“It’s your own fault.”
“It is?” he said.
“It’s this same kind of thing, this purposeless wandering activity.”
“Plus,” he said, “the slides in Doctor—what was his name, McIntosh?”
“Yes,” she said, “McIntosh. Plus what you couldn’t see letting happen because it might wound your vanity; it might have made you feel superfluous.”
“There’s no point in arguing it out now,” he said.
“No,” she agreed.
He said, “The only thing I don’t understand is the picture I get, probably inaccurate. But I see you sitting around the place that Saturday afternoon by yourself, meditating everything over rationally in your mind, and then, click, you had it worked out. As calm and coldblooded as—” He lifted his hands.
“I thought it over for months,” she said.
“But you came to your conclusion like an IBM machine.” And then, he thought, after that there was no talking to her. No arguing, no discussing. Not after her mind was made up. Their marriage had been a mistake, and the next question had to do with how to divide up the joint possessions and how to get the thing through court as cheaply and simply as possible.
The hiring of mutual friends, he thought; that was the really evil part. Sending them down-picking them up in the car and driving them down—to the courthouse, to testify to the travesty he and she had invented. What a pitiless time that had been.
Across from him, Pat said, “The phone’s ringing.”
“What?” he said. It was, but he had not even heard it. Still ringing, even here, at her apartment. “So it is,” he said, glancing around.
“I’ll get it.” She disappeared into the living room. “Hello?” he heard her say.
He opened the refrigerator and examined the unopened fifth of Gilby’s gin, excellent stuff, and a cheap vermouth, and a pint of vodka, and wine of every description. The Gothic script on the label of a MM Wein bottle attracted him, and he began to translate the German.
Pat appeared in the kitchen doorway. “It’s Ted Haynes.”
He went stiff-legged into the living room. “Does he want me?”
“He wants to know if you’re here.” She had her hand over the receiver, but he had never believed in that; he knew that the other person could still hear. They got the sound through the Bakelite, as the deaf person got sound through the bones of his skull.
“Sure I’m here,” he said.
Pat said, “He’s so mad he can hardly talk.”
“Well,” he said, still holding the bottle of German wine, “I guess Posin must have called him.”
“Don’t blame Bob,” she said. The phone dipped, and he took it from her. “Don’t blame him or me.” When he took the phone, Haynes’s voice said hoarsely in his ear, “Jim, a man named Sharpstein called me just now here at my home and said they’re canceling, and if they ever see our sales representative near their lots they’ll call the police and have him thrown into the street.”
“Sharpstein,” he said. “He must represent them or something. What’s his first name? Luke?”
“I’d like to see you in the next half hour, preferably at the station, or if you feel you can’t make it down there again on your own time I’ll meet you where you are now. You’re at Pat’s apartment; that’s not very far from where I am. If you’re going to be there for a while, I’ll drop over and we can settle this on the spot.”
His brain was too fuzzy; he could not follow what Haynes was saying. “If you want,” he said.
“I want you to call Bob Posin and ask him to come over so he can be present. It isn’t essential, but he’s more familiar with the union rulings than I am; I have no time to memorize that sort of business. I have too many other important things on my mind to waste my time with that. All right then, I’ll see you where you are now in about fifteen minutes.”
“Goodbye,” Jim said.
The phone clicked first, before he was able to get the receiver down. He felt childishly defeated. “Did they hear?” Pat said. “Did the Luke people hear?” He said, “I have to call Bob Posin.”
As he reached to take up the telephone book, Pat said, “It’s on the cover. By the corner.”
“Oh?” he said, with rage. “You keep it handy?”
“Yes, I keep it handy.”
“What’s this?” he demanded.
“What do you mean, what’s this? Oh my god.” She walked out of the living room: a door slammed, probably the bathroom door. He stood a moment, and then he dialed Bob Posin’s number. There was only the one brief buzz and then Posin’s voice saying, “Hello?”
“This is Jim Briskin,” he said. “Oh, did Haynes get hold of you?”
“He wanted to get hold of you.” Posin’s voice had a muted quality, as if his own rancor had been punctured; as if, Jim thought, now that Haynes had come onto the scene Bob Posin was bowing out. “Say,” Posin said, “that was quite a stunt you pulled tonight.”
“Tell me,” Jim said, “how did the Luke people get into it? Were they listening?”
“Yes, as a matter of fact they were. Just a minute.” A long minute and then Posin was back. “I had a cigarette going. Say, well, apparently they were gathered around the radio. Can’t hear enough of their own bilge, I suppose. Something on that order. He must really have hit the roof. I got this all secondhand, of course. He—Luke Sharpstein, I mean—called Haynes, and Haynes got hold of me; he was looking for you. By that time you had left the station.”
Jim said, “I’m over at Pat’s.”
“I see,” Posin said. “Well, how about that.”
“Haynes told me to call you,” Jim said. “You’re supposed to be here. He’s coming over in fifteen minutes or so.”
“What’s he want me around for? To hold the bowl, I guess. You know, the bowl under the neck, after they make the cut.”
“I’ll see you, then,” Jim said and hung up. This time he was the first to get the phone onto the hook.
Pat had come back out of the bathroom. She was in the process of fixing her hair, putting it up for the night. “Did you tell him to come here?” She seemed to have settled down a trifle; her voice was less uneven. “It’s almost one o’clock.”
“Not my idea,” he said. “Haynes is coming too. Both of them.”
“Now I’ll tell you exactly what to say,” she said. “I was working it out while you were talking.”
“More smoothing,” he said. “You tell them, yes, of course, you stopped in the middle of the ‘commercial’ you admit they heard you— But here’s why you did it; you decided a lot of entertainers like Arthur Godfrey and Steve Allen and all those have been more successful with an—”
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll tell Sharpstein and Haynes and Posin that. I’ll tell them I wanted to be another Henry Morgan. Remember him?”
“Yes,” she said.
“It’s hard to,” he said. “It really takes you back.”
She said, “Henry Morgan is on television; he’s on the ‘Garry Moore Show.’ Every week.”
Shrugging, Jim said, “It doesn’t matter. I have nothing to tell them. Let’s just get it over. I’m sorry it has to be here in your apartment. That wasn’t my idea.”
She stood considering, meditating. Then she returned to the bathroom and resumed what she was doing to her hair. He remembered the nightly setting. The metal clips, the cloth, the smell of shampoo and wave lotion, the bottles and cotton pads. Her back to him, she said, “Can I ask you something?”
“Okay,” he said.
Her hands worked methodically at the base of her skull, lifting her hair, sorting, massaging, putting the hair in place. “Do you want me to quit my job? Would you feel easier if I left the station?”