The Troubled Air (15 page)

Archer rang Frances’ bell, wondering how he would begin with her. Conducting a conversation with Frances was difficult at best of times, because she had a jumpy, quick mind and was imperiously in her own direction in any company. It’s too nice a day, Archer thought resentfully, staring back at the sunlit street, for a job like this.

Then the buzzer rang. He sighed and went in. He climbed dark, genteel steps, past a door from which the smell of frying bacon wafted out, and another door behind which someone was practicing a run from the Brahms Second Concerto on the piano. Frances was waiting for him on the top floor, looking over the banister. He tried to disguise the fact that he was panting as he said hello.

“Oh, you poor darling,” Frances said as she closed the door behind him and took his coat, “I just must move some place where there’s an elevator. Your dear little bald spot is perfectly purple. Sit down and don’t say a word.”

Archer grinned weakly as he seated himself in a narrow modern chair that made him feel as though he had been captured. He saw that he was already at a disadvantage and that he would never recover from it. “You have a very nice apartment here,” he said, looking around him at the tiny room and spacing the words between gasps. “Although at this altitude I advise the use of oxygen.”

“My lair,” Frances said carelessly, glancing at the dark-brick wall above the white fireplace. “It’s all right if you don’t try to have more than a hundred people in at any one time.”

The phone rang in the next room and Frances said, “Oh, damn, there it goes again. Excuse me.” She rushed into the bedroom and picked up the phone. “Motherwell speaking,” she said crisply, sounding like an officer in the Army. Archer noticed the business-like affectation and was displeased by it. Actresses, he thought, if they’re any good, never can persuade themselves to sound like normal human beings. He could see her through the doorway, knee up on a chair, frowning into the phone and poking a pencil in her hair. She was a striking-looking girl and her face didn’t look folded together at all, he noticed. Her hair was pulled back severely to show her high, bold forehead. She had a nervous mobile face, with large gray eyes that were a little too flat in her head, so that they seemed over-prominent. She was slender and had good legs and Archer could see she didn’t need a girdle and wasn’t wearing one. She was dressed in a sweater and a closely fitting green skirt, simple and finely made and reminded Archer of his daughter. Give Jane another six or seven years, Archer thought, and she’ll probably look very much like that.

“It’s perfectly sweet of you to ask me, lover,” Frances was saying into the phone, causing unknown tremblings on the other end of the wire, “and I’d adore coming. Just let me look in my little book and see what it says about Tuesday.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and made a grimace at Archer. “Bore Number One of the Winter Season,” she whispered hoarsely. She didn’t open the book on the table. She waited an acceptable amount of time then took her hand off the mouthpiece. “Darling,” she said, her voice freighted with regret, “the little book says I’m spoken for on Tuesday. Isn’t it damnable? I’m so sorry. Do remember to ask me again, won’t you?” She nodded impatiently several times and took the phone away from her ear and hung it over her shoulder as the voice on the other end made several diminishing remarks. “That’s sweet,” she said briskly, putting the phone to her ear again. “We must get together. But
real
soon. Thanks so much for calling.” She hung up, looked briefly at herself in a mirror and came back into the room.

There ought to be a law, Archer thought, regulating the conduct of pretty women over the telephone. The Federal Communications Commission. And they do it brazenly in front of you, confident of the absence of solidarity among men.

“Poor dear,” Frances said. “He’s such a lump. And he never catches on. Do you mind if I go into the kitchen for a second? I was just getting myself a goodie when you rang.”

“Go ahead,” Archer said. “I have all day.”

Frances swept into the kitchen. She moved in swift bursts, brushing past the furniture in the crowded room with a dancer’s precision. Archer heard her rattling the door to the refrigerator. “Can I get you anything?” she called in. “I see I have five oranges, a quart of milk and a half pound of pâté.”

“No, thanks,” Archer said, smiling at the menu.

“Oh,” she called again. “I saw your daughter two nights ago. At the Ruban Bleu. With Dom. She looked heavenly. She’s a true man-killer, that girl.”

“Is she?” Archer said loudly, wondering uneasily if in the language of the day that was a compliment.

“She will devour them by the dozen,” Frances said. “Mark my word.”

She relapsed into silence as she pushed glasses into the sink. Archer looked around the room curiously. There were red and white candy-striped draperies at the windows, an abstract painting that looked ugly, authentic and expensive above the fireplace and, surprisingly, a whole wallful of books. When does she get time to read? Archer wondered. Helplessly he felt himself staring at the books, searching for the titles. A great many current novels and one whole side devoted to poetry. Dobson, Donne, Baudelaire, Eliot, Auden. What message was hidden there for him? Or for the poor lump who had asked for Tuesday on the phone? Off to one side, in a neat pile, was a group of magazines. The top one was a small literary magazine that was put out by avowedly Communist writers. Archer leaned over and read some of the names on the cover. Two of them he recognized as being leaders of what the magazine itself often referred to as left-wing thought. He sat back feeling distaste for himself. Before this, he had, as a bookish man, always glanced curiously at his hosts’ books when he was invited anywhere. Until now he had done it thoughtlessly, without any sense of guilt. Now, he seemed to himself to be looking at bookshelves through the eyes of a potential informer. Perhaps, he thought, I will never be able to pick up a friend’s book innocently again. The curtailment of pleasure, brought about by secret dislocations in attitude. Guilt was not in the act, but in the conception of the act. Archer had an old-fashioned sense of hospitality and he could not help but feel that judging your host in his own home was a betrayal of friendship. I wonder, he thought, how detectives square their consciences after a fruitful day’s work.

Frances came back into the room carrying a tall glass.

“What’s that?” Archer asked.

“Chocolate milk,” Frances said. “I’m queer for it. Wonderful after a rough night. Want some?”

“Lord, no. I haven’t had a rough night since 1940.”

“Lucky man,” Frances said. She sat down on the sofa across from him, putting her leg under her. She sipped at the milk. “Heaven,” she said.

She has decided, Archer thought, that today she will be girlish and is putting in the proper strokes unerringly.

“Clement, dear,” she said, staring at him over the rim of her glass, “I’m sure you’re wondering why I dragged you up here like this.”

“Well …” Archer began.

“I’ve always been meaning to invite you up,” she said swiftly. “You and your wife. For a little party. I’d never invite your daughter.” She smiled widely. She had a disturbing habit of licking her lower lip in darting little movements of her tongue. “Not after the other night. Things’re bad enough around town as it is without bringing the competition to your own fireside. Dom was all over her.”

“Was he?” Archer asked, not reassured.

“You know Dom. He never means any harm—except to women.” She grinned and Archer smiled woodenly back at her, confused and wishing she’d move on to another subject. “He never looked at me once,” Frances said. “And we’ve been friends for a long time. Though to be perfectly truthful, Dom is too fleet of foot for my tastes.”

Dimly, Archer remembered that Frances and Barbante had been seen together for a short period. But then Barbante had been seen with almost everybody for a short period. Frances, he knew, had been involved with quite a few men. She was not promiscuous, but she was—well—restless. She fell deeply in love, made no bones about it, displayed her love proudly and publicly, was furiously attached to one man for a time and then suddenly, finding him lacking in one way or another, ditched him without ceremony, usually in public, and went on to the next. At every party she went to there would be several men who watched her warily and a little regretfully from corners, carefully keeping out of her way. She had a rough, ironic tongue and in her trail there were several limp markers where she had left lovers permanently demolished.

“In a better-regulated society,” Frances was saying briskly, “you could hire Dom by the night, and send him out in the morning before the maid arrived to see how naughty you’d been.”

“Now, Frances,” Archer said uncomfortably, “Dom is a friend of mine.”

“He’s a friend of mine, too,” Frances said cheerfully. “I say all these things right in front of him. He loves it. He thinks it’s a compliment.”

“Frances,” Archer said desperately, “you started to say …”

“Oh, yes.” She took another sip of her chocolate milk. “Clement, I’m afraid I have some dreadful news for you. And I wanted to tell you in advance before …”

The phone rang again. “Oh, damn it,” Frances said, putting her glass down. “I’m going to have the number changed.” She got up and went to the phone, patting Archer’s cheek as she passed him. “Motherwell speaking,” she said impatiently. “Yes. I see.” Her voice became guarded and she glanced involuntarily at Archer. He felt out of place and superfluous, knowing that she wanted privacy for this conversation. He wondered if it would be discreet to go and lock himself in the bathroom for awhile.

“Yes,” Frances said. “That’s quite clear. Look—where are you? You’d better call me back. In about thirty minutes. Right.” She hung up. “Sorry,” she said, as she resumed her seat. Archer glanced obliquely at her face, but nothing was revealed there.

“You said you had bad news,” he said gently.

“Well,” Frances said, “maybe I’m just being egotistic when I say that. Maybe you won’t mind at all.”

“What is it, Frances?”

“I want to quit the program.” She peered at him with her head to one side. The sun caught her cheek and lit up her hair and she looked young and morning-like. “Have I broken your heart?”

Archer sighed. A dozen sensations flooded through him, jumbled and contradictory. He didn’t try to sort them out. Now, he thought, is the time for me to be very careful. “Why, Frances?” he asked.”

“I’ve been offered the lead in a play,” she said. “The most beautiful part. And Cowley’s directing and he’s on fire to have me. It’s too good to be true.” She laughed, again a little out of control. “I even have to go mad at the end of Act Three.”

Listening to her laugh, Archer realized why the director had picked her for that particular scene.

“It’s the chance I’ve been waiting for ever since the war,” Frances said earnestly. “I couldn’t let it pass, even though it’s going to cost me quite a bit of money. I have to give up all my radio jobs, but I think it’s worth it.”

“When would you have to quit?” Archer asked, guiltily feeling that luck, for this day at least, was running his way.

“Well,” Frances said, “rehearsals don’t begin for another ten days. But I thought if you’d be a love and said it was all right for me to quit right now, I’d go skiing for a week and get that clear-eyed young look back on my face before rehearsals.”

“You don’t have a contract,” Archer said. “There’s nothing to keep you—legally.”

“I know,” Frances said. “But you’ve been such a dear, I couldn’t bear to leave you in a hole.”

“Where’re you going skiing?” Archer asked.

“The Laurentians,” Frances said. “But only if you say OK.”

The suspects, Archer thought, may be found at all the winter resorts, coming downhill at thirty dollars a day.

“Sure, Frances,” Archer said. “I wouldn’t want to stand in your way.” For a moment, Archer was almost ready to leave it at that. Telling her what he had to say seemed almost gratuitously candid. And Frances, as she had proved again, always made out all right. If you were that young, that attractive, that talented, nobody had to worry about you finally. And besides, she had a rich family back in Texas or somewhere, to complete her luck. Pokorny was a different matter, Alice Weller … That’s where the truth would be necessary, on those gloomy, unlucky grounds. It was almost silly to insist upon having your bad half hour with a girl like Frances Motherwell. Archer wrestled himself out of his chair, ready to go.

“Good luck, Frances.” He extended his hand formally.

She jumped up and came over and kissed him. Even for a sisterly, congratulatory kiss like that, she provocatively threw her body, wiry and soft in the soft sweater, against him. As he kissed her, Archer thought reprovingly, somebody ought to tell her not to do that with older men. He stepped away. Her eyes were shining, almost as though she were holding back tears, although of course, with a girl like Frances, you never really could tell whether it was talent or emotion, and probably she couldn’t either.

“You’re the nicest living man,” Frances said. “Some day I may fall in love with you.”

Archer chuckled falsely, rubbing his bald spot and pretending to be older than he was. “I couldn’t stand the strain,” he said. He almost left then. He took a step toward the door. Then he stopped. How far could you let expedience push you into cowardice? How would he feel when Frances heard of the accusations against her, and what the agency had planned to do to her? And there was no doubt about it, she would find out. And probably very soon. At the top of a snowy hill in Canada, feeling young and healthy, racing down the slope in her nervous excited way because she had been told that a telegram awaked her below and all news these days was good news … How would she feel about him then, remembering this afternoon? The nicest living man … He stopped and turned toward the girl.

“Frances, darling,” he said. “Please sit down. I have something to say to you.”

“You’re not going to change your mind, are you?” There was alarm in her eyes and a flicker of stubbornness.

“No. Now sit down. This is awfully serious.”