If I Should Die Before I Die (36 page)

“The family, Bob,” she answered, “has been a sick joke for as long as you or I can remember.”

She too, it turned out, had a proposal in writing. She took it out of the black portfolio and put it on the table in front of her brothers. I learned later that it was based on whatever her brothers' offer turned out to be, prorated to match the magazine division's share of the company's revenues. Fair enough, it seemed to me. But then, like Sally said, it wasn't about money.

Young Bob asked for a recess, and the three brothers left the room, followed by their personal attorneys, followed by Doug McClintock and, at a signal from McClintock, Hank Rand. The Firm, it seemed, had decided not to be left out.

At some point in the wait that followed, the Counselor wrote the figure $7,000 on his pad and pushed it in front of me. That, he said, was a conservative guess at what Young Bob's recess had cost the family so far in legal fees. A little later, he crossed out the 7 and changed it to a 10. Then I saw Sally look at her watch, and she sent one of her attorneys out with the message that she would stay no more than another fifteen minutes. The attorney came back immediately, accompanied by Stafford Magister, who asked Sally if she would join them outside, and Doug McClintock, looking worried, who did likewise with the Counselor.

Sally Magister left with them, the Counselor too. And Roy Barger started to sweat. Maybe he thought the Magisters would pull the offer if Sally refused. Maybe he thought that might mean a lawsuit, possibly a lucrative one, but who knew what his client would decide? By this time, the stock market had closed for the day. The last quote on Magister, we learned, had been 42 and 1/8, and Roy Barger could do the arithmetic. He—or his client—stood to make millions. But the decision was being made outside his control, and this drove him crazy.

The Magisters never did come back to the conference room. I guess they felt they didn't have to. All the power people, after all, were outside, and only the spear carriers (namely the attorneys) were left behind.

They left it to Doug McClintock to make the announcement.

“Gentlemen,” he said from the doorway, the Counselor towering next to him, “Bob Magister has asked me to thank you all for coming and to tell you that he and his sister have reached agreement. The Magister magazine division will be sold to Sally Magister. They've left it to us,” with a McClintock sigh, “to draw up the paperwork.”

And so it ended.

CHAPTER

20

For the record, the Magister brothers did have backing. It came, sign of the times, from overseas, and by the end of the following year, the German-based communications conglomerate which had financed the family buyout had swallowed up all the remaining outstanding shares in the company.

The Firm, nevertheless, has managed to hang in there. They still represent the so-called Magister Division and are angling—“positioning themselves” is the phrase they use—for more of the new owners' legal business. On the rare occasions when I talk to him, I like to ask Hank Rand how his German's coming, but he takes teasing less well since he's made senior partner.

Another prediction come true: Sally Magister never did stand trial. Her oldest son, as far as I know, remains what people call a “vegetable,” although I've never understood the term. Vegetables, it seems to me, lead healthy and useful lives, if short ones; Vincent Angus Halloran will never be of use to anyone, and he died long before he died.

I've left the personal parts for last.

Roy Barger mentioned, that last afternoon at the Firm, that Margie wanted to see me. She took to phoning me too. I ducked her for about a week—I guess I'd had enough of the Magister clan—but one dark afternoon, in the trough between Thanksgiving and Christmas, her call found me at my desk.

“Philippe!” she said, with the French pronunciation. “Haven't you gotten my messages?”

I said something about having been awfully busy.

“Busy with what? Busy with women, I would bet. But I must see you before I go away. Why don't you come to dinner tonight?”

The difference between dinner and supper, she explained provocatively, was that dinner left you with the rest of the evening free.

I told her I was sorry but that I had a date, which was true. She asked who it was. I said nobody she knew. Finally we agreed to meet for a drink that same afternoon. I suggested the Madison Avenue bar we'd been to before. No, she thought that was bad luck. The Pierre, she thought. The little bar at the Pierre. That was much more romantic. If I'd give her forty-five minutes, she'd meet me at the Pierre. Her treat, she insisted.

I walked down Madison, then Fifth, in the enveloping gloom of those shortened afternoons and waited for her in the Pierre bar. She came rushing in some fifteen minutes later, in a chic black cloth coat with a fur collar high around her neck and her cheeks rouged either by the cold or makeup. She flung her arms around my neck and kissed me on the mouth. She'd done something to her hair. The bangs were gone, the black hair swept back off her forehead. The full-face look, I thought, made her older but somehow more beautiful.

We sat at a little table near the window, and she held my hand while she told me about her plans. I'd thought, over the phone, that she was just going away for the holidays, but she meant more than that. In fact, she'd already put her apartment on the market.

“I'm leaving New York, Philippe,” she said. “There's nothing here for me anymore. It's not that I made a mistake—I love New York—but it's over, all that. I'm going back to the south of France. I have that house there, you know, Bob's house, but,” making a face, “I'm going to sell that one too. But the Côte d'Azur is marvelous in winter.”

“It sounds like you're cashing out,” I said.

“Yes, cash. One can do everything with cash. Tell me, Philippe, what would you do if you suddenly had all the cash in the world, all you could ever imagine needing? What would you do?”

“I don't know,” I said with a laugh. “That's one thing I've never had to lose sleep over.”

“Of course you haven't. Do you think it was any different for me? But imagine yourself with all Margie's cash. What would you do?”

“I don't know. Probably I'd travel, go to all the places I've never seen. I'd want some time to figure out how to spend the rest of it.”

“Exactly,” she said. “This is exactly what I am going to do now.” Then, squeezing my hand and eyeing me excitedly: “But here is the thing, Philippe. Why don't you come spend it with me?”

I took it as a joke, spur of the moment, but she looked serious about it. One hundred percent serious, in fact. I was sufficiently taken aback to blurt out the first thing that came into my head:

“Why me, Margie? I'd have thought I was too old for you.”

I saw her wince a little, but her eyes held mine.

“Touché,”
she said. “But you know, ever since what happened, I've thought and thought about that. About Vincent. The others too but mostly Vincent. I have asked myself: Margie, Margie, what did you think you were doing? And do you know what I think? Well, I was trying to help him, yes. Somehow I knew he was in big trouble. But more than this, I think I was trying to stay young too.

“Now, though,” she went on, “that's over. It was a terrible time for me, believe me. Terrible like a bad dream. But what Sally did woke me up from the bad dream. I'm a different person now. I think I'm ready for what you Americans call a ‘mature relationship.' With,” smiling at me now, “someone my own age. Someone such as you, my dear Philippe Revere.”

She rushed on before I could say anything. Why was it such a crazy idea? What was wrong with people acting on an impulse? We would have all the money we could ever imagine wanting. For two people who had worked most of their lives, we would never have to work again if we didn't want to. We could go anywhere, live anywhere, buy anything, do anything. Do nothing. She thought she would love doing nothing with me.

She tried, as she described how it would be, to gauge my reaction. Apparently she misread it.

“What will happen if it
doesn't
work, is that what you're worried about? Why, that's so simple, darling. We'll have Charles or Roy work up an agreement, they'll know what to say. If it doesn't work and we split up, then you will still have far more money than you'll ever have slaving for your stupid Charles. But it
will
work, darling. I know it will. I can be wonderful for a man, the right man, believe me, Philippe.”

I did believe that, and I told her so. I also believed there had been times before, and maybe there would be again, when an offer like Margie's would have had me running to the nearest drugstore to buy a toothbrush and then onto the plane, no looking back, and I told her that too. But the timing was wrong, at least for that season.

I remember standing outside the Pierre with her, after I'd succeeded in paying the bar bill. It was dark, cold, and the avenue was jammed with taxis plying the rush-hour trade. She'd asked me to walk her home anyway, and we headed up the sidewalk, her arm tucked inside mine.

“So there is someone else, is there?” she asked, matching her stride to mine.

“Yes, in a way,” I answered.

“What do you mean, ‘in a way'? Is there or isn't there?”

“Yes, there is.”

“Well, tell me about her, this lucky other woman.”

“Her name is Laura,” I said.

“Yes? And is she pretty?”

“I think so.”

“And how old?”

“A little younger than I am.”

“And is she rich too?”

“No,” I said, laughing. “She works for a living.”

“And where does she work?”

“For an advertising agency.”

“Well, what's so wonderful about all that?” she asked irritably. “What is it then that makes you love her?”

I didn't know that I did, at least up till that minute.

By this time, we'd reached the canopy over the entrance to her building. She turned to face me under it, taking both my hands. The rouge was in her cheeks and the smell of her perfume rising from the fur collar of her coat.

“Why don't you come upstairs anyway, just for a little while?”

In spite of myself, she must have read my expression. I'd realized, or thought I'd realized, that not all the money in the world could keep Margie Magister from the fear of being alone. Realized it, I should add, because I knew the feeling well. And so, just for that minute, I felt sorry for her.

She read that all right. The dancing light went out of her eyes.

“Good-bye, Philippe,” she said tersely. And turned and was gone, and I haven't heard from her since.

The Laura Hugger part.

Like I said, I'd called her just before Thanksgiving to learn that she'd already gone off for the weekend. I spent the nothing weekend as described and also, which I haven't mentioned, got through my own short stint as a celebrity: the guy who'd helped the police crack the Pillow Killer and In Memoriam cases, etc., etc.

Laura called back the following Monday and missed me, and I called her back and missed her, and back and forth we went, answering machine style, till one night I found her at home.

“So how's the famous Phil Revere?” she said for openers.

“Not so famous,” I answered.

“What's wrong? From what I've seen, you've practically become an urban hero overnight.”

“Maybe that's what's wrong,” I said. “Other than that I'd like to see you.”

She didn't respond to that one.

“How was your Thanksgiving?” she said.

“Nowhere. Yours?”

“Equally nowhere.”

“Really? I heard you'd gotten away.”

“True.”

“Well? Not alone, I assume. Who was the guy?”

“Never mind,” she said.

“That bad, huh?”

She started to laugh. Then I did too. Then I said:

“Can I come over?”

“When?”

“Right now.”

“But it's the middle of the night, practically.”

“So what? We've got six hours left. Seven if I hurry.”

“You're crazy.”

“No, I'm not crazy. I think I was for a while, but I'm not now.”

So we started up again, as we had other times, and I took to sleeping most nights at Laura's again, carrying my jogging gear in a plastic bag so as to make the dawn run and be able to start the new day from home. Only this time it was different from before, somehow, and I think we both knew it. Call it caution; call it tenderness even. Or maybe age, the sense of two people growing older and finding themselves together again in spite of everything. Or maybe at that it was nothing more than the look in Margie Magister's eyes that evening I've described; the fear of being left alone again, and Christmas was coming, and for God's sake please let's not spoil it this time.

Was that enough?

I guess not, at that.

The night I came home to Laura's after meeting Margie at the Pierre bar, I found myself, to my surprise, suggesting we set up housekeeping together.

Second surprise: she turned me down.

Which leaves the Counselor's Wife.

It's no accident, she'd say, that I've left her for last. She'd say there are no accidents in interpersonal relationships, only unresolved conflicts.

She'd even say it was because I was in love with her, a little.

How do I know what she'd say?

Easy.

I think I've mentioned the feeling that we were avoiding each other. Well, once she came back from the Hamptons, that became, I'll admit, pretty much a one-way street. A couple of times she even invited me to have lunch with her, but I begged off. Once I had another appointment, the other time a backlog of work I was determined to get behind me. Both true enough. For some reason, it seemed to be my season for people inviting me to meals.