“No. Not everything.”
“What does she look like?”
“She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever known.”
“Oh, brother!” Felix said.
“I’m talking objectively. Wherever we go, men look at her. You can’t miss her, Felix. It embarrasses me sometimes.”
“They smell it on her. They smell ripeness.”
“No, that’s not it. She’s beautiful.”
“All right, she’s beautiful. What don’t you like about her?”
“A lot of things.”
“Do they bother you? Would you like to change them?”
“Yes.”
“Brother, pull out now. Take my advice. You’re heading for a lot of trouble.”
“No,” Larry said. He shook his head. “I can’t.”
In the finished basement of Felix Anders’ house, they talked. It was the end of February, and they knew each other well enough to talk easily, but with no real friendship between them. Larry had told Eve he’d wanted a look at the finished basement about which he’d heard so much. He’d planned to walk up to the center with Felix, but Betty had gone to a movie with a neighbor, and so they sat downstairs and smoked and talked without friendship in a friendly manner.
“You know the old gag,” Felix said. “It’s the same as that.”
“Which gag?”
“This fellow comes home to his wife, and he’s undressing, and there’s a big lipstick imprint on his undershorts. A big red pair of lips! Well, his wife sees it, points to it, and shouts, ‘There’s lipstick on your undershorts!’ The fellow looks down at it. Then he looks up at his wife. Then, with a surprised look on his face, he says, ‘Hey, how ’bout that?’”
Larry burst out laughing, and Felix chuckled at his own joke.
“It’s just what I was telling you,” he said. “Bluff it through. There’s only one person in your house who knows the truth, and that’s you. Your wife is only guessing. Even if someone actually sees you with Blondie, your wife won’t want to believe it. If you know you’ve been seen, come home and beat her to the punch. Tell her first. Tell her you ran into an old high-school chum and bought her a drink, and she’s married now and has four kids and lives in Richmond Hills with her dentist husband. Lie your way out of it. The bigger the lie, the better. The only thing you can’t lie your way out of is actually being caught right in that bed. And that practically never happens.”
“I don’t like lying,” Larry said. “I’ll never enjoy that part of it.”
“It’s a necessity, part of the game. What can you do? You’ve got to lie. For example, suppose you come home some night smelling of perfume.”
“She doesn’t wear perfume any more.”
“Some night she’ll wear it, believe me. She’ll want to send you home stinking of her, just to make you squirm, just to show your wife that she owns you too. Believe me, Larry, she’ll do it. Especially if her husband’s not home. Then she can pour the stuff on without having to explain why she’s wearing Tabu to a civic association meeting. Does he work nights?”
“No.”
“What is he? A white-collar worker? No? A factory worker? It doesn’t matter. Some night he’ll be out, and she’ll climb into that car reeking of perfume. ‘I just didn’t think,’ she’ll say. Ha!”
“How can I lie my way out of perfume?”
“Oh, simple. On the way home, stop off at a drugstore and buy a bottle for Eve. Tell her the salesgirl, stupid idiot, offered you a sniff and then spilled it accidentally on your shirt front.”
“I see.”
“If you get lipstick on your handkerchief, throw it out.”
“She takes her lipstick off.”
“Some night she’ll smear it on as thick as warpaint. Especially if her husband isn’t home. He works nights, did you say?”
“No. No, he doesn’t.”
“But he’s a factory worker?”
“Yes.”
“Sure,” Felix answered. “She’ll get lipstick on you because she’ll be getting tired of hiding. Isn’t her love as real as Eve’s? Why should she have to hide it? She’s a woman, Larry, a woman! And they’re all the same. I try to carry a clean shirt in the trunk of my car. Sometimes it comes in handy. Has she marked you yet?”
“What?”
“Marked you? Bitten you? Sent you home bruised for your wife to see?”
“No.”
“She will. It’s another way of claiming you. If you want to keep her, Larry, you’ve got to be careful for both of you. For your own protection.”
“She isn’t like that,” Larry said.
“She will be. Look, you’ve got this beautiful blonde who lives right here in this development, right?”
“Well...”
“She’s married, and she’s got a young son. That’s what you said, wasn’t it?”
Larry shrugged.
“Her husband’s a factory worker! And you’re an architect, probably the best thing that ever happened to her. She wants you. She’s going to do everything in her power to get you. Watch out.”
“You’ve got it all wrong.”
“Have I? Women are women. And I know women.”
“Well, I think you’ve got this woman wrong.”
“Have I? I know this woman pretty well.”
“Sure, sure,” Larry said, smiling.
“I can even tell you her name,” Felix said.
The smile dropped from Larry’s face. He sat speechless; but Felix wasn’t waiting for an answer.
“Margaret Gault,” Felix said, grinning.
21
March came in like a daisy.
White with mild snow flurries that touched the pavement, lingered gently kissing, and then were gone. Yellow with unexpected, unseasonably bright sunshine that seemed anomalous without forsythias in bloom. Green with anxious bulbs pushing their way through frozen soil. In the city, people shed their overcoats and walked with a jaunty perkiness in their step. It had been a short winter and a mild one, and soon it would be spring.
When the telephone rang, Roger Altar was in the shower. He mumbled something about it never failing, wrapped a towel around his waist, and then went dripping into the room which served as his office. Viciously he snapped the receiver from its cradle, and viciously he said, “Hello?”
“Rog?”
“Who’s this?”
“Bert.”
“What the hell do you want, Bert?”
“Nice greeting.”
Bert Dannerdorf was Altar’s agent, a small man with bright brown eyes and a stable of successful writers. Altar was number-two horse in the stable, number-one horse being a mystery writer who outsold even Hemingway.
Dannerdorf was a good agent in that he spoke, ate, drank and slept with editors and publishers. He talked of his clients while he was eating and drinking and perhaps even when he was sleeping. There was a time when Bert had been a sideshow barker at the World’s Fair. He was no longer selling Tanya the Snake Girl but he was still giving his spiel. Broken down, his spiel said, “My writers are the best in the world,” and Bert never let you forget it.
He particularly reminded you of it when you were ready to purchase’ a property. When that moment came, Dannerdorf became the meanest, shrewdest, toughest son of a bitch in the United States. Even if his client were a run-down Western writer who lived in a Wyoming shack, when it came time to close that deal Bert acted as if the man were — at that very moment, in the dust-swept Wyoming shack — preparing his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize.
Roger Altar didn’t particularly care for business. Bert Dannerdorf thrived on it. Like Jack Spratt and his wife, they made a formidable pair.