“You’re right, of course. I didn’t really offer my suggestion seriously.”
He walked over and sat down on the sofa near her, turning sidewise to face her in an unusually companionable position. He was behaving so graciously, as a matter of fact, that it made her uneasy and inclined to listen sharply for significant nuances in his voice.
“Did you and Samantha get along all right?”
“Perfectly. Usually I can’t tolerate her for more than a few hours at a time at most, but this time we didn’t have the slightest difficulty.”
“That’s good. Who else was there?”
“You mean all the time or just everyone who happened to come and go?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to account for all of Samantha’s casual visitors. Just the guests.”
“There were only three besides me. There were a couple, a Wesley Bussy and his wife, who were from Hollywood. He has something or other to do with motion pictures, production or administration or something like that, not acting or directing or anything. An executive is what he is. His wife’s name is Andrea, and she went to Hollywood from someplace like Texas to become an actress, but he saw her there and married her, and she’s given it up. Acting, I mean. Neither of them is anyone you’d be likely to hear about.”
She said all this naturally, with a perfect accent of truth, and even the names, which were imaginary, were produced without hesitation. To anyone who heard her give such a performance and knew all the while that she was lying, which was frequently the situation, it seemed an incredible accomplishment, but it was not actually as remarkable as it seemed. The truth was, she often amused herself by thinking up names and circumstances that might become useful to her, and when she needed to tell something convincing in an emergency, they were always available. She was really rather proud of her ability to file them away in her mind, and she was very particular about the names, evaluating them carefully to be certain that they were neither too common nor too odd, which would have made them excite suspicion in either event. The only thing that concerned her sometimes was the feeling that she had, in lying to someone it was necessary to deceive, given certain names to certain imaginary people that she had previously given to other imaginary people who were obviously altogether different in all other respects. She tried never to use the same name over in telling lies to any given person, but she couldn’t always be sure she hadn’t slipped. She was sure now, however, of the Bussys. She had only imagined them recently and had definitely never used them before.
“Were they interesting people?” Oliver said.
“No, they were very dull. They were bores, as a matter of fact. Especially her. A number of years ago she won several of these beauty contests you are always reading about in which someone becomes Miss something-or-other, and she seemed to think this was important. Everyone knows perfectly well that such contests mean hardly anything, but she kept referring to them all the time as if having won them was an exceptional accomplishment.”
“I’m sorry you were bored. Was the other guest any better?”
“Yes, he was. He was much better, He’s a professor in a university somewhere and is apparently quite poor, but he’s writing a book that may make some money for him.”
“What’s his name?”
“Clyde Connelly. I don’t remember what university he teaches in, but I believe it’s somewhere in the Middle West, like Ohio or Illinois or somewhere, and if I’m not mistaken he is on sabbatical leave next year and is going to Europe. He came to New York to see a publisher about the book and met Samantha at a party they had both gone to with someone else. You know Samantha. She is always picking someone up and cultivating him for a while and then dropping him. This professor is good-looking and not very old, and it’s probable that they’re having an affair.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do. I think it’s probable.”
“Are all your friends always having affairs?”
“Oh, no. Not always. I didn’t intend to give that impression at all. If you think they are, you’re mistaken.”
He laughed and reached over and squeezed her nearer knee in a sudden warm gesture.
“My dear,” he said, rising, “I know practically nothing about your friends, and I think about them just as infrequently as I can.”
He stood looking down at her, smiling, and her feeling of uneasiness returned and grew, not because of what he had said or the way in which he had said it, but simply because his geniality was rare and excessive and therefore suspect.
“I must go change,” he said. “Are you going out this evening?”
“No. I thought I’d stay in and go to bed early. I’m rather tired after the weekend and all.”
“Good idea,” he said. “I’ll not disturb you when I come in.”
When he was gone, her uneasiness began to diminish slowly and after a few minutes was gone. There had simply been no evidence at all that he was informed on her affair, and it was impossible to believe that he was capable of such convincing and monstrous deception. Besides, what would have been the point of it? It was obvious that everything was all right, that there was nothing to worry about, and she began to regret, now that she had convinced herself of this, that she had not planned to go see Joe Doyle tonight instead of tomorrow night. She was tempted to go tonight anyhow, regardless of plans, but perhaps it would be wiser, since she had committed herself to staying in and going to bed early, to wait another twenty-four hours.
The time would pass. Tomorrow she would find something to do, though she didn’t know what, and tonight she would have a simple dinner alone and two or three Martinis afterward, and then she would watch television in bed. Television was commonly so utterly dull that it would probably put her to sleep after a while without the help of soporifics.
Chapter 14
Tuesday was a day that was somehow spent.
In the afternoon, the gown and other things were delivered, and she tried on the gown in her room to be sure that it was actually as exciting as she had thought it was in the salon, and it seemed to her that it was. Often she would get enthusiastic about something that she saw and bought, and then later, when she saw it again in different circumstances, she couldn’t understand how she had been so mistaken as to have wanted it, but this time, to her relief, the gown was still right and exciting and just the thing to wear when she went to see Joe Doyle.
After trying it on and looking at herself for a long time in a mirror, she took it off again and laid it across the bed in readiness for later, and then there wasn’t a thing left to do that was tolerable, but it was essential to do something, for doing nothing was most intolerable of all. In this kind of situation, she usually ended up doing things to herself, brushing her hair and trying new effects with her face and fixing her fingernails and toenails, things like that, and she started now doing all these things. Fortunately, this was all meticulous work that required careful attention and had the incidental result of making time pass quickly, and she had just finished with the nail of the little toe on her left foot, the last thing to be done, when Oliver came home and knocked on her door, and she was genuinely astonished to realize that it had become so late so soon.
But there was something terribly wrong. She felt it the moment Oliver came into the room. He closed the door behind him and stood leaning against it, watching her, and the wrongness was immediately present and felt and growing to such enormous dimensions that it seemed to fill the room and press in upon her from the walls. Not that he said anything or did anything or appeared to be in the least angry. He appeared, in fact, to be unusually congenial, as he had been yesterday, and he smiled and nodded his head, watching her, as if he approved of what he saw.