The Confessions of Edward Day (17 page)

“I see that,” Teddy said. “You’ve gone pale. It looks like a bigger shock than my affair with Wayne.”

“Jesus,” I said. “Maybe it’s the combination.” But it wasn’t. I hadn’t felt much beyond surprise and interest in Teddy’s confession; it didn’t touch me. This news penetrated deep into my
thoracic cavity, where my liver was briskly pumping out enough bile to digest a brick. The truth was bitter. I didn’t want to marry Madeleine—I didn’t want to marry anyone, the idea was appalling—but I didn’t want anyone else to marry her and I most particularly did not want Guy Margate to marry her.

“Mr. and Mrs. Margate,” I said sourly.

“Well,” Teddy said. “She’s not changing her name.”

A
t dinner Teddy talked about nothing but Wayne. He was in the first giddy stages of infatuation, his ragged heart flapping on his sleeve for the whole world to see. I hardly knew what to say to him but it didn’t matter because he wouldn’t have heard me if I had. I pleaded fatigue and the necessity for an early wake-up call—I’d been laid off at Bloomingdale’s and would have to scare up a new day job—and we parted after dinner, he to Wayne’s studio, I to my apartment, which the Georgia peach had evidently spent the summer scrubbing down with bleach; even the dresser drawers reeked of it.

My brain was in an uproar. I paced up and down, muttering imprecations against Madeleine; how could she have done it, how brought herself to so low a pass? I dropped to the floor and did push-ups until my arms trembled. I put Jim Morrison on my record player and sang along with “The Crystal Ship” and “Back Door Man.” At midnight I could stand my thoughts no longer and went out.

The streets were empty but for panhandlers and unsavory types, so I walked at a brisk pace down to Washington Square,
across to Broadway, and back up to Union Square, where there was an all-night bar patronized by models and Hispanic drug dealers. I had a quick drink there, exchanging pleasantries with a beanpole of a model who called herself Vakushka, “You know like in that movie.”

“Verushka,” I corrected her.

“No, I’m sure it’s Vakushka,” she replied. I set out again, across to Fifth Avenue and back down to Washington Square. The night was damp and progressively cooler. As I crossed into SoHo a light rain began to fall and by the time I got to Spring Street it was a downpour. I turned back toward the Village. There was still a smattering of nightlife going on, people rushing into and out of cabs and cars, lights flickering from the open doors of a few bars and restaurants. I cut across toward Bowery, thinking I might dry out at Phebe’s if they were still open. The street widened, light posts were farther apart, the rain clattered, running off the gutters, puddling around the plastic garbage bags lining the curb. A torn bag rustled ominously as I passed and in the next moment a rat rushed out at me. “Get away!” I snarled, revving up to a trot. At the corner I turned north again, shielding my eyes with my hand to see through the sheeting water.

A man sporting an umbrella appeared on the opposite sidewalk, moving swiftly, as I was, and in the same direction. For a block he mirrored me. I could sense him there more than see him, and at the next corner he crossed to my side and came up behind me. The umbrella, a cumbersome and sensible accoutrement, made me think he was unlikely to be a thief or a thug. Phebe’s lights glimmered in the near distance; he was clearly
headed there as well. I glanced as surreptitiously as I could over my shoulder, but all I could see was the umbrella and a loose jacket flapping open as its owner hastened along.

“Why don’t you slow down and share my umbrella?” he said. “We’ve still got a block to go.”

It was Guy. My first impulse, which was to run away, gave way to my second, which was a burning curiosity to find out something about Madeleine. “How did you know it was me?” I asked, as he extended the umbrella over my head.

“I knew it as soon as I turned the corner. You walk like a dog with your head down.”

“Ever observant,” I said. “Can you do an impression of me?”

“As a matter of fact I have a very good impression of you. I’ll show it to you someday.”

The thought gave me pause. Did he do an impression of me for Madeleine? Did she laugh? Did she correct him on certain intimate details? An unpleasant scenario played out in my head as we covered the last block and stepped in under Phebe’s awning. The chairs were stacked on the tables but there were a few stragglers at the bar, waiting out the storm. We went in; I shook myself off and passed a handkerchief over my hair. As he folded his umbrella and propped it primly against the doorframe I took a closer look at Madeleine’s husband.

He’d changed again. His face was haggard, his hair was greased and slicked back, his skin was sallow, there were dark circles beneath his eyes. Married life. The jacket was bomber style, not new, shiny, probably water resistant. The sleeves were too short. There was something seedy about him, but his good
posture and bones combined to give him an air of shabby gentility. He knew I was examining him and allowed a moment before he turned to me, his expression flat as a foot, and said, “I could use a drink.”

“Me too,” I agreed. We went to the bar.

“Miserable night,” said the bartender. “What will you have?”

We had bourbon. “I understand you’re to be congratulated,” I said, lifting my glass in a mini-toast.

“News travels fast,” he said. “Who told you?”

“Teddy. I just had dinner with him.”

“Did you meet Wayne?”

“No. But I heard a lot about him.”

“Teddy’s not serious,” he observed.

“He says he’s never been more serious in his life.”

“Not about Wayne. About being an actor. He’s not serious and Wayne is a way out.”

“He says his acting has improved.”

Guy snorted. “Do you believe that?”

“Well,” I said, “if he’s been repressing a whole part of himself and now he’s not, it stands to reason he’ll be a better actor. He has access to more of himself. I mean, before he was acting even when he wasn’t playing a part. Now he’s not, so there should be more truth to his work.”

“You sound like Madeleine.”

“Do I?” I said. Madeleine often carped about “truth” until I was stultified with boredom. “Maybe she’s right.”

Guy rolled his eyes dramatically. “There’s no way around playing a part,” he said. “There’s no truth to be known. You
make it up as you go along. If anyone should know that, it’s you.”

“Does Madeleine know you think like this?”

“Of course not. I’m not stupid.”

So he had contempt for Madeleine too. “How is she?” I asked.

He swirled his bourbon in the glass and knocked it back. “She’s asleep.”

Of course, I thought. He knew when Madeleine was asleep and when she was awake. And when she washed her hair, and what brand of toothbrush she preferred, and how carefully she placed those cotton balls between her toes when she painted her toenails. What Guy must know about Madeleine depressed me. “So you’re on the prowl,” I said.

“I have trouble sleeping,” he said. “I walk around at night. But you know that.”

We all stayed up late and burned the candle at both ends, so it had not, until that moment, occurred to me that Guy was an insomniac. It was sleeplessness, he implied, that had drawn him out on the pier that night. He was searching for sleep and he’d found a drowning man. And now he’d left Madeleine alone in a dingy apartment somewhere because he was too restless to lie by her side. The longer I spent with Guy the more I wanted to talk to Madeleine, but he was between us now, like an ogre guarding a princess, and he couldn’t even be counted upon to fall asleep long enough to get past him. All my anger against her had been washed out of me by the rain and I could feel the cold, wet shirt against my back, the
squishy toes of my socks. I was a miserable wet dog in the manger if ever there was one.

“Is she working?” I asked.

“She’s not acting, if that’s what you mean. She’s got a job at the bookstore with me. She gets tired out pretty easily; the doctor says she’s anemic. She’s not going back to classes when they start up again.”

“I’d like to talk to her,” I said.

He pushed a few bills across the bar, studying me with his dark eyes. “I’m sure you would,” he said.

She doesn’t love him, I thought. How could she? He’d caught her at a weak moment. She had no one else to turn to and he was there. He twisted his mouth into something like a smile and gave a quick chuck to my shoulder with the back of his hand. “She liked that photo I took of you,” he said.

“What photo?”

“In Connecticut.”

My brain contracted around this information like an octopus engulfing a bivalve. “But you told me she didn’t know you were coming to see me.”

“She didn’t know then. But when I got back I told her. And I gave her the money you sent. She appreciated that.”

“I asked you not to tell her it came from me.”

“I’m not going to lie to Madeleine for you. She’s my wife.”

I rested my elbows on the bar and lowered my head into my hands. “Oh, man,” I said.

Guy buttoned his jacket. “I’m off,” he said. “Nice running into you, Ed.”

“Oh, man,” I said again. I didn’t lift my head until I heard the door swing closed behind him.

He’d laid a trap for me and I’d waltzed right into it. God knew what he’d told Madeleine about our meeting in Connecticut. How could I talk to her? She clearly wasn’t going to return my calls, she wasn’t going to classes, and she worked in the same place as her husband. And even if I did manage it, what could I possibly say?
It’s your own fault
, I upbraided myself.
You wanted to get away from her, you wanted a break, you welcomed it
.

That’s true
, I protested in my defense.
But it wasn’t supposed to turn out like this!

T
he next morning I went down to SoHo to see if I could get my old job back. I was welcomed by my employer like the prodigal son. He was shorthanded; two waiters had quit by simply not showing up. He offered me a flexible schedule, including lunches and enough hours so that I wouldn’t need a second job. On Wednesday I met with Barney Marker, an avuncular, fast-talking hipster from Brooklyn who asked me a number of questions, the last of which was did I think I was up to Pinter. He knew the director for a production of
The Birthday Party
coming up at the Roundabout, which had recently moved from a supermarket basement to a theater on Twenty-third Street. It was Equity, reputable, and regularly reviewed. With a pair of glasses, Barney said, I would be perfect for the part of Stanley.

I bought the glasses and a few days after that I read for the
part, got a callback the next day, and by the end of the week signed up for my first substantial role in New York.

I felt great; things were definitely looking up. I wanted to tell everyone; most particularly I wanted to tell Madeleine. But I realized that I didn’t even know where she lived.

I called Mindy Banks. “I don’t think she wants to see you,” she said, but not coldly.

“I need to talk to her,” I pleaded. “I don’t know what Guy told her but I’m pretty sure it was all lies. She won’t return my calls. I’ll have to go where she is, but I don’t know where that is.”

“She works at a bookstore,” she said.

“I know that, but where is it?”

Mindy hesitated, consulting some code of female fealty. “It’s at Columbus Circle. She works on Monday and Wednesday night. They stay open late.”

“Is Guy there too?”

Again she paused.

“Mindy, I’m desperate.”

“He’s not there on Monday nights.”

“Bless you,” I said.

“Do you see Teddy?” she asked.

“Only once since I’ve been back.”

“Have you met this Wayne character?”

“No, I don’t want to. Have you?”

“I’ve seen him,” she confided. “I went by the gallery he works in. He thought I was looking at the pictures.”

“What did you think?”

“I think he’s a Chinese devil.”

I laughed.

“It’s not funny,” Mindy said. “Do me a favor and take a look for yourself. I’m so worried about Teddy it’s making me sick.”

A
surprising number of customers were in the bookstore, scanning the tall shelves and thumbing through the volumes on the display tables. The place was vast, wall-to-wall books, various niches and corners formed by free-standing shelves and an information desk that looked like a bar at the center where two clerks, neither of them Madeleine, dispensed helpful hints to the shoppers. I had no idea how she would feel about being accosted in her workplace and I was nervous. I glanced about, pretending to read the placards over the shelves: Science, History, Chess. At a checkout counter near the door a businessman unfolded his wallet before a youthful clerk, not Madeleine, dressed in the equivalent of a dashiki. A murmur of female voices drew me into the Fiction aisle but the two women who halted their conversation at my approach were bespectacled and white-haired. I passed them with a nod and entered Poetry, an impressive collection, just in time to see the heel of a black shoe and the flare of a red skirt disappear into Religion/Philosophy I followed; she turned again into Occult. She was carrying a book, and as I came around the corner, she stopped before a shelf and, stretching up on her toes, carefully slid the volume into place. Her hair was pulled back in an ill-contained knot. She was wearing a cerulean blue cardigan I’d never seen before that made her
eyes, when she turned them upon me, glisten like captured bits of sky.

“Madeleine?” I said, tentative as a schoolboy.

Not a pause, not a moment of reserve or recrimination, no weighing of options or just deserts; she came down on her heels, her lips parting in a smile of such warmth that I moved quickly toward her, holding out my hands. “Edward,” she said, stepping into my embrace, her arms circling my neck, nestling her head against my chest. My heart swelled with surprise and then pity. What on earth had we done to ourselves? I pressed my lips into her hair, that familiar spicy fragrance, and tightened my arms around her back. “I missed you so,” she murmured.

A theatrical “ahem,” issued from a professorial type happening upon us in his quest for an essential tome. We separated, holding hands. She didn’t look pregnant, I thought, and she certainly didn’t look anemic. “When do you get off?” I asked. “I’ll wait for you. I’ve got to see you.”