The Housewife Blues (11 page)

"Light as lain," Jack said, still in a playful
mood. "I'm getting a yen for some more flied lice. But first let's do
something about this election."

"I love this election more than anything," Myrna
said, kissing it again. And again.

But once it was firmly decided to take no chances and wait
until after the election for him to ask Nell for a divorce, his paranoia
increased. A misstep, they both knew, could be a political disaster, and
therefore the mechanics of their weekends grew more complicated as the fear of
discovery upped the ante considerably. It boiled down to his need to continue
to be a senator, thereby keeping his options open for higher office, and her
new compulsion to be a senator's wife or more. How will that grab you, Pop? she
fantasized secretly.

"Maybe we should cool it until after the
election," Myrna had suggested from time to time, knowing it was only a
test. They were always testing each other. An affliction of lovers, she had
told him. Never quite trusting the joy, the miracle, of it. It provided its
share of pain as well. The pain of parting, the uncertainty of such love
between them being sustained. "Suppose we're not in love like this after
the election? Suppose you fall out of love with me?"

"Or you with me?"

"Never," she would attest. "Never. Never.
Never."

"Why so sure? You fell out of love with others. Your
two husbands."

"I never loved them."

"Then why did you marry them?"

"I was trying to fuck my father."

"And did you?"

"No. They were imposters."

"And me?"

"I want to fuck you, not my father. My father is
yesterday. It's all over. I've taken over the blame." It had, she knew,
the ring of truth. Only she could hear the hollow note.

"One day you'll stop loving me. Find out I'm an
imposter, just like the others," Jack said, another test, just to bait
her. It was all part of it, the testing, the fear, the delicious insecurity,
the exquisite danger.

"And you? Didn't you once love Nell?"

"There's love and love."

"And this?"

"It takes some maturity to understand the difference
between the original and a knock-off."

"And which are we?"

"The original."

"Then why do you keep knocking me off?" They both
giggled at that. In fact, they spent lots of time giggling. At times she
wondered if she had actually become the Myrna Loy of the
Thin Man
series. And he was the William Powell character. The irony amused her, despite
its Pyrrhic victory for her father.

At times during their weekends they would hear sounds in
the hallway or on the stairs or the movement of the elevator.

"You suppose any of them knows?" he would ask.

"How could they know?"

"They could have seen me, seen through my stupid
disguise."

"In this building? Everybody seems to be hiding
something around here. It's a miracle if you even get a hello. Which is exactly
the way I want it. All I need is to face a lot of bullshit from the neighbors.
Hell, we couldn't be doing this if I had gotten friendly with them. Some yenta
would be ringing the buzzer at the most inappropriate moment, wanting to borrow
some herb tea, for chris-sake."

"But you still couldn't be certain, dead
certain."

She contemplated his challenge for a long moment.
"Certain. But not dead certain," she agreed. "What about you?
Can you be certain that you got here clean and unspotted? I mean, how can you
be so sure you weren't followed?"

"I know how to shake a tail."

"Yessirree. I vote yea to that one."

"Good. That's exactly my immediate intention."

"Okay. Here's my tail."

She loved this easy banter between them, the sex, the closeness,
the letting go, and she was sure the same went for him.

One weekend, he asked her: "Is there anything you
want?"

At first the question confused her, and she had hesitated
to answer it, but he had prodded her.

"Something material, something you have on the top of
a wish list, something personal." On other occasions he had expressed some
guilt in the fact that they spent the weekends holed up, hiding out like
fugitives. This request, she assumed, obviously came about because of those
feelings.

"You don't have to, Jack," she told him. "My
cup already runneth over."

"You don't understand. I want to. No, I need to. And
not just a token."

She had thought about it for a number of weeks, deciding
finally to tell him the truth, sure that it would be beyond his means. She had
seen what she wanted at Henri Bendel one day. It had arrested her attention,
and she had actually tried it on. Wanting a material thing had never turned her
on. Except this.

"A certain full-length sable coat," she told him,
giving some specifics about her experience at Bendel's. "Pure frippery, I
know. Against all liberal principles about animal rights and such. But you
really wanted to know. I don't like jewelry. You said personal. So that's it,
that full-length sable coat. The one that said 'Come and get me at Bendel's.'
I'd love to go out with you in that sable coat. In fact, we don't even have to
go out, I'll wear it with nothing on underneath. How's that for fantasy."

She watched his face, expecting some expression of either
ridicule or frustration.

"Perfect," he said. "I'm of an age when I
can still remember that once a woman's most fervent material desire was to have
a fur coat."

"See how traditional I am."

"That's my girl. You want that full-length sable, you
got it."

"Come on, Jack. We're talking more than a hundred
thousand dollars. I know you're loaded, but it's not easy to hide a purchase
like that from the people who administer your private funds. Some one of your
various retainers is bound to raise a red flag. You asked. I told you. It was
meant to scare you, not to encourage you. Besides, you give me your love and
your loving, and that's quite enough."

He was silent for a long time after that. She let him
alone, hoping he was in the process of rejecting the idea as foolhardy and
dangerous. Finally, when he did not speak, she embellished her earlier note of
caution.

"First of all, in your position, you'd have to buy it
in cash. No records, remember. Then you'd have to be sure that the name of the
chippy, me, was totally hidden. Can't you see the headlines: 'Sable Coat to
Secret Mistress in Senator's Love Nest.' The
National Enquirer
would
have a field day."

"That's exactly the point. We'll outsmart the
bastards. Fool them."

"Now that is crazy."

"Crazy? Better yet, dangerous. I love the idea of
outsmarting the bastards. Let's just figure out how to make it happen. Can the
coat you want be described on the telephone?"

"Of course. Actually, it may already be gone."

"Did you ask the price?"

"One hundred twenty-five thousand five hundred, plus
luxury tax. So there. So much for fantasy."

"Do you know the salesperson? Were you
recognized?"

"You can't be serious," she muttered. "But
the answer is no."

"Okay. So we keep you anonymous. Now getting it to
you..." He mused for a while over the detail. Idle speculation, she
decided. "We have it delivered to someone untraceable to me or you. A
casual acquaintance, perhaps. The thing about this business is that you've got
to protect your flanks."

"Why bother?"

"Because it's there."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she said.

"It means," Jack said, "that I'm going to do
it. I need to do this. I need to show you how far I'm willing to go."

"It's adolescent," she protested. "Like
playing chicken."

"Sort of," he admitted. "One way or another
I'm going to do it. With or without your complicity."

"You don't have to prove anything to me, Jack. I love
you. Nothing can make me love you more."

"And I love you. And I want to do this."

"But, Jack, if the media, or some legitimate
investigative body, or, for that matter, some illegitimate body, a private
detective hired by an opponent, wants to dig up dirt, this will be a
bonanza."

"I'm all a-twitter," Jack said.

"You have that much untraceable cash?"

"In my stash."

"What does that mean?"

"It means that most politicians have campaign cash
hidden, unaccounted for. Even me."

"Is that legal?"

"Not legal. Just done. Standard practice. So you see,
not to worry. Believe me, I can get the nicely laundered cash for the purchase.
Like Nixon in the Watergate tapes saying he could get the cash. Anonymously.
Then we get a private delivery service to deliver it to someone of your
choice."

No matter what she said, however convoluted her scenarios
of doom, she knew that he had already figured things out and there could be no
dissuading him. In an odd way she was glad that she had told him about it,
although she still worried about the terrible risk to him.

"You realize you're jeopardizing your career,"
she told him.

"That's exactly the point. I want to risk it. I want
to illustrate how much you truly mean to me."

"Sounds like you want to get caught."

"Psychobabble," he replied. "No. I want to
get away with it, and I want you to have this gift. I've bought enough gifts
for people that meant nothing. I want you to have a gift from me that means
something."

"It's romantic stupidity."

"I know. Isn't it wonderful?"

It did not take her long to be a party to it. The issue
finally got down to who would be the perfect go-between. She wrestled over that
one. It was not a matter of trust, more of naive ignorance, someone who would
simply accept the assignment, relegating it to no more than a simple favor.

That cute little woman downstairs! She remembered how she
had dutifully delivered Myrna's shoes, how fresh, sweet, and naive she seemed.
And apparently, from what Myrna had observed, she spent most of her time at
home, the perfect little homemaker. What was her name? Burns. Janey or Jenny?

Thinking about her caused Myrna to expand her thoughts
about the people who occupied the building. Myrna had lived here for five
years. It was perfect for her needs, spacious, high ceilings and thick plaster
walls, well kept, and most important, away from the gossiping curiosity of
concierges, doormen, and janitors who hung about high rises with their palms
out and their eyes open.

She considered finding such an apartment in a small
building a stroke of luck. It would have been impossible for Jack to visit her
like this if she lived in one of those luxury high rises. Someone was sure to
spot him. Not that she was totally secure that he had not been recognized
coming in or out of her building. But the odds seemed a lot less, and six
months had passed without any suspicious incident.

She had maintained a bare minimum of sociability with the
neighbors, offering a pleasant hello or a trite comment about the weather.
Invariably she kept her distance. The Richardsons, who lived in the apartment
across from hers, seemed pleasant enough, and she heard their comings and
goings without interest. Mr. Richardson had introduced himself to her,
volunteering that he was an art dealer, which had immediately put her on alert.
Art dealers were always hustling paintings.

Upstairs, just above her place, were the Sterns. She looked
like gloom and doom, and he seemed always self-absorbed and unfriendly. Their
son, too, was equally strange. When they waited on the first-floor landing for
the elevator, she would be sure to offer the most perfunctory acknowledgment
she could think of, then dash up the stairs. Actually it was difficult to ascertain
who was being more standoffish, she or them. Either way it suited her just
fine.

Then there was the gay couple on the ground level that were
always losing their cat. Three times in the last year one of them had rung her
buzzer looking for that damned cat. Once or twice she had spotted the Stern boy
sitting on the steps stroking the cat, a tabby that looked like a miniature
tiger. Beyond that, she had little or nothing to do with the couple.

Which left the obvious, that sweet little thing on the
first floor. Myrna remembered that she had this midwestern twang and a fresh,
open, trusting look. It was obvious that she would have liked to come into
Myrna's apartment and pass the time of day. That, Myrna suspected, would be
fatal, since the woman seemed to have lots of time on her hands.

Perhaps she stayed home because she was pregnant or
unemployed or had been cowed into accepting the role of housewife by what could
be her overbearing twit of a husband. Indeed, she knew the type well from
paternal experience.

Her suspicions had been confirmed when she had observed the
husband a couple of times as they passed in the hallway. He appeared to be a
sleek, conceited, hard-body type. She felt certain that he was one of that vast
army of nose-in-the-air, tight-ass, take-no-prisoners superyuppies, always
dressed in the latest designer suits or jogging clothes. She had encountered
hordes of them between husbands. They were always so cocksure of making it big
and expected the world to bow down and admire them.

She got her jollies ball-busting them, making them feel
like shit, especially in the sack, where they really thought they were showing
their stuff. She chuckled to herself, remembering how she had faked
indifference to their lovemaking, after coming to beat the band. That really
pissed them off. This Burns fellow, she decided, was a classic specimen.

Actually, even though she was determined not to befriend
the neighbors, he seemed to go beyond the pale, not even looking her way when
they passed in the hall, offering not even the slightest impersonal grunt of
recognition and leaving in his wake the stink of his trendy after-shave.