Don't Rely on Gemini (3 page)

• • •

He should do that anyway.

He told himself so while he was upstairs in his study, sorting through the material for the book.

Yes, ideally an enthusiastic and pretty young girl should be there to have the nightcaps with him and tell him he was going to be famous, and then make love with him for a long time. But that was fantasy-land, like those science-fiction stories Margaret enjoyed, in which a man would take the elevator in his apartment building to the wrong floor and find himself entering a new life with his name on the door of another apartment and another wife and family waiting for him, or a man would wake up with a different face, a new nationality, everything about his life changed.

Neal knew well from his years at Rock-Or that there were many neurotics who could not be happy except in the anticipation of change. The change itself meant nothing to such people; when they would make it, the next wish would be to change again.

Why was he even entertaining these ideas?

He was like some schoolboy enlarging on a fantasy until reality was forced out of proportion.

The more he saw of Penny Bissel, the more he was indulging the fantasy and letting go of reality.

Yet as he sat at his desk looking out at the moonlight on the river, he heard reality beneath him, and it made him wince with displeasure.

“Dove c'è qui un buon ristorante?”
the voice on the record said.

“Where is there a good restaurant?”

“Dove c'è qui un buon ristorante?”

“Non c'è nessuno che parli inglese?”

“Is there anyone who speaks English?”

“Non c'è nessuno che parli inglese?”

He had a sudden vision of Penny running toward him in the field that day they had driven up to Bear Mountain, how they had run toward each other through the tall elephant grass, and the scent of the sun in her hair when he caught her to him and her fingers held on to his shirt, both of them laughing so hard.

“Avanti!”

“Come in!”

“Avanti!”

Once, in his office, she had said to him, in the middle of some idiotic diatribe he had been making about Forrest's unconscious wish to be punished as his father had beaten him when he was a child, “Neal? How long will it be before you'll touch me?”

He had kissed her that day for the first time, near-to-crazy at the way it made him feel, hardly able to stop, or to care that someone could happen into his office and find them like that.

She had said afterward, “I knew, Neal.” “What?”

“How it would be with us. That it would be like this.”

Remember? She was wearing a long-sleeved white wool dress with a pin made from a penny on the collar.

She had pennies on everything, her handkerchiefs and sweaters and even one on the door of her father's car. Neal had bought her a coffee mug in New City with a penny on it.

“Un uovo alla cocca.”

“A boiled egg.”

“Un uovo alla cocca.”

Tomorrow, he'd take her to the ‘76 House in Old Tappan for lunch.

Wednesday night.

Archie's glasses were lost. While they searched the apartment for them, the phone rang.

Archie said to Dru, “I'll get it. May I tell whoever's calling that we're on our way out?”

“Why ask me?”

“Because it'll be for you,” he said. “It always is.”

“Archie, don't act so put-upon. I didn't lose your glasses, you lost them.”

But the call was not for Dru; it was Archie's father.

“How are you?” Archie said without much enthusiasm.

His father said, “If I felt any better I'd be in jail for rape.”

Archie made an effort to laugh. Years ago, when Archie had been in analysis, his father's perpetual braggadocio on the subject of his sexual prowess had frequently tied Archie's stomach in knots. Most of his fifty-minute hours had been spent reliving the anxieties he had felt as the young son of a self-proclaimed Don Juan.

Now Archie was more bored than anything else by it, and still resentful at what it had done to his mother. After the divorce, she had never remarried, and she had gone to her grave pretending to everyone, including Archie, that the stories of Frank Gamble's infidelities were exaggerated. They weren't, but she imagined her word was accepted. It was a way of saving face. When Archie was a boy he used to hear her tell his father: “I know you're seeing other women, but don't flaunt it. Don't embarrass me before my friends.”

While Archie talked to his father, he studied his reflection in the Constitution mirror above the telephone stand. He remembered when he used to find gray hairs among the coal-black ones on his head; now the reverse was true. At forty-two, could he still claim he was prematurely gray? He decided that his friends who weren't gray probably darkened their hair.

“… had a visitor today,” his father was saying. “Female, naturally, but a very special female.”

“Good for you. Look, Dad, Dru and I are on our way to the country. Did you call about something in particular?”

“Don't you want to know who my female friend was?” he said.

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“Come on, Dad. I don't have time.” “Liddy.”

Archie reached in the pocket of his blazer for a cigarette. “Oh?”

“Is that all you have to say? Oh?”

“How is she?” He found a match and lit the cigarette.

“She's the same Liddy. I'll never know how you let that slip through your fingers.”

Archie's father wasn't fond of Dru. She wouldn't flirt back with him the way Liddy would.

Archie said, “Is she planning to stay in New York?” Dru came out of the bedroom carrying his glasses. She walked across and Archie bent down so she could put them on him.

“Oh, yes. She has an apartment on East Fifty-Seventh Street.”

“Alone?”

“Well, as alone as a woman like Liddy will ever be.”

“Good for her.”

“She asked about you.”

“Uh huh.”

“Wanted to know if you were happy.” “Ummm.”

“I said you might not be happy, but you were cheerful.” “You have a lot of insight,” Archie said dryly. “Are you going to see her, son?”

He was never able to adjust to his father's calling him “son.” It invariably embarrassed him. He said, “What for?”

“What
for?
You were married to her for fifteen years!” “So?”

“I thought you'd want to see her. I thought I was bringing you good news. She wants to see
you.
She says it's important. Urgent.”

Dru sat across the room from him turning the pages of
Life.
Normally she would be making frantic motions for him to get off the phone, but she sensed that the conversation was about Liddy. She was wearing her best I-Won't-Make-A-Scene expression, which usually indicated that she would, delayed-reaction style, three hours from now or three days from now. Suddenly. Zap!

Archie said, “Dad, we're going to be late if we don't leave right away.”

“Where are you going in the country?”

“I have some research to do for this astrology show.”

“What a lot of bunk that is. Astrology.”

“Yeah. Right.”

Why did Archie remember then an afternoon when his father had come into his bedroom—what was Archie, ten, eleven? His father had picked up the journal Archie was writing in, and read aloud the quotation Archie was copying from F. Scott Fitzgerald.
“In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning.”

His father had bent double laughing until tears rolled down his cheeks. He had tugged on Archie's hair and guffawed. “What bunk! And what do you know about dark nights of the soul, Little Lord Fauntleroy? You're as self-pitying as your mother is!”

Archie had actually struck him, and his father had stood there with a look of stunned hatred on his face, his hand holding the spot near his nose where Archie's blow had landed.

His father had said, “If I hit girls, I'd hit you back.”

Now his father said, “I don't know what Liddy wants, but it's urgent. That I do know. Call her, son. Here's her private number.”

“I don't need it, thanks.”

“You ought to call her, you know.”

“Sometime I will.”

• • •

Dru had read about a restaurant in Old Tappan called ‘76 House. It dated back to the eighteenth century, with lots of old wood, supposedly, and heavy on atmosphere. The plan was to have dinner there, then proceed to Grandview-on-Hudson. Mrs. Dana had invited them for nine-thirty, warning Dru that the hill was long and treacherous and that you had to drive along River Road slowly or you'd miss the right turn which led up to the house.

As Archie drove the Triumph across the George Washington bridge, he asked Dru again, “Why doesn't she want to tell him about it ahead of time?”

Dru had the Goodavage book on her lap; she was paging through it.

She said, “What do you think your reaction would have been four months ago, if I had told you your astro-twin was dropping in?”

“I'd have had you committed.”

“Soooo. She's not telling him ahead of time.” “What a pleasant surprise he's in for.” “She says it's the best way.”

“I wouldn't blame him if he slugged me,” Archie said. “He won't. He's a psychologist.” “What's that got to do with it?”

“I just think a psychologist would have more control.” “Did you ever hear the old saying, ‘Physician, heal thyself?”

“He's not a doctor, Archie. He's a Ph.D.”

“I hope this place has a steak.”

“Is that what you feel like? Again?”

“I like steak.”

“He does, too. Neal Dana. Margaret said he could eat steak every night of his life.”

Archie groaned. “You two have compared notes already?” “We had a little talk.”

“Why didn't you say so? You said you just called her for directions.”

Dru said, “We didn't talk long. I told you he was writing a book.”

“Ummm. If you want to use that basis for comparison, every other joker in the country is living a life parallel to mine.”

“I'm not trying to talk you into anything, Archie. I'm not Mrs. Muckermann.”

“What else did she say about him?”

“Let's see. He's nearsighted and he always misplaces his glasses, and he attended the Journalism School at the University of Missouri, and he was in psychoanalysis for four years, and—“

“Okay, okay.”

“Archie?”

“What?”

“Listen to this.” She picked up the Goodavage book and read to him:

“… George A. Blanden, Jr., and Douglas Fillebrown, who were both born in the same year, month, date, hour, and close to the same minute in the same state (Portsmouth and Gorham, N.H., on November thirteenth, 1944). On June twenty-second, 1964, a fire broke out in a three-story Phi Kappa Alpha fraternity house at the University of New Hampshire. A dozen young men scrambled to safety—but not George Blunden nor Douglas Fillebrown. Inexplicably, both burned to death at the same time. Was this predestined? Could it have been predicted or prevented? What science other than astrology can explain why these ‘astro-twins' were attracted to the same university? Why did they choose the same fraternity? Why did they have to be in the same fraternity house at the exact time it burned down? Why were they the only ones who didn't escape?”

She put the book down. “Are you
ready
for that?”

Archie laughed. “Coincidence.”

“You want to hear some more
coincidences?”

“Ummm hmmm.” But he wasn't paying attention now. Mercury and Saturn were stimulating that opposition full force, for he was distracted again, and by thoughts of Liddy again.

What could be so important that made her eager to see him, and why hadn't she given his father some idea what it was about? His father and Liddy had always been very close. It used to annoy Archie that she called his father “Frank” and treated him like her favorite confidant. Toward the end of their marriage, Archie had even imagined that Liddy told his father about her affairs, that the two of them discussed it over drinks—those long drinking sessions they put in together—and that they laughed at him behind his back.

Would Liddy do that to him?

He was still unconvinced that she wouldn't, even though she had wept (unusual for Liddy) when he had accused her of it, and asked him how in God's name he could think that of her; wasn't there any feeling for her left from what they had had?

The trouble was, there was too much feeling left then; maybe there still was.

She had come back to New York alone. He received no small satisfaction from that news. He was sure that Moneybags had left her, for married to him, Liddy could have everything, all that money could buy and all the affairs she wanted. Moneybags was one of those strange men who not only didn't demand fidelity from his wife, but felt perversely pleased with the idea other men could love her although she belonged to him. Archie had only a hazy memory of Moneybags, though he had met him four or five times. He was the type who wore dark glasses at night.

“The second ‘astro-twin' was found lying dead on the floor,” Dru continued. “Autopsies revealed that marzey doats and dozey doats and little lambsy divy. Isn't that fascinating, Archie?”

Archie said, “Is it documented? Dates, places?”

“Oh my, yes. The mares came from Sioux City, Iowa.”

“That's interesting.”

She slammed the book shut.

“Something the matter?” Archie asked her.

“What could be the matter?”

“I don't know. The way you slammed the book. I thought something was the matter.” “You're just oversensitive.”

He turned right at the end of the bridge, fed fifty cents to the toll booth, and swung onto Palisades Parkway.

“These brakes aren't any too good,” he said. “Why don't you take this car in for a complete checkup?”

Dru didn't answer him. She was looking out the window at the river.