And Now the News (34 page)

She'd leave the door on the latch and put everything where he could see it when he came in, there was a dear,
dear
man, what would she ever do without him? Lance soothed her and said of course he would do it, or anything else his little princess commanded, all she had to do was just give him tiny little hints, she needn't even ask. He said they would meet at the airline terminal in the morning, and added a number of other remarks having much to do with a new life in a new world and little to do with this narrative.

As it turned out, his agreement was impulsive and impractical. It was acutely inconvenient for him to do anything of the kind. He realized this as he set down the phone, and experienced one second of horror at his impracticality. This was followed by a towering disdain for himself—
What, call yourself in love? Deny your little princess a little favor just for a little inconvenience?

His pendulum swung violently to the other extreme. He jammed his hat on, snapped one order—“Take care of everything, Joe”—at his thunderstruck assistant, and took, not an hour, but the entire day for his princess' small favor.

Once he had accomplished the enormous thing, he ceased to worry or even think about it—perhaps the secret of his considerable success—and, turning his back on chaos, gave himself over to the service of his beloved.

He found the place easily, took the elevator upstairs and went down the narrow corridor to her room. He stood there for a long
moment, lost in emerald mists of reminiscence and shocking-pink clouds of anticipation, then removed his hat and turned the knob. He clicked the lock as he closed the door behind him and stood, smiling fatuously into the sweet disorder of her parting from this chrysalis.

Much of the furniture was gone, and the pieces that were left were all tagged—for the Salvation Army, for the superintendent, for one or two persons whose names he didn't recognize. In one corner of the room was a tumbled clutter of miscellany—a scratched tabouret, some pictures with broken frames, a four-foot model of an Eskimo kayak, a mound of books, papers and magazines, dusty curtains, drapes and slip-covers. Tacked to the north wall, strung around the tabouret and tacked again to the west wall, was a piece of twine, forming a sort of fence around this particular jetsam. Hanging from it was a piece of paper folded in half. On the paper, lettered legibly and tersely, were the words THROW OUT.

Piled just inside the door were the things she wanted to keep, from all her past, to take into her life with him. There were the old typewriter and a mahogany case—the heirlooms. On top of the case sat a cardboard box, the kind in which one buys a ream of bond paper. It was lettered WIP, which he properly translated as WORK IN PROGRESS.

On this lay the heavy gold-and-leather frame in which he had enshrined his picture,
All my Love, Lance
, and, eclipsing this, was a folded sheet of paper. He picked it up. It read,
Lance, I do love you so, Ellie
.

Although it was hardly inspired copy, it stopped his heart for a giddy moment. Anyone else might read those words as just those words—he heard them in her eager half-whisper.

He was delicately fanned by her long lashes as they swept up on
do
and down on
so
. He knew her special fragrance and even, for a moment, sensed a sort of nearness which was not heat nor odor nor sound, but just—nearness. He let his breath whistle through his nostrils and stood there, shaking his head and murmuring her name.

He opened his eyes on the dangling sign which said, so pitilessly, THROW OUT, and for the very first time felt a small curl of regret. She had so submissively agreed to his half-playful dictum to wipe
out the past, that he had never thought of what it might cost her.

He crossed to the twine barrier and ran his gaze over the clutter behind it. He suddenly bent and took up another bond-paper box, also with WIP inscribed upon it. It was dusty and cracked, and written across one corner was
Furilla's Rose
.

Here, he thought, were the worksheets, the carbons, the notes—all the mysterious machine-filings and mold-castings from which a great novel comes—filings and castings Eloise had lived with, slaved over, hoped and dreamed upon—her second novel. Now, because of his arbitrary whim, they were tossed on a heap with a broken kayak and some dusty drapes, under a sign which commanded THROW OUT.

His passion for her mounted the shoulders of his strange reverence for books, a reverence sometimes encountered in the non-reader, and rose towering over him. He took the box over to the stenographer's chair pushed against the window, sat down with it on his lap, opened it, read—

Yes, it was the famous opening of
Furilla's Rose
. How strange it looked in typescript, in grey-haloed carbon! What currents, what depths flowed and swirled in his kitten-princess!

He leafed on.

That's my Ellie! thought Lance deMarcopolo fondly. If it was ugly, she didn't know it was there until it went away.

He skimmed on, through the tremendous sequence where Furilla met Maserac and went to live in his house. Maserac was an Older Man, and poor Furilla was quite sure that Older Men were safe.

That was a close one, thought deMarcopolo admiringly. He turned the leaf over, and a blue slip fell out. He bent and picked it up. It was from a desk memo pad and was imprinted with
Office of the Publisher
. He didn't mean to read it, but he couldn't help it.

DeMarcopolo sat staring at the paper, holding it between thumb and forefinger, flapping it like a small blue wing. Brill … Brill? Oh! Brill MacIver!
That
old fool—the publisher who …

He shook himself, or shuddered, then set the box down on the floor. He got up and took off his topcoat and draped it over the back of the chair, then sat down again. He put the box back on his lap.
He didn't skim it lightly now, though he didn't know why. He went rapidly through the sheets.

He got to that scene between Furilla and young Harald. Harald had come into Furilla's life “like a great storm” and, in a famous sequence, there had been a storm—a beaut. It built and built outside, glaring and crashing, silhouetting Harald against its lightning flashes as he climbed in her window. It built and built still more as he pressed closer and closer to Furilla, until, when he reached her, the clouds rolled and the thunder banged and, at last—
zing!—
a mighty flash burned down the boathouse.

Just here, a paperclip separated some pages from the main manuscript. It was the scene when, next morning, Furilla awoke, alone, bruised, strangely disturbed, and considered what she was to do.

Lance deMarcopolo sat quite still, his eyes on the manuscript but not doing anything. He remembered the scene, but that was not the way it had happened in the book.

He uttered a soft, puzzled grunt and turned the page. Under it, lay a pink flimsy with some single-spaced typescript on it. He knew that Ellie used pink second-sheets for her correspondence, white for her work. This must be the copy of a letter to somebody, and perhaps he—but before he could have any doubts about it, his quick eye had taken it in.

I do love you so
. A numb place existed suddenly in the pit of Lance's stomach. He did not permit himself to think. He went on to the next sheet—an original, typed with a heavy hand and a pale ribbon on a piece of business stationery with the letterhead torn off.

I shouldn't
, thought deMarcopolo in panic.
This has nothing to do with …
But he went on to the next one—another pink carbon.

Next was an imprinted office memo, headed
Office of the Publisher
. Typed by a firm, even hand, were a few lines, which deMarcopolo read without hesitation.

DeMarcopolo shook his head rapidly, like a man swimming up out of consciousness, and then went back to his reading. Again, it was manuscript. Same scene, but—oh!…