Jack and Susan in 1933 (5 page)

“Nevertheless,” Jack said to the woman in green, “it is an accident. I was only attempting to take this young lady home.”

“He said,” called Susan from the recessed doorway, “that if I saw his friend again, he'd have me killed for good.”

“I thought it was something like that,” said the young woman in the green coat. “It always is. Are you all right in there?”

“Yes, she's all right,” said Jack. “She's perfectly fine, and
no one
tried to kill her. I, on the other hand, have this steering wheel stuck in my stomach, and I am
not
fine. And, Miss Bright, if and when the police arrive, I would appreciate your not trying to maintain that this was a murder attempt.”

“If I had a gun,” said the young woman in the green coat to Jack, “I'd shoot you right here and now.”

“If I had a gun,” Susan said, “I'd give it to you.”

A small crowd gathered—a few well-dressed drunken revelers on their way to home and hangovers, a few delivery men, a few children whose parents were home abed, a few men and women lucky enough to have work but not lucky enough to have a holiday, a few indigents on their way from one cold stoop to another. The crowd seemed sympathetic to Susan's plight, and indifferent to Jack's. Those who did not look on this accident as an attempted murder were inclined to look on it as a failed seduction. Jack's only ally was a particularly drunken man in a broken top hat who kept calling out, “Marry the girl, and then she'll do whatever you want.” Eventually, the police arrived, and tossed the drunken man's cape over the hood of the car to Susan. She wrapped it around her tightly, and thanked the policeman. Soon a truck from a garage arrived. A chain was attached to the already smashed bumper of Jack's car, which was pulled free from the facade of the insurance building.

Four policemen instantly supported Susan away from the recessed doorway, and ignored Jack's cries. When the automobile was pulled free of the building, the front portion of the car dropped heavily to the ground, and the steering wheel jammed even more tightly into Jack's abdomen.

Jack felt one of his ribs crack.

“Ohh—” he started to groan.

Then another one went as well.

“So tell me exactly what you said to her,” said Barbara impatiently.

“Said to whom?” moaned Jack. Formerly no bed had been long enough for Jack's legs. Now no bed could be too soft for his ribs. Bandages were wrapped tightly around his chest. He felt he had to struggle for every breath. Beneath his neck was what could be described only as a wide, tender bruise. It was the only thing he wanted to think about.

“To
her
,” sighed Barbara. “To that chanteuse. To
Susan
…”

Jack remembered Susan—with no particular fondness. She only made him think of his two broken ribs, the circle of pain that used to be his chest, and oh yes, his viridian roadster. Perhaps his ribs would repair themselves. His automobile wouldn't. “Call Harmon,” Jack pleaded.

“Harmon?” echoed Barbara, pacing with a cigarette whose smoke—Jack predicted—was going to make it even more difficult for him to breathe. “Harmon won't say anything about the girl. Pardon me, the
chit
. Harmon knows what I feel about
that sort
.”

“No,” whispered Jack, deciding that in his life up to this point he had been entirely profligate with his breath. Surely he could get along just as well on only half as many in-and exhalations. “Have him send over some of his good brandy.”

“I
hate
brandy!” Barbara fumed. “And what has brandy to do with what you said to that girl?”

“The brandy is for me,” said Jack weakly. “It might help to ease the pain.”

Barbara looked at Jack as if he were mad. “Pain? You feel pain? Didn't you see the doctor?” Then, knowing very well that Jack
had
seen the doctor, and that his pain must therefore be quite imaginary, Barbara returned to the matter at hand: Susan Bright, and what Jack had said to her. “You were there for over an hour, you said, so you must have had plenty of opportunity to talk to her. You warned her away from Harmon, I hope. You made it very clear that nothing was to come of this infatuation of his, I trust. May I assume that you had the good sense to threaten her a little?”

Jack looked at Barbara for a moment, and then replied, “Yes, I think I can say that Susan felt a little threatened. She was particularly afraid that the car would explode.”

“Lincoln LeBarons never explode,” retorted Barbara. “Every schoolgirl knows that. I can imagine the entire situation now. You had that girl where you wanted her— trapped in the entrance of that building—and you might have applied any amount of pressure. But the fact is— Jack, I do know this as if I had been there—she wrapped you around her little finger. I should have handled this.” Barbara dropped her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table, and then stalked out of the room.

“I wish you had,” said Jack sincerely. He spent the next few minutes trying to find a way to reach Barbara's burning cigarette without jarring any portion of his upper body. It proved not to be possible. Finally he gave up, simply reached for the cigarette, stretching every one of the three-hundred-odd muscles that were involved in that mighty piece of work that was the bruise that used to be his chest, screamed a mighty scream, and stabbed out the cigarette with his bare thumb.

Jack was in no condition to return to work. Because Jack did not go to work, Harmon Dodge saw no reason to go to work. As he explained amiably to Jack, sitting on the edge of Jack's bed, and bouncing up and down in a way that made Jack's ribs prod their serrated edges against his lungs, “If a client came in and saw me there, he might ask my advice, and what the hell do I know about bankruptcies?”

“I hope you're not seeing that girl,” said Jack dutifully. Barbara had told Jack several dozen times that he was to quiz Harmon
unmercifully
. Jack felt that he had recently attained new understanding of the adverb.

“What girl?” returned Harmon amiably. Then he considered for a moment. “Oh yes, the redhead from the Purple Porcupine Tea Shop. No, certainly not. Haven't seen her for ages. She went back to her boyfriend in Philadelphia. The boyfriend promised to marry her mother, or some such thing. Very romantic, and I was very happy for her.”

“No,” said Jack suspiciously, “not the girl from the Purple Porcupine, but the girl from Villa Vanity. Susan Bright.”

Harmon grinned and smote Jack familiarly on the shoulder. Jack felt as if his internal organs had just undergone some sort of improbable and dangerous rearrangement. “You've had more to do with that one than I, Jackie my boy, Jackie my gentleman. I wasn't the one who put her in certain danger of death just so that I could rescue her. No, Jackie my gentle gentleman, it wasn't I.”

“Then you haven't seen her?” Jack persisted, and surreptitiously stuck a finger into his pajamas to see if his bandages were becoming soaked with blood.

“The Villa Vanity is closed,” said Harmon.

That wasn't quite the answer that would have satisfied Barbara.

“So you haven't heard her sing,” said Jack. “But perhaps you've seen her elsewhere?”

Harmon smiled. “When this damned Depression is over, we're going into criminal law. You'll beat those witnesses down, Jackie, won't you Jock?” Harmon bounced up from the bed, putting Jack's organs into their proper place. Then he wagged a finger at the groaning Jack. “Tell Barbara not to worry about me, Jockie Jack, for I'll be seeing no more of Miss Bright. Miss Bright will cease to exist for me. Miss Bright, I have learned, has vacated her establishment on the Hudson, and it will know her no more.
I
will know her no more. Can I be plainer?”

“No,” said Jack, and thought
, Even Barbara would be satisfied with this
. Harmon Dodge didn't think lying worth his trouble. If he said Miss Bright existed for him no more, then there wasn't anything else to it—she didn't exist.

“Well,” said Barbara when she returned to the apartment that evening, “something was done right for a change.”

“Please don't light a cigarette,” said Jack. “And please don't jump up and down on the side of the bed.”

“I had no intention of doing either,” said Barbara, rolling her head on her neck in a way that made the bones crack loudly enough to be heard across the room.

“And don't make your neck crack like that,” said Jack. “It brings back painful memories.”

“You're a perfectly wretched invalid,” said Barbara.

“As a nurse…” Jack began, but then didn't finish. The best thing that could be said about Barbara Beaumont as a nurse was the best that could be said about certain doctors—they stayed away.

“I've no aptitude for nursing,” Barbara conceded. “I'm a Christian Scientist at heart, I suppose. I don't really believe in illness.”

“Except when it's your own,” said Jack.

“Well, of course I believe in it
then
,” she returned, “for I can feel it. Can't I?” She lit a cigarette and studied Jack for a few moments. “You're no good here,” she said at last.

“No,” he agreed with all the heartiness that a dozen yards of bandages would allow.

“It's quite dreadful sleeping with you,” she went on. “That smell of camphor and mending bones never leaves the bed.”

“What do mending bones smell like?”

“A little like rancid butter,” Barbara replied with an air that suggested she'd thought about an appropriate comparison for some time. “And this apartment really is a little too small for two persons at the best of times, but when one of them is claiming to be ill—”

“Barbara, I broke two ribs—”

“—it is
entirely
too small, and therefore I've decided that we should spend a few weeks in the country with Father.”

Jack didn't say anything. Usually when Barbara spent this much time working up to a proposal of some course of action, the idea was harebrained. Jack tended to object to it as a matter of course. But this one sounded pleasant. Jack liked Barbara's father. Jack liked the country, and he liked Barbara's father's mansion. Jack disliked their short, hard bed in New York, and he liked the long, soft bed in their bedroom at the Cliffs. Jack disliked the way that windows rattled in the January wind in New York, and he
hated
the blasting dry heat of New York radiators. He liked the coziness of country winters and the crackling heat of enormous stone fireplaces.