I had it gift-wrapped and a kind salesperson helped me carry it to my car. The microwave and Archy filled the Miata’s front seat. From there to the Palm Court where I parked in the space reserved for number 1170.
One space over was filled with a black Mercedes. My, my, what a surprise.
Toting the bulky package without help was cumbersome but not impossible. I hauled it up the three steps to number 1168 and rang the bell. The Greeks had landed.
Bianca opened her door, looked at the man on her doorstep holding a gift-wrapped crate, and said, “I didn’t order it.”
“It’s not for you,” I told her.
“Then go away,” she said.
“If I may explain…”
“Are you selling computers, door to door?”
“No, ma’am. It’s a microwave oven.”
“I have one,” she said. “Good day.”
Before the door closed in my face, I explained, “It’s for your neighbor Binky Watrous. I’m Archy McNally.”
Her pretty blue eyes opened wide, from her ruby lips came an “Oh!” and the faintest hint of color surfaced on her white cheeks. If Helen’s was the face that launched a thousand ships, Bianca’s was the one that got Archy to buy Binky a microwave oven. Who’s to say which face will survive the test of time? This woman was made for color snaps, picnics in summer, football games in fall, sleigh rides in winter, and chasing around the Maypole in apple blossom time.
“Mr. McNally. I am so sorry. What can I do for you?”
“Inviting me in would help my cause.” My knees were beginning to buckle, but if I put the damn thing down I feared I would never be able to lift it off the floor.
She opened the door and backed away. “Please, please come in. I am so sorry. I didn’t recognize you, Mr. McNally.”
I looked for a corner to unload my burden. Then, remembering where I was, I lowered it to the floor of Bianca’s kitchen moments before I would be in need of a truss. Pretending I wasn’t about to expire, I smiled at her while I got my second wind, which was long in coming. She smiled back, displaying a near perfect set of teeth. Was there nothing wrong with the woman?
“There was no reason you should have recognized me, Ms Courtney,” I said. “I believe we saw each other only fleetingly the other day, when Binky rented number 1170.”
“Please, my name is Bianca. Won’t you sit a moment? I was just going to make a pot of coffee. Will you join me?”
I sat, gratefully, in a good reproduction of a classic Windsor chair, which, along with one other, went with a table of matching pine. There were cafe curtains on the little kitchen window, and by stealing what I hoped was a subtle glance into the parlor I got the impression of chintz and pastels and sugar and spice and everything nice. I felt like the big, bad wolf, but not strongly enough to call off my expedition. I was, after all, here to help.
“I haven’t had my second cup pa this morning, so I don’t mind if I do,”
I accepted.
“Good. Regular or decaf?”
“Regular. I need the jolt.”
She laughed as she filled a Mr. Coffee with water. “So do I. You said the microwave was for Binky, Mr. McNally?”
“How can I call you Bianca if you insist on Mr. McNally? It makes me feel like an old man. Friends call me Archy and I hope you’ll join the throng.”
I watched her hesitantly measure the amount of coffee, which told me she was new at the task. Today, she wore Capri pants in a a black toile pattern, a crisp white sleeveless blouse, and neat little flats.
Her brown hair was combed back and held from her face with a simple clip above each ear. If I had to guess her age I would say early twenties, give or take.
“Yes,” I told her, ‘the microwave is for Binky and perhaps I should explain. It’s a housewarming gift.. ”
“How kind of you,” she interrupted.
I gave her a modest shrug. “As a matter of fact, it was me who rallied the office into contributing to Binky’s rather spartan digs.”
“He told me you were best of friends,” she said, setting out cups and saucers. There was even a sugar bowl and a creamer, which she filled with half-and-half.
I enjoyed watching her move about and estimated her waist at a waspish twenty-two inches. This reminded me to refuse any sweets should they be offered with the coffee. “I brought the microwave here thinking I might catch Binky before he left for the office but I was too late. He told me about his friendly neighbor, so I thought I might impose upon you to store the gift, saving me the trouble of carting it to the office and back here again.”
“You’re not imposing at all, Archy!” Our coffee ready, she played hostess.
“You had Binky in for dinner last night?” I helped myself to the half-and-half but refused the sugar. Cutting back on smoking had sparked my appetite, which was never wanting to begin with.
“Chinese takeout,” she said, avoiding the sugar and the half-and-half.
“We both had the chicken and snow peas with extra fried rice. Wicked, but delicious.” I knew I wasn’t going to be offered anything with the coffee, and just as well.
Here, as happens with new acquaintances who have exhausted the few topics of conversation they have in common, the mindless chatter petered out. We smiled at each other like two actors in search of a script. I had gotten in the front door and now had come the time to establish a beachhead. “Your neighbor on the other side, Sergeant Al Rogoff, is also a friend of mine,” I said.
“So Binky told me,” she answered, unimpressed. “He interviewed me when I went to the police with a particular problem, but he wasn’t much help. Did Binky say anything to you about my former employer?”
“He did, and, to be truthful, so did Al. Would you like to tell me your version?”
It seemed she would like nothing better. Bianca was a native Floridian, from Coral Gables, where her mother taught at the local high school and her father was a CPA with an expertise in restaurants, which, in southern Florida, made for a flourishing practice. She had a younger brother who was in New York in search of an acting career. She told me he had met another young man from out west who was in the Big Apple on a similar calling and the two were now sharing digs in Chelsea. Wasn’t that nice?
Was she ingenuous or was Archy too quick to assume? I would reserve judgment.
It was all very middle class and ho-hum until tragedy struck when her parents were killed in an auto crash two years ago. Mr. Courtney, it seemed, had spent a little faster than he had made. Even their home was mortgaged to the hilt. Bianca, who was finishing at the University of Miami in her hometown, was forced to leave and go to work. Enter Lilian Ashman.
Lilian was a distant, distant relative of Mrs. Courtney’s, who had married a widower twenty years her senior. Mr. Ashman had dabbled in Manhattan real estate, buying up blocks of Third Avenue before the El came down. When it did, Mr. Ashman became a multimillionaire and, a few short months later, a corpse. The grieving widow came south to take the sun and the waters. She was sixty, admitted to fifty, and dressed as if she were thirty.
“It was embarrassing,” Bianca said. “Having married a man twenty years older, I think she was compensating by looking for one twenty years younger. But she was kind. When she heard of my situation she offered me a job as companion, which was little more than accompanying her on shopping sprees and attending countless cocktail parties and charity balls.”
And, I thought, attracting young men into her company. Bianca had obviously never read Tennessee Williams’s Garden District.
“Then she met Tony. Antony, without an h, Gilbert. He claimed to be forty but I think he was nearer fifty,” she said with more honesty than rancor.
“How did they meet,” I cut in.
Her cheeks took on that flush that began at her throat and worked its way up. “Through the Personals in a magazine. But it was a very literary magazine, Archy.”