“Saint Croix,” she said. “We have a house there.”
Good God. “We do?” And what more wonders lay ahead, yet to be unwrapped?
“We’ll phone them in the morning to open it,” Liz said, “and we’ll fly down tomorrow afternoon.”
So I’d be going to the Caribbean after all; wherever he was, I hoped Volpinex was pleased. “Fine,” I said.
55
We had identical Air France bags, many-pocketed and pale blue. Mine had been Betty’s, but as Liz pointed out, “Why let it go to waste?”
Monday morning, while she phoned the servants in Saint Croix and the airline at Kennedy, I went back, possibly for the last time, to my little black office in the garment district, carrying my new blue bag. Gloria was typing away, and had the usual pile of outrageous mail and phone messages stacked up. “Forget all that,” I told her. “Remember that rabble of ungrateful illustrators that wanted to steal the company from me, couple of years ago?”
Gloria nodded. “In lieu of payment,” she said. “I always thought they were crazy, myself.”
“They had a lawyer,” I said. “Look him up in the file, prepare a letter for my signature, no date, saying, ‘I don’t ask to be insulted. Mine was a serious question.’ I’ll sign it.”
She frowned at me. “You do carry a grudge, don’t you?”
“Not exactly. This afternoon, call that lawyer and ask him if his company of turncoats is still interested in making a deal. If he says yes, ask him to forward the details of their proposition. When you get it, put a date on that response of mine and send it to him with all copies of his proposition. Any time he calls, I’m out of town but expected back shortly, and you don’t know where I can be reached.”
Gloria said, “You wouldn’t really quit, would you?”
“Life goes on.”
“And I go back to Met Life? That isn’t fair! I’ve given you the worst years of my life!”
“Don’t dramatize, Gloria,” I said, and went on to the inner office, where I collected my emergency cache of ten-dollar bills from behind the “Kiss me again” plaque, then turned my attention to the desk. Was there anything I wanted with me for an indefinite stay in the Caribbean?
A bottom drawer revealed an extra glasses case; startled, I stuffed it out of sight into the wastebasket. Bart’s glasses had been consumed with his body, and Art would never wear glasses again.
There were, however, some useful items: my passport, my birth certificate, my immunization record. And what was this on the desk top, this large manila envelope with its combination of pleasant and unpleasant associations?
Ah, yes: the thesis of Linda Ann Margolies. In all the activity of the last week or so, I hadn’t given the thing a thought. Now at last I opened it, and withdrew a sheaf of Xeroxed manuscript pages, plus a brief letter. The letter said:
Chief,
At last. I have the plans for the new naval torpedo, and Admiral Von Heffelwitz has the clap. For the glory of France!
Cherie
Enc: Stolen plans for naval torpedo.
Right. I slipped the stolen plans into the Air France bag, for later reading ’neath a tropical sun.
Gloria wouldn’t talk to me when I left.
56
Snoozed with champagne, Liz snoozed as we sailed above the Atlantic. Washington, D.C., was on the horizon to our right, if anybody cared; nobody cared, at least not up front here in first class. This half-empty 747 was taking us all to Puerto Rico, where Liz and I would switch to some smaller mud jumper for the hop over to St. Croix. For now, the majority of my fellow passengers, somnolent with lunchtime wine, were sagging in their seats and waiting for the movie.
I couldn’t quite sag, not all the way. We had no baggage other than our two Air France bags, now tucked companionably together beneath the seats in front of us, exactly where I would have preferred to tuck my feet. “I can’t stand waiting for luggage,” Liz had announced. “What do we need there anyway? A toothbrush and a bathing suit.” So I had to keep my legs bent.
The stewardess came by with a fresh rum and tonic, gave it to me, and glanced over at Liz, pillowing her head against the plastic window. “Is your friend comfortable?”
“Very seldom,” I said. “What’s the movie today?”
“Guolpo, The Reluctant Chihuahua, with Fred Murray.”
“Ah.”
The stew went on her way, dispensing bloody Marys and bullshots to the off-season spenders, and I prepared myself for departure to the upstairs lounge. I would take Linda Ann Margolies’s thesis with me. Where better to read a master’s thesis on humor than the upstairs lounge of a 747?
The envelope jutted up near the top of the anonymous mélange in the bag. I unzipped, reached in, pulled the thing out, zipped again, restowed the bag, and left my seat. And not a moment too soon: the movie screen was being drawn out of the ceiling at the forward end of the compartment. Turning my back, I climbed the steep spiral staircase and found the lounge unoccupied except for another stew, who was setting out drinkables on a counter and who shouted above the plane noise, “Hello!”
“Hello!”
“Want a drink?”
“Got one!” I shouted, and displayed the glass in my right hand and the manila envelope in my left.
She smiled broadly, then shouted, “Did the movie start?”
“Just about to!”
“I’ll be back! I just love the part with Bill Dana and Cher on the roller coaster!” And off she went.
I chose a seat with a window and a handy table and lots of legroom, sat down, put my drink to one side, and placed the envelope on my lap.
It was Volpinex’s envelope.
The hairs on my forearms recoiled from my shivering skin. I didn’t move, I didn’t breathe, I didn’t blink. The droning rush of airplane filled my ears.
It was Volpinex’s envelope. There on the upper left corner was the printed name and address of his law firm: Leek, Conchell & McPoo, 7 Broad Street, New York, N.Y. 10001. I’d noticed that name and address when I was burning this—
Burning it.
Betty’s name and address were centered, as before. Elisabeth Kerner and so on; it blurred before my eyes.
This is a nightmare. I, too, have fallen asleep, overfull of drink, relaxing at last from the tensions of August, and my worst fears have come to me in a nightmare. I am not awake, this is not Volpinex’s envelope — which I burned burned burned — and it does not contain the proofs of Bart’s nonexistence. I am asleep, I am having a nightmare.
It contained the proofs. I opened the envelope, undoing the metal clip at the end, and found inside a second manila envelope, not quite so large, with a note attached. On Leek, Conchell & McPoo letterhead stationery, some Uriah Heep named Gordon Alworthy was writing to Liz — Liz, not Betty — to say the enclosed envelope had been in the confidential Kerner file in Ernest Volpinex’s desk. The said Alworthy, having been for some time the said Volpinex’s assistant on the Kerner and similar matters (and the said Alworthy undoubtedly now snuffing around to take the said Volpinex’s place), the said Alworthy was pleased to forward the said envelope (unread, need it be said) to the said Miss Kerner, for disposal as she best saw fit.
And inside the said envelope? The familiar photostats, Xeroxes of the familiar documents, the whole grim familiar package.
Eyes. I looked up, and Liz was standing beside my chair, looking down at me. The blurry red mark on her forehead from sleeping against the window did not detract from the coldness of her eyes or the grimness of her expression. “Give it back,” she said.