A Dual Inheritance (21 page)

“Paris,” said Ordway, as the elevator doors opened. “My wife prevailed on this matter. I can’t say I approve.”

“No?”

“I was there,” he said, shaking his head, as they stepped into the empty, gleaming lobby. “In the service,” he added, as if the service itself was a filthy movie.

“I didn’t realize you’d served, sir.”

He nodded, looked at his watch.

“Army?” Ed asked.

“We had a telegram from my daughter this weekend,” Mr. Ordway said irritably, as if he’d wanted to say this all day long and Ed had somehow prevented it.

“Really?” said Ed.

Mr. Ordway put his hands in his pockets. He carried no briefcase; for all Ed knew, there was no wallet in Ordway’s pocket. Maybe, for the truly wealthy, common currency was actually unnecessary.

“Apparently your friend Hugh Shipley may be arriving in Paris this week.”

“Well,” said Ed lightly, “that’s good.”

“
May
is a month between April and June.
May
has no meaning to me. Do you understand?”

“Of course I do,” said Ed.

Mr. Ordway shook his head and opened the door. The night was still hot, but the darkness itself was refreshing.

“Get some sleep,” said Mr. Ordway. “From what Jack tells me, you’re going to need rest one of these days.”

“He’s told you I’m a hard worker?”

“I don’t need Jack Stone to tell me that,” said Mr. Ordway, with a laugh. “Why do you think you’re here?”

“I—”

The blast of a gunshot rang out suddenly, and both men flinched.
“Goddamn it,”
said Ordway, visibly rattled.

“It was just a car backfiring,” said Ed, the words tumbling out. He wasn’t sure why, but he was in an instant rush to reassure him. “Of course,” said Mr. Ordway. “Of course.”

More distressing than his urge to reassure Mr. Ordway, like every other toadying underling in town, was the image of Jack Stone’s athletic little pivot.

Ed thought about telling Mr. Ordway about it now, how he’d been shot down by Jack Stone—erroneously and
stupidly
shot down. He imagined explaining his theory and how the look on Mr. Ordway’s face would shift from mild interest to deep fascination. Ordway would take him uptown in his limousine; they’d stop at his club for a celebratory drink. By tomorrow Jack Stone would be gone.

But before Ed could make a decision, Mr. Ordway gestured to his driver down the street, dismissing Ed with a nod.

“Well,” said Ed, “good night, then.”

But right before he reached his driver—who was standing at attention, waiting to open his door—Mr. Ordway turned around. “Oh, and young man—”

“Sir?” Ed realized he felt less tired than he usually did at this hour, and he attributed it all to his brand-new seersucker suit.

Mr. Ordway cleared his throat, looked Ed up and down. “This is not the Kentucky Derby.”

As Mr. Ordway climbed into the backseat of the car and the driver closed his door, Ed willed himself not to betray one iota of a reaction. It was a great suit. He looked sharp. He knew this. He even thought Polly had lightly blushed when she’d bid him good morning. But as he pictured that dark-wood office full of navy jackets, he also knew that the suit would hang in a succession of closets until he made real money. Then he’d wear it as a rich man, every summer, every chance he got. Even after he could no longer button the tortoiseshell button, because he’d eaten too much expensive food over too many years, and even after his inevitable discovery that the sight of Ed Cantowitz in a seersucker suit was, of course, just as foolish as Guy Ordway clearly thought it was.

At the tail end of August, Ed broke his finger by slamming it in the passenger door of Ira Gersten’s Imperial. He didn’t realize it was broken until the following morning, a Monday, when it was swollen and black and he called Ordway Keller and told Polly not to worry but he was taking himself to the emergency room. Bellevue was crowded with crying babies and knife wounds and such misery that Ed almost left without registering. But his finger was throbbing, so he sat in that waiting room for the entire morning, between a Negro reading charismatically aloud from a Bible while holding a long-ago melted chunk of ice in a dish towel to a nasty cut on his cheek and a flushed old geezer who kept repeating, “Jesus Mary and Joseph.” It was like some kind of mixed-up house of God, and—at his most bored and agitated—Ed almost belted
out the portion from his bar mitzvah that had mysteriously stayed in his head all these years and emerged (not comfortingly) during times of great stress, but he only kept his head down and waited.

By the time he’d been splinted and released and showered and changed, it was well after lunchtime. He ate a banana, swallowed four aspirin, took the A train downtown, and—as he struggled to both keep his finger elevated, as the beleaguered resident had suggested, and to not feel like a total schmuck with his bandaged hand held aloft—he greeted Polly and Bess, nodded at the others in action, engrossed on their telephones, and made his way to the rolltop desk that would soon be a summer memory.

He scanned his new pile of annual reports and 10-Ks, began imagining the appropriate steps toward one day acquiring his own company with its own 10-Ks—one that manufactured car parts, perhaps, maybe a retailer; why not Chrysler?—and, just as he was about to get up to take a piss (he usually waited until he could barely keep it in, so pathologically did he loathe wasting time), just when he forgot to elevate his finger and the blood rushed to it with one great painful throb—

“Bonjour,”
said a familiar voice.

“Oh my God,” he cried. Very polished, very suave.

Helen stood beside his desk in a yellow suit, holding a white leather purse with both of her hands.

“What are you doing here?” he marveled.

“I had lunch with my father.”

“Look at you!” He sprang to his feet and—poking his hand in the air as if halfheartedly hailing a cab—initiated the most ungainly hug in the history of the embrace.

“What happened to you?” she giggled.

He was laughing now, too, and not quietly. He was especially cognizant of two things: that they had an audience, and that if he didn’t get to the john soon, he was going to cause even more damage to himself than a broken finger. “C’mere,” he said. He ushered her away from the desks and toward the flowers. “You look great,” he said, “really great.”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m too skinny.”

“How was Paris?” he asked. The pressure on his bladder was terrible.

“Paris was awful.”

“Only you could possibly say that and still make it sound like you had a ball.”

“No, really. My boss was always trying to feel me up, my apartment was so hot I couldn’t sleep, and when I can’t sleep, I lose my appetite. Can you imagine being in France with no appetite? Oh, and Hugh never arrived. He’s evidently on to relief work. Says he’s done with being an observer, which I suppose might be a very good thing. But what about you? That pretty secretary told me you went to the emergency room. I think she likes you, by the way—”

“Shh—”

“Don’t worry, she can’t hear me. I’m telling you, she seemed awfully concerned.”

“I slammed my hand in a car door.”

“Oh for God’s sake. How?”

“Helen—”

“Was it a taxi?”

“No—Helen—”

“Were you drunk or something?” Her eyes widened.
“Were you with that secretary?”

“Listen—I’m so sorry—but I have to excuse myself.”

“Oh,” she said, “oh, of course.” She pushed the elevator button, and he realized she thought he was trying to get rid of her.

“Helen,” he whispered, “I have to use the bathroom.”

She smiled as if he’d just told her his biggest secret. “Well,” she said, with a flourish of a throat-clear that—for a brief moment—reminded him of her father, “as it happens, I have to run to an appointment uptown. Let me buy you a drink later. Seems like you kind of need one. There’s this new place that I read about. Or, actually, my sister read about. She’s always reading about places in
The New Yorker
and telling me to go. Poor Kitty.”

“Kitty reads
The New Yorker
?”

“Will you meet me at Grand Central?”

“Where are we going? I do have to get up for work in the morning, you know.”

“The bar is at the station. Apparently it’s done up like an old train car. Edwardian.”

“Nifty.”

“Just be there, okay?”

“See you at seven,” he said, before nearly sprinting down the hall.

The Grand Central joint was too dainty, the lace curtains and delicate glasses made him feel even more ungainly than he already felt with his broken finger, and by the time the check had arrived and Helen waved it toward her, Ed was antsy as hell. “I’ll let you pay this one time,” he said bitterly.

“Of course you will. I already insisted.”

“But no more after this.”

“We’re not on a date,” she said, finishing off her sidecar, ice clinking in the glass.

“I know,” he said.

“So you don’t have to impress me.”

“It’s not about that. Just—”

“What?”

“Forget it.”

“Come on, you hate when I do that,” she said. “Ed?”

“Listen,” he said, “I’m going to stop being a pill.”

She looked a bit too relieved to hear it. Though she’d repeated how excited she was to have a real adventure, how Paris had been a disappointment and didn’t count, and how wonderful Hugh had sounded during their one phone conversation, how
inspired
, Ed knew she was anxious about her current plan to meet him in Nairobi, a plan she had yet to tell her parents about (though she was booked on a flight leaving in less than one week’s time), and he knew that it was somehow up to him to reassure her, when of course he couldn’t possibly do that. Even if
they’d finally set a date (this January; winter wedding, Connecticut), they still weren’t married, and, besides which, what was Hugh really doing over there? And what was Helen Ordway going to do in Nairobi?

Ed looked around. This room was full of ladies. He had a feeling he was sitting in a place popular for resting after the exertions of shopping, for sipping while waiting for husbands. One husband walked in the door just then and tapped a woman’s shoulder. She let her crisply folded newspaper fall to her chair as she stood to kiss him.

“Have you thought about what you’ll do once you get there?”

Helen shrugged and stood up. “Let’s go,” she said. Sometimes she was so decisive, and it was always a surprise. “And no more talking about money. I want to see you plenty before I go. We can’t let Kitty down, now, can we? This is the greatest city in the world and you’re my favorite friend in town,
and
you have a broken finger. Okay?”

“Okay,” said Ed. “Hey, okay.”

From different bars, every evening that week, they wrote postcards to Hugh. They wondered if he’d ever receive them. Ed discovered that a brandy Alexander was nectar of the gods. How embarrassing, they both agreed; he couldn’t exactly take a girl out and order himself a brandy Alexander. They ate Chinese food for dinner, little dumplings and noodles and cold, weak beer. They walked and walked, earning the understanding of how each neighborhood in Manhattan fit together.

Helen: “If you could live anywhere, where would it be?”

He pointed at an apartment on Park Avenue—limestone adorned with a broad navy awning, white-gloved doorman standing by.

Helen: “Typical.”

But he could tell she wasn’t disappointed.

And then their last night, Friday: something called lobster fra diavolo, someplace in Greenwich Village, his mouth afire but, for the first time, not minding such a kick, in fact suddenly understanding why people liked, even loved, spicy food. Bottles of Chianti: first to toast to Helen’s trip, to her reunion with Hugh, and then to dull the diavolo, and
then because the owner brought them a dusty bottle they had to try and also some kind of pastry exploding with cream. Next door down a narrow stairwell: horns, a snare drum, and a tall regal woman, her big eyes closed, singing,
Ill wind
—sequins over skin like sparkles on tar, those glitter-city streets—
ill wind, no good
.

Helen nudged him awake when the set was over, with a touch that knew unexpected sleep called for tenderness. As she took a cigarette from a familiar silver case, Ed reached for the matchbook between them. He struck a match and she leaned forward; he’d never found a ritual so reassuring.

“To be honest,” she finally said, “I was a bit nervous that we’d run out of things to talk about.”

“When?” He was tired and finally felt it, all those long days, all that working and not sleeping enough; he just wanted to put his head down on a cool dark surface, this table between them, the floor at Helen’s feet, or maybe the singer’s bare shoulder in the corner; she was having a drink and smiling like there was no trouble, never had been.

“We’d never spent any time together. Without Hugh, I mean.”

“I think we’ve done okay,” said Ed, still looking at the singer.

“Then,” she said, “would you mind looking at me while I’m talking?”

He twisted up his mouth and tipped his chair back precariously. He did what she asked. Her lipstick was worn off and she looked mussed up and radiant, like it was dawn already and everything had already been done, every last shameful thing, and these terrible constricting necessary clothes were strewn across an anonymous floor. “What time is it?” he asked.

“One,” she said, biting her lip.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” There was a green light above the doorway next to the stage, and when the singer passed through it Ed wondered about what went on behind that door. He also realized that he didn’t care nearly as much about anything else as he cared about Helen. Ed looked at her through the cloud of smoke.

“I’m worried,” Helen said. “I guess I’m worried.”

“Okay,” said Ed. “What about?”

“I want to tell you something.”

“So tell me.”

“I’m not sure I should.” She glanced up at the low ceiling. “But now I have to. Don’t I?”

“You don’t.”

“Thank you.”