“I was fifteen,” she says.
“Well, yes, I suppose you were. Shaw was buying dozens of albums as gifts. He told the clerk he had a charge at the store, and the clerk said, ‘Yes, sir, may I have your name, please?’ And Shaw said, ‘Artie Shaw,’ and the clerk said ‘Is that S-H-O-R-E, sir?’”
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m serious. A music store.”
“Didn’t know Artie Shaw.”
“Incredible.”
“Everybody knows Artie Shaw.”
“Sic transit gloria mundi,” David says.
“Our Gloria?” Kate asks, and they both laugh.
“Why did you tell him you sprained your ankle? I thought it was because...”
“He called me.”
“Who? Your stage manager?”
“No, Artie Shaw.”
“Really, who...?”
“The nut who sent me the flowers and...”
“Called...?”
“...the letters. Yes.”
“Where?”
“Backstage.”
“At the theater?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t those numbers unlisted?”
“Yes.”
“Then how...?”
“I don’t know. David, I’m very frightened. That’s why I want to leave the city. That’s the real reason.”
“Kate,” he says, “you have to go to the police again.”
“No, I can’t. He warned me not to.”
“Then call Clancy. Ask him to come see you. I’m sure he’d be willing to...”
“Sure, in New York? Anyway, how can I call him?”
“Why not?”
“He’d find out.”
“How can he possibly...?”
“He knows everything I do!”
“How can he hear a phone call you make from your own...?”
“How do I know? How’d he get the number at the theater?”
“Are you sure it was him?”
“Of course. Who do you think it was?”
“Maybe someone you know. Maybe someone playing a...”
“I don’t have friends who kid around that way. Besides he called me Puss, of course it was him.”
“You didn’t give Rickie either of those numbers, did you?”
“No.”
“Who else has them?”
“Everybody in the show.”
“I mean, who’d you give them to?”
“My agent, of course. And my mother. A few friends...”
“How about your sister?”
“My sister doesn’t make phone calls.”
“What do you mean?”
“My sister is in Whiting.”
“Whiting?”
“The Whiting Forensic Institute. In Middletown, Connecticut.”
The band is playing “Gently, Sweetly.” A male vocalist croons into the microphone. A mirrored globe rotates over the dance floor. Spotlights strike its myriad facets and beam splinters of reflected light to every corner of the room. Across the table, Kate’s face seems shattered with light.
“It’s a maximum security hospital,” she says.
“Gently...”
“For the criminally insane.”
“Sweetly...”
“Burning down the house was just the start.”
“More and more...”
“Completely...”
“She tried to kill my father.”
“Take me...”
“Make me...”
“Yours.”
The band’s saxophone section — two altos and two tenors — modulates from the singer’s key to a somewhat higher one that lends a soaring semblance to the next chorus.
David is staring at her now.
“Yes,” she says, and nods in dismissal.
The song ends.
They order coffee.
They hold hands across the table.
They dance some more.
She doesn’t wish to discuss her sister further at this present time, thank you.
He respects her wishes.
Frankly, he doesn’t want to open that can of worms, anyway.
When she excuses herself to go to the ladies’ room, he tells her he’ll meet her near the coat check at the front door, and then pays the check and goes to the men’s room.
Dr. Chris Fielding is pissing in the urinal alongside his.
“David!” he says, cock in hand, “how are you?”
“Fine, fine, Chris, and you?” David says, unzipping his fly, thinking Jesus, did he spot us on the dance floor, does he know I’m here with, Jesus, Helen knows him, Helen knows his wife, Jesus Christ!
Side by side, they urinate.
“How do you like this place?” Chris asks.
“Great, great.”
“What does Helen think?”
Helen?
Helen thinks I’m listening to Dr. Gianfranco Donato giving a talk on Learning and Motor Skill Disorders at the Lotos Club, is what Helen thinks, he thinks, and immediately says, “I’m here alone. Helen’s on the Vineyard.”
“Oh?” Chris says.
“I love listening to these old songs,” David says. “It’s a great band. Sounds much bigger than it is,” he says, quoting New York magazine. “And the steaks are terrific.”
“So they are, so they are,” Chris says, a trifle in his cups, giving his cock a little shake with each repetitive observation.
But Kate is waiting at the coat check.
No one needs coats in this sweltering August, but she is waiting there nonetheless, looking eminently gorgeous in her little black Fuck Me dress and strapped high-heeled Fuck Me shoes and sheer black Fuck Me jacket. And as fate would have it, as fate always fucking does, mousy Melanie Fielding is also waiting at the coat check as Chris Fielding — Question: What do you call the guy who ranked last in his class in medical school? Answer: Doctor — Dr. Chris Fielding, then, staggers his way toward his wife with David close behind him, trying to catch Kate’s eye, but she seems thoroughly absorbed in reading the framed reviews of the place hanging on the entrance wall, her back to him, “David, hello, what are you doing here?”
This from Melanie Fielding, who spots him now and quickly looks past him to see where Helen might be. For this is a place where couples come to dance, no? What then...?
Kate has turned.
Please, he thinks. Be smart.
You’re smart.
Be smart.
“Hi, Melanie,” he says, and takes her hand, and leans into her, and kisses the air beside her cheek, and says, “I love this big-band stuff, Helen’s on the Vineyard...”
“She’s on the Vineyard,” Chris says blearily.
“...and the steaks are terrific.”
“Oh, what a shame,” Melanie says.
Kate is walking out the door.
“Give her my love, won’t you?” Melanie says.
“I’ll be talking to her in...”
David looks at his watch.
“...a half hour.”
“Give her my love.”
“I will.”
“Mine, too,” Chris says.