“What’s she like, Alden?”
“A bit like Miss Ivy. But much taller.”
“That Ivy chick is five-seven.”
“Who but the superficial notice superficialities in a woman?” I said.
“That’s a tall broad, all right. What’s she look like?”
“She has a face of some character and attraction. The operation, she tells me, did wonders.”
Gordon recoiled slightly. “Operation? What operation?”
“The one to which she submitted after the accident.”
“Accident?”
“Automobile collision. Head-on. She wasn’t wearing her seat belt.”
But I wasn’t scaring him off to a movie. I could tell he was trying to see through me. And that he wasn’t going to leave without at least getting a peek at the merchandise.
“Plenty of food there for two, it looks like.”
“Miss Schwartz is a sturdy eater. You have to be if you play amateur basketball and wrestle A.A.U.”
Perhaps I was laying it on too heavy. Because Gordon wasn’t at all convinced I’d be dining with the mutation I’d described.
He began searching out silverware. “Just set the table for you before I go. Just a helping hand.”
I never should have left the kitchen, but I did, to call Gigi Schwartz to learn what time she was arriving. When I returned, Gordon was stuffing frogs legs and drying extra vegetables and bamboo shoots.
“You got enough here for three people. I’ll probably end up eating in some diner on the West Side. A tough steak, greasy coffee and Sonny James records on the jukebox.”
“All right, you can stay for dinner, but right after it, I want you out of here like a fast jet. Understood?”
“Alden, you’re areal brother. Believe me, I’ll serve myself last and I won’t hog the conversation. I’ll even make the tea, pour the saki and clean up afterwards.”
One by one, Gordon broke each of these promises. He served himself second after serving Gigi, he consumed the conversation like a man speaking his dying words, and the only time he took his hungry eyes from Gigi Schwartz was when he poured the tea and saki, hers dutifully and daintily, mine with pre-occupied overspill.
But it was his final broken promise that really cut it when he mentioned the play.
“Alden tells me you two are off to see this new off-Broadway smash, The Great Con Edison Monster and How the People Came to Destroy It. I haven’t seen a play in years.”
I think it was Gordon’s hang-dog look that made the compassion sparkle wetly in Gigi Schwartz’s eyes. Gordon does just about the most devastating hang-dog look outside of the canine world I’ve ever seen.
“Well then why don’t you join us, Gordon? I’m sure it will be all right with Alden. Won’t it Alden?”
“Just love it,” I said as I swallowed my rage. “Unfortunately he doesn’t have a ticket.”
Gordon showed his perfect teeth. No cavities, I swear. And not a single filling inside his entire face. “Oh, they always have tickets at the box office for those off-Broadway things. You wouldn’t mind if I tagged along, would you, Alden? I mean, I’d just sit around here all night, staring at four walls, wallowing in my lonesomeness, drowning in my self-pity...”
“Of course we wouldn’t mind,” Gigi said. “We have time for one more cup of saki before we leave for the theater. Alden, would you pour?”
Thereafter my relationship with Gigi Schwartz went from warm to cool to cold in very short order. And I think it was about at that point that I began toying with the idea of murder. You are now, brought up to date.
Monday Evening, April 26: I returned home from work this afternoon to find the apartment very lived in. Clothing strewn about the living room, the television set on and tuned to Secret Storm, and the sounds of activity coming from the kitchen. Unmistakably, Gordon, the wandering brother, was home.
Gordon was in the process of piling a triple decker sandwich. The drain board looked like the aftermath of two produce trucks colliding.
I tried to be cordial. “You’re missing the last half of Secret Storm.”
“Oh. Hi, Alden. It isn’t my favorite show. I just turned it on so I wouldn’t miss Cartoon Carnival at five o’clock. I always watch those old Bugs Bunny and Sylvester the Cat flicks. They crack me up one side and down the other.”
“Where have you been over the weekend?” I asked.
Gordon added the last of the Swiss cheese and the last of a two-day-old loaf of French bread. I bought it fresh on Saturday at A La Duchesse Anne on Madison. It was clear he’d been packing it, and the cheese and lunch meat, in all day.
“Tasting the Big Apple, Alden,” he said as he took a pre-emptory bite of his sandwich, catsup squirting out and down his stolen CCYN sweatshirt. He always uses that phrase to explain that he’s been out on the town. Tasting the Big Apple. Very hip.
“You going to clean up your mess,” I said, “or enter it in the Good Housekeeping’s Kitchens Ugly Contest?”
“Relax, Alden. I’ll clean it up. And I got to tell you it may not be too long before you got this whole place to yourself.”
That was quite a shocker. Gordon, after all these years of thievery and deceit and mooching, was about to change his quarters?
“You mean you’ve found a place of your own?” I said anxiously.
“Yeah, I think I have, Alden. As a matter of fact, I’m moving into a little place Friday over on 68th Street. The Dutch House.”
The Dutch House. At once my heart fell apart at its seams. The Dutch House was where Gigi Schwartz lived.
“Isn’t that where—”
“—where Gigi pads, right,” Gordon said, wiping horseradish and mustard from his chin. “I’m going to move in with her, see how it works out, you know? Real sweet kid, that Gigi. I got to thank you, Alden, for introducing me to her.”
“Don’t mention it,” I replied. Though my voice wasn’t in it. I should have been please about finally getting rid of Gordon. But I wasn’t. Not at all. Not this way.
“Cheer up. There’ll be plenty of chicks for you. This Big Apple is full of them, ripe ones low on the tree waiting to be picked. You just hang in there around the old trunk. You’ll snatch a juicy one down that’s meant for you.”
To this point I had been fearful of going through with my plans to murder Gordon. I had the bomb in my attache case in the bedroom and I had a tentative plan, but I still doubted whether I could actually go through with it. But now, I needed no finer reason to murder Gordon that the one with which I was now presented. He had not only stolen the woman I loved, he was now moving in with her, with horseradish and catsup on his crummy stolen CCNY sweatshirt and no goodbye or thanks-a-lot on his lips.
Tuesday, April 27: This final note, before I drop off to sleep. I have tentatively scheduled Gordon’s death for Thursday. It is a good target date, allowing me two full days — Tuesday and Wednesday — in which to determine the routines of fifth and sixth floor tenants. Beyond the wall of my room I can hear Gordon banging and clanging around packing some of his things. Not much in our place is his so it shouldn’t take him long. The racket does not offend me and it shouldn’t take me long to drop off. Instead of sheep-counting, I shall count one by one, tenants as they leave the building on Thursday morning. And I shall count Gordon, as well, sleeping ’til noon with a bomb beneath his bed.
Following my usual routine, I left the apartment at 8:10 for work, but instead of heading for work, I crossed the street to Bryant Park where, from a bench some one hundred yards away, I could observe the routines of my fellow tenants.