Two Much! Page 4

  “Oh, we both do our share,” I said.

  Still, she pursued the subject, and I gradually permitted myself to admit that Art was more the clever intuitive member of the family, while I was the practical one who kept the company stable and afloat. “Liz and I are like that,” Betty said. “She’s just so clever and witty sometimes, and I’m the plain practical one.”

  “Not plain,” I assured her. Reaching across the table, I squeezed her hand. “Anything but plain.”

  She squeezed back. “You are nice,” she said.

  Then it was back to the greeting card company, and now she wanted to know if we did all the “verses” ourselves, or did we accept work from “free-lancers.” On the assumption that Mr. Hallmark doesn’t do all his own writing, I said, “Oh, we buy most of our verses from professionals.”

  Something flustered and coy overtook her now, and she said, “You may not believe this, but I write verses myself.”

  My heart sank. “Do you really?”

  “Oh, not for publication, just for family occasions. I don’t suppose I’m good enough to be a real professional.”

  Nor did I. However, I now had no choice; it was required of me that I coax her, blushing and reluctant, to quote me some of her crap. Which at last, of course, she consented to do.

  “I wrote this for my mother’s fiftieth birthday,” she said. “Mother, when I think of all/The things you’ve done for me,/I know no other mother could/Compare on land or sea./I think you’re sweet, I think you’re great/In short, I think you’re nifty—”

  “Oh, good!” I said. “Here come our drinks.”

  “GOOD MORNING, SWEETHEART.”

  I must be awake; nobody could dream a headache this bad. Cautiously—or incautiously, as it turned out—I opened one eye, and a needle of sunlight struck straight through into my brain. “Holy Mother of God!” I groaned, and snapped the eyelid shut again over my charred eyeball.

  A smell of coffee threatened my stomach with upheaval, and a voice I recognized said, redundantly, “I brought you some coffee.”

  This time I squinted, which was safer, and vaguely made out her female form. Liz, or possibly Betty. Which one was it? Come to think of it, which one was I?

  “Do you want your glasses?”

  Ah hah, a clue. Glasses = Bart. “Sweetheart” said to Bart = Betty.

  Sweetheart? Betty? What bed was I in? “Glasses,” I muttered, feeling sudden urgency, and waved a hand in the air until my spectacles were thrust into it. I donned them without sticking the wings in my eyes and blinked around at a bedroom I knew from somewhere. Good God, there was the closet, its door demurely closed. I was upstairs once more in the Kerner house, and had apparently spent the night.

  Oh, really? I struggled to a sitting position, my back against the knurled wood headboard, and looked fuzzily around. This room was furnished with twin beds, in one of which I was roiling about and on the edge of the other of which Betty was sitting, cheerful and not at all hung over, crisp and cute in white shorts and a pale blue top.

  She smiled at me. “Hung over?”

  “I think it’s terminal.”

  “I brought you some aspirin.”

  “Gimme.”

  She watched me struggle the aspirin down with gulps of coffee, and her expression was fond and indulgent and maternal, three of my least favorite mannerisms in a woman.

  It was hard to think and swallow aspirin at the same time, but I forced myself. Last night: romantic evening, motorboat, Pewter Tankard. Betty had informed me she never drank anything stronger than wine, so I’d seen to it the table flowed with the stuff. Sherry beforehand, Moselle with the appetizer, Médoc with the entree, and stingers with dessert. (The wine limitation had fallen by then.) I did remember the stingers, but from then on memory faltered. There was a scene involving hilarious laughter and me failing to get out of a boat There was something to do with whether or not we were going to steal bicycles. Beyond that, a veil covereth all.

  At last I abandoned the effort and put the coffee cup on the night table between the beds, saying, “God, what a head.”

  “I guess you’re just not used to wine.”

  “That might be it.”

  “You know, you look a lot more like your brother with your glasses off, and your hair tousled that way.”

  I whipped a guilty hand to my head, but could do nothing effective there, and permitted it to drop again to my side.

  “Have you ever thought of trying contact lenses?”

  “Oh, well,” I said. “Glasses are good enough for me.” They were hurting my nose.

  “You’re really very good-looking, you know,” she said, and when I looked at her it seemed to me there was something possessive, possibly triumphant in the set of her head and the glint of her eye.

  Had we? There are things you don’t forget, aren’t there? Aren’t there? I was naked beneath the sheet and thin blanket. Speak, memory. Goddamn it to hell. But memory remained silent. And that is one question it is never possible to ask a woman. They don’t take kindly to the thought of being forgettable. “I think,” I said, “you should take cover. I believe my head is about to explode.”

  “I’ll massage your temples,” she offered. “I do that for Liz sometimes when she has hangovers, and she says it helps just wonderfully.”

  “Anything,” I said.

  So she moved over to sit on my bed, remove my glasses, and began stroking my temples with her cool fingers. It did nothing for me in any medical way, but it did put her in arm’s reach, so I slid a hand around her waist The smile she gave me was very nearly as lewd as her sister’s, and she said, “Again? You’d better rest.”

  Ah hah, another clue. Again, was it? I stroked a breast and drew her close and murmured, “It’s the only known cure. A medical fact.”

  “Now, Bart,” she said, and we kissed. Despite my throbbing head I enjoyed it.

  But when I tried to roll her into the bed with me she pulled back, becoming at once serious. “Not in my father’s bed!”

  “Your fa—” I glanced toward the other one. “Not that one either, I guess.”

  “You can understand, can’t you?” She petted my chest, seeking forgiveness.

  “Oh, sure. But—” How to phrase this, without tipping the fact that our previous encounter wasn’t on the tape? “Last night,” I suggested, “didn’t we, uh? …”

  She looked at me, with humorous shock covering the true shock. “You don’t remember!”

  “Of course I remember.” I sat up straighter, astounded that she could doubt me. “I remember you. But you know the condition I was in, and the dark, and …” I let it trail off, with a vague wavy gesture of the hand “I just don’t remember where” I said.

  “You silly thing,” she said. “On the porch.”

  “Ah.”

  “And the living room.”

  “Ah hah.”

  “And the bathroom.”

  “Ah?”

  She giggled, and petted my chest some more. “You were just insatiable,” she said.

  I must have been. “I still am,” I said, and petted her chest, while I looked around for some solution to our quandary. My eye lit on the closet; no, that would be going just too far.

  “Oh, Bart,” she said, and leaned forward to nibble my pectorals.

  “Um,” I said, and pointed to the floor. “You see that rug?”

  “What a wonderful idea,” she said, and bounded out of her shorts.

  Even with twins, there are certain differences. Betty was a trifle thinner than Liz, and somewhat less imaginative. She was also a lot harder to bring off; in fact, I’m not sure I did. However, she seemed well enough pleased, and afterward, as I lay on the rug like a trout in the bottom of a boat, she wetly kissed my ear and whispered, “I’ll make you a nice breakfast.”

  “Thank you,” I whispered. She had whispered because it was romantic, but I did so because I didn’t have the strength to talk.

  She started away, then came back to wh
isper some more. “Now, if Liz comes in, remember we’re going to keep it a secret.”

  A secret. Screwing? I wasn’t up to any response other than a bewildered squint in her general direction.

  She was about to become hurt again. “Now,” she said, no longer whispering, “you’ll tell me you didn’t forget our engagement.”

  “Oh, our engagement! Well, naturally I know about that. I just didn’t know what you were talking about”

  She considered me briefly, but finally decided to let it go, for which small kindness I hope she was given full marks in heaven. She left the room, and slowly I made it to a sitting position on the floor. I spoke aloud. “I’m engaged,” I said, and then I giggled.

  It wasn’t until some time later that I thought of the world’s third largest supplier of wood and wood products, and the several other firms including a television station in Indiana.

  SUNDAY MORNING I TOOK the ferry from Point O’ Woods to Bay Shore, stepped into a phone booth, and called the Kerner house. I knew it was Betty who answered, since Liz hadn’t been around all weekend, but I said, “Hi, is this Liz?”

  “No, it’s Betty.”

  “Oh, hello. This is Art Dodge. Is my brother there, by any chance?”

  “Oh, you just missed him! He just now took the ferry.”

  “Drat,” I said. “Well, I’ll call him tonight in the city. Is Liz around?”

  “Not right now,” she said doubtfully. She wasn’t about to tell Art the hair-raising stories she’d told Bart, about Liz disappearing routinely for two or three days at a time. “Could she call you back?”

  “Sure,” I said, and left Candy and Ralph’s number. Then I walked across Maple Avenue and took the Fair Harbor ferry, which wasn’t at all in the same league as the boat from Point O’ Woods.

  Yesterday, after my hangover had ebbed a bit, and after Betty and I had committed sacrilege after all upon her father’s bed, I’d called my Fair Harbor hosts to tell them not to worry, I was more or less safe and sound. Happily, it was Ralph who answered, and he’d understood at once. “Go get ’em, Art,” he’d said, and I could just see him doing that little punching gesture.

  Which left Candy still to be heard from.

  She wasn’t home, I’m glad to say, but the kids were there, spreading peanut butter and jelly on the kitchen counter. I took my damn glasses off, popped my lenses in, changed into bathing trunks, grabbed a towel, and headed for the beach. After a night and a day and a night of romping with Betty in a Liz-less house I was ready for some restorative rest.

  But I wasn’t to get it I hadn’t been lying there on my back twenty minutes when somebody kicked sand in my face. Squinting upward, I saw at first nothing but a blue-swathed crotch above tanned legs. Then Liz dropped to the sand beside me and said, “Hello, lover.”

  “Hello, yourself.”

  “Your brother came sniffing around,” she said.

  I glared, “After you?”

  “Hah,” she said. “You never saw a couple that belonged together like your Bart and my Betty.”

  Had I been that bad? Grinning in relief, I lay my head back on the towel and said, “Well, that’s all right then.”

  “So there you are,” said another voice, and when I looked up this new crotch was swathed in yellow. It dropped down toward me, and there was Candy sitting on my left, baring her teeth across my chest at Liz. “And this must be your new friend,” she said.

  “Liz Kerner,” I said, “this is Candy Minck, my hostess.” And then, because one or the other of them would surely now say something that would blow the twin bit forever, with nothing I could possibly do about it, I rested my head back on the towel, closed my eyes, and folded my hands on my breast.

  LIZ: “I recognized your voice from the phone. It’s so distinctive.”

  CANDY: “You don’t look at all the way I pictured you.”

  LIZ: “Really? You look exactly the way I thought you would.”

  CANDY: “Oh? How’s that?”

  LIZ: “Oh, I don’t know. Sort of cute and matronly.”

  CANDY: “What a sweet thing to say. But Art has told us so little about you. Do you have a place of your own here, or do you just come over for the day?”

  LIZ: “I have a little house in Point O’ Woods. Not as … casual as yours, of course.”

  CANDY: “Yes, you have seen my place, haven’t you?”

  Opening my eyes, I cautiously lifted my head. Claws were dug into the sand on both sides of my rib cage. I said, “Where do you suppose Ralph is?”

  Candy, her eyes still fixed on Liz, waggled impatient fingers toward the ocean. “Drowning.” To Liz she said, “I want you always to feel free to drop in at my house just any time you want.”

  “That’s so nice of you,” Liz said. “It’s so relaxing to be in a place where nobody cares about housekeeping and all of that.”

  “Say,” I said, with a big friendly smile, “why don’t we have a drink?”

  “I thought you’d never ask,” Liz said.

  Candy was already on her feet, wiping sand from her ass which just accidentally fell on my head. “We’ll all go to my place,” she said.

  So we left the beach and strolled along the boardwalk toward Candy’s house. There was blessed silence for a minute or two, and then Candy said to Liz, “Do your people at Point O’ Woods give you many days off?”

  “Not many,” Liz said. “Since I inherited my father’s estate it’s just business business business all the time.”

  “Oh, are you an orphan, poor dear?”

  I said, “Liz has a twin sister. There’s just the two of them left in the world.”

  “There’s another one at home like you?” The idea seemed to daunt Candy slightly.

  “You never know where you’ll run into twins, ha, ha,” I said, then pointed and said, “Isn’t that one of the kids on the roof?”

  “Wha?” Candy squinted, she shielded her eyes from the sun. “I don’t see anybody.”

  “My mistake,” I said. “For a second I thought I saw somebody there.”

  We walked on to the house. If only Liz had to go to the john, I would take Candy to one side, explain the twin scam to her briefly, assure her my intentions toward the Kerners were strictly mercenary and that my dishonorable intentions were still centered on her own sweet self, insist that my motive was Kerner investment in Those Wonderful Folks, and beg her connivance in the plot. The idea should appeal to her; Candy had a natural love of the underhanded.

  Unfortunately, when we entered the house it was Candy who headed immediately for the john, while Liz stood at the kitchen counter, touching the peanut butter and jelly with a hesitant finger and waiting for her usual. I called after Candy, “And what’s yours?”

  “I’ll make it when I come back.”

  Vodka-ice. Rum-and. “Cheers,” I said, and we both drank.

  “You have a true taste for the gutter, don’t you?” Liz suggested.

  “What, Candy? She’s my best friend’s wife.”

  “I took that for granted.” She strolled around, looking at the furnishings. “It’s hard to believe people still live like this.”

  “We are the people,” I told her. “The salt of the earth.”

  She gave me a skeptical look. “You’re more the nutmeg,” she said. “But—” with another disdainful glance at her surroundings “—it’s easy to see why you were attracted to Betty. The simple smell of soap would probably drive you mad.”

  I decided to ignore the crack about Betty; she couldn’t possibly still be annoyed about the party. “The last time you were here,” I said, “you seemed to find the accommodations, uh, satisfactory.”

  “I’ll try anything once,” she said. “I like new experiences.”

  I remembered she hadn’t been home since Friday evening. “I’m sure you do,” I said.

  “It’s too bad most of them become old so fast,” she said.

  “Don’t I know the feeling.”

  We stood smiling at one another
, me near the kitchen counter and Liz in the living room area, until all at once Candy marched between us, heading for the door, carrying what appeared to be my suitcase. We watched her kick open the screen door, rear back, and toss the suitcase out of the house. Underhanded, of course: It lofted up and over the railing and landed in the poison ivy.

  Candy turned on me a smile that would crack granite. “I hope,” she said, through her gritted grin, “you’ll have a glorious time in Point O’ Woods.” Approaching me, she said, “And that’s my drink, thank you very much.” And plucked from my hand my rum and tonic.

  Liz suddenly started laughing. “Oh, Art,” she said, “what a beautiful face!”

  “Well,” I said.

  Candy had taken a slug of my drink. “You get out of here, Art,” she said. “Get out of here right now.” From the look in her eye, she’d be picking up a steak knife next.

  I backed toward the door, irritably aware of Liz grinning in the corner of my vision. “I suppose that goes for Bart too,” I said, and before she could respond I quickly added, “Does Ralph know about this? Does he go along with this? He is, after all—”

  “You leave Ralph out of this! I don’t even want you to mention his name!”

  “He’ll just wonder why I’m not here.”

  “You don’t think I’ll tell him? You don’t think so?”

  I thought she was capable of any idiocy, given her present mood, so rather than reply I stepped outside, picked up the mop leaning against the wall near the door, and went fishing for my suitcase.

  Meanwhile, Candy had turned on Liz. It’s amazing how many coarse names she knew for female private parts. And while the pebbles Liz dropped into Candy’s stream of invective were rather quieter, I wouldn’t exactly say they were gentler.

  I grasped my suitcase, hauled it up onto the deck, and went cautiously back inside. Candy was heaving so much in her little two-piece yellow bathing suit she looked like a belly dancer trainee, and Liz was also a bit red around the face. Neither, however, was speaking at this precise moment. “My attaché case,” I whispered to them both, as though there were a sleeper nearby that I didn’t want to wake, and I tiptoed to the ladder. Up I went, packed the last few items—including Bart’s glasses—and carried the attaché case down.