"And then?"

"Reno."

"At my expense?"

"Sally! I pay for it, of course. We-"

"Including the millions it costs me?"

"Oh, so that's it! It's been said now, at last!"

"It's been said from the beginning, Clay-the trouble is you don't listen. You pretend nothing's been said when it has been. Those millions, dear heart, are important. And so you get it straight, I'm not giving them up. Now, what else?"

"In the first place, you're not in line for the millions."

"So happens I think I am."

"In the second place, they're not all."

"You mean there's you and your lily-white hand?"

"Sally, I mean there's you, and your more or less lily-white life." And as she looked at him, startled, he went on: "I didn't like this guy, and from the start I felt something peculiar. The whole thing, his idea for the trick, his coming, his testing of the rail, had something phony about it. And quite a while after he left I hit on the explanation-to my own satisfaction, at least. You used to work for him, didn't you? In the act, before you had your baby? O.K., then-suppose Buster gets sick? Suppose she gets the flu? And he puts the bite on you to go on in her place? Sally, with you hanging up there by wires from a cradle on rails, your life will be hanging there too, and I would not give a nickel for it! That's what we have to think about, and believe me, once you come crashing down, there'll be no millions for you. Did you hear what I said? There won't be anything-but a bang-up funeral, with lilies. And I happen to love you, that's all."

He had no recollection of having this idea at all before he started to talk, and in fact heard himself get it off with utter astonishment, mixed with some admiration. It was a pure, inspired ad-lib, but it got him nowhere at all. She listened with ill-concealed boredom and, when he was finished, said: "Well, thanks for worrying about me-though there was no reason, really. You were right, of course, about one thing: there was something phony about it. He's dreaming about this stunt, which he thinks will be quite a sensation. But to pull it every night, with her 'way up in the air, would get him in dutch with the cops-she's a human being, believe it or not, and they would worry about her-maybe haul him to court. So to take care of that he'll fake it-use a wire frame and plastic head, so she seems to be up there and isn't. But to tell you how it's done, as he figures, would be telling the whole wide world-and if that sounds silly to you, you don't know magicians. They think the world is lying awake to know how their tricks are done-they guard their secrets like gold. So to cover up, to make it all look kind of real, he brings her to see you too-as though she's the one to be rea.s.sured. But when she decided to chin herself on the rail, that was coming too thick. Now that was an idea, wasn't it? All she wanted was a feel-from you. And the way you tell it she got it-and I don't blame him for how he felt. He's a crumb, he's ruined my life-but for once I'm on his side."

"I'll never be on his side."

"All right-what else?"

He tramped around, very agitated, then turned to her and blurted: "We talk-we bat it around-we don't get anywhere. So I'm taking this bull by the horns. You're not going back."

"You mean, to him?"

"To him, to that house, or anywhere, but here. So, our new life begins-has begun-as of now. So why don't we celebrate?"

He went out in the kitchen, got a quart of champagne from the icebox, with gla.s.ses he had put there to chill. Coming back, he twisted the wire off the bottle, worked the cork with skillful fingers, got it out with a festive pop. He poured a sip in one gla.s.s, tasted, then filled both gla.s.ses and raised one with a flourish. "Happy days!" he declaimed. "To you, to Elly, to me. Happy years, happy-everything."

She made no move toward her gla.s.s. "Just goes to show," she observed after a moment, "how mistaken you can be. How mistaken I can be."

"Yeah? What mistakes have you made?"

"Oh, you know. Like with the rock I thought I had. Well? You looked like a rock, kind of. And acted like one-I thought. But the rock turned out to be more of a mock orange. Ever see one, Clay? Kind of pretty on the outside, like a big green grapefruit. Open it up it's not so good. Instead of juice it has milk, that's slimy and sticks to your fingers and stinks-so you want to throw up. Like what runs in your veins, come to think of it. What a rock. What a hero. What a joy. What a comfort-to a girl in trouble that needs someone to lean on."

O.K., lean. I'm here-not there."

"d.a.m.n it, shut up!"

Though his finger trembled, betraying how much he was shaken, he pointed it at her gla.s.s, saying: "I toasted you 'Happy days.' What are you toasting me?"

She raised her gla.s.s, and he reached for his to clink. But then suddenly he was blinded, by wet stinging stuff in his eye, and realized she had thrown the wine at him. Wiping off with a napkin, he heard gla.s.s breaking, and when he could see, she was lunging at him with a stem, a glittering, splintered thing that she held in her fist, like a practiced barroom fighter. He jumped up and backed away. She jumped up and charged. Her next lunge grazed his cheek and he clipped her on the chin, toppling her over backward. When he touched his tingling cheek his finger came away red, and he went back to the bathroom, stopping the blood with a styptic pencil. When he got back to the living room he gave a gasp of horror, for pictures, cups, and mementos were all on the floor, the caviar and egg were stamped into the rug, the champagne was upside down, gurgling into the sofa, and she was on his Orozco, the finest painting he had, which had hung over the fireplace, kicking the frame apart and grinding her heels in the canvas. He grabbed her and she cursed him, he flinching at the words, so different were they in her shrill feminine accents from their sound as said by men, and so horrible. Dragging her to the door, he pushed her out. Then, aiming with care, he drove a kick at her bottom, with all his strength, that sprawled her on her face in front of the elevator.

Coming back, he closed the door, panting from exertion and gagging from revulsion. He saw her bag on the telephone table. Grabbing it up, he opened the door again and threw it at her, where she still lay on the floor. Then, banging the door shut, he dived for the bathroom, where white foamy stuff came retching up from his stomach.

"You've had it-this is the end. You're not seeing this dame again for the rest of your life or of hers. You've seen her for what she is, and if you go on asking for more, you should have yourself committed. Did you hear what I said? You're through!"

8.

TAKING AN ARMFUL OF towels, he stuffed them into the sofa to sop up the wine. Then he gathered up paintings and bric-a-brac, including the Orozco, and piled them on the piano. Then he got yards of paper towels and went to work on the rug to clean up the mess. He heard, almost without emotion, a bedlam of screams outside, with kicks and thumps on his door, and did nothing about it at all. He had just finished, using dustpan and whiskbroom, brushing up the last of the egg, when his inside phone rang. People had made complaints, Doris coldly informed him, "from all over the building, about some woman up there, whooping and hollering and banging on your door." Dully he admitted, "She's out there in the hall, I guess." When Doris asked him what she should do, he answered foolishly that it was "your hall, not mine-do whatever you want." On her informing him, "In a case like this I have to call the police," he told her: "Why, sure, I guess you do." She talked a few moments more, making it clear to him the police were going to be called.

He hung up, put the chain lock on the door. Then, opening as far as the chain would permit, he called through the crack: "Cops are being called-they're on their way."

"Ah, you would, wouldn't you?"

He closed the door again, remembered the ham in the oven, went in and turned it off. He waited for more kicks on his door, but none came, or any more screams, for that matter. Then his buzzer sounded, and a man's voice said: "Police." He opened for the officers, who said they had had a complaint, so pulling himself together, he tried to answer them sensibly. "Yes," he said, "there was a girl out there, putting on kind of a roughhouse, but she seems to have gone-I haven't heard her the last few minutes. She uses the freight elevator and may have gone out the back way." The officers went, after taking in the living room. His stomach contracted again, but when he got to the bathroom with it, he discovered the trouble was sobbing, not retching. He decided to go to bed, but having had his say to the mirror, he avoided it while undressing, and when he had on his pajamas, crawled into bed. After a long time he persuaded himself he could sleep. He was just dozing off, or thought he was, when his inside phone rang again. This time when he answered he was quite peevish to Doris, asking: "Yeah, what is it now?" She said she was sorry to bother him, but "a lady is here to see you-a Mrs. Simone, the same one as was here before. But if you want me to say you've retired-?" He told her no, to "send her up," then hurriedly got into his bathrobe and put on the living-room lights. Grace, when he opened, was in a dark summer suit, and stood in the hall for some moments, not responding to his pleasant "Come in."

"I'm not sure I'm going to," she said coldly. "I've come about Sally. She's been with me-she just left. And I think it's rotten what you did to her!"

"I regret I have only one boot to plant in her tail for my country. If this be treason, make the most of it!"

"She's horribly bruised, do you hear?"

"Maybe so, but the cops have been here once, and unless you want a ride in the wagon, you'd better come inside."

She came in then and at last saw the living room. She winced as though hit with a whip, wailing: "Oh! Oh! Oh!" And then: "I-didn't know about this. She-didn't tell me about it! She didn't say one word!"

"Just told you what I did, hey?"

"Not by name. Just-"

"Called me a louse and went on from there?"

" 'Son of a b.i.t.c.h' is what she called you."

"Now, that sounds just like her."

By then she had reached the piano and begun examining the things piled on it. Seeing the Orozco, she started to cry, picking it up, touching fingers to it, turning it over, peering at the reverse side. Then, pa.s.sionately: "It can be repaired-and I'll pay for it, Clay! There's a Mr. Gumpertz on Chase Street who'll make it as good as new! He does marvelous restorations! He-"

"I know Jake, of course. I'll call him-and pay my bills, if you don't mind. This one's going to be big."

"She... didn't mean any harm!"

"Of course not! Just her way of having fun!"

"Clay, please!"

"Grace, what did you come about?"

He had taken a seat on the sofa, the dry one with its back to the piano, and before answering, she came and sat beside him. Then she said: "I had to see you."

"To bawl me out."

"Yes."

"O.K. Go ahead."

"I can't-not after that."

With a shudder, she motioned to the Orozco, and perhaps to ease things for her, he asked: "How's my picture coming along?"

"Rather well, I think-it's almost done now. I was having trouble with it-the eyes were slightly cold. They looked the way they do look when you have that stare on your face that you wear most of the time. I wanted that other look, that warm, interested look that you get when you want to be friendly. And it wouldn't come. But then something happened, I don't quite know what. The blade-on the face I'm using a knife-gave a flick, and there was one eye as I wanted it. Then the other one came-and I stopped. Except for some work on the hands, I'm done."

"I'm certainly curious to see it."

"What do I smell, Clay?"

"Ham. Want some?"

"I have to admit I didn't have much supper."

"I admit I didn't get any. Come on."

Huddled close at the dining-room table, she sipped white wine and wolfed down ham sandwiches. Presently her hand found his, and then suddenly gripped it. "Clay," she whispered, "you're going to ring her, aren't you? And say-something nice to her?"

"You mean, now?"

"She's home. And she's alone."

"Answer: no, Grace. I'm through with her."

"For me? I'm so frightened."

"Not for anyone. What are you frightened about?"

"I don't know. I keep telling myself about nothing! It doesn't help-I keep right on having these crazy jitters. ... About her. About Alec. About Elly! About-everything!"

"The electric chair is frightening."

"No! Don't talk like that!"

"It's what you're afraid of, though-have been all along. It's why you came to me, in the hope I'd bust things up with this marriage she got herself into. Before things get out of hand. Do you know what started this thing? This brawl that we had tonight? It was because I was lousing her time schedule. She's marking time, she says, until the old man dies-and I wanted action tonight. I made my same old pitch, that she go to Reno, have it done, and marry me! But first I wanted that both of us go to him, that husband, and lay it on the line, how things stood, so he'd know-because something happened, Grace, that made it out of the question that things could go on as before, in secret." For the first time, then, he told of the afternoon's episode: "a d.a.m.ned unpleasant occurrence, and it opened my eyes to some things. The first was I don't blame her for all that's happened. That guy's an ugly customer and on top of that a fool. The second was-that fool, dunce, or jerk, I shook his hand. I made him my welcome guest, and that made it a new deal. Things can't go on as they were. But she, do you think she got the point? She just stared at me, as though I was some kind of a nut. I got tired of listening to her and laid the law down, but good. I told her how it would be, that she was staying with me and we would go on from there. We would start a new life, I said, and opened some wine to celebrate. She threw it in my face, broke the gla.s.s and cut my cheek, and wrecked my apartment for me. So if you think I'm calling her up, you just think again. I kicked her out, and she's lucky a boot in the tail is all she got from me. I should have-"

He broke off, speechless with the rage that had repossessed him, then asked: "Isn't that what you've wanted, Grace? Isn't that what you've asked me to do? Isn't it now? Isn't it?"

"Well, not quite in that tone of voice."

"My tone of voice was fine. Answer."

"Then, if you put it that way, I say yes."

O.K. Now! Let's us go on from here."

"Meaning?"

"The same old thing I've meant with you from the start. Let's us begin 'going steady,' as the high-school kids call it."

"Clay, that's out of the question."

"You mean, you have to be loyal to her?"

"That, partly, of course."

"If she's out, what point does loyalty have?"

"You're not out, though."

She put out a hand, touched his bare neck, impulsively pulled him to her. "I own up," she said, "there's nothing I'd like better than to 'go steady' with you. Those weeks you sat for me-I made them last and last and last, I loved them so. And then the other night, when your eyes spoke to me, when I made them come alive, I knew the truth at last. But my love, Clay, isn't only desire. It can face sacrifice too-must face it if it's anything at all. And you've betrayed, with every word, how you feel about her-as she betrayed, when she came to me tonight, how she feels about you!"

"How she feels about losing her cat's-paw!"

"How she feels about-what?"

"You know what I mean, stop 'whatting' me. I'm sure she raged like a tiger, but it wasn't love, my sweet. She's not capable of it! She's-"

"She is, she is, she is!"

"I interrupted. I'm sorry. Go on."

"Whatever she's capable of, you're in this, Clay!"

"I was in it-not any more!"

"You're both in it!"

Both were panting as her chair inched closer and closer and her grip on his neck tightened. Then: "Clay," she whispered, "do you want to go on this way? The two of you fighting each other? With only one possible way for the whole thing to come out? It's not whether you make up! It's just a question of when! So why not do it tonight? Before you destroy each other, from pure, childish spite. ... Well, maybe not you. You're not vindictive, that I must say, my own wonderful Clay. But she is-she can't help it. That's how she was born, it's how she's going to die. If you won't destroy her, she'll surely destroy you, and that's the point it has, my loyalty to you! Clay, don't let it happen! Call her up, make a little gag, ask if it's turning blue, your heel mark on her bottom! So life can go on! So-"

"Behind his back, you mean?"

"Listen! That part can be straightened out!"

"With a blackjack it certainly can be!"