Carr tried to look thoughtful. Marcia swept on, “Keaton has his plans all laid. He’s gone into it very carefully. He’s spotted some likely first clients—badly edited publications he knows it’ll be easy to improve. That way you’ll get a reputation right from the start. Once the circulation of those first publications begins to climb, watch the others flock to you! Even if you have to lose money to turn the trick, it will be worth it.”
Carr frowned. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Magazine and newspaper guys have their own ideas. They don’t put much trust in the judgment of outsiders.”
Marcia smiled with the faintest touch of pity. “Most publishers know that they can’t have editorial staffs that are the equal of Life or the Post, simply because they can’t pay the money. But they can have an editorial counseling service that’s that good, because dozens of other publishers will help to bear the expense.
Carr shrugged. “If we were as good as Life or the Post, why wouldn’t we start a magazine of our own?”
This time Marcia did not smile, although the suggestion of pity was if anything more marked. “Objections, again. Always objections. Next you’ll be telling me your interests don’t lie in that direction. The time isn’t right for new ventures.”
“Well,” he said, “I can see how all this applies to Keaton Fisher. He’s had experience on big magazines. But where do I shine in?”
“It’s obvious. Keaton’s no good at handling people. You’re an expert! This service won’t be purely an editorial matter. You’ll also be reshaping the office routine and personnel of publications.”
“I see,” he said slowly. “Well, I’ll think it over? I won’t be seeing him until Friday, you say.”
“What’s wrong?” She sat up straight. “Merely that there’s no question of thinking it over at all. You surely don’t compare your present job to Keaton’s proposition.”
He looked at her quickly, then looked away. “Well, Marcia, I don’t exactly like the idea of this counseling service.”
She smiled, almost encouragingly. “No?”
He sucked his lip. “Oh, it seems too much a part of the old con game. The old business of tailoring wordage, retailoring it, patching it up, cleaning and pressing it, putting it through the mangle over and over again. Too derivative. We wouldn’t even be editing the stuff. We’d be editing the editors. Selling them their own product.” He hurried on. “No, if I were to break away from General Employment, I’d want it to be for the sake of something more legitimate, more creative.”
She leaned back. Carr couldn’t recall her ever looking more the cool mistress of herself. Yet he knew she was displaying herself, tempting him deliberately. “Good,” she said. “Why don’t you?”
“What?”
“Do something creative. You were quite an actor in college, you’ve told me. Of course it may be a little late for that, though you never can tell. But there’s always writing, painting—all sorts of ways of blazoning your personality before the world.”
“Oh, Marcia!” For a moment he almost lost control of himself. Then with an effort he put down the hot hunger within him. “Look Marcia, the important thing is that we like each other and have good times together. That’s all that really matters, isn’t it?” He moved closer to her, watched the rise and fall of her bosom as she breathed.
She didn’t respond.
“Well, isn’t it?” he asked after a moment. “Look, Marcia, I enjoy the time we have together better than anything else. The parties, the shows, the yacht club, all that. Your friends are wonderful. The Pendletons and the Mandevilles are grand people. Last Sunday on the lake was marvelous. There was a kind of glamour in every moment, as there always is when you’re around.” He slid his hand along the top of the couch, behind her shoulders. “It’s fun, don’t you see? The best fun in the world?”
“You can’t join in the pleasures of people like the Pendletons and the Mandevilles without joining in their enterprises too. In the long run you can’t command the sweets of life without commanding people and events.”
“Why not?” he asked with simulated lightness. “After all, I pay my own way.”
“As an extra man, yes,” she admitted without rancor. He was close enough to smell her hair. “But that isn’t the same thing at all. Don’t you see that you’ve got to get into the really big money? Why, with all your ability—”
“No, I don’t see,” he said. “All I can see is you. And I love you very much.” Smiling, he quickly put his arms around her and pulled her toward him.
She didn’t resist. She only thinned her lips and looked straight into his eyes. “No,” she said, “No.”
“Please, baby!”
He seized her. With avid roughness he caressed the pink flesh. His kisses fell hot on her throat, her shoulders. He felt the smooth silkiness of her skin, the pliant sweet curves of her filling his palms.
But she jerked back and stood up in one movement. A little of her drink spilled onto the couch and pooled there.
“So that’s it,” he said. “You tempt me. You entice me. You think I desire you, you’ll control me—I’ll do anything you say.”
“And if I have to do that to put some steel into your backbone,” she replied, “why shouldn’t I?”
Carr thought that Marcia had never looked so queenly or desirable. At the same time, he saw in a flash how the whole evening would go from here on. First he would beg her pardon. Then, to please her, he would pretend to become very interested in Keaton Fisher’s editorial counseling service. As the evening wore along, what with drinks and the hypnotic glitter of restaurant and nightclub, he actually would begin to get interested. And she would become coolly amorous when he took her home, and let him in, and give him his little reward for dancing to her tune.
Like some puppet. Like some damned puppet dangling on her strings.
Well, for once he wouldn’t. For once he’d break the pattern, no matter what it cost him. There were other places he could go tonight. She wasn’t his whole life, not quite.
He had backed a couple steps away from her.
She finished her drink. “I’m ready now,” she said smiling. “I’ll get my bag.”
As she moved toward the bedroom, he watched her. He swallowed hard. Yes, there were other places. He had to prove that.
When she was out of sight, he turned quickly and—the door was still ajar—walked rapidly and silently out of the room and down the hall.
Yes, he kept telling himself, other places.
Short of the elevator, he opened the door to the stairs. He hurried down the gray, squared spiral. Faster. Faster.
Atop his mood of painful desperation, he was aware of a sudden sense of freedom, even excitement. For it had just occurred to him what the other place was. He had just realized the meaning of a phrase he had read uncomprehendingly an hour before: “…the lion’s tail near the five sisters…”
Few people walk on the east side of Michigan Boulevard after dark. At such times the Art Institute looks very dead, with the automobile headlights and the colored glows from the busy side of the boulevard playing on its dark stone like archeologists’ flashlights. The two majestic bronze lions might well be guarding the portals of some monument of Roman antiquity. One wonders, though, whether the sculptor Keneys foresaw that the tail of the southernmost lion, conveniently horizontal, would always be kept polished bright by the casual elbows of art students and idlers, and now, the frightened girl.
She watched Carr mount the steps, without any active sign of recognition. He might be part of some dream she was having. A forbidding cold wind was whipping in from the lake and she had buttoned up her cardigan. She didn’t seem so frightened now, but very alone, as if she had nowhere in the world to go and was waiting for someone who would never come. Carr stopped a half dozen paces away.