West 47th (16 page)

“You have an uncanny sniffer.”

“At times it can be less than a blessing,” she said. “Like this morning in the reception at Ronald's office. As you know it's not all that large, and a man waiting there smelled as though he hadn't been able to wait … more than once. Phew.” Ronald Albertson was her attorney, an earnest fellow, who looked after the interests of the Strawbridge family.

“So you went out this morning.”

“Had to sign things.”

“Couldn't they have been messengered to you?”

“I wanted to go out.”

Mitch assumed her business with Ronald involved contributions she was making to her causes such as the United Nations Children's Fund and the World Wildlife Fund and AIDS research. She gave on a regular basis to these, and to numerous others when they appealed to her. It then occurred to Mitch that the Elise fund had made a pitch for a new apartment in Barcelona and decided that had probably been Maddie's business at Ronald's. What would happen, Mitch wondered, if she turned Elise down and instead gave to preserving the population of the Louisiana black bear?

“What was it with all that sneaking?” Maddie asked.

“Sneaking?”

“The way you snuck out to the foyer and slammed the door and all that?”

He was cornered.

“What a loony way to act.”

“You should talk.”

“Me? I'm unceasingly sane.”

“I left my folio out on the landing,” he fibbed.

She crunched more ice rather menacingly and then let him get away with it, did about a seventy-five percent version of her best smile; anyway enough of it to cause nice commas at the corners of her mouth. “I love you, precious,” she declared unequivocally.

“Love you too,” he said on the way over to her. They kissed a fairly lengthy one and held on after it. She told his ear: “I bought something for you today.”

From her kimono pocket she brought out a small, leather-covered jeweler's box, gold-embossed and worn at its edges.

Fitted within the box's creamy velour interior was a pair of cuff links. They were Edwardian, guilloche green enamel and gold centered with rubies and diamonds. Even before taking them up Mitch believed they were Fabergé. And yes, there was the hallmark in Cyrillic on the underside of each line:
along with
the initials of the work master Hjalmar Armfelt. “The man at the shop said they're the real thing.”

“They are.”

“He said people used to make Fabergé imitations and some still do.”

“Yeah.”

“He also said these had once belonged to Cary Grant, that they were a gift from Barbara Hutton when Grant married her in 1943. Believe that?”

Colorful provenance. Shades of the days of Laughton and Sons, Mitch thought. The cuff links must have set Maddie back at least twenty-five thousand. He took another admiring look at them before placing them back in their velour bed. “You shouldn't have,” he said.

“Well, I have.”

“Whoever you bought them from will take them back.”

“No returns. He made a point of it. I'll bet it even says so on the sales receipt.”

“How did you pay for them?”

“By check.”

“Just stop it.”

“No, you stop it. I know you like the cuff links. I heard your breath do a little catch right after I heard the box snap open.”

“Not true.”

“I listened for it.”

“Whether I like them or not doesn't matter. The fact is you're way over your quota.”

“It's a silly arrangement.”

“It's what we agreed on.”

“You bullied me into agreeing.”

“I've never bullied you. Frankly I doubt anyone ever could.”

“Okay, I'll put it another way; you suckered me into it. I was led to believe you'd eventually come around to seeing it differently.”

Setting a quota had seemed to Mitch to be a solution. Until then Maddie had squandered money on him. Hardly a week passed that she didn't buy him something extravagant, something he himself couldn't so easily afford:

A thirty-four-thousand Gerald Genta perpetual calendar watch, a six-piece set of Hermès luggage (the overnight bag alone cost four thousand), ten suits in a range of fine worsteds and gabardines by the leading tailor in Milan (she sent his favorite-fitting one as a model and, for the while it was away, fibbed that it was misplaced at the dry cleaners), a Watteau sketch of a nude adolescent girl done in black and sienna charcoal which she hung to the left of his side of the bathroom vanity. For morning and evening inspiration, she said.

That was not to mention the less-costly things she splurged on, that she shrugged off as mere fripperies. Solid-gold Bulgari comb, Bucellati letter opener, Cartier lacquered fountain pens (everyone should have a spare) and so on. Necessary unnecessaries: antique English paperweight from Shrubsole, box of silver dominoes from Asprey, lots of things from Asprey.

Mitch enjoyed being the recipient of such largesse. Who wouldn't? However, for the sake of his male stuff, the health of that gender-conscious part of him that couldn't be merely a stand-in for the role of provider, he had to put a stop to it.

Maddie reasoned: What difference did it make whose money was spent? Why not just blend his lesser amount with her greater and let it be theirs? Sure, have Ronald put hers and his into a sort of financial blender and press the frappé button. Besides, giving to the one she loved as well as those who needed was a major pleasure for her. Would he deprive her of it?

Her contention was sensible. And comfortable for her. Her nature was to be generous. After the robbery of the Laughton store she'd offered Kenneth whatever it would take to restock and restart. Kenneth appreciated her willingness to help but couldn't see any direction other than out.

At various other times she'd also proposed putting up the money for an upscale store for Mitch. They'd be strolling upper Madison and come upon frontage space for lease and she'd ask his opinion on whether or not it would be a good location.

She'd slip in the topic during their pillow talks. Her insight told her that having such a store was his latent ambition. He never said it was something he craved. However he did contribute to visualizing a store with her, enjoyed doing so, often got carried away with that and allowed his enthusiasm to turn him inside out.

It had happened recently. Realizing how exposed he was at that moment she'd taken a shot. “We should stop talking about it and do it,” she said.

Nothing from him.

“You deserve to be well-known for your taste in jewelry and all you know about it.”

“Yeah.” His enthusiasm having retreated.

She'd gotten exasperated. “What is it with you? Are you afraid people will point you out as a bounder who lives off his wife?”

“Bounder?” A new old one. Where did she dig that up?

“Bounder,” she maintained.

“Maybe that's it.”

“Another sample of double standard. A kept woman is entirely acceptable, even fascinating, but a kept man …”

“All men are kept in some way,” Mitch asserted philosophically.

“As are women.” Maddie shrugged.

They laughed at the truth.

So, a quota was the compromise. It put a cap on the amount she could spend on him each month. She abided by it diligently for a while but subsequently only once in a while, maybe half the time.

Mitch never made it a combustible issue. Actually, as time went on he became more reasonable about it, several times came close to admitting that he was macho stubborn and she was right. He shouldn't squelch her generosity.

But not in this instance with the Cary Grant-Fabergé cuff links.

He calmly insisted Maddie return them to the store.

She calmly told him before she'd do that she'd give them to just anyone. “You don't understand,” he told her. “I seldom wear cuff links and I already own three pair. Only a couple of my evening shirts have cuffs that require them.”

“That never occurred to me. So, we'll have to have some shirts like that made for you.”

“I prefer regular cuffs.”

“Oh,” she acquiesced.

“But these links are exquisite, Maddie, and thank you anyway.”

“No harm done,” she said blithely. “I'll take them back and get you something else.” And then, without a pause: “What'll we do for dinner?”

“Want to go out?”

“Not really. Did you have a proper lunch?”

“No.”

“That's not smart. It's essential to us that you take care of yourself, precious. Can't have your energy level getting diminuendo, can we?”

Mitch tried to think of another way he should take that. He'd known men who were the last to know they weren't keeping pace. Just recently he'd read an article that dealt with the inequitable allotment of sexual potential to the genders. Maddie certainly had a wealth of passion, a swiftly replenishing fortune. Was free to spend all she wanted on him.

“I could whip up a tuna and something casserole,” she said. “We haven't had one in weeks.”

Mercy, Mitch thought. He resourcefully reasoned: “Felicia left the kitchen all tidy. Be a shame to mess it up. I'll go out and get something.”

“Suits me,” Maddie said, settling the matter with a loud, languid sigh.

Mitch changed into a pair of cotton tans and a sweatshirt worn once but not sweated in. When he returned to the study he saw Maddie was having a silent conversation with herself. He sat across from her in his usual chair and read much of that day's
Times
and a little here and there of last week's
New Yorker
.

Around six he put a bit of cash and credit cards into pocket and went down to find dinner. He had in mind some take-out from Barney's, a variety of delicacies, goose paté plentifully truffled, some kind of cold pasta maybe, certainly a loaf of well-done, crisp-crusted peasant bread. He'd munch on the heel of it on the way home. They'd eat on trays, find a movie on television, a Robert De Niro gangster or the like, one that on some previous similar night he'd narrated much of the action for Maddie so now she knew what was happening from the dialogue and sound effects.

Ruder was in the lobby. That was so unexpected that he didn't register on Mitch right off, but it was unmistakably Ruder standing to one side of the way out.

Ruder was wearing a white cap, the sort most proper for golfing. Perhaps that morning, when choosing how to present himself to the day and those who'd be in it, he'd decided the cap was called for by his blue and white seersucker suit, bought off the rack, of course, at Tripler's, of course, six summers ago. Add on white, kilted loafers. He'd lost sight of what he looked best in because he didn't look good in much. There was slightly more than a hint of simian about him. Short in the legs, long in the arms, a large head.

All in all he didn't appear to be what one might visualize as a best-school person, which was what he was: Hotchkiss, Yale, Skull and Bones and so on. He lived up in Rye in a handed-down house, enjoyed a handed-down membership at Wykygyl, had been married only once but been left numerous times.

Ruder did a pleasant surprise. “I was having a drink here at Harry's with a friend in from Philadelphia,” he said. “He just now left and I myself was about to.”

Mitch thought Ruder deserved a fairly high rating as a makeup man but then decided he'd probably had that line in his mouth all the way uptown.

“I'd forgotten you live here at the Sherry,” Ruder added on.

“I'd invite you up but my wife isn't feeling well,” Mitch told him. “I'm on my way to pick up a prescription for her.”

“Nothing serious, I hope.”

“Never know.”

“Right. Friend of mine's wife went to bed spry that other night, was dead at dawn.”

“Your friend from Philadelphia?”

“No, another.”

“You have a lot of friends.”

“Who can have too many?”

He'll blow his nose any moment now, Mitch thought. Whenever they'd been together Ruder had blown his nose repeatedly, although he apparently didn't have a cold or allergy. It was like he was vainly trying to expel something from his brain. His way of thinking, perhaps.