Always and Forever (22 page)

“Wally’s downstairs with the car,” Julius told him. “Bring along those reports from the Dallas store. We can go over them on the way out.” He glanced sidewise at his son with a sly grin. “You see that red-haired temp that came over from the agency this morning?”

“I didn’t notice,” Phil said.

“This one you’d notice. Even at my age she gives me that urge.”

“I’ll let you know. Let’s get this show on the road.”

The two men left the office and headed down the hall to the elevators. En route they passed the small office shared by the bookkeeper, the office manager and a pair of secretaries.

“There she is—” Julius poked Phil in the ribs.

Phil managed a fast glance into the room. Normally he wasn’t turned on by girls with no tits, but this one exuded sex. Tall and skinny, four-inch heels, with a curvaceous rump and a baby-doll face.

“How long is she going to be here?” Phil asked while they waited for an elevator.

“As long as Maisie needs her. Two or three days,” Julius guessed.

The next morning Phil contrived to meet the new temp. Her name was Carol Graham, she was fresh out of Northwestern with a degree in drama, and she shared an apartment with another girl in the West Seventies. By late afternoon he’d asked her out for dinner, and she’d accepted. He called the Southampton house to tell Kathy he was staying in New York.

“I’ve got a buyer from the Dallas store that I have to take out to dinner,” he lied. “See you tomorrow night.”

He was whistling when he got off the phone. Roz was becoming a pain in the ass with all the hints she’d been dropping lately. Where did she get the nerve to think he’d dump Kathy and marry her? He had a good thing going—why should he change it? The trouble with Roz, she was all shook up at hitting thirty and no rich husband in sight.

As pre-arranged, he met Carol at the soda fountain around the corner. She was sipping a Coke and carrying on a conversation with a male-model type behind the counter.

“That soda-jerk has a walk-on in a TV show next month,” she said wistfully when they were on the sidewalk. “That’s a start.”

Phil took her to dinner at an Italian place down in Greenwich Village, where they were unlikely to encounter anyone he knew. She was twenty-two and dying to make it big in theater.

“Oh sure, TV is okay,” she said with mild condescension, “but theater is the real action.”

“I took a flier in theater for a while.” All at once Phil felt ten years younger.
Free.
“I was in a couple of shows that closed before they even came into town,” he lied offhandedly. “That’s when I went into the business with my old man.”

“Are you sorry you walked out on theater?” she asked, making no effort to remove her knee when it collided with his under the table.

“Now and then. I still have a few contacts.” He saw her eyes light up. “Everybody I know is away for the summer, but I’ll put in a good word for you when they come back.”

“Just looking at you, I guessed you’d been involved in theater somewhere along the line. You’ve got that look.” Under the table her knee jiggled against his.

When he took her home to the brownstone apartment on West 73rd that she shared with another recent Northwestern graduate, he discreetly left her at her door after a good-night kiss that told him Carol Graham was a girl worth cultivating. He promised himself he’d make it into her bed within a week. She made him feel like a kid again. This could be a fun summer.

Phil was disappointed when Maisie dropped Carol after three days. Still, he was taking her to some weird downtown theater to see a play on Friday night. He’d stay over in the city, go out to Southampton on Saturday. He’d invite her up to the apartment. The company apartment, he reminded himself. No need for her to know where he lived.

On Friday he met her at the same drugstore as the last time. She was there waiting for him.

“Where’d you work today?” he asked, sliding an arm about her waist as they left the drugstore to look for a cab. They were heading downtown to a pre-theater dinner.

“Oh, I don’t go out on a regular basis,” Carol explained. “Just when my cash flow is bad. My folks give me money for the basics; but when I want something else, I go out for a few days.”

At Carol’s suggestion Phil instructed the driver to take them down to Rappaport’s on Second Avenue.

“It’s real close to the theater,” she’d pointed out.

“How do you know Rappaport’s?” Phil asked curiously.

“It’s where my father always takes my grandmother on special occasions,” Carol told him. “I’m from Irvington, up in Westchester.”

“What does your father do?”

“He’s an orthodontist. My name’s really Garfinkel, but I thought Graham would look better on a marquee.”

“I can buy that.” Phil nodded in approval.

While they ate blintzes and sour cream, Carol talked about the new little theaters popping up not only in Greenwich Village but farther east.

“I mean, nobody makes any money in these crummy little playhouses, but you have a showcase. You can invite agents to come down and see you.”

“You’re something to see,” he teased, aware that several male diners agreed with him.

“We’re just around the corner from the playhouse,” she told him later while she debated between ordering strawberry shortcake or apple strudel. “We’ve got plenty of time.”

The playhouse—a converted store—was drab, tiny, and miserably hot. The cast varied from fair to awful. The play was pretentious drivel. When the lights came up for intermission, they discovered that a chunk of the small audience had crept out during the first act.

“It’s so bloody hot,” Phil complained as they rose in their seats. “Do we have to stay?”

“No. It was terrible. I’m glad I didn’t bother to try out for a part.”

“Let’s go somewhere for something cold to drink. I’ve got a better idea,” he said, trying to make it seem spontaneous. “Why don’t we run up to the company apartment and have some chilled wine and great air-conditioning?”

She gazed at him for a moment as though in deliberation.

“I know this is when I should look you straight in the eye and say ‘no.’ But I’ll say ‘yes’ if you remember this is only the second time we’ve been out together and I’m not popping into bed with you.” But the ingenuous smile was accompanied by a seductive glint in her artfully made-up hazel eyes.

“A little romance on the sofa?” he coaxed with the potent Phil Kohn charm.

“Yeah. Within limits.”

Okay, so she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. In time he’d get there. And this little babe was worth waiting for.

Early in the fall Bella called Kathy to tell her that David would be in New York in two weeks.

“He’ll stay up here at the house for a couple of nights before he flies out to California for some medical convention. Why don’t you and Phil plan to stay with us, too? Phil can drive in to the city with Julius in the morning, like in the old days.”

“I’d love that, Bella.” Kathy tried to mask her joyous reaction.
David would be here in New York.
She hadn’t seen him in three years! “By then the leaves will be changing color—it’s such a beautiful time in Greenwich.”

“You know David—he never boasts—but I suspect he must be making a name for himself in his field. They wouldn’t ask him to come all the way from West Berlin to San Francisco unless he has an important contribution to make.”

“I’ll tell Phil about it tonight,” Kathy promised.

They talked awhile until Bella realized it was time to leave for one of her volunteer meetings.

“I feel so guilty,” Kathy said. “I’m not involved actively in anything here in New York.”

“Some of the committees!” Bella grunted in distaste. “The women aren’t concerned about raising money for charities. They fight over who’s to get credit for pulling it off. But I’d better run now. I loathe being late.”

Kathy put down the phone and crossed to a window to look down on Central Park. She was glad she’d persuaded Phil that Fifth Avenue was more elegant than Park. That glorious sweep of open land down there filled her with such a sense of peace most times. But not today. All she could think about was that David would be in the city in two weeks.

Every six months or so Bella said they had a letter from him. He hadn’t said anything about being married. As always, she thought tenderly, he was all wrapped up in his work.

The September sun was dropping low in the sky as David waited restlessly for the weekday rush-hour traffic to begin to crawl again. He was tense behind the wheel of the vintage Mercedes that the Institute put at his disposal from time to time in recognition of his work. He’d hoped that a few hours in the Grunewald—walking along the bank of the Havel, breathing in the fresh greenery-scented air—would ease the taut muscles between his shoulder blades, drive away the dull pain at the back of his skull.

He’d been like this ever since he had accepted the invitation to the San Francisco medical conference. Not because of anxiety at reading his paper before the conference. Because he knew he’d be seeing Kathy. In every life there was a crucial turn in the road, and he had taken the wrong turn.

“This was a beautiful day for a picnic.” Gretchen’s low, musical voice tugged him back to the present. “Aren’t you glad I said we should take the afternoon off after working ourselves ragged over the weekend?”

“It was great.” His eyes swung to meet hers. Gretchen had been invaluable in these four months that she had been his lab assistant. She was pretty, intelligent, and dedicated to her job. He brushed aside the suspicion that she was eager to expand their relationship to a personal one. “We both needed a few hours away.”

“You must be looking forward to the trip. Berlin is such a grim city. Everybody working endless hours. At least, those who have jobs,” she added with ironic humor because unemployment was distressingly high.

“I know I overwork you, Gretchen,” he said apologetically.

“I didn’t mean us,” she broke in. “I’m fascinated by what we’re doing. But most people in the city—even in the Western Sector—seem to live such frenetic lives.”

“It isn’t easy for any of us to put the past behind us.” The traffic was beginning to move again. “And we never quite forget that we’re encircled by the Communists. Are you sorry you didn’t stay in England?” Like himself, just before war broke out Gretchen had been sent out of the country to study. She had gone through the war years at school in London.

“I had to come back,” she told him. “I’ve told you how I tracked my mother and sister down after V-E Day. They were the only ones in the family to survive Buchenwald. I brought them back to Berlin and tried to make a home for them. Except for them I would never have set foot on German soil again.”

“I’ll drop you off at your flat and go back to the laboratory for a little while,” he decided. “I’d like to review some notes tonight.” He had not meant to return to Berlin after those months in Hamburg. But seeing the survivors, he’d known he must go back to help those who returned from the camps. And he was haunted by the possibility that he might be lucky enough to locate his father’s papers—as he had.

“David, you drive yourself too hard,” Gretchen scolded.

“I won’t stay long,” he promised. “I like to be by my home phone in case I’m needed.” His improvised clinic in the flat usually served at least two or three patients after his laboratory hours.

He left Gretchen at her flat, and returned briefly to the Institute. His head still ached. A walk would help, he decided. Tonight he was drawn to Potsdamer Platz—the symbol of divided Berlin. It was at the Platz that East and West met and vied for the other’s loyalty, and was on occasion the site of violence between residents of the two sectors of the city.

By the time he arrived at Potsdamer Platz, the area was in its usual evening chaos, with pedestrians darting to avoid the onrush of trolleys, bicycles, and trucks taking workers to their homes. The Western Sector’s 90-foot electric sign—it reminded him of Times Square in New York—was flashing out in five-foot letters the latest news, living up to its heading of “the Free Berlin Press Reports.” The gray-uniformed police of the West and the blue-uniformed “Vopos” of the East exchanged glances across the square.

David paused to buy a newspaper at the booth on the Western side. The varied offering of West German newspapers, books, and magazines brought East Berliners across the invisible line between the Eastern and Western sectors. From where he stood David could see the queue before the Soviet food store just beyond, and he was conscious—again—of the difference in the quality of life between the two sectors.

In the Western Sector life was almost normal again. In the Eastern Sector there were painful food and housing shortages because, unlike in West Berlin, construction focused on public buildings rather than housing. Every day people streamed from the East to shop in the Western Sector—those who had money to spend.

Restless, David began to walk away from the Platz. Tonight his mind focused on the day almost six years ago that he’d spent with Kathy in Berlin. She would be amazed at the way the Kurfürstendamm had been rebuilt, its shops stocked with luxury goods that many West Berliners relished inspecting even though few could buy. The Kurfürstendamm was like a blend of Fifth Avenue and Broadway in Manhattan, he mused.

Unter den Linden—where he and Kathy had walked in the sharp November cold—was in the Eastern Sector now, one of its “show window” streets. Here the Russians were constructing buildings to house government agencies for the most part. The enormous new white-marble Russian embassy was mocked by West Berliners as being wedding-cake ornate.

He remembered lunching with Kathy at the Hotel Adlon. After lunch they had walked endlessly, and then they’d stopped at the pawnshop window and he saw the family brooch. His throat tightened as he recalled the moment when he asked Kathy to wear it.
“Seeing you wear it will be like seeing a bit of home
.
”

How stupid he had been. He should have said “Wear it because I love you, and once this madness has faded into memory I want to be your husband.” That was the moment, and he had thrown it away. No one else would ever wear the brooch—because he would never love another woman.