The Best of Everything (52 page)

She had expected a sinister oriental houseboy, but Cassaro opened the door himself. He looked exactly as he did in his photographs, a littie older perhaps, a little tliinner. He was forty, she knew, but a very young forty.

"You must be Caroline Bender," John Cassaro said.

"Yes."

"Come in."

He was wearing a navy-blue silk dressing gown and actually had a silk scarf tucked around his throat. It was exactly as she had imagined he would look in the morning. As she followed him into the living room, Caroline realized to her surprise that he was much taller than she had expected him to be. Perhaps because of the deh-cate bones of his face she had expected him to be small, but he was not, he was nearly six feet tall.

The living room was air conditioned, as was the entire suite, and it had a piano in one corner. It was a huge room, with pale carpeting and pale walls, and the blinds were opened to the brilliant summer sunlight. At one end of the room there was a door leading to a large terrace, and beyond the terrace wall Caroline could see the city sky line. I must remember everything, she thought, to tell Gregg and April.

"Would you like some coffee?" John Cassaro asked.

"That would be lovely."

"I just got up," he said.

There was a coffee table in front of the sofa, with a hotel coffee service set upon it. Caroline had somehow expected a fat manager to be sitting in the comer chewing a damp cigar, or some hangers-on

with vague jobs, or a maid or a butler, but there was no one. He's all alone, she thought. How odd. He's alone with me.

"So you're from that lousy Fabian Publications," he said abruptly. "I didn't realize until yesterday. You publish Unveiled."

"I'm with Derby Books," Caroline said. "I read that piece of garbage they wrote about you in Unveiled and I thought it was disgraceful." She said it calmly, without vehemence, and he smiled a little.

"I don't pay attention to that stuff," he said. "But it seems ironic that Fabian Publications expects me to do them a favor after what they did to me."

"I know," Caroline said sympathetically, "it seems unfair. But the promotion of the book will help the promotion of your picture, and that's the important thing."

He did not touch his coffee but lighted a cigarette and got up from the sofa to pace up and down the room. He seemed nervous, and Caroline knew it was not because of a decision about an endorsement for a paperback novel, because that meant nothing to him; his nervousness went deeper than that. It was a part of his personality. Somehow she felt sorry for him. His voice was so familiar, like the voice of an old old friend, and yet it was the voice of the celluloid untouchable. The telephone rang then, and he answered it, in a kind of guarded growl.

"Yeah . . ."

She poured cream into her coffee and stirred it, trying to pretend she was not there. John Cassaro was speaking and listening, holding on to the receiver at the full length of its cord and pacing about in a circle like an animal on the end of a chain. She had never seen anyone talk on the telephone in such a way, as if every instant he was not moving impatiently was an instant wasted. He finished the conversation finally and came to stand over her.

"Are you a writer?" he asked.

"No, I'm an editor."

"Do you like it?"

"Yes."

"You look so young."

"I'm twenty-three."

"That's young, isn't it," he said, "to be an editor?"

"Yes, it is."

He stood there above her, looking down at her for a moment more, and in that instant Caroline knew instinctively that all the stories she had heard about him were true. His voice that had made millions laugh and yearn at the same time still bore some of the intonations of his slum boyhood, his face and body had the hard wariness of someone who has fought for years to be where John Cassaro was now. She knew as he looked at her that if they knew each other better he might be capable of asking her to do any mad thing: run away with him, go on a brief but gigantic spree; and that it would be exactly the kind of thing that someone like her would find strange and signiBcant and romantic, and to him it would mean nothing at all. They were complete strangers, and yet his look said. We know each other perfectiy well, don't we? And she had to admit that it was true. She had never felt more conventional and Hmited and ordinary in her life.

He gave her a small smile and sat down on the sofa beside her. "Cigarette?"

"Thank you."

After he had lighted their cigarettes he sat snapping the lighter on and oflF, staring into the flame. Then he put the lighter on the table. "All right," John Cassaro said. "What do you want me to do for you?" His eyes widened a little, just a flicker, but Caroline noticed it. She bent over her handbag.

"I have the endorsement right here, which I happened to write myself," she said, not looking at him. "I thought I'd save you the trouble since you're being kind enough to take the trouble to do it at all. If you like it, then just sign it here at the bottom and that's all there is to it."

He took the piece of paper from her hand and read it quickly, all business, all personal wariness again. "You wrote this?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a pen?"

She handed him one, already uncapped. He leaned over the piece of paper on the coffee table, pushing aside the coffee cups, his lips clamped around his cigarette. He x'd out a word, wrote another in its place, and then wrote his signature in large, flowing letters at the bottom.

"Thank you," Caroline said. She had her head tilted, looking over his shoulder at what he had written. He had simply changed an

adjective, a small thing, but it was better his way. "And thank you for the improvement," she said with a little smile.

When he turned his head to look at her his face was only an inch or two from her own. She had the weirdest, most unreasonable feeling that he was going to kiss her, like some corny scene from a movie, and all of a sudden her heart turned over and she realized that if he were capable of such a thing it would be neither weird nor corny at all. She moved away from him quickly.

He did not move but sat there looking at her. "You can send the thousand dollars to Boys' Town," he said.

"That's very kind of you. I'll have the treasvuer send it in your name when I go back to the office."

He looked at his watch. "I have to go downtown to a rehearsal. Why don't you make yourself a drink and then I'll drop you off on my way."

"All right. Thank you."

"Make me one too." He stood and started for the bedroom. "I'll be right back."

There was a large bar next to one wall with every kind of liquor imaginable and an assortment of glasses. Caroline poured herself a Scotch and water and then stood there not knowing what to do because he had not told her what he wanted. She gathered up coiu"-age and called out to tlie closed bedroom door, "Do you want Scotch?"

"Yeah."

She made one for him too and then carried hers over to the door to the terrace. She could tell from the heat sizzling on the white stones outside that it was turning out to be a mean day. But in here it was cool and expensive, with white carnations in a vase on the end table and tlie best Scotch on the bar and well-tiained hotel servants ready to arrive at a moment's notice with anything John Cas-saro could ask for. He was going to a rehearsal, he had dozens of friends and millions of admirers, and yet he had asked her to wait and have a drink with him when it was she who should be grateful to him for signing the endorsement. He wasn't even being paid for the endorsement, since he had told her to send his payment to charity. Besides, what was a thousand dollars to him? He made two million dollars a year.

He came up behind her without a sound, dressed in a light hnen business suit. "Do you want to go out on the terrace?"

"Oh! Yes . . . I would."

He opened the door and they stepped outside together. It was very hot but so high up that there was a small breeze blowing. There was an awning with two chaises under it and a glass-topped table, and a potted plant four feet high. A white pigeon was sitting on the terrace wall, cooing. "Look," Caroline said, pointing. "He must be lost."

"That one? I have him trained. He drinks Martinis."

She laughed. "It's so beautiful here."

John Cassaro was leaning on the terrace wall, drinking his Scotch. 'Tou can see the ships from here, see?" he said. "That's the He de France. You'll see it better in a minute. It's twelve o'clock."

"I hate all ships that go to France," Caroline said.

"Really? Why?"

"I was in love with someone who went away on one and never came back to me," she said lightly. And as she said it she suddenly realized for the first time that she did not really mean that about hating the ships, that Paris was no longer a word that hurt, and that she was saying this to John Cassaro simply for something to say to him to prove she was a girl who had been in love.

"How come he never came back?"

"Got married."

"She must have been Helen of Troy," he said, glancing at Caroline.

She smiled.

He set his nearly full glass on the terrace wall. "Now watch, the pigeon's going to come over to it and drink it," he said. "Don't make any noise."

"I thought he liked Martinis," Caroline whispered.

"Scotch before lunch. He needs a clear head or he'll fly into a win-dowpane."

They stood there, side by side, elbows on the top of the terrace wall, looking out of the comers of tlieir eyes at the pigeon. It cooed, ruffled its white feathers, and waddled slowly over to the glass of Scotch, taking gingerly steps with its toothpick legs. Then with a rustle of wings the pigeon swooped down on the glass, dipped its head over the rim and drank, poised, flapping and evidentiy thirsty.

"That's impossible!" Caroline whispered. "I don't believe it."

"He's half hummingbird."

"Nobody will believe me. I'll tell them I was here with John Cas-saro watching a pigeon drink Scotch."

"Why not?" John Cassaro said. "They believe everything else." He looked at his watch again. "We have to go."

Walking through the hotel lobby with him, Caroline was very conscious of tlie glances of other people. They all recognized him, and they probably thought she was John Cassaro's latest girl. The mystery girl. He took her arm to help her into the taxi and it was just like the grip of any one of a hundred boys who had taken her out in the past eight years, and yet it was diflPerent. It was entirely diflferent. Why should it be this way, Caroline thought, it's unfair. A hand is anatomically nearly exactly the same as any other hand, and yet one has the power to make me want to draw closer and another annoys me so I want to brush it away. I don't know him, he's nothing to me, he's just a celebrity I've heard of. This was not love, tliis was not Eddie, this was not even a friend she was deeply fond of. And yet at that moment if John Cassaro had chosen to kiss her she knew she would have responded with a passion that she had not felt since her romance with Eddie Harris. It was the first time she had ever realized that, despite everything she and her friends had believed and had told each other, there was such a thing as sheer animal sex appeal with nothing more sentimental between two people than magnetism, and it made Caroline feel so uncomfortable and vaguely guilty that she could hardly think of anything to say to this man all the way to her office.

The cab drew to the curb in front of the statue of Atlas. "Thank you," Caroline said.

He smiled at her from the deptlis of the taxi. He's just another man, she tliought, just another man in a tan suit on a summer day, but she knew she was staring at his face. "Good luck," John Cassaro said.

She stepped out of the cab and walked into her office building, not daring to turn and look back for fear he might see her and think she was impressed by him. And then she thought, How foolish. I should have turned and waved. It might have done some good. Good for what? If I'm lucky I'll never see him again.

It was nearly twelve-thirty and girls were streaming out of the

building in pairs, and groups, going to lunch. They all looked the same somehow: hot, surprised at the swift blast of heat after their air-conditioned tower, hungry, a little wilted, glad to be released for an hour to chatter and relax. Some of them were pretty but most of them weren't, and none of them was so beautiful that you would turn around to look at her twice. Perhaps one in a thousand would have a life that would draw notice in ten years, and very few of them really cared. But all of them had their daydreams at times, and perhaps sometimes the daydreams included a date with John Cassaro. So why shouldn't mine, Caroline thought? I'm no diflFerent, really, except that I've met him, and I don't think tliat's going to make that much diflFerence. Daydreams are harmless and they do make a great difference; sometimes all the difference in the world while you're waiting for something real and good.

The next day when Paul came up to Port Blair Caroline made him sit through a double-feature movie with her, and then at one o'clock when he tried to kiss her she pleaded exhaustion from the late hour and the day of sun at the beach, and fled to her room. For the first time since her first date with Paul she felt as if she had escaped from him and was glad to be alone and free again. The last thing she thought of when she fell asleep was John Cassaro feeding the Scotch to the pigeon and she remembered the shape of his hand as it curved around the glass. Paul had stayed overnight so he could go to the beach with her the next day, and as Caroline watched him sitting on the porch in the morning reading the Sunday papers and working the crossword puzzle like a member of the family, she had a sense of unreality, as if she were hving in two worlds simultaneously. At ten-thirty April telephoned her from New York.

"Caroline! Guess who just got married!"

"Whor

"Barbara Lemont—you know, my friend. She eloped with Sidney Carter from the Carter Agency. He's the one she's been madly in love with for a year. She just called me. They went away for the weekend and got married."