Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (36 page)

Thunder and lightning … Yes, indeed, oh Khan, I can feel the earth tremble beneath your tread. You reveal your heart, oh Celestial One, and rain mourns on ten thousand roofs. From your silken pavilion on the Persian plains, oh Splendid One, falcon on wrist and jewelled dagger at hip, gaze you at the blue domes of Samarkand which soon will fall…

‘Have you ever had any experience with unions?’ he was asking.

‘No,’ I said.

‘How old are you?’

‘Thirty.’

‘That’s Jonah’s age and he’s never had experience with unions, either. You met Jonah?’

‘I had a drink with him.’

‘That,’ he said, with a little harsh laugh, ‘is a very easy thing to do with Jonah. …’

He put his drink on the silver tray on the desk and poured more whiskey into it from a cut-glass decanter.

‘May I look at that?’ I asked.

‘Certainly,’ he said.

The decanter was of clear glass, heavy, with a six-inch stopper, and as I turned it in my hand the flutings and incisions refracted the light and sparkled like a mass of diamonds. It was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. ‘It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen,’ I said, putting it down on the tray.

‘Really? Well now, not many people notice it.’

‘It’s magnificent,’ I said. ‘It looks like a Steigel.’

He stared at me open-mouthed, his drink arrested half-way to his lips. ‘You know that?’ he said. ‘Nobody ever recognized that before. Is glass your business?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘We used to have one like that. It had the same big pontil mark. … No, by God,’ I said abruptly, ‘we didn’t have one like that at all. It was a vinegar cruet. It used to sit in a caster on my grandmother’s table. I dropped it one day and broke it. …’

‘And you wound up in the woodshed. …’

‘I would have if it hadn’t been for my grandmother,’ I said.

He laughed softly, as if the thought was pleasantly nostalgic. ‘Well, that’s the proper function of a grandmother – to protect the grandson. I don’t remember mine,’ he said. ‘You’re fortunate to remember yours. …’

I looked away from the decanter and the multitudinous refractions that stabbed at my memory. …

‘I’ll see that you get the decanter,’ he said. ‘I want you to have it.’

‘No!’ I said, and when he snapped his head looking at me, surprise in his face, I realized that I had spoken involuntarily. I was sorry I had noticed the decanter, I was sorry I had mentioned it, I was sorry I had picked it up. I had not known then. It was that girl, that goddamn girl with the white face and the black hair who had broken into my sanctuary again and uncovered more of the fetishes. This had to be ended. I did not want the damned decanter. I was sorry I had noticed it. I had to get the hell out of here. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t take it. …’

There was a single rap at the door and it opened with no invitation from Ezra Dobson and Rushing came in with another silver tray that held a martini bowl and a martini glass.

‘Put it there,’ Ezra Dobson said.

Rushing put the tray on the desk and stirred the martini with a glass spoon as Ezra Dobson regarded me closely; and then Rushing poured and I reached for the glass. He picked up my half-empty glass and went out.

I toasted Ezra Dobson with my fresh drink and he toasted me with his and we drank and then he said: ‘Well, we had a hard time finding you. …’

‘I would have been glad to help if I had known,’ I said. ‘I thought this was all over.’

‘So did I. I had just about given up hope that Midge would ever find a man who could interest her.’

‘I assure you that I did nothing to encourage it,’ I said.

He took a sip of his drink and gave me a paternal glance. ‘Even if you were trying, you couldn’t have picked a better way than to show a complete disregard for money,’ he said. ‘Until then, I frankly don’t think she was very keen about you.’

‘You’ve both got me wrong,’ I said thinly. ‘I don’t have a disregard for money. I have a disregard only for your money.’

‘Good tactics,’ he said, nodding. ‘Very good …’

The son-of-a-bitch. … ‘They are obvious tactics to use on the daughter of a man who is as rich as you are,’ I said. I took some of the martini and stood up. ‘Unfortunately, I don’t seem able to convince you that you’ve got nothing I want – daughter, money or a job. I’m very busy, Mister Dobson. If you’ll excuse me now. …’

I put the glass on the martini tray and nodded good night and turned to leave.

‘Keep your shirt on,’ he said. ‘I’m just as busy as you are.’

‘You’re probably busier. And you’re much more important. You keep people waiting and they feel flattered. I keep them waiting and they get mad. I’ve got people waiting on me now.’

‘Tell ’em you were with me,’ he said.

The pomposity, the royal arrogance of the son-of-a-bitch. ‘And you think that’ll square me?’

‘I know it,’ he said. ‘Now, look here, Murphy,’ he said. ‘I had you come here because I wanted to talk to you about Midge. I don’t want to impose on you, but I would like for you to listen. These are the only free minutes I’m going to have until God knows when – and I won’t have very many of them. I’ve got people on the way out here now. I’m up to me neck in a strike – a big one …’ He took another drink and put his glass on the big brown blotter and sat down. He put his hands on the solid arms of the chair and lowered himself slowly, like heavy cargo, letting his arms take the full weight of his body. He had now stopped working at the job of being Conqueror. The thunder and lightning had been turned off, the jewelled dagger and falcon had been put away. He was just a tired old man.…‘And I’ve also got a daughter I’m interested in saving. I thought she would be off my hands by now, I thought one of the dozen men she’s known would have taken over the responsibility. But they only wanted the responsibility of the money, not the responsibility of the woman. That made them subservient. You cannot do that with Midge. The minute she dominates you, you are through. She’s got to have a man she respects. …’

‘She’s young, she’ll find one,’ I said.

He took a drink and shook his head slowly, leaning back in his chair, holding his glass with both hands. ‘I can’t wait. I can’t run the risk,’ he said. ‘She’s too far overboard now. You must know that.’

‘Know what?’ I asked.

‘You’ve had dates with her every night for two weeks,’ he said. ‘You know what. Her mania for fakirs and crackpots and new forms of religion and revelatory thought and all the rest of that junk. It’s ruining her life – if it hasn’t already ruined it. She keeps on this way and she’ll wind up in an insane asylum. You think I want that to happen? I can’t break her away from this stuff, psychiatrists can’t because she won’t co-operate but I think maybe you can. I think maybe you can wake her up. …’

Jesus Christ, I thought. Jesus Christ… ‘Are you proposing to turn Margaret over to me?’ I managed to ask.

‘Yes. Exactly.’

‘Don’t you think she should have something to say about this?’

‘She had said it. That’s why you are here now. …’

‘But you don’t know anything about me,’ I said. ‘I’m a total stranger to you. I might have a wife already. I might be a thief. I might be an embezzler. I might be a convict. I might be a murderer. …’

‘When a drowning man reaches for a piece of driftwood, he does not worry about getting splinters in his hand. I don’t care what you are or what you’ve been. I can find out all that later. And I’m not particularly concerned with how you feel about Midge. I’m only concerned with how she feels about you. …’

‘I’m very honored,’ I said. ‘But I don’t think I can help.’

He took a drink. ‘I don’t like to throw my weight around, Murphy, but may I point out that a personal relationship with me might have certain advantages to an ambitious man?’

‘I’m sure of that. …’

‘Then you must also know that I can hinder as well as help. …’

‘I’m sure of that, too,’ I said. I tried to keep the rage out of my face and my voice, but it was no use. This son-of-a-bitch … ‘Goddamn it, by what right do you insert yourself into my own personal destiny? All I want from you is to be left alone!’

‘You married her once,’ he said.

‘We were drunk,’ I said. ‘I didn’t even know who she was.’

‘You know now. …’

‘You’ve got nothing I want,’ I said, ‘but to be left alone.’

He idly turned the glass in the palm of his hand. ‘Just how high does your disregard for my money go?’ he asked. ‘Does it reach to a million dollars?’

I put my arms across the back of the chair and looked at him, incredulous. I had heard but I did not believe.

‘I will start you off with a million dollars,’ he said. ‘Outright. One million dollars. No strings, no books to balance, no questions asked. All I want you to do is give me your word as a man that you’ll do everything you can to restore Margaret to a normal and healthy mental and physical life. And if you succeed…’

This was not real. This could not be real. This was the reading of a newly discovered Gilbert and Sullivan manuscript.

‘One million dollars in cash …’

He had said it again. I was staggered. One million dollars! What I could do with one million dollars and his influence but I would have to take Margaret too, Margaret the symbol, the bridge to the past, Margaret, who would always be jabbing at those memories, weakening the regression more and more and more until, until… ‘No,’ I said. Thank you very much, but no. And now I must say good night. …’

I nodded politely, waiting for him to nod or say good night, but he just looked at me, and I turned and walked towards the door.

‘Before you do,’ he said, ‘I think you should see this …’

I stopped and turned around. He was taking something out of the desk drawer. I thought it was a check and then I saw that it wasn’t a check, but a piece of paper. I went back to the desk. He handed me the paper.

It was the annulment petition I had signed.

‘When I found out how Midge felt about you, I thought I’d better hold that up,’ he said. ‘So, you see you’re still married.’

I felt a quick cold nocturnal wind on my face and I got a whiff of the
Huele de Noche
and I saw again the undulating curtains at the slightly raised windows in that old parlor, and I dropped the paper and leaned on the desk to keep from falling, dimly aware that he was watching me, but much more aware that I was revealing to him a fatal weakness, but not being able to hide it…

‘Think it over,’ he was saying. ‘Let me know tomorrow.’

The colored refractions from the decanter bombarded me, taking me back – and I walked out on legs that were not mine.

… Coining down the hall towards me, from the front door, were three men. As they approached I saw that they were Rushing and two men in blue uniforms and then I saw that these were police uniforms and then I saw the men in the uniforms. They were Webber and Reece.

I moved away from the library door, giving them room to enter. The only sign that Webber recognized me was the narrowing of his eyes, but Reece was very surprised. I had no reaction to the sight of them, no reaction to their uniforms, although I had not seen them in uniforms before.

‘Mister Jonah would like to see you, sir,’ Rushing said. ‘If you will wait a moment…’

He rapped on the library door and opened it, speaking to Ezra Dobson inside. ‘You said directly the officers arrived, sir…’

‘Show them in,’ Ezra Dobson’s voice said.

Still watching me, Webber and Reece went into the library, and I heard Ezra Dobson’s voice, saying, ‘Hello, Charlie,’ and then Rushing closed the heavy door and said to me: ‘This way, sir.’

All this, his words to me, his words to Ezra Dobson, Ezra Dobson’s words, the movement, the uniforms, were superimposed on my eyes and ears like bas-relief; I heard and saw and understood, but my reflexes were still paralysed and I followed the tall stiff butler up the stairs, down the hall, with as little volition as one horse follows another on a carousel, to a door which he opened for me.

‘Rushing?’ Jonah’s voice called.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Mister Murphy there?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Paul – come on back …’

I’m sorry I ever crashed out of the prison farm, I was thinking. That was torture too, but torture of a different sort, much easier to stand. When I was on the prison farm, what I. remembered of a lifetime ago was pleasant, not like this. Would those foul memories never be expiated?

‘Paul!’

I must not let him see me like this, I thought I’ve got to snap out of it. I went across the room to the open window and put my nose against the screen and sucked hard at the weight of the night air. It was fresh and clean and had no death smell, only the smell of foliage…

‘Yes?’ I said.

I looked around and saw that I was in the sitting-room, filled with books and photographs and dozens of silver and gold cups and other trophies; these objects registering as what they were, with no distortion. I sucked at the night air again and moved slightly away from the window. My legs felt a little more like my own legs now.

‘Come on back …’ he called.

‘I’m admiring your trophies,’ I said.

‘Oh! Well, make yourself at home. …’

My God, I was thinking, now that I could get my mind out of that phantasmagoria, now that I could use it with some objectivity, what kind of idiocy was this, trying to force me to take his daughter? I couldn’t possibly have heard the monster correctly. It was the refractions from the goddamn decanter that had sent my memory back and while my memory was hovering over the foothills of the Gap he had said something about a million dollars, but there was so much confusion in my thought processes then, and desperation too, seeing flashes of things I did not want to see, fighting desperately to keep from seeing the whole thing, which would engulf and destroy me, that I could not remember exactly how he had meant it…

‘Come on back here,’ Jonah was saying.

He was standing in the doorway in shorts and lemon-colored cashmere socks.

‘Oh, sure, sure …’ I said.

He craned his neck, staring at me. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

‘Sure. I’m fine,’ I said.

‘Stop shaking then. You want a drink?’