“Neither can I. But just in case. Okay, this afternoon at two, there’ll be a panel discussion on Mood Disorders, chaired by Dr. Phyllis Cagney who’ll also be doing the one on Eating Disorders tomorrow afternoon. She doesn’t exist, either. I’ve got those at a meeting room at the Brewster, that’s a small hotel on Eighty-sixth off Fifth, this isn’t supposed to be a huge convention or anything, you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“I’ve already given you Dr. Donato at the Lotos Club tonight...”
“Yes, what time?”
“Eight. I told Gerry you and I would be having dinner together first, hmm?”
“Where?”
“Bertinelli’s. On Madison and Sixty-fifth. Actually, I’ll be taking Cindy there,” he says, his voice lowering again on her name. “I’ll put it on my credit card, and say it was you.”
“Fine. I’ll do the same.”
“I didn’t tell her where. That’s just in case she asks later. I didn’t think we have to give them any restaurant names in advance. Unless they ask.”
“Okay.”
“Will Helen ask?”
“I’m sure she will.”
“So where do you want to say?”
“Well, not Bertinelli’s. If you’ll be there with her.”
“Cindy.”
“Yes.”
“You should see her. So where will you say?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Well, pick something, just in case Gerry...”
“You can tell Gerry it was Bertinelli’s, I’m sure Helen won’t be calling her. I’ll tell Helen whatever. Wherever I finally end up tonight. I’ll let you know in the morning where it was.”
“But not too early, hmm?” Stanley says.
He has never before used the call-forwarding feature on the telephone in their apartment, but when he goes there late that morning he first calls the Vineyard to tell Helen he’s arrived safely, and then he consults the manual. The manual says:
• Call Forwarding Works Like This
TO USE CALL FORWARDING, DIAL: 7 4 #
LISTEN FOR A DIAL TONE. THEN DIAL THE TELEPHONE NUMBER YOU WANT YOUR CALLS TO BE FORWARDED TO. LISTEN FOR TONE(S) FOLLOWED BY RINGING. CALL FORWARDING WILL BE ESTABLISHED WHEN SOMEONE ANSWERS. TELL THE PERSON WHO ANSWERS TO EXPECT YOUR CALLS.
He reads the instructions yet another time. He keeps the manual open before him as he punches out 7, 4, #. He listens for the dial tone. He dials Kate’s number. He hears a beep and then her phone begins ringing.
“Hello?” she says.
“It’s me,” he says.
He feels like a spy.
Later that afternoon, he records an outgoing message on Kate’s answering machine, and then, from a pay phone on the corner, he dials his own number. There is a single ring, and then an almost imperceptible click, and then another ring, and another, and another, and Kate’s machine kicks in, not with her familiar, “Hi, at the beep, please,” but instead with David’s recorded voice: “Hello, no one can answer your call just now, but if you leave a message at the beep, someone will get back to you as soon as possible.”
Aside from that tiny click — which could, after all, have been the answering machine switching modes — there is no way that anyone on earth can know that the call is not being answered in the Chapman apartment. If Helen calls from the Vineyard, she will have no way of knowing his voice is coming from Kate’s machine rather than their own. She will have no way of knowing that her husband is a lying cheat.
“Does it work?” Kate asks.
“Yes,” he says.
Smiling, she takes his arm.
After dinner that night, they go back to her apartment.
He feels relatively safe.
Sort of.
“Your boyfriend’s on the phone,” Mistoffelees says.
Already in costume for the Wednesday matinee performance, he comes bouncing down the hall as part of his warm-up exercises, a virtual jack-in-the-box in black, springing up and down and up again as he gestures toward the wall phone and leaps away out of sight.
The receiver is hanging from its cord.
She picks it up.
“Hi, darling,” she says.
“Well,” he says approvingly, “that’s better.”
A chill races up her back.
“Who is this?” she asks at once.
“Who do you think it is, Puss?”
“Go away,” she says.
“Don’t hang up,” he warns.
She stands transfixed, a barrage of thoughts bombarding her mind. This number is unlisted, how did he get it? Does he know someone in the show? Is he an investor? Is he an actor who once worked the Winter Garden? Has he dated one of the...?
“How are you?” he asks pleasantly.
“I’m going to hang up.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“What do you want from me?”
“Obedience,” he says.
“Leave me alone. I’ll go to the police again.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
“Have you gone to the police?”
“No. But I will if you don’t...”
“Have you?”
“I will go. I said I will”
“No, you said again.”
“No. But I will.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“I will.”
Her voice weakening.
“I’m watching you, Puss.”
“Please. You have to stop...”
“I’ll be there tonight.”
“No. Please.”
“Watching. Dance nice.”
“No. Don’t come. Please. I don’t want you to come.”
“You don’t want me to come, darling?” he says, and begins laughing.
She hangs up at once. She is shaking violently. She stands by the phone, her open hand pressed to her pounding heart.
“You okay?” someone asks.
She looks up.
Rum Turn Tugger.
“Yes, fine,” she says.
But immediately following the performance that afternoon, she limps over to the stage manager and tells him she thinks she sprained her ankle during the “Growltiger” number.
“I want to check with my doctor,” she lies. “But meanwhile I wouldn’t count on me for tonight.”
David has chosen a place he’s read about in New York, a dim, wood-paneled, clubby sort of dinner-dancing spot in the Village. “The steaks are terrific,” wrote the magazine’s restaurant critic, “and the eight-piece band plays much bigger-band music.” The tunes these musicians are playing now are hardly reminiscent of those David grew up with. Starting with when he was twelve or thirteen and first beginning to notice girls, the doowop songs he favored seemed to reflect his every adolescent mood and emotional shift, ranging from Brenda Lee’s “All Alone Am I” to “So Much in Love” by the Tymes, and all the other hanging-out, malt-shop, jukebox tunes that dominated the radio waves.
When he was fourteen or fifteen the charts exploded with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” and “I Feel Fine” and “She Loves You,” and more Beatles tunes than he could county, all of them an integral part of his tumultuous adolescence — when you were in love, the whole damn world was Paul, John, Ringo and George. And then when he was sixteen, the song that possibly best expressed his own inner turmoil, the song that seemed to speak directly to him, was the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction,” of which he, too, couldn’t seem to get none nohow. Oddly, when he was seventeen and his taste began to change somewhat, he played Frank Sinatra’s “Strangers in the Night” day and night, longing for that stranger in the night who would fill his arms one day. Or night. Or anytime, for that matter.