Who He? - (4)

"But how disappointing. Aren't you an artist?"
    "No, Mrs. McVeagh, I'm a business man. I sell ideas for a living."
    "Oh dear! And I had such a lovely picture of you ... working all night and smoking opium."
    "Only when he's plastered," Cooper grinned.
    Lennox looked at him stonily. Poor Jake! Standing there on his best behavior, tall and erect with his hands at his side; keeping his face wooden and unrecognizable, trying to belong on Alice McVeagh's terms, and destroying himself before Gabby Valentine. To his hostess he tried to appear austere, kindly, infallible and sophisticated. To Gabby he seemed hostile and unyielding. If only Cooper had come five minutes later. When he finally departed with the hostess and Lennox turned to resume the intimacy with Gabby, it was too late.
    "Gabby...." he began.
    "No," she interrupted, bitterly disappointed. "No. It was only the candle-light." She took a deep breath. Her smile was no longer a private matter between them. "Please forget everything I said. I thought you--" She broke off.
    "You thought I what?" Lennox asked sharply. He was deeply hurt by her abrupt change.
    "It doesn't matter."
    "It matters to me."
    "Please don't cross-examine me," Gabby said gently. "I made fool of myself, that's all."
    "I think you're trying to make a fool of me."
    "No. It's all right. I'm the idiot, not you. What do you write, Mr. Lennox?"
    "I write better scenes than this, Miss Valentine. My characters don't play games."
    "Neither do I."
    "Then what the hell happened?"
    "Nothing happened. That's why I'm an idiot."
    Lennox was furious, and, consequently, icy and sardonic. He imagined that this was an impudent young society girl, willful and cavalier, who had taken it into her head to make an ass of him. He couldn't have been more wrong.
    Gabrielle Valentine was a unique creature. You meet people like that occasionally, and if you're not too cynical you treasure them ... beautiful beings who've been loved and adored from birth and have grown up unspoiled and trusting, completely honest and without guile. This is rare because beauty is more often a curse for a woman and usually sickens her unless she turns it into her profession. No plain girl will believe this, but it's true.
    Gabby had received affection all her life and gave it as freely. She was not brilliant, which was just as well. No one really likes brilliant people. She was a girl of average intelligence who had grown up in a world which she was able to treat with the disarming confidence of a child. Half the world treated her with the tenderness reserved for children. The cynical half could not abide her transparent honesty.
    She was twenty-eight. Her father had been an old-line Socialist and had worked with Eugene Debs. He had come from a French Colonial family which had lived in Indo-China for generations and, I suspect, probably intermarried with natives. Certainly Gabby seemed to support the legend that women of mixed French and Oriental blood are the loveliest in the world. Her mother was still living and was a very smart couturiere. Gabby didn't see much of her. She was too busy making her own affectionate way in the world.
    She had trained, of all things, as an architect, and worked as a free-lance draftsman. Drafting pays well and Gabby was able to afford her own apartment in one of the better Village studio buildings. She was political-minded, an inheritance from her father no doubt, and was an invaluable asset in fund-raising campaigns. She had once gone down to Wall Street and bearded a Republican financier in his den for a contribution to the Democratic party. Or maybe it was a Democrat for the Republican party. I forget which, not being political-minded myself. The point of the story is that she got the money.
    She was an artist, but she didn't understand music. She had learned to be chic, but wasn't interested in clothes. She liked good food, but had to be told when it was good. She drank very little. She liked people more than anything else ... liked to be with them and talk to them, provided they were honest and unaffected. Everyone came to her with their troubles and she gave all her affection and help. She had never been in love.
    And then had come this burst of flame in the glimmering darkness with Lennox, and there was a stranger in his body who had killed the flame with his rigid poise before Alice McVeagh and was trampling on the embers in icy fury.
    "Please go away," Gabby said quietly. "You're making me hate you, and I don't like that."
    "I'm sorry, Miss Valentine," Lennox answered. "I don't know the rules of your game. Is that a request or a challenge?"
    "Why should it be? Do you like to fight?"
    "I'm enjoying this fight ... with all my heart." Lennox showed his teeth in a smile.
    "That's a sign of weakness, isn't it?" Gabby looked at him with steady eyes. "Like sick dogs that bite. Please go away."
    "You've done the biting."
    "Oh. You're hurt. I'm sorry."
    "No, I'm enjoying the game. What do you do, Miss Valentine, when you can spare the time?"
    "You can't be a very good writer if you talk like that," Gabby said slowly. "You sound as though you like to hate people."
    "I'm a very successful writer."
    "There's a difference."
    "What big teeth you have, grandma."
    "I don't like to be with people who hate," Gabby nodded gracefully. "Goodbye, Mr. Lennox."
    "The end of Round One?"
    "No. The end. I don't think we should see each other again."
    "You'll see me often," Lennox assured her. "We'll fight this to a finish."
    "There's nothing to fight."
    "Something happened, and then you changed your mind. I'd like to find out how your gears mesh. Professionally, of course. I can always use a comedy gimmick." Automatically he flexed his right arm against his chest and was appalled to remember that his gimmick book was lost, but he was too angry with Gabby to concentrate on it.
    "Who did you hope I was in the dark?" he asked. "Aly Khan?"
    "You're making it worse."
    "Who did you think I was?"
    "I thought you...." She shook her head. "How can I say? I thought I--" Suddenly her dark eyes filled with tears. "You're not very kind. I've just made a fool of myself and I'm hurt too. Are you enjoying this?"
    "Passionately."
    "Please let me go."
    She broke away from him and descended the library steps to the ballroom, her shoulders square, her carriage relaxed and graceful. The bright chandelier lights gleamed on her skin. Lennox followed her doggedly around the edge of the ballroom and into the bar. He could not let go. He would not let up. Gabby bent over the red-head sleeping on the bar.
    "Phil," she said. "It's time to leave." She shook him gently.
    The red-head snorted and slept. Gabby looked reproachfully at the bartender who instantly became apologetic, as though he had personally supervised the downfall of the teacher from Yale.
    "It's not your fault," Gabby told him. "He comes down from New Haven full of undergraduate notions. He had to work his way through college. He never had a chance to be hedonistic."
    Lennox stepped forward. "I'll take you home, Miss Valentine."
    "It isn't me that has to be taken. It's Phil."
    "To New Haven?"
    "What if I said yes?"
    "Bon voyage, Miss Valentine."
    "Oh, why are you so hostile?"
    "Because I'm a damned fool," Lennox answered furiously. "All right. I'll take him back to New Haven for you."
    "Not New Haven. New York. The Harvard Club."
    "A neat one-two. Next time I'll know when to duck. I'll take you both home."
    "Not me. Phil."
    "You and Phil both."
    "That's your price?"
    "It's a bargain, Miss Valentine. Snap it up."
    "I think I'd better get someone else."
    She left the bar. Lennox heaved the red-head up, powerfully but not unkindly, and hauled him to the door. There, an efficient man in black uniform located hats and coats without clues and helped Lennox dress the red-head. Then Lennox dressed himself. When Gabby came to the foyer with three eager admirers, Lennox looked them over and growled: "I'm taking you both home. I'm prepared to fight for it. If you don't believe me get ready for a scene."
    Her eyes flashed, but she dismissed the men and got into her coat. Together they took the teacher downstairs in a burning silence and propped him in a cab between them. As the cab drove off Lennox asked: "Why the Harvard Club? He teaches at Yale."
    No answer.
    He contrived to peer past the red-headed barricade at her. She was impassive. The street lights flickered on her skin like lightning on jewels. He had never wanted anyone and hated anyone so badly in his life; nor known anything so inexplicably out of his grasp.
    He said: "I worked my way through college too. I was a telegrapher."
    No answer.
    After five minutes he said: "Can you spell hedonistic?"
    No answer.
    They arrived at the Harvard Club and turned the teacher over to a patient doorman. Lennox did not ask permission to re-enter the cab. He got in and slammed the door. Gabby gave her address in the Village and the cab started. Lennox was startled. He had expected a number on Park Avenue. He revised his guess about her society background.
    The cab crunched downtown through crusted streets. The rain and snow had stopped. There was no wind, but the air was still bitter. A few blocks from Union Square, Lennox abruptly called to the driver: "Stop here. On the right, two doors down. Don't argue with me. Stop."
    The cab stopped. Lennox opened the door and got out. To Gabby he said: "Wait here for me. Understand? Wait." He turned and ran across the sidewalk to the open door of a Salvation Army Mission in a small store. There were candles burning in the window. He ducked into the store, removed two candles from the window, dropped a five dollar bill in their place, and ran back to the cab. He got in and shut the door.
    "All right, get going," he told the driver. He handed one of the burning candles to Gabby without a word.
    She smiled; that sudden dazzle of light on water, then her face lost its expression when she saw the cold fury in him. She shook her head.
    Lennox slid the glass partition panel aside. "Can you sing?" he asked the driver. "Sing Pop Goes The Weasel."
    "Have a heart, buddy."
    "'Pop Goes The Weasel' ... in the key of C. Take it."
    "That ain't no Christmas Carol."
    "And this ain't no Christmas present." Lennox poked a bill through the slit and dropped it. "Sing."
    The driver began a miserable croaking. Lennox sat back and eyed Gabby. She blew out her candle and turned her head away. He dropped his candle and trampled it.
    "Listen to me," he said. "My name is Jordan Lennox, I'm thirty-five years old. Unmarried. My income is thirty-five thousand a year. I have no family left, but the Islip YMCA director will provide a character reference. My blood type is O. My eyes are twenty-twenty. My I.Q. is a hundred and nineteen. I understand people, but I don't understand you. I would like permission to get to know you better. If necessary, this oral request can be followed by a formal letter from my attorney and a bond will be posted."
    The cab stopped before a squat studio building with great duplex windows, Lennox had the fare ready. He thrust it over the driver's shoulder, then helped Gabby out of the cab and with a fierce secret gesture signalled the driver to get lost.
    "Well?" he asked.
    She shook her head. He would not give up. He took her arm, escorted her the five steps to the doorway, thrust open the door and handed her through.
    "Why not?" he asked.
    "Goodnight."
    "Why not?"
    "You wouldn't understand."
    "Make me understand."
    "Goodnight."
    His fingers gripped her arm. "Make me understand."
    "What can I say? I thought you were somebody else. I thought...."
    "What?"
    "Once," she said slowly, "I had to study chemistry. And in the stockroom there was a glass jar filled with the most beautiful candy I ever saw. Then someone told me it was poison. Crystals of poison.... That's what happened."
    "Poison!" he exclaimed. "I'm poison to you?"
    "No; but you aren't what I thought you were. It's my fault. I made the mistake and I--" Gabby broke off in astonishment. The color had drained out of Lennox's face. The fury drained out of his body. He took a step into the foyer and let go of the door which swung heavily and smashed his hand resting limp on the jamb. He wrenched his hand free and took another hypnotic step toward the row of brass letter-boxes on the foyer wall. Each had a white call button underneath the name plate. In clear block letters alongside VALENTINE was FOX.
    "What is it?" Gabby cried.
    "'Fair is my love, for April's in her face,'" Lennox mumbled. "Her lovely breasts September claims his part...." He turned a wild face to her. "What made me think of that? What's terrifying about it?"
    "What's the matter?"
    "I don't know," he answered, swallowing hard and lifting a trembling hand to his face. It left blood smears on his cheek. "I'm lost. Again. I.... Christ!" He shut his eyes and pressed his fists together. "Sam," he whispered. "Sam. Come and get me. Please."
    "You'd better come in," Gabby said in alarm. She took him upstairs to her apartment and through a barn-like studio to a tailored bedroom where she helped him off with his coat and sat him down on a chaise longue. He was shaking. He tried to joke. "We shouldn't be here," he said. "Very suggestive."
    "It's too cold in the studio. What's the matter? What happened to you?"
    "Downstairs. That name ... Fox. It cut me off from everything. I don't know why. I'm crying again," he groaned. "Crying. There's been nothing but dirt and tears all day. I don't know what happened."
    "I'll get you a drink."
    "No. Thank you. I'm not sick. It's just something trying to come back and hurting like sin."
    "What do you mean?"
    "I can't explain. Give me a minute.... It'll go away again, if I'm lucky. Then I'll go too."
    He sat in silence, trying to control himself, looking around the room with smarting eyes. Gabby took off her coat, left the bedroom and returned a moment later with a glass and a sealed bottle of whiskey. She tried to remove the cap and failed. She handed the bottle to Lennox who took it, opened it mechanically and then put it down.
    "I didn't know you lived like this," he said at last.
    "How do you mean?"
    "Like this. Not girly-girly. I thought ... Park Avenue and decorators. This could be a man's place. Do you play Boys' Rules?"
    "You didn't."
    "I know it. I've been trying to start all over again for the last two hours." He stood up, went to the bed and touched the pillow gently. "Hello, Gabby," he said. He went to the dressing table and touched it. He touched the window drapes, the lamps, the books, the pictures ... everything that was hers as though he were touching her heart.
    Without looking at her he said: "You're right. I'm poisonous ... but I love you. I'm the wrong man, but I love you. It's too quick ... only a few hours, but I love you. I hate too much, I hurt too much because I'm poisonous.... And I love you. I'd better go now. Goodnight."
    He searched blindly for his coat, ashamed to meet her eyes, and the real Lennox appeared, the Lennox she had seen by candle-light two hours ago.
    "Oh!" Gabby exclaimed in tears, "Oh darling ... darling! Why did you hide from me? Why?"
    He caught his breath. She came to him and he took her in his arms. After a moment he managed to speak.
    "Is this how it happens? Has it happened again?"
    She clung to him.
    "Now I'm frightened, Gabby."
    "Why did you hide from me? Why did you change like that? You were so cold and hateful...."
    "I didn't know I was hiding. I didn't know what I was doing. I've been half crazy all day." He raised her hand and pressed it against his eyes. "I dreamed about meeting you, but not like this. I was going to be at my best. You know? Brilliant and successful. Scattering money and charm in all directions. Winning you ... not whining my way into your heart."
    "No. No. You don't understand. No one wants to be won. We want to be wanted.... Needed."
    "God knows, I need you. God knows, I--"
    "Shhh." She seated him again, ran out of the room and returned with a warm moist cloth. She cleaned his hand and his cheek. Lennox seized her suddenly as she stood over him and buried his face in her body.
    "It's all right, darling," she whispered. "Don't be afraid. You're just used to taking, that's all. Nobody ever gave you anything."
    He looked up at her. "What happened to us after the dance? What did I do then? What's wrong with me? Was I mean dirty drunk? Did I--" He stopped. He stood up slowly. In a strange voice he said: "Mean dirty drunk. Clarence Fox from Philadelphia. The Quaker and the blonde. Yes. That's where the gimmick book is...."
    Gabby was alarmed again. She put her hands on his shoulders.
    "But why can't I remember the rest?" Lennox asked in terror. "The knot. What's so horrible about a knot? What is it? Why can't I remember what it is?"
    She tried to press him back on the chaise longue. He was too big to be forced but he responded instantly to her pressure.
    "You're in trouble," she said. "Let me help."
    He tried to smile. "Yes. It's bad. I want to hide things from you, but you empty me out. Let me keep a few secrets for a little while. I can't do it unless you let me."
    She nodded.
    He took a breath. "I'm afraid to break this moment. I'm remembering what happened two hours ago."
    She shook her head emphatically.
    "But I.... But something's got to be written down before I forget it again. Someone has to go somewhere and get something for me."
    "I'll go," Gabby offered.
    "No," Lennox said sharply.
    She picked up a sketch-pad and pencil from the bed table and looked at him. Lennox spoke as though each syllable were acid on his lips. "Aimee Driscoll. 900 East 33rd Street." Suddenly he burst out: "There's worse. There's going to be worse to remember!"
    She came to him and took his face in her hands. "This isn't a moment, is it?"
    "No," he said. "Please God, darling.... No." He pulled her down alongside him and kissed her until he plunged into a darkness which he did not fear.
    CHAPTER IV
    Four o'clock in the morning after Christmas I was trying to see how many different ways I could type NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR PARTY when my phone rang. I was indignant but I had to find out who'd be calling at that hour. I picked up the phone. Lennox was on the other end.
    "Kitten? Jake Lennox."
    "What are you calling for?"
    "Are you working?"
    "No. I'm hung up on a script."
    "Then I'm not interrupting. I want a favor." Jake was always direct on the horn. "I'll tell you first, then you can say yes or no."
    "Shoot."
    "I think I left my gimmick book in the apartment of a woman named Aimee Driscoll, 900 East 33rd. I can't get it myself."
    "Why?"
    "Just listen, Kit. I need somebody I can trust to go there and pick it up for me first thing in the morning."
    "Don't you trust Cooper?"
    "I can't locate him."
    "Isn't he home?"
    "No. You ask too many questions, Kitten."
    I admit I'm curious. That's how I got my nickname; but I'm always annoyed when anyone throws it up to me.
    "Ask Cooper when he comes home," I said. "And that's not a question."
    "I can't." Lennox sounded a little strained. "That's why I'm asking you. Yes or no."
    "Do I owe you a favor?"
    "No."
    "Then I'll do it."
    "As soon as possible, Kit."
    "Nine o'clock in the morning."
    "Thanks. Meet me in Grabinett's office at ten."
    "Can't you wait a few hours, Jake? Ten's too early."
    "Why?"
    "It's like this. If I stay hung up I'll have to research in the library for an idea. I can pick up the book first thing, but then I'd like to get a few hours work done in the Reading Room."
    "Right. Reasonable. Twelve o'clock?"
    "Yes."
    "Meet me at Sabatini's. I'll spring for a drink."
    "Sabatini's at noon. What's that noise?" In the background I could hear sound. I listened hard. It was music. Delius.
    "Oh. I almost forgot," Lennox said. "I left a coat too. My burberry. Will you latch on to it, Kit? Thanks. Goodnight."
    He hung up hastily. I went down the hall and looked into the bedroom. My wife was still up, reading. Robin has straight straw-colored hair and is stacked like a Swede acrobat, a fact which always made me nervous where Lennox was concerned.
    "Put on a nightgown or pull up the sheet," I told her. "You're demoralizing the neighbors." Robin grinned shamelessly. I closed the blinds and turned on the bedside radio. "Find me Delius," I said. "I've got to write down a name and address." I wrote it down, only I spelled it Amy. Robin dialed through the stations one by one. No Delius. She looked at me.
    "Dig this," I said. "I happen to know Cooper hates Delius. Won't have a record in the house. But Jake just phoned and there was Appalachia blasting in the background. Big romantic stuff, and not from a radio either." I told her about Jake's call. "All right, Robin, you guess first."
    "Do you think he's good in bed?"
    "For God's sake! Women! Haven't you got any romance in you?"
    "That was romance."
    "It was not. You give us complexes. Is bed everything?"
    "Yes."
    "What about all the rest?"
    "Bed first."
    "I guess you're right," I said and I was an hour late getting to Aimee Driscoll's apartment next morning.
    I was lucky at that. She'd just gotten up and was in a vicious mood. She handed me the freeze reserved for Squares and I handed it right back. That gave us an understanding and put us on a basis of armed neutrality as fellow members of the entertainment profession. The blonde and I passed a few remarks about the Quaker. She called my attention to the new television set and laughed it up because she'd gotten it out of the Quaker for nothing; but I noticed that she laughed angrily. I didn't know why.
    The photograph should have tipped it. It stood on the set in a silver frame, faded and vignetted, a costume piece, circa 1913. It was a portrait of a man with heavy brows and a stern face and could have been a photograph of Lennox in costume and makeup. The fact that she'd placed it on the set Lennox gave her was significant, but I only realized that after the death in the Venice theater.
    "Who's the grim reaper?" I asked.
    "My old man," Aimee answered. She darted a look of loathing at the photograph. It was so poisonous that I wanted to ask more questions, but before I could get started, she gave me the brush-final. I left with Jake's gimmick book and burberry and didn't get to the library until eleven....
    Lennox marched into the Grabinett office at ten sharp. It was in a small building off Madison Avenue in the fifties. Grabinett had started there as a two-bit agent in a rat-hole, and when he hit the big money it turned out that rentals were too tight for him to move into larger quarters. He spread into stockrooms, broke through closets and halls, had it all decorated and air-conditioned, and it still looked like a blond wood rat-hole. They held daily rat-races there.
    Grabinett was in his corner office eating Danish and coffee and reading Red Channels. There was a stack of mail, Nielsen Reports, Variety, Billboard, Radio and TV Newssheets on the desk before him. Lennox tore off his coat, revealing that he was still wearing black tie. He flung the coat on a chair piled with bundles of stenciled scripts.
    Grabinett eyed Lennox with lively hatred and verged on continuing the battle from the night before until his attention was distracted by the dinner jacket.
    "What's this?" he blinked.
    "Costume."
    "You're a panel expert?" Grabinett leaped up in dismay. "Jesus Almighty! Don't tell me A&B sold another panel show to the network. What have they got on Roy Audibon? Do they know where the body's buried?"