Until Wednesday, September 14th. On that day Dane phoned his mother to ask how she was. She was fine, Lutetia said, although disappointed.
“Your father and I were planning to lunch together downtown,” Lutetia said. “While we were discussing it at breakfast, there was a phone call from Washington. It was the President’s appointments secretary. The President wanted to see Ashton today, so there went our plans.” She laughed her tinkly laugh. “I must say Father didn’t seem to appreciate the honor. He was actually annoyed. Almost balked at letting me pack his overnight bag. In the end, of course, he went. You don’t turn down the President of the United States.”
Overnight bag...
“Sheila.”
“Dane? Hi, darling!”
“See you tonight?”
“Well...”
“How about dinner at Louis’s?”
“All right, dear, but let’s make it early. I’ll have to be back before ten.”
“How come?”
“I still have gobs of work to do on my designs before the collection is finished.”
He could not help wondering what she would use as an excuse after her collection was completed. At the same time, he was puzzled. Overnight bag... Had the whole story of the presidential call been a put-up job? Or just the part about overnight?
They had Louis’s special salad, which was not on the menu, but Sheila ate it as if it had been prepared by a diner chef. He was asked please not to dawdle over his coffee. They were on the sidewalk at 9:30.
“How about a nightcap, Sheila? A quick one?”
She apparently could not find a plausible way to refuse. Upstairs: “Would you make it yourself, darling? Nothing for me. I’ll just change into my working clothes, then you’ll have to go.”
Calmly Dane said, “I’m not going.”
Sheila laughed. “Come on, pardner, have your drink and skedaddle.”
“I don’t want a drink. And I’m not going.”
Her laugh turned uncertain. “Dane, I’m not sure I like this. I must get to work.”
“You’re not going to work, and I’m not leaving.”
“I don’t understand. What do you mean?”
“You’re trying to get rid of me. I’m not going to be got rid of.”
For a moment Sheila was quiet, as if weighing certain factors against her temper. Then she said in a light voice, “Listen to the man! Are you keeping me, O Lord and Master? I pay my own rent, buddy-boy, and you stay when I say, and you leave when I tell you to, and right now I want you to leave.” When he stood there, saying nothing, her face turned to ice. “Dane, leave now. I mean now. Or you’ll be sorry.”
“My father will be here any minute, won’t he?”
It was as if he had struck her. “You know!.. I suppose you’ve known all along. I see, I see now. That’s why—”
“That’s why I’m staying. Yes, sweetie pie, that’s why.”
He was disgusted with her and with himself and with his father and even with his mother. He stripped off his jacket and laid it across the back of an armchair, and his silver cigaret case, a gift from his mother, dropped out of the pocket. He picked it up and took a cigaret and found his hands shaking so badly he could not light up.
“I’m waiting for my father,” he muttered, tossing the case on the chair. “What’s more, I intend to tell him about you and me.”
With a smothered half-cry, Sheila went to the picture window, to the door, back to the middle of the room. “All right, Dane. Stay and be damned to you. I can’t very well put you out by force.”
“You didn’t have the guts to tell him. Or maybe you never meant to?”
“That’s foul, Dane. That really is!”
“One man at a time, I believe you said. Didn’t you mean one family at a time?”
To his stupefaction, she burst out laughing. “This is very funny. Funnier than you could possibly imagine!”
“You have a peculiar sense of humor!” Every speck of the love he had felt for her was vanishing with the speed of light. Dread began heavily to build up, and with it the insane rage he had been guarding against.
“You think I’ve been sleeping with your father?” Sheila cried. “Let me tell you something, little boy — we aren’t lovers; we never have been. There’s nothing in the least physical about our friendship. Yes, and that’s exactly what it is — friendship! We like each other. We respect each other. We enjoy each other’s company. But that’s all. Of course you won’t believe it. Maybe nobody would. But, so help me, Dane, it’s the truth. For your own sake, if for no one else’s, you’d better believe that.”
He could see his own fists, hear his own shout. “Can’t you think of a more convincing story than that? Friendship! Don’t you think I know the old man’s been parking his shoes under your bed every Wednesday night? I’ve seen some of his clothes in your bedroom closet!”
“He’s been coming here, yes, and he keeps a change of clothing — some comfortable things—”
“To talk over the little events of the week, I suppose, over a tea cozy? In slacks and a dressing gown? What kind of triple-headed idiot do you take me for? For God’s sake, don’t you have the decency to admit it when you’re caught with your pants down?”
He choked; there was a roaring in his ears. He became faintly aware that her lips were moving.
“I don’t want to hurt you, Dane. I don’t want to say things about—”
“You’d better not,” he heard himself growl.
“—about your mother. But apparently I offer your father a... a scope, an experience, that makes it possible for him to talk to me in a way in which he could never talk to his wife. We have a very special and wonderful relationship. It helps him to come here every Wednesday night, Dane. And I’m terribly fond of him.”
“Why am I bothering? Helps him! How? Come on, spin a few more of your lies to me!”
She flared up at that. “It helps his feelings about himself as a man, if you must know — a man in relation to women. I tell you, Dane, he’s my friend, not my lover! He couldn’t be my lover even if he wanted to! There! Are you satisfied now? Now do you understand?”
Dane stood dumb. He couldn’t be my lover even if he wanted to...
“You mean you won’t let him be? Is that your yarn?”
She said, white-lipped, “I mean he’s physically incapable of it. Now you know.”
He could not — could not — believe it. Ashton McKell, big, hairy, strapping, vigorous, virile Ashton McKell, incapable of physical relations with a woman?
He sank onto the ottoman, dazed. The very shock of the thought generated its own believability. Nobody, not even a witch, would invent a story like that about Ash McKell. It had to be true. And suddenly he saw how far this went toward explaining the thrusting McKell drive in business, his tapeworm hunger for commercial expansion. A compensation!
But if that were the case, why hadn’t his mother said anything? The question answered itself. Lutetia McKell could not have brought herself to mention a thing like that, to her son above all people.
“So now you know the truth,” Sheila was saying, and she sounded urgent. “Dane, please, won’t you go? I’ve been trying to find a way to tell your father about you and me without hurting him. Let me work this out my own way. Help me spare him.”
He shook his head violently. “I’m going to tell him myself. I’ve got to know whether this is all true or not.”
She clapped her hands in sheer exasperation. “You’d do that? You’d leave him not one shred of self-respect? His own son! Don’t you know how ashamed he is of his impotence? Dane, if you do that, you’re a rotten, despicable—”