“So that’s it,” Kling said.
“That’s it, huh?” Carella said. “Are you telling me…?”
“I’m telling you what happened.”
“Nothing happened,” Carella said. “Except some dumb blonde got drunk and filled your head with—”
“She said she saw Augusta all over town. With guys, Steve. With one guy especially Steve.”
“Uh huh. And you believe her, huh?”
“I don’t know what to believe.”
“Have you talked to Augusta about it?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“What am I supposed to do? Ask her if there’s some guy she’s been seeing? Suppose she tells me there is? Then what? Shit, Steve…”
“If I were in a similar situation, I’d ask Teddy in a minute.”
“And what if she said it was true?”
“We’d work it out.”
“Sure.”
“We would.”
Kling was silent for several moments. His face was beaded with sweat, he appeared on the verge of tears. He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and dabbed at his forehead. He sucked in a deep breath, and said, “Steve… is it… is it still good between you and Teddy?”
“Yes.”
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean.”
“In bed, I mean.”
“Yes, in bed. And everywhere else.”
“Because… I, I don’t think I’d have believed a word that blonde was saying if, if I, if I didn’t already think something was wrong. Steve, we… these past few months… ever since June it must be… we… you know, it used to be we couldn’t keep our hands off each other, I’d come home from work, she’d be all over me. But lately…” He shook his head, his voice trailed.
Carella said nothing. He stared through the windshield ahead, and then blew the horn at a pedestrian about to step off the curb against the light. Kling shook his head again. He took out his handkerchief again, and again dabbed at his brow with it.
“It’s just that lately… well, for a long time now… there hasn’t been anything between us. I mean, not like before. Not the way it used to be, when we, when we couldn’t stand being apart for a minute. Now it’s… when we make love, it’s just so… so cut-and-dried, Steve. As if she’s… tolerating me, you know what I mean? Just doing it to, to, to get it over with. Aw, shit, Steve,” he said, and ducked his face into the handkerchief, both hands spread over it, and began sobbing.
“Come on,” Carella said.
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay, come on.”
“What an asshole,” Kling said, sobbing into the handkerchief.
“You’ve got to talk to her about it,” Carella said.
“Yeah.” The handkerchief was still covering his face. He kept sobbing into it, his head turned away from Carella, his shoulders heaving.
“Will you do that?”
“Yeah.”
“Bert? Will you talk to her?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I will.”
“Come on, now.”
“Yeah, okay,” Kling said, and sniffed, and took the handkerchief from his face, and dried his eyes, and sniffed again, and said, “Thanks,” and stared straight ahead through the windshield again.
She did not get home until almost eleven.
He was watching the news on television when she came into the apartment. She was wearing a pale green, silk chiffon jumpsuit, the flimsy top slashed low over her naked breasts, the color complementing the flaming autumn of her hair, swept to one side of her face to expose one ear dotted with an emerald earring that accentuated the jungle green of her eyes, a darker echo of her costume. As always, he caught his breath at the sheer beauty of her. He had been tongue-tied the first time he’d seen her in her burglarized apartment on Richardson Drive. She had just come back from a skiing trip to find the place ransacked; he had never been skiing in his life, he’d always thought of it as a spoil for the very rich. He supposed they were very rich now. The only problem was that he never felt any of it was really his.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said from the front door, and took her key from the lock, and then came to where he was sitting in front of the television set, a can of warm beer in his hand. She kissed him fleetingly on top of his head, and then said, “I have to pee, don’t go away.”
On the television screen, the newscaster was detailing the latest trouble in the Middle East. Sometimes Kling thought the Middle East had been invented by the government, the way the war in Orwell’s novel had been invented by Big Brother. Without the Middle East to occupy their thoughts the people would have to worry about unemployment and inflation and crime in the streets and racial conflict and corruption in high places and tsetse flies. He sipped at his beer. He had eaten a TV dinner consisting of veal parmigiana with apple slices, peas in seasoned sauce, and a lemon muffin. He had also consumed three cans of beer; this was his fourth. The thawed meal had been lousy. He was a big man, and he was hungry again. He heard her flushing the toilet, and then heard the closet door in their bedroom sliding open. He waited.
When she came back into the living room, she was wearing a wraparound black nylon robe belted at the waist. Her hair fell loose around her face. She was barefoot. The television newscaster droned
“Are you watching that?” she asked.
“Sort of,” he said.
“Why don’t you turn it off?” she said, and, without waiting for his reply, went to the set and snapped the switch. The room went silent. “Another scorcher today, huh?” she said. “How’d it go for you?”
“So-so.”
“What time did you get home?”
“Little after six.”
“Did you forget the party at Bianca’s?”
“We’re working a complicated one.”
“When aren’t you working a complicated one?” Augusta asked, and smiled.
He watched as she sat on the carpet in front of the blank television screen, her legs extended, the flaps of the nylon robe thrown back, and began doing her situps, part of her nightly exercise routine. Her hands clasped behind her head, she raised her trunk and lowered it, raised it and lowered it.
“We had to go see this lady,” Kling said.
“I told you this morning about the party.”
“I know, but Steve wanted to hit her this afternoon.”
“First twenty-four hours are the most important,” Augusta said by rote.
“Well, that’s true, in fact. How was the party?”
“Fine,” Augusta said.
“She still living with that photographer, what’s his name?”
“Andy Hastings. He’s only the most important fashion photographer in America.”
“I have trouble keeping them straight,” Kling said.
“Andy’s the one with the black hair and blue eyes.”
“Who’s the bald one?”
“Lamont.”
“Yeah. With the earring in his left ear. Was he there?”
“Everybody was there. Except my husband.”