“You were wrong.”
“Maybe,” Leventhal said, drooping. “My nerves were shot. And I never was any good at rubbing people the right way. I don’t know how to please them.”
“You’re not long on tact, that’s perfectly true,” said Willis-ton. He seemed somewhat appeased.
“I never intended to hurt Allbee. That’s my word of honor.”
“I believe you.”
“Do you? Thanks. You’d do me a favor if you’d tell Allbee that.”
“I don’t see him. I told you before that I haven’t seen him for years.”
Allbee was ashamed to show himself to his old friends, Leventhal thought. Of course it was only natural.
“He thinks I’m his worst enemy.”
“Where did you run into him? What’s he doing? I didn’t even know he was still in New York. He sank out of sight.”
“He’s been following me around,” Leventhal said. And he told Williston about his three encounters with Allbee. Willis-ton listened with a gravely examining expression and a modified but noticeable disapproving tightness at the corners of his mouth. Leventhal concluded, “I don’t see what he’s after. I can’t find out what he wants.”
“You ought to,” said Williston. “You certainly ought.”
“Does he mean that I ought to do something for him?” said Leventhal to himself. That, unmistakably, was what he implied. But what and how? It was not at all clear. He felt that he had not said everything he had come to say. The really important things, the deepest issues, had not been touched. But he saw that it was necessary for him to accept some of the blame for Allbee’s comedown. He had contributed to it, though he had yet to decide to what extent he was to blame. Allbee had been making a last great effort to hold on to his job… However, it was time to go. He had taken up much more than his fifteen minutes. He stood up.
Williston said at the door that he expected to hear from him about the matter; he was very much interested in what was happening to Allbee.
Leventhal pressed the button for the elevator. It started up with a subdued meshing and locking of the metal doors and rose with measured slowness.
In bed later, lying near the wall, his knees pulled up and his face resting on the striped ticking of the mattress, Leventhal went over his mistakes. Some of them made him wince; others caught at his heart too savagely for wincing, and he stifled his emotion altogether and all expression, merely moving his lids downward. He did not try to spare himself; he recalled them all, from his attack on Williston tonight to the original scene in Rudiger’s office. When he came to this, he turned on his back and crossed his bare arms over his eyes.
But even as he did so, he recognized one of those deeper issues that he had failed to reach before. He was ready to accept the blame for losing his head at Dill’s. But why had he lost it? Only because of Rudiger’s abuse? No, he, he himself had begun to fear that the lowest price he put on himself was too high and he could scarcely understand why anyone should want to pay for his services. And under Rudiger’s influence he had felt this. “He made me believe what I was afraid of,” Leventhal thought, and he doubted whether Williston could have understood this. For he belonged to the professional world and was loyal to it. There was always a place for someone like him, there or elsewhere. And another man’s words and looks could never convert him into his own worst enemy. He did not have to worry about that.
Williston had not tried to justify Rudiger, true, but to Leventhal it was apparent that he himself was considered the greater offender. And looking at the incident from Rudiger’s standpoint and taking Allbee’s character into account, too, it was, after all, plausible that he, Leventhal, had been sent with instructions to make a scene. Harkavy had suspected Allbee and Rudiger of rigging it up in the first place. It had seemed reasonable to him and it seemed reasonable also to Rudiger. Only to Rudiger the suspicion was instantly true, true because it occurred to him, probably. That was the kind of man he was.
There was still another consideration — he ran his hand down his throat and through the hair of his chest which began with the shaven line above his collarbone. Had he unknowingly, that is, unconsciously, wanted to get back at Allbee? He was sure he hadn’t. The night of the party he was angry, of course. But since then, no. Truthfully, no. Williston had said that he believed him; he wondered, however, whether he really did. It was hard to tell where you stood with Williston.
10
LEVENTHAL ran into Harkavy early Sunday afternoon in a cafeteria on Fourteenth Street.
He had come in as much to escape the hot wind as to eat. The glass door shut on the dusty rush behind him, and he advanced a few steps over the green tile floor and paused, opening his mouth a little to take in the coolness of the place. The trays were on a stand nearby, and he picked one up and started toward the counter. The cashier called him back. He had forgotten to pull a check from the machine. She smiled. “Sunday hangover, or what?” But Leventhal did not respond. He turned from the machine and found Harkavy standing in his path.
“Are you hard of hearing this morning? Man, I called you three, four times.”
“Hello. Oh, the cashier was yelling too. I can’t hear everything at once.”
“You’re not very alert today, are you? Anyway, come sit with us. I’m here with some people. My brother-in-law — you know Julia’s husband, Goldstone — and some of his friends.”
“Do I know them?”
“I think you do,” said Harkavy. “Shifcart’s one of them.”
“That musician? The trumpeter?”
“Not any longer. Give the woman your order or you’ll never get waited on. No, he’s not in that line any more. He’s with a big Hollywood outfit, Persevalli and Company, the impresarios and talent farmers, or whatever you call them. And you remember Schlossberg.”
“Do I?”
“Oh, sure you do. The journalist. He writes for the Jewish papers.”
“What does he write?”
“Whatever comes to hand, I think. Nowadays, theater reminiscences — he used to be a theatrical man. But science, too, I hear. You know, I can’t read Yiddish.”
“Let me have a Swiss on rye,” said Leventhal over the counter. “Elderly man, isn’t he? Didn’t I meet him at your house with someone else?”
“That’s right; his son, whom he still supports at thirty-five.”
“Is he sick?”
“No, just looking around; hasn’t made up his mind about a vocation. There are daughters, too. Worse yet.”
“Loose?”
“Here’s your sandwich,” said Harkavy. The woman sent the plate across the counter with a spin and a rattle, and Harkavy hurried Leventhal to his table. The three men shifted their chairs to make room.
“This is an old friend of mine, Leventhal.”
“I think I used to know Mr Shifcart,” said Leventhal. “—How are you? — When I roomed with Dan, we met.”
“In the bachelor days,” Harkavy said. “Goldstone — no introduction needed. And this is Mr Schlossberg.”
Shifcart was bald and high-colored, his neck was thick and his lips small but fleshy. He said amicably, “Yes, I think I place you,” and with a spanning hand pressed on the round gold rims of his glasses. Schlossberg repeated his name sonorously but obviously did not remember him. He spoke in deep tones, not always distinctly because of his heavy breathing. He was a large old man with a sturdy gray head, hulking shoulders, and a wide, worn face; his eyes were blue and disproportionately small, and even their gaze was rather worn. But he was vigorous and he must once have been (some of his remarks evoked him, for Leventhal, as a younger man) sensual, powerful, flashy, a dandy — as his double-breasted vest and pointed shoes attested. He wore a knitted tie which had lost its shape with pulling and was made up with a bold, broad knot. Leventhal felt himself strongly drawn to him.