not your cousins,” his mother said, “it’s a woman.”
“Well, you don’t really know that,” David said. He could not believe this about his father. His father? Buying a pair of diamond earrings for a woman who was not David’s mother? No, he could not believe it.
She confronted her husband when he got home from the store that night.
She showed him the receipt, just the way she had shown it to David. She demanded to know what he had done with the earrings he’d bought in June. He kept changing his story.
First he said, “What earrings? Where’d you get that piece of paper? I never saw it before in my life.”
She told him she’d found it in his cigar box, in his dresser drawer.
He said, “Somebody must’ve put it there.”
“Who?” she asked.
“Somebody who wants to cause trouble.”
“Who’s in the house but you, me, and David?”
“People come in all the time,” he said. “Friends, people.”
“Do these people go in your dresser drawer? In your cigar box?”
“Who knows where people go?” he said.
“Morrie,” she said, “it was you who put that receipt in your cigar box.”
“What are you, a fingerprint expert?” he asked, and laughed. “Sherlock Holmes, we got here,” he said to David.
“Who’d you give those earrings to?” she wanted to know.
He remembered then that he had bought the earrings for a friend of his who used to work for him when he had Weber’s Army & Navy Surplus Supply Outlet, right after World War II. A man named David (Listening, David thought it odd that his father had chosen his name for his mysterious bygone friend) who knew he could get a break for him at the jewelry store right next door.
“Some break,” his father said. “I could break his head for all the trouble he’s causing me.”
He smiled.
David’s mother was not smiling. David’s mother had her arms folded across her chest. David’s mother’s eyes were flashing lightning bolts.