Woman in the Window (12 page)

Moira came back to the kitchen doorway, smoking a badly rolled joint as if it were a plain cigarette. Then she nipped it off between thumb and forefinger, threw back her head, and sucked the smoke in. She held it out toward Natalie, who shook her head. Moira laughed harshly. Finally she said, “Dinner is served. Rory, get out here.”

Natalie went to the table, closed her eyes, and prayed
that
it would all be over soon. Dinner had once been a chicken, far too recently by the taste of it. Underdone baked potatoes. Half-cooked brown-and-serve rolls. She ate what she could. Her brain was just cutting out. Moira smoked two joints during the course of the next hour and the relationship between husband and wife seemed to deepen into something very like wickedness.

Rory got going on the smallness of his advance and Natalie made the mistake of trying to explain the realities to him.

“Fuck all that, dearie. That doesna mean shit to me—Moira made me write
the
book, it’s a piece of crap, I wrote it for the money—for the money! Understand? And what do I get? Bloody nothing, just nothing. … What’s the point? What did I prostitute myself for, piece of crap—goddamn it, Moira says write it, write it, play the game, make some money for a change! Mother o’ Mercy, make some money!” He began to cough into his napkin, couldn’t speak. Natalie looked away.

Moira went on the attack: “You’re such a hot agent—I say you’re a whore, you’re all whores, agents and publishers and editors and critics, all whores, all fucking each other. You fuck that kid? The million-dollar kid?” She smiled shrewdly, as if she had stumbled on the truth. “You want to fuck Rory here? Go ahead, you can have him if you can get him some real money … fuck the literary world! Christ.” She threw her fork at a cat, who looked up and went to hide under a wooden chair.

“I’m going,” Natalie said abruptly, standing up, her chair falling over backward and clattering on the bare floor.

“Cunt,” the woman hissed.

“You’re insane!” Natalie was screaming suddenly. She felt like an unlucky Alice, stepping through the looking glass into the nightmares of Hieronymous Bosch.

Linehan lurched to his feet, grabbed at her, but she twisted away. Moira sat watching, dragging on the joint, knees spread loosely like her bright red mouth, the wise-crazy shrewdness putting light in her eyes for the first time. Natalie slipped, reached the couch, and heard Linehan fall heavily behind her, the air knocked out of him with a rushing sound, as if he’d been punctured. He was on his knees in the middle of the room. His chest was heaving beneath the soiled sweater; he had the copy of
PW
in his hand and was shaking it above his head.

Natalie was fumbling with the door, realized the chain was on. Her hands were working frantically, slipping. Moira had begun to laugh again, like a doll who gave a bad imitation of mirth when a string in its back was yanked.

“How about this!” Linehan roared hoarsely. He ripped her picture out of the magazine, shredded it again, then again. …

Finally the chain was off and she bolted into the hallway. She went down the stairs as quickly as she could, stumbling, grabbing the railing, finally breathless and out the front door into the street. She stood gasping in the cold air.

She walked toward Second Avenue, not thinking, just putting one foot ahead of the other. She stopped at the corner, feeling like someone in an isolation booth, watching the world go past. Not a part of it—alone. The life, the energy field she’d just left, the perverse sexuality of Moira curling her mouth around the word
fuck
as if she could bring it to life with her lips … What was going on back there now? She knew, she knew what was happening, on the floor among the cats and the rank odors—

Then she began to laugh.

At herself. At the Linehans.

At all of it …

I
NEVITABLY JAY SHOWED UP
at her office once she got settled down to work and had put the Linehans as far out of her mind as possible. He came in, his binoculars hanging around his neck, and went to her window, ever searching for a better angle.

“The thing is,” he murmured, “these peregrines seem to love construction sites. It must be the exposed girders, places to sit down and have a look at all of us earthbound creatures.” He knelt, tilted his head to see what he could see. “So,” he went on, radiating a new scent of cologne she didn’t recognize, the binoculars riding the bridge of his nose, “have a nice evening with your favorite author?”

“It was different,” she said, smiling to herself. She was delighted with her unexpected ability to shift the ghastly evening into perspective so quickly. And easily, for that matter. She was already seeing it as one of those bizarre turns on which a raconteur like Jay could dine out for months. If enough really trying and peculiar and unsettling things happened to you in a short time, she supposed, you were able to rank them in terms of priority. As far as her own life went, the past ten days were quite without parallel.

“Different,” Danmeier repeated in a silky monotone. “Now what could that mean?”

“Less sophisticated than you would enjoy. More my milieu, lots of booze and dope and uncooked food and a dozen cats using the living room for a toilet. Moira was a vision and Linehan—Rory, that is—looked like he couldn’t quite remember who’d thrown up on him most recently. Dylan Thomas effect.”

“Very funny.” He lowered the binoculars. “Be serious, Natalie. He’s a client of ours. What was it like, really? All sort of Irish and everyone quoting Yeats and Wilde?”

“Not exactly. Let’s see—seriously summing the evening up? Let’s just say it was grand through thin and thin. Loved him, hated her—I don’t know, Jay.” She smiled sweetly across the desk at him. “Once they began defacing my picture in
PW
I left. …”

“Sometimes,” he sighed, “your sense of humor is lost on me.” He got up from where he was kneeling and took two mints from the dish on the corner of her desk.

“How was Clive Morrison?”

He rolled his eyes, frowning. “He brought his mistress with him. God. He spent more time with his hand on her leg than he did talking to me. Randy old bastard.” He sucked the mint. “So, despite your feeble attempts at wit, I was lumbered with a truly ghastly evening. Consider yourself fortunate. Ah well, one never knows—I spent most of the evening longing to exchange places with you.” He shrugged and went back to his office.

Friday night.

Natalie was used to spending Friday evenings at home, alone, worn out from the week, glad to settle down with a new record or a book to read for pleasure or a trashy movie on television. She would sometimes order in a pizza from the Original Ray’s. Or soak the evening away in a hot tub. Or write letters. Or make a careful plan of the weekend, allowing time for all the necessary errands—the laundry, the cleaning, the seamstress who altered this and that, the shoe-repair man, the trip to Gillies for her favorite coffee—as well as visits to the Whitney or MOMA or the Metropolitan for a certain show. She’d check the Weekend section of the Friday
Times
for the hours at which movies she particularly wanted to see were being shown. She might arrange to have Sunday brunch with a female friend from outside the world of publishing. Friday evenings were precious. Friday evenings were for Natalie. For throwing the tennis balls for Sir, maybe for a leisurely walk to reacquaint him with the block on which he lived. Friday evenings she began to unwind and recover from the week. …

But tonight was different. Almost unprecedentedly, she wanted company. She wanted someone to talk to and she realized how few were the possibilities. Tony would misinterpret a suggestion that they meet—even if she wanted to see him—and in any case he was probably out on the island. Or busy. And Lew … poor Lew, she’d burdened him enough.

She ran through her list of girl friends and couldn’t get excited. What was the matter with her? Was she becoming such a recluse?

Julie, of course. But it was Friday night and Julie was bound to be laying waste her various watering holes of choice. Still, there was always the chance for a miracle. She looked around the apartment: none of the stolen items had yet been replaced. So Saturday was already planned for her. Unless she didn’t really give a damn, for the moment. Perhaps she needed a day in the museums. …

She called Julie. A miracle. Home and no plans for the evening. “Sure, order a pizza and I’ll be down in fifteen minutes.”

Waiting for her, Natalie wasn’t sure what she wanted to talk about. It would come to her.

“And you worry about me when I go out for an evening!” Julie’s deep, throaty laughter erupted in the stillness. She licked tomato sauce from the huge pizza slice that flopped around in her hand with a life of its own. “I mean, last night you saw the seamy side!” She laughed again, her great wide mouth grinning, showing more teeth than was possible.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Natalie said, leaning back, sitting on the floor looking at the brick wall where the television set used to be. “There was a stagy quality about it, like I had walked into a theater and found myself in a play I hated. It was both more and less than real, sort of intensified—do people really act that way?” She took a drink from a can of beer and bit off another chunk of pizza. “They even had names like people in a play—Rory and Moira. Who’s named Rory and Moira, anyway?”

“What are you saying? That you think they put on the whole little psychodrama for your benefit? And once you escaped they had a good laugh and brought out the Louis Quinze table and chairs and dumped the cats out the window?” Julie snorted indignantly. “No way. These were real loonies. People don’t pull practical jokes like that in what passes for life. No way.”

“No, I don’t suppose.” Natalie leaned forward and poked the logs in an attempt to coax some flames out of them. “But there was something else going on in that room, something between the two of them. There was so much energy—I don’t know how to explain it but that’s what made me think of the theater, it was like the energy I’ve seen on a stage.” She shook her head, knowing she wasn’t making much sense. “Horrible as they were—and they were horrible, I promise you—there was an electric current running between them. It was exciting—it excited me, I was sweating and my heart was pounding. …”

Julie looked at her appraisingly. “You were excited, weren’t you? I mean,
excited
—”

“That’s what I’m telling you. And when I left them I felt lonely … and frustrated.”

“You’re talking about sex, aren’t you? You were sexually excited by the situation and then sexually frustrated afterward—am I getting this right?”

Natalie nodded. “Yes, you’re getting it right. It couldn’t have been
about
them. But all the talk about fucking and my being a whore and did I fuck the other writer—” She shivered at the memory, disgusted. “But I was aroused
by
them somehow. It was something in the air—look, do I sound like a raving idiot?”

“No, I’m just trying to think.” Julie munched another wedge of pizza. “I’ve felt the same thing. In a way. In a bar or a room full of people I really don’t like, a setting I don’t like—when I leave, when I’m alone—and glad to be alone—I get, you know, that feeling. It’s just there. Sure, in the air. But then, that’s me … your case is much simpler.” She chewed away, smiling.

“You think so?”

“Of course. You
are
lonely. Lonely for a man. It’s been a long time, Natalie.”

Natalie felt herself flushing. “Haven’t you heard of the new celibacy?”

“Of course. I may even confound medical science by deciding to adopt it, but that has nothing to do with simple desire. Celibacy does not remove desire, Nat: it’s not surgery. You’ve been alone with your vibrator too long—” She laughed loudly.

“I don’t have a vibrator!”

“That’s your problem! Get one!” She couldn’t stop laughing.

“You’re missing the point. Stop dribbling pizza—the point is, I’m talking about the feeling that I needed warmth, some human companionship. Not a vibrator, for God’s sake.”

“Well, don’t forget Sir.” At the sound of his name, Sir came edging toward the box of pizza and Julie gave him a chunk.

“Okay, don’t be serious.” Natalie had almost lost the point herself and was beginning to giggle.

“Look, it’s so simple. You’re finally past the divorce trauma, you’ve had your delayed reaction to the sense of failure you felt after investing so much of your life in Tony, after trying to help him get his book published. Now you’re getting ready to reenter the real world and find a man. Simplicity itself—you make such hard work out of everything, Nat—”

“But that’s not the way I feel. I don’t want another person underfoot, someone I’ve always got to consider whenever I want to do something.”

“Then why bellyache about being alone?”

“Damned if I know.” She grinned. “Maybe it was a momentary aberration?”

“Bullshit, darling! But why don’t you just sort through the men in your life. There’s Tony, of course. I mean, it’s never over till it’s over—” It’s over.

“I’m not so sure. There’s still something there, something you’re trying to sort out. Maybe you still feel responsible for him, how should I know? But he’s not a goner, yet. Then there’s Jay Danmeier. From what you say, he’s quite an imposing guy—”

“He’s married, Julie. And he can be a real pain in the neck, believe me. An ego the size of Rockefeller Center and all the vulnerability that goes with it.”

“First, you didn’t say you were looking for a husband. And second, he’s obviously nuts about you. You can have him any way you want him—as a lover or a husband. Believe me, I know these things. He’s a sitting duck, Nat. And—” She took a deep breath and a long drink of beer. “And then there’s Lew, your old pal who’s probably been crazy about you since college. Poor bastard. On the whole, that’s not bad for a start. Three live ones.” She leaned back, rubbing Sir’s ears and smiling smugly.

“You named three men. These are not relationships, just men. Men I know. And they’re all out of the question. An ex-husband, my boss, and an old friend who is strictly that. Not a chance.” She felt helpless: there was no getting past Julie’s own kind of logic, no making her see the differences.