40
Ernest Volpinex, please.”
“Who shall I say is calling?”
“Art Dodge,” I said, “Tell him I’m not on the plane.”
“One moment, please.”
I was briefly again in my office before heading north to some tranquil hideaway. Lake Placid, maybe; the sound of it was exactly what I had in mind. A placid time out, a rest period between halves. Perhaps on Saturday or Sunday I’d call Betty and reluctantly permit Bart to be drawn into a reconciliation scene.
“Volpinex here.”
“Ah, yes,” I said. “And this is Art Dodge, still here.”
“My secretary said you wanted to talk about an airplane,” he said.
“Oh, really? You’re going to be innocent?”
“I do dislike hearing your voice, Dodge,” he said. “If there’s a point to this call, would you mind stating it?”
“I married Liz at three o’clock this afternoon.”
There was a short electric silence. I waited through it, smiling at the phone, and finally Volpinex said, in a quiet thoughtful voice, “I see.”
“So you can call off your goons,” I told him, “and forget about airplane trips to St. Martin.”
He said nothing.
This time I didn’t wait him out. I paused long enough to give him a chance to speak if he had anything to say, and then I added, “You can forget everything in fact. It’s too late.”
“Perhaps,” he said. Still quiet, still thoughtful.
A little chill touched the back of my neck; I did my best to ignore it. “Perhaps? I told you, Volpinex, I’m married. Signed, sealed, and delivered.” And then, remembering Ralph’s having told me Volpinex was a widower whose wife had died on vacation in Maine, I added, “And I’m not going to Maine.”
The coldest voice I’ve ever heard said, “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean it’s all over. You’ve had it.”
Click.
“Volpinex?” I knew he’d hung up, but I jiggled the phone cradle anyway. “Volpinex?” But he was actually gone, so reluctantly I too hung up, and sat there a minute frowning at the telephone.
The conversation had not been as satisfactory as I’d anticipated. The chill still hovered at the back of my neck, and the sound of Volpinex’s cold voice still whispered in my ear.
I found myself rethinking my plan to drive north and spend tonight alone. A friendly face, a warm body, might be a much better idea after all.
But whom? Not Betty. Linda Ann Margolies? I could phone her, take her out to dinner, see what happened next. We’d already had sex, right here on this floor, so if she wasn’t busy tonight there wasn’t any reason—
The phone rang.
“Hello?”
“So there you are.”
“Candy?”
“You have too many women, Art, is that it? You can’t recognize voices any more?”
“I only recognize your voice when you’re sweet to me.”
“When I’m sweet to you!” Her shock and outrage nearly melted the plastic of the phone.
“Sweetheart,” I said, “I’ve been so busy lately, it’s just—”
“I’ll just bet you have.”
“Some day I’ll tell you all a—”
“Make it today.”
It was now shortly after six, approaching dinnertime. I said, “Candy, even if I had time to come out to Fair Harbor, I’d never make the last—”
“I’m in New York.”
Flashback: vision of Candy entering this selfsame building as I was exiting it with Betty after the mirror trick. “Ah,” I said. “You’re in New York.”
“I left Ralph.”
“Oh, Candy, think what you’re saying.”
“I wrote him a letter, Art, I told him everything.”
“A letter? To Ralph?”
“Everything, Art.”
“Candy, are you sure you—”
“I’ll show you the carbon. Take me to dinner and I’ll show you the carbon, and we can talk.”
Good God. An hysterical or overemotional woman at this juncture would have been bad enough, but a woman who tells all to her husband in a letter and makes a carbon is neither hysterical nor overemotional. No. Such a woman is a woman with something in mind. I said, carefully, “Candy, if you want to talk over your problems with me for old time’s sake, I’ll be hap—”
“Old time’s sake? We had a lot more than old times before you started running around with that rich bitch.”
“Candy,” I said, “I hate to bring this up, but the reason we haven’t seen so much of one another lately is because you threw me out. Remember that?”
“We’ll talk about that, too, Art.”
“Um. What does Ralph say, Candy?”
“About what?”
“About the letter, what else?”
“He hasn’t seen it yet. I’m going to mail it to him tonight.”
“Oh,” I said.
“After you and I have our talk,” she said.
“I see.”
“You always were pretty quick, Art.”
Candy hardly counted as a friendly face, but God knew she was a warm body. So much for Linda Ann Margolies — too bad. I said, “Where are you now, dear?”
“At home.” Meaning the apartment on West End Avenue in the eighties.
“I’ll come by for you at seven?”
“Have the doorman buzz me,” she said. “I’ll come down.”
“You don’t want me to come in, Candy?”
“First,” she said firmly, “we’ll talk.”
41
We had dinner in the library, a Broadway restaurant near her apartment. I’d asked immediately to see the carbon of this famous letter, but she’d said, “Let’s not spoil our appetites with a lot of argument,” so we’d had to go through the entire meal, spoiling my digestion if not my appetite, and at last over coffee she took a well-folded document from her purse and handed it over to me.
Two sheets of paper, typed. Sighing, convinced I was not going to be happy with this letter, I began to read:
Dearest Ralph,
Darling, I want you to know that no matter what happens from this point in time forward in time I have never lost respect and love for you and I never will lose that respect and that love.
However, I have come to the distraught conclusion that it can no longer be possible for you Ralph and me Candice to continue to live together as husband and wife. The gulf mat stretches between us cannot be bridged by our best intentions no matter how good those intentions of ours might be.
We are drifting apart, my darling, and I no longer see any possible way or circumstance in which we could drift back together again. Our problems of sexual and emotional incompatibility are simply too deep for us to be able to climb over them and find one another in the valley of love on the other side.
You know that I have asked you repeatedly to see Doctor Zeeberger about your premature ejaculations and your occasional impotence and your general inability to satisfy me in the conduct of our conjugal affairs in the bedroom. I want to be honest with you, Ralph, now more than ever, and I do know that you have been to see Doctor Zeeberger, but I do not believe you could possibly have explained the situation to him or he would not have said it was me he wanted to talk to. I do not have premature ejaculations. I do not have occasional impotence. In fact, Ralph, if you will recall and be honest with yourself and with me, you will know that I have given you every possible verbal assistance and reassurance on this subject, saying such things to you as, “I’m sure it’ll be just fine this time,” and, “Don’t get tense, sweetheart,” every single time we go to bed together.
Ralph, I have a confession to make. I am a woman, with the needs and desires of a woman, and in my frustration and anguish I have turned to another man. Yes, you know him, Ralph, he is your dearest friend and mine, Art Dodge. In his arms I have found the fulfillment that fled me within my marriage. Art and I have had intercourse on a regular basis for over a year now, in a variety of settings. I am enclosing photostats of four motel registers where we registered as Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Dodge.