Jack and Susan in 1953 Page 6

“It was the mustard,” someone ventured. “The mustard on the hot dog must have gone bad.”

  “He got dizzy when he tried to fix the windshield wiper,” someone else said. Then after a pause, to Rodolfo, “You’ll have to take it to a garage now.”

  The policeman said to Susan, “Is your friend drunk?”

  Jack shook his head no, with exactly the care a drunk takes when he’s trying to show someone that he’s not had too much to drink.

  Woolf had jumped into the back seat of the car, and was barking incessantly directly at the policeman’s back.

  “Does that dog have a collar?” the cop demanded, turning around suddenly, and staring at the mongrel.

  “We were on our way to get one,” said Susan. “But Jack hadn’t had any lunch so we stopped for a hot dog, and I think the mustard must have gone bad. Like the man said.”

  The policeman sighed a deep sigh, and said, “Get out of here. Drive away please, and let that guy throw up on someone else’s beat, would you?”

  “Yes sir,” said Susan quickly, “thank you.” She smiled at the policeman, and threw an appreciative glance at the small crowd. The people smiled back at Susan, and then began to drift away. “Get in the car,” she said in a low voice to Jack, pushing him toward the door. Rodolfo pushed the seat forward, and Susan shoved Jack into the back with Woolf.

  In another moment, just as the policeman was staring thoughtfully at Rodolfo’s license plate, the vehicle eased its way back into the traffic. Rodolfo turned off the avenue at the next corner.

  As soon as the policeman was lost to sight, Woolf quit barking, turned around, and again began licking Jack’s face.

  The following morning, directly after tour number 3 (Spanish Renaissance), Susan stuck a nickel into the pay telephone in the employees’ lounge of the museum and dialed Jack’s number. She had looked it up that morning before coming to work; someone invariably stole the directories in the employees’ lounge, no matter how often they were replaced.

  Jack answered, groggily.

  “It’s Susan Bright,” she said hesitantly. “I called to find out if you’d recovered.”

  There was a small pause before he answered. “I’m all right. I think.”

  “I woke you up.”

  “That’s all right.”

  “Did you go to the doctor? I wish you had let Rodolfo and me take you to the doctor.”

  “I’m fine. I didn’t need to see a doctor. I was just a little shaken up.”

  “You wouldn’t even let us take you upstairs,” said Susan. “I would have felt better—”

  “I had seen enough of Rodolfo García-Cifuentes.”

  Susan decided to remain silent. In the ensuing pause, she heard violent barking on the other end of the telephone.

  “Shut up, Woolf!” Jack said, away from the receiver.

  “I forgot about him. Are you going to keep him?”

  “I guess so. Until he throws himself out the window. This dog has no sense of height. I think he was raised in Kansas or somewhere. And then wandered off the prairie onto Fifth Avenue.”

  “Are you feeding him hot dogs?”

  “Cheese, actually. I cut it into hot dog shapes. Are you going to continue to see Rodolfo?”

  “Jack—”

  “He tried to kill me, you know.”

  “You jumped out in front of his car.”

  “He didn’t even try to stop.”

  “He didn’t have time to stop. Besides, he didn’t.”

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Kill you.”

  “Has he ever introduced you to any of his friends?”

  “Jack, this is none of your business. None of your business whatsoever. I only called because—”

  “He hasn’t, has he? You’ve never met any of his friends. That’s because he doesn’t have any and he doesn’t have any for the simple reason that he doesn’t exist.”

  Susan hated the smugness in Jack’s voice. Susan was glad that what she said next was true.

  “He’s invited me to have dinner tonight—”

  “Don’t accept.”

  “—at the home of the Cuban consul.”

  Susan waited for a response from Jack. None came. Good, she thought, that shut him up.

  “He said,” Susan went on, “that I had never met any of his friends, and it was time I did. He said he wanted to make up for yesterday’s accident.”

  “See? He admits it was his fault.”

  “No, he didn’t admit any such thing. It’s just that I once told him that it upsets me to see people run down in the street. And it does—even when it’s you.”

  Why was it that Jack always made her say such things? Why did a simple telephone call to ask, “How do you feel?” turn into a tedious barrage of insults?

  She’d felt bad for Jack the day before. Never mind that it was an impossibly stupid thing to have done—run out into the traffic of Fifth Avenue in order to save the life of a stray mongrel dog that would probably have made it to the other side of the street without mishap. Never mind that the whole thing wouldn’t have happened at all if he hadn’t showed up, unasked, unwanted, and totally out of line with vague and unwarranted accusations against Rodolfo. Never mind that Jack had been positively rude to Rodolfo at the door of the apartment building, refusing Rodolfo’s help up to his flat. Never mind that Jack never ever failed to say something or do something that immediately annoyed her when they were together for more than five minutes. Nevertheless Susan had felt sorry for Jack when she pried him loose from the hood of Rodolfo’s car.

  Now she was glad she had called him. He was as impossible as ever. His narrow brush with death hadn’t improved him. He was very very annoying, and she didn’t need to feel sorry for him anymore.

  “Good-bye, Jack,” she said suddenly. “Look both ways before crossing.” Then she hung up the telephone, sat down, and rubbed her feet for a couple of minutes before she went out to meet tour group number 4 (the Age of Pericles).

  While she sat there she thought about Jack some more. In the four years since she’d last seen him, she had often considered what it would be like to run into him again, but she had always envisaged that event taking place in an environmental vacuum with nothing to distract from the actual drama of the encounter.

  It hadn’t happened that way the night before last. Immediately after she’d insulted him at the bar of Mr. Vance’s, she’d seen Jack do a wonderful and brave thing. He had protected Libby’s life at the risk of his own. The following day he had risked his life again, to save a dog from being run down in the street.

  He’d never done that for her.

  She remembered the bitterness of their parting—or rather, she remembered that she had felt bitter at the time.

  No trace of that was left.

  But if that really was so, then why had she been so unpleasant toward him for two days running?

  She didn’t like her own answer to that question. She had been unpleasant because she had feared that he still would be bitter toward her and that his animosity would be undiminished, and she would have to show him that she could match him.

  But now, she was forced to admit, he seemed to harbor no such resentment. But did it really matter?

  The previous day, after taking Jack home, Rodolfo had driven Susan directly to Washington Square. Rodolfo had parked and walked her to the door of her building. At the entrance, Rodolfo had kissed her.

  His lips were hard and dry, his beard was coarse.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  JACK STOOD NAKED in front of the full-length mirror on the back of his closet door and looked at his body. Actually, he looked at the bruises on his body. The bruises that were on his left leg—all up and down it. The bruises to his rib cage. He probed them with his fingers and they were tender. There was a long scrape from his neck to his solar plexus—the windshield wiper had done that. He turned around and looked over his shoulder. More bruises on his back, particularly on the left side. It felt like his joints creaked. Wo
olf came over and licked him where it tickled.

  “Go away, Woolf.”

  He was too sore even to bend over and push the dog away. He went into the bathroom and stared at the tub, wishing it were possible for him to lie in it at full length. Jack’s apartment building was newly converted, which meant that the apartments in it were newly small and newly inconvenient. Jack’s apartment and two others had been made out of what had been one decent-sized flat. A living room, a bedroom, a bath with a tub that was only big enough for people less than five feet tall, a kitchen that was more suggestive of a dent in the living room wall than a place in which to prepare meals, and what the realtor had called “a winter closet.” Jack had no idea what that meant, since there wasn’t a summer closet to match it. There was only one tiny clothes closet, in fact. The view was not much to speak of either: both windows in the apartment overlooked a small echoing courtyard where the superintendent’s children played incessantly. Nevertheless, Jack was pleased with the place. He was a bachelor, and bachelors don’t need a lot of room. The apartment was furnished with a dozen fine pieces of furniture rescued from the wreck of his mother’s fortune. It was old, and the upholstery was worn and faded, but it was comfortable and bore some old-fashioned charm and lent the flat a kind of gentility.

  Jack turned the water on hot and stood in the shower, turning his bruises to the needles of steaming water. He came out wrinkled and tired and glad that it was Saturday and he wasn’t expected at work.

  He made coffee, and thought about Susan’s call that had awakened him. He was glad she had called. He liked hearing her voice. He liked to think she cared whether he lived or died.

  Woolf had made known his desire to go out by scratching at—thereby removing a fair portion of paint from—the door of the winter closet, evidently thinking that this was the way out of the apartment.

  Jack put on loose clothing that would brush against his bruises as little as possible, improvised a leash out of an old rope that was tied around his fishing-rod case at the back of the closet, attached the three-foot length of cord to Woolf’s collar, and sallied forth.

  Woolf was a strong dog, and the leash was short and none too sturdy. Woolf pulled so hard that the bruises on Jack’s arm felt as if they were being stretched into areas of discomfort darker and larger than before. Woolf dragged Jack forward along Sixty-first Street in the direction of Second Avenue, which fortunately was exactly where Jack had intended to go. Woolf wouldn’t allow Jack to stop at the first shop they came to, or the second. At the third, the dog consented to be tied to a parking meter while Jack went inside. Jack bought a box of Pep whole wheat cereal, three boxes of Birds Eye frozen vegetables, two bottles of Canada Dry club soda, and a box of Clix dog candy.

  Not only the leash, but Woolf himself was wrapped tightly about the parking meter by the time Jack came out again. Jack carefully put down the groceries and untangled Woolf, who was in danger of choking himself and breaking both forelegs with his energetic movements against the rope.

  “If I don’t use the leash,” Jack said to the dog, “will you promise to run away?”

  “Woolf,” shouted Woolf.

  But Woolf did not run away. In fact, he trotted along at Jack’s heels so close to Jack that several times Jack stumbled and nearly fell face forward onto the sidewalk.

  Jack was thinking about Libby now, and the fact that in one week—bruises or no bruises—Libby was expecting him to ask for her hand in marriage. His thoughts were rambling. Libby had a huge pantry. Libby even had people who went out and bought groceries for her. Jack wondered if Libby would mind a dog with so little pedigree as Woolf. Jack wondered—

  He wondered what the hell he was going to do, married to Libby Mather, the nationally known margarine heiress. He didn’t really need all that money, and despite Libby’s objections, he liked this apartment well enough.

  Besides, he told himself, he liked being a bachelor.

  Actually, what he liked was holding himself open in case Susan Bright ever decided she wanted to have something to do with him again. Jack didn’t like to admit such things, even to himself, but his bruises hurt—every one of them—and it felt like Woolf was pulling Jack’s arm out of its socket. A man admitted things under physical duress he wouldn’t own up to otherwise.

  The elevator man didn’t approve of Woolf; pets were against the rules of the building. Jack named seven tenants of the building who owned dogs, and two more who owned more than one dog. “Number seventeen, I’ve been told,” Jack said to the elevator man, “has a room that is completely given over to parakeets. They fly free,” he added darkly. He gave the elevator man a five-dollar bill, and the elevator man conceded, “This dog’s better behaved than most.”

  Jack’s kitchen consisted of a cupboard that was the size of a medicine chest and a single multipurpose appliance—a Hess combination refrigerator, freezer, sink, oven, and gas range with three burners—all in a white enamel housing the size of a small steamer trunk. Jack put away his groceries, fed Woolf a half-dozen bone-shaped dog candies, and then lay down on the sofa and tried to go to sleep again. If he were asleep he wouldn’t feel his bruises, and he wouldn’t have to think about the fact that one of the five richest women in America wanted to become his wife.

  His mother’s sofa was normal sized, which meant that Jack, at his height, did not fit on it. Before long, he had not only bruises, but a sore neck and feet with impaired circulation. But he was asleep. He hadn’t actually realized he was asleep, however, until the door buzzer awakened him out of that uncomfortable slumber.

  He got up automatically and went toward the door, but his feet didn’t work properly, and he stumbled and fell. He might have injured himself had his fall not been broken by Woolf who was barking energetically at the door of the winter closet, still convinced that was the way to the hallway.

  The buzzer sounded again.

  Jack pulled himself up off Woolf, and moved much more slowly this time. He had no idea who might be on the other side of the door.

  It was Rodolfo García-Cifuentes.

  Invalids, Jack thought, should not be subjected to unpleasant surprises, which retarded their healing.

  Jack said nothing. Did not smile. Did not invite the man inside. There was something about this visit that offended Jack deeply. He tried to think of the last time anyone had showed up uninvited at the door of his apartment. Never.

  “I was passing,” said Rodolfo, “and I dropped by to see if you were well.”

  “I’ve got bruises all over my damned body,” said Jack.

  “May I come inside?” said Rodolfo, gently pushing away Woolf, who was industriously licking his brushed-leather shoes. The man dressed perfectly, even on a Saturday afternoon. Wearing an oatmeal-colored sport jacket and light brown flannel trousers. His oxford shirt was perfectly complemented by a brown silk tie. The ideal outfit to intimidate a rival in love. In his tousled hair, bare feet, wrinkled shirt, and his too-short trousers, Jack felt grubby.

  “Have you recovered yourself?” Rodolfo asked, dropping into a chair with perfect ease, without invitation.

  “I’ll be fine,” said Jack, taking a seat on the couch. “Someday.”

  Rodolfo smiled. The smile seemed genuine. “I am glad you were not injured.”

  “Lucky for me—and lucky for you as well,” Jack agreed. “Foreign nationals running down native pedestrians is not looked on with favor here.” He considered offering Rodolfo something to drink, then decided against it.

  Rodolfo smiled again. “Shoo!” he said quietly to Woolf, now licking the cuffs of his trousers.

  Jack remained offended by Rodolfo’s presence. Whatever his motive in coming was, it was sure to be underhanded, sneaky, unworthy of a man. Jack had decided that one thing about Rodolfo was effeminate: not his appearance, not his carriage, or mannerisms, but his mode of treachery. Jack didn’t know what Rodolfo intended to say or do this Saturday afternoon, but he was certain this visit constituted some sort of attack. He may not h
ave had his arm raised high above his head, and there was no knife visible, but it was an attack all the same.

  “Susan was very worried,” said Rodolfo after a moment of silence.

  “She telephoned a while ago.”

  “Did she?”

  “Yes,” said Jack.

  “She said she intended to. I’m glad she did,” said Rodolfo. “She also said you two were once in love.”

  Jack remained silent, but he could feel what must have been an entire pint of blood surging up out of his heart to suffuse his face with color. Rodolfo smiled. The smile enraged Jack. But he still refrained from speech. The last time he’d gotten into one of these bewildering conversations, he’d asked questions, and he’d ended up engaged—or, rather, engaged to be engaged.

  “I am glad,” said Rodolfo. Still Jack did not speak. He tried to will the blush to fade. Blood began to flow downward through the veins in his neck. He was beginning to look less like a beet, he hoped. “I do not like to be the first man that a woman has loved,” Rodolfo went on. “A woman, when she loves for the first time, does not see clearly love. She does not love, she only imagines that it would be sweet to be in love. It is not she who loves, it is her heart. But the second time…”

  The sensation was peculiar—to sit in his own apartment, attending to a Cuban making a disquisition on love. It made Jack squirm. “The second time?” Jack prompted, and then wished he hadn’t.

  “…the second time, a woman loves not only with her heart. But with her soul. And with her mind. It is the second love that is the stronger.”

  “Would you like a drink?” Jack said, getting up and heading for the kitchen.

  “No thank you,” said Rodolfo politely.

  Good, thought Jack, that leaves more for me. He poured three fingers of scotch into a glass.

  Jack didn’t talk about such things as love, neither aloud nor silently to himself. That was why it had taken him so long to realize that he still cared for Susan Bright. That was why he had gotten so entangled with Libby Mather. And now here was Rodolfo, employing love as a theme, and Jack had no idea how to respond.