Three-Martini Lunch (32 page)

“Randy! Go an' fetch the winnings,” Tony shouted into the din of noise once he had dropped my hand. Robert and Arturo came over and helped me off with my gloves while Randy dashed out of the room and came back carrying a rolled-up wad of greenbacks secured with a rubber band. “Awright, Cliff, here you are,” Tony said, handing it over. “The whole pot. Cungradulations.” He stepped between the ropes and down from the ring. Other guys were coming up now, climbing into the ring and clapping me and Jozef on the back.

“Good going!” some of them shouted. “Atta boy! Who'da thought?”

“Boo! What'd you wanna do a thing like that for?” others jeered. “That ain't a fight.”

They felt cheated, I realized, out of the bloody pounding they had thought I was sure to receive. Without a referee, Jozef would've laid me out cold for sure, they pointed out. This was true, but I didn't care. The bottom line was there
had
been a referee and I had boxed my way to a victory, fair and square. I was happy about my win and as I looked at the wad of cash clutched in my hand I realized I wanted to lose myself in the celebration of it.

“Who wants to have a victory drink with me?” I shouted around the room.

O
f course they all wanted to have a victory drink, because the guys at the Y figured I was buying and people are always in a hurry to spend money when it is not coming out of their own pockets. Guys who had cheered me on came out to toast me and guys who had booed me and been clearly disappointed when Jozef failed to knock my block off came out to freeload and to razz me some more. We started at a little bar around the corner from the Y but at some point somebody got the big idea that we should get a hotel room with my winnings and throw a real party with girls and everything. Of course by “girls” the fellas meant prostitutes and before too long I did a little calculation and realized the night was shaping up to be a bigger expense than even my winnings would cover.

But the thing about parties is once in motion they are near impossible to stop and I'll admit I did very little to slow this one down. I figured the fellas couldn't possibly expect me to pay for everything and I was sure when the time came to settle up at the end of the night each fella
would be decent about things and foot his share of the bill for the girls and the booze and, if I was lucky, maybe even part of the room bill. My idea about taking Eden to dinner and buying her a hat was out of the question at that point, but at least I'd had the good intention and anyway I could win other fights and take home more money in the future. This was my first real prizefight and I'd won and I was entitled to a true celebration.

I celebrated a little too hard, however, because sometime around three or four o'clock in the morning I'd gotten so rip-roaring drunk that my ears began to ring and my vision began to blur and then I blacked out. I don't remember anything after that.

•   •   •

I
woke up alone in the hotel room, late the next afternoon. Well, not
alone
exactly, because in fact the hotel manager and two of his beefier bellhops were standing over me. The room was in shambles. As I sat up I heard the tinkle of broken glass and thought I recognized tiny pieces of what used to be a lovely blue vase. Cigarettes were mashed into the carpet. The window was wide-open and feathers from a ripped pillow swirled about in various nervous corners of the room. A pair of women's stockings hung from the lamp next to the sofa.

“Time to check out, sir,” the hotel manager said. “These gentlemen will help see you on your way, but I'm afraid you'll have to pay the damages first.” His voice suggested this was going to be a very businesslike transaction. “Naturally,” he added with a smile.

I gave him what remained of the crumpled bills in my pocket. “I'll have to call my banker for the rest,” I said, imitating his obnoxious demeanor. He dropped the smile and did not appear amused.

Private telephone lines were very expensive in those days and Eden and I still didn't have one in our apartment. But there was a bar around the corner where Swish and I often drank and they liked me there and I knew
if I could get the bartender on the phone I could get him to send someone to go around the corner to fetch Eden and tell her about my predicament. It was a workday so Eden didn't arrive home until after five o'clock but after a few attempts sure enough it worked and she got the message and then all I could do was sit and wait and hope she'd come and bring the money. I sent along the amount of my bill in the message and I didn't know where she could possibly get that kind of money, but Eden was smart and I knew she would think of something.

Over an hour passed before she finally turned up. Then the sun went down and I was under a sort of informal house arrest. The hotel manager went off to take care of other business and I was forced to sit and wait on the sofa in the busted-up hotel room while the two muscle-headed porters stood over me like a pair of buzzards sizing up a dying wildebeest.

I thought I was feeling pretty bad, what with being all banged up from the boxing match and hungover, but I didn't know what bad was until I saw Eden walk into the room. She had probably wondered where I was when I'd never come home the night before, and here she had her disappointing answer. Her face was pale and she looked very tired.

“Mr. Nelson,” the manager called out to me as he crossed the room with Eden at his elbow. “You'll be happy to know your wife here has been kind enough to settle the bill for you.” He dropped the businessman routine and shot me a spiteful grin. I sorely wanted to punch the sonofabitch. He knew perfectly well he could have sent a bellhop up to get me while Eden waited downstairs in the hotel lobby but instead he'd purposely dragged her up to the room so she could have a look at things for herself. I could tell from the way she came in she wanted no part of this scene but now she had been dragged into it. I watched her stepping carefully in her black ballet flats, cautiously picking over the broken glass on the carpet. And I suddenly became acutely conscious of exactly what she must be taking in: empty bottles and broken glass on the floor, lipstick on my
collar, and the whole room lousy with cheap perfume. In my mind I cursed the phony sonofabitch manager again; it amused him to watch her find me like this, of course.

“I brought your coat, just in case,” Eden said, holding it out to me. I thanked her and pulled it on over my shirt and rumpled pants, happy to hide the wretched state of my clothes.

Of course the manager asked the two porters to escort us out of the hotel. He reverted back to that phony hospitable tone of his as though he were doing us a great kindness when really he was just making sure we got the boot good and hard and when he said it I almost lost it and hit him. But then I thought of Eden and knew the best thing I could do was to steady my trembling fists for her sake. It was bad enough she was going to have to endure the humiliation of being thrown out; I figured the least I could do was to make this last part as civil as possible.

I took Eden by the hand and allowed them to hustle us out and before we knew it we were standing on Fifty-second Street. By then it was well after seven o'clock and I felt like an entire day was missing from my life. It was a cool, breezy night, the kind of night in Manhattan where you remember the city is an island and where it seems like the wind is blowing in from both rivers at the same time. I moved in the direction of the subway but Eden allowed my hand to drop.

“I'd like to walk,” she said in a faraway voice.

“It's an awful lot of blocks.”

“I'm aware.”

“All right,” I agreed. “We'll walk.” We turned south and set off in the general direction of the Village.

“What happened?” she asked. There was no complaint in it but it unnerved me nonetheless because her voice was strange, distant.

“There was a prizefight.” We took a few more strides in silence. “I won,” I added.

“Oh,” she said. “Congratulations.” She smiled a little wan smile for my benefit. I was astounded. Even when I had gone and done the terrible things I'd done, she could still find a way to be goddamn encouraging.

“I guess we got a little carried away celebrating. I didn't mean for things to get out of hand like that. I'm sorry you had to come to the hotel. Someone . . . one of the fellas must've stolen my wallet. They slipped me some kind of Mickey or something and left me there to rot, the slobs. You know how boys can be when they get rowdy. I bet they're somewhere having a good laugh about it now.”

She sighed. I knew she did not believe me, or at least that she only partially believed me, because Eden was too smart to ever fall for the whole thing hook, line, and sinker. I always
mostly
told the truth, but Eden knew I tended to leave a fact or two out.

“Say, where did you dig up the bail money?” I asked, trying to keep things lighthearted.

“I'd been saving a little bit,” she replied. “I used to call it ‘Rusty money'
—
emergency money, in case things got out of hand. Anyway, it's all gone now.”

At first, I was angry and hurt that she had been saving money on the side and not telling me about it, but the very instant I thought this, a second thought came to me that sobered me right up. She wouldn't need to save money on the side if it weren't for me in the first place and anyway the fact that she did squirrel away cash had come in very handy just now and it was the reason I was walking home to my apartment and not riding in a squad car to a midtown jail.

We passed a milliner. It was closed but the lights were on. In the window someone had erected a large iron hat rack made to look like a tree. I know nothing about hats but these hats were very colorful and engineered like spaceships and struck me as being quite chic. Just as Eden had been too tired to question me further about the circumstances that had led to my debacle at the hotel, she was too tired now to perk up and look at all
the hats in the window as she would have ordinarily done. It damn near broke my heart to see it.

I thought about telling her all about my plan to use the winnings to buy her a beauty of a hat and to take her out to a swell dinner, but I knew she would only hate me more for telling her about my good intentions as though those counted for anything. Instead I simply walked beside her the rest of the way home in silence. It was the best and most considerate thing I could do.

52

C
uriosity finally got the better of me. Well, curiosity and also a kind of frustrated malaise, I suppose. Malaise in my marriage, malaise when it came to my prospects for advancement at Bonwright.

I reached for my typewriter's vinyl dustcover and slipped it over the machine.

“Where are you off to, Eden?” a girl named Donna asked in a curious tone. It was an hour too early for our usual lunchtime.

“I've got a doctor's appointment,” I said, feeling bad for the lie. You would think, with all the deception that had cropped up in my life over the past year, I'd be comfortable stretching the truth by now, but I wasn't.

“I hope it's nothing serious,” Donna said, looking hungry for something to gossip about.

“It's not,” I said, disappointing her. “Only a check-up.” I gathered up my pocketbook and crossed the typing pool to where my coat hung on a rack in the corner of the room. “Mr. Nelson knows I'm leaving now. I just
checked on him, and he shouldn't need anything until after he comes back from lunch.”

“All right,” Donna said, turning back to her own work with disinterest. “Hope you don't have to sit around too long in the waiting room listening to the sound of that terrible drill. I hate that!”

“Me, too. See you later!”

I took the elevator down and left the building. It was cold outside, but sunny and bright. Most of the leaves had fallen from their branches; the wind blew them into the dry gutters, where they rustled about listlessly as though they were antsy for the eventual rain, the sleet, the snow.

It wasn't very far, so I made my way on foot over to Madison and Fiftieth Street. The building was different than I'd expected; it was a former mansion of some variety, carved up so each wing was devoted to a different small enterprise. Between Torchon & Lyle and Bonwright, I'd come to associate publishing houses with cold steel high-rises, not former residences—albeit grand—like this one. In the black-and-white-tiled lobby, I found the little gold plaque that indicated which wing housed Farbman & Company. There was a very small birdcage of an elevator, and a set of marble stairs. I took the stairs.

Once at the top, a friendly receptionist led me to Mavis Singer's office. Most of the office doors were open as we walked along the hallway, and I peeked in here and there. It was heartening to see that, despite being a woman, Ms. Singer had been assigned an office of equal size as her male peers, instead of being tucked away in a smaller office on a different floor, as Miss Everett had been, and as most female editors were accustomed.

“Hello, Ms. Singer,” the receptionist called in a friendly voice, rapping lightly on the inside of the open doorframe. “Eden Katz here to see you.”

How strange it was, I realized, to hear the sound again of my true name.

“Oh yes, Miss Katz!” she said, looking up from her desk and smiling
pleasantly. “Come in, come in. I'm just wrapping up a few things here and then we can go to lunch.” She offered me a seat. Just as she had been at the book party, she was very neatly put together, this time in a navy wool women's suit. Her office was library-green, with large windows that let in the light.

“Minor bureaucratic items,” she explained as she arranged things on her desk. “Let me put them in order so I can hand them over to Betty on our way out.”

“Certainly,” I said. “Take your time.”

There was a brisk, clean efficiency about her. We chatted as she organized the documents on her desk and on her credenza.

“What are your ambitions in the publishing industry, if I may ask, Eden?”

“I want to become an editor someday.”

“I thought as much,” she said. “Very good. At the parties, I noticed you've been paying attention and have your head in the business.”

“Yes.” I hesitated. “I'm starting to wonder, however . . .”

“How badly you want it?” Ms. Singer supplied, glancing up at me. She gave a terse shrug. “Well, it's not for everybody.”

“No, it's not that,” I replied. “I still want it. Awfully bad, as a matter of fact. It's just . . . well, most people seem to think I'm being unrealistic, that I ought to have other goals to fall back on.”

“Like a husband and children?”

“I suppose so.” I shifted in my chair. “Wanting to be an editor . . . do you think I'm being unrealistic?”

Ms. Singer paused in her organizing and stopped to look me square in the eye. “Put aside the fact I hardly know you and can't say what is or isn't realistic for you in particular . . . Rule number one in publishing, Eden: Know your audience. I'm a woman and I'm an editor. Two guesses what my opinion is on the matter.”

I felt sheepish. I didn't have a clue why I'd blurted out that ridiculous question to Ms. Singer, of all people.

“It's all right, Eden,” she continued, as though she had read my mind. “You asked the question because you're still trying to decide for yourself, and there's nothing wrong with that. But”—she held up a finger—“when you blurt out that question in front of different people, you are going to get back very different answers.” She leaned in. “For instance, if you blurt out that question in front of Roger Nelson, I'd be willing to bet you'll get a very different answer than the one I just gave you. I figure it couldn't hurt to offer you an earful from the other side.”

She stood up and carefully loaded her arms with different stacks containing contracts, sales reports, and manuscripts. I offered to help.

“No need,” she said, “I'm quite capable.” Truer words were never spoken, I thought. “Now, shall we?”

•   •   •

O
ver lunch we talked some more about publishing and editing. I recounted what I'd done at Torchon & Lyle and the duties I'd been assigned now that I was at Bonwright. To my relief, she didn't inquire what had prompted my move from one publishing house to the other. I skirted delicately around the subject of Miss Everett, hinting lightly that there had been some discord between us but never saying anything outright. Ms. Singer seemed to know the personalities of everyone who was anyone in publishing very well. I wondered if she didn't already know about Miss Everett, or about Mr. Turner and his alleged biases.

There was something refreshing and forthright about Ms. Singer. She was friendly enough but at the same time very professional. She didn't gossip or disparage her colleagues. She invited my confidence and at the same time she didn't ask any question that might pry into my personal life. The biggest personal revelation we shared was that we were both
originally from the suburbs of much smaller cities: Her hometown was in New Jersey and mine was in Indiana.

“At the risk of making a banal observation, Manhattan can be a shock, can't it?” she said over lunch.

“Yes,” I admitted. “I never knew how . . . how much I depended on suburban life to sort of . . . include me, but also
erase
me . . . if that makes any sense.”

“Don't try so hard to be invisible, Eden,” she advised with a knowing tone. “There aren't any accolades for that. Just be yourself.”

At one point I was tempted to come clean and tell her the truth about Torchon & Lyle and how I'd had to get the job at Bonwright as “Eden Collins,” not “Eden Katz.” But then I pictured telling her—a woman named
Singer
, working at a company named
Farbman
—and I felt a deep sense of shame. It could also backfire and go terribly wrong: Though I didn't think she would, there was always the possibility Ms. Singer might feel it was her duty to pass along the illegalities of the situation to Mr. Nelson out of a sense of professional courtesy. I'd had enough of things backfiring and decided to keep my confession to myself.

I was glad I did, too, because shortly after I ruled out telling Ms. Singer about my name, she said something that reminded me—for a fleeting moment—of Miss Everett.

“One thing, Eden . . .” she said.

“Yes?”

“It's none of my business, but if you really want to make it as an editor, I would advise against marriage or a family.”

I blinked, surprised by the abrupt unsolicited opinion.

“You are quite young and perhaps the world will change someday, but as it stands, it's near impossible for us women to have our cake and eat it, too. I'm nicer about it than others, but even I've had a tough time keeping a girl on after she's decided to become pregnant. Some girls can marshal their mothers or an elderly aunt to babysit during the days, but the
prevailing expectation is that she'd rather be at home and if she wouldn't there's something wrong with her that ought to be fixed. It is likely that at some point you will have to choose between a career or a family, and it's good to know in advance which one you want most.”

She did not say
more
, she said
most
, implying that it wasn't a question of a slight tip in the balance—more like a necessary landslide. What would she have said if I told her I was already married, that I'd gone and secretly eloped with the boss's son? The sense of shame came over me again. It was like something soggy seeping into my physical body, bringing me down. How had my life gotten so tangled?

“Okay, I've done my duty and said my peace about that,” Ms. Singer said in a cheerful voice. “Now let's move on to something else.”

We finished our lunch in a punctual manner—no extra martinis or cigars after lunch for Ms. Singer—and I hurried back to the office. I can't say why I felt so blue, but I did. I liked my job working for Mr. Nelson just fine, and yet a tiny part of me couldn't help but wish I could go back and do it all over again: moving to New York and hunting for a job and all of it. It would've been nice if I could've met Ms. Singer first instead of last.

•   •   •

L
ater that evening I came home to an unexpected sight. I turned my key in the lock and opened the door to find Cliff addressing an envelope and stuffing a stack of manuscript pages into it. I drew closer, and recognized the manuscript as the pages I'd been typing up for him.

“Eden old girl!” he called out. He smiled, and I saw that he was in an upbeat, cheerful mood. “Come, sit down.” He shepherded me over to a folding chair beside the card table.

“Now,” he continued, “I know I've put you through a lot these past few weeks.” I assumed he was referring to the disaster with Rusty and Miles at our party, the wrecked hotel room and corresponding bill I'd had to pay
after he'd won a prizefight at the Y. I eyed the manila envelope warily, hoping he wasn't about to ask me—yet again—to slip the manuscript to his father as an anonymous submission.

“Don't worry,” he said, following my gaze and reading my mind. “My point is I'm sorry, and my apology is to leave you out of things, just as you requested. You know, I've hit upon the crux of the problem: All this time I've been dancing around the subject with My Old Man. I've never once come out and asked him to plain read my work! Can you believe? So, after chewing it over pretty good, I've decided to approach my father once and for all, man-to-man.”

I was shocked. It was, I thought, perhaps the first time I'd ever heard Cliff use the term
my father
instead of
My Old Man
. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this.

“I'm submitting my manuscript myself,” he said proudly, “the good, old-fashioned way. I'm going to make this strictly business: a real bona fide submission, from me to him. Going to mail it and everything!”

“Wow,” I said, slightly impressed, slightly horrified. My mind flashed immediately forward to what Mr. Nelson would say, if he in fact took the trouble to read Cliff's manuscript in its present state.