“I love you, Bert,” she said, “you know that.”
“I thought you did.”
“I do.”
“But you keep going places without me…”
“That was your idea, Bert, you know it was. You hate those parties.”
“Yeah, but still…”
“I won’t go anywhere else without you, okay?”
“Well…”
What about during the day? he wondered. What about when I’m out chasing some cheap thief, what about then? What about when I have the night watch? What will you be doing then? he wondered. The parties don’t mean a damn, he thought, except when you tell me you had dinner at a Chinese restaurant with a whole bunch of people, and Mr. Ah Wong himself tells me there was no redhead in Miss Mercier’s party. You should have been a brunette, Gussie, they don’t stand out as much in a crowd.
“I promise,” she said. “No place else without you. Now lie down.”
“There are still some things…”
“Lie down,” she said. “On your back.”
She pulled the sheet off of him. “Just be still,” she said.
“Gussie…”
“Ouiet.”
“Honey…”
“Shh,” she said. “Shh, baby. I’m gonna take care of you. Poor little neglected darling, Mama’s gonna take good care of you,” she said, and her mouth descended hungrily.
She came into the apartment at a little after midnight. He was sitting before the television set watching the beginning of an old movie.
“Hi,” she said from the front door, and then took her key from the lock, and came into the living room, and kissed him on top of his head.
“How’d it go?” he asked.
“It was called off,” she said.
“Oh?”
“Some trouble with the hospital. They didn’t want us shooting outside. Said it would disturb the patients.”
“So where’d you end up shooting?” Kling asked.
“We didn’t. Had a big meeting instead. Up at Chelsea.”
“Chelsea?”
“Chelsea TV, Inc. Would you like a sandwich or something? I’m famished,” she said, and walked out to the kitchen.
He watched her as she went, kept watching her as she unwrapped a loaf of sliced bread at the kitchen counter. He could remember the first time they’d met, could remember all of it as if it were happening here and now, the call from Murchison on the desk downstairs, a Burglary Past at 657 Richardson Drive, Apartment 11D, see the lady.
He had never seen a more beautiful woman in his life.
“Who are they?” he asked.
“What?” Augusta said from the kitchen.
“Chelsea TV.”
“The ad firm shooting the commercial.”
“Oh,” he said. “So what was the meeting about?”
“Rewriting, rescheduling, picking a new location — the same old jazz.” She licked the knife with which she’d been spreading peanut butter and said, “Mmm, you sure you don’t want some of this?”
“They needed you for that, huh?”
“For what?”
“Rewriting, and rescheduling, and—”
“Well, Larry wants me for the spot.”
“Larry?”
“Patterson. At Chelsea. He wrote the spot, and he’s directing it.”
“Oh, yeah, right.”
“So we had to figure out my availability and all that.”
He found himself staring at her as she came back into the living room, the sandwich in her hand, just the way he’d stared at her on their first date so long ago, couldn’t stop staring at her. When finally she’d told him to stop it, he was forced to admit he’d never been out with a girl as beautiful as she was, and she simply said he’d have to get over it, he could still remember her exact words.
“Well, you’ll have to get over it. Because I think you’re beautiful, too, and we’d have one hell of a relationship if all we did was sit around and stare at each other all the time. I mean, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other, and I’d like to think I’m permitted to sweat every now and then. I do sweat, you know.”
Yes, Gussie, he thought, you do sweat, I know that now, and you belch and you fart, too, and I’ve seen you sitting on the toilet bowl, and once when you got drunk with all those flitty photographer friends of yours, I held your head while you vomited, and I put you to bed afterward and wiped up the bathroom floor, yes, Gussie, I know you sweat, I know you’re human, but Jesus, Gussie, do you have to… do you have to do this to me, do you have to behave like… like a goddamn bitch in heat?
“… thinking of going down to South America to do it,” Augusta said.
“What?” Kling said.
“Larry. Shoot the spot down there. There’s snow down there now. Forget the symbolic mountain, do it on a real mountain instead.”
“What symbolic mountain?”
“Long General. Have you ever seen it? It looks like—”
“Yeah, a mountain.”
“Well, you know what I mean.”
“So you’ll be going to South America, huh?”
“Just for a few days. If it works out.”
“When?”
“Well, I don’t know yet.”
“When do you think it might be?”
“Pretty soon, I guess. While there’s still snow. This is like their winter, you know.”
“Yeah,” Kling said. “Like when? This month sometime?”
“Probably.”
“Did you tell him you’d go?”
“I don’t get many shots at television, Bert. This is a full minute, the exposure’ll mean a lot to me.”
“Oh, sure, I know that.”
“It’ll just be for a few days.”
“Who’ll be going down there?” he asked.
“Just me, and Larry, and the crew.”
“No other models?”
“He’ll pick up his extras on the spot.”
“I don’t think I’ve met him,” Kling said. “Have I met him?”
“Who?”
“Larry Patterson.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Augusta said, and looked away. “You sure you don’t want me to fix you something?”
“Nothing,” Kling said. “Thanks.”
He wanted to make sure he’d given her enough time to get here.
She had called him at the squadroom at nine o’clock, to say she was going to the movies after all, if he wouldn’t mind, and would be catching the nine twenty-seven show, just around the corner, he didn’t have to worry about her getting home safe, the avenue was well lighted. She had then gone on to reel off the name of the movie she’d be seeing, the novel upon which it was based, the stars who were in it, and had even quoted from a review she’d read on it. She had done her homework well.
It was now a little past ten.
The windows on the first floor of the Hopper Street building were lighted; Michael Lucas, the painter, was home. On the second floor, only the lights to the apartment shared by Martha and Michelle were on; Franny next door was apparently uptown with her Zooey. The lights on the third and fourth floors were out, as usual. Only one light binned on the Fifth floor, at the northernmost end of Bradford Douglas’s apartment — the bedroom light, Kling thought.
He waited.
In a little while, the light went out.
He crossed the street and rang the service bell. Henry Watkins, the superintendent he’d talked to this past Tuesday, opened the door when he identified himself.
“What’s it now?” Watkins asked.
“Same old runaway,” Kling said. “Have to ask a few more questions.”
“Help yourself,” Watkins said, and shrugged. “Let yourself out when you’re finished, just pull the door shut hard behind you.”