Blessings (34 page)

“Alone? Goodness, no. The neighbors are taking turns to be with her. There are never fewer than two of us with her, day or night. Right now the place is jam-packed, and we intend to stay.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful! I was so worried.”

“You can speak to her yourself. She’s in bed, of course, poor soul, but there’s a phone upstairs.”

“I’m doing fine,” Martha told Jennie weakly. “I’m holding up better than I ever thought I could.”

“You’re like George. You’ve got guts. Tell me, Martha, has anybody been looking for the tape? Have you got it safely hidden till the case comes up?”

Martha sighed, began to speak, then sighed again. “Jennie, I don’t know how to begin to tell you. This business has been a fiasco from the start.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, on the day of the funeral my niece came to tidy up the bedroom. George had put the tape, disguised in a paper grocery bag, under the bed. I didn’t think about it —naturally I wasn’t thinking very well that day—and she threw the bag out in the trash. It’s incinerated, Jennie. Gone.”

Jennie felt a surge of crazy laughter. A grocery bag under the bed! How typical of George!

“I’m so sorry, Jennie. The chief weapon’s gone now, isn’t it?”

“I’m afraid so. Well, the Preservation Committee is back where it started, that’s all.”

“I hear you’re not the lawyer anymore. What happened?”

“It’s a long story. Too long.”

“Without you they’re going to lose.”

“Oh, you give me too much credit. I have no influence on the board. They’ll vote the way they want to vote.”

“No, there’s a couple of swing votes that can go either way, easily as not. And you’re a spellbinder, Jennie.”

“Well, thank you for the kind words, but I’m out of it now. Take care, Martha. I’ll keep in touch.”

Out of my hands, she thought. So Barker Development will win, the land will be destroyed, and Martha and I and the rest of us will be safe. A mixed bag, after all the effort, the fuss and fury. Talk about irony!

Her work had piled up to the sky in less than a week. Papers and appointments filled the morning. As always, almost every woman who came in either brought a child along, had left one with a neighbor, or was ripely pregnant with one. So many of these women had no dependable, permanent man, having either been deserted by one or having never had one. Hard lives, these were, and still Jennie could not help but think, with some bitterness, that they had a certain freedom, too; there was no secrecy about the way they lived, and no explanations were needed.

All morning they came and went. She had lunch at her desk, a bad sandwich, mostly mayonnaise, and a soft drink, there being no time to go out for anything better. The telephone rang. The mail came and another pile accumulated. By one o’clock when Dinah left, Jennie was working away.

“You must be awfully tired,” Dinah said with concern. “Why don’t you go home?”

“I’m fine. I’ll just stay on another hour or so.”

She wanted to be tired. It would be such comfort to go home exhausted, there to eat some simple cheese and fruit, go to sleep and not think about Arthur Wolfe—or anybody.

Someone was knocking at the outer door. Her first impulse was to ignore it and let whoever it was go away. The knocking became insistent. It occurred to her that it might be the terrorized girl who had come in a few days ago with blue-green bruises all over her neck and arms. Her lover may have come back in another temper. She got up and opened the door.

A well-dressed man of early middle age, wearing a gray overcoat, stood before her.

“My name’s Robinson. I know it’s late, but I saw the light. May I come in?”

He was already in, following Jennie into her room, where the debris of the busy day, papers finished and papers not finished, littered every surface.

He laid his attache case—pin seal and brass buckles— on the floor beside a chair, removed a small sheaf of Jennie’s papers from the chair, and handed them to her.

“Mind if I sit down?”

She took her papers from his hand, thinking, He’s cool, mighty cool. Who is he?

“You’ve got a nice place here,” he said, looking around at the mess. “And the flowers. I raise roses myself. It’s a hobby of mine.”

“What can I do for you?” Jennie asked, wary now.

“Somebody’s got to think a whole lot of you to send those. They cost, those long stems. They cost a bundle.”

Who was he? The hairs on Jennie’s forearms rose. An animal besieged in its den recognizes danger. But where is safety? Where can one hide?

“I asked you,” she said, keeping a level tone, “what I can do for you. What is your business?”

“Well, this and that.” When he smiled, his gums, which were knobby, white, and slick, were revealed above extraordinary, oversize, yellowed teeth.

“Big teeth,” George had said. “The biggest teeth you ever saw.”

But the name hadn’t been Robinson, she was sure, although at the onset of panic, alone here with everyone gone home from next door and silence in the outer hall, she couldn’t think of the name. It made no difference, anyway. She tried to steady her thoughts.

“Yes, this and that,” the man said. Manicured fingers played with the hand-tailored cuff on the other arm.

: ‘This and that’ tells me nothing. Do you have a legal problem? I’m a lawyer.”

“Well, I know that, don’t I? And also that you’ve had experience with adoption law. I know that too.”

Startled, Jennie looked into a pair of narrow black eyes, the eyes of a rodent watching from a hidden corner.

“Adoption?” she said. “Not particularly.”

“No? I heard you had.”

“Not at all.”

“Oh, come, I know better. You’re surprised.” He smiled again, and the teeth glistened. “People hear things. Crossed wires. There are ways.”

The click on the phone, the man on the steps and under the streetlight. The day she forgot to lock the door …

It all came clear. They had stopped at nothing in their search for that tape. They couldn’t go to George’s house because of the crowd; moreover, hadn’t George led them to believe that “someone else” had it? Logically that someone would be Arthur Wolfe or Jay or herself. All this flashed through her mind in a few seconds under the scrutiny of those cold, basilisk eyes.

A short pain shot through her chest. One could have a heart attack; even as young as she was, it was possible. Still, she kept silence.

“Yes, yes. There are certain people, a certain person, who would be interested to know what it is that you know about adoptions. Even one that happened a long time ago.”

How strange, Jennie was thinking. The twisted strands come together. Peter and Jill and the Green Marsh meet and twist together at Jay’s feet. Or they would, if Jay’s feet were still standing where they stood before.

“You’d just as soon he wouldn’t know, I’m sure. No more good life, no more riding around the country in his cute two-seater Mercedes.”

This was the man, then. The car belonged to the Wolfes and was kept in the country. She’d been out in it with Jay.

“What do you want?” she asked, forcing herself to speak.

“You know what I want.”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t ask,” she retorted, astonished that she was not only able to talk but also to show a bit of defiance.

“Look, we’ve each got something on the other. So if you’re smart, you won’t play games with me. I want the tape.” And when she didn’t answer at once, he leaned forward in the chair as if he were about to leap out of it. “And don’t say ‘What tape’? This isn’t the time to play dumb.” At the same time his voice was low and controlled.

Her palms were wet with the sweat of terror. “I haven’t got any tape.” The black eyes looked at her now without expression. And she said, “That’s the truth. I never had any.”

He swiveled around in the chair and looked toward the window. Across the street the office building had gone mostly dark, except that here and there lights were being turned back on as the cleaning crews began their rounds. She tried to remember what time they started work here on this floor but couldn’t remember, couldn’t think of anything except fear. She should have had more sense than to stay alone in a deserted building.

“Too bad about the old man, wasn’t it?” he said, still with his back to her.

“What old man?” she said, parrying.

He whipped about, leapt from the chair, and stood over her so that she drew back, instinctively protecting her face from a blow.

“Jennie, Jennie, you’re wasting my time.” He was smiling at his effect upon her. “I’d just as soon not knock your teeth out. Now, you’re a smart gal, a lawyer, so you don’t need me to draw pictures for you. Here it is, final offer: Hand over the tapes and I keep my mouth shut about the kid and the other guy. What could be sweeter?”

“As to the kid,” Jennie said, “you can tell the world, for all it matters. And as to the tapes, I tell you I know nothing about them. I haven’t anything to do with the entire affair anymore.”

“What the hell do you mean by that?”

“What I said. I’m not the lawyer. I’ve been fired.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“If you’ll let me get up from this chair, I’ll find the letter.”

She was beginning to think again. The animal in its lair fights for its life.

“I’m not stopping you,” he said, and showed his feral grin.

“You’re standing too close to me. I want to protect my teeth.”

He laughed slightly and stepped back. “You’ve got nerve. I like that in a woman.”

With shaking hands she rummaged through the stacks of papers on the desk while he stood waiting, so close to her that she could hear his breathing. In a desperate hurry she whipped around and overturned the stacks.

“I guess you haven’t got it. I guess you’ve been feeding me a lot of bull.”

“You guess wrong. It’s here. It has to be.” Unless I threw it out. Did I? If I did, God help me.

“I thought he was going to smash my teeth in,” George had said. But he had done worse than that.

“I don’t know. Give me a minute.”

“I’m not going to stand here all night, you know.”

She could hear the silence in the stone corridor beyond the door. Silence roars, one says. Like the sound of waves when you hold a shell to your ear. Like the rush of blood to the head.

She bent down. The wastebasket hadn’t been emptied yet. That’s where it would be. Oh, it had to be!

He grabbed her arm, the strong fingers pinching painfully. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

She tipped the overflowing basket onto the floor, knelt down, and feverishly separated scraps, crumpled advertisements, torn envelopes, the morning paper. Please, please, let me find it. …

“Here it is!” The letter had been partially ripped across the top but was clearly legible. She held it up to him.

“You see, I told you. I’ve been fired.”

He studied the letter first, then studied Jennie, who had risen and sat down again because her knees were buckling.

“So,” he said, “so you don’t really give a damn what happens now, do you?”

She thought, He will go to the Wolfes next. But there is nothing I can do about that, and nothing that they can’t cope with better than I can.

“No,” she said, “that’s right. I don’t give a damn.”

“And you don’t give a damn, either, whether he finds out about your kid.”

He was standing so close now that his knees brushed hers. “So you’re playing the field again.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Sure you do. The kid’s father.” He seemed amused. “Old home week, hey?”

Her teeth began to chatter. She’d read about chattering teeth but had never experienced them. It was strange, the way they rattled and wouldn’t be still.

He reached out and touched her breast. “You’re a good-looking woman.”

Her hands flew to her breasts. He pulled them away.

She looked up at him, trying sternness and reason. “Why do you want to do this? It’s not worth the trouble you’ll have.”

“I’ll give you six guesses why. You thought you’d outsmart me, didn’t you? Putting a wire on the old fool.” He had a tight hold on her hands. “I wonder how you’d look with a broken nose. Or maybe a few cuts on your pretty face?”

“I’ll scream—”

“Go on, scream. Who’ll hear you?”

His fist, on which there gleamed a gold ring, solid and domed like a rock, flashed toward her face. Quickly she dodged and fell, striking her head on the edge of the desk. Pain shot through her stomach; vomit rose in her throat. He bent down, seized the front of her shirt, and raised her. The tearing silk screeched. His huge, slick teeth loomed, his face was distorted with fury, his tobacco breath was hot, the fist came up again… .

Then from the far end of the corridor sounded the noisy clash of the elevator door and a babble of voices, a clatter of heavy shoes and clinking pails. “The cleaning crew! They’re coming in!” she cried out, sobbing.

In an instant he was up on his feet. “Shit!” Grabbing his attache case and overcoat, he was out the door before Jennie was up off the floor.

Faint and swaying, she held on to the back of a chair. She was still standing there, pulling the ripped blouse together, when the door opened and a boy came in, trundling the paraphernalia of pails, mops, rags, and brooms. He stopped and stared at her.

“That man!” she gasped. “Look in the hall! Has he gone?”

The boy shook his head. “No English.”

She wanted to thank him over and over, to get down on her knees before him. He would have thought she was crazy. Perhaps he thought so, anyway.

Trembling, hoping her knees would hold her up, she put on her jacket; gathered her coat, bag, and gloves; and then, afraid to go downstairs, sat down again. What if he was waiting for her on the sidewalk? But no, she must try to think logically; of course he wouldn’t be out on the street where she could cry for help. But would he try again at home?

The telephone was at her hand, but she was shaking so badly that she couldn’t hold it. She said aloud again: “I have to think. Call the police? To look somewhere for a man in a dark overcoat among the thousands of men in dark overcoats on the streets of New York? Absurd! Call Martin upstate?” Her face ached, she was weak, she needed someone to tell her what to do. How alone she was without Jay! Then sudden terror struck her. What if that—that creature were to go to Jay’s house? The stupid, snobbish nanny would admit him simply because he wore an expensive coat and looked like a gentleman, wouldn’t she? She and the children might be there alone. Or even if Jay were there by himself and the creature had a knife—