She handed me a card with a phone number written on it in a woman’s hand, area code 302. “He wasn’t sure you had it,” she said, still out of breath.
“Thanks ever so much. I didn’t.”
“The senator has, but—”
“I’m not the senator, am I?”
7
The next three days were bad, worse than I had thought they could be: I had what I wanted. I had used her to put it across, and I had put it across. That being the case, it didn’t seem inevitable that I would suffer much, after only one day with her, from the fact that he was back in her bed. I went through hell. I’d think of her eyes, her attachments and how they shook, the way her bottom twitched. A hundred times I owned up to the fact that it wasn’t an afternoon’s fun I could forget and go on with my life. It was as big as I’d told her it was. The worst of it was that even on fundamentals, I wasn’t sure it would stick, because there was that remark she’d made, that after becoming a frog in a larger puddle, she would throw me out. I kept telling myself that on that point, at least, I was safe, that she couldn’t throw me out without risking my revenge, which I could take any time simply by calling Mr. Garrett at the number Miss Immelman had given me and telling him. I thought, at least that stops her from talking; but then: if he charged her with what I said, she could simply say that I raped her, that she had meant to spare him the truth; but since I was playing dirty, the truth was all she had left. When I got that far with the thought, I can tell you, it hurt.
On the third night I turned to misery’s companion, a deck of playing cards, and dealt them out on the cocktail table for a game of solitaire. I had been at it for some time when I heard the freight elevator. I wondered who would be using it at that hour of the night. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor. Then I heard footsteps on the other side of my door. A key clicked in the lock. My heart almost stopped beating. The only people who had ever had keys were my mother before she died, Eliza, the cleaning woman, and Hortense. For some reason, it was my mother I thought of now as the door began to open slowly.
It was Hortense. She closed the door and stood in the foyer, looking at me.
“Well?” she said. “You gave me the keys, didn’t you?”
I went clumping over to her, gathered her in my arms, and kissed her — just once. Then I stood back and said: “O.K., I’m glad. I can’t pretend I’m not. Now suppose you get the hell out.”
“Suppose I what?”
“You heard me. Get out.”
“Any particular reason?”
“You know why: you don’t shack up for two days with him and then start up with me again. Out. Beat it.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
“And suppose I don’t want to?”
“Then I’ll throw you out.”
“I don’t believe it. Want to bet?”
“Okay,” I said, grabbing her, “you’re going — now!”
“And taking the institute with me?”
I was so angry that I had forgotten about the institute. Suddenly a lump came in my throat and my heart skipped a beat. She came close, her lips skinned back from her teeth.
“Dr. Palmer!” she exclaimed as though greatly concerned. “Are you all right? Oh my! You turned the color of chalk. Should I call a physician? Or administer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation? What do you wish me to do?”
“All right, then, stay.”
“Stay? If I—”
“Please.”
“That’s better. And could we sit down?”
She led the way into the living room where she pushed me into a chair with more strength than I would have thought she had.
“Now!” she went on brightly and cheerily, “if I may have your attention, I wish to gloat.” She walked away from me, twitching it, then walked back, twitching everything. “Do you like it? Does it give you ideas? Does it remind you of night before last when you were in bed here, alone, at least as we hope, and I was — But need we go into details? Were you imagining my situation, after the coup you arranged, of a bigger pond to swim in and a place in Who’s Who in the World? I hope it caused you no pain imagining how pitiful I looked there in my bed, waiting, whispering things through the door—”
“Goddam it, shut up.”
“No profanity, please. It upsets me.”
“Will you, for Christ’s sake, knock it off?”
“Beautiful gloat, I love you.”
By then it was affecting me as though I had a cramp, and I was all doubled up in the chair. But all of a sudden she folded, collapsing face down on one of the sofas. I let her lie there awhile. Then I went over to see if something was wrong. I couldn’t see that anything was but leaned down when she started to mumble, low and jerky, one or two words at a time. “I thought,” she said, or at least I thought she said, “—it was going to be fun — that I would love it, having my gloat. But it wasn’t fun at all.” And then, after some time: “A gloat’s not a gloat; it’s not any gloat at all if it’s not a gloat.” That made no sense, but then suddenly she cleared it up. Turning over, she burst out: “It has to be real! It has to be real, and it’s not. He didn’t come to me. He just kissed me and said good night! He was wonderful except for that — had flowers sent over, three beautiful orchids, took me to dinner, said all kinds of lovely things. But he didn’t do what I hoped for — and I don’t have any gloat! Any real gloat, at you! I enjoyed torturing you. I guess I did, if I did, torture you, I mean. You had it coming. You certainly did. But—”
“Shut up.”
“Okay, now you know.”
“Where is he now?”
“ ‘Up above the world so high, like a tea tray in the sky.’ What’s that from?”
“Alice in Wonderland.”
“Yes, he’s flying to London, but what’s there? What’s with London to make it a wonderland?”
“You know what I’ve got a good mind to do? Fan your backside till it has blisters on it and looks like two fried egg yolks.”
“O.K., here it is.”
She turned over again, pulled up her skirt, and slid down her pantyhose to give me a full, fair view, and right there on the living room sofa, with half her clothes still on, we resumed our love affair, complete with biting, whispering, and spanking. Afterward, we lay there, holding close. At last she said: “I was close to God. What were you close to?”
“God.”
“I’m hungry.”
I kissed her, pulled on my clothes, and went out to the kitchen to fix a snack. I had just got out eggs, mushrooms, bacon, juice, bread, and coffee when she joined me, wearing a pair of my pajamas with the legs and sleeves turned up and her own shoes with no stockings inside.
“I found this outfit in your bureau drawer,” she said. “Okay to wear it?”
“But of course. Be my guest.”
“What are you giving me?”
“Tomato juice, an omelette, bacon, toast, coffee. This hour of the night, I thought you’d rather have Sanka. I might add that you’re looking at the champion three-egg-and-mushroom-filler-omelette-maker of Prince Georges County, Maryland. I have special, peculiar skills that—”
“I don’t want an omelette.”
“Tell me what you do want, please.”
“I want two eggs sunny-side up, to look as my backside would have if it had gotten what it deserved — so I know, in lieu of a mirror.”
“Sunny-side up, they shall be.”
She gulped down her tomato juice, then I made her the eggs. She ate them neat, saying “You’re supposed to break the yokes, but I love to put them in whole and squash them with my tongue. These are nice.” Butter dribbled from the toast onto her chin, and she held it over for me. I said: “Come on, hurry up; that puts ideas in my head.”