In the Still of the Night (19 page)

“I was thinking of next week.”

She watched the little pulse start at his temple. All so casual on the surface. Inside he was in turmoil, she could tell. He couldn’t lie to save his life. “Would you like me to go with you?” She succeeded in sounding as though she was suddenly enchanted with the idea.

“It never occurred to me that you’d want to.” His voice was as flat as the floor.

“I do want to, but darling, I can’t get away, and neither can you. Janet Caruthers will be here from London next week, and I’m counting on you to cope with her. You said yourself it would be disastrous to submit her manuscript as it is now. When did Tom offer you the beach house?”

“We had lunch.”

“You’ve heard from Wilczynski, haven’t you?”

“I expect to. I thought I might ask him to go up to the Cape with me. He knows more about the outdoors than most people.”

She could not believe her ears. What kind of a fool did he take her for? As naive as himself? “Mark, did he or did he not insult me? What’s this business: ‘He maligned my wife’? Give it to me straight out, what
did
he say?”

“Actually, it was me he insulted, only I didn’t look at it that way at the time.”

“
What did he say?
The exact words: spit them out.”

“He said I didn’t have to take all the shit.”

“From me?”

Mark shrugged. Who else?

“The insolent pup. To dare to speak to you like that. Or is that among the privileges you’ve given him?”

“What does that mean?”

“Mark, do you see what you’re doing to me? You’re rewarding him for what he said.”

“You’re forgetting, I almost killed him that night.”

“Too bad you didn’t,” Kitty said. “One more botched job to your credit.”

Back in her own office Kitty phoned Wilding. “What in hell are you trying to do, break up my marriage?”

“That would take an act of God, Kitty.”

“What about Wilczynski?”

“What about him?”

“Is there something going between him and Mark?”

“Sexual? It would never have entered my mind.”

“Then think about it: You offer him a house on Cape Cod, and he decides to take Wilczynski with him.”

“I didn’t even know he was taking me up on the offer, Kitty.”

“He’s not. Believe me.”

“Kitty, don’t jump to conclusions. That’s a really off-the-wall notion about Mark and Wilczynski. It’s father and son if it’s anything besides agent and writer.”

“If you’re holding back on me, Tom, I’ll cut your heart out.”

Mark had heard from Wilczynski. When Kitty left him, he retrieved the survival-knife flyer from the wastebasket by way of occupying himself until it was safe to resume what he’d been doing when she came into his office. He watched her out of sight and then kept his eye on the phone lights until he saw that she was at her desk and busy. Then he took the manuscript from the middle drawer where he had swept it out of sight on her arrival. He had heard from Wilczynski and found the communication a great deal more disturbing than not hearing from him had been. Some thirty pages and a brief outline had arrived from him that morning with a covering letter that read:

Dear Mark:

I think you know that I have wanted to divide my time and talents in such a way that I can earn my living by writing. I like the idea of poetry and the murder mystery, but until our recent bloody encounter I could find no satisfactory act of violence on which I could take off.

Please let me know what you think of these few pages and whether you would consider working with me on the plot. I’ve heard Kitty boast about working with her writers, so that I don’t hesitate to ask. You may consider this beginning an impertinence, but if it is, it’s a devoted one.

André

P.S. I am sending a letter to both you and Kitty under separate cover. It should clear the air.

The locale of Wilczynski’s proposed novel, although said to be in a building on Riverside Drive with a view of the Hudson River, was plainly the Colemans’ apartment on Central Park West, which André knew startlingly well. The principal characters, crudely drawn in this beginning, were comparable to the Colemans only in that they were a married couple approaching middle age. The woman was fat, long-suffering, and bland, and kept a meticulous house, nobody recognizable to Mark. The man had a Mephistophelian quality. “A cross between Mephistopheles and Svengali,” André had written. Which, Mark thought, did not leave much room for character development. Mark had suddenly realized what Wilczynski was trying to do when Kitty walked in on him: He had switched the roles of the Colemans. It did not bother Mark much to see himself portrayed as a tub of lard, and under other circumstances, Kitty might enjoy the role into which she was cast. But the whole gambit disturbed him, especially with murder as its objective. However, if André could write suspense, he should be encouraged and helped to find a different vehicle. Without Kitty’s knowing of this beginning. It was with this in mind that Mark had briefly entertained the notion of going to the Cape after all and taking Wilczynski with him, and had tested it out on Kitty. Patently he was not going with Janet Caruthers about to arrive. He put the Wilczynski proposal—to describe it a more advanced way than it deserved—into an agency folder and stashed it in a desk drawer. He decided to do nothing about it until the other letter André had mentioned came.

Wilding came out of a meeting to take Coleman’s call. Mark hadn’t said it was urgent. The sense of urgency was his own. Kitty’s conjecture about Mark and Wilczynski had distressed him. She was an unpredictable woman, and he didn’t like to think what she was capable of doing if something of hers was threatened.

But Mark was quite cheerful. “Kitty said you wanted to know: We now have a letter of apology from André Wilczynski.”

“Read it to me if it isn’t too long.”

“Very brief in fact.” The pertinent line read, “‘I hope you will allow me to consider my punishment sufficient to the offense.’”

“Fancy words,” Wilding murmured. They did not sound at all like Wilczynski. “But they’ll do as long as he signed the letter. What does Kitty say?”

“I’ll tell you exactly what she said, ‘Okay. Now let’s get rid of him.’”

“I’d do it, if I were you. I’d get on the phone right now and tell him in the most diplomatic way possible that while you accept his apology in the same spirit as he accepted yours, you think it would be better for him to find other representation.”

“No. I can’t do that, Tom. And to tell you the truth, I don’t see why I should.”

Wilding, aware of the suspended meeting awaiting his return in the next room, could not think of a judicious way to persuade Mark in the time at hand. “It’s up to you. But for God’s sake, don’t lose that letter.”

“It’s safe. It’s in Kitty’s hands.”

Mark postponed further thought about the Wilczynski proposal until the Janet Caruthers visit. He spent most of the weekend going over her manuscript. He thought it barely literate, but he would not say that even to Kitty, abiding by his habit of loyalty to his authors. He had merely told her that it needed work, something to which she agreed on rereading it. The problem was to persuade Caruthers that she owed it to herself to do some rewriting. Her publisher might well accept the book as it was, she was that popular. Mark felt good about himself and the work he did on the script. He was able to concentrate for long stretches, which, he would be the first to admit, said something for the Caruthers manuscript as well. Kitty was right: Literacy wasn’t everything.

Caruthers arrived in New York Monday noon. Mark did not see her until Wednesday evening, when, at Kitty’s suggestion, he took them both to dinner at Le Perigord. As soon as he had ordered cocktails, Kitty announced, “Janet and I have made a pact: Tonight is trivia time. Not a word about
Storm over Bertram Heights.
Don’t you love that title, Mark?”

He said that he did and looked around to see if they were getting his drink. It was usually mixed and chilling by the time he’d given up his topcoat and seated his guests. It occurred to him that if Kitty and Janet had agreed not to discuss the manuscript, they had probably already discussed it. “What are we going to talk about? Am I allowed to ask since I wasn’t in on the arrangement?”

Kitty flashed him a warning glance. He was not to be contentious. A quick smile followed. “What?” she repeated, an invitation to suggest a subject.

“Other writers—who’s in, who’s out,” Caruthers said. She was a big, amiable woman, getting bigger with every success. She did not like to write especially but, as she put it, she had a knack for it and she loved the little luxuries writing could buy. It turned out she had spent the afternoon at Kenneth Beauty Salon.

Which information, along with the arrival of their cocktails, cheered Mark up considerably. There was something reassuring about having a client who spent the afternoon with Kenneth.

Mark scraped his last oyster from the shell. The women were slower, having champagne with theirs, vulgar or not, as Kitty said. He found himself free-floating, as it were, adrift in their easy conversation. Kitty was the heroine of all her stories, and he marveled at the attention authors paid her, even Janet. A kind of fairy tale.

Kitty, for her part, was quite aware that he was drifting in and out of their presence, speaking only when spoken to. He was still an attractive man, she thought: They were noticed wherever they went together. And she liked it that way. His silence troubled her, as though he’d gone off secretly on his own. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know where. During the clearing of the oyster shells, she pondered how to reach him. She waited until the
Roti de Veau a la Maison
was served and their guest involved in her gastronomic adventure. Then she said to him, almost casually, “Mark, would you like me to try to place a collection of André’s poems with Linden House?”

He came to instant attention. “I thought you wanted him …” He avoided saying the word
out
in Caruthers’s presence.

“Obviously you don’t,” Kitty said. “And I thought you’d be pleased at the idea.”

“Why Linden House?” He was shaken by the suggestion. And it was not a publisher he’d have gone to with poetry. Nor would he go to any house with as thin a body of verse as Wilczynski had so far produced. Kitty didn’t even know what there was of it, much less its merit. She was putting him on, Mark decided, wanting to see how he’d react. But why? In her phone conversation with Wilding, the one on which he had eavesdropped, she told the lawyer Wilczynski was jealous of her. Now, he realized, she was jealous of Wilczynski. It boded both ill and well if she was serious about placing the poems. Above all, it would take him off the hook in discussing with André the mystery-novel proposal in his desk drawer: To have his poems published by a reputable house would seem extraordinary to him, and the very possibility of it would melt his hostility toward Kitty.

“A hunch,” she said about Linden House. “You know me and my hunches. I always play them.” She laid a finger on the busy wrist of Janet Caruthers. “I had a hunch Janet would like the veal.”

“I’ve never had an experience like it,” Janet said happily.

Mark kept thinking of Linden House and who there would possibly be interested in Wilczynski. It would have to be someone in the upper echelon. Kitty always went to the decision-makers. He did not want to press her. She might turn on him in front of Janet.

Then Kitty said, “Mark, stop racking your brain. I only had the idea five minutes ago, but you’d better believe I can get him a contract if I put my mind to it.”

“Now who are we talking about?” Janet asked, dabbing her lips with her napkin.

“A young poet Mark is fathering,” Kitty said.

Caruthers turned to him. “Is he good? He must be or you wouldn’t be interested in him.”

“I think he is.” Then he remembered: On the terrace the night of the party Kitty and he had exchanged words about Jonathan Root, and that was the Linden House connection. Kitty had switched Root there on a million-dollar contract. She was quite capable of going back to them and squeezing out a thousand dollars more for a book they might or might not eventually publish.

But why would she do it? To lure the poet away from him? Or had she done it
for
him? He looked at her across the table. Her eyes were wide, blinking in anticipation. She expected him to say he was pleased. So he said it and added that young poets needed all the encouragement they could get.

It was a crisp, clear night, and they decided to walk the few blocks to the St. Regis, where Caruthers was staying. They paused to look at the long sweep of lights up Park Avenue and the joyous punctuation of a Christmas tree every block for as far as they could see. The tree in the hotel lobby was full of old-fashioned ornaments, and the music sounded as though it came from a calliope. Janet invited them to have a nightcap at the bar, which had a new jazz pianist, and she knew Mark loved jazz. The Colemans declined—a working day ahead, Kitty said. Janet kissed them both, thanked them, and wished them a Merry Christmas.

“I don’t envy you Christmas in Los Angeles,” Kitty said.

“Is it true,” Janet wanted to know, “red, white, and blue Christmas trees?”

“And pink,” Kitty said.

“When do you get back?” Mark asked. Somewhere along the line he had missed the information that she was going to the Coast.

“Late spring. One of you will come over to London before then. It would be super if you could come together.”

“You’re flying home directly from L.A., is that it?” Mark said.

Janet nodded.

“And …
Bertram Heights?
” He mimed a spiral with his hands suggestive of something ongoing, unfinished.

Kitty took over. “Darling, Janet had lunch with her editor and all of them yesterday. They want the book
now.
I said you’d agree—if that’s how they feel, they’d better have it. You do agree, don’t you?”

“The point is moot by now, isn’t it? Shall we go home?”

“There simply wasn’t time,” she said in the cab when he had not spoken by the time they passed Columbus Circle and headed up Central Park West.