“Duo’s,” he said. “Yancy speaking.”
“Hello, Yancy,” she said. “This is Charity Farnese. You know. The dry Martini.”
“I know.”
“Where in the world have you been? The phone rang and rang, and I was about to hang up.”
“I was here all the time. I was busy.”
“Well, I’m glad I waited. It just shows you that it doesn’t pay to give up too soon, doesn’t it?”
“Not always. Sometimes it pays to give up as soon as possible.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean, and I don’t think I want to know. What I do want to know is, is Joe there?”
“Joe Doyle?”
“Of course Joe Doyle. You know perfectly well I mean Joe Doyle. Please don’t be so evasive, Yancy.”
“Sorry. He isn’t here.”
“Do you suppose he will be there soon?”
“I don’t think so. Not soon.”
“Do you know his telephone number?”
“It’s a house phone. I don’t know the number.”
“Perhaps you could tell me the name the number is listed under.”
“I can’t. I don’t know it.”
“Are you merely being contrary, Yancy?”
“No. If I knew I’d tell you.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you. Will you please give him a message from me when he comes in?”
“I might.”
“What do you mean, you might? Will you or won’t your?”
“It depends on the message.”
“Please tell him that I won’t be able to come tonight. Something has developed that makes it impossible.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“Tell him also that I’m truly sorry and will see him as soon as I can. Will you tell him that?”
“Reluctantly.”
“What’s the matter with you, Yancy? Do you still think it’s wrong for me to see him and that no good will come of it?”
“You know what I think. I told you.”
“Well, in the beginning there may have been an excuse for your scepticism, but now there is none whatever, and you are only being stubborn and unpleasant. I can tell you that some good has already come of it, and Joe will tell you the same if you will only ask him.”
“Not me. What’s good or what’s bad is for you and Joe to figure, and you don’t owe any accounting to anyone but each other and maybe your husband. I just decided. Good-by, now. I’ve got customers.”
He hung up without giving her a chance to say good-by in return, and she listened for a few moments to the humming of the wire and hung up too. It was still earlier than she needed to start dressing for the evening, but she started anyhow, because there was nothing else to do and doing something was a necessary defensive mechanism, taking a long bath and brushing her hair for a long while deliberately. Finally, after everything else was done, she took the new gown off the bed and hung it in a closet and selected another, which she hardly looked at, and put it on. She was compelled under the circumstances to go out with Oliver if he demanded it, but she was not compelled to wear the gown she had bought particularly to wear for Joe Doyle, and she was not going to do it. She would think of something to say in explanation if Oliver noticed it was not the new gown and said something about it, and that, of course, as it happened, was the first thing Oliver did when he knocked on the door at a quarter to eight and entered.
“I thought you were going to wear the new gown,” he said. “Or did you buy it for a special occasion?”
“No,” she said. “I decided it isn’t suitable for the Empire Room, that’s all.”
“Really? I thought it looked quite suitable.”
“No. It’s not suitable at all.”
“Whatever you think, of course. The gown you’re wearing is nice. You look lovely in it.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s time to leave now. Are you ready?”
“Yes, I’m ready.”
Edith let them out of the apartment and closed the door silently after them, and they went down to the Avenue and found Oliver’s Imperial, which had been ordered around, waiting for them at the curb. They drove on the Avenue to the Waldorf-Astoria and went immediately to the Empire Room and were shown to the table that Oliver had reserved. She should have known, of course, that he had made a reservation, but she had not considered the details of the situation that carefully, and now that they were exposed and she was compelled to consider them in spite of herself, she was possessed by a most terrible feeling of absolute impotence. Without consulting her or conceding anything whatever to her rights or wishes, he had reserved the table and the night and her, and all the time that she had been planning to make certain things happen, quite different things had actually been happening already and were still happening, and there had been nothing she could have done to change the order of events then, before she even knew about it, and there was nothing she could do to stop it or change it now. Nothing at all. What she had hoped and almost believed yesterday and earlier today, that Oliver’s unusual geniality was only a sign that he might become a nuisance and not a menace, she no longer hoped or believed in the least. She was resigned to disaster, and as her resignation increased, her fear diminished. She hardly cared what the form of disaster might be precisely, or when, exactly, it might come.
A waiter placed a menu before her, but she had no interest in it. She pushed it away with the tips of her fingers as if it were something contagious. Oliver watched her, smiling. He traced and retraced lightly the line of his scar.
“Will you order now, my dear?” he said.
“I don’t believe I care to order,” she said. “I’m only interested in having a very dry Martini immediately.”
“Would you like me to order for both of us?”
“If you wish.”
It was apparent that dinner was part of the established order in which she was involved and impotent, and it would be quite futile to say that she did not want it or to resist it in any way. While Oliver ordered from the menu, she thought of her Martini, which she wanted desperately, and looked around the room, which she did not like. She never came here voluntarily and would have been depressed, even if everything else were all right, at being brought here under compulsion. It was not that there was anything wrong with the place itself. It was only that she and the place were not compatible. It was always filled with people who were supposed to be important or interesting or both, and they always seemed to be working very hard at being whatever they were supposed to be, and she always had, watching them, a very strong feeling that there was actually no such thing as importance and that anyone who assumed it or pretended to it was a kind of imposter. It was her experience, moreover, that the most interesting people were usually found in places where no one expected to find them, and that these interesting people, when they were found, hadn’t the faintest idea that they were interesting. This experience had been supported by her study of bartenders in odd places, as well as by other contacts in other places she had gone to accidentally or on purpose, and it was her impression now that by far the most interesting person in this incompatible room was the attractive Negress who was singing sultry songs in a tigerish manner. Charity was sure that the singer was someone she ought to know, for anyone who sang songs in the Empire Room was bound to be someone that everyone ought to know, but she couldn’t think of the singer’s name, although she was positive it was a name she would recognize if someone mentioned it.
Her Martini was served and she nursed it with a kind of greediness because she knew that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to get another before dinner. Oliver did not have a cocktail. She had never seen him have a cocktail or a drink of any kind in all the time she had known him and been married to him, which was about the same amount of time in either case.