Two Much! Page 2

  “Quite the contrary,” I said. “In point of fact, all our effort is the other way, to make breeding improve the race.”

  This being the most incisive remark any of them had ever heard in their lives, I was immediately absorbed into the group, where the man I’d contradicted thrust his hand out and said, “Frazier.”

  I gave him my honest grip and said, “Dodge.”

  Another man said, “Of the New Bedford Dodges?”

  “Distantly,” I said.

  We chatted about horses for a while, then transposed to a critique and comparison of several North Carolina golf courses, during which I excused myself and headed for the bar. “Rum and tonic,” I said.

  “Ha ha ha,” he said. “Got no rum.”

  “Make it vodka.”

  “Ho ho ho,” he said, and made my drink.

  Liz sidled up and said, “My usual, Mike.”

  “Ha ha,” he said, gave me my drink, and made Liz’s usual: one ice cube in a glass, vodka to the brim.

  Waiting for it she said to me, with a head-nod toward the rest of the party, “See why I wanted you here?”

  “I think you should have called the coroner.”

  “Here y’are, Miss Kerner.”

  “Thanks, Mike.”

  “Ha ha ha.”

  We strolled away from Pagliacci and I said, “If I’m going to hang around here, you’d better lay in some rum.”

  “Let’s wait and see if your option gets picked up.”

  We stood in a quiet corner and observed the party. Betty, the twin, was in moribund conversation with a girl in yellow and a girl in pink. All three dresses, I noticed, ended just below the knee. I said, “You and your sister aren’t really very much alike at all.”

  “She’s noisier,” Liz said. “What about you and your brother?”

  “He’s quieter.” I was determined not to talk about my damn brother. “Is this your sister’s party? It seems more her style.”

  “She isn’t that bad,” she said. “This is a political party. We want to sell the house.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t follow.”

  “If you’re going to sell a house in Point O’ Woods,” she said, “you don’t exactly run an ad in the Daily News. We’re a restricted community.”

  Looking around at the revelers, I said, “You can only sell to someone with a valid death certificate.”

  “Something like that. None of us actually own our houses, you know. The Association owns everything, and we have long-term leases. So what we’re selling is the lease, and of course the Association has to approve the new leaseholder.”

  “Of course.”

  “You see the gent over there in the gray tie with the maroon polka dots?”

  “I’m afraid I do, yes.”

  “He’s our potential buyer.”

  He was one of the Fraziers: stocky, Republican, graying at the temples. “He seems absolutely perfect,” I said.

  “Doesn’t he? Unfortunately, there’s a problem.”

  “The wife?”

  “Good God, no. That’s her there, in the tweed.”

  Tweed, in August. The woman in question was a perfect Grahame. “What, then?”

  “Family. They’re a little outside the general circle.”

  “How awful for you.”

  “We’re introducing them now, that’s the idea of the party.”

  “Ah. And if they pass muster, you can sell. But why do you want to?”

  She shrugged. “This was our parents’ place. Neither of us wants it.”

  “Are you recently orphaned?”

  “Last New Year’s Eve. They were on their way to a performance of Handel’s Messiah when someone tipped a piano off a terrace. It went right through the roof of the Lincoln. The chauffeur had a black key embedded in his shoulder but was otherwise completely unscratched.”

  “That must have been, um, terrible for you,” I said. Sympathy is such a difficult mode to get just right.

  But once again she shrugged, saying, “Death didn’t change them that much. Fewer questions, that’s all. Listen, why don’t we go upstairs and screw?”

  “What a wonderful party this is,” I said.

  She gave her glass a critical look. “Let me just get a fresh drink.”

  The houses of Point O’ Woods are not summer cottages at all. They are perfect imitations of small-town houses, circa 1920. Brown shingle siding, white trim, full front porches, varnished wood floors. We did not clamber up a ladder to a sleeping loft, Liz and I, we walked up a solid flight of stairs to a solid second floor. Two bedrooms and a bath.

  Unfortunately, that bath was the only one in the house, which meant a steady traffic of guests up and down the stairs. The bedroom doors were both standing open, and Liz thought it unwise to try closing one. Therefore, we had at it in a closet full of dusty garments and chittering hangers. It was warm in there to begin with, and we’d soon created an atmosphere like that in a rain forest at midnight Nor were matters helped much when Liz, writhing along midway in our progress, kicked over her fresh glass of vodka. Don’t let anybody ever tell you vodka has no smell; in a closed closet it does.

  Still, there was a good side to it all, which eventually climaxed with a lot of rucking and bumping amid the shifts and sneakers. Following which, we readjusted ourselves for public consumption and returned to the quieter side of the party, carefully closing the closet door behind ourselves. It really did look—and smell—as though some sort of debauch had taken place in there. “Poor old closet,” I said. “Things will be dull for it once you sell.”

  “I wish I hadn’t spilled that drink,” she said irritably, but she was thinking of herself, not of the closet Downstairs, she left me without so much as a thank you and headed straight for Mike.

  I roamed a while, listened to three under-thirty males discuss the implications for the legal profession of no-fault auto insurance, eavesdropped on girl-talk about dog shows, had another vodka and tonic, and eventually found myself alone in a corner when Betty, the Liz who wasn’t Liz, came over with her polite-hostess smile and said, “This party must be dull for you.”

  “Does it show?”

  The smile became a touch more limpid. “No,” she said, “you’re carrying it off very well.”

  “So are you,” I told her. Regardless of the white dress, regardless of the hostess smile and the tamed-down gestures, this face and body were so completely the same as the face and body I’d just been humping in the upstairs closet that I couldn’t help a sense of familiarity, an easiness of discourse. Also, it was impossible to believe this one was as unlike her sister as she seemed; surely that throat could be made to produce the same low groans as Liz.

  She raised one eyebrow. I’ve never been able to do that, and I’ve always envied people who could. “Don’t you think I’m enjoying myself?”

  “You’ve had better times,” I told her, and reached out to pat a hand holding a glass containing what looked suspiciously like sherry. “And you will again,” I said. Then I noticed Liz frowning in our direction from some distance away, and casually I removed my hand and placed it instead in my pocket.

  But it seemed already to have done its work. The hostess smile was all at once much more honest, much looser. She said, “Do you like good times, Mr. Dodge?”

  “Cozy times,” I said, but it was all a charade and meaningless. Liz was too self-contained to break in on our chitchat, but she was circling on the far side of the room, her awareness as intrusive as an electric current. You can’t change sisters in mid-scheme. I’ve tried and I know; you lose them both. Blood is also thicker than oil, apparently.

  The sister in purdah was saying something about ski lodges and roaring fires; following on my use of the word cozy, I suppose. “That’s why I’m a winter person,” she said. “I love the ice and snow, and then you come in and get all bundled up and warm.” She hugged herself, and sipped sherry. “Are you like that?”

  “Depends who I’m bundling with,” I said.


  She pretended to find me risqué, and took the opportunity to touch my wrist with her own cool fingertips. “Oh, you’re perfect for Liz,” she said. “She just loves fast people.”

  “And you?”

  “Oh, I’m just a spectator.” Her little smile was meant to be fatalistic, I suppose, but in truth it was smug.

  “If you see something you like,” I suggested, “just ask for it”

  “Oh, I think I’ll stay on the sidelines,” she said, with a depressingly flirtatious little smile. Then she said, “Do you know your eyes sparkle in this light?”

  I wear contact lenses. “It’s because I’m a romantic,” I said. “And so do yours.”

  “Oh, I wear contact lenses. Liz doesn’t, though; her eyes aren’t as bad as mine.” She gave me a coy look. “So we aren’t exactly the same, after all.”

  “Two separate mysteries,” I said, with low-voiced melodrama.

  “That’s exactly tight Isn’t it that way with you and your brother?”

  The brother again. “Oh, I suppose we’re different in some ways,” I said.

  “Would I like to meet him?”

  A comical thought entered my brain—casual, fanciful, not yet serious. “You’d probably get along fine with old Bart,” I said.

  “Bart, is that his name?”

  “Mmm hmm.”

  “Why don’t you bring him around some time?”

  I smiled. “Maybe I will,” I said. “Maybe I will.” Then another ray from Liz’s eyes struck my left temple a glancing blow, and I bowed my head to look at my drink and say, “I believe I need a refill.”

  We parted with mutual expressions of esteem, and Liz intercepted me at the bar. “My usual, Mike,” she said.

  “Ha ha ha,” said Mike.

  Liz tossed me a sidelong green-eyed glare. “Having fun with my sister?”

  “She’d rather be in a ski lodge,” I said. “Before a roaring fire.”

  “Or in one,” she muttered, and Mike gave us our drinks.

  I said, “Let’s go back to the closet.”

  She gave me a flat look. “Screw you,” she said, and went away.

  I hung around a while longer, but she remained angry, and God knows there was no other reason to be there, so eventually I made my departure. I gave my hostesses separate farewells. “Drop in any time you’re in the neighborhood,” Liz said, with eyes much colder than her sister’s winter wonderland. Betty, in her turn, said she was glad to meet me and asked once more after my dear brother Bart. Then I left.

  This protected enclave of the well-bred well-to-do; they even leave their bicycles out at night, unlocked, safe from the teen-age chimpanzees who harass the proletarian communities. I stole the first bike I came to, rode it to the end of Point O’ Woods, walked it with difficulty through the thick sand around the end of the fence, and then rode cheerfully down the central walk through Ocean Bay Park and Seaview and Ocean Beach. I had to abandon it men and walk along the beach to Lonelyville, but in Dunewood I found another untended bike—most unusual—and sailed along to Fair Harbor and the fair Candy, who had just had a raging fight with Ralph and wasn’t speaking to anybody. Ralph and I went to Hommel’s and drank, until Ralph asked me to go back to the house and try to soothe Candy. “She won’t talk to me,” he said. “Maybe she’ll talk to you.” So I went back to the house and soothed her.

  THE NEXT DAY WAS WEDnesday and I was going to the city. Ralph decided to go in with me, so we took a morning ferry together, wearing shoes and carrying attaché cases. Ralph bought a Times at the Pioneer Market to read on the boat, and I spent the time trying to work up some fresh greetings. I didn’t have a really good Get Well Soon, and it was also time to start thinking about Christmas. While the ferry wallowed across the Great South Bay, I doodled on a sheet of paper resting on my attaché case. “Get well soon—get well soon—get well soon—”

  The voyage from Fire Island to Manhattan employs most of the transportation methods known to man. First the ferry to Bay Shore, on the southern coast of Long Island; then a cab from the dock to the railroad station; then a train on in to the city. “Get well soon,” I wrote. “Get well soon.” I was getting nowhere.

  Then all at once a Merry Christmas dropped into my head, and I laughed aloud. “Ralph,” I said.

  He looked up from the bridal announcements; Ralph reads everything in the Times. “Mm?”

  “On the front,” I said, “there’s a drawing of a cute priest. Barry Fitzgerald. He’s smiling directly at us, with the caption, ‘Merry Christmas.’ And inside it says, ‘you Jew bastard.’”

  “Mmmmm,” he said. “Won’t that offend some people?”

  “You really think so?”

  “Not everybody is as sophisticated as you are,” he said.

  “Oh, go long with you,” I said. I don’t know why I sounding-board Ralph; he has no more sense of humor than a yak.

  We separated at Perm Station, Ralph to cab downtown to the law firm with his homework, me to walk up into the bowels of the garment district My office is on the fifth floor of a building so infested with third-rate garment manufacturers I think of the place as an outpatient clinic for bankruptcy court. The regular elevator ceased to function during the Harding Administration, and this time I shared the freight elevator with a rack of thin floral dresses accompanied by a pair of four-foot-tall PRs. Hispanics, they prefer to be called, but most people use the abbreviation: spic.

  Gloria was at her desk, typing at her typewriter. “Look at the tan,” she said.

  “It comes from the Tabasco in the bloody Marys.” I pulled the dress out from under my shirt and said, “Here’s a little something I bought you.”

  “You bought me?” She held the dress away from herself with one hand, studying it without trust “If I wear it to work, will I get arrested?”

  “Think of it as a weekend dress. What’s that you’re typing?”

  “A letter to my mother.”

  “Good. I was afraid it might have something to do with the firm.”

  “What firm?”

  “No double-entendres,” I warned her, and went back into my own room, which hadn’t changed much in my absence.

  My firm is Those Wonderful Folks, Inc., and I do greeting cards. I create my own copy, farm out the illustrations, and am cheated by the printer and robbed by the distributor. My product, known as Folksy Cards, is distributed only in the Greater New York area, and pays just enough to make me ineligible for food stamps.

  My favorite cards are framed and mounted on the walls in my office. It inspires me to be able to look up from the desk and see the earlier emanations of my genius. “Kiss me again—I’ll turn the other cheek.” “We’ll have to stop meeting like this—roll over.” “Love is—never having to say, ‘How much?’”

  In fact, they inspired me again. I no sooner sat down at my desk than I grabbed pencil and paper and wrote. “Get well soon—my doctor says you have it, too.” That was two in one day, by God; taking a vacation really does help.

  Whistling cheerfully, I turned to the stack of memos on which Gloria had listed the incoming phone calls of the last few days, and what an honor roll of complainers and spoilsports unfolded there before me. Even the landlord, for the love of Christ. Jack Mulligan, my sister, Ed Frazee,

  Linda Ann Margolies …

  Linda Ann Margolies? I buzzed Gloria. “Who is Linda Ann Margolies?”

  “A sexy voice on the phone. Young and cuddly.”

  “Get her.”

  “Mm hm.”

  “You’re too cynical, Gloria,” I said, hung up, and finished throwing away the rest of the phone memos. Three calls from my ex-wife alone. If these buffoons overworked Gloria, she’d up and quit. Then there were Dave Danforth, Abbie Lancaster, Charlie Hillerman.…

  Hmmm, Charlie Hillerman. An illustrator with a very lewd style, he’d be perfect for the Get Well Soon. Unfortunately, I still owed him one or two fees for previous work, which-was surely what he was calling about. Would he do just one
more, prior to payment? It wouldn’t hurt to ask.

  Buzz. Gloria said, “Linda Ann Margolies.”

  “Fine. Get me Charlie Hillerman.”

  “You must be crazy.”

  “Just get him.” I switched to the outside line, and said, “Miss Margolies?”

  “Yes, it is.” Gloria’s description had been absolutely on the money: sexy, cuddly and young. “Is that Arthur Dodge?”

  “Depends,” I said. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m a graduate student at Columbia, Mr. Dodge,” she said. “My master’s thesis is on humor, and I’d like to interview you about Folksy Cards and your theory of comedy and, oh, all sorts of stuffy things like that.”

  “Well, you can’t hope for too much from a first date,” I said. (She had a nicely throaty chuckle.) “When did you want to get together?” Not that I was set on fire by the thought of a master’s thesis on the theory of comedy—my own theory, which could quickly have been transmitted by telephone, is if they buy it it’s funny—but the voice was intriguing. And, as John Ray pointed out back in 1650, “A maid that laughs is half taken.”

  “As soon as possible,” she said. “Could I come down there today?”

  “Not today,” I said. “Umm, how about next Wednesday?”

  “What time?”

  “One o’clock.” Late enough for me to definitely be in town, early enough so I wouldn’t have to leave for a while.

  “Fine,” she said. “See you then.”

  “Try to stay cheerful,” I told her, hung up, and Gloria buzzed me. “Hah?”

  “Hillerman.”

  “Ah.” I pushed the button. “Hi, Charlie.”

  “So you’re in town, are you?” He sounded dangerous, and I was recalling now that he’s a large fellow for an illustrator. He comes from Oregon, and he’s no stranger to woodchopping. “Just wait there,” he said, “I’ll be right over.”

  “No need, Charlie,” I said. “I can describe the idea on the phone.”

  That bewildered him. “What idea?”

  “The idea I’m calling about. It’s a Get Well Soon, and what we want—”

  “You want me to do another?” He became briefly falsetto. “You son of a bitch, you’ve been avoiding me with that out-of-town gag, all of a sudden—”